As US forces pulled out of Afghanistan, local government and military was overrun in record times by Taliban. I think within 72 hours of withdrawal Taliban had control over capital. Saigon-like footage played on the news, with people trying to cling to landing gear of leaving military planes and desperate mothers tossing babies at the troops as they are leaving.

Yet, I still think withdrawal was the right call. The collapse of Afghan military showed that US command was lying and/or delusional and that CIA was lying and/or clueless in assessing the situation. TWENTY years, BILLIONS spent, THOUSANDS dead, and this is ALL THEY GOT TO SHOW for it? Clearly, more of the same would not have changes anything.

I think the root cause is fundamental misunderstanding of how Islamic value system is incompatible with the Western liberal governance. You can't build a nation when people you are building it for do not want nation like that.

What do you think?

It was going to be a shit show. I still can't get over the Trump administration's push to release the Taliban leader and negotiating directly with the Taliban without the Afgan government involved. They wanted to do this by May if he had been reelected.

I think we need to differentiate between the unmitigated disaster that was withdrawal from unmitigated disaster that was US presence in Afghanistan.

I don't think Biden should be held responsible for the disaster that was US presence in Afghanistan. I think key blame is neocons during Bush era that started this thing and partially to blame everyone else that came after that decided to kick the can down the road. I expect regardless of when withdrawal was to happen, 2011 to 2041, it would have always ended with eventual Taliban takeover.

I do think that Biden should be held responsible for the disaster that was US withdrawal. This is solely on him and his incapable administration. Saying that Trump would have likely created similar mess is poor defense. I thought the whole purpose of electing Biden is to do a better job as POTUS than Trump, and clearly, it is not even arguably the case here - Trump wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan during his term, but had sufficient presence of mind or luck to not create this mess. Biden did.

Taliban has billions in US weapons, including Black Hawks and up to 600K rifles What a disaster. This will splill all over middle east.

Hopefully aircraft would be drone-striked before Taliban can sell them to Iran or likes. More so, communication equipment, if I think it is what it is, is encrypted band-hopping radios. Which are much harder to jam or monitor compared to civilian equipment Taliban was using. Last but not least, nigh-vision gear was one of the key advantages US troops had and 16,000 supply means that anyone with money would get a set.