It's obviously tempting to compare the American withdrawal from Afghanistan to the USSR's withdrawal in 1989, and many of our guys have been doing so. Two important differences: the Soviet retreat was orderly, and left in place a functional regime that lasted three years as opposed to three weeks.
There is no such thing as a direct, apples-to-apples historical comparison, and the Soviet Union in 1989 faced challenges that were different and in some ways more severe than those faced by the United States in 2021. That said, people noting that the USSR fell in 1991, two years after their retreat from Afghanistan, are correct to draw attention to this humiliating defeat as an index for American decline more generally.
And ask yourself: do you really think the United States can survive two more years of COVID hysteria, lockdowns, vaccination mandates, federal vaccine passports for interstate travel, Blacks and anarchists rioting, police retiring en masse? Over the past two years, the percentage of American households with at least one child being homeschooled has quadrupled, from 5% to 20%. People are checking out of the system in a way they never have before. And all of this is before we consider supply chain disruptions, double digit (and accelerating) inflation, housing prices ballooning out of control, the eviction moratorium expiring...
Simply put, the United States does not have the USSR's "two years" on its current trajectory. It is ultimately a matter of simple mathematics: either the trajectory will change, and soon, or at some point in the very near future, the riots of 2020 will look like a "mostly peaceful protest" by comparison.
Either way we are in for some major turbulence. So gather your loved ones near, make sure you're as physically and mentally prepared as your circumstances allow, and buckle up. The ride never ends