Non - Afghanistan

Toronto John said:
Unless I've got it wrong, those were mostly brought on by home grown radicalized individuals, though weren't they? That's not in the same league as 4, or 10, or 19 terrorists working together as directed from a terrorist regime, such regimes having been largely disrupted in the past 10-15 years.

You are absolutely right though that intelligence services locally are vigilant, and have to be so.
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Sounds like you asked the wrong question then doesn't it.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Sounds like you asked the wrong question then doesn't it.
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No, question was "do you feel safer", not "what was the reason you feel safer".

But I do believe that the efforts over there throughout the region, to disrupt terrorist forces did make it safer for us in NA and you in the UK.

And, I do fear that allowing a new regime to take hold in Afghanistan will promote the terrorists to reform and create a new stronghold which will result in organized attacks back to our doors.
 
Toronto John said:
No, question was "do you feel safer", not "what was the reason you feel safer". 7

But I do believe that the efforts over there throughout the region, to disrupt terrorist forces did make it safer for us in NA and you in the UK.

And, I do fear that allowing a new regime to take hold in Afghanistan will promote the terrorists to reform and create a new stronghold which will result in organized attacks back to our doors.
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Of course it's going to lead to bigger trouble down the line. We've spent 20 years pissing loads of them off spurring lifelong vendettas against the west and now are leaving them to it. The whole thing was not just a waste of time but also extremely counterproductive. It was also not even the right country.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Of course it's going to lead to bigger trouble down the line. We've spent 20 years pissing loads of them off spurring lifelong vendettas against the west and now are leaving them to it. The whole thing was not just a waste of time but also extremely counterproductive. It was also not even the right country.
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Yes, I agree with you there. But then again, I am somewhat of an isolationist. I would have been plenty OK to leave them to their own devices as long as they don't bring their troubles to us. But, you'd have to go back to the 13th century to rectify that one.
 
Toronto John said:
Yes, I agree with you there. But then again, I am somewhat of an isolationist. I would have been plenty OK to leave them to their own devices as long as they don't bring their troubles to us. But, you'd have to go back to the 13th century to rectify that one.
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True, there are no easy solutions. Easy to say we should never have gone in too. The understable depth of feeling post 9/11meant that doing nothing was never likely to happen even if it was the better option.
 
Toronto John said:
No, question was "do you feel safer", not "what was the reason you feel safer".

But I do believe that the efforts over there throughout the region, to disrupt terrorist forces did make it safer for us in NA and you in the UK.

And, I do fear that allowing a new regime to take hold in Afghanistan will promote the terrorists to reform and create a new stronghold which will result in organized attacks back to our doors.
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Trouble is, if it’s not Afghanistan then it’ll be another country that is sympathetic enough to open borders to training camps. And it’s not necessarily “in that region”. I think the lessons learned after 9/11 aren’t necessarily about occupying a country but more about intelligence and vigilance.
 
billythekid said:
Basically they should have started evacuating as soon as Trump made that agreement.

All last minute and panic.
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When Biden took over, there were just 3,500 U.S. troops left in the country (from a high of 100,000 during the Obama years). He pushed back the date of the planned withdrawal from May 1 to four months later, but he kept the deal intact. U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
 
Toronto John said:
At the time, I wanted retribution of the highest order. Nuke the damn region, and dispose of any that would bring such crimes to our door.
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Nice bit of genocide avocation to wake up to. The problem may people here can't seem to grasp is the more civilians we kill, the more we aid the anti-West propaganda. If I was an Afghani farmer and a drone killed my kid, I'd probably end up hating the US as well.
 
USCherry said:
Trouble is, if it’s not Afghanistan then it’ll be another country that is sympathetic enough to open borders to training camps. And it’s not necessarily “in that region”. I think the lessons learned after 9/11 aren’t necessarily about occupying a country but more about intelligence and vigilance.
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But when the main sponsors of terror are our “friends “ in Saudi Arabia not a lot is going to get done about it.
 
USCherry said:
Trouble is, if it’s not Afghanistan then it’ll be another country that is sympathetic enough to open borders to training camps. And it’s not necessarily “in that region”. I think the lessons learned after 9/11 aren’t necessarily about occupying a country but more about intelligence and vigilance.
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This.
 
CherriesOnTop said:
To say it was a whole watse of time is offensive to those who payed the ultimate sacrifice. It wasn't, we achieved or main effort which was to put a massive dent on global terrorism. We achieved that. After that it was our intent to make that country self dependent against their own integral threat.

As I said before, you can't win a counter insurgency war. You are fighting an idea and not an enemy. You kill 2 insurgence and 5 take up this ideology through revenge. You miss place a fire mission and a whole village changes. Hearts and minds went a long way to stop this, which is why those people did not lose their lives for no reason.

We had to leave, billions of pounds later and probably trillions of american dollars, the best training in the world, and they bottled it. Since 2014 our main effort has been to mentor and advise their military in strategic military operations. It has been their fault not, a god damn thing we could of done any better.

We knew we were leaving Afghan in 2018 the last tour was supposed to be in 2020 potentially 2021. Our withdrawal has been fine. The Americans on the other hand....
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Well I certainly didn't mean any offence but surely there's a feeling among those who served that the outcomes are a massive let down. As others on the thread have pointed out history tells us that any actions in Afghanistan are doomed from the start.

Your second paragraph sums up why I think it has been counterproductive. Are we in a better position moving forward in terms of global terrorism? We've probably created more potential terrorists and possibly even imported them. I can't help thinking about the UK involvement in Libya and the link to the Manchester Arena bombing and think that this will go the same way.
 
billythekid said:
Basically they should have started evacuating as soon as Trump made that agreement.

All last minute and panic.
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There was overwhelming support amoung the US electorate and bipartisan across the aisle for withdrawal, and I can both respect and understand that. With that in mind, surely they should have been planning it since before Trump made the agreement (and I'm sure they were). That it looks totally unplanned tells it's own story.

Biden is aiming to have all boots out by the arbitrary date of the 9/11 anniversary, presumably having had some commemoration planned, which will fall flat now.

This date, whilst affording more time than Trump's initial date (no doubt intended for his own purposes as well), isn't much better. Everyone with any experience of Afghan that I've read/heard seems to say that the Afghan winter would be a better time to withdraw as insurgents are never as active and the Taliban would have fewer fighters available to them.

I appreciate we have some fellas on here who might know something more about that in reality, please correct me if necessary.
 
CherriesOnTop said:
I knew when I was out there in 2019, but you probabaly know better with all the media you've been reading.
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So it was a military rather than a political decision as the UK government seem to be unaware it was happening.

Media is supposed to be read surely.

It's about winning the peace as our US allies would say.

Time to move on from the nuclear non deterrent and focus on cyber wars.
 
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