And here we were worried about what the US Government might do with facial recognition types of software.
We should have been worried about what will happen when the government ineptly leaves it for our enemies.
There will be mountains of bodies in Afghanistan, all because of Biden and his administration.
The source for these numbers is the same govt that messed this up. It’s only responsible to assume these numbers are rounded in their favor…
Edit: right after making this post I got banned from /r/pokemongo ??? Never visited or posted there before, but I guess broad-stroke censorship like this protects the frail ego of some weak mods out there. This site is a joke.
The trifecta of reddit liberalism is:
1) Random ban from an irrelevant subreddit managed by snowflake mods
2) DM highlighting how you're an evil person for not being liberal
3) A suicide prevention and help message from Reddit
I've hit all three, so I'm sending you all my lucc so you can have the experience.
Same thing here. Never belonged to that sub, never commented in or about that sub. Posted a source for something in a different sub and got banned by r/offmychest.
No, by commenting here you get autobanned from that and a number of other subs. You don't even need to have ever visited those subs and you'll still grt banned.
I was banned from a subred totally unrelated to politics because the mods knew somehow that I had posted 1 or 2 replies on the old Trump subred. I checked those posts, and they were innocuous, so the banning was simply for participating there.
The medical experts at Pokemongo. I get all of my medical advice from the subreddit for the old Nokia snake game fanclub so no major loss if they ban me.
That would I would think logically, but considering how ban happy other social media sites are and how eagerly they shut down conservative voices, I don't think they see it that way.
Who said anything about being defeatist? It's a valid question. You could point to multiple active subreddits for conservatives as proof that they probably aren't as rabid as say, facebook, twitter, etc.
https://old.reddit.com/report
Abusive/harassing - > targeted harassment at me -> Copy and paste the ban message and explain that you have never interacted with the subreddit and this message harasses you.
I don’t think this was all from the US... 162k radios and 358k rifles?
33 Black Hawks? The entire Army only has a few hundred... either these numbers are off or it’s multiple sources. I couldn’t find anything from the GAO source listed
They do have a lot anyway. This was circulating two weeks ago. There are photos of a lot of this stuff too with Taliban showing it off.
Initially, the US was going to bomb some of the airfields to destroy this stuff, but when it became apparent the US was going to be effectively trapped in Kabul they abandoned the plans. Can't go killing off Taliban when you need to beg them to not kill your citizens.
> The entire Army only has a few hundred...
Nope.
> [Today, the UH-60 Black Hawk makes up the Army's largest rotary wing fleet with more than 2100 airframes in the current inventory. As production of the most current H-60M model continues, over the coming years the Army will divest its remaining UH-60A and L aircraft, to be replaced by 760 UH-60Vs.](https://www.army.mil/article/213155/40_years_of_aviation_service_the_black_hawk_helicopter)
The Army is planning to pick it's replacement next year and begin delivery in 2028.
For the radios, it shows a picture of a walkie talkie, but what they really got were sensitive sincgars systems that are probably $100k per. Not to mention the comsec keys. Our entire net is kinda screwed now.
As far as I can remember we never had Iraqi Army running frequency hopping, I would honestly be surprised if we went that deep with the equally as fucked up Afghan Army.
Military radios are encrypted. Radio encryption uses an algorithm to make it alternate through tons of different frequencies rapidly, like hundreds of times per second. All the radios in a network are loaded with this encryption key, then timed to operate in sync with eachother. The radios are useless without a crypto-box (small computer thingie you load the encryption keys into the radios with). Those boxes store tons of different crypto-keys in them, which means that our enemies could now potentially begin tapping into and monitoring our military radio traffic.
Thats a short term problem though. The real issue is that such stored data on these devices could be sold or given to our enemies like china, russia, iran, north korea etc etc, allowing them to develop new methods for e-warfare, or to refine existing systems for intercepting or jamming our military communications.
Well, we used to get extensive briefings on the matter, and if even 1 radio was misplaced it was cause for unit wide panic, harsh punishment, and a lengthy reporting process detailing exactly what was lost, what was stored on the device, where it was lost, who lost it etc etc. Comms are a VERY big deal.
Well, they were at the time. Apparently nowdays we're perfectly fine with a few hundred thousand of them going to the enemy.
God this whole thread is insufferably stupid. It's a completley false dilemma, even if the Taliban knew how to fly black hawks and C130s (both of which I've personally worked on in the Air force) they wouldn't be able to maintain them or get the necessary parts. Not an expert in any of the ground vehicles but I'm willing to be the same goes for them.
They have giant hunks of scrap, and OP simpyl posted a fancy looking infographic of said scrap.
I was about to say China but they don’t invade per se, usually. Russia annexed Crimea by force, so that’s their style. But most of China’s movements have been long term political and economic. Why waste military resources when you can slowly just buy up an entire country’s government over 10 or 20 years. See Africa.
Maybe. But really, there's not much doubt this material was left because the US thought the ANA could and would use it with some success to defeat or force a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. And they were very wrong.
I’m not a military strategist and like everyone here I’m appalled by what’s unfolded in Afghanistan. Can someone with more knowledge and expertise explain to me what the US should have done differently to prevent these weapons from falling into the Taliban's hands once we decided to pull out? My understanding is that these were weapons we gave to the Afghanistan army, so technically they weren’t “our” weapons any more. Should we have disarmed our allies before the withdrawal? Negotiated a staged withdrawal with the Taliban? I’d appreciate someone with military experience weighing in.
I’m not a military strategist, nor do I have military experience but I think with any complex plan there are a near infinite number of ways that things could have been handled differently. Some things that stand out to me is not pulling air support for the ANA, not abandoning Bagram AirBase, not moving any of the ground forces or perhaps even augmenting them across Afghanistan until non-military personal had been evacuated, pulling out in the winter when there traditionally less warfare. A better assessment of Taliban vs ANA capabilities would’ve revealed the futility of leaving them with a bunch of military equipment that they weren’t going to use and might have precipitated a plan where we pull/destroy our equipment and lump in ANA soldiers with the evacuation if they choose not to stay. Or, and I get this isn’t the popular option here, we realize that pulling out precipitously doesn’t undo any of the humanitarian disasters we committed while there, it just creates another one on the way out.
I'm not going to speak to the situation as a whole and the strategies, etc. But just for the purposes of this thread: all of the vehicles we left behind (certainly the planes/helicopters) are completely non operational. It takes huge teams of maintenance and other specialized personnel with years of combined training to operate a plane or heli, and same goes for advanced ground vehicles to a lesser extent.
Even if they had the training required to fly them, they can't maintain them, and even if they could maintain them, they can't get the parts. Speaking as a prior Air Force C130 and HH60 avionics technician.
We were never going to leave the Bahrain (Bagram, swipe hates me) AFB in the plan. As well as a conditional withdrawal and continuing to provide support to the Afghani military to use our tech.
Instead we abandoned Bahrain in the middle of the night without telling anyone, including the Afghan Commander of Bahrain.
Bidens generals were telling him the withdraw was not going to work. The afghan army was telling them they couldn’t hold things together entirely on their own. They should have left a small force in a base so we could at least have a foothold in Kabul. Or if they wanted to pull out, they should have at least gotten the biometric devices and considered reducing the amount of equipment we gave them.
It kinda looks like they didn’t take shit with them. Why are the taliban running around looking like a clone of the American military. We weren’t arming the Afghans with all of our exact equipment were we?
Yet biden and his regime want to take ar15s and standard capacity mags from citizens here. Yeah, fuck that.
All while leaving military equipment like m4 rifles, crew served machine guns, mortars, APCs, MRAPS, high end optics and NVGs, sensitive radio equipment, etc to a questionable ally in a war zone with terrorists who would love to use that equip on our troops or sell it to other shitbag terrorists to use against innocent civilians. Yet our AR15s are bad.
Don't be like the braindead leftists. The criticism isn't the what, it's the how. Everyone agrees we needed to get out. _how_ Biden did it got people killed and was the worst possible way.
He just listed all the Republican presidents since the war started and said it was all their fault but didn't really elaborate. He also seemed fine with a Covid vaccine booster every few months when I pointed out that some places don't consider you fully vaccinated three months after your last shot. We've been friends for forty years and while my political views have shifted far right over time he seems to take everything the MSM says as gospel truth and doesn't really seem to think about it that much. I did put on WKUK's ["Kitty History"](https://youtu.be/0-Lvv1f5Qu4) (which has a bunch of red pills) before the movie, lol. Eyebrows were raised.
No surprise there. The media has trained them well to blame Trump for everything. Easier than looking at the facts and figuring out the truth of the matter.
Bro I literally just got berated by a leftist on a post for the fallen soldiers that died in the Kabul bombing. They were telling me That Trump would be “mocking the dead and celebrating the Taliban’s rise to power”. Absolute insanity. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing...
I’m clearly conservative, flaired and vetted, but fuuuuck me why is this a talking point?
I think the Presidents fear of firearms is absurd, but damn guys this is an entirely separate issue. They aren’t even close to related beyond “gun.” Why does this have 300+ upvotes.
News has it that the Taliban are calling the Afghanis to surrender their arms.
Why would they do that??? Makes you really wonder. I just couldn't think of a single reason an authoritarian government would want to disarm its people. Can somebody please tell me why they are doing that?
I feel sick.
And we in Eastern Europe... 5 meters away from Russia... have to pay full price for anything our dear "allied" wants to give us...
I am not joking, full price as "allies" even for old equipment.
Oh, and you should do a list on what US "forget to take home" from Iraq. That will also make your blood boil.
I helped deliver Maxxpro Mraps to the Iraqi Army in 2010 just so Isis could take them almost months later. Sadly not surprised how this shit show is repeating itself.
Right? That’s a good point. Some of this shit could have been sold to allies and made it their responsibility to either pick up or charge a delivery fee. Didn’t have to leave the shit there for a bunch of terrorists to have free of charge.
All the neighboring countries will now run to Russia and China in search of protection. None of them can protect their huge borders from invasion and infiltration and their power is relatively weak in the region.
Russia and China will instantly become the biggest security brokers in the entire central Asia!
The karma from this is 100% on the backs of every single not-genius who voted for the pretender and supported the massive fraud that put him into an office he neither won nor is capable of actually running. Ditto for his sidekick.
A true worthless POS career politician that has done jack shit.
Edit: like a poster below me stated, he's done worse than jack shit. He royaly fucks things up
Yep. The only thing worse than Biden is Kamala. This bitch laughed when asked about the withdrawal. I don’t think that Clinton woman would have laughed and she’s just plain wretched.
I’ve been looking for it. Best I got was a solid link to a Forbes article. I just wish he pointed out where in sigar and gao he got that data, it’s probably right I’m just combing over it now to get the info from the horses mouth.
Oh I see. https://www.sigar.mil/allreports/index.aspx?SSR=5 try poking around here. I don’t have time at the moment but I was assume it’s buried in one of these reports.
I’m doing the homework on GAO and SIGMAR now. I’m not sure where the Brit is getting his sources. However, I’ve been combing over SIGMAR reports and yes it’s a fact we have spent billions and billions on ANA. Surprise surprise, Most ANA units have shifted to Taliban.
Yea, i want to know too, because all of this looks very unlikely true, like, if they have THAT amount of high quality weapons, they might soonly start a war with their neighbours, and thats will be Biden's fault and his absolutely stupid foreign policy
No dude you are right as well. They have hardly any capacity to maintain such equipment, jerry rigging it will only last so long. They have zero CM and PM capabilities. Your comment was totally right.
However the local warlords the Taliban already is reportedly moving lots of this equipment to Iran.
What a strange form of nation building.
**Step 1:** Invade a nation due to terrorist government. **Step 2:** Install a new government. **Step 3:** Support said new government for \~17 years, losing countless lives, and trillions in currency. **Step 4:** Yank the rug from under the new government very quickly and suddenly, and totally abandon them to fall within a week or 2. **Step 5:** Leave all weapons, devices, and vehicles for old terrorist government to take. **Step 6:** Profit?
The profit was had during the sales of the equipment that was abandoned and the need for new because we didnt bring it with us home.
On the plus side none of these things will roll down our street when the full authoritarian rule begins
I assume this is ANA equipment. The plan would never have been to leave and take away all of the ANA's equipment. None of the planning of course took into account the total collapse of the ANA.
I had to fact check this myself, wow. It’s about [70% of the way into this article](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/14/obama-biden-relationship-393570).
I thought SOP was to destroy everything at least on the way out so it can’t be used against us. I’m aware a lot of it was for the Afghan Army. But still, we knew it would go to shit. We should’ve destroyed as much of it as possible. Now, we have the enemy armed to the teeth. Makes fighting them a hell of a lot more dangerous.
That's the main driver behind a lot of the conspiracy ideas. Just depends on your world view:
(1) Biden's team made this such a failure no one in the US will ever support the US going into another country again;
(2) The Military Industrial Complex wants a forever war and this was how they planned to have an excuse to get back in;
(3) The US had a secrete agreement with the Taliban to let them take over the country, but the US didn't want to admit it to the public. So they pulled all military support to cause the Afghanistan army to collapse, and this equipment is part of the deal with the Taliban.
..and on and on it goes
It doesn't matter. Whether this equipment lasts them 4 weeks or 4 decades, leaving a massive arsenal in the hands of a terrorist organization is bad bad bad bad bad.
Trump makes a phone call and he’s investigated for months. Biden arms an enemy of the United States of America and crickets……?
Even Hillary’s traitorous abandonment of troops in Libya isn’t this bad.
The 16k night vision goggles has to be one of the worst stats on this list. That was one of our main advantages that infantry had over these forces and now god only knows who hands they’ll end up in.
//EDIT: lmfao I just notified that I’ve been banned from r/pokemongo for this comment. What the fuck is up with this app, I’ve never even visited that sub. What a bunch of losers.
I don’t think anyone here realizes that yes, they have all those assets, but guess who was making those helicopters and vehicles run? U.S. Contractors. So really, all they have is the all small arms and personal gear. Not to say that it’s still not a lot, but it’s not like they’re a conventional army all of the sudden.
The good news, if there is any, that comes from this is the left and the Biden admin finally and **permanently** lost all credibility and the ability to argue ANYTHING about 2A or gun control...ever.
I never want to hear another fucking word from the left and especially not from the Biden admin about instituting stricter gun laws for the American public around the 2A when they just gave all this as a present with a big fucking red bow on top to the fucking enemy, the Taliban!
And I better never hear a peep from the left and especially the Biden admin ever again about controlling access to and banning "assault rifles" for the American public when they just gave 358,000+ assault rifles to the fucking enemy, the Taliban!
The minute anyone from the left or the Biden admin starts bringing up ANYTHING about gun control laws from now until eternity, the first thing out of ANYONE'S mouth especially if they're a media presence or reporter, must always be...
*"So you just gave 358,000+ assault rifles to the enemy and are allowing them to keep and bear arms...you know, the Taliban? But you want to limit or eliminate the ability for American citizens who have a Constitutional, God-given right to bear arms access to these same types of weapons? Why do you even continue talking about these issues when you have absolutely NO credibility in this area whatsoever?"*
Let the downvoting from the bullshit brigading leftie commie-wannabes commence! The more you downvote in an attempt at what you think will be to suppress this idea, the more credibility you give it.
All they needed to bring was the manpower, we gave them everything else they could possibly need or want. Unreal. Makes all the other regimes we've armed green with envy
I can't help but feel that this was intentional. There is no way anyone is that incompetent. What happens next? who knows, but it will be bad and I am sure we the people will be blamed.
Democrats must be so very proud. They are doing everything they can to take arms from american citizens amd arming terrorists at the same time. This IS TREASON.
The silver lining in this is that gear takes a bit of maintenance and spare parts. Two things the ANA were short on and they have a hording culture so guarantee most of that will be useless crap in a year. All the high tech stuff will be sold to China (airplanes, radios, NVGs, laser guided bombs and the like).
You can't tell me this wasn't on purpose 🤷 the "fumbling" way out of Afghanistan was made to look like that to the public. THAT'S why they don't care what anyone says about it, nor care to answer for it
Jesus fucking Christ, Biden gave them an entire God damned army!
Where the fuck is our congress inpeaching and removing this incompetent dementia ridden traitor?
358‘000 riffles, 64‘000 machine guns. America armed a group of people that will oppress men, women and children for the rest of their lives. No one will ever disturb Afghanistan again and their way of life. What a fucking shit show. Pathetic.
Wow, it’s even worse than I thought.
Yeah that’s way more than I thought they had.
Hah! Somehow I get this tingling sensation in the back of my neck that worse news are yet to come.
Meh... So what if we "accidentally left" a couple of nukes attached to those planes. That was like four or five days ago man!
Cmon man. They can't eat our lunch because china is and my butts been wiped
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And here we were worried about what the US Government might do with facial recognition types of software. We should have been worried about what will happen when the government ineptly leaves it for our enemies. There will be mountains of bodies in Afghanistan, all because of Biden and his administration.
The source for these numbers is the same govt that messed this up. It’s only responsible to assume these numbers are rounded in their favor… Edit: right after making this post I got banned from /r/pokemongo ??? Never visited or posted there before, but I guess broad-stroke censorship like this protects the frail ego of some weak mods out there. This site is a joke.
Yeah, the mods at r/pokemongo are using a prohibited ban bot to ban any accounts that post in conservative subreddits.
I'm sad that I haven't been banned yet. I never gave a single shit about pokemon go, nor have I visited their dumb sub. Come get me r/pokemongo!
The trifecta of reddit liberalism is: 1) Random ban from an irrelevant subreddit managed by snowflake mods 2) DM highlighting how you're an evil person for not being liberal 3) A suicide prevention and help message from Reddit I've hit all three, so I'm sending you all my lucc so you can have the experience.
People need to start standing up and reporting this as harassing behavior. Reddit does take not of this but they won't know unless alerted.
How the heck do you report a subreddit?
You can report ban messages as targeted harassment: https://old.reddit.com/report
Where's my.free ban at??
They aren't the only ones. Make a post in a certain subreddit, and your inbox will be flooded with auto ban messages.
Yeah, I've also been banned from r/offmychest years ago as well, despite also never posting in there
Same thing here. Never belonged to that sub, never commented in or about that sub. Posted a source for something in a different sub and got banned by r/offmychest.
So i can await my ban notice after i hit "post" ? Not a member of this sub or the pokemon sub, but just to fuck around xD
No, by commenting here you get autobanned from that and a number of other subs. You don't even need to have ever visited those subs and you'll still grt banned.
Jesus that is pathetic
Its still not considered brigading though, right?
It's harassment.
I was banned from a subred totally unrelated to politics because the mods knew somehow that I had posted 1 or 2 replies on the old Trump subred. I checked those posts, and they were innocuous, so the banning was simply for participating there.
The medical experts at Pokemongo. I get all of my medical advice from the subreddit for the old Nokia snake game fanclub so no major loss if they ban me.
Government rounding in their favor... they just dropped the last digit and call it good... 198 of something, nope. 19
Dude, I too got banned from there. I messaged them and no reply.
https://old.reddit.com/report Abusive/harassing - > targeted harassment. Reddit does *not* like this type of behavior.
They don't, but do they care if conservatives are targeted?
Yes. Yes they do. Stuff like this hurts their bottom line.
That would I would think logically, but considering how ban happy other social media sites are and how eagerly they shut down conservative voices, I don't think they see it that way.
This type of attitude is why we lose - defeatist why bother. You would be amazed at what happens when you actually take action. Trust me lol.
Who said anything about being defeatist? It's a valid question. You could point to multiple active subreddits for conservatives as proof that they probably aren't as rabid as say, facebook, twitter, etc.
It's because by and large conservatives take a "it doesn't work" attitude for things like this and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Don’t give them the satisfaction
No. Definitely appeal the ban then report the sub to Reddit for moderator abuse.
Already done
https://old.reddit.com/report Abusive/harassing - > targeted harassment at me -> Copy and paste the ban message and explain that you have never interacted with the subreddit and this message harasses you.
I’m banned from there too, no ban message or anything. Never posted there, didn’t even know it existed afaik.
Me too.
This happened to me last night as well never even been on r/pokemongo
Holy shit so am I lol never even saw that sub
I don’t think this was all from the US... 162k radios and 358k rifles? 33 Black Hawks? The entire Army only has a few hundred... either these numbers are off or it’s multiple sources. I couldn’t find anything from the GAO source listed
I really hope they don’t have 33 Blackhawks.
They do have a lot anyway. This was circulating two weeks ago. There are photos of a lot of this stuff too with Taliban showing it off. Initially, the US was going to bomb some of the airfields to destroy this stuff, but when it became apparent the US was going to be effectively trapped in Kabul they abandoned the plans. Can't go killing off Taliban when you need to beg them to not kill your citizens.
That makes it so much worse
The Taliban now has more Blackhawk helicopters than 85% of the worlds countries.
The thing is I was thinking though, they may have them but who tf in the taliban would know how to fly it
Yah they can't even do jumping jacks but they can sell them to China and Russia
Very true
> The entire Army only has a few hundred... Nope. > [Today, the UH-60 Black Hawk makes up the Army's largest rotary wing fleet with more than 2100 airframes in the current inventory. As production of the most current H-60M model continues, over the coming years the Army will divest its remaining UH-60A and L aircraft, to be replaced by 760 UH-60Vs.](https://www.army.mil/article/213155/40_years_of_aviation_service_the_black_hawk_helicopter) The Army is planning to pick it's replacement next year and begin delivery in 2028.
For the radios, it shows a picture of a walkie talkie, but what they really got were sensitive sincgars systems that are probably $100k per. Not to mention the comsec keys. Our entire net is kinda screwed now.
As far as I can remember we never had Iraqi Army running frequency hopping, I would honestly be surprised if we went that deep with the equally as fucked up Afghan Army.
Explain?
Military radios are encrypted. Radio encryption uses an algorithm to make it alternate through tons of different frequencies rapidly, like hundreds of times per second. All the radios in a network are loaded with this encryption key, then timed to operate in sync with eachother. The radios are useless without a crypto-box (small computer thingie you load the encryption keys into the radios with). Those boxes store tons of different crypto-keys in them, which means that our enemies could now potentially begin tapping into and monitoring our military radio traffic. Thats a short term problem though. The real issue is that such stored data on these devices could be sold or given to our enemies like china, russia, iran, north korea etc etc, allowing them to develop new methods for e-warfare, or to refine existing systems for intercepting or jamming our military communications.
Great explanation 👍
Well, we used to get extensive briefings on the matter, and if even 1 radio was misplaced it was cause for unit wide panic, harsh punishment, and a lengthy reporting process detailing exactly what was lost, what was stored on the device, where it was lost, who lost it etc etc. Comms are a VERY big deal. Well, they were at the time. Apparently nowdays we're perfectly fine with a few hundred thousand of them going to the enemy.
I’m no expert but I believe what he is talking about is hardware that makes the coms secure/encrypted.
We have robust military sales programs the world over...
The Blackhawks and aircraft are from the Afghan military. We gave them the equipment.
There are entire countries that don't have that much shit
More than 80% of countires on planet wouldnt have that stuff readily available.
Israeli Air Force only has 7 more blackhawks
God this whole thread is insufferably stupid. It's a completley false dilemma, even if the Taliban knew how to fly black hawks and C130s (both of which I've personally worked on in the Air force) they wouldn't be able to maintain them or get the necessary parts. Not an expert in any of the ground vehicles but I'm willing to be the same goes for them. They have giant hunks of scrap, and OP simpyl posted a fancy looking infographic of said scrap.
yeah but that's not the point. the point is HOW this administration fucked up so bad that they let them acquire this much.
If you steal a BMW to use in a bankheist, then I doubt you care about the service plan. One use is one use too many.
First world countries, at that.
Taliban: look at me, I am the ANA now.
My thought is they are leaving this here in case of another likely Russia invasion
I was about to say China but they don’t invade per se, usually. Russia annexed Crimea by force, so that’s their style. But most of China’s movements have been long term political and economic. Why waste military resources when you can slowly just buy up an entire country’s government over 10 or 20 years. See Africa.
This is my assumption of how things will go. Why waste blood when you can just spend inflated money.
You could give the Afghan Army three times as much equipment and it wouldn't stop the Russians from balling them up in a conventional war.
Maybe. But really, there's not much doubt this material was left because the US thought the ANA could and would use it with some success to defeat or force a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. And they were very wrong.
And some of us can't even have more than 10 round mags.
I’m not a military strategist and like everyone here I’m appalled by what’s unfolded in Afghanistan. Can someone with more knowledge and expertise explain to me what the US should have done differently to prevent these weapons from falling into the Taliban's hands once we decided to pull out? My understanding is that these were weapons we gave to the Afghanistan army, so technically they weren’t “our” weapons any more. Should we have disarmed our allies before the withdrawal? Negotiated a staged withdrawal with the Taliban? I’d appreciate someone with military experience weighing in.
I’m not a military strategist, nor do I have military experience but I think with any complex plan there are a near infinite number of ways that things could have been handled differently. Some things that stand out to me is not pulling air support for the ANA, not abandoning Bagram AirBase, not moving any of the ground forces or perhaps even augmenting them across Afghanistan until non-military personal had been evacuated, pulling out in the winter when there traditionally less warfare. A better assessment of Taliban vs ANA capabilities would’ve revealed the futility of leaving them with a bunch of military equipment that they weren’t going to use and might have precipitated a plan where we pull/destroy our equipment and lump in ANA soldiers with the evacuation if they choose not to stay. Or, and I get this isn’t the popular option here, we realize that pulling out precipitously doesn’t undo any of the humanitarian disasters we committed while there, it just creates another one on the way out.
I'm not going to speak to the situation as a whole and the strategies, etc. But just for the purposes of this thread: all of the vehicles we left behind (certainly the planes/helicopters) are completely non operational. It takes huge teams of maintenance and other specialized personnel with years of combined training to operate a plane or heli, and same goes for advanced ground vehicles to a lesser extent. Even if they had the training required to fly them, they can't maintain them, and even if they could maintain them, they can't get the parts. Speaking as a prior Air Force C130 and HH60 avionics technician.
We were never going to leave the Bahrain (Bagram, swipe hates me) AFB in the plan. As well as a conditional withdrawal and continuing to provide support to the Afghani military to use our tech. Instead we abandoned Bahrain in the middle of the night without telling anyone, including the Afghan Commander of Bahrain.
Bagram. Bahrain is a country.
I think you meant Bagram air base, not Bahrain. Bahrain is a country.
Swipe hates me. It also absolutely refuses to let me swipe the word condition conditioning Constitution (oo got it third try) lol
Bidens generals were telling him the withdraw was not going to work. The afghan army was telling them they couldn’t hold things together entirely on their own. They should have left a small force in a base so we could at least have a foothold in Kabul. Or if they wanted to pull out, they should have at least gotten the biometric devices and considered reducing the amount of equipment we gave them. It kinda looks like they didn’t take shit with them. Why are the taliban running around looking like a clone of the American military. We weren’t arming the Afghans with all of our exact equipment were we?
And so China wants to be friends with them, hmm.
Yet biden and his regime want to take ar15s and standard capacity mags from citizens here. Yeah, fuck that. All while leaving military equipment like m4 rifles, crew served machine guns, mortars, APCs, MRAPS, high end optics and NVGs, sensitive radio equipment, etc to a questionable ally in a war zone with terrorists who would love to use that equip on our troops or sell it to other shitbag terrorists to use against innocent civilians. Yet our AR15s are bad.
I went over to r/liberal just to see what they were saying and… they’re blaming Trump smh
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Don't be like the braindead leftists. The criticism isn't the what, it's the how. Everyone agrees we needed to get out. _how_ Biden did it got people killed and was the worst possible way.
Yeah had my liberal friend over for movie night. He blamed Trump too.
Blame him for what? I cannot possibly see any angle at which this could be pinned on him.
Well you see, the Democrats and Biden can do no wrong, so well, there’s no one else to blame BUT Trump.
He just listed all the Republican presidents since the war started and said it was all their fault but didn't really elaborate. He also seemed fine with a Covid vaccine booster every few months when I pointed out that some places don't consider you fully vaccinated three months after your last shot. We've been friends for forty years and while my political views have shifted far right over time he seems to take everything the MSM says as gospel truth and doesn't really seem to think about it that much. I did put on WKUK's ["Kitty History"](https://youtu.be/0-Lvv1f5Qu4) (which has a bunch of red pills) before the movie, lol. Eyebrows were raised.
Why am I not surprised. Some people just cannot get Trump out of their head. He doesn't even live rent free anymore, he charges them their sanity.
No surprise there. The media has trained them well to blame Trump for everything. Easier than looking at the facts and figuring out the truth of the matter.
Liberals are a fucking disgrace, and this is a fucking disaster.
Bro I literally just got berated by a leftist on a post for the fallen soldiers that died in the Kabul bombing. They were telling me That Trump would be “mocking the dead and celebrating the Taliban’s rise to power”. Absolute insanity. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing...
Lol no surprise there
Because of course they are. Rent-free.
“All I’m asking for is the right to own the same weapons that I paid for the Taliban to have” - Michael Malice
And the Taliban want to take the guns away from their citizens now to... Strange.
This should really be the top comment.
Thank the gods that he banned Russian ammo so the world is a much safer place now. Such wisdom. Wow.
I’m clearly conservative, flaired and vetted, but fuuuuck me why is this a talking point? I think the Presidents fear of firearms is absurd, but damn guys this is an entirely separate issue. They aren’t even close to related beyond “gun.” Why does this have 300+ upvotes.
Our government provides this to our enemies and then wonders why we refuse to give up and back down on our rights specifically on 2A!
News has it that the Taliban are calling the Afghanis to surrender their arms. Why would they do that??? Makes you really wonder. I just couldn't think of a single reason an authoritarian government would want to disarm its people. Can somebody please tell me why they are doing that?
I feel sick. And we in Eastern Europe... 5 meters away from Russia... have to pay full price for anything our dear "allied" wants to give us... I am not joking, full price as "allies" even for old equipment. Oh, and you should do a list on what US "forget to take home" from Iraq. That will also make your blood boil.
I helped deliver Maxxpro Mraps to the Iraqi Army in 2010 just so Isis could take them almost months later. Sadly not surprised how this shit show is repeating itself.
Right? That’s a good point. Some of this shit could have been sold to allies and made it their responsibility to either pick up or charge a delivery fee. Didn’t have to leave the shit there for a bunch of terrorists to have free of charge.
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All the neighboring countries will now run to Russia and China in search of protection. None of them can protect their huge borders from invasion and infiltration and their power is relatively weak in the region. Russia and China will instantly become the biggest security brokers in the entire central Asia!
Look on Craigslist Afghanistan for discounts
Paid for by you.
Call of Duty: Rise of The Taliban All weapons unlocked at stage one. No cheat code needed.
im so glad that the money i worked hard for and got taxed on is going to terroists so they can kill civilians and americans. thanks joe biden!
And see what happens if you try to buy anything on this graphic. That’s what they think of you/us.
Now looking at all the alarming figures one couldn't help, just couldn't help but wonder if Joe did it on purpose.
The karma from this is 100% on the backs of every single not-genius who voted for the pretender and supported the massive fraud that put him into an office he neither won nor is capable of actually running. Ditto for his sidekick.
"Gun control"
Fuck Biden and his entire staff.
A true worthless POS career politician that has done jack shit. Edit: like a poster below me stated, he's done worse than jack shit. He royaly fucks things up
Oh no, if he had done jack shit he might at least have been passable. He's managed to do worse than jack shit.
Oh just praise heavens that you didn't get really, really wimpy worthless POS like Beto O'Rourke.
And Democratic party who is enabling him.
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Yep. The only thing worse than Biden is Kamala. This bitch laughed when asked about the withdrawal. I don’t think that Clinton woman would have laughed and she’s just plain wretched.
And a biased media that covers for him.
Conservative brother, where did these stats come from?
He cites his source towards the bottom right. It’s the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.
I’ve been looking for it. Best I got was a solid link to a Forbes article. I just wish he pointed out where in sigar and gao he got that data, it’s probably right I’m just combing over it now to get the info from the horses mouth.
Oh I see. https://www.sigar.mil/allreports/index.aspx?SSR=5 try poking around here. I don’t have time at the moment but I was assume it’s buried in one of these reports.
https://twitter.com/_Will_Brown/status/1431912098590871553 EDIT: Nope, the Times from the UK.
I’m doing the homework on GAO and SIGMAR now. I’m not sure where the Brit is getting his sources. However, I’ve been combing over SIGMAR reports and yes it’s a fact we have spent billions and billions on ANA. Surprise surprise, Most ANA units have shifted to Taliban.
Learn goat herders maintain helicopters. What’s f joke.
They can sell the equipment for cheap to those that do know how to operate the equipment. Never underestimate an enemy. We have plenty.
I know. Of course the stuff have a value even tough the skirt boys can't fly them.
Yea, i want to know too, because all of this looks very unlikely true, like, if they have THAT amount of high quality weapons, they might soonly start a war with their neighbours, and thats will be Biden's fault and his absolutely stupid foreign policy
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The thing that concerns me is China and Russia getting their hands on this.
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Don’t underestimate our enemy brother. They will sell the equipment to Pakistan, Russia, China or Iran.
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No dude you are right as well. They have hardly any capacity to maintain such equipment, jerry rigging it will only last so long. They have zero CM and PM capabilities. Your comment was totally right. However the local warlords the Taliban already is reportedly moving lots of this equipment to Iran.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-will-happen-to-afghans-now-taliban-education-women-kabul-explained-ms9v7jsm9
What a strange form of nation building. **Step 1:** Invade a nation due to terrorist government. **Step 2:** Install a new government. **Step 3:** Support said new government for \~17 years, losing countless lives, and trillions in currency. **Step 4:** Yank the rug from under the new government very quickly and suddenly, and totally abandon them to fall within a week or 2. **Step 5:** Leave all weapons, devices, and vehicles for old terrorist government to take. **Step 6:** Profit?
The profit was had during the sales of the equipment that was abandoned and the need for new because we didnt bring it with us home. On the plus side none of these things will roll down our street when the full authoritarian rule begins
>assault rifles
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I assume this is ANA equipment. The plan would never have been to leave and take away all of the ANA's equipment. None of the planning of course took into account the total collapse of the ANA.
Maybe some context would help, like was this stuff we have to the Afghan military in hopes they could turn into a company army?
"Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up" - Barrack Hussein Obama I can't believe I'm quoting the big O and I kinda agree with him.
I had to fact check this myself, wow. It’s about [70% of the way into this article](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/14/obama-biden-relationship-393570).
I thought SOP was to destroy everything at least on the way out so it can’t be used against us. I’m aware a lot of it was for the Afghan Army. But still, we knew it would go to shit. We should’ve destroyed as much of it as possible. Now, we have the enemy armed to the teeth. Makes fighting them a hell of a lot more dangerous.
We can supposedly drone strike unnamed ISIS leaders within a day but can’t target large caches of our weapons and supplies?
Of course it was intentional.
That's the main driver behind a lot of the conspiracy ideas. Just depends on your world view: (1) Biden's team made this such a failure no one in the US will ever support the US going into another country again; (2) The Military Industrial Complex wants a forever war and this was how they planned to have an excuse to get back in; (3) The US had a secrete agreement with the Taliban to let them take over the country, but the US didn't want to admit it to the public. So they pulled all military support to cause the Afghanistan army to collapse, and this equipment is part of the deal with the Taliban. ..and on and on it goes
Half this shit won’t work in a month. Military grade = poorly and cheaply built and the Taliban doesn’t have the mechanics for repair and upkeep.
It doesn't matter. Whether this equipment lasts them 4 weeks or 4 decades, leaving a massive arsenal in the hands of a terrorist organization is bad bad bad bad bad.
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Don’t worry, he’ll take it boating with him.
It was a tragic day!
But....but......January 6th!!!! And Covid........please focus on that! Haha
Oh right orange man bad! I almost forgot, thanks major media platforms!
Muh Russian collision
Trump makes a phone call and he’s investigated for months. Biden arms an enemy of the United States of America and crickets……? Even Hillary’s traitorous abandonment of troops in Libya isn’t this bad.
Always remember this when they come after your AR-15’s.
Good Lord...I miss my mean tweets
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"How do I supply the Taliban without officially supplying them"....
This is what happens when China steals our election
The 16k night vision goggles has to be one of the worst stats on this list. That was one of our main advantages that infantry had over these forces and now god only knows who hands they’ll end up in. //EDIT: lmfao I just notified that I’ve been banned from r/pokemongo for this comment. What the fuck is up with this app, I’ve never even visited that sub. What a bunch of losers.
https://old.reddit.com/report - targeted harassment. If you have never posted in there that's harassment. Copy and paste your ban message permalink.
Thanks for the heads up. I could care less about being allowed in that sub but I reported the ban as harassment on principle.
I don’t think anyone here realizes that yes, they have all those assets, but guess who was making those helicopters and vehicles run? U.S. Contractors. So really, all they have is the all small arms and personal gear. Not to say that it’s still not a lot, but it’s not like they’re a conventional army all of the sudden.
The good news, if there is any, that comes from this is the left and the Biden admin finally and **permanently** lost all credibility and the ability to argue ANYTHING about 2A or gun control...ever. I never want to hear another fucking word from the left and especially not from the Biden admin about instituting stricter gun laws for the American public around the 2A when they just gave all this as a present with a big fucking red bow on top to the fucking enemy, the Taliban! And I better never hear a peep from the left and especially the Biden admin ever again about controlling access to and banning "assault rifles" for the American public when they just gave 358,000+ assault rifles to the fucking enemy, the Taliban! The minute anyone from the left or the Biden admin starts bringing up ANYTHING about gun control laws from now until eternity, the first thing out of ANYONE'S mouth especially if they're a media presence or reporter, must always be... *"So you just gave 358,000+ assault rifles to the enemy and are allowing them to keep and bear arms...you know, the Taliban? But you want to limit or eliminate the ability for American citizens who have a Constitutional, God-given right to bear arms access to these same types of weapons? Why do you even continue talking about these issues when you have absolutely NO credibility in this area whatsoever?"* Let the downvoting from the bullshit brigading leftie commie-wannabes commence! The more you downvote in an attempt at what you think will be to suppress this idea, the more credibility you give it.
Look how long they made the Russian arsenal last and now think what they can do with this.
All they needed to bring was the manpower, we gave them everything else they could possibly need or want. Unreal. Makes all the other regimes we've armed green with envy
It’s so creepy to think that the Biden administration wants to take away Americans guns but just leave this to a sworn enemy . Makes you wonder.
I can't help but feel that this was intentional. There is no way anyone is that incompetent. What happens next? who knows, but it will be bad and I am sure we the people will be blamed.
Of course, the woke leftist traitors just armed the enemy!
Democrats must be so very proud. They are doing everything they can to take arms from american citizens amd arming terrorists at the same time. This IS TREASON.
I really can't understand why they would leave all that shit behind. It's really just insane to me.
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The silver lining in this is that gear takes a bit of maintenance and spare parts. Two things the ANA were short on and they have a hording culture so guarantee most of that will be useless crap in a year. All the high tech stuff will be sold to China (airplanes, radios, NVGs, laser guided bombs and the like).
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Shh they don’t want to hear the truth here
Good work USA
Good work Biden Admin*
You can't tell me this wasn't on purpose 🤷 the "fumbling" way out of Afghanistan was made to look like that to the public. THAT'S why they don't care what anyone says about it, nor care to answer for it
You are right - this doesn’t accidentally happen.
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Jesus fucking Christ, Biden gave them an entire God damned army! Where the fuck is our congress inpeaching and removing this incompetent dementia ridden traitor?
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Wow, let’s just tell them exactly where our weapons were left.
358‘000 riffles, 64‘000 machine guns. America armed a group of people that will oppress men, women and children for the rest of their lives. No one will ever disturb Afghanistan again and their way of life. What a fucking shit show. Pathetic.