Afghanistan, Afghanistan, every one is talking about Afghanistan. Seems like we all are falling all over ourselves deciding who to blame, President Biden, or former President Trump.
Wasn't President Obama supposed to get us out of there? No, he made the deal to release a few Taliban fighters in trade for the deserter, Bobby Bergdahl. We all could go on and on pointing fingers. People are comparing our trip to Afghanistan to our trip to Vietnam as indicated by the picture above. The fact of the matter is, whoever said, 'He who ignores history is doomed to repeat it' or some such thing is absolutely correct.
Take a look at the histories of Afghanistan and Vietnam. And don't give me crap over the source, discernment is key. Humans have been living there (plural) for thousands of years. Over the centuries, it has always been a proverbial pissing contest(s) over which resident(s) is the ruler(s). Until somebody else steps in. Kind of like us. Here is where the parallels get to be kind of obvious. Recent history in Vietnam, it was the French. We saw what happened to the French in Vietnam during what they call, "The First Indochina War". Later, we got involved. And more involved. And then some. Even though it was a war 'against the spread of Communism', underneath it all; we were invading their country. It seems for many Vietnamese, their factions may have disappeared and we became the enemy. And we all saw how it finally ended. Look at the left side of the picture above to be reminded.
Spool up Afghanistan. Especially the recent history of Afghanistan which led to the war with the then Soviet Union. It could be said because of the timing that we used that conflict as a proxy war to 'get back' at the Soviet Union for Vietnam. I could now go into the plethora of reasons that the two could never be related and all the intricacies of how we inadvertently trained the Taliban to kill us and such, but hey, let's just focus on the parallels for now. It was mainly the locals who were most instrumental in the outcome(s). The 'super powers' somehow lost. And that is the point of this article.
The point we should have learned. News is happening fast, the news in the following sentence. We now have at the very least 10,000 American Citizens potentially stranded in Afghanistan. Back when the Afghani's (Taliban-eve) were fighting the Russians:
Notice the Russian made rifles. So much more that could be commented on, but I am going to get to a point. After we have left, now check the country of origin for the weapons of choice for the Taliban:
Have we now learned? In my honest opinion, the person to blame is George W. Bush. Bin Ladin claimed responsibility for 9/11. Bin Laden was in Afghanistan as a guest to the Taliban, who has now turned on those who trained them. Knowing all this, we should have just made Kandahar look like this on September 12, 2001:
On September 13, 2001, we should have done these to the Khyber pass:
Finally, if we felt the need, Kabul:
Rumor has it, the Taliban had such a strangle hold on information in Afghanistan at the time that there was no release atf all of what happened in the U.S. on September 11, 2001 in Afghanistan. Rumor.
Instead we played war with Afghanistan. And lost lots of American lives. Just like we did in Vietnam, just like the Soviets had previously done in Afghanistan. The solutions above kept us from losing more lives in WWII against a determined enemy just like we knew we would face in Afghanistan. And here we are now with a FUBAR mess. Am I the only one who wishes we fought wars to win them instead of fucking around? I don't like to fight at all, so get it OVER with in a fucking hurry I say.
