It has been 17 years that our troops have been fighting in Afghanistan……I was never in favor of a continued presence after the first 2 years….I felt it would be an irritant and just a replay of the Vietnam scenario…..and so far I have seen NOTHING that would warrant us staying this long or another minute longer……..
But Hell I am a crotchity old fart but I am NOT wrong……and now so says the Pentagon’s Inspector General……
The inspector general has issued a new report openly scorning Pentagon claims of progress in the war in Afghanistan, noting the continued large attacks from the Taliban and ISIS, and that available data simply doesn’t show progress in much of anything.
That’s been a recurring theme in the war, now 17 years in. Pentagon officials have claimed in recent months that they see progress being made, and that they’ve “turned the corner,” but they’ve made similar claims dozens of times with nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile, ISIS and the Taliban are able to carry out major attacks even in supposedly secure districts. The Taliban controls broad swathes of the country, and only yesterday the Afghan senate admitted that roughly half of the country is outside their direct control.
That’s all bad news that’s been growing markedly worse in the past couple of years. The US has increased their own presence in Afghanistan, and is launching a soaring number of airstrikes, but neither of those has changed the underlying reality that the war is being steadily lost.
(antiwar.com)
This is not the first report that has shitty news about Afghanistan….if so then when will a spineless bunch of Congresspeople do something. Time for these cowards to stand up and demand that our overworked and over-deployed troops come home and leave Afghanistan to the Afghans?
A war that can never be won, that’s for sure. Definitely time to leave, before more soldiers are lost for nothing.
Best wishes, Pete.
THat would take commonsense and there is damn little of that left here in the US….chuq
Sometime next year, US soldiers who weren’t even born when the war started will be fighting in it. “But we’re winning!!!” Seventeen years of winning but still no end in sight.
But it’s more than US soldiers getting killed & injured. Afghani civilians get killed in total silence by Talibans, Americans and flying death robots run out of abandoned Arizona malls. So, yet another generation of Afghans have known nothing but war and are further acclimatized to fighting Americans/foreign invaders.
That’s going to be with them for the rest of their lives too. And the longer America stays, the longer it’s going to take for that hatred & war mentality fade away.
The Afghans have been fighting “foreign invaders” since Alexander the Great….they will never get past the hatred….chuq