5 ms·

Who cares how much wealth they have as the new government, you're not importing black hawk helicopters, missiles, thermal weapons from first world nations or ev

Who cares how much wealth they have as the new government, you're not importing black hawk helicopters, missiles, thermal weapons from first world nations or even Russia/China and equivalents easily. Just because there are weapons markets doesnt mean you're getting access to high tech stuff. And even if they do eventually, why make it easy for them. The point is every amount matters and this screams of incompetence when all you needed to do was at least strap some C4 to the big stuff. On top of this, them parading around in US gear makes us look like even bigger clowns. Aside from the gear, the loss of life is a glaring failure.

polartx 5y ago
The US armed forces are extremely well versed with destructive decommissioning of equipment (blowing up stuff you don’t want to manage). The fact that everything was present to ensure that no advanced or classified weapon technology would be left behind, but nothing was done, smacks of corruption.
- unclebucknasty 5y ago
  >smacks of corruption. No. It doesn't. Your assertion that it was "left behind" is incorrect. The U.S. provided this equipment to the Afghan military as part of our long effort to prepare the Afghan government to defend itself. Now, one can argue as to whether we should have entrusted such equipment to them in the first place. But, that entrustment was just one of many costly decisions made over our decades-long presence in Afghanistan that led up to this moment.
  - polartx 5y ago
    The Afghan military surrendered over a week ago. While we were still in a position to decommission equipment, instead it was left behind to the Taliban. Also curious on your hot take of this—the unusually effective suicide bombings that took place last week, (y’know the ones that killed our servicemen and about a hundred innocent civilians?), were very likely composed of the very same high explosives that we left behind.
    - unclebucknasty 5y ago
      >The Afghan military surrendered over a week ago. While we were still in a position to decommission equipment I don't know what you're defining as being "still in a position" or what your basis is for that determination, but we all witnessed that chaos ensued quickly upon the collapse of the Afghan govt/military. At that point, it seems the priority was on saving lives and extricating human beings which was meeting with significant difficulty to say the least. That's a much more plausible explanation for why decommissioning the equipment was not prioritized. The situation is bad. The 20-year occupation itself was horrible foreign policy. But just making unfounded allegations of "corruption" is FUD.
    - unclebucknasty 5y ago
      >Also curious on your hot take of this—the unusually effective suicide bombings (y’know the ones that killed our servicemen and about a hundred innocent civilians?) were very likely composed of the very same high explosives that we left behind. I found the "y'know..." bit a little flip, given the tragic circumstances. In any case, my "hot take" on that narrow point is that it's another unfounded assertion that reads like more FUD. On the broader point, there are many people politicizing this and working overtime to assign as much blame as possible to the current administration, including what you appear to be doing here. And, my hot take on that broader point is that it's divisive and uses the tragic deaths of our fallen military and the grief of their families as political props. The unbridled glee in their political attacks is palpable, even as our country and military are experiencing a significant setback that includes the loss of life. It's disgusting and, whatever they think they're rooting for, it's not America.
      - polartx 5y ago
        >On the broader point, there are many people politicizing this and working overtime to assign as much blame as possible to the current administration 8 months in office and practically unlimited resources (human and material), and this is the best they could come up with. Joe Biden was a senator when Saigon was evacuated. No there’s not enough work here to go into overtime.

polartx 5y ago

The US armed forces are extremely well versed with destructive decommissioning of equipment (blowing up stuff you don’t want to manage). The fact that everything was present to ensure that no advanced or classified weapon technology would be left behind, but nothing was done, smacks of corruption.

unclebucknasty 5y ago
>smacks of corruption. No. It doesn't. Your assertion that it was "left behind" is incorrect. The U.S. provided this equipment to the Afghan military as part of our long effort to prepare the Afghan government to defend itself. Now, one can argue as to whether we should have entrusted such equipment to them in the first place. But, that entrustment was just one of many costly decisions made over our decades-long presence in Afghanistan that led up to this moment.
- polartx 5y ago
  The Afghan military surrendered over a week ago. While we were still in a position to decommission equipment, instead it was left behind to the Taliban. Also curious on your hot take of this—the unusually effective suicide bombings that took place last week, (y’know the ones that killed our servicemen and about a hundred innocent civilians?), were very likely composed of the very same high explosives that we left behind.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >The Afghan military surrendered over a week ago. While we were still in a position to decommission equipment I don't know what you're defining as being "still in a position" or what your basis is for that determination, but we all witnessed that chaos ensued quickly upon the collapse of the Afghan govt/military. At that point, it seems the priority was on saving lives and extricating human beings which was meeting with significant difficulty to say the least. That's a much more plausible explanation for why decommissioning the equipment was not prioritized. The situation is bad. The 20-year occupation itself was horrible foreign policy. But just making unfounded allegations of "corruption" is FUD.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >Also curious on your hot take of this—the unusually effective suicide bombings (y’know the ones that killed our servicemen and about a hundred innocent civilians?) were very likely composed of the very same high explosives that we left behind. I found the "y'know..." bit a little flip, given the tragic circumstances. In any case, my "hot take" on that narrow point is that it's another unfounded assertion that reads like more FUD. On the broader point, there are many people politicizing this and working overtime to assign as much blame as possible to the current administration, including what you appear to be doing here. And, my hot take on that broader point is that it's divisive and uses the tragic deaths of our fallen military and the grief of their families as political props. The unbridled glee in their political attacks is palpable, even as our country and military are experiencing a significant setback that includes the loss of life. It's disgusting and, whatever they think they're rooting for, it's not America.
    - polartx 5y ago
      >On the broader point, there are many people politicizing this and working overtime to assign as much blame as possible to the current administration 8 months in office and practically unlimited resources (human and material), and this is the best they could come up with. Joe Biden was a senator when Saigon was evacuated. No there’s not enough work here to go into overtime.