> [..] let's not forget we had twenty years to help build a functioning army. Sure, 20 years of failure - we shouldn't have been there in the first place. But

> [..] let's not forget we had twenty years to help build a functioning army. Sure, 20 years of failure - we shouldn't have been there in the first place. But accepting your losses and performing an abysmal withdrawal process is entirely different. > It's not as though things were going really great and then oops, we left too suddenly. It was better than the Taliban overrunning every major city in a week. They must have been doing something to keep them inline. They deliberately waited for the withdrawal process to be mostly complete. > [..] the Afghan army has been failing to step up [..] This was very shocking and disheartening, the majority abandoned their posts and let them overrun the cities. All of that training and investment only to have it thrown away.