OK, so I am retired military and I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and just outside of the US. I learned a long time ago that the US media was corrupt and into the political game. I peruse a lot of news sites overseas and they sometimes gives the story to their readers that the US media ignored because it does not fit their agenda. One of the better stories I read was out of Singapore and it had to do with with the corrupt Afghanistan government. It seems as if they were sending their troops out into fights without being paid or supplied properly. I mean not just food but weapons and ammunition and other supplies being needed. Instead the corrupt government was selling stuff on the black market and pocketing the money.. Another more recent story had do with Mr. Ghani and that when he left Kabul, he left with 4 cars and a helicopter all stuffed with cash, like millions of dollars. So don't blame the Afghan Army for not fighting, they did not have the supplies to support it. Another fact, is that since the Afghans took over the fighting duties from the US in 2015, they have lost over 66,000 troops. We and our Allies have lost only about 3,500. Now I am not trivializing the dead or hurt individuals who were deployed in Afghanistan but there seems to be a little disparity there.
On another note, people say we are not the world's police force. OK, let's talk about soldiers in Germany, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Africa and Central/South America. I give that if we fight them there, we are not fighting them here. I am not an isolationist but the ones that bring it up about Afghanistan are being hypocritical. Another thing about comparing this to Vietnam, well that was pretty well thought out, this, I believe, is a kneejerk reaction and a purely political decision on the part of this Administration. You can refute me if you like but I don't get my facts from the lame stream media, I do research just like I did while I was in the military for 21 years.

The real question is, why were Americans ever sent to the cemetery of Empires at all.
The federal government has been corrupt for decades (probably more than a century.)
They have sent Americans as fodder for their war profits for at least 50 years.
This result in Afghanistan was easy to predict. The military industrial complex gets richer and innocent Americans die. That is their plan.
We need to fight for liberty HERE in America against the domestic enemies in DC and NY and other corrupt cities.
Close the US borders to all potential terrorists and restrict immigrants to those with exceptional talents.
Let the Afghans, Vietnamese, and all others fix their own countries while Americans fix ours.

Over 20 years ago I said that we should not go to Afghanistan because we as a people didn't have the perseverance to complete the job.

It was and is obvious to any rational person. We are still in Germany approximately 76 years after WWII and culturally speaking the Germans are and have always been much closer to our culture than the people of Afghanistan. I said back then that if we were to go there that it would take a minimum of 3 generations and wiping out the Islamic religion COMPLETELY for us to be successful.

So here we are 20 years later doing EXACTLY what I predicted. It is maddeningly sad to see all of the waste that this has engendered.

Afganjstan is a lost cause.. The powers that be will let our people rot there, as they did with Benghasi. All we have left is this--Close the borders. Say it again and again, write to the congress again and again. It won't matter. The border states have to make the first move, as Texas, which says the wall will be finished on THAT border at least. When the entire tier of southern border states can agree and act in concert, there may be a chance. Maybe then, the Border Patrol will be able to get a handle on that unholy mess. Keep the Admin out of it. Those traitorous scum can only destroy, never build, never stand for anything worth anything.

The afghan fighters just wanted the bucks. Once we stopped providing them, they went with what their friends were doing- taliban. Pretty easy to figure out. I wonder what Biden was thinking, if indeed he was thinking.

The irony is that the Taliban will shout “Allahu Akbar” just before they shoot the Transgender Soldiers in the face.
Makes a lot of America question who they support?

As a libertarian I’m just sitting here watching a bunch of coercive asshats beat on eachother.

That kind of explanation is too much intellectualizing.

They did not fight because they were barely armed, had little ammo, were not paid, were not fed.
They knew, better than us, that plenty of US $ had been sent to pay for all that. We all know that the nominal ex-pres made his escape in a helicopter crammed with cash while others trying to get out tried to hide in plane wheel-wells.

jimslag , thanks for same ideas.

The Taliban live there. They knew the Russians would leave back in the 80s. They knew someday the Americans would leave too. They still live there.

For decades Reagan got credit for winning the cold war. My question is how much Russia's prolonged involvement contributed to their collapse? An additional question is will our prolonged afghan entanglement contribute to our collapse. We live through epochs and learn nothing.