The Montagnards in Vietnam...I'm trying to be diplomatic here, but leaving the possibility open we'll support them again at some point is the most American thing about this. It's how we fought the Cold War. It's why we don't care that a Saudi prince had a journalist murdered or how they treat women. It's why Manuel Noriega was our ally, then our enemy, then our ally, then our enemy. It's why we buddied up to the Kurds until it was choose Kurds or Turks and we chose Turks. You can be actively disgusted by it, but it's not exactly a new play for us as a nation. We will overlook any number of human rights abuses or ideological conflicts if it gains us a lever against someone we like less.
This part of your post is just a little off base. Neither party wants a limited government. They just have different things they want to control with the beast.Communist Party goal is to subvert the Constitution of the United States of America, and destroy the concept of limited government.
Meh. Not wrong. He just didn't say that most republicans are communists too.This part of your post is just a little off base. Neither party wants a limited government. They just have different things they want to control with the beast.
I don't disagree with your assessment that we've propped up terrible regimes before, I think that's a given. I disagree with your contention that this situation is the same as all the other examples you listed. None of those other example (possible exception being the Saudis if they were involved in 9\11) were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. I also wouldn't call this approach "American" although it may have been carried out by Americans. It's not consistent with our traditional values, and may be one reason why the world seems completely FUBAR right now.
I'm trying to be diplomatic here, but leaving the possibility open we'll support them again at some point is the most American thing about this. It's how we fought the Cold War. It's why we don't care that a Saudi prince had a journalist murdered or how they treat women. It's why Manuel Noriega was our ally, then our enemy, then our ally, then our enemy. It's why we buddied up to the Kurds until it was choose Kurds or Turks and we chose Turks. You can be actively disgusted by it, but it's not exactly a new play for us as a nation. We will overlook any number of human rights abuses or ideological conflicts if it gains us a lever against someone we like less.
To be fair I think vehicles under US control, left at the airport might have been disabled like Pentagon dude is saying.
The vehicles we see in this video were probably given to the Afghan military and not stored at the airport.
I got to see some photos of stuff left at the airport. It's sapped. You may be able to park it in front of the local Afghanistan Legion post for propoganda purposes, but it's busted.
It sounds like (not from media sources) that what was taken intact air craft wise was Afghan gov't stuff. US stuff was sapped and wasn't military anyway, it was stuff that was obsolete and had been repurposed to various civilian agencies and/or NGOs.
From my own experience, the US military provided us (us being DynCorp) with APCs...but not the same ones they were using. They were either old M113s (and even the newest M113 was obsolete as Bradleys and MRAPs had been fielded) or South African wheeled APCs. Those might have actually belonged to DynCorp, I'm not sure, but they were commercially avialable.
Have you used armored buses as well?
I've read that they (US gov) used those to transport their folks, journalists etc, to and from the airport.
We may not have learned the lesson of Vietnam, but it's very clear to me Joe Biden learned the lesson of Jimmy Carter. In my mind's ear, I can almost hear him saying it over the phone to a staff member in Lyndon Johnson's tone of voice:
"Listen here boy, we're not going to have ourselves another g*ddamn Jimmy Carter Hostage Crisis here, dragging on forever making me look bad...if they can't get out by the deadline, then leave them there and let them f*cking die..."
My whole family sat up and stared speechless the other night, when the U.S. General stood up on national TV and told the American public, the number of Americans left was in the "Very low, and I do mean very low, hundreds." My son was dumb-struck by it, and he's not old enough to have a historical reference for how the US should handle the issue of American lives at-risk overseas. The unacceptability of getting yourself into a situation where you have say that, was self-evident.
How long before the Dems propose an amendment that will allow someone from the Taliban to run for president of the US? I mean, they're already controlling our military apparently thru Jihad Joe Biden.This isnt good. We knew who the bomber was, where he was going to strike, and even had a drone lock on him, but the brass refused to authorize the shot. Now 13 soldiers are dead because of that inaction. like that is why we didnt win this war.