The full version of this article appears on Medium
By the time you read this, the Taliban may already be in Kabul. If not now, then soon.
Nixon wanted — and got — his decent interval between the United States pullout of Vietnam and the inevitable North Vietnamese takeover. Afghanistan’s interval was never going to be decent, but I confess I expected an interval. We’re scrambling to leave in time, we’re racing for the helicopters as the Taliban burns through Afghanistan like a forest fire.
I remember Afghanistan well. I deployed there twice — once in 2008, and again in 2009–2010. It was already obvious that the Taliban would sweep through the very instant we left. And here we are today.
I know how bad the Taliban is. I know what they do to women and little boys. I know what they’re going to do to the interpreters and the people who cooperated with us, it’s awful, it’s bad, but we are leaving, and all I feel is grim relief.
This is what I remember:
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Thank you for this well written account devastation on autopilot. Surgical strikes on the camps that trained the 9/11 crews was all that Afghanistan needed. The real culprits were and continue to be the Saudis that planned and carried carried out the attacks as well as the sheiks who have funded violent fundamentalism for decades.
The entire existence of the United States of America has been defined by lies, brutality and plunder. This the 21 century, but everything is still in place. The single nation that has been in or has initiated military conflict across the world for the last town hundred years has been the USA. In the process, they have destroyed the lives of hundreds of millions of lives. The United has been involved in wars in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, Africa and even in the islands of the Pacific islands, the US has conducted military actions against all of these people. And yet, this barbaric nation and people have been the only nation to use nuclear weapons against civilian population and continue to threat the use of such weapons even today. In spite of all of this, the Americans who have continue to conduct killing sprees across world every day through its drone programme, still want the people of the world to think that they represent the best people and the best government in the world. Facts seem to have no meqnaing in America and they want the world to adopt the same kind of insanity.
like your stuff / saw you on with marianne and what you say is heartfelt the truth without varnish / keep up the good work
What branch of the Military were you in?