Regarding Afghanistan,

[rownesheck]

I'm sorry, but I can't care about what happened. We fucked up going in 20 years ago. What? Did we not pay attention to Russia's fucked up experience? Being the USA, our arrogant asses actually thought we would succeed there. We were stupid.

I have no problem with us finally understanding the shit wasn't working and just leaving. Sorry, citizens of Afghanistan. We fucked up and your military blows apparently. We can't spend trillions of our dollars trying to help you (or whatever the fuck we were doing there), and you guys not help yourselves.

In my opinion, we've got much more pressing issues at home dealing with our own taliban.

Full disclosure: I hate the military industrial complex and I feel we spend an obscene amount of money on "defense".

[JI7]

1. We went in to get bin laden

[JohnSJ]

4. Yes, and dismantle AQ. Some seem to forget that the Taliban was giving sanctuary to bin laden

and AQ

We missed him at tora bora where he escaped to Pakistan, but after got him in Pakistan, that was the time when we needed to start setting an end date

[JI7]

5. Yes, the problem was Bush never made a serious attempt to get bin laden

and pretty much gave up on it to focus on Iraq.

Obama should have started removing soldiers after we got bin laden.

[JohnSJ]

7. Yes

[bluedevil4]

2. Is it ok

if we get out our citizens before we move on?

[Johonny]

3. I'll be honest, the last 1.5 years have been rough and covid is still not gone

I got unvaccinated kids, school starting up, a job to try to hold etc . . .

I'm more focused on American getting through this pandemic than trying to repair the broken country we propped up for 20 years.

[stillcool]

6. I try not to think about the war department

there's too much to read, and who knows what the truth is? Sometimes, when it comes to the military I don't think anyone can possibly know what everyone in those agencies is doing.

Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed.
And that is the way the empire grows-a base in every neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after world War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty years after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.
"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before," US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February 2002. Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: "The United States Military is currently deployed to more locations then it has been throughout history."
.
https://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/American_Empire_KH2004.html

Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden,
and the Taliban
by Phil Gasper
International Socialist Review, November-December 2001
https://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Afghanistan/Afghanistan_CIA_Taliban.html
In addition to tapping new sources of energy, de [project] also suited a major U.S. strategic aim in the region: isolating its nemesis Iran and stifling a frequently mooted rival pipeline project backed by Teheran, experts said.
But Washington's initial enthusiasm for the Taliban's seizure of power provoked a hostile reaction from human rights and women's organizations in the United States. The Clinton administration quickly decided to take a more cautious public approach. Plans to send the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan on a visit to Kabul were canceled, and the State Department decided not to recognize the new regime immediately. Nevertheless, Unocal executive vice president Chris Taggart continued to maintain, "If the Taliban leads to stability and international recognition then it's positive."
Tacit U.S. support for the Taliban continued until 1998, when Washington blamed Osama bin Laden for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and retaliated by launching cruise missiles at bin Laden's alleged training camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban's refusal to extradite bin Laden- not its atrocious human rights record-led to UN-imposed sanctions on the regime the following year. "Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used to say that she cared about the women suffering under the Taliban, but after the Taliban took over the U.S. accepted very few refugees," points out journalist Laura Flanders. "In '96 and '97 no Afghan refugees were admitted to the United States; in '98, only 88, in '99, some 360."
Whatever the U.S. government's current rhetoric about the repressive nature of the Taliban regime, its long history of intervention in the region has been motivated not by concern for democracy or human rights, but by the narrow economic and political interests of the U.S. ruling class. It has been prepared to aid and support the most retrograde elements if it thought a temporary advantage would be the result. Now Washington has launched a war against its former allies based on a strategic calculation that the Taliban can no longer be relied upon to provide a stable, U.S.-friendly government that can serve its strategic interests. No matter what the outcome, the war is certain to lay the grounds for more "blowback" in the future.