The Falls

There is a vote. Many of the politicians who were all for starting the war in Afghanistan are still in office. The American people were just fine with the war for 20 years and continued to vote for the people who started and supported it. This is not just a bad look on American politicians, it is a bad look on the American people.

The collapse of the Afghan military shouldn't have came as a surprise to anyone that spent time training and working with the Afghan military. In the 10 years I worked with the Afghan military and government I recall running across one single squad of afghan soldiers that look like and carried themselves like professional well trained soldiers. The rest were a complete joke (not bad people, just a complete lack of discipline, integrity, punctuality, education and training). From 2009 to 2019 there was zero improvement.

Who I feel truly sorry and concerned for are many of the translators I worked with over the years. I really hope they were able to get out. They were good people and put everything on the line to help the US. F*ck the Afghan military and government, they had every opportunity to become legitimate. The abandonment of these translators and workers is what disgusts me.

 

Most of the developed world and a lot of the developing world played a part in Afghanistan. Germany had a huge base in the North with a large contingent of Hungarian forces, Italy in the West with a bunch of Nordic countries assisting, the UK and Canada in the South again with countries like Estonian and Lithuanian troops helping. All of NATO had a role to play. Turkey, Egypt, Mongolia and Columbia (and many more countries) even had troops there that played a role with lyrics and security. A good chunk of the world tried to help Afghanistan, and not in minor way. I worked on a US electronic warfare loan program that gave equipment to afghan and NATO partners and have seen the contributions they made first hand. Let's not discount the effort and struggles other countries made to that country. Yeah, the US gave the most in terms of money but it was our war after all. Nobody can claim that the world didn't try.

I haven't worked there for nearly 2 years. I saw the end coming. No plans on going back but if someone offered me a ridiculous amount of money I would probably take another contract.

When I was training them on radio jammers it was like training a bunch of 3rd graders. When they finished the course they got their certificate, they stood in front of everyone, held it above their heads, yelled some stuff, and proudly marched back to their seat with a sense of accomplishment. My best students were Taliban fighters who had joined the army to learn counter IED tactics. I was always suspicious of the soldiers who were paying attention, especially if they asked questions about what frequencies were being jammed.

Note: My training involved locating the on and off button on the jammer and instructing them not to shoot the antennas. They regularly brought the system back for maintenance with the issue being they forgot how to turn it on. Sometimes they would tow the vehicle to my shop with a dead vehicle battery and say the jammer wasn't working. Plenty of antennas brought back completely destroyed.

Does the US even officially recognize Taiwan as a country? I think there is a huge difference between the what happened in Afghanistan and what could happen in Taiwan. We didn't start that. Do we have a defense treaty with Taiwan?