"Afghanistan Is Getting a Lot Worse" Topic

"Militant attacks are escalating. Afghan military casualties are high. Deserters number in the thousands. Kabul's coffers are depleted. American officials are cowering in their fortified compounds.

That's the dark picture that the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction — the U.S. government's watchdog agency for the Afghanistan war — painted in its July 2017 quarterly report.

Since invading Afghanistan in late 2001 in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, the United States has spent $714 USD billion on military and reconstruction efforts in the country, SIGAR noted. 4,200 American servicepeople have died in Afghanistan since 2001. Most recently, U.S. Army private Hansen Kirkpatrick died in an indirect-fire attack in Helmand province on July 3, 2017.

As of May 2017, there were 8,300 U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan, part of a total NATO support force of around 15,000 troops…"
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Amicalement
Armand

But by Taliban lights, Afghanistan is getting a lot better.

OK, all contrariness aside -- maybe the foreign troops should recognize a lost cause when they see one and let the Afghans sort things out for themselves, since they can't impose order from the outside, or through a puppet government?

As President Trump have said… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Astan is a sink. It has always been a sink. We were stupid to go there to "build" it up. After Bin Laden disappeared, we should have pulled back to Iraq and fought the insurgency to extinction. While we were in Iraq, no factions in Saudi Arabia could risk toppling the house of Saud. And that, I still maintain, was the real reason for having close to a quarter million troops in the Mideast at the time.

Graveyard of Empires continues to be Graveyard of Empires.

Who'd'a thunk it? Hyuk hyuk!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand