[NonContro]

US forces abandoned the country 'overnight' - leaving behind all of the military equipment the Taliban would need for their reconquest:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210814-weapon-seizur...

Why wasn't all this equipment repatriated or destroyed? Why were the bases just abandoned without proper transition to Afghan Control, so that in some cases they were even looted by civilians?

Possible explanations:

1. Extreme incompetence or total apathy by US Commanders/Politicians

2. There was no land/sea transport route through Pakistan to retrieve all the equipment

3. The US Military-Industrial Complex was happy for all this stuff to be lost, so it could be reordered

4. The US wanted the Taliban to reconquer the country quickly, so that any power vaccuum could not be filled by China or Russia

5. Managed decline of the US Empire, requiring deliberate humiliation and demoralization of the US forces, enabled by corrupt senior US commanders and politicians who have made deals with China.

[chewz]

You are too hard on US. Afgan Army had 300 thousand soldiers trained and well equiped.

If Afgans do not want to fight Taliban themselves what US can do?

[smhost]

U.S. could have not cynically installed the most pliant pro-American corrupt thugs to be in charge and told the people to obey, after having destroyed their homeland and treated them like idiot children for an entire generation.

[yellowcake0]

> U.S. could have not cynically installed the most pliant pro-American corrupt thugs to be in charge and told the people to obey

Which of course has been the post-WW2 standard operating procedure for the U.S. in more countries than I care to count. And it always comes back to haunt us, god knows what the long-term ramifications of this latest fiasco will be.

[chewz]

There are 6 million people in Kabul plus some elite Afgan Army. That is enough to make a no passaran moment to Taliban. Theoretically.

But it seems like all Western-minded urban Afgans want to get evacuated to US, Europe, Canada rather then put up a good fight. So why the West shall fight for their freedoms?

[smhost]

How many more dead bodies do you want to add to your tally for your Hollywood movie moment? They don't want a civil war. How is that not obvious to you?

[chewz]

They do not want to fight for their freedoms so why shall we Westerners feel obliged to do the fighting for them? They can go back to Middle Ages.

[Johnjonjoan]

We started the fight

[kingofpandora]

They do not have 300,000 troops. It's a fiction.

[cnlevy]

No idea why they dont want to fight ? Have a look at

https://observers.france24.com/en/20200218-afghanistan-corru...

[bellyfullofbac]

The corruption is incredible, even this 6 year old article (discussing a book on corruption) knew about it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev...

E.g. an excerpt:

> [A]s Chayes studied the graft of the Karzai government, she concluded that it was anything but benign. Many in the political élite were not merely stealing reconstruction money but expropriating farmland from other Afghans. Warlords could hoodwink U.S. special forces into dispatching their adversaries by feeding the Americans intelligence tips about supposed Taliban ties. Many of those who made money from the largesse of the international community enjoyed a sideline in the drug trade. Afghanistan is often described as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly trying, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether”—the enrichment of its own members. Washington supported Hamid Karzai and his ministers and adjutants in the hope that they could establish a stable government, help pursue Al Qaeda, and keep the Taliban at bay. But the Karzai government wasn’t a government at all, Chayes concluded. It was “a vertically integrated criminal organization.”

[Overton-Window]

Biden would disagree:

> Q Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —

> THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken.

> The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

[SynasterBeiter]

> There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

That did not age very well. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/15/1027806863/the-taliban-seize-...

[belter]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1426900769656254468

[belter]

Look at my post in this thread basically 30 days ago...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27800432

[fivefifty]

Some of the trucks etc were broken down or worn out and some might have been contractor or personal vehicles brought over that they probably decided wasn't worth the cost to take back.

The ammo, weapons and military vehicles I believe quite lot of it technically belongs (or belonged) to the Afghan national army or at least was donated to them, although from what others on here have said, they were barely functioning as a force with rampant corruption at all levels.

None of this is new, pretty much exactly the same thing happen after South Vietnam fell, with the North Vietnamese getting an even more massive stockpile of basically US military equipment that makes what the Taliban have captured pale in comparison. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/29/archives/arms-left-by-us-... https://militarymatters.online/weapons/vietnam-loves-america...

Not to mention all the helicopters they just pushed into the sea during the Saigon evacuation to make more space on the decks of ships.

Even back to end of world war 2 they dumped huge amounts of equipment into the sea or buried them or just left them in place to avoid the costs of taking them back. I suppose it does make some sense from an overall cost and logistical point of view, but on a personal level it does seem incredibly wasteful. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/wwii-ended...

[natmaka]

> 3. The US Military-Industrial Complex was happy for all this stuff to be lost, so it could be reordered

... and if some group (Talibans?) fetches it then become a foe, he will be a serious one, and therefore the Complex will sell more stuff.

4. Profit!

[belter]

Mullah Omar said:

“God has promised us victory, and Bush has promised us defeat. We’ll see which promise is more truthful”.

[pishpash]

From the article itself:

"The fall of the last major city [Jalalabad] outside the capital secured for the insurgents the roads connecting Afghanistan to Pakistan, a Western official said."