Afghanistan

[Moksha]

What will the US do without a war? Can we handle it?

[Chap]

Perhaps this point has already been raised in this thread.

But in case it has not, I think that the future-oriented question for Americans to discuss might be - why did successive US governments conceal from the public the facts that:

(a) The US effort to construct an effective Afghan army and administration was known to be failing for much of the past two decades.

(b) The US government nevertheless continued to pour vast sums of they taxpayers' money into an effort they increasingly knew was bound to fail.

(c) As the situation got more and more undeniably bad, major efforts were made not to let the true state of affairs be publicly known.

Documents obtained by the Washington Post showed this all pretty clearly, as recounted two years ago ... It's a long article, of which this is only an extract. I end the quote at the words “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

US officials distorted statistics to mislead public about Afghan war, confidential documents reveal
An 18-year, trillion-dollar conflict was known to be failing from an early stage. This knowledge was concealed from the public.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in US history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The US government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Washington Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan - we didn't know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star army general who served as the White House's Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Mr Lute added, blaming the deaths of US military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”

Since 2001, more than 775,000 US troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defence Department figures.

The interviews, through an extensive array of voices, bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day. They underscore how three presidents - George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump - and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan.

With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, US officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.

The interviews also highlight the US government's botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan's thriving opium trade.

The US government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.

Since 2001, the Defence Department, State Department and US Agency for International Development have spent or appropriated between $934bn (£710bn) and $978bn (£743bn), according to an inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded veterans.

“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?” Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.”

The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from US presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.

Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the US government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul - and at the White House - to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to US military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

[ajax18]

What will the US do without a war? Can we handle it?

This pull out will actually increase terrorist incidents and war. When they start flying planes into the great welfare office and your EBT card runs out, I'm sure you'll be looking to launch an attack and begin a long term occupation again.

[Atlanticmike]

Russia will start taking over security in Afghanistan within the next 100 days.

A joke? or are you young enough not to remember the Taliban driving Russia out of Afghanistan?

I think fairly soon the Taliban will be recognized and set up governmental operations for all of Afghanistan. Russia, will succeed at working with the taliban and supplying them with weaponry including the help they need to start an air force. They'll help the Taliban with securing the country until they have a fighting force so large America won't think about ever stepping foot in Afghanistan again. No different than what we did with building up the Afghani military. Why wouldn't they?? It's a very strategic move and the best way to give the finger to America.

[Moksha]

What will the US do without a war? Can we handle it?

This pull out will actually increase terrorist incidents and war. When they start flying planes into the great welfare office and your EBT card runs out, I'm sure you'll be looking to launch an attack and begin a long term occupation again.

Wait a minute, I was defending your butt last week. Now I hope the Confederacy does not rise again just to spite you.

[Chap]

Russia, will succeed at working with the taliban and supplying them with weaponry including the help they need to start an air force. They'll help the Taliban with securing the country until they have a fighting force so large America won't think about ever stepping foot in Afghanistan again. No different than what we did with building up the Afghani military.

That last sentence is a bit pessimistic. You mean they will spend twenty years pouring money into a system that is so corrupt and unfit for purpose that the resultant military are so seldom paid, so badly (if at all) led, and so lacking in even regular supplies of food that they can see no point in their even trying to resist an enemy inferior to them in numbers, weaponry and transport, to say nothing of a complete lack of air support?

Let us not forget that when the Russians were last in Afghanistan it was US-funded mujahideen (when means "those who practice jihad") who forced them to leave. Money spent in that direction (tough guys with basic weaponry and high commitment) was an investment that brought excellent returns to the west ...

[Moksha]

I hear we left billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment for the Taliban to confiscate and use against us when we start having more 9/11s as well. This goes beyond poorly planned. I don't understand the Biden administrations motives on this but it doesn't seem near as politically popular as the usual writing people checks and inflating the dollar to avoid paying it back.

When Trump decided to pull out, met with the Taliban, and signed the agreement with the Taliban to leave, I bet you were enthusiastic.

Due to a similarity in politics, why don't you try to regard the takeover by the Taliban as the counterpart to Trump regaining power?

[Chap]

Republicans delete webpage celebrating Trump’s deal with Taliban

Page touting former president’s ‘historic peace agreement’ disappeared over the weekend

Still there on the Wayback Machine, though:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210615230 ... -east-rsr/

PRESIDENT Trump HAS CONTINUED TO TAKE THE LEAD IN PEACE TALKS AS HE SIGNED A HISTORIC PEACE AGREEMENT WITH THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN, WHICH WOULD END AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR

On February 2, 2020, the Trump Administration signed a preliminary peace agreement with the Taliban that sets the stage to end America's longest war.
Under the agreement, the U.S. will withdraw nearly 5,000 troops from the country in 135 days in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism.
Time Magazine reported that other components of the agreement included an agreement that U.S. counterterrorism forces stay in the country, permissions for the CIA to operate in Taliban-held areas, and details of how the Taliban's promises to reduce violence will be monitored and verified.
The deal has been called the " best chance to end this conflict ," a " decisive move " towards peace, and " the best path " for the United States.
The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history, a conflict that has killed more than 3,500 U.S. and NATO troops and cost U.S. taxpayers nearly 900 billion dollars.
As part of the peace agreement, the Taliban and the Afghan government recently began historic peace, talks which would end decades of war that Afghanistan has consumed.
The negotiations will cover the terms of a " permanent ceasefire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarmament of the country's many militia groups ."

[ceeboo]

This is a very complex, multi-layered and deeply historic issue.

In short, I do think we should bring our men and women home and I am deeply concerned for the Afghan people as this all continues to play out. While I am certainly not a Biden fan, I thought his speech yesterday was one of his best to date.

These are really really tough calls that will likely have horrific consequences attached to them - no matter what decisions are made.

[ajax18]

Due to a similarity in politics, why don't you try to regard the takeover by the Taliban as the counterpart to Trump regaining power?

I just wish you had the one tenth of the fighting spirit you demonstrate against conservatives looking to lower payroll taxes and reform the social welfare state as you have against against regimes that provide a foothold for communism, harbor terrorists, and dump acid on the faces of girls who had the termerity to attend school.