The trillions the USA spend on weapons you would have thought they would have come up with a weapon system capable of significant tactical force leverage but which does require a huge manpower investment, drones are the closest fit.

Given their most likely strategic military need is regime change/support you need a tactical weapon system able to fit this need, instead most of the USA military is still configured to counter the Russians rolling through the Fulda gap.

Yea there’s just not a weapon to buy that will control the government of some town of 250 people in the middle of nowhere on a barren mountain range. Multiply that by most of the country. The countryside was abandoned somewhere between 2011-2014. Taliban never stopped having shadow governors.

It’s crazy we propped up that government in all these cities with 3500 troops and now it’s all gone.

How do I post a tweet with the preview visible here?

https://twitter.com/bsarwary/status/...631726083?s=21

God help us

That’s on top of what 10,000 of the highest powered American made sniper rifles the Taliban has seized in the last month. Maybe 10,000 light machine guns. The taliban has 70% of the country and also 70% of the Afghan army’s arsenal.

And now those helicopters too.

Thats nothing to do with what I am talking about.

The military has a ton of drones in all shapes and sizes.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and opine that your post was rhetorical and you really mean AMERIKKAAAA! and the why is because they're evil and they're evil because AMERIKKKAAAA!!

Am I right with my presumption?

You gotta wonder just wtf the US military were doing the past 20 years and if they even had troops outside the major cities or if they bothered training the Afghan military at all or bothered engaging in intel or strikes against Taliban positions, as the current situation indicates they didn't on all counts.

Obviously nothing fairly cheap and fairly disposable that they could deploy to greatly leverage the ability of friendly forces.

It only has to be able to defeat counter measures that the Taliban have access too.

The problem with most hardware is that it is so expensive you dont want to use it, because its over engineered to meet the threat of Russians pouring through the Fulda gap.

The problem with the ANA, the Afghan National Army, is that, a bit like the South Vietnamese Army in the early 1970s, it's dressed up to look like an army but it doesn't really exist as a fighting force. Huge sums have been poured into it, and US and British and other troops have spent years 'training' and 'mentoring' it, and it means nothing.

It's basically just a way for the corrupt Afghan leadership to con money out of the gullible foreigners. The troops don't get paid because the 'commanders' keep the money for themselves. And, almost worse, the troops don't have family support packages in place. If they're killed, their families are done for. So as soon as the Taliban show up, if there are no NATO troops or air power to sort it out, they're going to run away. They'd be daft not to.

So all the ANA's weaponry will now or shortly be in Taliban hands. As the Taliban are already funded and armed up to the nines (in light infantry terms) by Pakistan, they're pretty irresistible -- though only because most Afghans can't be bothered to resist them and always give in to them, even though the Taliban don't have serious heavy weaponry like armour or artillery or aircraft. And there isn't anything that outside powers can do about that. We're just going to have to let the Taliban take over again, then bomb them (because the great thing they don't have, and which even Pakistan won't give them, is air power).

Viewed from the West, it is quite interesting to see Biden tearing up his credentials and writing 'IDIOT' on his forehead in bright lipstick, though.

Pakistan. As part of their regional power-play and never-ending grudge-match against India, because India backs the non-Islamist factions. Did you really not know that?

It's not very hard to understand if you look at Afghanistan's geography and infrastructure. It's not a difficult region to hide a capable fighting force in. It can be a difficult thing to grasp when you are used to live in countries fully connected with infrastructure.

Military operations in Afghanistan hinged on military presence in Afghanistan, protecting key regions and cities. A military presence which grew increasingly unpopular in their home countries, which the Taliban of course knew; they are not idiots and able to read newspapers. They planned for this day, not for a direct military victory over NATO.

What is happening now wasn't that hard to predict:

I'm sure the Twitter-verse has all the answers, since it resides in a world where everything you agree is political nirvana without downside, and everything you disagree with represents the imminent collapse of society.

Ceasing military operations in Afghanistan was always going to be ugly with a big price to pay. So would continuing the operations, with increasing political, economical and individual cost in the countries which took part in the operation.

That's just how the real world is, where things are ugly, answers aren't what you want them to be, fact is not optional and waving ideological slogans around is about as useful as giving reading glasses to a blind man.

Mazar e sharif falls. The Taliban controls the entire country save Kabul and jalalabad. Will Ghani let the Taliban hang him from a lamppost or flee? I got flee

Didn't follow much politics lately but just to be sure,
pulling troops of afghanistan was a major point for Trump and republicans last few years, right?
Trumpkins must be really happy right?

Trump signed a deal with the Taliban that set a date this past May for coalition troops to leave but seeing these scenes I don’t think he would have had the courage to follow through. Trump killed sulemani because he was mad about seeing the embassy in Iraq besieged by protestors. He woke up saw that **** on tv and sulemani was dead within hours.

I don’t disagree with the decision to leave but it should not have been like this.

I think it is safe to say that war fatigue has been prominent on both sides of the political spectrum in the US in recent years.

Regardless of who ended the operations, the opposition would try to capitalize on the fallout. That’s pretty much a given.

While the speed of the collapse is surprising compared to predictions, the outcome is not. We did however see similar snowball collapses in Iraq when IS attacked, perhaps it is time analysts started factoring in the impact of social media and instant news when making predictions.

Think about Biden asking all the generals who have been fighting this war for 20 years ‘how long until the Taliban start taking over the country, does the afghan army have a chance’ and the answer was 6-18 months and yes the Afghans have a fighting chance.

More failure. Consistent strategic failure from an entire generation of generals with no accountability. The Taliban planned this right under our nose.

Incredible level of ridiculous and absurd hyperbole.

20 years, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, for nothing.

So the temporary US forces in Kabul are basically playing chicken with the Taliban in Kabul, with the Taliban knowing the US forces are bluffing/won't do anything?

The Taliban doesn't really have the capability to kill a few thousand marines fast enough before planes from the carrier Ronald Reagan and air forces in Qatar, to say nothing of planes most likely already in Afghan air space, basically bomb Afghan positions into oblivion.

The Taliban won. Even a small % chance to provoke Americans into responding in force is stupid. A much more likely outcome is they start taking the rest of Kabul while letting Americans leave. They'll complete the victory by executing the people Americans leave behind.

Nope, I understand the present world immensely better than you do and also history, which is why I know and so does anyone who is not having a mental lapse of some kind, that present day is absolutely nothing like France in 39.

A rather predictable return of the Taliban in Afghanistan is just like the prologue of break out of war between European powers.

Just like it.

Full-blown assault would be to give up one of their major goals, the big seat at the table in determining future government which can be recognized internationally, so it would be a weird move. Cruel, draconian and oppressive certainly fits the Taliban, but it's not a small terrorist group we're talking about, but an organized political, religious and military force.

Still, the situation is obviously high risk.

Reports from Al-Arabiya state that the current government will step down, which increases the odds of negotiation. But as always, any news should be taken with a grain of salt in these situations, until confirmed by multiple sources. The rumors will always fly regardless, and misinformation will be used actively to create additional chaos.