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Originally Posted by sterlingice
I really am having a hard time with the "this country just wants Taliban rule" line of thought. For some segment of the population, sure, but for the whole country, writ large?
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it's not pleasant, and I share some of the thoughts from your (excellent) post. On this ... I just don't see any other way to see it. Not *everyone* wants the Taliban. But I don't see any other way to fairly view the facts that doesn't end up concluding significantly more want the Taliban than don't.
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Originally Posted by sterlingice
what could we, as the US, do now or could have done in the last couple of weeks to make this different?
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I still think not a whole lot. The information I'm seeing, making the large assumption it's at all accurate but it's certainly better than a guess, indicates Taliban started buying off the Afghan government/negotiating/etc. as soon as the withdrawal agreement was signed. That our intelligence reports were inconsistent and largely incorrect. Etc
I think history should blame Trump more than any other president for the manner of the withdrawal, but I also think it was never going to be good. I agree with the sentiment expressed by others that there was no useful purpose for us to be there after bin Laden was eliminated.
The main thing I've re-learned through all of this is that we really don't know how to put reasonable lines down on a map to govern ourselves as a species. It's going to be painful and it won't happen in our lifetimes, but the sooner we have one government administering all of Earth the better off we'll be. Until then ... fractional conflict like this will not end until the people who live there want it to end more than they want it to continue. I know it's an overly simplistic assessment, but I think in general accurate, that this is basically what happened in Ireland after generations of violence in the late 90s. It's not 'over' there by any stretch, but it's much better than it was.