Has Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?

[Valmy]

And that would be the ultimate defeat of the US and NATO effort if, after 20 years, Taliban 2.0 are better at governance using the infrastructure built up in the last 20 years, as well as more stable (because no Taliban) and perceived as more legitimate by Afghans than the current government.

I guess. Ultimately the point was the get Osama Bin Laden, defeat AQ, and punish the Taliban for sheltering them. We did those things. If the Taliban does just roll back into power with no resistance then at least I hope they think twice before screwing with us again and maybe we left Afghanistan a little better than how we found it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Something to keep in mind is "giving lots of money to a third world shit hole" isn't actually a military function. That's a political function.

I don't see that there is a ton to learn in Afghanistan other than "regions of the world with no national identity and where only the force wielded by a warlord is respected, are not viable places to dump development money in some stupid effort to cause a Western style democratic society to sprout from thin air." The lesson of Afghanistan is "don't."

[grumbler]

That is mildly encouraging.

A more political savvy Taliban is not an unalloyed good.
It's one thing to act moderate to smooth the process of taking power.  The question is how long the velvet glove stays on.

Yes, they also made all kinds of conciliatory noises when they surged into power in 1996; "peace, justice, security and Islam."  And there were elements of the Taliban that seemed sincerely willing to negotiate with the Northern Alliance.  But, as usually happens to authoritarian movements, the hardliners and bloody-handers were the ones who eventually rose to dominate the movement, because they were ruthless enough to excel in a lawless environment.

The current generation of Taliban leaders is not the generation driven from power, so maybe has more conciliatory intentions right now, but I wouldn't trust them to resist the rise of the ruthless and bloody-minded this time, either.

[viper37]

Thank goodness Canada was there to train the US Army how to "stand and fight"!

A disaster narrowly avoided!

Could you guys send some of your stand and fighters down south to our basic training camps, so we can learn how to "stand and fight" right from the start from the experten?

mock all you want, jingo all you can, but it' the truth: US troops over rely on airstrikes and have a high rate of collateral damage detrimental to the success of your missions.
If your army&govt were truly as perfect as you imagine it, we wouldn't have this thread and ISIS would never have had an opportunity to rise out of Iraq.

[viper37]

We bombed the Serbs to get them to back off on Bosnia.  We got nothing out of the deal, but at least it happened quickly.

these 2 conflicts were still traditional warfare, with frontlines, not fighting in the streets and facing a local insurection.  It's another beast entirely.  Bombing tanks and aircraft can be easily achieved with massive firepower.  Rooting out an ennemy out of a city without needlessly killing the civilians around is much, much harder.

[viper37]

The way we could have "won" in Afghanistan would have been a different political perspective. Probably one in which we resurrect the Afghan monarchy and empower an absolutist with lots of money and weapons to kill anyone who is getting out of line in the provinces. We then structure the country around local rule handling most issues--which is the reason all these tribes were mostly behaved under the King's rule before the mid-1970s. Going in to these places and telling people how to live and what to do isn't a good recipe for success. A feudal strongman who mostly lets the tribes run themselves and who just has enough military force to kill people who get too out of line is honestly the only likely stable situation Afghanistan could hope to find. This feudal strongman would likely need to be allowed to do things we morally oppose, things that violate the modern laws of war, to stamp out insurgencies when they flare up.

National identity don't happen out of thin air.
There was no such thing in 2001, there still isn't in 2021, and that's a failure of US/NATO policies with Afghanistan.  We kind of let them to their own, the US drastically reduced its troops and intelligence level in 2003, and that was a huge mistake, especially the intelligence part.  It's one thing to fight the ennemy, you got to know where he is and what he's planning.  The Afghan govt wasn't able to do that on its own after a couple of years without the Taleban in power.
It's a failure of all participating countries.  The Iraq war gave the perfect excuse for EUropeans to drag their feet in the matter.  You can't stabilize a large country like that with so few troops and resources.  Just showering money everywhere doesn't work.

[Berkut]

Thank goodness Canada was there to train the US Army how to "stand and fight"!

A disaster narrowly avoided!

Could you guys send some of your stand and fighters down south to our basic training camps, so we can learn how to "stand and fight" right from the start from the experten?

mock all you want, jingo all you can, but it' the truth: US troops over rely on airstrikes and have a high rate of collateral damage detrimental to the success of your missions.
If your army&govt were truly as perfect as you imagine it, we wouldn't have this thread and ISIS would never have had an opportunity to rise out of Iraq.

Perfect? Who said anything about perfect?

I am just glad whatever little success the US military has ever had is so clearly based on the careful tutelage of the Canadian army, the ones who have taught Americans how to "stand and fight".

[Berkut]

Thank goodness Canada was there to train the US Army how to "stand and fight"!

A disaster narrowly avoided!

Could you guys send some of your stand and fighters down south to our basic training camps, so we can learn how to "stand and fight" right from the start from the experten?

mock all you want, jingo all you can, but it' the truth: US troops over rely on airstrikes and have a high rate of collateral damage detrimental to the success of your missions.
If your army&govt were truly as perfect as you imagine it, we wouldn't have this thread and ISIS would never have had an opportunity to rise out of Iraq.

The irony here is that what I am mocking is YOUR jingoism.

The idea that the Canadians had to come along and teach the US Army how to "stand and fight" is fucking hilarious.

If you had just observered that American soldiers are not super awesome at the nitty gritty, ugly, dangerous, and really fucking hard job of fighting a counter insurgency, no mocking would have been needed. Of course - the reality is that that isn't because Americans won't "stand and fight" without some Canadians around to show them how, it is because all of that is really fucking hard for any Western military to do - nobody has every done it well. No-one. Not even the vaunted Canadian Armed Forces, with their incredible reputation for showing Americans how to "stand and fight" instead of randomly carpet bombing villages.

Look, nobody here is some fucking military genius who has anything to teach the people running the US Army. They know more then any of us about how hard it is to fight an insurgency, and the problems with how to apply firepower without murderizing the very people you are trying to protect. The idea that they were all sitting around blowing away civilians until the Canadians came along to show them how to "stand and fight" is so fucking jingoist it's downright hilarious. You know....Canada. With their extensive experience and institutional knowledge about how to fight against insurgents.

The US Army isn't good at it because nobody if fucking good at it who isn't willing to just be over the top brutal. Hell - that doesn't work very well either, as the Soviets found out.

I am just going to keep chuckling though that you thought this was a great chance to trumpet Canada's teaching Americans how to "stand and fight"*.




* - Note: I have an immense amount of actual respect for the Canadian military. I actually think they are professional, competent, and very good at what they do. Both of them.

[Berkut]

Last point:

I actually know people in the US Army. Officers. Men who spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've talked to them about what they did there, what they tried to do 15 years ago, and how that changed over time, and how different what they were doing 5 years ago was from what they were doing say 15 years ago.

This idea that the men running the US Army are some slack jawed morons constantly befuddled that there isn't a Panzer IV around for them to blow up is utter bullshit. This stereotype of a bunch of army guys who just call in artillery or airstrikes on anything and everything without care or thought about collateral damage is so far from the reality that people who say it immediately betray that they really have no fucking idea what is actually going on.

They are thinking about all this - in fact, this is their job, their profession, and most of them take it very seriously. They have thought about this a LOT more then you have, and in a lot more rigorous manner, and with a lot more background, experience, and study.

I would love to have them read this thread and see their reaction to being told by some guy that they needed the Canadians to show them how to "stand and fight" or that apparently they are still trying to win WW2 and haven't realized that was 80 years ago and they need to think about how to win a different kind of war. Like they are going to be all "HOLY SHIT WE NEVER FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT!!!!!"

[The Minsky Moment]

Google says the Secretary of Defense makes $221,400. A 4 star general is $197,301.60.

That is a joke. I just looked up Raytheon's comp disclosure. The CEO made $21 million in 2020 and the lowest paid named executive officer made $2,999,414.

Clearly the logical conclusion is that money is the only possible motivation a person can have and therefore the CEO of Raytheon must be 100 times smarter than the secretary of defense.  And therefore whenever some highly compensated person leaves say Goldman Sachs or Exxon for a low 6 figure cabinet position, it must be because they were really being fired for incompetence and were forced to fall back on some crap government job like Secretary of State.

I'm being sarcastic of course, but in fact there is at least one person who really thinks this way.  A billionaire (or in the vicinity) who truly believed he was orders of magnitude smarter than highly decorated generals - because only a chump would risk his life for O-scale govt pay.  yeah that worked out well.

[alfred russel]

Clearly the logical conclusion is that money is the only possible motivation a person can have and therefore the CEO of Raytheon must be 100 times smarter than the secretary of defense.  And therefore whenever some highly compensated person leaves say Goldman Sachs or Exxon for a low 6 figure cabinet position, it must be because they were really being fired for incompetence and were forced to fall back on some crap government job like Secretary of State.

Those cabinet positions offer a level of prestige you can't buy. For people worth a few hundred million, the difference between another $100 million and a cabinet position can be worth it.

I'm being sarcastic of course, but in fact there is at least one person who really thinks this way.  A billionaire (or in the vicinity) who truly believed he was orders of magnitude smarter than highly decorated generals - because only a chump would risk his life for O-scale govt pay.  yeah that worked out well.

You are seriously referencing our former Commander in Chief Donald Trump to argue that the US military has top quality leadership?

[Eddie Teach]

The rest of the brass aren't elected.

[OttoVonBismarck]

AR is engaged in a campaign of "post a bunch of stupid shit, whenever people are foolish enough to respond to specific parts of it double down on it." It's frankly pretty obvious trolling. I don't see a reason to engage. I actually know he's not as stupid as the things he's posting, so there's other motivations at play.

Look, nobody here is some fucking military genius who has anything to teach the people running the US Army. They know more then any of us about how hard it is to fight an insurgency, and the problems with how to apply firepower without murderizing the very people you are trying to protect. The idea that they were all sitting around blowing away civilians until the Canadians came along to show them how to "stand and fight" is so fucking jingoist it's downright hilarious. You know....Canada. With their extensive experience and institutional knowledge about how to fight against insurgents.

The US Army isn't good at it because nobody if fucking good at it who isn't willing to just be over the top brutal. Hell - that doesn't work very well either, as the Soviets found out.

Places like Afghanistan have one recipe we know works--if you want to control it, you remove the people who control it now, and kill many/most of the adult men in areas that continue to support the deposed leader. Then you find a local who will be loyal to you and make him your "Maharaja", you give him money and weapons to kill anyone (including the families and entire villages) who oppose him. That sort of rule can and has been sustained for hundreds of years.

The problem comes when you actually want to not behave like the Mongols or Roman Empire because it's the 21st century AND when your goal is to basically change the "hearts and minds" of millions of people. The Soviets weren't afraid of being brutal, but the reason they faced so many issues is they were not content to just have a loyal Maharaja, they wanted to impose Soviet style socialism all throughout the country, this meant forced education, forced abandonment of old cultural practices etc. The Soviets weren't trying to build a client state, they were trying to Sovietize Afghanistan like they had the -stans to the north of it. That's much more difficult. It creates a forever war--and they don't have the obvious solution that the Mongols did because the Mongols weren't interested in changing hearts and minds. They didn't care how the Pashtun tribes behaved on a day to day basis, they cared that they bent the knee and paid tribute. That's a different type of suzerainty and one that allows you to just utilize mass scale killings if people don't behave.

[alfred russel]

The rest of the brass aren't elected.

He selected Milley for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the most important military national security security job. His qualifications were:

+ Obama fired him
+ Mattis didn't like him

Milley was not the first person Trump hired based on the qualification of being fired by Obama.  The first person Trump tried to hire on the basis of that sterling credential was Michael Flynn. That ran into the problem that Flynn committed a felony before he could  be confirmed, for which he subsequently pled guilty. The second person Trump hired on that basis was   . . . . James Mattis (*).  So, perhaps not the optimal criterion?

*Yes I know he "resigned".  To spend more time with his family etc.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The rest of the brass aren't elected.

He selected Milley for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the most important military national security security job. His qualifications were:

+ Obama fired him
+ Mattis didn't like him

Case in point: saying deliberately stupid things looking for a reaction.