I guess it’s hard to understand how much danger may lurk there for us unless we knew we had killed them all. But the war that was will all be for nothing if Al Queda rises up there and hits us again.
I would say that we needed to stay there until the Taliban surrendered and agreed to not take up with the likes of Al Queda again, and if they didn’t, we needed to stay there until they all were dead.
The war in the middle east has been going on for 1300 years. Is that long enough??

We have been using the wrong weapons in this war.
We needed to educate the public. If we did that for twenty years, it would be easier to withdraw.

Do you know or have you heard of anyone who believes we shouldn’t leave?

It’s been yesterday’s war for some time fought for outdated reasons. After a US airstrike wiped out an Afghan wedding party would have been a good time to get out, or better still, sometime before that.

Afghanistan has been the graveyard of military ambitions since the days of Alexander the Great. In the history of the world, no great power has EVER succeeded militarily or otherwise in controlling it. The brutally harsh and sparse geography of the place renders it effectively immune to any civilizing influences, and powerful nations consistently refuse to accept the truth that primitive tribal people might successfully defy the weapons and terrors of modernity in a hellscape which renders infantry tactics and logistics useless. The thing which is truly deplorable about our own involvement in Afghanistan is that our own government and military must surely know the history of the place. We Americans are inexcusably ignorant of the history of ANYTHING, but you would think that at least the people running our ignorant country would consult with those aware of the history of Afghanistan and draw the proper conclusions. Like Vietnam, this mistake is once again colossal and another in the lineup of multi trillion dollar stupidity fests in the lineage of our clown show pretense at empire.

There are no remaining military objectives in Afghanistan. We remain there because it’s profitable for the military industrial complex.

@stanleybmanly I have come across some, yes, though mostly it’s an anti-Biden complaint. When I point out that Trump also planned to withdraw, they clam up. But I was interested in hearing reasons for staying apart from “I hate Biden”.

@kritiper Do you believe that we should still be fighting in Vietnam as well? Why/why not?

- twenty years. Stores have a saying. You break it you buy it. Afghanistan has been bombed into the Stone age. We can always come back if things get worse.