Submission Statement
Between 2001 and 2021, under four U.S. presidents, the United States spent approximately $2.3 trillion, with 2,459 American military fatalities and up to 360,000 estimated Afghan civilian deaths.
After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, approximately $7.12 billion worth of military equipment was left behind, according to a 2022 Department of Defense report. This equipment, transferred to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from 2005 to 2021, included:
Weapons: Over 300,000 of 427,300 weapons, including rifles like M4s and M16s.
Vehicles: More than 40,000 of 96,000 military vehicles, including 12,000 Humvees and 1,000 armored vehicles.
Aircraft: 78 aircraft, valued at $923.3 million, left at Hamid Karzai International Airport, all demilitarized and rendered inoperable.
Munitions: 9,524 air-to-ground munitions worth $6.54 million, mostly non-precision.
Communications and Specialized Equipment: Nearly all communications gear (e.g., radios, encryption devices) and 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric, and positioning equipment.
The total equipment provided to the ANDSF was valued at $18.6 billion, with the $7.12 billion figure representing what remained after the withdrawal. Much of this equipment is now under Taliban control, though its operational capability is limited due to the need for specialized maintenance and technical expertise.
The United States has provided at least $93.41 billion in total aid to Afghanistan since 2001. This includes:
Military Aid (2001–2020): Approximately $72.7 billion (in current dollars), primarily through the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund ($71.7 billion) and other programs like International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and Peacekeeping Operations ($1 billion combined).
Humanitarian and Reconstruction Aid (2001–2025): Around $20.71 billion, including $3 billion in humanitarian and development aid post-2021 and $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan assets transferred to the Afghan Fund in 2022. Pre-2021 reconstruction and humanitarian aid (e.g., $174 million in 2001 and $300 million pledged in 2002) adds to this, though exact figures for the full period are less clear.
I mean yeah, all that, but did you even stop to consider how absolutely insanely wealthy we made like 7 people!?
God you people are so selfish with your wah wah thousands upon thousands have died! Think of the rich people for once!
:P
My goddamn brother in law, gung-ho air Force dude, is trying to get his Gen Z kids to enlist because it worked out so well for him. He enlisted during the magical late 90s so he wasn’t shipped anywhere. Hardest thing he had to do was pushups and whatever hazing the other soldiers put him through.
Uh late 90s would line up with being deployed early 00s.
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Yes but actually no. Mujahideen (did I spell that correctly?) were CIA funded as they opposed the Russian invasion.
A lot of former Mujahideen fighters did end up in both Taliban and Al-Quebec (autocorrect tells me that’s the right spelling) after the soviet-Afghan war, including Osama himself. While allied, they are separate entities.
They are allies and with common roots, but saying Taliban was trained by CIA is an oversimplification. Some of its members were, yes, but that was long before Taliban was a thing.
Also, the paragon of Aged Like Milk:
Hahahahahahahhqhahaa!!! Al-Quebec!
The French Canadian province would like a word
So it wasn’t these guys that ended up in Afghanistan somehow?
No. The Taliban only got started after the Soviets left. But the US funded and trained the Mujahedeen which later created Al-Quaeda.
Riiight, tell me, what does the word ‘mujahedeen’ mean?
And why are they trying to hide it then if it’s so on the level?
You americans sure love those name tricks.
Like this POS ISIS headchopper:
Nooo, he’s Ahmed al-Sharaa now and no longer from Al Quaida but totally harmless HTS.
“That’s why the Taliban is so deadly and effective — hapkido training. Where’d they learn that? From Steven Seagal’s fat ass. Why do you think Kelly Lebrock left him? 'Cause he’s Taliban.”
We did.
There’s a whole joke about it in The Boys when the Soldier Boy character is revived.
They trained them, gave them weapons and assistance as much as they could.
Don’t believe the revisionist trolls bcs the name is different.
They were the same people with the same beliefs.
Just ask the trolls what Mujahideen stands for?
Or where they got the stinger missiles?Adds another ~4 billion to the equation.
And yet, I’ve seen people on here criticize the withdrawal. Like, how much longer did you wanna stay, dawg? Another 20 years so the proxy we set up would last another week?
This happened a lot around Afghanistan too.
If there’s one thing both sides love in this country, it’s permanent warfare, provided they can get the poors to do all the fighting and dying.
So many people are “anti-war,” except for the current one.
People didn’t criticize the withdrawal itself (at least non-monsters didn’t). People criticized the fact that in so many years there was no robust infrastructure built. They broke whatever was there before them, fucked around for decades, achieved jack shit, and left leaving power vacuum.
People didn’t criticize the withdrawal itself (at least non-monsters didn’t).
I mean, I’m not going to disagree with characterizing these .worlders for example as monsters, but it’s not as if it was a fringe position.
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Lol. Imperialism is what made Afghanistan today.
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You have it wrong. Not doing imperialism to them is classism.
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and the USA claims healcare for its citizens is unaffordable
We’re also cutting Veteran benefits, which has been a recurring thing.
Books are where it’s at!
“Invade Afghanistan, you will regret it,” is one of history’s NCDish lessons. Like:
- Don’t invade Russia in winter.
- Don’t let Germany get too economically depressed.
- Don’t let the Chinese people get too unhappy with their govt.
Iran feels geographically close enough to inherit the curse for sure.
And most important:
I don’t think that’s what they’re after. It’s oil and money somehow at the root, it always is.
It’s Israeli hegemony. The entire point of American conquest in the Middle East is Zionism.
Nah. Whenever I see Zionism used as a giant umbrella, I know that person is stirring up shit and/or is antisemitic.
Whenever I hear an inconvenient theory I turn off critical thinking and assassinate the person’s character in my mind
Genetic fallacy
Let’s see how your critical thinking got you to that end result. Show your work.
President Trump, who announced the “very successful attacks” on Truth Social, told Axios in a brief phone call that “Israel is much safer now.”
It’s the other way around. Zionism is a tool, not an end goal.
Really? Isn’t it famously petroleum and shipping lanes?
It’s kind of a package deal; Israeli domination of the middle east also means domination of the oil and shipping.
Another facet is just good old fashion military industrial profeteering
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Is this text AI generated? The civilian death toll in the “submission statement” is about 6x higher than accepted numbers and about 100K higher than all total deaths in the entire conflict.
IMO (AI or not) slop like this just “floods the zone with shit” while doing noting to help the progressive cause.
This is in the first paragraph of what you linked:
The Cost of War project estimated in 2015 that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts.
I shouldn’t need to tell you that that is a completely different statistic. You don’t need to muddy the waters of truth to make the point.
You actually think they were there to stop the Taliban?
Absolutely. The plan was to do in Afghanistan what we’d done in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Argentina and the Philippines.
We wanted a local aristocracy beholden to the US business interests with a police force willing to brutalize dissidents. Taliban wasn’t that thing, so they needed to be supplanted.
Problem was, the Afghan aristocracy that the US aligned with were more vile than the Taliban and rejected by the public at large. So the US spent 23 years killing everyone who refused to submit to them.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/who-responsible-taliban
maybe there is more to it…
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
I might take this with a large grain of salt. My man is a neocon’s neocon.
If you dig into Afghanistan’s history, particularly with regard to the Soviet Union, there were a lot of parallels between the quasi-socialism of the Soviet occupation and the quasi-liberalism of the American occupation.
In both cases, the occupying army tried to subvert self-determination of the Afghan people. Trying to claim The Taliban as a product of US policy against the Communists or a product of Islamist policy against the Christian Nationalists really misses this as an ongoing effort by Afghanis to secure their own brand of domestic nationalism.
Get down to “Who is responsible?” Rubin doggedly insists that (a) US support for the Taliban in the '70s was worth the price, entirely to keep Communism out of Pakistan. And (b) we are the victims of imperfect policy rather than our own hubris.
Both beliefs are ultimately misguided, even if his history is a fun read.
It’s strange how Rubin glosses over the CIA’s training and arming of the very extremist groups which conducted 911. I don’t see how anyone can try to argue that arming and training such groups was worth it.
Simple. 3000 dead Americans was a small price to pay to bring down the Evil Empire of the USSR and liberate billions of people from Communism.
These people argue that all sacrifices are worth the goal of spreading global freedom even when they turn democracies into dictatorships. These people can never admit they were wrong about anything. Even now when the communist nations are beginning to overtake the west, these fools argue that China is a capitalist nation. They live in a fantasy world.
China is a capitalist nation
Capitalism is when people get rich, and the richer you are, the more capitalist you have become.
But also, Communism is when everyone hates their government. This proves that Americans are the Communists and China are the Capitalists.
but can we agree OPs title is useless? the reminder does neither help nor explain anything. no one won anything. there is no likeable party.
The plan was to grow a shitload of poppy
Don’t forget the money and weapons you gave them before.
I forget, which movie was this from?
The Greatest US warrior of allThe first was for himself. The second for his country. This time it’s to save his friend. 😉
I think the text is doctored, in the OG film it’s not so explicit. Feel free to correct me though, I’m working off “I heard it somewhere”.
The movie is Rambo 3 and you are correct. The real dedication is to the “Gallant people of Afghanistan”.
There is some debate about who doctored it yes.
Can’t mistake the message of the movie tho
I learned 2 important lesson from this.
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You can’t bomb people into liking you.
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Most people don’t give a shit about number 1.
Edit: AutoIncorrect got me.
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Yes, but sometimes my phone thinks it I went to write different words.
No, I hear you! Just checking…
Yeah. I might be a jackass, but not a cycle path.
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before that it was the mujahadeen trained by SEALs/special operations, turned taliban.
Man, am I glad that never backfired.
Still, we got Charlie Wilson’s War out of it.
Throw another 20 years at it
Hell, throw another 100 years at it, it wouldn’t make a difference
Doesn’t even matter which country invades, it won’t hold it for long.
Even Alexander the Great only briefly held it for 25 years after defeating Darius III
The people didn’t want us there and we weren’t interested in forcing ourselves on them like some kind of brutal Soviet satellite state
The rampant unchecked corruption was way worse than we thought and it was a major consideration for pulling out
Can’t help people who are unwilling to help themselves
The war in Afghanistan was never about helping anyone. 🙄
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Initially, no. I’m still baffled that we bothered staying at all. Later on it transitioned from it being primarily a combat mission to a combat mission plus a side humanitarian effort
When it was beyond clear that the people weren’t interested in our way of life at all, then they waited 10+ years and pulled the plug
Had to make sure the contractor companies got theirs first
People weren’t interested in gifts brought by colonizers. It’s not our way of life, it’s the fact that we forced on them at the end a gun.
Not really. We presented opportunities and they rejected them.
The US led coalition established a system of voting, Afghans risked their lives to vote
Other Afghans threatened to kill them if they voted, and many followed through with their threats
The US led coalition built schools, some risked their lives to attend
Other Afghans threatened to kill them if they attended, and many followed through with their threats
The US led coalition provided food and healthcare, many happily accepted
Others Afghans stole food and healthcare supplies and kept them from being distributed to other Afghans
The US led coalition provided new critical public infrastructure, many Afghans were overjoyed by the increase in their quality of life
Other Afghans destroyed that infrastructure with explosives and killed many Afghans in the process
No one was forced to accept it, the end of a gun came from other Afghans
Voting in rigged elections forced on them by the occupation for candidates forced on them by the occupation. Colonial schools that were meant to preach occupation propaganda to train up the next generation of compradores. Aid that is conditional on not being a resistance fighter against the colonial occupation and laying down their arms for their occupiers. And all of that infrastructure comes with strings attached and with debts that are expected to be repaid.
They’re not backward mud people, they were resisting colonial occupation.
Every gift from the Great Satan is poison.
Please, tell me more bullshit stories
They’re very entertaining
Colonizers are disgusting.
Sounds about one bad day away from this
Just wait.
In a few years we’re going to find out similar corruption occurred in Ukraine.
Not likely
How so?
It happened with every other war in recent years, and you’ll recall that Hamid Karzai got the Zelensky treatment, even making speeches in Congress, before it was found out he was personally benefitting from war funds.
One major reason is that even before the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine has been hot on the goal of trying to join the European Union which has strict metrics against corruption which Ukraine has been striving to eliminate with EU watchdogs constantly visiting Ukraine to independently assess their effort.
By the end of which Ukraine will likely have far less corruption than the US
Thanks to taco to negotiate withdrawal with Taliban instead with the Afghani government.
The current war with Iran is also because he withdraw from JCPOA, and looks like we know now why Netanyahu came to Mar-a-Lago June last year to see trump.
why Netanyahu came to Mar-a-Lago June last year to see trump
Interesting point. Mossad psyop teams helping promote pro-trump disinfo on the social networks?
This shit haunts me sometimes. I remember hearing somewhere that the Taliban actually offered to deliver OBL to the US if they would promise not to invade and we were like “get fucked, idiot”. How many people’s lives did we needlessly destroy, regardless of nationality, both in Iraq and Afghanistan? What else could have been bought besides misery with the nearly four trillion between those two wars?
Iirc what they offered was to put him on trial. Which is lol worthy.
Oh, okay. Hmm, yeah, that seems sus.
Yeah, brown people shouldn’t receive due process.
