Did we win in Afghanistan

With all the talk of bringing the last of our troops home and ending America's longest war. Many are asking if we won or not. What say you?

We killed way more of them than they did us, Victory. Hopefully erased an entire generation of those filthy animals.

No.

Mixed. We should have gotten OBL early on and then tried to make inroads with the Taliban.
When we didn't get him at TB we went in with two missions, one that was not possible.
When we got him 10 years ago we should have started our way out.

IMO.

What do you believe was left to do over there?

Who, me?

Did you hear anyone surrender? It isn't over until the enemy says it is....

My best friend spent two deployments in Afghanistan over the years. I asked him if he was surprised at the speedy surrender of the Afghans after Biden announced we were leaving. This was his reply back to me.


“ Well, I am not totally surprised, but this article seems to indicate that the fall is happening much faster than I would have expected. A key to this may be that Afghanistan is not a cohesive country. It is a land of numerous cultures/races/religions. It is very divided and it is corrupt. I think of it as a place with many tribes. War and rumors of war are a way of life there. But if we could not succeed in building a country in two decades of spending truck loads of money, fighting for their security, and providing professional training for their military, police, and government another two decades would probably not suffice, either.

We lost two outstanding soldiers from my unit there. We had Afghan interpreters and workers that are no doubt left exposed and could easily lose their lives. Afghan women are at great risk. We worked very hard in a hostile environment and took chances on a frequent basis and I had high expectations for success at the time. I volunteered to return to complete projects we started because I believed in the cause. I would have thought that by now I would be able to return as a tourist. But now it looks very much like a huge, staggering waste.

Prayers for their women and children. They have been slaughtering each other for centuries.

No

I don't think winning is an option in that type of society. You can stabilized the government somewhat but you can never leave and expect a change.

There is no winning over there. All you can do is keep the super-religious fanatics from gaining too much military power. You'll never change their beliefs and you can't kill everyone. I'd say we've managed to do that. Might not be a "win", but it's accomplished what was needed.

Somebody won with all the opium harvested over there. No coincidence that pill mills got real busy while we were over there.

Next person up to bat, The Chinese Govt.

Nobody has ever won fighting in Afghanistan. We were doomed from the start because not one of the presidents (of both parties) were willing to allow us to wage fully unrestricted warfare there and that is the only way to win. Total destruction followed by a complete rebuilding was required and we never had leaders with the balls to do it.

The key question is, what was the mission and was it accomplished. And, if it hasn't been accomplished, do we need boots on the ground still to accomplish it.

Did we destroy the al Qaeda training camps - yup
Did we eventually eliminate Osama Bin Laden - yup
Do we have the capability to prevent or eliminate training camps in the future without boots on the ground - yup

The original mission was accomplished a long time ago. The troops should have come home a long time ago after OBL was taken out. Too many side missions, the, well, while we are here missions, popped up and administration after administration just extended the role of ground troops and kept adding/changing the missions.

We won the original mission. We were never going to win trying to change the country into a nation we wanted to build there.

Within days, maybe hours, from our complete withdrawal from that area the Taliban will again have complete control of Afghanistan. As we have pulled our troops out they have taken over all those districts, and the estimate I heard earlier last week was the Taliban now controls about 85% of the country. The rest will fall as soon as we are 100% gone.

This makes me ask the question, "what did we gain that was worth the lives of almost 7,000 of our military in the last 20 years? In addition to those numbers there were over 3,000 civilian contractors killed as well." These numbers include the time in Iraq and Afghanistan during that time period.

Nope. It will be the 90's all over again. We'll be back.

I don't think prayers will help. Their religion and Sharia law prominence allows stoning women to death, and death to homosexuals. It is a wasteland of idiots.

We just need to set up a regular routine to bomb that country into oblivion every 3 or 4 years.

If your idea of winning is sacrificing our brave soldiers for a country that has zero idea or desire for liberty and freedom, blowing multiple trillions of our childrens tax dollars and getting absolutely nothing for it. Then it was a huge WIN.

No. We should never again leave boots on the ground. Identify targets, destroy targets. Communicate clearly we will continue that pattern until the behavior that caused us to react has ceased.

China has big plans to move into Afghanistan.

It was a no win situation for our troops. Hopefully one day our country will cease nation building military ops.

Afghanistan has one of the largest lithium deposits on the world. The ME has lots of oil. One would think we would be king of the worlds energy. Instead, we’ve spent trillions upon trillions to accomplish little.

Wish I would have trademarked the phrase “boots on the ground” years ago. By now I’d have WAWI money and be gaining on Flyfisherman.

no one can possibly do that

All we did is create another generation of terrorist to devise ways to get revenge on America for killing their families.

If they didn’t have oil we wouldn’t even be in the Middle East.

The day after we killed Bin Laden we should have left, that would have made a statement.

Russia occupied Afghanistan for 9 years and walked out without a win. Over a million civilians were killed, as well as 90,000 Mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. There will never be a "winner" in Afghanistan.

No, we will be there again

The deal should have been to the taliban if they try to ovet throw the government there and go back to their old ways tjey will be introduced to 100's of MOAB and show the leadership what they do. But then again they arent afraid of death.
But like some on hear said we will be back, and never should have left bagram hell we got troops all over the world. If they dont believe the taliban why leave.

I'm a poor man with poor man ways. I live burger to burger.

This. No one ever wins.

We should have learned a lesson after Vietnam, but it seems we didn't, and I doubt we learned anything from Afghanistan either.
Politicians love war!

So does the military industrial complex.

Gulf War 1 showed that we learned the lesson of the Vietnam War. Gulf War 2 showed that we could easily forget it.

Dad, with the strong CIA background, was a masterful political/long term strategy chess player. Son and his VP, not so much.

This is were you are wrong!
We should have never gone into Gulf War 1 unless we were determined to finish the job! GW 2 just proved point #1.

Gulf War 1 was to kick Iraq out of Kuwait, which Iraq had invaded. That was mission accomplished and that war ended almost as quickly as it began. That is how wars should be fought. Set a clear objective, accomplish it in a swift and decisive fashion.

Exactly. Set reasonable goals with a beginning and end. Then get out once the goals are accomplished.
Thats why the first war lasted several months instead of years to decades.

And got Bin Laden, which was the mission going in!
So, yes

Winning in that part of the world is probably a gray area. In my mind I would like to think that the leaders in those countries would think twice before letting terrorists use their countries as a safe harbor but who knows. I suspect there will be more nonsense from them cause that's what they do. I think taking Iran back 100 years while over there would have been a good idea.

they allowed him to escape Afghanistan, so I say no.

Compared to the Russians, it was a success and we got OBL. Unfortunately, that country will need help again but there are other hot spots.

One of the biggest regrets of the 90s was not snuffing that guy out—believe the CIA and covert ops almost had him a couple of times 1996-1999.

That's because Clintons focus was on smoking a Monica not a Bin Laden

NO........

Clinton wouldn’t pull the trigger 😬

So he’s not dead?

he was afraid of collateral damage. I see that as a plus.

Well, news is reporting that Taliban is claiming to have control of 75% of the country. In all honesty, nobody ever wins this type of war. You settle things down and pull troops and it returns to what it was before. Too many cockroaches come running from the baseboards when the lights go off.

Ollie North warned our politicians about Bin Laden back in 1987. There is plenty of blame to go around in DC for not listening.

Somewhere it went from get Bin Laden in Afghanistan to let’s play politics and put our choice in power with Harmid. The troops had Taliban leaders corralled up fairly quick to get told “they have rights”. The rest is history.

IMO the epitome of failure was our so called leaders in DC sending farm equipment and teachers to Afghanistan to teach the locals how to grow pomegranates. Of course all that equipment is still there being used to farm our insatiable appetite for opioids.

We called this FUBAR while I was serving.

It's almost like a dog chasing it's tail, it will never catch it

WTH are we supposed to do? We demolished the place! Nothing left but a few huts. You cant win a war by making them love you. If victory is only achieved by making tit safe to open a KFC then we lost I guess. Do you think the Japanese loved us?

Making what safe to open a KFC?^

Won the battle but lost the war

Eisenhower warned us about that many, many years ago.

I don’t think we “won” anything. We allegedly got OBL, which is a success. But can you call it a win if the same organization/group will be back in power in short order? OBL needed killing, but we could’ve gone about that a totally different way and a lot of American soldiers would still be alive. There is one way to win the Afghan type of war, and that is to kill everyone old enough to die. The USA doesn’t have the stomach for that.

This war is just like Vietnam. We won every major battle and inflicted a tremendous amount of harm onto the enemy. But the damn politicians have figured out a way to lose a war even when the troops win every battle. Simply amazing.

What is wrong with Afghan men?
Total P’s

It wasn't a win that's for sure... Maybe a split decision... Dan

the same group of guys who say "women are for babies, men are for fun."

For each person killed in the twin towers we've spent about $700M blowing up tents and what not in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. 2.2 trillion total. We lost over 2,000 soldiers. Killed a couple hundred thousand afghans. Hard to argue any sort of a win in my mind given the staggering financial cost.

There is some value in keeping the spear of the united state military sharp. When the civil war started so few people remembered how to fight a large scale war it was a real problem. I do worry about this from time to time for us. Do we have anyone left who really knows how to fight an actual ground war? Maybe those wars don't exist anymore with nukes and airpower. In any case, I suppose some of these military operations in the middle east serve at least some purpose to keep us sharp.

.....and military industrial complex stimulation along with natural resource management (oil/natural gas/opium/titanium/uranium/gold/silver)