If so I’d wager that it’s a small contributor.

You can say the same for Putin and his oligarchy

Do you think this partially explains why the Pentagon / Defense Department keeps failing their audit?

No because they made people rich in the process.

Contracts in general varied from year and job. I made upwards of $180k when I was there. The largest contract I heard of was for logisticians. Some of them were still clearing north of $300k a year at the end. I met one such person in 2016. He’d been contracting for 12 years and was heading home for good. He had a house in Dallas and 2 cars paid in full with no additional debt. He was retiring at 33.

I was born last week

Its okay, I knew itd be unpopular. Thank you though. Your support makes it worth it

How much money have you made going there? You mentioned contractors got paid 5x more than soldiers. So I’m assuming no one really goes there unless it’s for the money.

Was Rice or Rumsfeld charged for their illegal war or crimes against humanity?

All good points. It’s unfortunate you’re being downvoted. But that speaks more on how Americans still feel about their failed war

>if y’all wanna do some real good possibly,

This is your version of bitching that something good still wasn't done to your satisfaction.

You have chosen the worst possible forum to air these grievances, and you did it in an accusatory way when your interlocutors clearly share your sensibilities. Why on Earth did you not go do this in some boot-licking thread instead?

You were born after September 2001 weren't you?

This is Zach. I didn't make it out to Kandahar until 2016, and I'm not sure there were any Brits in TAAC-South. But, we did have a situation where an Australian major (he's a cousin to us after all) was trying to tell an American civilian to calm down and called her a cunt. Cultural differences are a son of a bitch. I'll never forget that.

Deployment cycles certainly had an effect on the war's winnability. Wesley Morgan's book The Hardest Place directly addresses the difficulties faced in the Pech Valley due to our rotations. We consider theater-level changeover to be a bigger issue. A new ISAF commander would show up and they would have a new plan, which means it's time to scrap the old one. Any progress made over the previous year would be halted to pivot to the new priorities. And an even bigger contributing factor, probably the biggest, to the war being lost was the inability to build a stable government. That responsibility fell on the State Department.

I don't say this to be flippant, but how was everyone supposed to get to Kabul from every corner of the country? Had those in charge accepted the reality following Doha Agreement, things are different. Instead, they sat on their hands and did nothing and we were left with August 2021.

We couldn't accomplish anything with 2500 advisors in country. Which is why 5000 soldiers and marines were sent back in for the evacuation. If Bagram requires more people, and it would have, then you send more people.

Hi all, I'm a former British Royal Air Force engineer, I served two tours in Kandahar, 2008 and 2013, there's a good chance we bumped into each other (on the boardwalk!). When there, it was my job, among other things, to maintain the arrestor equipment on the runway, but beacause the air traffic control was operated by US staff there was usually a breakdown in comms which resulted in a few close calls involving aircraft! My question: what is your most memorable interaction with any of the UK forces out in Afghan?

A boot.

Wow yes, thank you for mentioning Hypernormalisation! I hope you’ve just turned a lot of people on to Adam Curtis docs here.

Can you translate what you just said? What is a "big e4 mindset?"

Yeah it was on FLIR like normal but he saw someone moving in the backseat and then eventually a couple of kids got out. Wild.

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Thank I will.

It's common from anyone who just wants to act like they could have done better.

The “should’ve been bagram” response is common from folks that never had to secure anything larger than a fighting position. HKIA kissed the Green Zone where every embassy was located. No other location could’ve been secured with the force presence in country.