Speaking of that, again, lmao at anyone (outside of us) who seriously believes that ol' demented Joe forcibly pushed for this [helllish] withdrawal and brought the Swamp to its knees, as they had to capitulate to one of their own.
He totally did it because of Trump and media posing the question to him during the campaign. 'He never had a heart of his own.'
one thing to consider tho, apparently biden wanted out a decade ago. as much as people want to blame him, that at least seems somewhat legit.
as I pointed out over in the taliban thread: as sleepy as joe is, if that's the one thing he won't budge on
and wants to put his name in the history books (considering he wanted it long before trump made it a campaign promise), there's not much his handlers can do. a puppet is only as good as it follows the strings. deep state and military drag their feet, pointing out that that taliban will take over and will take over fast (basically saying the USA needs to stay), but if joe doesn't agree there's not much they can do without his signature. fast forward and you get that SHTF clusterfuck.
So there was literally no benefit to sticking around, whatever LMAO.
depends, are you a glowie or have stock in a defense contractor?
"officially" the reason the usa (and the rest of the west) went in there was due to 9/11 and the war on terror. the idea being it would give them a base in the middle east to intervene more easily and sooner, and at the same time would rob the taliban of the ability to shelter and train new terrorists. or in short "unless you want another 9/11, we have to stay in afghanistan". but since you can't run a forever war, as much as the MIC and deep state wants to, you try to built a proper nation so they can take care of their own shit, block the taliban and get a new ally in the middle east. so for all the shitting on nation building there were good intentions (somewhere).
however those don't matter if you fuck up the execution, and it basically turned into a big get rich scheme/money laundry operation, military and it's cronies like it as an excuse for their existence and constant influx of money, glowies and politicians like it because it's easy to make money disappear with not accountability.
the question people should ask (but won't): "why did it never amount to anything" (instead of "why didn't we leave sooner")?