Afghanistan

[Moksha]

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.

Yeah, that Taliban stuff has some dreadful future implications, but I assume Mike Pompeo was not counting on the Afghan army walking away when he negotiated the total pullout.

[Chap]

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.

And the decisions might not have had such horrific consequences had not successive US governments over the last twenty years, with the collaboration of the high military command, decided to conceal from their citizens the truth about the hopelessness of attempts to construct a non-corrupt government, administration and armed forces in Afghanistan by pouring money into a rotten system.

This is not just a 'historic issue'. The systems that let that happen are still in place.

[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.

And the decisions might not have had such horrific consequences had not successive US governments over the last twenty years, with the collaboration of the high military command, decided to conceal from their citizens the truth about the hopelessness of attempts to construct a non-corrupt government, administration and armed forces in Afghanistan by pouring money into a rotten system.

This is not just a 'historic issue'. The systems that let that happen are still in place.

Considering how rare it is that I agree with you, I am most pleased to let you know that this is indeed one of those rare occasions. I agree.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

And the decisions might not have had such horrific consequences had not successive US governments over the last twenty years, with the collaboration of the high military command, decided to conceal from their citizens the truth about the hopelessness of attempts to construct a non-corrupt government, administration and armed forces in Afghanistan by pouring money into a rotten system.

This is not just a 'historic issue'. The systems that let that happen are still in place.

I always wondered what the metric was for the US to achieve “success.”

The US clearly dominated Afghanistan, or the Taliban, easily, in purely military terms, but the total incompetence of three successive administrations wasn’t something the average citizen could be expected to understand or solved at a grassroots level.

For example, Bush2 went in with no long-term plan, and once the Taliban were expelled Bush2 (read: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all the other neocons) decided it could hold the entire country with less than 10k troops. Most of the US's attention was then directed to planning and carrying out the invasion of Iraq, while the Taliban were left to regroup. This was the really critical time: most of the Taliban's fighters in 2001 weren't fanatics and quickly abandoned the Taliban government when coalition forces invaded. However, once the Taliban had demonstrated that they could survive in the face of a US occupation force, they started gaining momentum again. As the Taliban had re-established themselves, the US and other coalition armies were too bogged down in Iraq to do anything. A lot of the Soldiers rotating through Afghanistan, pre-surge were calling it the Forgotten War. It was a really weird time.

So, yeah, mostly the fault lies with the Bush2 administration for leaving a weak occupation force that the Taliban could get publicity by challenging. If they had any kind of plan they could’ve locked down Afghanistan in 2001 - 2002, and crushed the organisational structure of the Taliban, killing the root to prevent the weed from sprouting again. However, neither the Bush2, nor Obama, nor the Trump administrations really engaged in the kind of nation-building necessary to eradicate the Taliban. They treated Afghanistan first and foremost as a military problem and left it to the military leadership, who naturally came up with military solutions like 'drone strike tribal areas in Pakistan', which accomplished nothing.

Afghanistan is being presented as a hopeless cause from the beginning because it's a convenient excuse for 20 years of incompetence from both sides of the political spectrum.

tl;dr - Bush2 shoulda forgot about Iraq, put about 300,000 military and civilians into Afghanistan, and we occupy it for a couple of hundred years. That’s how you “win” the war in Afghanistan. It’s a long-term protectorate basically.

- Doc

[Alf'Omega]

Afghanistan is being presented as a hopeless cause from the beginning because it's a convenient excuse for 20 years of incompetence from both sides of the political spectrum.

- Doc

But don't you think there is at least some truth to that sentiment? I ask because I'm stressed to come up with any comparable examples where we've successfully done what you suggest could've been done. Most people I know understood this was a cluster-fuk from the beginning. But it stayed out of the news so long as troops weren't battling terrorists in firefights and there were no deaths to report. But I think most of us understood that by withdrawing, the country is likely to go back to its old ways. Just look at how easily the existing government laid down to the Taliban. It is almost as if they were anticipating such a surrender as soon as we left. People who truly want freedom will fight for it.

[ajax18]

Just look at how easily the existing government laid down to the Taliban.

We cut off everything to our allies left in Afghanistan. When their helicopters and fighter jets stopped working, our maintenance plan was to offer help from a zoom call. We trained them to fight by relying on air support and then just cut off the air support. They didn't have a chance.

Now we have no airfields left from which to launch an air strike as Afghanistan becomes a hotbed of terror exportation.

[ceeboo]

I always wondered what the metric was for the US to achieve “success.”

The US clearly dominated Afghanistan, or the Taliban, easily, in purely military terms, but the total incompetence of three successive administrations wasn’t something the average citizen could be expected to understand or solved at a grassroots level.

For example, Bush2 went in with no long-term plan, and once the Taliban were expelled Bush2 (read: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all the other neocons) decided it could hold the entire country with less than 10k troops. Most of the US's attention was then directed to planning and carrying out the invasion of Iraq, while the Taliban were left to regroup. This was the really critical time: most of the Taliban's fighters in 2001 weren't fanatics and quickly abandoned the Taliban government when coalition forces invaded. However, once the Taliban had demonstrated that they could survive in the face of a US occupation force, they started gaining momentum again. As the Taliban had re-established themselves, the US and other coalition armies were too bogged down in Iraq to do anything. A lot of the Soldiers rotating through Afghanistan, pre-surge were calling it the Forgotten War. It was a really weird time.

So, yeah, mostly the fault lies with the Bush2 administration for leaving a weak occupation force that the Taliban could get publicity by challenging. If they had any kind of plan they could’ve locked down Afghanistan in 2001 - 2002, and crushed the organisational structure of the Taliban, killing the root to prevent the weed from sprouting again. However, neither the Bush2, nor Obama, nor the Trump administrations really engaged in the kind of nation-building necessary to eradicate the Taliban. They treated Afghanistan first and foremost as a military problem and left it to the military leadership, who naturally came up with military solutions like 'drone strike tribal areas in Pakistan', which accomplished nothing.

Afghanistan is being presented as a hopeless cause from the beginning because it's a convenient excuse for 20 years of incompetence from both sides of the political spectrum.

tl;dr - Bush2 shoulda forgot about Iraq, put about 300,000 military and civilians into Afghanistan, and we occupy it for a couple of hundred years. That’s how you “win” the war in Afghanistan. It’s a long-term protectorate basically.

- Doc

All true. Including the sequence. Including the “shoulda” .

It is odd that Doc Cam has this nailed and is also such an asshole to people. Interesting.

Yep!

As I have witnessed for a very long time, Cam is the epitome of a mixed bag! As a matter of fact, I have never seen a better example of a mixed bag on these boards. Sometimes you get a solid, well thought out and spot on contribution like this one and sometimes you get ................ Yeah.

[canpakes]

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.

Consider that it’s one thing to give them economic and military aid, and quite a different thing to get a Taliban Air Force shaped up into an efficient sort of operation that would pose a serious threat to existing powers.

Russia will be happy to keep Afghanistan as a client state, but I won’t bet that they’ll be entrusting the Taliban on their own with what it would take to do so.

Remember that Iraq had a military of considerable size going into Desert Storm, but that didn’t stop it from being relatively easily neutralized by tactical and technological advantages possessed by the allied forces.

No different than what we did with building up the Afghani military.

And you just saw how well that worked out.

[Alf'Omega]

I ask because I'm stressed to come up with any comparable examples where we've successfully done what you suggest could've been done.

We still have bases in Germany and Japan.

Not really comparable examples for many reasons, not least of which is that those countries want us there. And we aren't there as an occupying force. I think it should go without saying that the anti-American sentiment in that region has more to do with our military presence there. The manifesto from Osama bin Ladin which he used to justify 9/11 made it clear that this was the case. They seem themselves not as the aggressors, but as the "freedom fighters."

I'm reminded of these meme:

iran-bases.jpg

[Alf'Omega]

Now we have no airfields left from which to launch an air strike as Afghanistan becomes a hotbed of terror exportation.

Maybe you can tell us how we managed to bomb Afghanistan 20 years ago without an airfield there?

You do realize these bombers, fighters, drones have a range of thousands of miles, right?