Watching the coverage of our choppers over Kabul this morning reminded me of Saigon's fall.

[CTyankee]

I remembered being so horrified I couldn't finish looking at the footage...

[doc03]

1. Yep

[Irish_Dem]

2. I think many of us are flashing back to that event.

The military industrial complex has forced us into bad situations since WWII.

[Rustyeye77]

3. Except this was faster than Saigon

[CTyankee]

5. That's because our military (and the folks at the White House) remembered the dismal Saigon

departure. My guess is that our military brass reminded Biden's people that we need to have a more orderly departure in order to not look like the Saigon disaster. Otherwise, our Republican Party, now in disarray, will exploit our leaving Kabul with that earlier Saigon disaster. Now the pukes have only the helicopter leaving -- they are going in a more orderly fashion.

[bearsfootball516]

4. I had a friend tell me yesterday that Afghanistan is the Millennials' Vietnam.

Thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars spent, in an unwinnable war with no good way out.

[Haggard Celine]

6. That's one of my earliest memories of watching the news.

My parents and grandparents kept up with it all, but they weren't very good at explaining what it all meant, so I was left to draw my own conclusions. I understood that Vietnam was a place far away and that "we" were fighting the Vietnamese, and I knew my uncle had been over there and that he smoked dope and was in trouble all the time. I guess that was enough for a 6 year old to understand.

[AngryOldDem]

7. Remember it well.

Never forget the image of the overloaded helicopter crashing back to the ground.

I said in another thread my ex worked with a Vietnamese man who was employed at the U.S. Embassy. He was among the last to leave Saigon and had to leave behind his wife and parents. His position made him at risk of capture if he had stayed, which meant he could have been killed. For years he was trying to find his relatives.

This points to the truth that we OWE nationals who work for us to protect and look out for their best interests and safety. If the troops on the ground aren’t fully committed to the mission, these people certainly are.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

8. Its a full blown panic, evacuate NOW! We dont want American hostages, Taliban at Kabul gates

[CTyankee]

10. Biden inherited this mess. I think his advisors said "Get out now and make it fast." But I can hear

it now from the repukes: "Biden LOST Afghanistan."

I am not a military strategist at all but my political sense says that Biden's folks are counting on the Right Wing not being successful in trying to pin this whole thing on Biden, come re-election time. It won't have the same sting, nor the photos of people on the roof of our embassy desperately clinging to the ladder of a helicopter. That was just terrifying and a real political problem.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

11. Taliban are now in the Kabul city center, mass chaos in the streets, stay tuned

[onlyadream]

9. My son has a friend who is from Afghanistan

They live in Canada but have friends and family in Afghanistan. I’m told that the consensus is that the Afghans don’t like the Taliban or the Americans. And, if they had to choose, they’d choose the Taliban. This is perplexing to me, due to how they treat women and girls. My son explained that many women agree with the Taliban. It’s just their culture. Crazy.