Up til now I haven't commented on this thread, and have read just about half of it. The situation has been so fluid and awful, and at WS we can't talk politics, but how can it be avoided here?
But now...four U.S. Marines being killed and 3 wounded....it's unbearable.
I am one who felt that 20 years, trillions of dollars and US military lost was enough, and we should withdraw our troops. BUT NOT LIKE THIS!
IMO we should have first evacuated any and all U.S. Citizens quietly, then the Afghanis who GENUINELY were on the side of the Americans, and THEN withdrawn the troops.
We now have the worst-case scenario. When the TALIBAN is decrying the bombing as evil, we are in a different place. Uncharted waters. IMO this was botched so terribly; we have Americans killed, Americans trapped, innocent Afghanis trapped, terrorists who boarded the planes under false pretenses intending on future harm in the West, and a country left to be bedeviled by one or another evil regime. I mean the Taliban released 5000 terrorists from prison; it's not like they have noble intentions.
Our U.S. Government negotiating with the Taliban and doing as the Taliban say... How did we get here? Then ISIS-K committing this atrocity today. How was it so bungled?
Thanks to an earlier poster who found the instructions from the U.S. Embassy forewarning Americans to LEAVE months ago. Who can imagine why they stayed? No one would have had to tell me twice.
I'm a native New Yorker and I am dreading a repeat of a 9/11 level attack again.