Submission Statement
Between 2001 and 2021, under four U.S. presidents, the United States spent approximately $2.3 trillion, with 2,459 American military fatalities and up to 360,000 estimated Afghan civilian deaths.
After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, approximately $7.12 billion worth of military equipment was left behind, according to a 2022 Department of Defense report. This equipment, transferred to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from 2005 to 2021, included:
Weapons: Over 300,000 of 427,300 weapons, including rifles like M4s and M16s.
Vehicles: More than 40,000 of 96,000 military vehicles, including 12,000 Humvees and 1,000 armored vehicles.
Aircraft: 78 aircraft, valued at $923.3 million, left at Hamid Karzai International Airport, all demilitarized and rendered inoperable.
Munitions: 9,524 air-to-ground munitions worth $6.54 million, mostly non-precision.
Communications and Specialized Equipment: Nearly all communications gear (e.g., radios, encryption devices) and 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric, and positioning equipment.
The total equipment provided to the ANDSF was valued at $18.6 billion, with the $7.12 billion figure representing what remained after the withdrawal. Much of this equipment is now under Taliban control, though its operational capability is limited due to the need for specialized maintenance and technical expertise.
The United States has provided at least $93.41 billion in total aid to Afghanistan since 2001. This includes:
Military Aid (2001–2020): Approximately $72.7 billion (in current dollars), primarily through the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund ($71.7 billion) and other programs like International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and Peacekeeping Operations ($1 billion combined).
Humanitarian and Reconstruction Aid (2001–2025): Around $20.71 billion, including $3 billion in humanitarian and development aid post-2021 and $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan assets transferred to the Afghan Fund in 2022. Pre-2021 reconstruction and humanitarian aid (e.g., $174 million in 2001 and $300 million pledged in 2002) adds to this, though exact figures for the full period are less clear.
On the one hand, props for putting a number to it, on the other, Jesus Fucking Christ.
You realize that all the countries' governments you listed have at least consented to us being there, whereas Afghanistan specifically said they wanted us gone?
Just going full Genghis Khan over here. As if the brazen conquest wasn't bad enough, you want to condemn our grandkids to the continued subjugation of their grandkids. Absolutely insane.
Ehhh kinda. For many of those countries, the troops were a leftover of occupation, it was a choice but kind of a forced one, you don't want to upset your overlords.
In the EU, with the increased independence as the organization grew, calls to send the American troops home became stronger and stronger.
I'm not trying defend those deployments, I hate the military as much as anyone. But the fascist I'm arguing with is trying to use those deployments as a justification for a hostile, century long occupation with the goal of forcibly erasing their culture through force. All I'm saying is, those are not the same thing.
Ask the women and girls of Afghanistan if they want us gone. The women and girls who are no longer allowed to attend school, and can look forward to generations of total subjugation.
Why do you hold the opinions of their oppressors in such high regard?
You say they asked us to leave. They dont have a government with sufficient legitimacy to even make such a request. They won't have one until several generations of school kids have been raised to believe their mothers and sisters are actual people, not just some weird furniture.
When the first generation of co-ed Afghani school kids are in nursing homes and hospice, we can start listening to Afghan opinions about our continued presence.
Yes, permanent installations, influencing their economy and culture for decades. So that our grandkids see them grow into a nation more comparable to South Korea than North Korea.
The only language you imperialist bastards will ever understand is force, thankfully, Afghans know how to speak it. May the message spread around the world.
If that were true, you'd have a lot in common with them. How many women were murdered by the occupation? I wonder, how long your country would have to occupied to stop people from thinking and acting like you? Because I think we should leave Afghanistan alone and start there.
I hope that you find yourself on the receiving end of what you support.
LOL still salty about being kicked out
I bet you don't know the first elections after the invasion were already won by the Taliban after which the US decided they had to do it again without them participating.
What people do and their customs are not your business.
Why don't you invade Saudi Arabia then?
Where they hang people every day.
I cast a mental vote on behalf of each and every woman in the country. Votes that they and you ignore.
Theybare subjected to a government they did not choose. That pisses me right the fuck off.
You pretend to care about women's rights to justify and whitewash your gigantic large scale warcrimes. You bomb women, men and children indiscriminately.
Are you bombing the children of Iran and Palestine to promote womens rights too? I'm sure they'll love you for it.
Now piss off, you make me sick with your holier-than-thou BS.
These Afghan women married and gave birth to the men ruling over them. They're at least somewhat complicit in this. They had 20 years to breed a more liberal generation of men, but they did not.
Taliban had such an easy time taking back control because nobody gave a shit.
Ah, yes. It is the slave's fault that they do their master's bidding. They are complicit. They could just overthrow the overseers. Instead, they provide them with the means of their own enslavement.
That's you. That's what you sound like.
The slaves didn't raise their own masters.
The US backed Afghani government lasted less than one day because NOBODY wanted it. Only the Americans did. It's not part of Afghani culture to send women to school and such. It's like forcing Americans at gunpoint to eat salad instead of McDonald's.
What bunch of bs. Before taliban created by the united snake , women was stupying and working In the 1980s, about 40% of doctors and 60% of teachers in Kabul were women.
You are like the racists settlers who was calling Indigenous people savages. Shame on you
Kabul was always a lot more progressive because it's a big city. The rest of the country is a bunch of goatfuckers in the mountains. They think of women as objects. They were pissed off that women were given rights, so they took over. The women who do live in those regions, more than likely supported it - hating on those "liberal" Kabul women. The snake didn't impose the ideology on the Taliban, it (and Pakistan) equipped students of Islam (talibs) to fight communists. These people themselves were already quite nasty. There was an uprising in response to the mandatory literacy program for girls, before the US got interested in them (which was during the soviet intervention)
In the 1970s, when the communist revolution took place, the people of Afghanistan became increasingly restless due to all the reforms. They literally did not want progress. Then in the 2000s, the Americans tried to pick up where the soviets had left off... And as soon as they were gone, the Taliban was back. There was little resistance. Not enough people cared about equal rights. In particular, not a lot of people outside of Kabul, the biggest and most progressive city, cared.
It's all fucked up. Both the Soviet Union and the US tried to improve things, but of course the US and Pakistan funding Mujahideen, out of which the modern day Taliban grew, made it near impossible.
These people, the Talibs, were always anti-progress. They were poor boys who were sent to school, often in Pakistan, to study Islam and become clergymen. In the absence of any real government in poor rural areas, these guys were the closest things to civil servants. In the context of the period and place, you might consider them to be good guys even. But they were always very much fundamentalist muslims, and giving them any power was never a good idea.
Actually you are exactly like the racist settler hasbara operatives who invariably say "let us kill these Palestinian savages bcs they don't like the gays"