Poll
Question:
Was Biden's decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan by August 31, 2021 the correct one?
Option 1: Yes
votes: 29
Option 2: No
votes: 14
I was reading Al Jazeera's Live Updates (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/9/taliban-captures-more-provincial-capitals-afghanistan) about Afghanistan and, to me, it looks like the choice is between staying forever or letting the Taliban have the country. (Biden insists that the latter is not a foregone conclusion. (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-military-withdrawal-afghanistan-conclude-aug-31/story?id=78729387))
As a second question if the Taliban does retake the country; was the coalition involvement in Afghanistan a success? We ended up more or less where we started 20 years ago minus an Osama bin Laden.
Depends. What's the plan for containment?
Yes.
We do not have the resolve to actually what needs to be done to keep the Taliban out of power. We never had.
The decision is right, but the timing is wrong. This is the kind of decision you make just before you hand the office over to the other party.
One of my few criticisms of Obama was his decision to kick the can down the road. The choice is much as Sav describes it. Either stay forever or let the Taliban have the country.
The Taliban won't get the whole country, of course. They'll get the Pashtun majority of the country, and when they try to take over the Tajik and Hazera parts of the country they will be Taliban'd themselves.
Defeating the Taliban would require ethnic cleansing of the type that is just not acceptable these days.
Yeah, being that Afghanistan is landlocked and entirely surrounded by countries who are opposed to everything we've been doing, there was always little hope for success. Other than staying forever (just to keep their head above water), or throwing ROE out the window and fighting a literal war of extermination against the Taliban (Roman Empire style)...both unacceptable options.
And as China is already poised to back a Taliban government, it is likely their victory over any Northern Alliance-like resistance that might remain is a good bet (especially as much of that territory is already Taliban-controlled).
Our withdrawal has been pretty good...but a 1975-style abandoning of the embassy in Kabul is still not at all outside the realm of possibility.
Edit: Much like grumbles said...but I remain much more pessimistic about resistance to the Taliban. Unlike us, I don't doubt they'd do some ethnic cleansing of the Tajiks/Hazeras.
One lesson I take from history is that bad guys are almost invariably better fighters than good guys.
Quote from: grumbler on August 09, 2021, 03:23:27 PM
The Taliban won't get the whole country, of course. They'll get the Pashtun majority of the country, and when they try to take over the Tajik and Hazera parts of the country they will be Taliban'd themselves.
Defeating the Taliban would require ethnic cleansing of the type that is just not acceptable these days.
Yeah, I was going to post exactly this--it's misunderstood about the Taliban having support all over the country, Afghanistan's two largest ethnic groups are Pashtun and Tajik, the Taliban has no support amount Tajiks. Pakistan moved support to the Taliban in 1994 as it emerged, due to fall outs with some other Mujahedeen groups. Several of the other prominent Mujahedeen groups were in serious disarray from basically 20 years of fighting, the Taliban was arguably in a fresher position, and with a lot of outside support it was able to get most of the country other than the Northeast. The situation this time isn't quite like that, the Taliban has some outside support, but nothing like the relative support it had versus the other Mujahedeen in the mid-90s. Additionally the Taliban's entrenched enemies have a lot of support this time they did not have last time. The Taliban is going to do really well in the parts of Afghanistan that have basically been "under occupation" by the central government, due to their people completely rejecting the legitimacy of the central government. But not all of Afghanistan is like that. Areas that are not Pashtun majority and where tribal affiliations are distinctly not aligned with anything the Taliban is doing, will be very hostile operating territory for the Taliban. They'll be limited to terror attacks and raids into those areas, but occupations? No. They likely will suffer lots of counter raids and counter-terrorist attacks as well.
China's turn to get Afghanistan'd?
No, they might throw money/weapons at the Taliban in exchange for resources, but they're not going in there.
Yes. GTFO of that place. Should have been done about 18 years earlier I guess.
Incidentally Adam Tooze's latest newsletter was on Afghanistan - from economic perspective largely - but I had no idea how catastrophic the Soviet war was:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E78ZDY_XMAM28_V?format=png&name=small)
As a share of the Afghan population it is up there with some of the worst conflicts/regimes of the 20th century but is not, I think, particularly widely known.
The State Dept is releasing statement about their efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. That makes no sense to me if serious as it is pretty obvious that a negotiation strategy that opens by ostentatiously abandoning your biggest source of leverage is suboptimal.
From which I conclude that either:
1) Biden screwed up big time, OR
2) The Biden people determined that negotiations would never achieve anything and decided to ditch, and the talk about negotiations is just fig leaves.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 09, 2021, 03:28:43 PM
Yeah, being that Afghanistan is landlocked and entirely surrounded by countries who are opposed to everything we've been doing, there was always little hope for success. Other than staying forever (just to keep their head above water), or throwing ROE out the window and fighting a literal war of extermination against the Taliban (Roman Empire style)...both unacceptable options.
And as China is already poised to back a Taliban government, it is likely their victory over any Northern Alliance-like resistance that might remain is a good bet (especially as much of that territory is already Taliban-controlled).
Our withdrawal has been pretty good...but a 1975-style abandoning of the embassy in Kabul is still not at all outside the realm of possibility.
Edit: Much like grumbles said...but I remain much more pessimistic about resistance to the Taliban. Unlike us, I don't doubt they'd do some ethnic cleansing of the Tajiks/Hazeras.
All of those minorities have ethnic fellows across the border, which is how they could Taliban the Taliban by slipping across borders when convenient and returning when convenient. The US withdrawal represents an opportunity for more than just the Taliban.
I wonder if punitive strikes are an option as a way of getting out of Afghanistan without completely losing face. You let Taliban know if that if they behave badly, you'll aid their enemies with stuff like drone strikes for the express purpose of fucking them up, and if they don't, then you'll forget about that part of the world. We have to get the fuck out of there, but it's still not a good thing to have Taliban triumphantly do Taliban things.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 09, 2021, 03:29:48 PM
One lesson I take from history is that bad guys are almost invariably better fighters than good guys.
(https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/028/165/ccvzrbwha9tx.jpg)
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 09, 2021, 05:41:54 PM
The State Dept is releasing statement about their efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. That makes no sense to me if serious as it is pretty obvious that a negotiation strategy that opens by ostentatiously abandoning your biggest source of leverage is suboptimal.
From which I conclude that either:
1) Biden screwed up big time, OR
2) The Biden people determined that negotiations would never achieve anything and decided to ditch, and the talk about negotiations is just fig leaves.
Negotiations have been ongoing for at least eight years. North Korea will denuclearize before the Taliban make concessions that would move them forward into the 12th Century.
I mean we went in there to get Osama Bin Laden. Last I checked he is dead. The idea we were going to build a functional state was a doomed venture from the start. I was against it then an I am against it now.
We should have left in 2002 and left the Northern Alliance to it. But as it is we should allow anybody afraid to remain in the country to immigrate to the United States like we had to do with South Vietnam in 1975. Maybe somebody we will learn to not do this kind of foreign nation building.
So. How can we get a two state solution working?
Or it'll have to be a permanent one Afghanistan, two governments, constant war situation?
Quote from: Tyr on August 09, 2021, 06:03:34 PM
So. How can we get a two state solution working?
Or it'll have to be a permanent one Afghanistan, two governments, constant war situation?
They will have to work it out. They had it worked out before the Soviets moved in. More foreign interference has clearly not been the answer.
Quote from: grumbler on August 09, 2021, 06:00:38 PM
Negotiations have been ongoing for at least eight years. North Korea will denuclearize before the Taliban make concessions that would move them forward into the 12th Century.
ibn Rushd was around in the 12th century; you've under-rated how far the Taliban have to advance to reach that level.
Fools Rushd ibn?
Quote from: Valmy on August 09, 2021, 06:02:08 PM
I mean we went in there to get Osama Bin Laden.
And to dismantle the government that hosted and protected him.
Quote from: Valmy on August 09, 2021, 06:05:04 PM
They will have to work it out. They had it worked out before the Soviets moved in. More foreign interference has clearly not been the answer.
:lol: Uh, no they didn't. If there was a month in Afghanistan's history when an Afghan politician could find an affordable life insurance policy, it was probably in the late 1960s, under the king, when foreign aid was plentiful enough, and corruption widespread enough, that everyone could dip their snout.
Other than that, the motto was War Never Changes.
Yes. Well, I hope so. It's a shitty situation that will look much worse when Kabul falls to the Taliban. I do wonder how much damage the Afghan and Iraq wars have done to our democracy. We are sort of in a shitty situation ourselves right now.
Quote from: Valmy on August 09, 2021, 06:02:08 PM
Maybe somebody we will learn to not do this kind of foreign nation building.
Yeah, it really has worked out terribly for everyone every single time.
Excepting, of course, the times when it hasn't.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 09, 2021, 06:19:01 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 09, 2021, 06:02:08 PM
I mean we went in there to get Osama Bin Laden.
And to dismantle the government that hosted and protected him.
Well then we probably should have gathered millions of men for the genocide we needed to commit in Pakistan if that was the goal.
Quote from: Valmy on August 09, 2021, 06:41:12 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 09, 2021, 06:19:01 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 09, 2021, 06:02:08 PM
I mean we went in there to get Osama Bin Laden.
And to dismantle the government that hosted and protected him.
Well then we probably should have gathered millions of men for the genocide we needed to commit in Pakistan if that was the goal.
OBL was in Afghanistan at the time, not Pakistan. Unless you are arguing that US policy should have been a pre-emptive genocide in Pakistan so as to leave OBL no line of retreat.
Is it the right decision to withdraw from the graveyard of empires? Yes, absolutely. No amount of sunk cost fallacy will change that or result in more palatable results. The price is non-trivial, of course, especially for Afghanis not aligned with the Taliban, but it's not one that should be borne by the US and whatever allies are still involved.
Did the US lose? Yes.
The 9-11 attacks were intended - among other intentions - to provoke the US into a massive reaction that would weaken its legitimacy, bleed it of resources that could be spent elsewhere, and heighten internal divisions. IMO the attacks were successful in that, and the invasion of Afghanistan figures heavily in that.
Luckily for the US and it's allies, the US is solid enough that it can absorb the material losses from it's Afghanistan adventures.
On the other hand, there are indications that China may be getting more involved a bit in Afghanistan.
EDIT to add: I think going into Afghanistan was required, given the situation, but that the attack needed a better exit strategy.
Quote from: Savonarola on August 09, 2021, 02:47:24 PM
I was reading Al Jazeera's Live Updates (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/9/taliban-captures-more-provincial-capitals-afghanistan) about Afghanistan and, to me, it looks like the choice is between staying forever or letting the Taliban have the country. (Biden insists that the latter is not a foregone conclusion. (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-military-withdrawal-afghanistan-conclude-aug-31/story?id=78729387))
As a second question if the Taliban does retake the country; was the coalition involvement in Afghanistan a success? We ended up more or less where we started 20 years ago minus an Osama bin Laden.
no, it was the wrong decision.
he should have tried harder to rebuild an international coallition, vanquish the Taleban and truly train the troops there to take care of their security.
Biden made the right choice and I applaud him for his bravery.
Quote from: viper37 on August 09, 2021, 08:10:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on August 09, 2021, 02:47:24 PM
I was reading Al Jazeera's Live Updates (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/9/taliban-captures-more-provincial-capitals-afghanistan) about Afghanistan and, to me, it looks like the choice is between staying forever or letting the Taliban have the country. (Biden insists that the latter is not a foregone conclusion. (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-military-withdrawal-afghanistan-conclude-aug-31/story?id=78729387))
As a second question if the Taliban does retake the country; was the coalition involvement in Afghanistan a success? We ended up more or less where we started 20 years ago minus an Osama bin Laden.
no, it was the wrong decision.
he should have tried harder to rebuild an international coallition, vanquish the Taleban and truly train the troops there to take care of their security.
Tried harder, holy fuck. What a policy.
Quote from: Jacob on August 09, 2021, 06:56:52 PM
EDIT to add: I think going into Afghanistan was required, given the situation, but that the attack needed a better exit strategy.
As Valmy mentioned above, the correct exit strategy was to narrowly define the mission as killing the hell out of OBL and al Qaeda and smacking the Taliban around for giving them sanctuary.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 09, 2021, 08:34:53 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 09, 2021, 06:56:52 PM
EDIT to add: I think going into Afghanistan was required, given the situation, but that the attack needed a better exit strategy.
As Valmy mentioned above, the correct exit strategy was to narrowly define the mission as killing the hell out of OBL and al Qaeda and smacking the Taliban around for giving them sanctuary.
Indeed. It would not have been that hard to clearly define a mission, do it, and then leave.
But as usual, we took on the worst choice and split the baby instead.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 09, 2021, 08:34:53 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 09, 2021, 06:56:52 PM
EDIT to add: I think going into Afghanistan was required, given the situation, but that the attack needed a better exit strategy.
As Valmy mentioned above, the correct exit strategy was to narrowly define the mission as killing the hell out of OBL and al Qaeda and smacking the Taliban around for giving them sanctuary.
Yeah, I agree with this.
Whatever al-Qaeda's ultimate goals for 9/11 none of them really worked out in its favor. America got into some shit, but AQ is basically a third rate jihadist group now, it being the focus of so much U.S. attention has seriously rolled back its capabilities, and any time they start to resurge they become the focus again. Meanwhile jihdaism is a competitive game just like anything else, other groups have bigger mind share and get less attention, meaning they can recruit and build out in peace, while AQ can't. It's unsurprising AQ fell to the wayside in many respects.
As for Afghanistan I actually think it is exaggerated as the "graveyard of Empires" there's periods of literally hundreds of years where it's been under the authority of outside powers. Where you get into trouble is in thinking Afghanistan is a country, it's actually just a lawless border region. One reason it's been a "border region" for thousands of years is geographically it's always been fairly worthless. No history of important natural resources, no land that's particularly amazing for agriculture. Places like Egypt or the Bosporus strait were always center piece jewels in any crown. Parts of Persia the same can be said for as well, but Afghanistan is literally what historical records mean when they talk about "mountain barbarians." Or to put it in Trumpian terms--this is a shit hole country in every real respect, because the land is bad and the people are poor, and it's never had much economic value. If it had real value one of the old Empires would've ran through and just genocided out all the undesirables and seeded in settlers, akin to what we have seen many times over in more valuable patches of land.
Here's something unexpected: The Iraq war looks like it will turn out better than the Afghan war. It's hard to say that Iraq war went well, but Iraq does have a
mostly functioning government.
That's not unexpected, Iraq did have a history of functional government (for the region's standards) that you could work with.
Also, I doubt that it was politically feasible to frame the Afghan war solely as a punitive expedition. The Afghan war enjoyed vastly more international support than the Iraq war later had, but I don't think the nation building aspect could have been avoided.
It was time to admit defeat and retreat, but as somebody else wrote before here, I hope there will be airstrikes and such to keep the Taliban from letting themselves become too much of a terrorist training ground.
I mean, the Taliban are going to be a problem mostly for Russia, whose Central Asian border is basically nonexistent.
Quote from: celedhring on August 10, 2021, 01:23:23 AM
Also, I doubt that it was politically feasible to frame the Afghan war solely as a punitive expedition. The Afghan war enjoyed vastly more international support than the Iraq war later had, but I don't think the nation building aspect could have been avoided.
No - and the two were inextricably linked. The argument was that terrorism like 9/11 happens if you let states fail and if you allow there to be sort of ungoverned spaces. So the idea of a punitive strike only would have been seen as futile and creating the space for another attack, a fuure bin Laden etc.
It may be that if the White House and others had pushed a narrative that they just wanted a punitive stike (though I think they would have come up against both and liberal and neo-cons operating in the media) that you could go down that route. But I think without that concerted effort to shape the understanding of what the US was doing, why it was doing it - and an analysis of how that fit with wanting to punish and 9/11 and prevent another attack - this was inevitable. I think it's historical fiction to pretend that there was an alternative given the rhetoric and understanding in the media, general public and among political/think tanker elites.
QuoteOn the other hand, there are indications that China may be getting more involved a bit in Afghanistan.
Yeah. China's approach is going to be arguably easier in that they are indifferent to the form of a regime or its internal politics, but I think there will be a "provided it is stable" caveat in the future. At least for states that are in a position to impact China's access to raw materials or its strategic economic interests (like developing OBOR).
But given that I think there it's not unreasonable (especially now the US is a net oil and gas exporter) to see the US pulling out of much of its engagement with the Middle East, and China not quite replacing it but being a foreign intervening force for the purposes of stability. I wouldn't be surprised to see the US take more of an interest in the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia or Egypt, say, as this happens. I think the same is also happening with Pakistan and Afghanistan as the US re-aligns with India and there's probably be other areas like South-East Asia where the old Cold War framework doesn't work and the US/China is presented with new partners.
It's in that context that I think Turkey has actually been a really interesting and canny player - because they are moderate in their criticisms of China of Xinjiang but they are, at the top of my head, the only Muslim country in the Middle East or Central Asia that has criticised China at all. But also they may be part of OBOR but the "middle corridor" which goes through Central Asia-Caspian-Caucasus-Turkey is only one of the options including going through Iran or going through Russia. It's easier probably than the North route because it doesn't rely so heavily on Russia and it doesn't need the Russians and Georgians to cooperate, plus with this route post-conflict there's no need for the Armenians and Turks to cooperate or share their cut. And it's a route that will happen anyway - Turkey wants access to Azeri fuel - so it'll arguably be cheaper. But it puts Turkey in a far stronger negotiating position with China than if they are just one option to receive the end bit of the route as they would be with the Northern or Southern routes - especially if Turkey continues to expand its influence and relationships with the Central Asian states.
People seem to be forgetting that China was a major supplier of the Mujahedeen during the war against the Soviets. They are becoming a bigger player in Afghanistan now, for sure, but have always been a player.
Let the Chinese deal with it. The less the US does direct interventions like the ones it's been doing for the last 20 years in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc, the happier it'll be.
Also, America can of course theoretically go in to mow the lawn in Afghanistan if it feels the need. Have a pliable warlord or two as a clients.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 10, 2021, 05:35:37 AM
Yeah. China's approach is going to be arguably easier in that they are indifferent to the form of a regime or its internal politics, but I think there will be a "provided it is stable" caveat in the future. At least for states that are in a position to impact China's access to raw materials or its strategic economic interests (like developing OBOR).
As I understand it the Taliban has been quite supportive of the Uighurs in China in various ways that go beyond simple criticism. So while China may be interested in helping a US opponent it's not clear to me that they'll necessarily get what they want from the Taliban. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an imperial power has supported an Afghan power to annoy an enemy, only to create problems for themselves.
QuoteIt's in that context that I think Turkey has actually been a really interesting and canny player - because they are moderate in their criticisms of China of Xinjiang but they are, at the top of my head, the only Muslim country in the Middle East or Central Asia that has criticised China at all. But also they may be part of OBOR but the "middle corridor" which goes through Central Asia-Caspian-Caucasus-Turkey is only one of the options including going through Iran or going through Russia. It's easier probably than the North route because it doesn't rely so heavily on Russia and it doesn't need the Russians and Georgians to cooperate, plus with this route post-conflict there's no need for the Armenians and Turks to cooperate or share their cut. And it's a route that will happen anyway - Turkey wants access to Azeri fuel - so it'll arguably be cheaper. But it puts Turkey in a far stronger negotiating position with China than if they are just one option to receive the end bit of the route as they would be with the Northern or Southern routes - especially if Turkey continues to expand its influence and relationships with the Central Asian states.
Sort of apropos - anecdotally, individual Turks have been assisting the PRC in administrating Uighur oppression.
Pakistan is a linchpin ally for China. Whatever interest China has with Afghanistan and the Taliban, - and I strongly suspect it is limited to minimizing the mischief they may cause - it is far subordinate to their interests in the Sinopak alliance.
Quote from: Habbaku on August 09, 2021, 08:28:18 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 09, 2021, 08:10:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on August 09, 2021, 02:47:24 PM
I was reading Al Jazeera's Live Updates (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/9/taliban-captures-more-provincial-capitals-afghanistan) about Afghanistan and, to me, it looks like the choice is between staying forever or letting the Taliban have the country. (Biden insists that the latter is not a foregone conclusion. (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-military-withdrawal-afghanistan-conclude-aug-31/story?id=78729387))
As a second question if the Taliban does retake the country; was the coalition involvement in Afghanistan a success? We ended up more or less where we started 20 years ago minus an Osama bin Laden.
no, it was the wrong decision.
he should have tried harder to rebuild an international coallition, vanquish the Taleban and truly train the troops there to take care of their security.
Tried harder, holy fuck. What a policy.
Not my fault if Republicans elected morons with short sight vision.
America can't win a war alone, it has to be a multilateral effort. I think the past 4 years have proven my point, "american first" just isn't going to work to contain threats from Russia and China. And now, you'll have a new giant training camp for all wannabe djihadist in the world. And in 15-20 years, we'll all have to go back there again following a series of terrorist attacks in occidental countries.
That the war was mismanaged without any clear plan to win does not mean it is unwinnable. The Taleban do not have a majority of the population behind them because of their charisma. They have them by the throat. They offer the only sensible alternative between justice and anarchy, and they kill anyone who opposes them.
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 05:26:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
A lot of Canadians who had friends and family injured and killed in Afghanistan would not agree that there were no troops there.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/2017/07/30/remembering-list-of-canadas-afghan-war-dead
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 05:26:48 PM
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
"All wars are winnable" ranks up there with "
Invincible is a lucky name for a warship" in the annals of "don't know what you are talking about."
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 05:44:05 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 05:26:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
A lot of Canadians who had friends and family injured and killed in Afghanistan would not agree that there were no troops there.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/2017/07/30/remembering-list-of-canadas-afghan-war-dead
He clearly meant "barely any" rather than "no".
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 10, 2021, 07:23:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 05:44:05 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 05:26:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
A lot of Canadians who had friends and family injured and killed in Afghanistan would not agree that there were no troops there.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/2017/07/30/remembering-list-of-canadas-afghan-war-dead
He clearly meant "barely any" rather than "no".
Given that US troop levels peaked at 100,000 in August, 2010, "barely any" is about as dumb as "no."
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 10, 2021, 07:23:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 05:44:05 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 05:26:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
A lot of Canadians who had friends and family injured and killed in Afghanistan would not agree that there were no troops there.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/2017/07/30/remembering-list-of-canadas-afghan-war-dead
He clearly meant "barely any" rather than "no".
Either is inaccurate.
Not a good choice, but it seems unfortunately, to be the best of the bad choices.
Quote from: grumbler on August 10, 2021, 07:26:50 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 10, 2021, 07:23:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 05:44:05 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 05:26:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
If you define winning as removing the Taliban forever, then this was never a winnable war.
all wars are winnable. but since there were barely no troops in Afghanistan from 2003 and on, US or otherwise, they had ample time to regroup and reform.
A lot of Canadians who had friends and family injured and killed in Afghanistan would not agree that there were no troops there.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/2017/07/30/remembering-list-of-canadas-afghan-war-dead
He clearly meant "barely any" rather than "no".
Given that US troop levels peaked at 100,000 in August, 2010, "barely any" is about as dumb as "no."
Perhaps, but apparently not enough.
Quote from: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 01:51:26 PM
Not my fault if Republicans elected morons with short sight vision.
America can't win a war alone, it has to be a multilateral effort. I think the past 4 years have proven my point, "american first" just isn't going to work to contain threats from Russia and China. And now, you'll have a new giant training camp for all wannabe djihadist in the world. And in 15-20 years, we'll all have to go back there again following a series of terrorist attacks in occidental countries.
That the war was mismanaged without any clear plan to win does not mean it is unwinnable. The Taleban do not have a majority of the population behind them because of their charisma. They have them by the throat. They offer the only sensible alternative between justice and anarchy, and they kill anyone who opposes them.
Barack did escalate the war in 2009 as he tried to replicate the success of the Surge in Iraq (and he did have a broad based coalition of nations as well.) At the time it was successful in driving the Taliban to the hills, but it was also a time of increased deaths of NATO troops and atrocities committed by the US as well (and the WikiLeaks releases.) Ten years later the Taliban is back in force. I don't think Biden has the political capital to call for another, bigger surge and, unless we're willing to make a desert and call it peace, I don't think it would make any difference in the long run.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 09, 2021, 03:36:51 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 09, 2021, 03:23:27 PM
The Taliban won't get the whole country, of course. They'll get the Pashtun majority of the country, and when they try to take over the Tajik and Hazera parts of the country they will be Taliban'd themselves.
Defeating the Taliban would require ethnic cleansing of the type that is just not acceptable these days.
Yeah, I was going to post exactly this--it's misunderstood about the Taliban having support all over the country, Afghanistan's two largest ethnic groups are Pashtun and Tajik, the Taliban has no support amount Tajiks. Pakistan moved support to the Taliban in 1994 as it emerged, due to fall outs with some other Mujahedeen groups. Several of the other prominent Mujahedeen groups were in serious disarray from basically 20 years of fighting, the Taliban was arguably in a fresher position, and with a lot of outside support it was able to get most of the country other than the Northeast. The situation this time isn't quite like that, the Taliban has some outside support, but nothing like the relative support it had versus the other Mujahedeen in the mid-90s. Additionally the Taliban's entrenched enemies have a lot of support this time they did not have last time. The Taliban is going to do really well in the parts of Afghanistan that have basically been "under occupation" by the central government, due to their people completely rejecting the legitimacy of the central government. But not all of Afghanistan is like that. Areas that are not Pashtun majority and where tribal affiliations are distinctly not aligned with anything the Taliban is doing, will be very hostile operating territory for the Taliban. They'll be limited to terror attacks and raids into those areas, but occupations? No. They likely will suffer lots of counter raids and counter-terrorist attacks as well.
Thanks, Otto, Grumbler and Tonitrus; I was unaware that the Taliban would only be able to control Pashtun areas. To me that raises the question: is a long lasting civil war in the region a better outcome than complete Taliban control?
On reflection I am leaning towards no or at least mixed bag.
The status quo c 2020 displeased everyone but was it really that awful compared to the realistic alternatives? There was an de facto stalemate with the Taliban controlling significant territory but effectively contained and the government controlling the majority of the populated areas. The Afghan government suffers from high level of corruption and ineffectiveness but it is a functional democracy that guarantees basic freedoms in the areas under its control. The economy has been moribund for a decade, but at levels much higher than those experienced when under Taliban rule.
Biden's move will result in millions of people coming under direct and indirect Taliban rule as compared to the present. The humanitarian impact of that is undeniable and should not be shrugged away. It amounts to a sharp curtailment of freedom. political participation and quality of life, and submission to rule by a brutal and violent clique. Many people will die because of this, and many will suffer terribly.
The strategic implications are less clear and predictable but it is hard to see that how it improves from the US POV and easy to conceive that it could get materially worse. Geopolitical "Nature" abhors a power vacuum and whatever fills the space departing by a weakening Afghan government and its US backer isn't likely to be good. Both Islamic State and Al-Qaida are active and recruiting in country but the biggest risks are the unexpected "unknown unknowns"
Against this are the costs of the US staying in. The financial costs while significant are and have been well within the capability of the US to bear. The Trump years showed that a precarious status quo could be maintained with a smaller overall troop level. The cost in terms of casualties is by nature incommensurable to the benefits. Because of the decline in troop presence, deaths and KIA have declined a lot. In the past year, there were no troop deaths in Afghanistan; in the 6 months prior to that, there were 4 deaths, all non-hostile. In Feb 2020, 2 US soldiers died in a "Green on blue" attack from a rogue Afghan policeman and in the 12 months prior to that 20 deaths from hostile fire or IEDs.
As an American president, Biden's first duty is to safeguard American lives and so there is a logic to saying that no American lives should be put at risk for Afghan lives. However, there should be no illusions that while withdrawal will prevent the future deaths of some number of US soldiers, it will very likely result in the deaths of a much larger number of Afghans, and other very bad consequences.
The bigger and unknown question is whether as the consequences of the withdrawal play out over time, America is eventually drawn back into the region to address an emergency situation at a much cost than would have been sustained by simply staying put at the reduced 2020 force levels. It's impossible to precisely quantify that risk. However, in Biden's shoes I'm not sure i'd roll those dice.
The status quo ex ante was a messy compromise. Very easy to criticize, but much harder to improve upon.
To be clear with the full benefit of hindsight, it might have been optimal to follow the Valmy plan of go in, bloody the Taliban's nose, and get the hell out in 02/03, as opposed to what actually happened. But that doesn't mean withdrawal is the right policy *now*
Quote from: Savonarola on August 11, 2021, 09:52:26 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 09, 2021, 03:36:51 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 09, 2021, 03:23:27 PM
The Taliban won't get the whole country, of course. They'll get the Pashtun majority of the country, and when they try to take over the Tajik and Hazera parts of the country they will be Taliban'd themselves.
Defeating the Taliban would require ethnic cleansing of the type that is just not acceptable these days.
Yeah, I was going to post exactly this--it's misunderstood about the Taliban having support all over the country, Afghanistan's two largest ethnic groups are Pashtun and Tajik, the Taliban has no support amount Tajiks. Pakistan moved support to the Taliban in 1994 as it emerged, due to fall outs with some other Mujahedeen groups. Several of the other prominent Mujahedeen groups were in serious disarray from basically 20 years of fighting, the Taliban was arguably in a fresher position, and with a lot of outside support it was able to get most of the country other than the Northeast. The situation this time isn't quite like that, the Taliban has some outside support, but nothing like the relative support it had versus the other Mujahedeen in the mid-90s. Additionally the Taliban's entrenched enemies have a lot of support this time they did not have last time. The Taliban is going to do really well in the parts of Afghanistan that have basically been "under occupation" by the central government, due to their people completely rejecting the legitimacy of the central government. But not all of Afghanistan is like that. Areas that are not Pashtun majority and where tribal affiliations are distinctly not aligned with anything the Taliban is doing, will be very hostile operating territory for the Taliban. They'll be limited to terror attacks and raids into those areas, but occupations? No. They likely will suffer lots of counter raids and counter-terrorist attacks as well.
Thanks, Otto, Grumbler and Tonitrus; I was unaware that the Taliban would only be able to control Pashtun areas. To me that raises the question: is a long lasting civil war in the region a better outcome than complete Taliban control?
To clarify...I think grumbler is too optimistic. The Taliban already control a large amount of the area that had resisted them prior to the US intervention. The Tajiks and some others may never go away entirely (or has he suggested, strike back from the outside)...but I think if/when the Taliban win this time, it will be for keeps...and their hold on the country more firm and brutal.
I think too many are disposed to thinking the Taliban as being "somewhat reasonable", when compared to say...ISIS. But I think they are very little different.
Yeah, these kind of things tend to have a momentum, and those who are brutal enough to ride that momentum will exploit it to its full extent.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 11, 2021, 10:44:31 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on August 11, 2021, 09:52:26 AM
Thanks, Otto, Grumbler and Tonitrus; I was unaware that the Taliban would only be able to control Pashtun areas. To me that raises the question: is a long lasting civil war in the region a better outcome than complete Taliban control?
To clarify...I think grumbler is too optimistic. The Taliban already control a large amount of the area that had resisted them prior to the US intervention. The Tajiks and some others may never go away entirely (or has he suggested, strike back from the outside)...but I think if/when the Taliban win this time, it will be for keeps...and their hold on the country more firm and brutal.
I think too many are disposed to thinking the Taliban as being "somewhat reasonable", when compared to say...ISIS. But I think they are very little different.
Heh, well if a long lasting civil war is an optimistic outcome I guess I have an answer to my question. ;)
I agree that the Taliban and ISIS are cut from the same cloth. The Taliban was destroying world patrimony and blowing up statues long before ISIS thought it was cool.
One positive in the the unfolding disaster is, I hope the realisation in the US that Pakistan is in no meaningful way any kind of ally of America. Because a significant part of this Taliban offensive is being driven by the Pakistan intelligence services and backed by that country's military.
The first outcome of the collapse of the Afghan 'government' should be US and international sanctions against Pakistan.
I think the US govt has understood the realities of Pakistan for a while, certainly since the operation to take out OBL, when Pakistani territory was entered without permission or prior warning.
In the broad sense, the US has made a clear commitment to align itself with India which means any possibility with an alliance with Pakistan is out of the question. And that is a clear policy trend among many that exhibited continuity between the Obama and Trump admins, the domestic US political rhetoric aside.
At the same time, Pakistan remains a key regional player. Its a highly transactional relationship but there are some important and useful transactions to make.
Should we stop to consider the possibility that the US military sucks and all the smoke that is blown up their ass the past few decades is bullshit?
The better part of 20 years were supposed to be spent training the Afghan military to stand on its own two feet and the Afghan military folds within 20 minutes against a goofball gang aka as the taliban.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 11, 2021, 10:19:09 PM
Should we stop to consider the possibility that the US military sucks and all the smoke that is blown up their ass the past few decades is bullshit?
The better part of 20 years were supposed to be spent training the Afghan military to stand on its own two feet and the Afghan military folds within 20 minutes against a goofball gang aka as the taliban.
I think it is always valuable to question conventional truths. I expect that the US military has shortcomings in some places where the US public thinks it has strengths. There could be some good lessons to be learned from a clear-eyed honest examination of the facts.
That said, training the Afghan military to stand on its own two feet is not, strictly speaking and IMO, a military problem. It is a political problem. I think we may find that a number of crucial failure points for the "get the Afghan government and military to be able to stand on its own" effort to lie elsewhere than with the US military.
Finally, I don't think your characterization of the Taliban as "a goofball gang" is particularly accurate.
No amount of equipment or training can make up for complete lack of morale.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 11, 2021, 10:19:09 PM
Should we stop to consider the possibility that the US military sucks and all the smoke that is blown up their ass the past few decades is bullshit?
The better part of 20 years were supposed to be spent training the Afghan military to stand on its own two feet and the Afghan military folds within 20 minutes against a goofball gang aka as the taliban.
I don't agree with the premise that the quality of the US Army is determined by their ability and success in training a foreign force. It's possible it sucks at that task but is really good in lots of other things . . .
The Afghan army has 180,000 troops on paper compared to about 60,000 Taliban fighters. However it is generally understood that the regular army is useless - basically a jobs program for young men.
The US training focused on the Commando units which total about 20,000. Those units have a decent track record at least when backed by proper air support and communications. Though designated elite units it is probably more accurate to see them as the army properly speaking with the putative regular forces being a unreliable constabulary.
In that context the problem is clear: the Afghans just don't have enough properly trained troops to cover the widely dispersed areas under govt control. If they split up the commandos to cover a wide area they leave them vulnerable to Taliban hit and run attacks; if they concentrate them, they leave outlying areas unprotected. US air power and recon could counteract those problems but are no longer available.
What has the US determined would motivate the non-Taliban to fight like tigers against the Taliban? What has the US determined really hurts the Taliban and would make them behave?
The answers may be "nothing" and "annihilation", and it might be as far as anyone can get. But as long as you don't know how to motivate the parties to behave the way you want them to behave you won't solve or win anything (sure annihilating the Taliban is at least a known way to defeat them, but it's beyond the political/military capabilities of the US).
When we demand high morale of a local army raised by a foreign occupying force perhaps we are hindered by our own viewpoint. Sure, we believe the US are the good guys and they are most certainly are when compared to savage animals like the Taliban, but I reckon many natives consider the Americans an occupying force (even if they are not keen on the Taliban either) and that means people fighting for the US-backed government are considered collaborators with a foreign conqueror. Hardly the kind of societal pressure that encourages the brightest and best to throw in their lot with them.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 11, 2021, 08:45:05 PM
I think the US govt has understood the realities of Pakistan for a while, certainly since the operation to take out OBL, when Pakistani territory was entered without permission or prior warning.
IIRC one of the revelations from WikiLeaks is that the US believed Pakistani Intelligence Services were working with the Taliban.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 01:59:11 AM
The US training focused on the Commando units which total about 20,000. Those units have a decent track record at least when backed by proper air support and communications.
Which is great, but also leaves them dependent on a US presence for those things. If the US is training their allies in the US method of doing war, then they probably shouldn't. I mean, I get the appeal of creating specialized commando units. They've proven great for doing counterinsurgency work, but are they really ready to fight a total war?
Quote from: Neil on August 12, 2021, 08:44:18 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 01:59:11 AM
The US training focused on the Commando units which total about 20,000. Those units have a decent track record at least when backed by proper air support and communications.
Which is great, but also leaves them dependent on a US presence for those things. If the US is training their allies in the US method of doing war, then they probably shouldn't. I mean, I get the appeal of creating specialized commando units. They've proven great for doing counterinsurgency work, but are they really ready to fight a total war?
They aren't really specialized commando units; that's just the name used to distinguish them from the otherwise useless regular formations. The "commando" units are the army: the "army" units are guys getting paid to keep themselves out of trouble.
We've been here before, the Afghan 'special forces' are similar in effective as the South Vietnamese paratroopers/rangers/marines were to the rest of the ARVN; once those units got tied down, exhausted or overrun the majority of the army collapsed, with only a few other units putting up serious opposition to the NVA steamroller in 75.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 11, 2021, 10:44:31 AM
To clarify...I think grumbler is too optimistic. The Taliban already control a large amount of the area that had resisted them prior to the US intervention. The Tajiks and some others may never go away entirely (or has he suggested, strike back from the outside)...but I think if/when the Taliban win this time, it will be for keeps...and their hold on the country more firm and brutal.
I think too many are disposed to thinking the Taliban as being "somewhat reasonable", when compared to say...ISIS. But I think they are very little different.
A big defect in everyone's understanding about Afghanistan has been a 25-30 year history of drawing "maps of control" which have no real affiliation with actual reality. These maps are often drawn out of either ignorance or a desire to paint a certain picture. The U.S. military has been drawing maps that have persistently exaggerated how much territory the Kabul government really controlled for like 14+ years. Meanwhile some of the Western press has periodically released maps that vaguely suggest the Taliban controls vast swathes of territory based on "sacking" police precincts in a big city and setting up a few road blocks there. The reality is even going back to the mid-1990s it's very hard to talk about "control" in a country that lacks a real traditional infrastructure and unified national polity.
For example there was a map at one point in the early 2010s that showed Helmand as being "partially Taliban controlled." This was a map attached to a Western media article critical of the war. At the point that map was written there was a major U.S. base in Helmand province with thousands of soldiers. There were police precincts controlled by the Kabul government in every major city. Most roads and checkpoints were controlled by the Afghan National Army. However the Taliban was very active in the province, collecting "taxes" from civilians in rural areas and controlling some roads. If you were making a strategy game how would you express that province? Controlled by America? Afghanistan's National Government? The Taliban? It's not an easy answer.
To link back to your original point, things partially look bad because we're starting to see maps now that are probably closer to reality than the 14 years of fake propaganda maps the military has been releasing were, but some of those maps likely are dramatically overstating what "control" means when it says the Taliban has control of a city. There was a claim at one point that before U.S. intervention the Taliban controlled 90% of Afghanistan. That was not really ever true either. It's probably more true that "the Taliban was the strongest faction in 90% of Afghanistan, but some of that territory it operated little effective control over, and some of that territory it was actively contested for control over by other factions."
I don't actually think anything grumbler said was optimistic, he mostly was just saying Afghanistan is going to revert back to what it has been ever since the Saur Revolution overthrew the Daoud Khan dictatorship and replaced it with a Soviet-aligned government, leading the Soviet occupation and rise of the mujahadeen. A fractured hell hole with lots of people fighting. The Taliban are the ethnic/religious force with the most support among the Pashtun ethnic group--the largest ethnic group in the country. Its domestic opposition is made up by a corrupt and anemic Aghan National Government that has to deal with great ethnic strife among its constituent members, and a number of non-Pashtun warlords who frankly, know how to fight the Taliban "for real" and if given weapons and money would probably be doing a better job than the Afghan government has done. Those non-Pashtun warlords have been systemically neutered by the Afghan National Government because they represented a threat to its authority, and the U.S. significantly backed their efforts to curtail their power. This likely was a tactical mistake. But over time I imagine things revert back to where they were and new warlords emerge, able to raise funds and acquire men and weapons easier with a weakened Afghan National Government collapsing--they may just start absorbing defector groups from the Afghan Army and their equipment whole sale. This will create a situation where the Taliban won't be able to establish a true national government that runs the country--just like it was never able to do so in the 90s.
The best analogue would probably be Somalia since the mid-90s--no one has ever actually ran it. Some factions have been on top, but they still weren't really running it like a country, it was more like "this street gang is the toughest right now and controls the most corners" but to confuse that with some sort of governing system is not correct.
Quote from: mongers on August 12, 2021, 09:59:31 AM
We've been here before, the Afghan 'special forces' are similar in effective as the South Vietnamese paratroopers/rangers/marines were to the rest of the ARVN; once those units got tied down, exhausted or overrun the majority of the army collapsed, with only a few other units putting up serious opposition to the NVA steamroller in 75.
Except North Vietnam was an actual country with a government and well established political and military leadership, and a huge army. The Taliban is none of those things. The North Vietnamese were also seen as ethnic compatriots by literally everyone in South Vietnam. Some South Vietnamese, probably not even 50%, opposed annexation and Communist rule, but it was still rule by people who had the same ethnic background, cultural background, and spoke the same language. Tajiks being rule by extremist Pashtuns is not anywhere the same. And the resources the Taliban has to stamp out insurgency and internal dissent are probably not even 1/100th of what the Vietnamese had.
Remember Vietnam's People's Army was so powerful right after it finished like a 25 year war with western powers, it rolled right into Cambodia and almost effortlessly removed the Khmer Rouge from power and replaced it with a different regime. About 5 years later it bloodied China's nose and fought it to a stalement along its northern borders. Comparing North Vietnam and the Taliban in ability to project force and occupy territory is akin to comparing Mike Tyson in his prime with YouTube boxer Jake Paul.
Also Minsky one core issue with your analysis is that the reason the cost of our involvement in Afghanistan had been relatively low is the Taliban as we know from intelligence leaks and other shit, was deliberately pursuing a strategy of waiting us out. They didn't see a reason after a certain point to lose endless men and treasure fighting an enemy that was going to leave based on a calendar at some point anyway. If we signaled that a reduced commitment to the country would continue forever, I suspect they'd push the matter into more open warfare and we'd have had 10,000 guys on the ground there who would have to get involved in it. Except in an intense war, we'd be badly outnumbered and get in trouble. Which would then mean political and public pressure to send more troops in to back them up...and suddenly look where you are. The only way off that tarbaby is to quit touching it.
Really striking that European countries seem to have largely opposed this move - but are ultimately utterly irrelevant. Apparently the British Defence Secretary was trying to organise a NATO coalition from European countries that were opposed to US withdrawal to stay in Afghanistan but there wasn't anywhere near enough support.
The most I've seen is former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt calling for European national and EU politicians to visit Kabul to "show support to the government in a most difficult situation". Which is about as good an example of magical thinking foreign policy as I can think - though the US is also guilty of this with Psaki commenting that the Taliban (the Taliban!) should think about how they'll be viewed by the international community if they breach the agreement and just take over.
The worry from Europe is having failed to prepare for this and having failed to influence it, I feel all that's left is to prepare for a flood of refugees in the course of the next year because I think, sadly, that is now inevitable (and as politics in Turkey has taken a strongly anti-refugee turn I don't think we can just expect Iran and Turkey to take a few million refugees). Instead I suspect it'll be a humanitarian catastrophe :(
(More shallowly this might all happen just in time for the French Presidential election :ph34r:)
Let the refugees go to Pakistan--the country most directly responsible for Afghanistan's troubles (well, other than Russia, but it conveniently no longer shares a border with Afghanistan.)
Make no mistake, I 100% agree the humanitarian outcome of this will be terrible. But if the Europeans really wanted to stop it they'd have to transform into a group of countries that do overseas force projection at scale. They have the economy and manpower to do it, but they have nowhere close to the political will. Should they try to change that? I don't know. I'm not sure Europe is much better off if it spends 30 years developing a force projection capacity to get entangled in third world hell holes. As a citizen of a country that does have that capacity I don't know how often it's worked to our benefit in this century.
I guess Iran will be a major destination with Tajik and Farsi being pretty much the same thing and big cultural links.
No idea how open Iran would be to this.
Europe does seem a logical target alas. And Syria is still burning....
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 12:09:29 PM
Make no mistake, I 100% agree the humanitarian outcome of this will be terrible. But if the Europeans really wanted to stop it they'd have to transform into a group of countries that do overseas force projection at scale. They have the economy and manpower to do it, but they have nowhere close to the political will. Should they try to change that? I don't know. I'm not sure Europe is much better off if it spends 30 years developing a force projection capacity to get entangled in third world hell holes. As a citizen of a country that does have that capacity I don't know how often it's worked to our benefit in this century.
Sure but the regions the US is or has been projecting forces to are Eastern Europe, North Africa, Middle East - I'd argue a lot of that is down to protecting the "West" which means Europe. And this may not be the last US retrenchment, or should be.
I'm not sure at this point that Europe is willing or in a place to replace the US, or to deal with the refugees and humanitarian consequences of events like this (added to Syria, added to Libya - the Sahel is still to come) arriving in Europe. Maybe fortress Europe will be enough - the suffering stays outside of Europe and we are able to keep our hands "clean". But we can already see the limits of that in the way Lukashenko and Erdogan use refugees. And I don't know, I'm not sure that is sustainable when we're faced with mounting humanitarian and climate crises - I certainly hope it isn't sustainable, I hope it causes a strong enough moral revulsion for us to address the fact that this is all our neighbourhood. In any event I think we need to start preparing now and not be surprised in 5-6 months when we start seeing Afghan refugees on the borders.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 12:02:06 PM
Also Minsky one core issue with your analysis is that the reason the cost of our involvement in Afghanistan had been relatively low is the Taliban as we know from intelligence leaks and other shit, was deliberately pursuing a strategy of waiting us out. They didn't see a reason after a certain point to lose endless men and treasure fighting an enemy that was going to leave based on a calendar at some point anyway. If we signaled that a reduced commitment to the country would continue forever, I suspect they'd push the matter into more open warfare and we'd have had 10,000 guys on the ground there who would have to get involved in it. Except in an intense war, we'd be badly outnumbered and get in trouble. Which would then mean political and public pressure to send more troops in to back them up...and suddenly look where you are. The only way off that tarbaby is to quit touching it.
The problem with that theory is that troop levels were cut below 10K in 2015, almost six years ago.
There is no reason we couldn't have continued the policy of leaving small levels of troops while talking about a future withdrawal indefinitely.
My concern with this Afghanistan situation is probably highly cynical. My biggest worry is that we may suffer a huge humiliating geopolitical defeat, if Taliban decides to spike the ball and wiggle its ass. That will aid our own domestic Taliban into getting back in power.
Quote from: DGuller on August 12, 2021, 12:55:38 PM
My concern with this Afghanistan situation is probably highly cynical. My biggest worry is that we may suffer a huge humiliating geopolitical defeat, if Taliban decides to spike the ball and wiggle its ass. That will aid our own domestic Taliban into getting back in power.
I think Yi hacked your account.
What does spike the ball and wiggle some ass mean in this circumstance. Who are our own domestic Taliban and when were they ever in power? How will they get back into power?
He is talking about the Republicans.
Quote from: Valmy on August 12, 2021, 12:59:42 PM
He is talking about the Republicans.
I am not sure the Taliban deserve that kind of insult.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 12:59:16 PM
Quote from: DGuller on August 12, 2021, 12:55:38 PM
My concern with this Afghanistan situation is probably highly cynical. My biggest worry is that we may suffer a huge humiliating geopolitical defeat, if Taliban decides to spike the ball and wiggle its ass. That will aid our own domestic Taliban into getting back in power.
I think Yi hacked your account.
What does spike the ball and wiggle some ass mean in this circumstance. Who are our own domestic Taliban and when were they ever in power? How will they get back into power?
That's a typo. He meant "spike the ass and wiggle the ball". I don't know what that means either. But if I don't know, and you don't know and Valmy doesn't know we can all not know together and that is the meaning of friendship.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 02:38:14 PM
But if I don't know, and you don't know and Valmy doesn't know we can all not know together and that is the meaning of friendship.
Awwwww :hug:
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 01:59:11 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 11, 2021, 10:19:09 PM
Should we stop to consider the possibility that the US military sucks and all the smoke that is blown up their ass the past few decades is bullshit?
The better part of 20 years were supposed to be spent training the Afghan military to stand on its own two feet and the Afghan military folds within 20 minutes against a goofball gang aka as the taliban.
I don't agree with the premise that the quality of the US Army is determined by their ability and success in training a foreign force. It's possible it sucks at that task but is really good in lots of other things . . .
In the real world, success in three of the last four major wars the US has fought (Vietnam, GWI, GWII, Afghanistan) came down to the ability of the US military to train a foreign force. The exception, GWI, had us invading Iraq a decade later after we declined to get involved in nation building (significantly involving the training of a defense force). Even beyond those conflicts, training foreign forces is a key element of the military's role facilitating US foreign policy.
I say the Orioles suck because when they play baseball they lose most of their games...You can counter that it is unfair to judge them in baseball because they'd make a killer water polo squad, but I prefer to judge them by their ability to accomplish the tasks they are actually undertaking.
The role of the military is a non military role?
Quote from: alfred russel on August 12, 2021, 03:49:55 PM
The exception, GWI, had us invading Iraq a decade later after we declined to get involved in nation building
Although to be fair, GW2 wasn't really done for any coherent reason. It's not like GW1 ended in an unsatisfactory way. It was just done for pleasure, and because a faction of Republican leaders dramatically misunderstood the limits of American power.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 09:27:36 AM
They aren't really specialized commando units; that's just the name used to distinguish them from the otherwise useless regular formations. The "commando" units are the army: the "army" units are guys getting paid to keep themselves out of trouble.
In which case they're too few to hold back the tide.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 03:53:08 PM
The role of the military is a non military role?
Military training is a military role.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 12:49:24 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 12:02:06 PM
Also Minsky one core issue with your analysis is that the reason the cost of our involvement in Afghanistan had been relatively low is the Taliban as we know from intelligence leaks and other shit, was deliberately pursuing a strategy of waiting us out. They didn't see a reason after a certain point to lose endless men and treasure fighting an enemy that was going to leave based on a calendar at some point anyway. If we signaled that a reduced commitment to the country would continue forever, I suspect they'd push the matter into more open warfare and we'd have had 10,000 guys on the ground there who would have to get involved in it. Except in an intense war, we'd be badly outnumbered and get in trouble. Which would then mean political and public pressure to send more troops in to back them up...and suddenly look where you are. The only way off that tarbaby is to quit touching it.
The problem with that theory is that troop levels were cut below 10K in 2015, almost six years ago.
There is no reason we couldn't have continued the policy of leaving small levels of troops while talking about a future withdrawal indefinitely.
Sure there's a big reason--politicians can't keep saying they plan to ultimately leave and not do it. You pay a political price to continually lie to the public about it, and it becomes politically weaponized. I think that's one thing Trump actually realized and why he was pro-withdrawal, we'd been saying we were withdrawing for like 10 years. You do take hits for not doing it.
If you really want to stay "clean" you have to admit you're staying forever, at which point the Taliban might decide a shooting war is a better route than waiting for awhile.
The failure in Afghanistan doesn't have that much to do with training. There are actually some glaring training and equipment failures we've perpetuated, but they aren't really the reason our mission there failed. It's because there is no sizable, meaningful cohort of Afghans willing to fight for a democratic, free, Afghanistan, one where people they might disagree with or who might be from a different tribe, might win elections and would be their ultimate commander. These people are tribal. The 1980s mujahadeen seized on religious extremism and a powerful desire to push a foreign occupier out. The Taliban didn't emerge out of some sort of magic ether, it was honestly just some nonsense in-fighting between mujahadeen groups, and the Taliban kind of sucked a bunch of supporters away from the other top mujahadeen group. Pakistan moved its support over, and they just kept rolling. The Taliban isn't really any fancy ideological group like ISIS or al-Qaeda, they're mostly just a rebranding of the same mujahadeen that have been fighting in Afghanistan forever. They're always going to be the strongest force in the country because everyone else is too fracture along tribal and ethnic lines. The only way to fix Afghanistan is to actually fix all those fault lines by building up some semblance of a civil society. That just hasn't occurred, nor is it goign to magically happen because you give soldiers good training.
The soldiers aren't bad because they received bad training, they're bad because they aren't willing to fight. They aren't willing to fight because they don't give a shit about protecting an Afghan National Government they never believed in, to them their military job is just a paycheck. It's not something to get shot over.
I'm also gonna say, that while Biden's commentary is obviously a political message, I think it has genuine merit. He's saying that Afghans have to fight for their country, and their leaders need to come together. I frankly agree. The Taliban is estimated at best to have around 60,000 armed soldiers, the full time Afghan Army has 180,000, there's tens of thousand of militarized police etc. Millions of fighting age young men.
The Taliban could absolutely be stopped if Afghans willing to fight them said it was time for them to be stopped. They aren't stepping up, and I'm not sure that's our problem forever.
How did Afghanistan wind up being a country anyway? As far as I know, it wasn't drawn on a map by European colonizers without any regard for the facts on the ground. How did it form into a single country that is so clearly a fractured ungovernable mess in the first place?
I think a case can be made that the US did a pretty good job training the Afghans. The commando units were able to perform effective operations and the US helped trained thousands of them.
There are practical limits to training. As I indicated the bulk of the ANA is a jobs program for otherwise unemployable men. Just one example: the majority of the soldiers - including a big chunk of the officer corps - are illiterate. It makes perfect sense in this context for the US to pick out the most suitable and motivated individuals and focus training efforts on them.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 05:07:30 PM
I'm also gonna say, that while Biden's commentary is obviously a political message, I think it has genuine merit. He's saying that Afghans have to fight for their country, and their leaders need to come together. I frankly agree. The Taliban is estimated at best to have around 60,000 armed soldiers, the full time Afghan Army has 180,000
As I stated before that 180,000 is a paper number. Most of those formations are unable to fight in the field and have no experience doing so.
QuoteMillions of fighting age young men.
That's a problem not a solution.
There's hundreds of thousands of Afghans who are not in the Taliban who have military training and many do, factually, have battle experience. The Taliban does not have the manpower to subjugate a country that doesn't want them, that is the simple reality. You can quibble with other nonsense as much as you want--the country of Afghanistan collectively does not have a big problem with the Taliban. That means it isn't our problem, either.
Quote from: DGuller on August 12, 2021, 05:09:02 PM
How did Afghanistan wind up being a country anyway? As far as I know, it wasn't drawn on a map by European colonizers without any regard for the facts on the ground. How did it form into a single country that is so clearly a fractured ungovernable mess in the first place?
It is the rump state of the Pashtun Darrani Empire from the 18th century.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 05:18:07 PM
There's hundreds of thousands of Afghans who are not in the Taliban who have military training and many do, factually, have battle experience.
I agree but that doesn't mean they will fight for the central government.
Returning to the warlord/militia era is a real possibility. However, it was the horror of that experience the last time that led many Afghan to support the Taliban in the first place.
If the best case scenario is to leap into the fire from the frying pan, it's not saying a lot.
None of which are compelling reasons for U.S. involvement. There's a lot of bad places on earth, many of which we haven't chosen to try to nation build. I'm not sure there's a general reason we should keep doing so in a country where it hasn't worked for 20 years simply because we've been trying for 20 years. That seems like a sunk cost fallacy.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 11:56:11 AM
Quote from: mongers on August 12, 2021, 09:59:31 AM
We've been here before, the Afghan 'special forces' are similar in effective as the South Vietnamese paratroopers/rangers/marines were to the rest of the ARVN; once those units got tied down, exhausted or overrun the majority of the army collapsed, with only a few other units putting up serious opposition to the NVA steamroller in 75.
Except North Vietnam was an actual country with a government and well established political and military leadership, and a huge army. The Taliban is none of those things. The North Vietnamese were also seen as ethnic compatriots by literally everyone in South Vietnam. Some South Vietnamese, probably not even 50%, opposed annexation and Communist rule, but it was still rule by people who had the same ethnic background, cultural background, and spoke the same language. Tajiks being rule by extremist Pashtuns is not anywhere the same. And the resources the Taliban has to stamp out insurgency and internal dissent are probably not even 1/100th of what the Vietnamese had.
Remember Vietnam's People's Army was so powerful right after it finished like a 25 year war with western powers, it rolled right into Cambodia and almost effortlessly removed the Khmer Rouge from power and replaced it with a different regime. About 5 years later it bloodied China's nose and fought it to a stalement along its northern borders. Comparing North Vietnam and the Taliban in ability to project force and occupy territory is akin to comparing Mike Tyson in his prime with YouTube boxer Jake Paul.
Otto, I didn't compare the Taliban to the NVA at all, didn't even mention them; I compared the ARVN to the Afghan government forces.
Also as we're seeing now, the absolute military might of the winning side doesn't matter once the other side is collapsing.
A soldier throwing away his rifle, helmet and uniform isn't bothered if it's a unit of T54s/PT76s attacking or just some guys in a pick-up chasing him, once morale has collapsed and the unit disintegrates it's every man for himself.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 11, 2021, 10:19:09 PM
Should we stop to consider the possibility that the US military sucks and all the smoke that is blown up their ass the past few decades is bullshit?
The better part of 20 years were supposed to be spent training the Afghan military to stand on its own two feet and the Afghan military folds within 20 minutes against a goofball gang aka as the taliban.
The US military has a lot of firepower but seems unable to concentrate it for long at te same place. Your special troops seems to be top of the line, though. But the regulars aren't any better trained than most NATO soldiers.
In fact, they're probably weaker since they over-relied to airstrikes in the past, and that was a huge problem in Afghanistan, Canadians had to trained them and some other NATO troops to stand and fight before calling an airstrike on an ennemy you can't see.
That being said, no serious military operation could do away with the US troops, firepower and special forces, good or bad. The army is just too big, and there's a lot of untapped manpower reservoir compared to many other countries, so they can easily replenished their armies when needed, compared with smaller countries, like Canada, Italy, Norway or Denmark.
If Republicans were as good as they think with firearms that country would be invincible.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 04:50:51 PM
The failure in Afghanistan doesn't have that much to do with training. There are actually some glaring training and equipment failures we've perpetuated, but they aren't really the reason our mission there failed. It's because there is no sizable, meaningful cohort of Afghans willing to fight for a democratic, free, Afghanistan, one where people they might disagree with or who might be from a different tribe, might win elections and would be their ultimate commander. These people are tribal. The 1980s mujahadeen seized on religious extremism and a powerful desire to push a foreign occupier out. The Taliban didn't emerge out of some sort of magic ether, it was honestly just some nonsense in-fighting between mujahadeen groups, and the Taliban kind of sucked a bunch of supporters away from the other top mujahadeen group. Pakistan moved its support over, and they just kept rolling. The Taliban isn't really any fancy ideological group like ISIS or al-Qaeda, they're mostly just a rebranding of the same mujahadeen that have been fighting in Afghanistan forever. They're always going to be the strongest force in the country because everyone else is too fracture along tribal and ethnic lines. The only way to fix Afghanistan is to actually fix all those fault lines by building up some semblance of a civil society. That just hasn't occurred, nor is it goign to magically happen because you give soldiers good training.
The soldiers aren't bad because they received bad training, they're bad because they aren't willing to fight. They aren't willing to fight because they don't give a shit about protecting an Afghan National Government they never believed in, to them their military job is just a paycheck. It's not something to get shot over.
Lots of people were willing to fight for Southern independance in 1860. Much less in 1864. Northern desertion was also much higher in 1860 than in 1864. There were a lot more of Nazi collaborators in occupied France in 1941 than in 1944. And a lot more French resistance members in '44 than in '41.
People flock to the winning alternative, the one that offers stability.
The Afghan govt has been corrupt since the beginning and we haven't really smacked down the hammer on them, preferring them to the alternative of having warlors fighting with the Talebans against NATO coallition troops.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 05:37:44 PM
There's a lot of bad places on earth
How many places on earth are (a) as bad off as Afghanistan, and (b) could and would obtain the same level of benefit from the presence of a relatively small number of US military?
Maybe Yemen or Libya? Not that many. But even then to make a difference in one of those places would require a much bigger investment of lives and money than in Afghanistan where the US had already taken its lumps and established itself in country. That's not a sunk cost fallacy, it's a reality that continuing on involves incurring ongoing operational costs and not the up front set up costs of establishing bases from scratch, relationships with key players, local know how etc. The US can't intervene everywhere, but it did intervene in Afghanistan, and one consequence is that if it chose to stay on longer it could continue to get a better humanitarian result per man and per dollar than it could be intervening elsewhere.
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?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 05:10:06 PM
I think a case can be made that the US did a pretty good job training the Afghans. The commando units were able to perform effective operations and the US helped trained thousands of them.
There are practical limits to training. As I indicated the bulk of the ANA is a jobs program for otherwise unemployable men. Just one example: the majority of the soldiers - including a big chunk of the officer corps - are illiterate. It makes perfect sense in this context for the US to pick out the most suitable and motivated individuals and focus training efforts on them.
The US military left Vietnam in March 73 and Saigon didn't fall until April 75. The US military effort in Vietnam was generally considered a massive failure and led to fundamental reforms. North Vietnam was of course getting significant Soviet aid and was an organized country, unlike the Taliban.
You are really going to argue the US military was effective in Afghanistan?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 09:26:29 PM
How many places on earth are (a) as bad off as Afghanistan, and (b) could and would obtain the same level of benefit from the presence of a relatively small number of US military?
Maybe Yemen or Libya? Not that many. But even then to make a difference in one of those places would require a much bigger investment of lives and money than in Afghanistan where the US had already taken its lumps and established itself in country. That's not a sunk cost fallacy, it's a reality that continuing on involves incurring ongoing operational costs and not the up front set up costs of establishing bases from scratch, relationships with key players, local know how etc. The US can't intervene everywhere, but it did intervene in Afghanistan, and one consequence is that if it chose to stay on longer it could continue to get a better humanitarian result per man and per dollar than it could be intervening elsewhere.
Purely humanitarian missions are bullshit to begin with and made even worse if there's no end game.
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.
Whether it was our business to begin with is one thing, but once you take it on as your business, you feel like you own the outcome. It may be a fallacy of human thinking on a logical level, but that's the way it works.
If you adopt a dog from a kill shelter that was about to be euthanized, but then you return it because it was a pain in the ass to take it for walks every day, you're not really changing the fate of the dog. Had you not adopted it in the first place, it would've been euthanized, and now it would be euthanized anyway after a brief chance at life, but the way you feel about it is different. In the first case it would be just a sad thing that happens that you wouldn't think about too much, but in the second case you would feel like you killed the animal.
I fear that the same thing will happen with Afghanistan. Before 2001 the treatment of women there was just a sad thing that happened in barbaric places. After 2021, we would feel complicit about the bad things that happen to the women there.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 12, 2021, 09:46:38 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 12, 2021, 05:10:06 PM
I think a case can be made that the US did a pretty good job training the Afghans. The commando units were able to perform effective operations and the US helped trained thousands of them.
There are practical limits to training. As I indicated the bulk of the ANA is a jobs program for otherwise unemployable men. Just one example: the majority of the soldiers - including a big chunk of the officer corps - are illiterate. It makes perfect sense in this context for the US to pick out the most suitable and motivated individuals and focus training efforts on them.
The US military left Vietnam in March 73 and Saigon didn't fall until April 75. The US military effort in Vietnam was generally considered a massive failure and led to fundamental reforms. North Vietnam was of course getting significant Soviet aid and was an organized country, unlike the Taliban.
You are really going to argue the US military was effective in Afghanistan?
Yes. The U.S. military in Vietnam had serious issues because it didn't know how to fight an insurgency and was trying to fight the war like it was WWII. The military in Iraq and Afghanistan came out on the other side being probably the world's premiere insurgency fighting force, at least that tries to broadly follow some semblance of the Geneva Conventions. As I mentioned there are some training and equipment failures involved--we trained the Afghan National Army to be a mini version of our own, meaning way too reliant on complex weapon system and air power. Both require educated and better trained soldiers. We likely should have focused on trying to stand up a military like pre-Iraq war Saddam's army or Iran's military, which is much more reliant on mass manpower and simpler conventional weapon systems. But while there is something to learn there, even that path wouldn't change the outcome. The core issue is the people of Afghanistan do not have a political consensus that they want to participate in a national army (one that would be lead by people who may not belong to their ethnic or tribal group, and one where their fellow soldiers might not either.) You're basically asking Pashtuns in the national army to fight other Pashtuns when you send them against the Taliban. They aren't willing to do so because they don't care about the concept of "Afghanistan" which is not a nationstate but just a random country name. Making people have some belief in a national society worth defending isn't something I think you do with the military.
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.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 12, 2021, 09:46:38 PM
The US military left Vietnam in March 73 and Saigon didn't fall until April 75. The US military effort in Vietnam was generally considered a massive failure and led to fundamental reforms. North Vietnam was of course getting significant Soviet aid and was an organized country, unlike the Taliban.
You are really going to argue the US military was effective in Afghanistan?
What does one have to do with the other? Why not bring in Stillwell in the CBI?
Stilwell would just run away and abandon his men again, so it seems apropos to bring him in here.
It might help people understand Afghanistan if they think of it as a miniature Soviet Union or Russian Empire: there is a core state consisting of one ethnic group, the largest in the empire, and then some attached provinces of different ethnic groups who feel no attachment to the empire/country as a whole, because they think of the empire/country as a foreign thing run by foreigners for the benefit of foreigners.
It might be best to simply allow Afghanistan to disintegrate, and then encourage the neighbors to watch out for their own ethnic groups there (which is going to happen to some extent anyway, since an Afghan Tajik is the same as a Tajikistan Tajik). Lots of potential for ethnic cleansing with that scenario, though. More, even, than in the Taliban victory scenario.
It should also be remembered that the group seen by Pashtuns as their big enemy isn't the US or The Tajiks, but rather the Punjabis back in Pakistan. One could hypothesize that one reason that the Pashtuns support the Taliban is because they want to use Afghanistan as a base for freeing the half of Pashtunistan that lies in Pakistan (or at least strengthen its autonomy).
What is this? A Soviet Union for ants??!?
Quote from: Habbaku on August 13, 2021, 09:15:36 AM
Stilwell would just run away and abandon his men again, so it seems apropos to bring him in here.
Revisionist history is best history!
Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 09:33:25 AM
It might be best to simply allow Afghanistan to disintegrate, and then encourage the neighbors to watch out for their own ethnic groups there (which is going to happen to some extent anyway, since an Afghan Tajik is the same as a Tajikistan Tajik). Lots of potential for ethnic cleansing with that scenario, though. More, even, than in the Taliban victory scenario.
That's essentially the course that was attempted in the post-Soviet era, with Pashtuns rallying behind the Taliban and Uzebks, Tajiks and Hazara's each carving out pieces of territory under ethnic leaders. The equilibrium didn't hold however, because the Taliban were too strong, resulting in the remnants of the minority forces cobbling together the beleaguered Northern Alliance under Massoud's (Tajik) leadership.
The US military is still trying to fight WWII.
How much investment goes into advanced warplanes, ships and tanks to ensure that we continue to totally outclass every other country? Most of the rest of the world has given up in fielding a real military, and the only conceivable competitive foes are Russia and China, the former of which is a total joke. In either case a all out war against either would be nuclear.
Neither Russia nor China is projecting force through proxies fighting conventional wars the way the Soviets did--and neither is really equipped to do so.
I mean you can't gear your entire military only to fight insurgents, or you could end up in a bad situation if we ever did have to fight a limited war against a China or a Russia. It's not actually easy trying to do "everything" like the United States does. To meet our geopolitical goals we need force projection, policing ability, nation building ability, counter insurgency, but we also need a major Navy, a world class missile program, heavy artillery and armor in case we fight a ground war against a more advanced foe etc etc.
If we're going to cut anything FWIW we cut the insurgency fighting. Insurgencies are not direct threats to the United States, I wouldn't sacrifice our parity with countries like China to get better at fucking around in Afghanistan. I think we should seriously consider ever doing stuff like Iraq II / Afghanistan ever again.
I think the approach we took against ISIS, against Assad in Syria, and in Libya represented "splitting the difference" pretty well. Did we always get the outcome we desired? No we didn't, but we got some of what we wanted out of all of those situations. And I'm not willing or desirous to see large scale ground invasions and troop presences for things that don't materially advance our interests.
Literally no other country is doing shit like this. The closest to it is Russia in some of its overseas adventurism, but it is typically doing it specifically to advance either genuine strategic concerns or to rally the base to Putin (which at least makes logical sense if you're Putin.) Our invasion of Iraq was literally nonsensical, our presence in Afghanistan stretching on 10 years after ObL died was insane. We should have left Afghanistan by 2005 or so when it was obvious our ground presence there wasn't necessary to fight al-Qaeda.
I will say the one area I disagree on Biden is he's showing he's not even willing to conduct a major air campaign against the Taliban, I do think that is a mistake. In 2001 the shambolic Northern Alliance was making ground gains against the Taliban even before we hit the ground, solely because of the impact of our bombing campaign deteriorating their tactical situation. Heavy bombing campaigns aren't going to erase the Taliban anymore than they were able to erase ISIS, but they have absolutely deteriorated the Taliban's ability to conduct major offensives in the past, and they severely undermined ISIS' logistics and maneuvering ability. There isn't a logical reason to not be bombing the Taliban really hard to avoid things getting out of hand in Afghanistan.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 01:13:20 PM
The US military is still trying to fight WWII.
How much investment goes into advanced warplanes, ships and tanks to ensure that we continue to totally outclass every other country? Most of the rest of the world has given up in fielding a real military, and the only conceivable competitive foes are Russia and China, the former of which is a total joke. In either case a all out war against either would be nuclear.
Neither Russia nor China is projecting force through proxies fighting conventional wars the way the Soviets did--and neither is really equipped to do so.
The US military is not trying to fight WW2.
I know this might be hard to imagine, but there are a lot of rather smart people running "the US military" and some of them have actually thought about their mission beyond "We must be able to beat the Nazis again if necessary!"
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 01:30:12 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 01:13:20 PM
The US military is still trying to fight WWII.
How much investment goes into advanced warplanes, ships and tanks to ensure that we continue to totally outclass every other country? Most of the rest of the world has given up in fielding a real military, and the only conceivable competitive foes are Russia and China, the former of which is a total joke. In either case a all out war against either would be nuclear.
Neither Russia nor China is projecting force through proxies fighting conventional wars the way the Soviets did--and neither is really equipped to do so.
The US military is not trying to fight WW2.
I know this might be hard to imagine, but there are a lot of rather smart people running "the US military" and some of them have actually thought about their mission beyond "We must be able to beat the Nazis again if necessary!"
Feeble arguments-by-assertion that appear to be motivated solely by contrarianism aren't worth even refuting. They are self-evidently wrong.
AR is on to something though - which is that the American people have certain expectations for the results of military commitment.
The "American Way of War" as exemplified by the Civil War (Federal) and the two World Wars - involved the use of overwhelming force to achieve unconditional surrender. Clear-cut enemies and objectives and a clear cut victory that can be declared and recognized by all. Conflicts that stay close to this model like the first Gulf War are perceived as successful; those that do not like Vietnam are not.
There is a good deal of merit to this model, but there are limitations and one limitation is that it does not lend itself well to counter-insurgency campaigns that don't always have a definitive victory condition. America did not win in Afghanistan and it never was going to win. For some people that is reason enough to leave. But America did achieve a kind of victory - it helped keep a shadow peace of sorts that for 20 years allowed millions of people to live some semblance of a life that they might not otherwise been able to live. And it kept locked down some potentially dangerous forces that created considerable mischief in the past. That is not the kind of victory that appeals to most Americans - the kind that has a fancy ceremony and signed documents and that wraps up cleanly with front page photos in the papers and the boys all going home to cheering crowds. That's why the "forever war" label is so powerful - the notion of a never-ending commitment to a permanent stalemate goes very much against the American grain. But it doesn't mean the policy was wrong.
The Taliban's actions and messages on taking power in cities is really fascinating - it's very different than my impression of them pre-9/11 or when they took over after the civil war. Perhaps because there is a semi-functioning country they're seizing. It is really interesting in seeing a rebel group doing governance and seizing control like this in real time.
See how long it lasts but it's interesting right now.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 02:38:26 PM
The Taliban's actions and messages on taking power in cities is really fascinating - it's very different than my impression of them pre-9/11 or when they took over after the civil war. Perhaps because there is a semi-functioning country they're seizing. It is really interesting in seeing a rebel group doing governance and seizing control like this in real time.
See how long it lasts but it's interesting right now.
I'm not following closely. What are they doing?
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 02:38:26 PM
The Taliban's actions and messages on taking power in cities is really fascinating - it's very different than my impression of them pre-9/11 or when they took over after the civil war. Perhaps because there is a semi-functioning country they're seizing. It is really interesting in seeing a rebel group doing governance and seizing control like this in real time.
See how long it lasts but it's interesting right now.
Yeah. 20 years and trillions of dollars once filtered through American military and political elites buys you a regime that holds out for 5 days before bolting to Dubai. I'd be slightly miffed at that. What a world.
Quote from: Jacob on August 13, 2021, 02:56:56 PM
I'm not following closely. What are they doing?
They've assure Shi'ite Muslims they'll be able to celebrate a festival later this month (previously banned by the Taliban). They've released a phone number/WhatsApp for people to get in touch to make complaints/report abuse by Taliban soldiers.
They've allowed UN planes to fly in and out of cities they're occupying.
The deputy Emir has released a messages to fighters and provincial leadership promising to fulfil all promises with people who surrender and treat them with respect and asked the provincial leadership to report to their offices to ensure regular smooth functioning of public services. They've asked for civil servants, municipal employees, traffic police etc to keep working. Taliban have been directed to deploy special units to protect airports, airplanes, pilots, travellers and personnel.
Where they've taken over they've announced that universities will re-open on Sunday (unclear if women will still be allowed to attend). They're planning a meeting on "future governance" but so far are only replacing governors - provincial and lower leadership are being kept on and asked to keep working.
As I say it's interesting - but for want of a better word they seem to be trying to win hearts and minds. Maybe that's just because that's possible when you take over a semi-functioning state as opposed to rubble after 10 years of war with the Soviets, but it feels like they've thought and planned for this takeover.
That is mildly encouraging.
And in fairness what we're seeing may not really be a collapse from what I can tell, there's a lot of negotiated surrenders/side-switching.
Basically this doesn't look like Iraq/ISIS.
It is encouraging. Though can't help but think it's a trick. Just kicking the can down the road to make conquering the whole country easier. Once it's secure they'll start going back to their interpretation of the letter of the Koran....
Quote from: Jacob on August 13, 2021, 03:09:40 PM
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.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 13, 2021, 03:23:11 PM
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.
For sure. I do believe there's a pretty wide space between "mildly encouraging" and "unalloyed good." But yes, just because it's better than expected doesn't mean it won't be bad.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 13, 2021, 03:23:11 PM
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.
Yeah - I don't think they've moderated particularly (there have been reports they will allow some education for girls which is a shift).
I think it's more likely that they are aware that Afghanistan now has state capacity (funded by the US and allies), and they fully intend to take it over and then use it for their ends. As opposed to just inheritng piles of rubble and having to build a "state" in the 90s. So not necessarily more politically savvy as much as a Taliban with a real state - which again is not an unalloyed good (but would, perhaps, be the biggest irony if the ultimate beneficiary of all that Western money etc was the Taliban).
It's a new leadership group, no? The new group might have a more in depth agenda than the previous one. The soviets were godless heathens while that is not who the West has put in charge the past decade.
I see little reason to assume anything positive--people are surrendering so the Taliban is letting them surrender. Them doing anything else at this point would be stupid.
The bigger point in terms of U.S. involvement is in city after city, we're seeing the Taliban not win by conquest, we're seeing literally hundreds of Afghan National Army give weapons to the Taliban and stand down, local officials surrender, and usually the provincial Governor flees. What exactly was built when that's the level of response? The answer is nothing. Which highlights how foolish it was to have remained there so long.
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 01:30:12 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 01:13:20 PM
The US military is still trying to fight WWII.
How much investment goes into advanced warplanes, ships and tanks to ensure that we continue to totally outclass every other country? Most of the rest of the world has given up in fielding a real military, and the only conceivable competitive foes are Russia and China, the former of which is a total joke. In either case a all out war against either would be nuclear.
Neither Russia nor China is projecting force through proxies fighting conventional wars the way the Soviets did--and neither is really equipped to do so.
The US military is not trying to fight WW2.
I know this might be hard to imagine, but there are a lot of rather smart people running "the US military" and some of them have actually thought about their mission beyond "We must be able to beat the Nazis again if necessary!"
Are you sure there are a lot of smart people in charge?
We just ended 4 years of Trump being Commander in Chief, and now we a really old dude that was pretty damn mediocre academically even in his heydey.
Military leadership (both on the civilian side and within the military) is egregiously underpaid for their responsibilities versus their private sector counterparts, which would seem prone to a culture of mediocrity or preference for high priced defense industry products (as the defense industry selling them those products is the natural place for them to eventually cash in).
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 04:08:57 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 01:30:12 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 01:13:20 PM
The US military is still trying to fight WWII.
How much investment goes into advanced warplanes, ships and tanks to ensure that we continue to totally outclass every other country? Most of the rest of the world has given up in fielding a real military, and the only conceivable competitive foes are Russia and China, the former of which is a total joke. In either case a all out war against either would be nuclear.
Neither Russia nor China is projecting force through proxies fighting conventional wars the way the Soviets did--and neither is really equipped to do so.
The US military is not trying to fight WW2.
I know this might be hard to imagine, but there are a lot of rather smart people running "the US military" and some of them have actually thought about their mission beyond "We must be able to beat the Nazis again if necessary!"
Are you sure there are a lot of smart people in charge?
We just ended 4 years of Trump being Commander in Chief, and now we a really old dude that was pretty damn mediocre academically even in his heydey.
Military leadership (both on the civilian side and within the military) is egregiously underpaid for their responsibilities versus their private sector counterparts, which would seem prone to a culture of mediocrity or preference for high priced defense industry products (as the defense industry selling them those products is the natural place for them to eventually cash in).
I'm quite convinced you have zero clue what you're talking about, or understand anything about how any of this works.
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.
You're kinda all over the place there Dorsey.
Quote from: Jacob on August 13, 2021, 04:42:54 PM
You're kinda all over the place there Dorsey.
I don't think industry capture of the defense department is an especially radical idea, nor do I think it is wild to suggest that ultimate leadership from people like Trump is a problem.
I don't think criticism of the effectiveness of the US military based on its performance in Afghanistan is radical either. Or maybe it is but it shouldn't be.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 04:48:04 PM
I don't think industry capture of the defense department is an especially radical idea, nor do I think it is wild to suggest that ultimate leadership from people like Trump is a problem.
I don't think criticism of the effectiveness of the US military based on its performance in Afghanistan is radical either. Or maybe it is but it shouldn't be.
For sure, neither of those things are particularly outlandish. It's kind of unclear what you're trying to say, though, or how those two things relate to it.
Quote from: Jacob on August 13, 2021, 04:52:26 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 04:48:04 PM
I don't think industry capture of the defense department is an especially radical idea, nor do I think it is wild to suggest that ultimate leadership from people like Trump is a problem.
I don't think criticism of the effectiveness of the US military based on its performance in Afghanistan is radical either. Or maybe it is but it shouldn't be.
For sure, neither of those things are particularly outlandish. It's kind of unclear what you're trying to say, though, or how those two things relate to it.
-Mediocre civilian and military leadership angling for jobs in the defense department = lots of focus on cool & pricey toys
-We get a military with lots of cool & pricey toys and a price tag to match
-Brainpower (limited in any event) and resources go to billion dollar submarines and zillion dollar carrier groups, doesn't really improve the ability succeed in the wars we are actually fighting
-Taliban getting ready spike the football and shake its butt in Kabul
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 03:07:31 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 13, 2021, 02:56:56 PM
I'm not following closely. What are they doing?
They've assure Shi'ite Muslims they'll be able to celebrate a festival later this month (previously banned by the Taliban). They've released a phone number/WhatsApp for people to get in touch to make complaints/report abuse by Taliban soldiers.
They've allowed UN planes to fly in and out of cities they're occupying.
The deputy Emir has released a messages to fighters and provincial leadership promising to fulfil all promises with people who surrender and treat them with respect and asked the provincial leadership to report to their offices to ensure regular smooth functioning of public services. They've asked for civil servants, municipal employees, traffic police etc to keep working. Taliban have been directed to deploy special units to protect airports, airplanes, pilots, travellers and personnel.
Where they've taken over they've announced that universities will re-open on Sunday (unclear if women will still be allowed to attend). They're planning a meeting on "future governance" but so far are only replacing governors - provincial and lower leadership are being kept on and asked to keep working.
As I say it's interesting - but for want of a better word they seem to be trying to win hearts and minds. Maybe that's just because that's possible when you take over a semi-functioning state as opposed to rubble after 10 years of war with the Soviets, but it feels like they've thought and planned for this takeover.
Well I appreciate you putting a positive spin on it but wow what an embarrassing farce. We put all this money and effort supporting this government and for what? They are just going to surrender right away. If the Afghans want the Taliban then who are we to deny them?
Simplistic logic, but on par with US policy since 9/11
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 13, 2021, 05:14:46 PM
Simplistic logic, but on par with US policy since 9/11
Oh so pre-9/11 we would have occupied Afghanistan for 200 years? Maybe 9/11 made us smarter then.
Quote from: Valmy on August 13, 2021, 05:12:09 PM
Well I appreciate you putting a positive spin on it but wow what an embarrassing farce. We put all this money and effort supporting this government and for what? They are just going to surrender right away. If the Afghans want the Taliban then who are we to deny them?
I'm not sure it's a positive spin on it - I just think it's quite interesting - and good rebel politics.
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.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 05:18:49 PM
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.
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."
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 13, 2021, 03:23:11 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 13, 2021, 03:09:40 PM
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.
Quote from: Berkut on August 12, 2021, 09:43:13 PM
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.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 13, 2021, 06:44:39 AM
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.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 13, 2021, 08:21:06 AM
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.
Quote from: viper37 on August 13, 2021, 06:23:42 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 12, 2021, 09:43:13 PM
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".
Quote from: viper37 on August 13, 2021, 06:23:42 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 12, 2021, 09:43:13 PM
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.
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!!!!!"
Quote from: alfred russel on August 13, 2021, 04:22:31 PM
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.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 13, 2021, 08:42:22 PM
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.
QuoteI'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?
The rest of the brass aren't elected.
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.
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 08:24:01 PM
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.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 14, 2021, 12:42:00 AM
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.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 14, 2021, 10:18:41 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 14, 2021, 12:42:00 AM
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.
Starting to look pretty bleak out there. I fear this will turn out to be a terrible mistake, and a stain on Biden's presidency.
Quote from: Maladict on August 14, 2021, 11:47:51 AM
Starting to look pretty bleak out there. I fear this will turn out to be a terrible mistake, and a stain on Biden's presidency.
Probably. No matter what we do it seems to go badly. It's like three shells and pea except each shell has a live grenade under it.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 14, 2021, 11:28:31 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 14, 2021, 10:18:41 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 14, 2021, 12:42:00 AM
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.
Take it up with Minsky Moment; that post was a quote from him. He made it about a month ago in the context of criticism of Trump. No one challenged his factual accuracy when he made that post or said he was trolling.
I don't think the problem is that I'm a troll/intentionally provocative or make stupid arguments. The problem is lots of people here are increasingly close minded, which really mirrors society at large.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 14, 2021, 02:47:34 PM
Take it up with Minsky Moment; that post was a quote from him. He made it about a month ago in the context of criticism of Trump. No one challenged his factual accuracy when he made that post or said he was trolling.
Because it was in a completely different context. In this context, it is meaningless.
Sure Trump made bad decisions. But what does that have to do whether Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?
Mark Milley's service history while Barack Obama was President:
- Promoted to Commanding General, 10th Mountain Division - 2011
- Promoted to Commanding General, III Corps - 2012, this came with a promotion to Lieutenant General
- Promoted to Commanding General, U.S. Army Forces Command - 2014
- Promoted to Chief of Staff, U.S. Army (fwiw the highest ranking position in the Dept. of the Army) - 2015, raised to the rank of General
The idea that Trump liked him because Obama didn't, is not borne out by the evidence since Obama in fact promoted him to the Joint Chiefs and gave him basically the career goal position of most high ranking officers in the U.S. Army.
He also had 6 deployments in a command capacity to major warzones:
-Panama
-Bosnia
-Iraq
-Afghanistanx3
With additional deployments to Egypt (observational), Haiti, Somalia and Colombia.
He had experience in a command capacity of U.S. Special Forces. Has been involved in some of the most comprehensive reviews of military missteps in Iraq. He holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a Master's from Columbia (Poli Sci undergrad / International Relations masters.)
FWIW there's things you can criticize Milley for in his actual record, but lack of experience that would be typical of someone promoted to Chief of Chiefs isn't it.
Edit to add: I did not see Minsky's post that you're referring to as it was in a different thread and I don't read all of them, had he said Milley's only qualification to be Chief was that Obama did not like him, I would have called that out as well. Now, a different claim, that the only reason Trump hired him is because he reportedly was very good at ingratiating himself to Trump in their one on one interview, I would take little issue with. That was widely reported at the time Trump picked him, specifically because Mattis actually favored the Air Force Chief of Staff for elevation, and it's unusual for the SecDef and POTUS to have different picks for that particular promotion (unusual enough that the national press covered it.) But that doesn't mean that Milley's only qualification was that Trump liked him; you can't just hire any random kind and sensitive person off the street for that job, you promote from the service chiefs. That long list of commands I typed out for Milley? Those represent the typical "rank up" of someone in his position. At each of those ranks there is opportunity to fail, and usually at that level the failure results in you being 'retirement tracked', you don't see higher command and you're put at some book shuffling job for a few years then get to retire. We also send commanders who are moving through those ranks to the various military war colleges and etc.
This wasn't a Ben Carson for HUD type hire because we don't allow that in our military.
I have no issues with Milley BTW as should have been clear from the context of that thread. It was Trump who soured on him as he sours on anyone who isn't a supine flunky
That seems meteoric Biscuit. Is only one year with a division par for the course or wunderkind stuff?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 14, 2021, 07:51:37 PM
That seems meteoric Biscuit. Is only one year with a division par for the course or wunderkind stuff?
A lot of those postings don't go quite as long as you might think. A typical term for a divisional commander in a division like 10th Mountain is 3 years, Milley did about 1.5 years--it was actually noted at the time he was promoted he was not in his previous role as long as is normal. Although things move around more now that we've been at war for 20 straight years, deployments can govern some of the timing. For example the III Corps was slated to deploy to Afghanistan in 2013, most likely Milley was moved up to command there in 2012 so he could prepare for that deployment. Either the previous commander of III Corps was retiring or for some other reason the brass didn't want him leading that deployment (just guessing based on the timing.) In March 2014 that deployment ended and the fact Milley was promoted again around that time is an indication he was considered a success in the command of the corps during that deployment.
U.S. Army Forces Command could have been another 3ish year posting, the interesting thing about a lot of these command roles is you're getting to the tier of command where like your next command is something bigger or you're "off track" and headed for retirement, example being you will be moved to some sort of lower prestige office job in the Pentagon or some sort of caretaker assignment, guys who get up to that many stars tend to get "pushed out" gently and with a pension bump through a terminal promotion but in spite of that it is kind of a meatgrinder, you're expected to do good enough to get a higher command each rotation or your career largely is over. So while his U.S. Army Forces Command was relatively short, that Chief of Staff position is one of those things where the SecDef/President are going to pick one of the appropriately Senior Generals of their choice, and it may short circuit other timelines. Most likely there were other generals of equivalent level who were nearing the end of their expected terms in their commands, who would've been hoping for that position. When they didn't get it, unless some other high level command became available they likely would be ending their careers.
Chief of Staff is a specifically termed position (4 years), and almost always at the end of the term the person holding it ends their military career. Exceptions are when they are elevated to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Technically the President can extend Chief of Staff to a second four year term, but I don't think it's been done in like 60+ years. Part of the "up or out" ethos.
When you say 3 years is typical for a division like 10th Mountain, does that mean some divisions are faster track and some are slower? What does it depend on? Public recognition? Sex appeal?
Divisions that are regular Army commands, there's reserve / national guard divisions that I think normally work differently, but I'm less clear on their operations.
Kabul is under a blackout and there's fighting reported in the city, according to Twitter.
Are the Afghan government forces even fighting back against the Taleban? Saw pictures from Mazar-i-Sharif and it looks like the Taleban drove into the city with their Toyota pickups and that was it.
Looks like twenty years of training missions and capability building were wasted together with billions in military assets.
AR, what do the bookies say?
You'd think someone called A. Blinken would be able to win a civil war. But no.
Quote from: Zanza on August 15, 2021, 12:38:07 AM
Are the Afghan government forces even fighting back against the Taleban? Saw pictures from Mazar-i-Sharif and it looks like the Taleban drove into the city with their Toyota pickups and that was it.
Looks like twenty years of training missions and capability building were wasted together with billions in military assets.
Jalalabad (sp?) apparently was surrendered by its governor without a fight.
As some of you guys pointed out earlier, ultimately, it quite clearly seems, most people in Afghanistan prefer Taliban rule over trying to fight them. And based on the history of Afghanistan, if those people can't be bothered to shoot at somebody, I think they must be quite ok with them.
The 1975 pics are already rolling in:
(https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/210815041320-01-kabul-afghanistan-0815-us-helicopters-large-tease.jpg)
(though I doubt the Chinook is landing on that roof)
I mean, whether Biden made the right decision or not, the decision was between admitting defeat or continuing feeding lives and money into maintaining what has been quickly revealed an illusion of control.
Seems like Kabul will also be handed over without a shot fired. Bagram airbase already has been.
Meanwhile:
QuoteThe expected transition to a Taliban-led administration in the coming days has sparked fears over the level of rights and freedoms to be granted women.
Last month, fighters from the group walked into the offices of Azizi Bank in the southern city of Kandahar and ordered nine women working there to leave, explaining that male relatives could take their place.
This is going to be a well managed country I can see. :D I guess part of the reason why many men wouldn't fight the Taliban is that all this women's rights thing had to be a serious cut on the shit they could get away with previously. Their good old times are coming back.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 05:57:59 AM
The 1975 pics are already rolling in:
(https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/210815041320-01-kabul-afghanistan-0815-us-helicopters-large-tease.jpg)
(though I doubt the Chinook is landing on that roof)
Every member of the Taliban will have his own personal Humvee courtesy of the American taxpayer. :wacko:
Quote from: Tamas on August 15, 2021, 06:17:06 AM
I mean, whether Biden made the right decision or not, the decision was between admitting defeat or continuing feeding lives and money into maintaining what has been quickly revealed an illusion of control.
I agree, but, however we think of the policy, the optics of how the end game plays out is going to be a big deal. Whether that is a blazing gunfight of fighting off Taliban from storming the embassy/airport, or peacefully handing over the keys to a Taliban representative after the Afghan government surrenders without a shot being fired.
How would we respond if the government brokers a peaceful handover of control to the Taliban and the Taliban offers to respect the diplomatic status of the embassy? Is the optics of staying in that case too embarrassing to contemplate, and we clear out anyway...or is it better, in practical terms, to accept that bit of humiliation and stick around?*
*For myself, I think just in terms of the little bit of humiliation in staying could be acceptable...but the fact that staying inevitably means accepting some responsibility of any future atrocities/horrible suppression of women's rights, makes that option completely unacceptable.
This is amazing... We spent 20 years doing nothing.
It is easy, and understandable to say that, as the shockingness of it all is very fresh. But would that conclusion be any different if the ANA fought to the bitter end at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and material ruin?
But, to lawyer up for the Devil a bit...
...is it a good thing that the Taliban is winning a swift takeover and with much lower deaths than a bloody fight to the finish? Even if such a finish might satisfy us more in some way?
If I recall, the last time the Taliban took over Kabul, it was a very terrible situation for all concerned.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 14, 2021, 03:19:27 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 14, 2021, 02:47:34 PM
Take it up with Minsky Moment; that post was a quote from him. He made it about a month ago in the context of criticism of Trump. No one challenged his factual accuracy when he made that post or said he was trolling.
Because it was in a completely different context. In this context, it is meaningless.
Sure Trump made bad decisions. But what does that have to do whether Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?
At least part of the discussion moved to the quality of the American military, and ET made the comment that noting Trump was CiC doesn't extend to top brass of the military.
The comment was relevant, but I agree the context changed.
The first context: criticism of Trump's decision making, everyone nods along in agreement, noncontroversial
The second context: the same statement, said in the same way, but to question military leadership: now its a troll and deliberately stupid
Yeah, to me if the Ghani government was just losing hard fought battles, I'd be more inclined to say we do something. Instead we have a force we've pumped like $90bn into, with at least 100,000+ armed men under its command before all this started, that has chosen not to fight at all. That means there is such deep rot in the paper government we helped build that it might as well not exist at all. It's easy to criticize Biden, but I think his word usage was spot on--Afghans have to choose to fight. If they aren't willing to do so, that says about all we need to know, to be honest. It means keeping the Taliban out of power was never something they were willing to fight for, and thus our money and effort along those lines was wasted. It'd be crazy to extend further American blood and treasure fighting for something that actual people of Afghanistan aren't willing to fight for, when all of the potential benefit accrues to them.
Quote from: Zanza on August 15, 2021, 12:38:07 AM
Are the Afghan government forces even fighting back against the Taleban? Saw pictures from Mazar-i-Sharif and it looks like the Taleban drove into the city with their Toyota pickups and that was it.
Not at all. As I say I'm not even sure collapse is the right word - everywhere it seems to be negotiated. The Taliban shadow governor rocks up and the negotiates their takeover.
From the perspective of Afghans that's probably better than a prolonged fight - but yeah it does make you question what the NATO mission achieved in the last 20 years. I suppose one thing is there is state capacity for the Taliban to take over and use, for better or worse.
Edit: And Ghani's left Kabul. Currently in Tajikistan.
This isn't just a military victory for the Taliban, that would be slower - this is politics and intelligence. They've clearly rolled the pitch for this and maybe except for governors it feels like they must have had infiltrators all through the ANA and provincial level. One week ago they didn't conrol a single provincial capital. It's extraordinary.
Quote from: The Brain on August 15, 2021, 02:25:55 AM
AR, what do the bookies say?
I don't know where you can bet on this, but 3 days ago the reporting based off US officials said Kabul could fall within 90 days. If the bookies set the over under at 90 days I'm guessing they would be seeing the bulk of the action on the "under".
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/afghan-government-could-fall-to-taliban-within-90-days-us-official-says/ar-AANczTl#:~:text=Afghanistan%20%27s%20capital%20city%20and%20the%20seat%20of,65%20percent%20of%20Afghanistan%2C%20according%20to%20European%20officials.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 15, 2021, 09:48:39 AM
I don't know where you can bet on this, but 3 days ago the reporting based off US officials said Kabul could fall within 90 days. If the bookies set the over under at 90 days I'm guessing they would be seeing the bulk of the action on the "under".
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/afghan-government-could-fall-to-taliban-within-90-days-us-official-says/ar-AANczTl#:~:text=Afghanistan%20%27s%20capital%20city%20and%20the%20seat%20of,65%20percent%20of%20Afghanistan%2C%20according%20to%20European%20officials.
Yeah. I wasn't following closely but my impression was that every expert - even ones who thought the Taliban would win - assumed there'd be probably a year or two of conflict.
Separately Western governments now need to move from shock and statements about supporting the Afghan government (from a distance) to forming concrete plans to deal with refugees - especially in Europe - and to negotiating either directly with the Taliban, or through the UN, to get "our" people out. I think all NATO governments will have employed Afghans such as translators, or offered Afghans the chance to study in their country (the Chevening scheme etc) or had Afghan contractors/sub-contractors - and I think they will be at risk solely because of that association. I think it's morally on us to negotiate a way out for those people because they don't even have time to flee.
QuotePlans to expand the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, will run $150 million over budget and run 2 years behind schedule, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office released Tuesday.
As of May 2014, construction costs have increased 24 percent from the original $625.4 million projection to $773.9 million, the report found. The project, expected to be completed by the end of this summer, now likely won't be done until July 2016.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/211726-gao-afghan-embassy-costs-150m-over-budget#:~:text=Plans%20to%20expand%20the%20U.S.%20Embassy%20in%20Kabul%2C,million%20projection%20to%20%24773.9%20million%2C%20the%20report%20found.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 15, 2021, 09:32:37 AM
Quote from: Zanza on August 15, 2021, 12:38:07 AM
Are the Afghan government forces even fighting back against the Taleban? Saw pictures from Mazar-i-Sharif and it looks like the Taleban drove into the city with their Toyota pickups and that was it.
Not at all. As I say I'm not even sure collapse is the right word - everywhere it seems to be negotiated. The Taliban shadow governor rocks up and the negotiates their takeover.
From the perspective of Afghans that's probably better than a prolonged fight - but yeah it does make you question what the NATO mission achieved in the last 20 years. I suppose one thing is there is state capacity for the Taliban to take over and use, for better or worse.
Edit: And Ghani's left Kabul. Currently in Tajikistan.
This isn't just a military victory for the Taliban, that would be slower - this is politics and intelligence. They've clearly rolled the pitch for this and maybe except for governors it feels like they must have had infiltrators all through the ANA and provincial level. One week ago they didn't conrol a single provincial capital. It's extraordinary.
There's some interesting things to consider, for one the Afghan National Army when we were active in the country militarily, fought with us for years and ate far higher casualty rates than we did. So at least some of the men were willing to fight. What happened here makes me think that like you say, the political and military leadership probably has been breaking away internally for awhile. One issue is that Ashraf Ghani in his two elections barely won, and the parties that lost to him only barely acknowledge him as a valid political leader. The lack of acceptance of democratic outcomes you disagree with is a major inhibitor to a democratic society functioning. I have a feeling a lot of local political and military leaders simply realized Ghani's government wasn't viable without U.S. support, so why die fighting for it? Maybe if there had been another force to get behind they'd have done that, but the Taliban was the only other force in country. Back in the 2000s there were major tribal warlords who likely could have resisted the Taliban, but they've been systematically defanged (by us.) Not saying having them around would be a good thing necessarily, but that's part of the picture of why there's so little fighting now.
Long term what happens is anyone's guess. While the Taliban are inheriting organs of U.S. backed state they will have no real U.S. support obviously. There's already talk of "local resistance militias" being formed in areas that don't actually want Taliban rule. Many of the men joining them are likely to be U.S. trained. The advantage the Taliban has is it has received backing from Pakistan and has had years to build out its militant organization, but it is unlikely they will be able to operate the sort of systemic, nationwide control needed to keep these militias from growing over the coming years. Whether it breaks out into a bloody Civil War is hard to say, if the Taliban is smart and recognizes their own limitations, they likely exercise a very light hand over non-Pashtun areas and mostly let them manage their own affairs, and maybe there's a chance things don't flame up into another prolonged civil war. That's probably the best outcome among the likely outcomes out there.
In a way this instant bloodless collapse is better PR for the US. They didn't abandon a friend in need, they just turned off life support for a government in vegetative state.
Although on the electoral front arguably the West accepting Karzai's "re-election" in 2009 despite ample evidence of fraud was probably a mistake.
Separately amazing video doing the rounds of former Ghani ally and deputy speaker announcing he has been appointed chief of police in Kabul by the Taliban. This isn't impromptu side-switching but something that's been planned and is now being executed. Perhaps for all the talk of 300,000 well armed, well trained troops we were always focused on the hard power side of things, while what this seems to be is a huge success of Taliban sort power: diplomacy, intelligence, propaganda - their ability to cut deals and exploit divisions within the Afghan government.
They've also taken Bamiyan province (the most Shi'ite province) without a shot.
It looks like Russia is lining up, after China, to recognise the Taliban.
Separately Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah and Hekmatyar have announced they're forming a coordination council to assist with transition, mediation, security and peace talks - basically they're trying to fill the void left by Ghani fleeing.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 15, 2021, 09:22:42 AM
Yeah, to me if the Ghani government was just losing hard fought battles, I'd be more inclined to say we do something. Instead we have a force we've pumped like $90bn into, with at least 100,000+ armed men under its command before all this started, that has chosen not to fight at all. That means there is such deep rot in the paper government we helped build that it might as well not exist at all. It's easy to criticize Biden, but I think his word usage was spot on--Afghans have to choose to fight. If they aren't willing to do so, that says about all we need to know, to be honest. It means keeping the Taliban out of power was never something they were willing to fight for, and thus our money and effort along those lines was wasted. It'd be crazy to extend further American blood and treasure fighting for something that actual people of Afghanistan aren't willing to fight for, when all of the potential benefit accrues to them.
What's being made clear for me is that the U.S. presence was considered foreign occupation by a lot if not most people there and the US-installed government had the zero loyalty of people usually given to collaborator governments.
The West fought there to modernise and civilise but that's quite clearly was not how the population read the situation, or at the very least they did not consider that a positive thing. They were willing to fight a brutal Soviet occupation for years and they fought the U.S for 20 years. If they were not ok with the Taliban they'd be fighting them now.
Fuck that shit. We (as in, the civilised world), should handle them like Israel does with it's weaker neighbours: if there's evidence of some shit going down like a terrorist training camp, fly in, bomb the shit out of it, but that's it. A choice has been made quite clear.
Quote from: Tamas on August 15, 2021, 10:46:27 AM
Fuck that shit. We (as in, the civilised world), should handle them like Israel does with it's weaker neighbours: if there's evidence of some shit going down like a terrorist training camp, fly in, bomb the shit out of it, but that's it. A choice has been made quite clear.
Absolutely. We should have come to that conclusion -- at a minimum -- a decade ago.
Well, I'd actually say most of the major cities didn't really seem to be hotbeds of fighting the occupation at all, and most of the "lamentations" I'm hearing in the media from Afghans are urban ones. This is basically a place where the large rural population is in the 1300s and the cities are in the 1940s or so, but the city folk weren't willing to fight to keep anything so this is the outcome. It's not dissimilar from how cosmopolitan Tehran ended up being dominated by middle age rural people in Iran after the Shah was forced out of power.
I will say one thing that's worth noting is this is Biden basically following the Trump Administration's withdrawal plan and deal that had already been negotiated. Now, the argument could be that when Biden was being told by the brass that completing that plan would lead to an instant collapse, maybe Trump would have decided differently--that's possible. But the reality is there was bipartisan support from a Republican administration and then a Democrat one to withdraw from the country. That's something Biden needs to emphasize repeatedly when the Fox talking heads start crying about a country they've wanted out of for 20 years.
We already know that the GOP/Fox has abandoned the quaint concept of intellectual consistency some time ago.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 11:08:09 AM
We already know that the GOP/Fox has abandoned the quaint concept of intellectual consistency some time ago.
I mean it is a bore and a wildly over-rated "virtue" - we should all embrace our inner Whitmans :P
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 09:14:33 AM
It is easy, and understandable to say that, as the shockingness of it all is very fresh. But would that conclusion be any different if the ANA fought to the bitter end at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and material ruin?
But, to lawyer up for the Devil a bit...
...is it a good thing that the Taliban is winning a swift takeover and with much lower deaths than a bloody fight to the finish? Even if such a finish might satisfy us more in some way?
If I recall, the last time the Taliban took over Kabul, it was a very terrible situation for all concerned.
I honestly don't know, we will have to see how this turns out.
This has been a cleaner transition of power then the last us election.
Guess Sheilbh is right, a lot of this was already preplanned by the taliban.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 15, 2021, 11:18:41 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 11:08:09 AM
We already know that the GOP/Fox has abandoned the quaint concept of intellectual consistency some time ago.
I mean it is a bore and a wildly over-rated "virtue" - we should all embrace our inner Whitmans :P
Walt?
Dick?
https://theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/15/an-afghan-woman-in-kabul-now-i-have-to-burn-everything-i-achieved
QuoteAn Afghan woman in Kabul: 'Now I have to burn everything I achieved'
A university student tells of seeing all around her the 'fearful faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women
Ends up living in third world Islamic shit holes sucks for women. Maybe we should invade most of the Middle East to fix it.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 15, 2021, 03:44:16 PM
Ends up living in third world Islamic shit holes sucks for women. Maybe we should invade most of the Middle East to fix it.
Not sure how the 2nd sentence is relevant.
It's as relevant as your post in a thread about whether Biden made the right decision, considering your post didn't address that concept at all.
I wasn't addressing that (though I think he made the right decision). Just posting something I found sad about Afghanistan.
(https://i.imgur.com/bkmXkA2.png)
I wonder how long the Taliban were planning this. They must have had agreements in place a while ago. Its just amazing that the whole country flipped almost as soon as the Americans left.
Seems there was a massive intelligence failure here. Or they just chose to ignore it
I guess I won't be able to visit Babur's tomb in my lifetime.
Quote from: Tyr on August 15, 2021, 04:52:31 PM
I wonder how long the Taliban were planning this. They must have had agreements in place a while ago. Its just amazing that the whole country flipped almost as soon as the Americans left.
Seems there was a massive intelligence failure here. Or they just chose to ignore it
What would we have held on for?
Quote from: Tyr on August 15, 2021, 04:52:31 PM
I wonder how long the Taliban were planning this. They must have had agreements in place a while ago. Its just amazing that the whole country flipped almost as soon as the Americans left.
Seems there was a massive intelligence failure here. Or they just chose to ignore it
It seems likely there must have been discussions at least with a number of these provincial leaders long before this month, maybe things to the effect of "when the Americans leave, if you surrender we'll promise X, Y and Z." It seems like there must have been virtually no faith in the Ghani government to function at all without American support for so many people to go from shooting Taliban to making deals with them.
This article has some details:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/
It basically sounds like a series of "local cease fires" negotiated over a year ago, were actually deals being struck between the Taliban and village-level leaders to simply surrender. These deals then rolled up to regional and provincial levels. Corrupt bargains were struck. It seems like most of the time the Afghan government described these deals as cease fires, which did not accurately represent the truth of the matter. Then the Taliban just had to wait for the U.S. to leave to execute on them.
Considering the Washington Post has such detail on this stuff pretty much as it is happening, I can only conclude this has been broadly known by U.S. intelligence all along?
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 15, 2021, 05:44:47 PM
It seems likely there must have been discussions at least with a number of these provincial leaders long before this month, maybe things to the effect of "when the Americans leave, if you surrender we'll promise X, Y and Z." It seems like there must have been virtually no faith in the Ghani government to function at all without American support for so many people to go from shooting Taliban to making deals with them.
I think that this is exactly it. The Taliban said "if you fight, we will execute you if we win" and no one was willing to bet their lives that the Taliban would not win.
It's much better for Punjab Afghanistan for it to go down this way, as it saves a lot of needless destruction and killing. Not so great for the rest of Afghanistan because the Taliban hardly had to break a sweat. For them the Afghan National Government was not a problem; barely an inconvenience.
This aged like milk:
(https://i.ibb.co/6b5kYYm/Afghanistan-You-Tube.jpg)
Being enslaved by ISIS made the Syrians and Iraqis get their heads out of their asses; dunno if the Afghanistan has any sort of counterforce or maybe they Love The Lash
Quote from: chipwich on August 15, 2021, 06:17:26 PM
Being enslaved by ISIS made the Syrians and Iraqis get their heads out of their asses; dunno if the Afghanistan has any sort of counterforce or maybe they Love The Lash
Syria and Iraq are very different places to Afghanistan.
I also think material factors play a role in this. I think it's one of those triangles I don't think you can try and build a western-aligned political system in a country that's major cash crop is opium, while still trying to crack down on that from a "war on drugs" perspective (that was a motivation in the UK going to Helmand - 90% of heroin in the UK comes from Afghanistan). I think you can have any two of those things. The Taliban are absolutely okay with opium.
I also wonder if it was a mistake not bringing back the king as a unifying Pashtun figurehead. The Loya Jirga in 2002 apparently preferred Shah to Karzai.
Separately it is striking that even Najibullah's regime lasted a couple of years - which is what I saw people predicting after the US left.
Quote"One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country," Biden said. "And an endless American presence in the middle of another country's civil conflict was not acceptable to me."
I honestly can't say he is wrong on this.
This is also interesting:
Quote"What I am feeling and thinking about the situation in Afghanistan, I can never fit on Twitter," Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), himself an Iraq War veteran, tweeted. "But one thing that is definitely sticking out is that I haven't gotten one constituent call about it and my district has a large Veteran population."
Americans don't vote based on Afghanistan.
Quote from: garbon on August 15, 2021, 03:17:10 PM
https://theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/15/an-afghan-woman-in-kabul-now-i-have-to-burn-everything-i-achieved
QuoteAn Afghan woman in Kabul: 'Now I have to burn everything I achieved'
A university student tells of seeing all around her the 'fearful faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women
I am very sorry for this woman just as I am for all those women who were crushed by the Islamic revolution in Iran.
But polling data is clear that the overwhelming majority of women in Afghanistan are more aligned with the Taliban than her. That is a fact no American occupation can change. Afghanistan can only be changed by the people of Afghanistan. If she wants to leave the country I hope somebody will help her. If she stays I wish her all the best.
Austria, meanwhile, sees no reason to suspend deportations of Afghan refugees whose requests for asylum have been rejected. Says interior minister Nehammer, "We will keep deporting for as long as we can."
Is it Saigon yet?
(https://assets.4cdn.hu/kraken/7dhUwqsDSeOdQbFUs.png?format=auto&width=763)
Apparently US troops had to fire warning shots to keep people away from planes meant for American diplomats and staff, but somebody reported 5 bodies carried away after the stampede so who knows how start warning shots those were.
Meanwhile, Germany is still discussing whether any Afghans who worked for German military or institutions (embassy, development office ...) should be offered refuge in Germany. German media have written an open letter urging to help people without whom they wouldn't have been able to report from Afghanistan (translators, etc.).
What's the benefit/point of comparisons to Saigon?
The US and allies having lost a land war in Asia to an enemy who had a plan and a vision.
Kabul airport's been overrun with people trying to get out. Reports of people literally trying to cling on to airplane wheels as they take off :(
Apparently the UK is evacuating up to 1,000 people a day (and have sent an extra troops 600 to help secure the airport) who are mainly British citizens or Afghans employed by the British. The ambassador was meant to leave yesterday but has apparently stayed in the hotel at the airport where he is just processing/signing visa applications for Afghans - how helpful this will be given that the Taliban control the roads to the airport is unclear. From what I've read the plans were in place to get everyone out by the end of August, but obviously events have overtaken that plan.
The Defence Secretary appeared very emotional this morning on some news. He has said the priority is to evacuate (I think 4,000) British citizens and "Afghans we have obligations to" (I suspect that's too limited a category), but some will probably not get out and be left behind. From what I can tell he's about the only person in the UK government left dealing with this - and has taken a different, far more critical line than Johnson - because the PM is on holiday in the West Country and Dominic Raab who is Foreign Minister and basically deputy PM was on holiday in Cyprus.
And for all the effectiveness of the Taliban's rebel governance and the way they have kept trying to reassure people - there are reports of them doing door-to-door searches in cities they've taken over. I imagine anyone they associate with the Western mission will be a target - translators, civilian employees, aid workers, journalists etc.
Going back to the quality of the military...from a July 8 press conference held by Biden on the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
QuoteGood afternoon. Earlier today, I was briefed by our senior military and national security leaders on the status of the drawdown of U.S. forces and allied forces in Afghanistan.
...
Q Mr. President — do you trust the Taliban, Mr. President?
Q Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.
Q Why?
THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.
...
Q Mr. President, will you amplify that question, please? Will you amplify your answer, please — why you don't trust the Taliban?
THE PRESIDENT: It's a — it's a silly question. Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war.
....
Q Mr. President, thank you very much. Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true.
...
Q Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —
THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I'm not mistaken.
The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They're not — they're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/
Either "our senior military and national security leaders" gave the president a phenomenally incorrect view of the situation or Biden just lied his ass off about the information he was receiving.
But from what I saw literally no-one predicted this and everyone has been shocked at how quickly the Taliban have moved.
There were experts saying they might manage to take over in a few months but I think the consensus was probably a year or two of struggle.
So I think it's a fair guess that your senior military and national security leaders had phenomenally incorrect view of the situation - because every expert seemed to. I don't think anyone thought the Taliban would go from not occupying any of the 34 provincial capitals to taking Kabul in a fortnight. There's maybe lessons to be learned there.
I think the US official estimates from last week that Kabul would fall within 30-90 days is probably more one that can be criticised as ignoring the reality that was emerging.
Edit: Incidentally, I wonder what they are thinking in Beijing because my understanding is that there are Uyghurs fighting with the Taliban. That's a different prospect, I'd guess, for China if there's going to be a civil war in Afghanistan for a year or two. They may now present more of an immediate risk. Though the Taliban promise they won't let Afghanistan be a base for any violence in Xinjiang.
But Russia and China are keeping their embassies in place - and it does look likely Russia will recognise the Taliban this week. Weirdly the Saudis are evacuating their embassy.
Steiner's attack will stabilize the situation.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 05:43:22 AM
But from what I saw literally no-one predicted this and everyone has been shocked at how quickly the Taliban have moved.
There were experts saying they might manage to take over in a few months but I think the consensus was probably a year or two of struggle.
So I think it's a fair guess that your senior military and national security leaders had phenomenally incorrect view of the situation - because every expert seemed to. I don't think anyone thought the Taliban would go from not occupying any of the 34 provincial capitals to taking Kabul in a fortnight. There's maybe lessons to be learned there.
This isn't a situation where the Taliban achieved an unexpected result on the battlefield and took over on an unexpected timeframe. This is a situation where the Afghan Army disintegrated without a fight.
Bigger picture we spent two decades and hundreds of billions, maybe even a trillion, trying to build the Afghan Army into a force that could defend the national government, and that force has been revealed to be an utter nullity. The enterprise was just a giant conveyer belt of money from US taxpayers to defense contractors and elite Afghans, and the grifters couldn't even give us a half assed battle as a return on our investment. The emperor had no clothes. We were in the country for 20 years working with these guys on a day by day basis: there isn't an excuse for not knowing.
Quote from: Valmy on August 15, 2021, 09:37:18 PM
I am very sorry for this woman just as I am for all those women who were crushed by the Islamic revolution in Iran.
But polling data is clear that the overwhelming majority of women in Afghanistan are more aligned with the Taliban than her. That is a fact no American occupation can change. Afghanistan can only be changed by the people of Afghanistan. If she wants to leave the country I hope somebody will help her. If she stays I wish her all the best.
How reliable is polling data from women in Afghanistan?
Quote from: alfred russel on August 16, 2021, 06:03:39 AM
This isn't a situation where the Taliban achieved an unexpected result on the battlefield and took over on an unexpected timeframe. This is a situation where the Afghan Army disintegrated without a fight.
Bigger picture we spent two decades and hundreds of billions, maybe even a trillion, trying to build the Afghan Army into a force that could defend the national government, and that force has been revealed to be an utter nullity. The enterprise was just a giant conveyer belt of money from US taxpayers to defense contractors and elite Afghans, and the grifters couldn't even give us a half assed battle as a return on our investment. The emperor had no clothes. We were in the country for 20 years working with these guys on a day by day basis: there isn't an excuse for not knowing.
Agreed - and I think the bigger criticism of Biden isn't that he was lying to people when he said he had faith in the Afghan but his role in America's foreign policy for the last 20 years. For the first 7 years of this conflict he was, from my understanding, a Senator who focused on foreign affairs. He was then VP who was fairly involved on internal debates on foreign policy. Though I would note that I think in 2009/10 when Obama was considering whether to go for an Afghan "surge" or start to reduce troop numbers, Biden was in favour of reducing numbers.
I think this line from the Atlantic piece by a former soldier is probably where I'd focus criticism of Biden (and others) given the roles he's played for at least 15 of the last 20 years:
QuoteWe were overly optimistic and largely made things up as we went along. We didn't like oversight or tough questions from Washington, and no one really bothered to hold us accountable anyway. We had no capacity or experience with some of our tasks, and we stumbled.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 05:43:22 AMThere were experts saying they might manage to take over in a few months but I think the consensus was probably a year or two of struggle.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/6bf7095d4bb0f2999ef62ed5716a8551/tumblr_ottsbnxh3t1u501aoo1_400.gifv)
I think Biden actually just lied about a lot of it. For one, that 300,000 troops number was known to not be true the moment he said it, so either he "misspoke" or he was deliberately deceiving.
The other big thing is, the Washington Post was able to talk to a number of Afghan police and military leaders who had agreed to lay down their arms and they were talking pretty candidly about accepting cash from the Taliban to switch sides. As far as I can tell the Washington Post's reporters were able to get this information in a couple of days end of last week. That suggests this wasn't exactly happening in secret. As they reported, local and district "cease fires" that were being signed, were actually surrender agreements in which the local Afghan leadership was taking money to basically switch over to the Taliban.
I just think it's not possible we didn't know this was going on, from an intelligence perspective. It was too widespread and apparently wasn't really being done covertly. So in the sense that Afghanistan was long term viable and able to resist long term, I 100% think Biden had intelligence telling him otherwise, and simply chose not to be honest about it. I understand his reasons--if the paradigm is you have to stay in Afghanistan until the local government is secure, that endlessly continues to extend your withdrawal date. Biden wanted a withdrawal regardless of the conditions on the ground, so it was not politically expedient to reveal that he knew the Afghan National Government had no long term viability.
Now, I can 100% believe that in spite of knowing of all these local defections, our intelligence may have assumed the provincial and military officials in and around Kabul would be inclined to fight it out. Even that alone would have likely meant 3+ months of fighting before a collapse, because of the large number of troops entrenched in and around the Kabul area. Them also just agreeing to surrender without a fight probably is the element that caught us by surprise. But I suspect Biden knew back when he did that press conference that the national government was in its entirety a sham, and unlikely to last much beyond 90 days. So his saying that it wouldn't collapse--a lie. Now do I think we knew it'd collapse in 14 days? No, I think the reporting that our intelligence analysts thought 90 days, is probably what they actually thought, likely banking on armed resistance from the core of the military around Kabul. Remember it took like a year to dislodge ISIS from Mosul and the Afghan National Army was actually better positioned to defend Kabul, so I can see our intelligence assuming there would be a prolonged period of fighting outside Kabul before we got to this point.
Afghanistan or not, I wonder how many people would opt to make a desperate last stand where they're expected to last for a couple of months before their enemy achieves total victory?
Quote from: DGuller on August 16, 2021, 07:58:37 AM
Afghanistan or not, I wonder how many people would opt to make a desperate last stand where they're expected to last for a couple of months before their enemy achieves total victory?
Biden should have made them Field Marshals. Problem solved.
Quote from: The Brain on August 16, 2021, 08:02:25 AM
Quote from: DGuller on August 16, 2021, 07:58:37 AM
Afghanistan or not, I wonder how many people would opt to make a desperate last stand where they're expected to last for a couple of months before their enemy achieves total victory?
Biden should have made them Field Marshals. Problem solved.
This very thing has actually been tried in Stalingrad by Hitler. It didn't work.
I wonder if Biden will get the blame for this?
Lest we forget its Trump's policy. Biden potentially deserves criticism for sticking to it. But it didn't originate with him.
Quote from: DGuller on August 16, 2021, 08:10:47 AM
Quote from: The Brain on August 16, 2021, 08:02:25 AM
Quote from: DGuller on August 16, 2021, 07:58:37 AM
Afghanistan or not, I wonder how many people would opt to make a desperate last stand where they're expected to last for a couple of months before their enemy achieves total victory?
Biden should have made them Field Marshals. Problem solved.
This very thing has actually been tried in Stalingrad by Hitler. It didn't work.
^_^
Quote from: Tyr on August 16, 2021, 08:21:25 AM
I wonder if Biden will get the blame for this?
Lest we forget its Trump's policy. Biden potentially deserves criticism for sticking to it. But it didn't originate with him.
Yes, he will. You can correctly say that Trump set the stage, as did the Presidents before him, but Trump specifically with his Doha agreement. However Biden is President now, and blame will accrue to him. You could always argue that if Trump saw things getting this bad, he'd have sent more troops in to stabilize it and not withdrawn. Is that what he would have done? Considering how he abandoned the Kurds in Syria, I doubt it. But it is what it is.
I think Biden (correctly) has gambled there is no real political hit related to Afghanistan. It's a talking point for Republicans who need talking points to fill air time and cry about things, but I don't think it's going to change D votes to R votes.
Plus I don't think he is planning to run for a second term.
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Quote from: Tyr on August 16, 2021, 08:21:25 AM
I wonder if Biden will get the blame for this?
Lest we forget its Trump's policy. Biden potentially deserves criticism for sticking to it. But it didn't originate with him.
As easy as it is to blame Trump for everything, Bush and Obama are just as culpable.
I get the impression the US public by and large does not care about Afghanistan (other than briefly, because of the Bin Laden thing) and so abandoning the place to its fate has little political cost.
This isn't at all like Vietnam, which was hugely divisive.
The question is whether this will change, if the Taliban were dumb enough to get involved in supporting terror attacks against the US. Presumably, they know better than to push that.
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies. The Trump administration abandoned the Kurds without a qualm, and the abandonment of Afghanistan proves this isn't just a Trump thing - the lesson is that you can't depend on the US alone for your security, you had better have alternative allies lined up, presumably in your region (and so who care whether you fall or not). Otherwise, your existence depends on the whims of US politics.
I would expect to see a lot more regional deal-making, along the lines of the David Accords.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 15, 2021, 09:00:52 PM
Quote"One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country," Biden said. "And an endless American presence in the middle of another country's civil conflict was not acceptable to me."
I honestly can't say he is wrong on this.
Seems pretty clear that the first sentence was catastrophically wrong. A small contingent of US combat troops plus support personnel was sufficient to bolster the Afghan forces and keep the Taliban at bay for years, so the US military presence made an enormous difference. As to the second sentence, it is undisputable that was Biden's opinion. But there are real life consequences to acting on that opinion.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 09:12:52 AM
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies.
That would be true if the US had any such credibility at the moment. Credibility has a zero lower bound.
If you choose to interpret it that way, what I believe was being suggested by "difference" was "making a difference in the domestic situation in Afghanistan." If the only thing keeping troops from selling their positions to the Taliban for money was a few thousand U.S. troops then there wasn't much being achieved by us remaining there.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 09:29:54 AM
If you choose to interpret it that way, what I believe was being suggested by "difference" was "making a difference in the domestic situation in Afghanistan." If the only thing keeping troops from selling their positions to the Taliban for money was a few thousand U.S. troops then there wasn't much being achieved by us remaining there.
I accept the premise, and draw exactly the opposite conclusion.
It seems to me if the second statement is true, then by definition quite a lot was being achieved by the US presence.
Quote from: Solmyr on August 16, 2021, 06:47:26 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 15, 2021, 09:37:18 PM
I am very sorry for this woman just as I am for all those women who were crushed by the Islamic revolution in Iran.
But polling data is clear that the overwhelming majority of women in Afghanistan are more aligned with the Taliban than her. That is a fact no American occupation can change. Afghanistan can only be changed by the people of Afghanistan. If she wants to leave the country I hope somebody will help her. If she stays I wish her all the best.
How reliable is polling data from women in Afghanistan?
I hope it is incredibly unreliable.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 09:12:52 AM
I get the impression the US public by and large does not care about Afghanistan (other than briefly, because of the Bin Laden thing) and so abandoning the place to its fate has little political cost.
This isn't at all like Vietnam, which was hugely divisive.
The question is whether this will change, if the Taliban were dumb enough to get involved in supporting terror attacks against the US. Presumably, they know better than to push that.
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies. The Trump administration abandoned the Kurds without a qualm, and the abandonment of Afghanistan proves this isn't just a Trump thing - the lesson is that you can't depend on the US alone for your security, you had better have alternative allies lined up, presumably in your region (and so who care whether you fall or not). Otherwise, your existence depends on the whims of US politics.
I would expect to see a lot more regional deal-making, along the lines of the David Accords.
It's amazing that the Americans lasted as long as they did, 20 years and mountains of cash later they found themselves with an Afghan army that won't fight even a day. :hmm: I mean it was obviously an enormously profitable scam for suppliers and contractors, courtesy of the taxpayer but for everyone else it was a colossal failure. Ending this doomed venture incompetently was maybe to be expected given the last 2 decades.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 09:12:52 AM
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies. The Trump administration abandoned the Kurds without a qualm, and the abandonment of Afghanistan proves this isn't just a Trump thing - the lesson is that you can't depend on the US alone for your security, you had better have alternative allies lined up, presumably in your region (and so who care whether you fall or not). Otherwise, your existence depends on the whims of US politics.
Well we supported the Kurds since what? 1991? 1992? We poured billions and put our lives on the line to support this Kabul regime since what? 2002? 2003? That is whimsical to you? And are we really allies? We provided all this equipment and training and they refuse to fight. Almost every time our "allies" run away when ISIS or the Taliban or whomever shows up. Some allies. Maybe before you expect us to be your staunch supporters maybe you should be ours? How about that? Yes that doesn't really apply to the Kurds but likewise I am confident they can take care of themselves and I don't think we have really abandoned them. If they are in serious trouble we will probably swoop in again.
The whole fucking point was to provide these people with the resources they needed to defend themselves. Fuck this. You cannot trust the United States! They will only pour endless resources in your direction with few strings attached for 20 or 30 years then fuck off! And no you should not depend on the US, or anybody, alone for your security especially for internal enemies.
And lastly all this international shenanigans the US keeps doing has never been popular among the American people. Ever. We have to be scared into it by red scares and terrorist hysteria. And since we are supposed to be this Democracy I think that should be warning enough to anybody who thinks we can be reliably counted upon to endlessly expend our lives and treasure in distant lands where our supposed friends are corrupt and refuse to fight for their own cause. We do not want to do that. Maybe Russia or China or somebody else will but not us.
The bottom line is Afghanistan does not want us there. They see us as foreign occupiers. They vastly prefer the Taliban to us. So how is this really betraying an ally? Afghanistan was never our ally. If they were our ally and had our interests as well as their's at heart we would have already left years ago because they would be able to stand on their own.
QuoteI would expect to see a lot more regional deal-making, along the lines of the David Accords.
Which is exactly what I want. Clearly our presence has done nothing but harm regional stability by holding back these kinds of agreements.
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2021, 10:01:38 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 09:12:52 AM
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies. The Trump administration abandoned the Kurds without a qualm, and the abandonment of Afghanistan proves this isn't just a Trump thing - the lesson is that you can't depend on the US alone for your security, you had better have alternative allies lined up, presumably in your region (and so who care whether you fall or not). Otherwise, your existence depends on the whims of US politics.
Well we supported the Kurds since what? 1991? 1992? We poured billions and put our lives on the line to support this Kabul regime since what? 2002? 2003? That is whimsical to you? And are we really allies? We provided all this equipment and training and they refuse to fight. Almost every time our "allies" run away when ISIS or the Taliban or whomever shows up. Some allies. Maybe before you expect us to be your staunch supporters maybe you should be ours? How about that? Yes that doesn't really apply to the Kurds but likewise I am confident they can take care of themselves and I don't think we have really abandoned them. If they are in serious trouble we will probably swoop in again.
The whole fucking point was to provide these people with the resources they needed to defend themselves. Fuck this. You cannot trust the United States! They will only pour endless resources in your direction with few strings attached for 20 or 30 years then fuck off! And no you should not depend on the US, or anybody, alone for your security especially for internal enemies.
And lastly all this international shenanigans the US keeps doing has never been popular among the American people. Ever. We have to be scared into it by red scares and terrorist hysteria. And since we are supposed to be this Democracy I think that should be warning enough to anybody who thinks we can be reliably counted upon to endlessly expend our lives and treasure in distant lands where our supposed friends are corrupt and refuse to fight for their own cause. We do not want to do that. Maybe Russia or China or somebody else will but not us.
The bottom line is Afghanistan does not want us there. They see us as foreign occupiers. They vastly prefer the Taliban to us. So how is this really betraying an ally? Afghanistan was never our ally. If they were our ally and had our interests as well as their's at heart we would have already left years ago because they would be able to stand on their own.
QuoteI would expect to see a lot more regional deal-making, along the lines of the David Accords.
Which is exactly what I want. Clearly our presence has done nothing but harm regional stability by holding back these kinds of agreements.
You are expending a lot of anger to agree with me. 😄
I'm making absolutely no comment on the relative justice of either course of action. The US does not, of course, have some sort of moral duty to police the rough places in the world.
However, actions have consequences. Having voluntarily taken on the invasion of Afghanistan and propped up a government there, for whatever reasons, abandoning that US creation to its fate sends a clear message to everyone else who, rightly or wrongly, depends on the US.
This naturally will have the effect of encouraging all the enemies of such places. If they only hold on long enough, the US will lose interest.
I think fears about our "allies" need to be tempered with an understanding of what sort of allies we should want, our allies should generally have a naturally mutually beneficial position to our own. Our European allies largely follow this paradigm, as do our significant Asian allies.
Allies that are only our allies because we funnel lots of money to their leaders, but who have either none of the same objectives we do, or actually hold oppositional objectives to our own, are probably not allies we should be supporting to the point of a 20 year military occupation. There's still some geopolitical reason to get in bed with "iffy" allies like that (see: Saudi Arabia, Egypt), but in most of those examples I can think of we at least have some shared interests. As far as I can tell the Afghan Government had no real interest that aligned with ours at all since their only commitment to a democratic, functional state seemed to be so their leaders could collect U.S. money and distribute it to their underlings.
Yeah, I am pretty much in full agreement with Otto here.
The complete dissolving of the Afghan government doesn't who Biden to be wrong (excecpt in the details), it shows that he was right to bail. It was never real to begin with, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and lots and lots and lots of money.
I think we need to do a hell of a lot better job picking our allies. I don't know how to do that though - it seems like it is either obvious (Western liberal democracies) or impossible to tell. And of course the ones we need to be able to figure that out with, are the very ones that are the hardest to figure out. Why did this work in Japan, and fail so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, as examples? It seems obvious in retrospect, but it suggests that there are entire cultural areas where the effort just seems hopeless.
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 10:27:34 AM
Why did this work in Japan, and fail so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, as examples? It seems obvious in retrospect, but it suggests that there are entire cultural areas where the effort just seems hopeless.
Well, I think waging an absolutely unrestricted punitive war of destruction against their entire population causing a massive culture shock and a clear indication that only death was alternative to submission certainly helped with Japan.
The present day West has a huge carrot but no stick.
Quote from: Tamas on August 16, 2021, 10:33:46 AM
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 10:27:34 AM
Why did this work in Japan, and fail so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, as examples? It seems obvious in retrospect, but it suggests that there are entire cultural areas where the effort just seems hopeless.
Well, I think waging an absolutely unrestricted punitive war of destruction against their entire population causing a massive culture shock and a clear indication that only death was alternative to submission certainly helped with Japan.
I think another huge factor is Iraq/Afghanistan both behind surrounded by states that are/were hostile to everything we were doing.
If I was King of the United States or whatever with no political checks on my behavior, I'd have crowned the heir to the Afghan monarchy and resurrected it. I would have funneled most of my money to internal intelligence / security agencies in the Kingdom, and to special forces. I would have spent less on some of the advanced weapons systems we gave the Afghans that mostly prepare them for war with say, their immediate neighbors, but didn't prepare them much for war with the Taliban.
I would have made their constitution one with a Federal system and autonomous tribal regions, various elements of the Federal system would have spots at some sort of council or upper house of the legislature to veto constitutional changes if they took issue with it. I would devolve lots of law making to the autonomous regions.
I'd frankly consider an arrangement like Iran has for the chief executive--elected President but the unelected King would hold a lot of reserve powers outside of accountability to the political system. I'd spend a lot of effort making sure the King stayed a U.S. ally.
I had actually forgotten that the previous Afghan King was actually still alive back in 2002, they should have just crowned him.
The only mistake the West made in Afghanistan is that we stayed for twenty years rather than twenty weeks in 2001-2002. What colossal waste of lives and resources.
The Afghan military and institutions were obviously not worth anything.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 09:12:52 AM
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies. The Trump administration abandoned the Kurds without a qualm, and the abandonment of Afghanistan proves this isn't just a Trump thing - the lesson is that you can't depend on the US alone for your security, you had better have alternative allies lined up, presumably in your region (and so who care whether you fall or not). Otherwise, your existence depends on the whims of US politics.
I would expect to see a lot more regional deal-making, along the lines of the David Accords.
That doesn't seem like damage; that seems like progress. Why should the US want allies that thinks that they can depend on the US alone for their security, or don't need to have regional allies lined up?
At the time Bush basically engineered the collapse of the Taliban because they wouldn't agree to hand bin Laden over (they were willing to take him into custody and subject him to a trial under "Sharia law", but would have required the United States to provide intelligence linking bin Laden to the attacks at said trial.) We had general intelligence that bin Laden was hiding out in eastern Afghanistan where al-Qaeda militants were known to be, we actually had special forces operations come pretty close to actually apprehending bin Laden after the invasion.
I'm curious what would have happened if we just deployed to eastern Afghanistan against the Taliban's wishes, made it known if they didn't shoot at us we wouldn't shoot at them, but if they did we'd bring hell onto them, and start conducting special forces operations aimed at going after al-Qaeda / bin Laden. I would liken it to what we did in Syria, when we literally just moved in and set up bases to fight ISIS even though the government of Syria very explicitly said they didn't want us there. There wasn't much they could do about it and they knew trying would just bring more trouble.
If we had taken that approach but left the Taliban in Kabul alone, I'm curious how it would have played out and what the Taliban would have done.
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 11:06:09 AM
The only mistake the West made in Afghanistan is that we stayed for twenty years rather than twenty weeks in 2001-2002. What colossal waste of lives and resources.
The Afghan military and institutions were obviously not worth anything.
Hardly wasted. We have provided the Taliban with a LOT of military hardware.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 16, 2021, 11:10:41 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 09:12:52 AM
Where this is really damaging, is to perception of the US willingness to support allies. The Trump administration abandoned the Kurds without a qualm, and the abandonment of Afghanistan proves this isn't just a Trump thing - the lesson is that you can't depend on the US alone for your security, you had better have alternative allies lined up, presumably in your region (and so who care whether you fall or not). Otherwise, your existence depends on the whims of US politics.
I would expect to see a lot more regional deal-making, along the lines of the David Accords.
That doesn't seem like damage; that seems like progress. Why should the US want allies that thinks that they can depend on the US alone for their security, or don't need to have regional allies lined up?
Depends on what the US wants out of this process. A world with a bunch of regional alliances may be a lot less stable than one in which large numbers of countries are dependant on the US. These regional alliances may not uphold US interests. Is the cost to the US worth the influence it buys?
For example - look why the US got involved in Afghanistan in the first place. It was not because the US wanted to buy an ally. It was because lack of US influence in Afghanistan meant the country was a safe haven for Bin Laden. Regional instability may not prove in US interests if it ends up with guys like the Taliban in charge.
Now it may well be that the Afghanistan Taliban has "learned its lesson" and will not host anti-US terrorists again - or maybe not.
I don't think the model of the U.S. trying to mold literally the entire world into our desires is a sustainable model.
There were serious intelligence failures in how 9/11 happened, that could have been addressed if we had a more robust intelligence operation aimed at al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. Preventing 9/11 2.0 didn't require a 20 year occupation of Afghanistan.
QuoteHundreds of Afghan soldiers fled to neighbouring Uzbekistan with 22 military planes and 24 helicopters last weekend, including one aircraft that collided with an escorting Uzbek fighter jet causing both to crash, Uzbekistan has said.
According to Reuters, the Uzbek defence ministry said an Afghan military jet had been shot down and crashed after crossing the border.
A total of 585 Afghan soldiers have arrived on aircraft and 158 more crossed the border on foot on Sunday, the Uzbek prosecutor general's office added.
Quite simply, the US has been duped.
I am sure there was a portion of the population who wanted to see westernisation happen, seeing education, seeing women risen out of the cattle status given to them by their previous governments and their religion. But I had no idea just how much the majority didn't give a fuck. I don't remember reading about any major engagement during the last two weeks - those soldiers above didn't flee after a defeat - they fled so they wouldn't have to fight.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 11:36:46 AM
Depends on what the US wants out of this process. A world with a bunch of regional alliances may be a lot less stable than one in which large numbers of countries are dependant on the US. These regional alliances may not uphold US interests. Is the cost to the US worth the influence it buys?
An emphatic answer is "absolutely not". Afghanistan is a tremendously poor and irrelevant country on the other side of the world. Two trillion spent in every such country will bankrupt the US quite quickly. This isn't even a close call.
QuoteNow it may well be that the Afghanistan Taliban has "learned its lesson" and will not host anti-US terrorists again - or maybe not.
And if it hasn't we can go back, fix the problem, and leave. Pakistan was playing host to Bin Laden for a while: we didn't occupy that country for 20 years or even a day. Way more cost effective than the Afghanistan boondoggle.
It reminds me reading this book written 2004 or maybe 2010, about the 19th century British involvement in Afghanistan. It was quite excellent. At the end the book claimed that the current (as in 2000s) opposing warlords (then chief of Taliban and the leader of the Afghan government) were from the same two tribes who fought it out as anti- and pro-British forces then.
My impression is, we (civilised countries) go in there apparently completely ignorant of the local situation, or at least unable to manipulate it, and while for sure, wherever we strike and whoever we choose as our local "allies" has a decisive impact on internal politics, at the end of the day we end up being tools used in their own internal intrigues.
A similar thing I read was about Commancheria and the situation with the American west for centuries: Spain and the rest of the Europeans would draw these neat maps of what belongs to them which paid no attention or attempted understanding of the Native American political units and ways of state-building, which bit the Europeans in the ass repeatedly, as their way of political/diplomatic thinking had almost zero correlation to local context.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 10:20:10 AM
I think fears about our "allies" need to be tempered with an understanding of what sort of allies we should want, our allies should generally have a naturally mutually beneficial position to our own.
The Kurds met that definition by any fair assessment. For a very long time they were loyal and reliable partners and effective fighters to boot. And if those are the kinds of allies you want, you need to have a reputation for being a reliable partner yourself.
One the quality issue Fredo, have you considered that a couple thousand US troops in country was the difference between a national army of 180,000 men fighting and it disintegrating? ^_^
(https://preview.redd.it/txrlmyrpsqh71.jpg?width=640&height=855&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=de4d38c180c89c946161fab02b230f02552f3b17)
I like our chances influencing a few elites running a regional alliance than I do of us winning the hearts and minds of the locals.
Quote from: The Brain on August 16, 2021, 11:13:17 AM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 11:06:09 AM
The only mistake the West made in Afghanistan is that we stayed for twenty years rather than twenty weeks in 2001-2002. What colossal waste of lives and resources.
The Afghan military and institutions were obviously not worth anything.
Hardly wasted. We have provided the Taliban with a LOT of military hardware.
I bet they cannot maintain anything more complex than a Toyota Hilux and all the expensive equipment will soon become defunct.
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 10:27:34 AM
The complete dissolving of the Afghan government doesn't who Biden to be wrong (excecpt in the details), it shows that he was right to bail. It was never real to begin with, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and lots and lots and lots of money.
It shows that either he lied to the American people or was badly wrong about the consequences of the precipitous withdrawal. I very much doubt the first.
No amount of porcine lip glossing can cover up this policy screw-up. There is no way that if Biden and his team knew then what they know now, they would have handled things in the same way. They might have still withdrew but it would have been planned a lot more carefully and deliberately. You can call those details, but they are pretty big and important details. When human beings who put their lives at risk to align with America - regardless of whether we judge them to be "worthy allies" are not - are plummeting to their deaths after desperately clinging to the outside of a departing jet, that's a sign of rather important details being lost.
One can throw as much shade of the Afghan government as you want; there is no shortage of murk there. But whether the leadership individually or collectively was "deserving" of the blessings of an American alliance, there was also a real, Afghan civil society that contained ordinary, regular living human beings who in many different ways relied on the American commitment and were encouraged to rely on that commitment. They will face the consequences of our departure. And regardless of whether the leaders deserved our support or not, the irreducible fact is that this fiasco of a withdrawal is a very bad look for America and it will impact the perception of America by the rest of the world for the worse.
Yeah, I think that's about right Minsky.
I believe an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan was the right course of action. But this withdrawal is not particularly orderly, and there are real consequences for that, including for individual Afghanis who've relied on and trusted the US.
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2021, 12:02:57 PM
I like our chances influencing a few elites running a regional alliance than I do of us winning the hearts and minds of the locals.
The history of the Baghdad Pact would suggest caution in reaching that conclusion.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 12:12:58 PM
One can throw as much shade of the Afghan government as you want; there is not shortage of murk there. But whether the leadership individually or collectively was "deserving" of the blessings of and American alliance, there was also a real, Afghan civil society that contained ordinary, regular living human beings who in many different ways relied on the American commitment and were encouraged to rely on that commitment. They will face the consequences of our departure. And regardless of whether the leaders deserved our support or not, the irreducible fact is that this fiasco of a withdrawal is a very bad look for America and it will impact the perception of America by the rest of the world for the worse.
Exactly like in South Vietnam. We always create these kinds of groups whenever we do this kind of thing which is exactly why we should not do so.
I am all for allowing them to immigrate to the US and doing whatever we can for anybody who legitimately was our friend in Afghanistan. We did the same for many of the South Vietnamese.
As for looking bad I will take a 1975 or 2021 any day of the week rather than 1955-1973 or a 2002-2020. Less Civilian deaths and less money wasted.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 12:17:25 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2021, 12:02:57 PM
I like our chances influencing a few elites running a regional alliance than I do of us winning the hearts and minds of the locals.
The history of the Baghdad Pact would suggest caution in reaching that conclusion.
Hey I didn't say it was a slam dunk.
I think the notion of an orderly, deliberate withdrawal is a bit of magical thinkiing. What reason is there to think that if we had withdrawn 100 men a week the Afghan army wouldn't have collectively decided overnight that it was not worth it to fight?
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 12:05:46 PM
Quote from: The Brain on August 16, 2021, 11:13:17 AM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 11:06:09 AM
The only mistake the West made in Afghanistan is that we stayed for twenty years rather than twenty weeks in 2001-2002. What colossal waste of lives and resources.
The Afghan military and institutions were obviously not worth anything.
Hardly wasted. We have provided the Taliban with a LOT of military hardware.
I bet they cannot maintain anything more complex than a Toyota Hilux and all the expensive equipment will soon become defunct.
This was actually one of the criticisms I was reading come out of some military policy wonk papers being put out 5+ years ago, we built an Afghan military like a mini-American military. Complex weapon systems that require expertise and expensive equipment to maintain and repair, over-reliance on air power etc. Now, that isn't why the government collapsed in a few days--that's because people just straight up accepted money from the Taliban to go home without fighting. But had the Afghan National Government not collapsed in literally days, we were leaving them with a military not well designed for their country.
I think Biden did lie, for what it's worth. I think he had to have known at least some of the details coming out now. I think he (and I think this was because of intelligence analysis provided to him) assumed the collapsed would take months and months. He didn't want to start prepping for a withdrawal 6 months ago that he was publicly saying wasn't going to happen. He was expecting there to be a slow fall and then he could say something like "conditions have deteriorated as the Afghan government is showing itself unable to contain the Taliban" and started withdrawal preparations, likely assuming he would still have several months to get it done.
It's definitely a major intelligence failure that we assumed it would take 90-180 days when it really took like 10.
For the rest of it though, I'm not sure I have enough eye rolls left in me to express how I feal about Afghan civil society. We are not the world's baby sitter.
I am trying to figure out what should have been done instead.
An orderly withdrawal? Isn't that what we've been doing for like the last decade and a half?
I am not trying to put gloss on anything. I am trying to understand what the failure was - and given what has happened, it seems pretty clear to me that the last fucking two decades has been a trillion dollar pig lip glossing, and staying even longer would just have meant more really, really expensive lip gloss being added on top of the 15 years that has been slathered on there already.
I am not indifferent to the suffering that is going to happen. Just not sure, given what we know now, how it could be avoided other then just staying and occupying the country basically forever. If it could not get done in 20 years, how much longer is it going to take?
I think we did go in there so we at the very least owe it to those who tried to help us in this doomed effort. I am happy expending more American treasure and potentially even lives to try to protect as many of those we brought along with us on our long, long ride tilting at those windmills. Hell, it's frankly cheap to do so compared to how many hundreds of billions we poured into that country. I would be fine with a basically nearly open door policy towards Afghans interested in getting the fuck out.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 16, 2021, 12:21:47 PM
I think the notion of an orderly, deliberate withdrawal is a bit of magical thinkiing. What reason is there to think that if we had withdrawn 100 men a week the Afghan army wouldn't have collectively decided overnight that it was not worth it to fight?
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 12:37:11 PM
I am trying to figure out what should have been done instead.
An orderly withdrawal? Isn't that what we've been doing for like the last decade and a half?
The fact that 5000 troops are being sent BACK to Afghanistan now to help evacuate the US citizens and dependents currently "sheltering in place" in country strongly suggests that there was ample room for improvement in the original plan.
For example, maybe NOT withdraw the 5000 troops until after the US personnel was evacuated.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 12:01:02 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 10:20:10 AM
I think fears about our "allies" need to be tempered with an understanding of what sort of allies we should want, our allies should generally have a naturally mutually beneficial position to our own.
The Kurds met that definition by any fair assessment. For a very long time they were loyal and reliable partners and effective fighters to boot. And if those are the kinds of allies you want, you need to have a reputation for being a reliable partner yourself.
True, but Kurds got into trouble with another important US ally. So the question became which was more important to US geopolitical interests: Containing Russia or fighting ISIS?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 12:39:34 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 16, 2021, 12:21:47 PM
I think the notion of an orderly, deliberate withdrawal is a bit of magical thinkiing. What reason is there to think that if we had withdrawn 100 men a week the Afghan army wouldn't have collectively decided overnight that it was not worth it to fight?
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 12:37:11 PM
I am trying to figure out what should have been done instead.
An orderly withdrawal? Isn't that what we've been doing for like the last decade and a half?
The fact that 5000 troops are being sent BACK to Afghanistan now to help evacuate the US citizens and dependents currently "sheltering in place" in country strongly suggests that there was ample room for improvement in the original plan.
For example, maybe NOT withdraw the 5000 troops until after the US personnel was evacuated.
That is most definitely a detail.
Of course there is no question that we look like morons for letting the situation get out of control.
But that isn't what I was asking, and I think you know that.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 16, 2021, 12:21:47 PM
I think the notion of an orderly, deliberate withdrawal is a bit of magical thinkiing. What reason is there to think that if we had withdrawn 100 men a week the Afghan army wouldn't have collectively decided overnight that it was not worth it to fight?
I agree that it's magical thinking if you believe that withdrawing 100 men a week would've caused the Afghan army to decide to fight rather than roll over, though I'm not sure what that has to do with the notion of an orderly withdrawal?
I think mainitaining a robust fighting perimeter while non-combatants leave in an orderly fashion, and where those Afghans at risk for reprisals by the Taliban for collaborating with the US could be properly processed and helped (to leave the country in many cases) in a semi-safe and organized fashion would've been preferable to the scenes we are seeing now.
Quote from: Neil on August 16, 2021, 12:40:15 PM
True, but Kurds got into trouble with another important US ally. So the question became which was more important to US geopolitical interests: Containing Russia or fighting ISIS?
I don't believe purchasing the S 400 from Russia is an effective containment strategy.
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 12:37:11 PM
I am trying to figure out what should have been done instead.
An orderly withdrawal? Isn't that what we've been doing for like the last decade and a half?
I am not trying to put gloss on anything. I am trying to understand what the failure was - and given what has happened, it seems pretty clear to me that the last fucking two decades has been a trillion dollar pig lip glossing, and staying even longer would just have meant more really, really expensive lip gloss being added on top of the 15 years that has been slathered on there already.
I am not indifferent to the suffering that is going to happen. Just not sure, given what we know now, how it could be avoided other then just staying and occupying the country basically forever. If it could not get done in 20 years, how much longer is it going to take?
I think we did go in there so we at the very least owe it to those who tried to help us in this doomed effort. I am happy expending more American treasure and potentially even lives to try to protect as many of those we brought along with us on our long, long ride tilting at those windmills. Hell, it's frankly cheap to do so compared to how many hundreds of billions we poured into that country. I would be fine with a basically nearly open door policy towards Afghans interested in getting the fuck out.
So to get specific:
1. Temporary deployment of troops to manage withdrawal, probably bringing to a total 7500 or so our forces in Kabul.
2. Seize control of the Kabul airport
3. Seize control of roads leading to the Kabul airport
At that point you tell the Taliban we aren't there to fight, but 7500 U.S. forces concentrated in a small area would probably be able to inflict a massive amount of death on Taliban trying to attack them. Let them know we're just focused on moving people out, and that we plan to leave on X date when that is over. Given how they've been behaving, they most likely leave the situation alone (right now they aren't even sending forces into the diplomatic district of Kabul, giving it a wide berth.)
Instead we waited until the airport had basically already fallen before we appeared to much do anything.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 16, 2021, 12:21:47 PM
I think the notion of an orderly, deliberate withdrawal is a bit of magical thinkiing. What reason is there to think that if we had withdrawn 100 men a week the Afghan army wouldn't have collectively decided overnight that it was not worth it to fight?
Isn't it more the Taliban would decide it wasn't worth the fight? If they know/knew the country was ready to fall into their laps why risk that by fighting the Americans.
QuoteThe fact that 5000 troops are being sent BACK to Afghanistan now to help evacuate the US citizens and dependents currently "sheltering in place" in country strongly suggests that there was ample room for improvement in the original plan.
But doesn't that happen anyway? I don't think anyone was considering an orderly withdrawal of US civilians or citizens plus Afghan support staff. No one was in effect trying to dismantly the American support the Afghan government.
So unless the orderly withdrawal is accompanied by an orderly increase in power by the Taliban, you have the same situation of them waiting and then moving swiftly and comprehensively across the country putting civilians/citizens/Afghan support at risk. And I think there's a very good reason for the Taliban to act swiftly and not build up slowly which is that resistance would be likely to increase the more people can see Taliban rule. I think Kabul is less likely to fall very quickly if there's been three or four months of people watching the Taliban rule in Kandahar, say.
Sheilbh I don't disagree which is why I advocated the stick with the status quo policy in this thread.
You can say that Biden was taken by surprise and didn't realize in advance how fast he'd have to pull out non-combat personnel but that's the risk his policy ran. And when events turn adverse, the buck stops with the man at the top.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 12:42:49 PM
So to get specific:
1. Temporary deployment of troops to manage withdrawal, probably bringing to a total 7500 or so our forces in Kabul.
2. Seize control of the Kabul airport
3. Seize control of roads leading to the Kabul airport
At that point you tell the Taliban we aren't there to fight, but 7500 U.S. forces concentrated in a small area would probably be able to inflict a massive amount of death on Taliban trying to attack them. Let them know we're just focused on moving people out, and that we plan to leave on X date when that is over. Given how they've been behaving, they most likely leave the situation alone (right now they aren't even sending forces into the diplomatic district of Kabul, giving it a wide berth.)
Instead we waited until the airport had basically already fallen before we appeared to much do anything.
For example, yes.
It would've been good to have processed the status of translators and other collaborators (and their families), and have a plan for getting them out of the country if/ when necessary to avoid Taliban reprisals. Which, it turns out, is pretty much now.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 12:44:42 PM
So unless the orderly withdrawal is accompanied by an orderly increase in power by the Taliban, you have the same situation of them waiting and then moving swiftly and comprehensively across the country putting civilians/citizens/Afghan support at risk. And I think there's a very good reason for the Taliban to act swiftly and not build up slowly which is that resistance would be likely to increase the more people can see Taliban rule. I think Kabul is less likely to fall very quickly if there's been three or four months of people watching the Taliban rule in Kandahar, say.
The point of the orderly withdrawal is not that it'll decrease the chances that the Taliban takes over - it won't. The point of an orderly withdrawal is that people who worked with the West are less likely to get executed by the Taliban because they're waiting for a visa to be processed (because they have to apply at the German consulate in New Delhi or whatever), and that where possible fewer tangible benefits (such as military materiel) are left to fall into Taliban hands.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 12:42:49 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 12:37:11 PM
I am trying to figure out what should have been done instead.
An orderly withdrawal? Isn't that what we've been doing for like the last decade and a half?
I am not trying to put gloss on anything. I am trying to understand what the failure was - and given what has happened, it seems pretty clear to me that the last fucking two decades has been a trillion dollar pig lip glossing, and staying even longer would just have meant more really, really expensive lip gloss being added on top of the 15 years that has been slathered on there already.
I am not indifferent to the suffering that is going to happen. Just not sure, given what we know now, how it could be avoided other then just staying and occupying the country basically forever. If it could not get done in 20 years, how much longer is it going to take?
I think we did go in there so we at the very least owe it to those who tried to help us in this doomed effort. I am happy expending more American treasure and potentially even lives to try to protect as many of those we brought along with us on our long, long ride tilting at those windmills. Hell, it's frankly cheap to do so compared to how many hundreds of billions we poured into that country. I would be fine with a basically nearly open door policy towards Afghans interested in getting the fuck out.
So to get specific:
1. Temporary deployment of troops to manage withdrawal, probably bringing to a total 7500 or so our forces in Kabul.
2. Seize control of the Kabul airport
3. Seize control of roads leading to the Kabul airport
At that point you tell the Taliban we aren't there to fight, but 7500 U.S. forces concentrated in a small area would probably be able to inflict a massive amount of death on Taliban trying to attack them. Let them know we're just focused on moving people out, and that we plan to leave on X date when that is over. Given how they've been behaving, they most likely leave the situation alone (right now they aren't even sending forces into the diplomatic district of Kabul, giving it a wide berth.)
Instead we waited until the airport had basically already fallen before we appeared to much do anything.
I am talking about what we should have done overall - not how we should have better managed what we did do.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 12:42:34 PM
Quote from: Neil on August 16, 2021, 12:40:15 PM
True, but Kurds got into trouble with another important US ally. So the question became which was more important to US geopolitical interests: Containing Russia or fighting ISIS?
I don't believe purchasing the S 400 from Russia is an effective containment strategy.
No, but maintaining control of the Bosphrous is.
Turkey has become less reliable over time, and has been squabbling with other US allies for decades. But the question is whether they offer more value towards advancing larger US goals than the Kurds.
Quote from: Jacob on August 16, 2021, 12:49:57 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 12:42:49 PM
So to get specific:
1. Temporary deployment of troops to manage withdrawal, probably bringing to a total 7500 or so our forces in Kabul.
2. Seize control of the Kabul airport
3. Seize control of roads leading to the Kabul airport
At that point you tell the Taliban we aren't there to fight, but 7500 U.S. forces concentrated in a small area would probably be able to inflict a massive amount of death on Taliban trying to attack them. Let them know we're just focused on moving people out, and that we plan to leave on X date when that is over. Given how they've been behaving, they most likely leave the situation alone (right now they aren't even sending forces into the diplomatic district of Kabul, giving it a wide berth.)
Instead we waited until the airport had basically already fallen before we appeared to much do anything.
For example, yes.
It would've been good to have processed the status of translators and other collaborators (and their families), and have a plan for getting them out of the country if/ when necessary to avoid Taliban reprisals. Which, it turns out, is pretty much now.
This sounds simple. I suspect it is not.
After all....the expectation is that the US would withdraw, and the Afghan National government would maintain control of some part of the country, including Kabul, and there would not be a need for a mass evacuation.
Perhaps that is a pipe dream, but that was the idea.
You can't say "Hey, the US is leaving, but we have left a powerful miliary capable of defending the country! It's going to be fine! Also.....please have everyone who would be needed to help run that government, and everyone who might be in danger should that government fall, start evacuating right now...."
You don't know you need emergency evacuation until the emergency, and it seems pretty clear that the US was expecting that the Afghan Nationals would be able to hold onto the critical pieces of the country.
Now, this doesn't really excuse the mess per se - but I don't think it is nearly as simple as it is being made out to be.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 12:48:30 PM
Sheilbh I don't disagree which is why I advocated the stick with the status quo policy in this thread.
You can say that Biden was taken by surprise and didn't realize in advance how fast he'd have to pull out non-combat personnel but that's the risk his policy ran. And when events turn adverse, the buck stops with the man at the top.
I think that's fair.
My view is that I don't think Biden has been lying about this - I think his statements probably reflected the advice and information he received from intelligence services, the State department and the military. Plus they reflect the American foreign policy consensus. I don't think there's ever been a President who's more embedded in and from that consensus/community. I think there is real shock in that world. But he took the decision and it is his responsibility.
But I think the alternative is probably a permanent ongoing presence in Afghanistan. I'm not sure it's justified - and I certainly think you need to make an argument for that (which would change the Taliban's behaviour and make them far more aggressive/trying to force the West out) rather than just carry on the status quo as if that level of permanence isn't a shift/change in policy.
QuoteThe point of the orderly withdrawal is not that it'll decrease the chances that the Taliban takes over - it won't. The point of an orderly withdrawal is that people who worked with the West are less likely to get executed by the Taliban because they're waiting for a visa to be processed (because they have to apply at the German consulate in New Delhi or whatever), and that where possible fewer tangible benefits (such as military materiel) are left to fall into Taliban hands.
I get that. My point is that if the Taliban follow the same strategy - and there's good reasons for them to do so - then you're facing the same result unless you position your orderly withdrawal as not jut troops but embassy staff, Afghans who've worked for you and basically admit the Afghan state is going to collapse.
I don't think you can have an orderly withdrawal of troops without the Taliban waiting you out and this situation.
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 01:07:24 PM
This sounds simple. I suspect it is not.
After all....the expectation is that the US would withdraw, and the Afghan National government would maintain control of some part of the country, including Kabul, and there would not be a need for a mass evacuation.
Perhaps that is a pipe dream, but that was the idea.
You can't say "Hey, the US is leaving, but we have left a powerful miliary capable of defending the country! It's going to be fine! Also.....please have everyone who would be needed to help run that government, and everyone who might be in danger should that government fall, start evacuating right now...."
You don't know you need emergency evacuation until the emergency, and it seems pretty clear that the US was expecting that the Afghan Nationals would be able to hold onto the critical pieces of the country.
Now, this doesn't really excuse the mess per se - but I don't think it is nearly as simple as it is being made out to be.
Fair points. It's probably not particularly simple, and organizing a withdrawal when you think things are going to continue on for a while is probably a very difficult needle to thread. And you're also right that it doesn't excuse the mess. There were obviously (in retrospect) a number of failure points along the way, and people are paying the price for it.
Something that shouldn't be forgotten is Biden campaigned on a promise to withdraw. At some point we should actually get out of wars that our public consistently wants us out of; it's easy for the Ivory Tower types ala Minsky to advocate for staying there forever, he's not getting deployed.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 01:46:24 PM
Something that shouldn't be forgotten is Biden campaigned on a promise to withdraw. At some point we should actually get out of wars that our public consistently wants us out of; it's easy for the Ivory Tower types ala Minsky to advocate for staying there forever, he's not getting deployed.
I spot about 3 logical fallacies in 2 sentences.
There's certainly merit to the pull out policy. But as we've begun to see, there are downsides.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 01:09:01 PM
My view is that I don't think Biden has been lying about this - I think his statements probably reflected the advice and information he received from intelligence services, the State department and the military. Plus they reflect the American foreign policy consensus. I don't think there's ever been a President who's more embedded in and from that consensus/community. I think there is real shock in that world.
Sure but it's a useful reminder that there are certain dysfunctions in the operation of government that were not unique toTrump. The National Security mandarins - Otto might call them ivory-tower types - have a natural tendency to groupthink. Add that to the fact that Biden's people know what the big man wants and even though he is far from a Trump, all else equal people prefer bringing news the boss likes to hear. And on the flip side, the boss tends to hear what he wants to hear, crediting the intel and advice that best supports his position, minimizing what does against it.
Wishful thinking + groupthink + confirmation bias is a very powerful force.
QuoteBut I think the alternative is probably a permanent ongoing presence in Afghanistan. I'm not sure it's justified - and I certainly think you need to make an argument for that (which would change the Taliban's behaviour and make them far more aggressive/trying to force the West out) rather than just carry on the status quo as if that level of permanence isn't a shift/change in policy.
The argument at is simplest: don't fix what ain't broke.
Quote
I get that. My point is that if the Taliban follow the same strategy - and there's good reasons for them to do so - then you're facing the same result unless you position your orderly withdrawal as not jut troops but embassy staff, Afghans who've worked for you and basically admit the Afghan state is going to collapse.
With the power of hindsight, that was clearly the way to go.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 01:09:01 PM
I get that. My point is that if the Taliban follow the same strategy - and there's good reasons for them to do so - then you're facing the same result unless you position your orderly withdrawal as not jut troops but embassy staff, Afghans who've worked for you and basically admit the Afghan state is going to collapse.
I don't think you can have an orderly withdrawal of troops without the Taliban waiting you out and this situation.
Sure. So you don't start with "it'll be a total collapse, let's evacuate everyone" as your plan A because it's politically untenable. But it'd be good and competent if there was a solid risk analysis that indicated that a total collapse was a risk, and a plan to enact if a total collapse came sooner than expected.
Hindsight, of course, but that doesn't make it less true.
It seems pretty clear that the overall thinking must have been something like "ok, if all of the cities except Kabul fall, we'll start pulling it all out, and the ANA will make some of fighting "last stand" and give us to time, maybe a couple weeks, to pull it all out in a somewhat orderly fashion".
They clearly didn't except/plan for it all go under inside a weekend.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 16, 2021, 02:08:17 PM
It seems pretty clear that the overall thinking must have been something like "ok, if all of the cities except Kabul fall, we'll start pulling it all out, and the ANA will make some of fighting "last stand" and give us to time, maybe a couple weeks, to pull it all out in a somewhat orderly fashion".
They clearly didn't except/plan for it all go under inside a weekend.
Makes sense.
And when you put it like that, it also makes perfect sense for the ANA to not make some sort of fighting "last stand" if they can get terms (even if it means the deaths of those who are closest to the US and allies).
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 01:48:42 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 01:46:24 PM
Something that shouldn't be forgotten is Biden campaigned on a promise to withdraw. At some point we should actually get out of wars that our public consistently wants us out of; it's easy for the Ivory Tower types ala Minsky to advocate for staying there forever, he's not getting deployed.
I spot about 3 logical fallacies in 2 sentences.
There's certainly merit to the pull out policy. But as we've begun to see, there are downsides.
You can spot as many as you want--we live in a country where Presidents campaign for office and make campaign promises. It is a reasonable approximation of public will when people elect someone (particularly by the margins Biden was elected.) We sent him to Washington to do things like this. The American people have said your desired billions of dollars a year never-ending deployment in Afghanistan needs to end.
FY2019 expenditure in Afghanistan (and this is only the special line item appropriated for OSF, the real cost is higher) was $46bn. That adds up over time, and when the only logical reason for it is "some people will have better lives", that's a precedent I'm not comfortable setting. Obviously we wouldn't go do it, but you could make that argument for dozens of countries. I'd much rather us draw a line in the sand that we as the United States do not perpetuate endless military commitments to countries when those commitments do not serve U.S. interests.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 16, 2021, 02:08:17 PM
It seems pretty clear that the overall thinking must have been something like "ok, if all of the cities except Kabul fall, we'll start pulling it all out, and the ANA will make some of fighting "last stand" and give us to time, maybe a couple weeks, to pull it all out in a somewhat orderly fashion".
They clearly didn't except/plan for it all go under inside a weekend.
Standard analysis would be that the Taliban is an insurgent force, lacking in a lot of the things that make major offensive against entrenched regular forces in large number successful. Insurgents work by attacking where you're dispersed and weak, not by hitting at your strength. It's a non-trivial thing for an insurgent force to take a city defended by a large, regular military. Especially one that has the backing of an air force (Afghanistan had its own air force.) The long term understanding would be that with the Taliban controlling most of the country side, you'd have morale issues and steady desertions, and eventually probably a collapse. I fully believe given all the handovers for cash that were happening, Biden was told about those and that the government wasn't going to last indefinitely.
But I also suspect he was told that Taliban irregulars just don't have the muscle to push out the real military that quickly. The truth is they don't, if the Afghan National Army had called its 20,000 special forces guys in from the provinces, entrenched and fought, it's possible the Taliban would've taken a year or longer to degrade overall conditions in the country to the point enough people had deserted that the Kabul government collapsed, and then the Taliban could've moved in. Look to Syria where entrenched Assad forces were able to hold cities where they were ringed by insurgents basically indefinitely. I think the big miss was they assumed that most of these defections for cash were going to stay in more of the rural provinces and wouldn't involve literally the entire military including the entire force defending Kabul turning coat, most without firing a single shot.
I wonder how long it would take for Taliban to start their purges once they break the back of the idea of organized resistance to them. Historically, the problem with surrendering power to an overwhelming force is that you're even more powerless to stop them from renegotiating the terms afterwards. The Mongols likewise often got cities to surrender through threats of massacre, and everyone knew their word was good on that, but sometimes they massacred those who surrendered anyway.
By the looks of things the outcome of the US withdrawal was different than the assumptions Biden had used to make his decision. Has anyone changed their mind based on the events of the past weekend (about keeping troops in the country long term, I mean, not about the withdrawal was handled or the immediate need to bring back forces)? What would convince you to change your mind?
I voted that Biden made the right decision. The collapse of the central government has not changed my mind. If the Taliban takes control of one of Afghanistan's neighbors (especially Pakistan) or if there's another 9/11 style attack on western(ish) country then I will admit that I was wrong.
Quote from: The Brain on August 16, 2021, 11:13:17 AM
Hardly wasted. We have provided the Taliban with a LOT of military hardware.
And created a huge market for replacement parts, ammo, and maintenance contracts. :lol:
I hope that Taliban learned to not get itself involved in the US business just as much as the US learned not to get itself involved in the Afghan business. I think Taliban would've preferred to stay in power these last 20 years rather than wait for the US to leave.
There was still a pretty formidable resistance to the Taliban 20 years ago...there will not be any of much significance now (not that is currently foreseeable).
A 20-year delay is still a bit much, though.
(https://www.defenseone.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2021/08/16/IMG_0084.jpg)
Quote from: Savonarola on August 16, 2021, 04:00:38 PM
I voted that Biden made the right decision. The collapse of the central government has not changed my mind.
In the immediate case, there is no question withdrawal was 100% the right decision. Imagine he got anything approaching accurate intelligence and honestly conveyed that to the American people:
"My fellow Americans, it has been brought to my attention that after 20 years and trillions of dollars, we have made zero progress creating an Afghan government and military able and willing to put up even the slightest level of resistance. I have therefore recommitted us to the military operation, and am hopeful that success will come someday soon."
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 16, 2021, 05:52:18 PM
(https://www.defenseone.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2021/08/16/IMG_0084.jpg)
Just imagine how much better Afghanistan would be if that many people fought for goodness.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 16, 2021, 05:52:18 PM
(https://www.defenseone.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2021/08/16/IMG_0084.jpg)
Let's annotate this picture with the names and birth dates of everyone while we're at it, no need to waste Taliban's time as it figures out who deserves retribution for disloyalty.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 16, 2021, 05:56:28 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on August 16, 2021, 04:00:38 PM
I voted that Biden made the right decision. The collapse of the central government has not changed my mind.
In the immediate case, there is no question withdrawal was 100% the right decision. Imagine he got anything approaching accurate intelligence and honestly conveyed that to the American people:
"My fellow Americans, it has been brought to my attention that after 20 years and trillions of dollars, we have made zero progress creating an Afghan government and military able and willing to put up even the slightest level of resistance. I have therefore recommitted us to the military operation, and am hopeful that success will come someday soon."
Yeah, exactly.
I mean - we learned something, and that knowledge certainly doesn't make me think leaving was some kind of missed opportunity.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 16, 2021, 11:54:41 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 11:36:46 AM
Depends on what the US wants out of this process. A world with a bunch of regional alliances may be a lot less stable than one in which large numbers of countries are dependant on the US. These regional alliances may not uphold US interests. Is the cost to the US worth the influence it buys?
An emphatic answer is "absolutely not". Afghanistan is a tremendously poor and irrelevant country on the other side of the world. Two trillion spent in every such country will bankrupt the US quite quickly. This isn't even a close call.
QuoteNow it may well be that the Afghanistan Taliban has "learned its lesson" and will not host anti-US terrorists again - or maybe not.
And if it hasn't we can go back, fix the problem, and leave. Pakistan was playing host to Bin Laden for a while: we didn't occupy that country for 20 years or even a day. Way more cost effective than the Afghanistan boondoggle.
The issue isn't whether the US ought to have gone to Afghanistan in the first place. That's a separate argument.
The issue is, having gone, should it have left; and if so, should it have left in this particular manner, which seems designed to produce disaster, discourage allies, and encourage enemies.
No-one is suggesting that the US go everywhere and fix everything.
An argument can certainly be made that the US, having spent so much, needed a viable exit strategy. Is this particular strategy a good idea though?
Quote from: DGuller on August 16, 2021, 06:46:51 PM
Let's annotate this picture with the names and birth dates of everyone while we're at it, no need to waste Taliban's time as it figures out who deserves retribution for disloyalty.
I think those are the people who got on the plane. If the Taliban is going to go gunning for them in whatever country they end up in, then they're opening themselves up for trouble.
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
I don't think the Ghani government was interested in negotiating a surrender to the Taliban. I also don't think a U.S. President can parlay a surrender agreement between Ghani and the Taliban, there are political concerns too.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
I don't think everyone knew that this collapse was inevitable. Did you? I didn't.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
That is a dramatically worse idea. We spent 20 years building a military that could stand on its own against the Taliban. Obviously it didn't even begin to scratch the surface of adequate, but the scope of the failure is evident because of the collapse. You surrender to the Taliban and for the rest of your life you are hearing people argue that Biden sold out the Afghan people, and stories of how brave the army was, etc.
Remember that Nixon's Paris Peace Accords were considered a major coup for him and Kissinger. Not because they achieved anything that was a strategic goal of the United States, but because they engineered a political moment where Nixon could take credit for getting "peace with dignity" in Vietnam, as he promised in his campaign (and ignoring the fact he actually spent his initial years in office expanding the war illegally into Cambodia and Laos.) That's most likely the sort of agreement Trump was fishing for, but couldn't find, and to be frank it'd be the same sort of agreement Biden would need as well. It wouldn't matter how it worked out long term, it would just matter that it could be called a win for a year or so.
The issue is unlike the North Vietnamese, who could easily afford to sign an agreement like that, the Taliban really couldn't. The North Vietnamese were a real country with a lot of resources. The Taliban signing such an agreement would put them at real risk of trouble within their own ranks, and would have created a power vacuum that could have seen the reemergence of sectarian warlords and other forces.
Perhaps their women should done the fighting. Probably would have made better fighters.
The conduct of the Afghan security forces was disgraceful. They deserve what they had the lack of will to fight against. We owe them no apologies.
I'm not very knowledgeable of Afghan war policy or history. Would a complete American withdrawal after Bin Laden was killed been a better point of departure?
Also, while it isn't in the top 1,000 of things I hate in the world, I'm not sure why we should be evacuating those who collaborated with us.
We were initially there to push out Al Qaeda, but after that it was more or less a humanitarian mission to help the Afghans help themselves. While that was as stupid an idea as humanitarian wars always are, those who collaborated weren't advancing our interests--they were ostensibly advancing their own nation's or at least their own pocketbooks. Not sure why they should get a lotto first world plane ticket when things go bad, and I think that actually sets a bad precedent for the future: maybe people would fight harder if their backs were really against the wall.
Quote from: 11B4V on August 16, 2021, 08:29:07 PM
The conduct of the Afghan security forces was disgraceful. They deserve what they had the lack of will to fight against.
Will to fight? They were all sold out by their political masters. Who would fight for a government where everyone either switched sides or took a private plane out?
Quote from: alfred russel on August 16, 2021, 08:33:11 PM
Also, while it isn't in the top 1,000 of things I hate in the world, I'm not sure why we should be evacuating those who collaborated with us.
We were initially there to push out Al Qaeda, but after that it was more or less a humanitarian mission to help the Afghans help themselves. While that was as stupid an idea as humanitarian wars always are, those who collaborated weren't advancing our interests--they were ostensibly advancing their own nation's or at least their own pocketbooks. Not sure why they should get a lotto first world plane ticket when things go bad, and I think that actually sets a bad precedent for the future: maybe people would fight harder if their backs were really against the wall.
Yes it sets a great precedent for the future that anyone who helps US forces overseas will be sold out when convenient. No doubt America will win many more friends with such a policy.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 08:43:04 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on August 16, 2021, 08:29:07 PM
The conduct of the Afghan security forces was disgraceful. They deserve what they had the lack of will to fight against.
Will to fight? They were all sold out by their political masters. Who would fight for a government where everyone either switched sides or took a private plane out?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html
QuoteGunfire erupts. At least a dozen men are seen shot to death amid cries of "Allahu Akhbar" -- God is Great.
The victims were members of an Afghan Special Forces unit: their executioners, the Taliban. The summary killings took place on June 16 in the town of Dawlat Abad in Faryab province, close to Afghanistan's border with Turkmenistan.
CNN has obtained and verified several videos of the incident and has spoken with witnesses.
Videos show the commandos' bodies strewn across an outdoor market. After a fierce battle to hold the town, the commandos had run out of ammunition and were surrounded by the Taliban fighters, witnesses said.
I doubt soldiers of any other nationality would have acquitted themselves better.
A credit to American training perhaps. But not to American commitment.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
that was basically the deal Trump-Pompeo made last year with the Talibans. They immediatly launch assaults against the Afghan security forces and US troops. And Russia has been paying them a bounty for each American soldier killed.
Quote from: Jacob on August 16, 2021, 02:02:52 PM
Sure. So you don't start with "it'll be a total collapse, let's evacuate everyone" as your plan A because it's politically untenable. But it'd be good and competent if there was a solid risk analysis that indicated that a total collapse was a risk, and a plan to enact if a total collapse came sooner than expected.
Hindsight, of course, but that doesn't make it less true.
I agree - although I don't know what that plan looks like. You know just to use the example of Kabul the airport is still held by Western forces, but the roads to the airport and the city are now held by the Taliban. I don't know how you can necessarily get people - as we should be trying - without fighting the Taliban for control of the places people live and a route to the airport.
QuoteIt seems pretty clear that the overall thinking must have been something like "ok, if all of the cities except Kabul fall, we'll start pulling it all out, and the ANA will make some of fighting "last stand" and give us to time, maybe a couple weeks, to pull it all out in a somewhat orderly fashion".
They clearly didn't except/plan for it all go under inside a weekend.
So I flagged that I think this is largely a political and intelligence success for the Taliban. But I understand there was at least some cleverness on the military front too - it is pretty basic but I understand that they basically feinted, the ANA and in particular the special forces, went to that area of the country. Then the Taliban started rolling up defections on the other side of the country and that area was clearly the focus.
Quote
I wonder how long it would take for Taliban to start their purges once they break the back of the idea of organized resistance to them. Historically, the problem with surrendering power to an overwhelming force is that you're even more powerless to stop them from renegotiating the terms afterwards. The Mongols likewise often got cities to surrender through threats of massacre, and everyone knew their word was good on that, but sometimes they massacred those who surrendered anyway.
From what I've seen they have already started in the cities they've occupied. But it does seem still slightly more mixed or pragmatically dealing with the reality of Afghanistan than they were in the 90s (it might help that despite support from UAE and Saudi - they don't have as many outsiders around). So there's been meetings with the Hindu and Sikh communities in Kabul, but also a Shi'ite procession in Western Kabul (I think it's coming up to Ashura). The Taliban had assured the Shi'ite that they would be allowed to hold parades. If that holds then that is a shift.
QuoteWill to fight? They were all sold out by their political masters. Who would fight for a government where everyone either switched sides or took a private plane out?
Yes I agree. And they absolutely were sold out. But I think the bigger issue that has become clear is that the government had lost all legitimacy. Fleeing is just the ultimate expression of that, but as I say I think this is a political victory for the Taliban so I think we probably need to focus on it more as a political defeat for the government the West backed (and the West) rather than the failure of the army.
The state melted the second the Taliban arrived and that only happens if there's basically nothing real there and I think that's probably where I'd be focusing the post-mortem not on the military element - it's a part of it, for sure. But for all the money and advisors and NGOs and international bodies operating in Afghanistan for the last 20 years they could not produce a durable and legitimate set of political institutions (I think there's probably an argument there was too much money) - and I don't think Afghanistan's unique in that.
I don't know you'd hope that Ashraf Ghani who is an expert on failed states would have the insights for that. But I don't think it's will to fight if you're an army and there's no state to fight for and, it seems, the Afghan people weren't particularly engaged by it - then I think it's really difficult to see how or for what the army can fight.
Video of a Taliban reciting a Quran verse in Ghani's office - the thing I find kind of fascinating about this video is in the last 20 seconds you can see a guy who is not like the rest of them dressed in a suit and from the bit at the end it looks like he is possibly someone who works in the Presidential palace taking them on to the next room in the tour:
https://twitter.com/ArifCRafiq/status/1426992712390172679?s=20
Edit: Reports of multiple Taliban checkpoints along the road to the airport - very difficult to see who they'll actually be letting get to it :(
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 16, 2021, 08:45:56 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 16, 2021, 08:33:11 PM
Also, while it isn't in the top 1,000 of things I hate in the world, I'm not sure why we should be evacuating those who collaborated with us.
We were initially there to push out Al Qaeda, but after that it was more or less a humanitarian mission to help the Afghans help themselves. While that was as stupid an idea as humanitarian wars always are, those who collaborated weren't advancing our interests--they were ostensibly advancing their own nation's or at least their own pocketbooks. Not sure why they should get a lotto first world plane ticket when things go bad, and I think that actually sets a bad precedent for the future: maybe people would fight harder if their backs were really against the wall.
Yes it sets a great precedent for the future that anyone who helps US forces overseas will be sold out when convenient. No doubt America will win many more friends with such a policy.
The absence of a golden parachute when things go to shit doesn't equate to being "sold out".
And yeah it would make it tougher to get "friends" like we had in Afghanistan going forward. Whether such friends were all that great, or whether ventures like Afghan nation building should ever be attempted again, is more debatable.
Its not the ruling elites who happened to be running the criminal gang that lost out that people are talking about getting out. Its the little guys who worked as translators and the like.
Sure they were largely motivated by putting food on the table rather than any amazing love of the US. But then thats the top priority for most people- if it isn't (e.g. the true believers amongst the taliban) then there's something wrong with you.
Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 04:51:56 AM
Its not the ruling elites who happened to be running the criminal gang that lost out that people are talking about getting out. Its the little guys who worked as translators and the like.
Sure they were largely motivated by putting food on the table rather than any amazing love of the US. But then thats the top priority for most people- if it isn't (e.g. the true believers amongst the taliban) then there's something wrong with you.
But wouldn't many of them have 'lost out' even if the US had never been involved in Afghanistan?
It feels like the lionshare of the blame to heap on the US is that for nearly two decades, we perpetrated the illusion that they could develop and maintain a westernized society. And that those who bought into that illusory hope have been particularly hard done by.
Quote from: garbon on August 17, 2021, 05:15:37 AM
Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 04:51:56 AM
Its not the ruling elites who happened to be running the criminal gang that lost out that people are talking about getting out. Its the little guys who worked as translators and the like.
Sure they were largely motivated by putting food on the table rather than any amazing love of the US. But then thats the top priority for most people- if it isn't (e.g. the true believers amongst the taliban) then there's something wrong with you.
But wouldn't many of them have 'lost out' even if the US had never been involved in Afghanistan?
It feels like the lionshare of the blame to heap on the US is that for nearly two decades, we perpetrated the illusion that they could develop and maintain a westernized society. And that those who bought into that illusory hope have been particularly hard done by.
Sure, but its like the analogy of adopting a kid then after a few years dumping him back on the street.
And you've dumped him in a bad part of town at night wearing clothes that mark him out as a rich kid.
Had you never adopted him he'd have been stuck in the system and had a shitty life. But by taking responsibility you took him away from that and this is a responsibility you can't just give up at whim, especially to put him in a shitter position than he would have been in as just part of the under privileged crowd.
Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 05:20:27 AM
Quote from: garbon on August 17, 2021, 05:15:37 AM
Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 04:51:56 AM
Its not the ruling elites who happened to be running the criminal gang that lost out that people are talking about getting out. Its the little guys who worked as translators and the like.
Sure they were largely motivated by putting food on the table rather than any amazing love of the US. But then thats the top priority for most people- if it isn't (e.g. the true believers amongst the taliban) then there's something wrong with you.
But wouldn't many of them have 'lost out' even if the US had never been involved in Afghanistan?
It feels like the lionshare of the blame to heap on the US is that for nearly two decades, we perpetrated the illusion that they could develop and maintain a westernized society. And that those who bought into that illusory hope have been particularly hard done by.
Sure, but its like the analogy of adopting a kid then after a few years dumping him back on the street.
And you've dumped him in a bad part of town at night wearing clothes that mark him out as a rich kid.
Had you never adopted him he'd have been stuck in the system and had a shitty life. But by taking responsibility you took him away from that and this is a responsibility you can't just give up at whim, especially to put him in a shitter position than he would have been in as just part of the under privileged crowd.
But it isn't really like that reductive analogy at all. There are many people at risk in Afghanistan now who didn't work with the US but did engage in modern/liberal jobs/lifestyles/practices. Do we have a duty to let them all in as well given we setup the conditions that allowed that sort of life to flourish? How and when is the debt discharged? If we went with your analogy, the child would now be an adult and on their own. :P
Note, I'm not saying that we don't help as many as we can (in fact I think we should) but I'm not sure there should be a moral imperative to evacuate everyone who is in danger. Many people are in the same position all around the world.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 09:36:18 PMI don't know you'd hope that Ashraf Ghani who is an expert on failed states would have the insights for that.
His academic bio prepared him to teach undergraduates. Not rule Afghanistan. I bet he sounded great to State Department morons though.
QuoteBut it isn't really like that reductive analogy at all. There are many people at risk in Afghanistan now who didn't work with the US but did engage in modern/liberal jobs/lifestyles/practices. Do we have a duty to let them all in as well given we setup the conditions that allowed that sort of life to flourish? How and when is the debt discharged? If we went with your analogy, the child would now be an adult and on their own. :P
Note, I'm not saying that we don't help as many as we can (in fact I think we should) but I'm not sure there should be a moral imperative to evacuate everyone who is in danger. Many people are in the same position all around the world.
With the others we're taking away the dumping them in a bad part of town all dressed up part (which was my addition).
So, still a dick move, but they've been less directly put clearly in harms way.
Quote from: Savonarola on August 16, 2021, 04:00:38 PM
By the looks of things the outcome of the US withdrawal was different than the assumptions Biden had used to make his decision. Has anyone changed their mind based on the events of the past weekend (about keeping troops in the country long term, I mean, not about the withdrawal was handled or the immediate need to bring back forces)? What would convince you to change your mind?
I voted that Biden made the right decision. The collapse of the central government has not changed my mind. If the Taliban takes control of one of Afghanistan's neighbors (especially Pakistan) or if there's another 9/11 style attack on western(ish) country then I will admit that I was wrong.
No, it was a terrible idea to withdraw in the first place anyway given the situation, and it has been handled so badly that I don't think even Trump could have done it worse.
Although the speed of collapse has surprised me, I did always think it was going to be disastrous. When you start off by handing your opponents an open-goal in propaganda terms it doesn't say much for the quality of the planners.
Hint: If you are going to announce a withdrawal will be completed before a certain, highly symbolic, date, do not do so when the opponents for whom IT IS ALSO, OR CAN EASILY BE USED AS, A HIGHLY SYMBOLIC DATE ARE STILL IN THE FIELD!!!! You only do that when the opponent has been crushed and is unable to take advantage of the importance it has for their own side.
[Biden was reported in the UK news as saying that all American forces would be home by the anniversary of 9/11; I haven't tracked down the speech to confirm he was that specific but that was how it was reported.]There's also been stories during the withdrawal about Afghan forces being surprised at abrupt departures, or outright not being told when the local Americans were pulling out. This may have been due to security concerns regarding leaks to the Taliban from the local forces but even so I cannot imagine how it could have seemed a good idea to conduct the withdrawal in a way that would have left such a morale crushing impression with the locals who were supposed to keep fighting after the Americans had gone. Not only are the Americans "running away" but they don't "trust us enough to even tell us when they are leaving".
Then the stories such as the huge stockpile of German beer that had to be sent back to Germany...funny, weren't they? Except, of course, the image left by this story is again of a force running away - the stockpile is big enough that it has to be returned to Germany? But then, if the withdrawal has been planned for months and is being done in an orderly fashion why is the stockpile so big? Why has it not been run down to a low level in preparation for the withdrawal?
How the withdrawal was handled, perhaps as much as the actual withdrawal itself, probably dropped the morale of Afghan forces to virtually nothing. As would be suggested by the speed of the collapse.
--------------------------
Anyway, my paralyzed mother, who can do nothing but watch the TV all day, has a more pungent explanation for the collapse, although probably one with a grain of truth to it. "Biden took away their air support".
Quote from: Agelastus on August 17, 2021, 06:44:13 AMHow the withdrawal was handled, perhaps as much as the actual withdrawal itself, probably dropped the morale of Afghan forces to virtually nothing. As would be suggested by the speed of the collapse.
The Afghan army getting steamrolled in about a week without even fighting because the Americans hurt their morale after deciding to leave after 20 years and trillions spent nation-building perfectly encapsulates what a farce this whole effort was in hindsight.
Quote from: Agelastus on August 17, 2021, 06:44:13 AM
Anyway, my paralyzed mother, who can do nothing but watch the TV all day, has a more pungent explanation for the collapse, although probably one with a grain of truth to it. "Biden took away their air support".
Yeah we only gave them trillions of dollars and hundreds of American lives. How much air support does the Taliban have?
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 09:55:30 AM
Quote from: Agelastus on August 17, 2021, 06:44:13 AM
Anyway, my paralyzed mother, who can do nothing but watch the TV all day, has a more pungent explanation for the collapse, although probably one with a grain of truth to it. "Biden took away their air support".
Yeah we only gave them trillions of dollars and hundreds of American lives. How much air support does the Taliban have?
Well more now anyway!
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 04:12:56 AM
The absence of a golden parachute when things go to shit doesn't equate to being "sold out".
Maybe this is hard for you to understand, but being forced to leave the only home you've ever known with nothing but the clothes on your back for an uncertain future in a strange land is very far from being a golden parachute. The prospect of living off minimum wage or public assistance in USA is not the lure you think it is for people who had decent jobs, decent lives, and social standing in Kabul and Kandahar.
QuoteAnd yeah it would make it tougher to get "friends" like we had in Afghanistan going forward. Whether such friends were all that great, or whether ventures like Afghan nation building should ever be attempted again, is more debatable.
It was pretty important to get friends in Afghanistan back in 02 when we were clearing the nests of al Qaeda.
It was even more important to have friends on the ground in Iraq when the ISIS caliphate was trying to take out that domino. Lucky the Bush and Obama administrations did not listen to your line of thinking and ISIS was resisted and then destroyed as an effective force at a minimum cost in American lives, but at a high cost in Kurdish and Iraqi militiamen. Perhaps you thing it would have better if that ratio were reversed? Or perhaps you think an ISIS caliphate from the Med to the Zagros is a perfectly desirable state of affairs and that only naive humanitarians would see any risk in that outcome.
Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 08:26:17 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
I don't think everyone knew that this collapse was inevitable. Did you? I didn't.
I did not.
But then, I'm not someone tasked with understanding that. I have zero military training, I was not in touch with the Afghan forces, and I did not spend twenty years in the country.
Is the contention that the US had no idea what would happen when they suddenly withdrew? That strikes me as a pretty fundamental failure in intelligence gathering.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:24:43 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 16, 2021, 08:11:40 PM
The question is, based on what we know about Afghanistan and our efforts there, how likely is it a departure at any point looks materially different than the departure that we're seeing right now?
Why not simply negotiate a surrender of the nation to the Taliban, allowing an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so in an orderly manner, and withdraw US equipment, if this collapse was inevitable? No doubt the Taliban would have been happy to get such terms.
I don't think the Ghani government was interested in negotiating a surrender to the Taliban. I also don't think a U.S. President can parlay a surrender agreement between Ghani and the Taliban, there are political concerns too.
Why not? The Ghani government must have known their chances were slim without US support. Simply offer them a carrot or a stick.
The US President is no doubt creative enough to dress up a surrender as something else - see Nixon in Vietnam.
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:10:00 PM
The issue isn't whether the US ought to have gone to Afghanistan in the first place. That's a separate argument.
The issue is, having gone, should it have left; and if so, should it have left in this particular manner, which seems designed to produce disaster, discourage allies, and encourage enemies.
No-one is suggesting that the US go everywhere and fix everything.
An argument can certainly be made that the US, having spent so much, needed a viable exit strategy. Is this particular strategy a good idea though?
The US should have announced the departure of US troops in advan... wait.
If you had been in charge of US policy, how would you have arranged a US withdrawal that would not be, in your opinion, "designed to produce disaster, discourage allies, and encourage enemies?"
Any US withdrawal, it seems to me, would do that As did the US staying in Afghanistan. As would the US not going into Afghanistan at all.
The US had a viable exit strategy, and executed it. The Afghan government's remain strategy seems less well-thought-out.
Quote from: grumbler on August 17, 2021, 10:58:18 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 16, 2021, 08:10:00 PM
The issue isn't whether the US ought to have gone to Afghanistan in the first place. That's a separate argument.
The issue is, having gone, should it have left; and if so, should it have left in this particular manner, which seems designed to produce disaster, discourage allies, and encourage enemies.
No-one is suggesting that the US go everywhere and fix everything.
An argument can certainly be made that the US, having spent so much, needed a viable exit strategy. Is this particular strategy a good idea though?
The US should have announced the departure of US troops in advan... wait.
If you had been in charge of US policy, how would you have arranged a US withdrawal that would not be, in your opinion, "designed to produce disaster, discourage allies, and encourage enemies?"
Any US withdrawal, it seems to me, would do that As did the US staying in Afghanistan. As would the US not going into Afghanistan at all.
The US had a viable exit strategy, and executed it. The Afghan government's remain strategy seems less well-thought-out.
Depends on what one's priorities are. The US pull out was handled so as to end US involvement, and it did just that, but at the cost of leaving piles of equipment to US enemies, accelerating the collapse of a US ally, and demonstrating once again the US will not stand by its friends.
I assume the argument will be that any strategy would have resulted in the same shambles. One impossible to now prove or disprove.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 17, 2021, 10:48:33 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 04:12:56 AM
The absence of a golden parachute when things go to shit doesn't equate to being "sold out".
Maybe this is hard for you to understand, but being forced to leave the only home you've ever known with nothing but the clothes on your back for an uncertain future in a strange land is very far from being a golden parachute. The prospect of living off minimum wage or public assistance in USA is not the lure you think it is for people who had decent jobs, decent lives, and social standing in Kabul and Kandahar.
QuoteAnd yeah it would make it tougher to get "friends" like we had in Afghanistan going forward. Whether such friends were all that great, or whether ventures like Afghan nation building should ever be attempted again, is more debatable.
It was pretty important to get friends in Afghanistan back in 02 when we were clearing the nests of al Qaeda.
It was even more important to have friends on the ground in Iraq when the ISIS caliphate was trying to take out that domino. Lucky the Bush and Obama administrations did not listen to your line of thinking and ISIS was resisted and then destroyed as an effective force at a minimum cost in American lives, but at a high cost in Kurdish and Iraqi militiamen. Perhaps you thing it would have better if that ratio were reversed? Or perhaps you think an ISIS caliphate from the Med to the Zagros is a perfectly desirable state of affairs and that only naive humanitarians would see any risk in that outcome.
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests. It is the other side of the world and simply doesn't matter. For humanitarian reasons you may consider to be naive I don't want them to, but I don't think occupying territory militarily for humanitarian reasons is a sound strategy.
And dude, it is a massive golden parachute to get into the US from a place like Afghanistan. Per capita income there is $493 / year. Minimum wage in a place with real workplace protections is pretty damn sweat by comparison.
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 10:52:48 AM
Is the contention that the US had no idea what would happen when they suddenly withdrew? That strikes me as a pretty fundamental failure in intelligence gathering.
Suddenly withdrew? We have been talking about withdrawing for years.
WSJ has a profile of the most visible Taliban leader now.
QuoteIn 2001, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, tried to arrange the group's surrender to the new U.S.-backed Afghan government. It was rejected. He spent most of the past decade under arrest in Pakistan.
It's a fractal clusterfuck no matter what angle you look at the last 20 years from.
https://archive.ph/sDfHg#selection-751.0-751.222 (https://archive.ph/sDfHg#selection-751.0-751.222)
I'm not in love with the 'The US didn't stand by their allies' take.
The US spent twenty years in Afghanistan, and spent a great deal of time and treasure trying to build institutions and striking at the enemies of the new Afghan state. That's twice as long a the occupation of Iraq and three times longer than Japan or Germany. At what point should Afghanistan be expected to be able to deal with these internal security issues without constant and significant foreign support? If the Afghan government has no public support in Afghanistan, is it really appropriate for American troops to maintain a sort of a colonial or Vichy regime?
Maybe they could have done a better job building institutions (although I'd argue that it would be politically unpalatable in the West for the United States to build institutions that would be acceptable to most Afghans), but that would have been an argument for 2002. In 2021, these choices had already been made and the US was in a position of either continuing their permanent occupation in a time where American resources are growing ever thinner, or moving towards a final withdrawal.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 11:12:21 AM
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests.
Control of Iraq and Syria are definitely a big deal in terms of US interests. The US is enormously interested in insuring the supply of Gulf oil to Europe and Asia. A hostile, aggressive caliphate controlling Iraq and threatening the Saudis and the Gulf states is a pretty big deal. Maintaining global trade (without which American prosperity cannot be maintained) is in US interests.
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 11:06:10 AM
Depends on what one's priorities are. The US pull out was handled so as to end US involvement, and it did just that, but at the cost of leaving piles of equipment to US enemies, accelerating the collapse of a US ally, and demonstrating once again the US will not stand by its friends.
Afghanistan is not some friend and ally we were assisting at the request of their citizens and government. We were not invited in.
Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 11:25:23 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 11:12:21 AM
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests.
Control of Iraq and Syria are definitely a big deal in terms of US interests. The US is enormously interested in insuring the supply of Gulf oil to Europe and Asia. A hostile, aggressive caliphate controlling Iraq and threatening the Saudis and the Gulf states is a pretty big deal. Maintaining global trade (without which American prosperity cannot be maintained) is in US interests.
Fortunately virtually everybody seems to agree with us on that point. Even the Russians.
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 11:31:10 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 11:06:10 AM
Depends on what one's priorities are. The US pull out was handled so as to end US involvement, and it did just that, but at the cost of leaving piles of equipment to US enemies, accelerating the collapse of a US ally, and demonstrating once again the US will not stand by its friends.
Afghanistan is not some friend and ally we were assisting at the request of their citizens and government. We were not invited in.
But even if it's a colonial enterprise, you're not going to maintain that forever. The European colonial powers weren't able to hold out indefinitely against the native independence movements, so it stands to reason that the US would eventually have to give in as well. Or if you're looking to just punish America's enemies, maybe a return to more Clintonian strategies of just launching an few air strikes and calling it even would be more productive than what we've seen here.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 11:12:21 AM
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests. It is the other side of the world and simply doesn't matter.
I get that's your view and that's where we disagree. I find the notion that mere separation in space completely insulates a country from any impact from events occurring outside its political borders to be absurd. It would be nice if true - hey, no need to worry about China anymore!
QuoteAnd dude, it is a massive golden parachute to get into the US from a place like Afghanistan. Per capita income there is $493 / year. Minimum wage in a place with real workplace protections is pretty damn sweat by comparison.
Per capita income has nothing to do with it. Much of the Afghan labor force consists of subsistence famers. The official GDP statistics count most of these people at zero because they produce no marketable product. Of course in reality many of these farmers are selling a cash crop. But illicit opium sales don't show up in the GDP accounts.
What is relevant for this inquiry is not the mass of rural famers or even the masses of unemployed in the cities, but the urban middle class that is the most likely to openly support the US and live "Western" lifestyles. This middle class - while a relatively small minority of the overall population - is able to maintain a respectable standard of living because even though their nominal incomes in dollar terms seem low, their costs of living are also very low by Western standards.
If you aren't familiar with the very ample literature on migration and refugees specifically - and if you don't have significant personal anecdotal connections with refugees, it is going to be hard to explain why you are mistaken with this. It can't be done with a flippant one line response. At the highest level, if people though the way you believe, levels of migration legal and illegal would be orders of magnitude greater than they are. This is a known economic puzzle that has been studied and there are many reasons why it is so. For example, from 2005 to 2014, more Mexicans left the US for Mexico then left US for Mexico - something that makes no sense if you view the world from the "golden ticket" perspective.
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 11:31:10 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 11:06:10 AM
Depends on what one's priorities are. The US pull out was handled so as to end US involvement, and it did just that, but at the cost of leaving piles of equipment to US enemies, accelerating the collapse of a US ally, and demonstrating once again the US will not stand by its friends.
Afghanistan is not some friend and ally we were assisting at the request of their citizens and government. We were not invited in.
The "friends" here are the individual Afghanis who aided the US - the ones now so frantic to leave the country. Many of whom did so out of sincere conviction that the US pointed the way to a better form of civilized life.
The lesson here is: aiding the US is risky.
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 11:14:33 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 10:52:48 AM
Is the contention that the US had no idea what would happen when they suddenly withdrew? That strikes me as a pretty fundamental failure in intelligence gathering.
Suddenly withdrew? We have been talking about withdrawing for years.
There are different ways to manage a withdrawal. Apparently in this case it was pretty sudden.
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 12:24:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 11:31:10 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 11:06:10 AM
Depends on what one's priorities are. The US pull out was handled so as to end US involvement, and it did just that, but at the cost of leaving piles of equipment to US enemies, accelerating the collapse of a US ally, and demonstrating once again the US will not stand by its friends.
Afghanistan is not some friend and ally we were assisting at the request of their citizens and government. We were not invited in.
The "friends" here are the individual Afghanis who aided the US - the ones now so frantic to leave the country. Many of whom did so out of sincere conviction that the US pointed the way to a better form of civilized life.
The lesson here is: aiding the US is risky.
And I am all for aiding that tiny minority of Afghanistan who did not see us as a distasteful occupying force.
As for the lesson, it depends on your circumstances doesn't it? I would say backing a foreign occupation is usually risky.
Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 11:20:46 AM
I'm not in love with the 'The US didn't stand by their allies' take.
The US spent twenty years in Afghanistan, and spent a great deal of time and treasure trying to build institutions and striking at the enemies of the new Afghan state. That's twice as long a the occupation of Iraq and three times longer than Japan or Germany. At what point should Afghanistan be expected to be able to deal with these internal security issues without constant and significant foreign support? If the Afghan government has no public support in Afghanistan, is it really appropriate for American troops to maintain a sort of a colonial or Vichy regime?
Maybe they could have done a better job building institutions (although I'd argue that it would be politically unpalatable in the West for the United States to build institutions that would be acceptable to most Afghans), but that would have been an argument for 2002. In 2021, these choices had already been made and the US was in a position of either continuing their permanent occupation in a time where American resources are growing ever thinner, or moving towards a final withdrawal.
The US is still in Korea. There are more troops there, than there were in Afghanistan prior to the withdrawal (some 28k).
Clearly, in some cases, it considers long-term engagement in its interests. No-one considers Korea a Vichy regime or a colonial imposition (other than the North Koreans).
A central question is why government-building succeeded in Korea.
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 12:25:34 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 11:14:33 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 10:52:48 AM
Is the contention that the US had no idea what would happen when they suddenly withdrew? That strikes me as a pretty fundamental failure in intelligence gathering.
Suddenly withdrew? We have been talking about withdrawing for years.
There are different ways to manage a withdrawal. Apparently in this case it was pretty sudden.
I mean we have been steadily drawing down our involvement for years and Biden promised to do this if elected over a year ago. Then he announced the date of withdrawal in the Spring, several months ago.
Eventually, no matter how steadily we backed out, we would reach a tipping point where the Taliban would feel comfortable enough to move in.
Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 11:25:23 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 11:12:21 AM
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests.
Control of Iraq and Syria are definitely a big deal in terms of US interests. The US is enormously interested in insuring the supply of Gulf oil to Europe and Asia. A hostile, aggressive caliphate controlling Iraq and threatening the Saudis and the Gulf states is a pretty big deal. Maintaining global trade (without which American prosperity cannot be maintained) is in US interests.
Pick 1:
-US interests are severely threatened by climate change caused by the use of fossil fuels.
-US interests depend on the supply of Gulf Oil to Europe and Asia at a reasonable price.
I mean one solution would have been to try and bring the Taliban (who clearly have a constituency) into the system and I think there were talks along those lines in the past that went nowhere. Arguably that with a national unity government of Ghani plus the Taliban attending handover ceremonies at the various NATO held bases may have been an alternative.
It would probably still devolve into a Taliban takeover but it would perhaps have been a route to a more stable withdrawal (while giving time and space of Afghans to get visas and get out).
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 12:32:29 PM
The US is still in Korea. There are more troops there, than there were in Afghanistan prior to the withdrawal (some 28k).
And I think we should leave there as well. South Korea is more than capable of defending itself. But I believe South Korea compensates us for that. It is not like us pulling out of South Korea would lead to North Korea moving in before we were even done withdrawing, even in 1970.
QuoteClearly, in some cases, it considers long-term engagement in its interests. No-one considers Korea a Vichy regime or a colonial imposition (other than the North Koreans).
A central question is why government-building succeeded in Korea.
I don't know why it worked in Korea or Germany and Japan and Austria and so badly in South Vietnam and other places, though I imagine we could all give some guesses. But it was pretty obvious it had by 1970, 20 years after we moved in to South Korea. I mean Japan was hosting the Olympics in under 20 years. Somehow we weren't able to swing the Kabul 2020 games this time.
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 12:24:24 PM
The "friends" here are the individual Afghanis who aided the US - the ones now so frantic to leave the country. Many of whom did so out of sincere conviction that the US pointed the way to a better form of civilized life.
The lesson here is: aiding the US is risky.
This was always known though. Aiding an occupying power against your countrymen because you believe that the occupying power will help your country adopt policies and practices more in line with your own values only works so long as the occupying power remains. Consider Pierre Laval.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 12:39:04 PM
I mean one solution would have been to try and bring the Taliban (who clearly have a constituency) into the system and I think there were talks along those lines in the past that went nowhere. Arguably that with a national unity government of Ghani plus the Taliban attending handover ceremonies at the various NATO held bases may have been an alternative.
It would probably still devolve into a Taliban takeover but it would perhaps have been a route to a more stable withdrawal (while giving time and space of Afghans to get visas and get out).
I think we tried this but, as pointed out in the thread, the Taliban had little to gain and lots to lose by doing so.
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 12:40:05 PM
I think we tried this but, as pointed out in the thread, the Taliban had little to gain and lots to lose by doing so.
We might be talking about different things because my memory is that the Afghan government vetoed - but it is a very loose memory of something happening in the news a few years ago.
Edit:
QuoteI don't know why it worked in Korea or Germany and Japan and Austria and so badly in South Vietnam and other places, though I imagine we could all give some guesses. But it was pretty obvious it had by 1970, 20 years after we moved in to South Korea. I mean Japan was hosting the Olympics in under 20 years. Somehow we weren't able to swing the Kabul 2020 games this time.
I think a key factor is the institutions that were established had buy-in and beecame seen as legitimate. I mean if you look at post-war Germany and Japan, the early leaders were political figures from the 1930s who were reasonably untainted after the war.
By contrast I think in Afghanistan all of the leaders supported by the US have spent large parts of their lives in exile touring, or lecturing in foreign capitals. I think that is an issue and maybe a solution would have been to actually try and bring in some of the warlords/rebel leaders more formally, maybe try and bring parts of the Taliban - I'm not even convinced the British idea of bringing back the King is crazy. But that does mean accepting that while it might be a democracy it is unlikely to be a Western style liberal democracy (in the same way that Pakistan or Bangladesh or India aren't when it comes to various bits of human rights protections).
I don't know if that would have worked but I think given the way the government has clearly lost all legitimacy it might have been an idea?
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 12:34:10 PM
Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 11:25:23 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 11:12:21 AM
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests.
Control of Iraq and Syria are definitely a big deal in terms of US interests. The US is enormously interested in insuring the supply of Gulf oil to Europe and Asia. A hostile, aggressive caliphate controlling Iraq and threatening the Saudis and the Gulf states is a pretty big deal. Maintaining global trade (without which American prosperity cannot be maintained) is in US interests.
Pick 1:
-US interests are severely threatened by climate change caused by the use of fossil fuels.
-US interests depend on the supply of Gulf Oil to Europe and Asia at a reasonable price.
I reject your false dichotomy. It's perfectly reasonable for the US to adopt a strategy of encouraging less reliance on oil through the use of other energy sources while still wanting to ensure that their global trade and defence partners have access to oil during the transitional period.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 17, 2021, 12:08:39 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 17, 2021, 11:12:21 AM
Whether ISIS controls Iraq or Syria or the Taliban controls Afghanistan just doesn't matter to US interests. It is the other side of the world and simply doesn't matter.
I get that's your view and that's where we disagree. I find the notion that mere separation in space completely insulates a country from any impact from events occurring outside its political borders to be absurd. It would be nice if true - hey, no need to worry about China anymore!
QuoteAnd dude, it is a massive golden parachute to get into the US from a place like Afghanistan. Per capita income there is $493 / year. Minimum wage in a place with real workplace protections is pretty damn sweat by comparison.
Per capita income has nothing to do with it. Much of the Afghan labor force consists of subsistence famers. The official GDP statistics count most of these people at zero because they produce no marketable product. Of course in reality many of these farmers are selling a cash crop. But illicit opium sales don't show up in the GDP accounts.
What is relevant for this inquiry is not the mass of rural famers or even the masses of unemployed in the cities, but the urban middle class that is the most likely to openly support the US and live "Western" lifestyles. This middle class - while a relatively small minority of the overall population - is able to maintain a respectable standard of living because even though their nominal incomes in dollar terms seem low, their costs of living are also very low by Western standards.
If you aren't familiar with the very ample literature on migration and refugees specifically - and if you don't have significant personal anecdotal connections with refugees, it is going to be hard to explain why you are mistaken with this. It can't be done with a flippant one line response. At the highest level, if people though the way you believe, levels of migration legal and illegal would be orders of magnitude greater than they are. This is a known economic puzzle that has been studied and there are many reasons why it is so. For example, from 2005 to 2014, more Mexicans left the US for Mexico then left US for Mexico - something that makes no sense if you view the world from the "golden ticket" perspective.
About 2 months ago I was (very briefly) in the eastern section of the DRC (though just barely inside the border). One of the most unstable places on earth but hardly anyone knows anything about it. I could see the smoke from a volcano erupting nearby from which thousands of people were evacuating on foot. I doubt it made the news in the US. There are lots of poor unstable places on the planet. That a few get headlines doesn't correspond with them being more strategically important.
AR - Afghans are not fleeing because of the consequences of a natural disaster, they are fleeing because of the consequences of a US policy change. And there are no UNHCR camps in Kabul to protect them.
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2021, 09:55:30 AM
Quote from: Agelastus on August 17, 2021, 06:44:13 AM
Anyway, my paralyzed mother, who can do nothing but watch the TV all day, has a more pungent explanation for the collapse, although probably one with a grain of truth to it. "Biden took away their air support".
Yeah we only gave them trillions of dollars and hundreds of American lives. How much air support does the Taliban have?
The Taliban have an army that hasn't been trained to rely on calling in air support; it's already been suggested up-thread that maybe the US Army spent 20 years setting up and training the "wrong" (for want of a better word) type of local Armed Forces in Afghanistan.
There is also the inherent advantage that the "baddies" have over the "good"...and that is their willingness to do things that the "good" will not contemplate...robbery, murder, pillage and brigandage. It's the same advantage that the criminal gang/mob/drug cartel have over law enforcement and democratic governments.
And that a fighting force like the Taliban will always be willing take fixed points/targets, (cities, towns, villages ,highways, etc.) they never worry about holding them.
Quote from: Malthus on August 17, 2021, 12:24:24 PM
The "friends" here are the individual Afghanis who aided the US - the ones now so frantic to leave the country. Many of whom did so out of sincere conviction that the US pointed the way to a better form of civilized life.
The US didn't abandon those people; there was a program in place to get them visas and bring them to the US. The fact that there was no Afghan national government to protect them in the meantime is on Afghani shoulders.
QuoteThe lesson here is: aiding the US is risky.
That lesson was taught long ago (along with: aiding Canada is risky, aiding the UK is risky, aiding Nazi Germany is risky, etc). Hell, aiding the Romans was risky for Gauls.
Quote from: Agelastus on August 17, 2021, 01:18:34 PM
The Taliban have an army that hasn't been trained to rely on calling in air support; it's already been suggested up-thread that maybe the US Army spent 20 years setting up and training the "wrong" (for want of a better word) type of local Armed Forces in Afghanistan.
The way I'd put it is that the US focused on training local forces to act in conjunction with and in support of a US directed counter-insurgency strategy, because that is what served US interests at the time.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 17, 2021, 01:07:21 PM
AR - Afghans are not fleeing because of the consequences of a natural disaster, they are fleeing because of the consequences of a US policy change. And there are no UNHCR camps in Kabul to protect them.
There was a civil war in Afghanistan, we intervened on one team's side because we didn't like the other team, and we tried to give them the strength to stand on their own two feet, and apparently they can't. It sucks that they live in a country that is about to be run by the Taliban, but that isn't our fault, and arguably they aren't any worse off than the residents of the eastern DRC that have dozens of lunatic militant groups roaming around (and that you rarely hear about because it just doesn't capture international attention).
I think it's been well covered we built a force too much designed to deal with potential conflicts with neighbors than with counterinsurgency, and too dependent on air power and advanced weapon systems they would struggle to maintain. But none of that explains the handovers with no fighting. The Afghan National Army had 20,000 very well trained and well regarded Special Forces, those guys could have been used to actually go after the Taliban, or to defend key cities. Instead they were largely wasted in dispersed assignments to various provincial capitals that weren't strategically that important, and in such diffuse number that they weren't locally viable. What we missed is that a lot of Afghans were never invested in this war to the same degree we were, they were willing to play both sides for money and even to fight when necessary, but they were also willing to cut deals.
The actual military we left them with, even without Air support, should have been almost impossible for the Taliban to dislodge from key strongholds and urban areas. The communist government of Afghanistan held out for years after the Soviets withdrew (it actually outlasted the USSR itself.) What happened here is a public exposure of a deep level of just uncommitted people trading their country away. This is because these are tribal people who only care about their tribe, and fighting for a country isn't part of that calculation. They were loyal to the central government as long as it was funneling American money to them, not a moment longer.
What's interesting is we chose to stay for 20 years without even trying to address the underlying issues. Afghan government corruption prevented any sort of movement of loyalty from tribal affiliation to the nation itself. The Taliban was largely able to maintain power because it had money to spread around, and we only made half-hearted attempts years ago to understand what sustained the Taliban.
I think looking at how Colombia beat the FARC is kind of instructive, General Carlos Alberto Ospina Ovalle has written that FARC persisted so long because (using Clausewitz's term) the government misunderstood FARC's Center of Gravity. Both the Colombian government and the U.S. government, starting in the 1980s, assessed that because FARC was largely funded by control over coca production, they were really just a big drug cartel, and so the war against FARC was really a war against drugs. That misunderstood the real problem--the real problem is the large rural farming base, from which many FARC members were recruited, and many of those people used FARC to get their crop to market and money to feed their families, had no meaningful alternatives. This was because of a government that lacked legitimacy in rural areas and that offered nothing to their people.
Rural Colombians were not growing coca for the FARC because they wanted to get people high, it was simply their best option, and FARC was the only entity offering these people any kind of life. There's huge parallels to the Taliban and rural Afghanistan that should be obvious. Oddly we never went down the foolish path in Afghanistan that we did in Colombia, where we painted it as a drug war and focused on that (which would also have been a mistake, but frankly would've probably been more effective at battling the Taliban than what we actually did.)
The core issue is the Afghan National Government has zero legitimacy in rural Afghanistan, and a huge amount of money goes to rural Afghanistan from the cultivation and production of opium. It's so pervasive that farming families in rural Afghanistan might have had sons in both the Afghan National Army and the Taliban, who would go home at harvest time to work the farm. Different families would meet socially, discuss business etc even when members of both armed sides of the conflict would be present. For a lot of rural Afghans this was something that was bigger and more important than the armed conflict, because they had never experienced any kind of legitimate government. What they had experienced was poverty and lack of basic needs being met, and opium production helped prevent those from getting too terrible. The Taliban was a major partner in getting opium to market, even if that family might have sons fighting against the Taliban as their "day job."
Quoting General Ospina:
Quote"...we decided to consider legitimacy as our CoG...This changed the whole situation of our war and contributed to the defeat of the FARC...in many Colombian provinces, we considered local security issues, low local economic production and poor people's welfare as overlapping problems...Without local security, legitimacy collapses since nothing can be achieved. Moreover, we can say that the value of local security is a priority to the strength of state legitimacy. Therefore, if you have strong local security, you will have strong legitimacy. Furthermore, you have to consider local security as one of the two basic elements since local economy is also essential. When both elements come together, they provide trust in the State. This trust prevents any popular mobilization in favour of the insurgency due to the acceptance of government policies and the rise of confidence in them among the peasantry."
Colombia built legitimacy through a series of constitutional and military reforms that started in the 1990s. They did not begin to bear fruit until the early 2000s, because such reforms are neither easy or simple to implement. What they ended up with after about a decade was security forces that didn't abuse locals, didn't use their badge to settle personal grievances, and a central government that was promoted large scale economic development in rural areas. FARC could not offer anything like this, and started to lose support. Another big move was the disbanding of the AUC (right wing paramilitaries the government tacitly supported to go after FARC, that frequently abused rural people suspected of "Marxist sympathies", shockingly the existence of these paramilitaries did not win hearts and minds.) There was a whole lot of funneling of money in Afghanistan from the United States to local power brokers friendly with the government, and likely a lot of abuses and settling of scores was occurring.
Back in 2006 when we internally recognized many of the problems with our war effort, we likely needed to start looking really hard at reforming the Afghan government, which we basically never did. Hamid Karzai was likely a big mistake, Karzai is a tribal leader of a specific Pashtun tribe, and was knowingly using his position to enrich himself, his family and his tribe at the expense of creating a legitimate national government. Karzai was an easy option in 2002, but a bad choice, and we should have made the hard choice of finding a different person to lead the government who was not so beholden to local tribal concerns. Arguably Ghani did represent an improvement, but in some ways he came far too late (2014) and he had such minimal legitimacy he had to power share with people who weren't interested in fixing the corrupt status quo. The simple reality is we needed to go in and say the Afghan government and constitution weren't working, remove politicians from power and start over. For domestic political reason we didn't want to do this, likely because it would have been a "bad look" to basically get rid of our hand picked guy and restart the political system. It also likely would have, short term, meant an escalation in fighting--guys like Karzai don't exist in a vacuum, he had alliances that would have probably turned against us after his removal. Fixing Afghanistan likely required a major increase in commitment around the 2006/2007 time, and we just weren't willing.
One hundred percent agree. And I think it also goes to the rebel governance point that the Taliban haven't had this success without the government losing legitimacy and the Taliban appearing to offer an alternative. It wasn't just that they were being more brutal or ruthless.
And of course it takes decades to do that in Colombia and, perhaps, it takes a long time to sort of not fall into the Arrested Development trap: "No of course it didn't work for those people, it never works....but maybe, it might just work for us."
2006/07 was around the time the Bush administration retreated from its grand plan to completely reconstruct the Middle East; Rumsfeld left Defense at the end of 2006; Wolfowitz in late 05; Scooter Libby resigned in late 05. At that point the nation building project in Afghanistan essentially petered out, except for the short-lived surge effort under Obama that had more limited objectives. The policy became and remained essentially one of pacification and maintaining the status quo.
I don't see what was so awful about that policy; from 2015 to the present, the US was able to keep it going without extreme resource commitments. My view is that we let the perfect be the enemy of the acceptably good, and as a consequence now face the bad.
2007 was the time of the surge in Iraq. That already stretched the military: not sure you could surge there and in Afghanistan simultaneously.
I have a few issues with the "we just should have stayed."
1. I absolutely believe things had calmed down somewhat in Afghanistan because the Taliban knew we were leaving. This enabled them to start working on all these negotiated deals. If we made it clear via official U.S. policy statements our commitment was open ended, I think the Taliban isn't as able to make some of these deals. But that also means they aren't going to be as content to sit on the sidelines--the military side would ramp up. So our commitment likely could not have been stable at 2500 or even 5000. I think it'd probably have to go up to the average of 40000 or so that was standard before the "end of major combat operations" declaration by the Obama Administration in 2014. This larger commitment carries with it greater financial costs, and frankly greater "strategic costs" of our military being bogged down in that situation.
2. Faith and trust in government are at all time lows, and this is bad for our country and bad for our democracy. We've had political leadership telling us Afghanistan is a "war" that will have an end, not an open-ended permanent commitment. I think staying under this false pretense is not acceptable. If we actually want to stay, we needed political leaders willing to actually take the political risk of saying their goal was to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely to prop up the Kabul regime. I don't think continuing the Obama policy of saying we're leaving but not really doing so is the way to go. I frankly have seen very little actual political will to step up and do this sort of thing.
3. We are actually supposed to be a democracy, with civilian control of the military. A deeply unpopular war, that has polled as an unpopular war for much of its 20 year duration, should not persist. It's one thing for the elected leadership to push into a war that maybe isn't popular for reasons of dire national interest, and for shorter periods of time...but a 20 year war? That seems less acceptable. Again, if we wanted to stay forever, we needed politicians out there beating the drums trying to convince people that staying forever was the way to go, you need American political support to stay forever, which has not generally existed.
4. If our conclusion is that Afghanistan is a largely lawless and ungovernable reason, but there are broad moral or humanitarian reasons that we should stay there forever to keep things from getting too bad there, then to me that isn't solely the moral obligation of the United States. I would want to see major buy in from our NATO allies and other allies. While I appreciate the help we got in Afghanistan from Britain, Germany and Canada, relative to the size of our GDPs and the size of our populations, their commitments never came close to ours in a proportional way. I think our financial investment in Afghanistan was something like 52 times the size of Germany's, and yet I know our GDP is nowhere near 52 times the German GDP. I'm not expecting these NATO allies to become superpowers or the sort of country to deploy troops to the same degree as we do, but if this is a real international issue then it should be internationalized. More troops from NATO, more money. Maybe even build out a UN force or something. I want other countries with skin in the game to a much bigger degree if this is some permanent obligation, I don't see how it's a permanent obligation where the U.S. has to shoulder a disproportionate amount of the burden.
While I've seen some political leaders in Germany and Britain bleating about our withdrawal, what I didn't see is larger financial or military commitments from those countries during the 20 years in country.
Otto - I agree with your points 3 and 4. Withdrawal happened because a political consensus favored it across party lines. I'm not disputing that, but I understand the question to be soliciting what we think is the best policy and what we would advocate for. On 4, I've found the NATO response to be as disappointing as Biden: a lot of complaining about how the US acted unilaterally and talk about the need to act independently, but no meaningful steps to create the capacity to take that kind of action. Non-US NATO members find themselves in the position because they did not take up the US prodding to up their military capacity, letting Uncle Sam shoulder that burden. I don't believe in the Trump punitive approach on this issue - NATO has great value to the US even when the European allies backslide on military capabilities. But in the real world you've got to pay to play.
On 1 the troop drawdown is over 5 years old; I don't buy it. The security situation had stalemated with the country split into zones of influence and with the US deploying sufficient power in conjunction with Afghan forces to keep the Taliban contained. On 2 I am not advocating false pretenses; the hypothetical President who would support this policy (Jeb Bush?) should be honest in explaining the premise and expectations.
I'm seeing a few reports today that don't bode too well. Apparently the Taliban have no money to pay any of the civil service and keep the organs of government functional, all of the country's assets are held in U.S. banks, which Biden has frozen. Ashraf Ghani is saying he is going to return to the country to lead active resistance to the Taliban rule. One of Ghanis' deputies is tweeting out for people to "join the resistance" and supposedly a decent amount of regular army and special forces groups are moving to strongholds in the north (with military equipment) to prepare an active resistance. The Ghani deputy is the son of a former Afghan warlord of sorts.
Meanwhile in Bamyan province it sounds like the Hazara minority which has historically fielded insurgent forces of its own, is angry at Taliban actions since they've taken over and there are agitations towards active resistance.
We'll have to see how it turns out. I don't like the Taliban, obviously. But an actual societal collapse followed by another intractable civil war is likely a much worse outcome than a stable Taliban government.
Man, tribalism in all its flavors is such a shitty inheritance of our genes.
Obviously had some great utility, but uggh, fucking worse then useless now.
Chancellor candidate Laschet has said he will evacuate as many Afghans who worked with Germans as possible ... if he gets elected on September 26th. :lol:
OvB, your point 2 explains your point 4. There is no democratic mandate for more involvement in other Western countries.
Quote from: Berkut on August 18, 2021, 10:20:49 PM
Man, tribalism in all its flavors is such a shitty inheritance of our genes.
Obviously had some great utility, but uggh, fucking worse then useless now.
Is it? Having a group that is 'us' is still of enormous value. We are not live peacefully on the Earth, with only the pure interactions of free market economics between us, with the liberal common law regulating our interactions. People have differing interests, economic, political, cultural, and I don't understand the idea that they shouldn't band together to promote and defend those interests from people who don't share them.
The argument against tribalism is 'You shouldn't care about what you care about, you should only care about what I care about', and it's unconvincing.
OvB has been really interesting in this thread. I think what he's saying about how Afghanistan suffers from (and Columbia suffered from) a lack of governmental legitimacy can be seen in our own reactions to government as well.
Quote from: Neil on August 19, 2021, 07:52:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on August 18, 2021, 10:20:49 PM
Man, tribalism in all its flavors is such a shitty inheritance of our genes.
Obviously had some great utility, but uggh, fucking worse then useless now.
Is it? Having a group that is 'us' is still of enormous value. We are not live peacefully on the Earth, with only the pure interactions of free market economics between us, with the liberal common law regulating our interactions. People have differing interests, economic, political, cultural, and I don't understand the idea that they shouldn't band together to promote and defend those interests from people who don't share them.
The argument against tribalism is 'You shouldn't care about what you care about, you should only care about what I care about', and it's unconvincing.
That is not at all the argument about tribalism.
This is, however, a really really excellent example of a strawman.
The problem with tribalism is not around having shared values in a group that you then cooperate with, it is around cooperating and defending a group because it is the group itself, rather then some objective and rational set of shared values.
That, of course, is the evolutionary utility of tribes to begin with - they are a shortcut in a world where social group inclusion and cooperation is absolutely necessary for survival. The tribe has real environmental meaning (your family and extended family, mostly).
When we look at tribalism in Afghanistan, these are not tribes that are banding together to defend themselves against other people with different ideas or interests, they are defending themselves against people from another tribe. They actually go to a lot of work to INVENT different distinctions to justify screwing each other over, differences that aren't actually objectively real or material. Like "they look different" or "they dress different" or "they don't worship exactly the same god that we do". None of these things are actually material in most cases, they certainly are not material enough to demand the need for group defense against the "other". We know this to be true because we can see plenty of examples where people share those same differences and yet do NOT organize into tribes to ensure that they don't cooperate with others.
Tribes can be useful I am sure, even today. Hell, they can even be fun. "Fuck you Pats fan! You suck!" can be fun, and it is leveraging our own biology to create tribes so we can all get emotionally invested in something we care about. But it isn't real - there isn't ACTUALLY any difference between a Chiefs fan and a Bucs fan that requires that to go beyond some good fun, and we would not be ok with someone refusing someone a job, or insisting that their daughter to associate with a rival NFL fan.
Tribalism sucks, overall. The human emotional response to group membership is not useful enough to justify the damage it does. And it is not necessary for the cases you are citing where there is objective and rational reasons to create and cooperate in groups. The objective, rational reasons are adequate in those cases, indeed, I would argue that the power of the group in question almost by definition should NOT extend beyond the rational and objective reasons.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 18, 2021, 10:13:30 PM
I'm seeing a few reports today that don't bode too well. Apparently the Taliban have no money to pay any of the civil service and keep the organs of government functional, all of the country's assets are held in U.S. banks, which Biden has frozen. Ashraf Ghani is saying he is going to return to the country to lead active resistance to the Taliban rule. One of Ghanis' deputies is tweeting out for people to "join the resistance" and supposedly a decent amount of regular army and special forces groups are moving to strongholds in the north (with military equipment) to prepare an active resistance. The Ghani deputy is the son of a former Afghan warlord of sorts.
Meanwhile in Bamyan province it sounds like the Hazara minority which has historically fielded insurgent forces of its own, is angry at Taliban actions since they've taken over and there are agitations towards active resistance.
We'll have to see how it turns out. I don't like the Taliban, obviously. But an actual societal collapse followed by another intractable civil war is likely a much worse outcome than a stable Taliban government.
Yeah. This is not a happy corner of the world, to put it mildly.
Quote from: Zanza on August 19, 2021, 02:31:28 AM
OvB, your point 2 explains your point 4. There is no democratic mandate for more involvement in other Western countries.
Sure--and obviously I'm not the one advocating a permanent commitment to Afghanistan. I think it should give us pause if other Western countries do not have domestic political will to do things like this. If something like "stabilizing Afghanistan" is genuinely a Western goal, there should be consensus among the West. When it is quite clear that there isn't only no-consensus, but not even any major Western country where it is a majority opinion, should give us pause in how we behave.
Quote from: Berkut on August 19, 2021, 08:21:54 AM
Quote from: Neil on August 19, 2021, 07:52:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on August 18, 2021, 10:20:49 PM
Man, tribalism in all its flavors is such a shitty inheritance of our genes.
Obviously had some great utility, but uggh, fucking worse then useless now.
Is it? Having a group that is 'us' is still of enormous value. We are not live peacefully on the Earth, with only the pure interactions of free market economics between us, with the liberal common law regulating our interactions. People have differing interests, economic, political, cultural, and I don't understand the idea that they shouldn't band together to promote and defend those interests from people who don't share them.
The argument against tribalism is 'You shouldn't care about what you care about, you should only care about what I care about', and it's unconvincing.
That is not at all the argument about tribalism.
This is, however, a really really excellent example of a strawman.
The problem with tribalism is not around having shared values in a group that you then cooperate with, it is around cooperating and defending a group because it is the group itself, rather then some objective and rational set of shared values.
That, of course, is the evolutionary utility of tribes to begin with - they are a shortcut in a world where social group inclusion and cooperation is absolutely necessary for survival. The tribe has real environmental meaning (your family and extended family, mostly).
When we look at tribalism in Afghanistan, these are not tribes that are banding together to defend themselves against other people with different ideas or interests, they are defending themselves against people from another tribe. They actually go to a lot of work to INVENT different distinctions to justify screwing each other over, differences that aren't actually objectively real or material. Like "they look different" or "they dress different" or "they don't worship exactly the same god that we do". None of these things are actually material in most cases, they certainly are not material enough to demand the need for group defense against the "other". We know this to be true because we can see plenty of examples where people share those same differences and yet do NOT organize into tribes to ensure that they don't cooperate with others.
Tribes can be useful I am sure, even today. Hell, they can even be fun. "Fuck you Pats fan! You suck!" can be fun, and it is leveraging our own biology to create tribes so we can all get emotionally invested in something we care about. But it isn't real - there isn't ACTUALLY any difference between a Chiefs fan and a Bucs fan that requires that to go beyond some good fun, and we would not be ok with someone refusing someone a job, or insisting that their daughter to associate with a rival NFL fan.
Tribalism sucks, overall. The human emotional response to group membership is not useful enough to justify the damage it does. And it is not necessary for the cases you are citing where there is objective and rational reasons to create and cooperate in groups. The objective, rational reasons are adequate in those cases, indeed, I would argue that the power of the group in question almost by definition should NOT extend beyond the rational and objective reasons.
Tribes in Afghanistan are most assuredly banding together to defend themselves against other people with different ideas or interests. Just because you can't tell the difference between a Pashtun and a Tadjik doesn't mean that none exists, and the division and securing of scarce resources certainly results in tension between what these groups perceive as their interests. If you're part of a group that has fought several wars against you neighbours in living memory, then tribal membership becomes a lot more rational than it seems for someone in the West, whose only wars in the last seventy years have been distant, impersonal, colonial affairs.
Honestly, your entire line of argumentation is kind of silly. Saying the the problem with human group membership is the emotional response that is inherent in humanity is profoundly unhelpful, especially as we watch groups that have tried to base themselves on objective and rational sets of shared values begin to crumble as the age of universal prosperity in the West begins to come to an end.
The argument that tribes are good because they serve the interests of individuals hasn't been true for a couple of thousand years, because modern humans, and their interests, are far more complex than tribes are. A tribe may serve an individual interest, but it will oppose others. Staying loyal to a tribe that harms as many individual interests as it helps is positively Republican.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 19, 2021, 09:51:39 AM
Quote from: Zanza on August 19, 2021, 02:31:28 AM
OvB, your point 2 explains your point 4. There is no democratic mandate for more involvement in other Western countries.
Sure--and obviously I'm not the one advocating a permanent commitment to Afghanistan. I think it should give us pause if other Western countries do not have domestic political will to do things like this. If something like "stabilizing Afghanistan" is genuinely a Western goal, there should be consensus among the West. When it is quite clear that there isn't only no-consensus, but not even any major Western country where it is a majority opinion, should give us pause in how we behave.
The people here that complain about the looming humanitarian disaster are the same that oppose any kind of military action. And that's not going to change short of a massive cultural shock.
From BBC liveblog earlier today :(
QuoteTaliban intensifying hunt for people who collaborated with US and Nato troops'
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/live-experience/cps/624/cpsprodpb/vivo/live/images/2021/8/19/4b445d84-d90d-4726-b894-19df130e3382.jpg)
EPACopyright: EPA
A UN document says the Taliban are intensifying their hunt for people who worked for and collaborated with Nato and US forces.
The confidential paper was produced by the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, which provides the UN with intelligence information.
"The Taliban are arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban," the document, seen by the BBC said.
It said that those at particular risk were people with positions in the military, police and investigative units.
"The Taliban have been conducting advance mapping of individuals prior to take take-over of all major cities," it said.
It added that the militants were screening for individuals while permitting some evacuation of foreign personnel from Kabul airport but the situation there remained "chaotic".
According to the report, the Taliban are recruiting new informer networks to collaborate with the new regime.
Although even seeing an Ashura march in Taliban occupied areas is still unusual.
There was also an incredibly sad report with British troops and diplomats in the airport:
https://news.sky.com/story/afghanistan-desperate-women-throw-babies-over-razor-wire-at-compound-asking-british-soldiers-to-take-them-12384646
Quote from: Neil on August 19, 2021, 10:25:53 AM
Quote from: Berkut on August 19, 2021, 08:21:54 AM
Quote from: Neil on August 19, 2021, 07:52:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on August 18, 2021, 10:20:49 PM
Man, tribalism in all its flavors is such a shitty inheritance of our genes.
Obviously had some great utility, but uggh, fucking worse then useless now.
Is it? Having a group that is 'us' is still of enormous value. We are not live peacefully on the Earth, with only the pure interactions of free market economics between us, with the liberal common law regulating our interactions. People have differing interests, economic, political, cultural, and I don't understand the idea that they shouldn't band together to promote and defend those interests from people who don't share them.
The argument against tribalism is 'You shouldn't care about what you care about, you should only care about what I care about', and it's unconvincing.
That is not at all the argument about tribalism.
This is, however, a really really excellent example of a strawman.
The problem with tribalism is not around having shared values in a group that you then cooperate with, it is around cooperating and defending a group because it is the group itself, rather then some objective and rational set of shared values.
That, of course, is the evolutionary utility of tribes to begin with - they are a shortcut in a world where social group inclusion and cooperation is absolutely necessary for survival. The tribe has real environmental meaning (your family and extended family, mostly).
When we look at tribalism in Afghanistan, these are not tribes that are banding together to defend themselves against other people with different ideas or interests, they are defending themselves against people from another tribe. They actually go to a lot of work to INVENT different distinctions to justify screwing each other over, differences that aren't actually objectively real or material. Like "they look different" or "they dress different" or "they don't worship exactly the same god that we do". None of these things are actually material in most cases, they certainly are not material enough to demand the need for group defense against the "other". We know this to be true because we can see plenty of examples where people share those same differences and yet do NOT organize into tribes to ensure that they don't cooperate with others.
Tribes can be useful I am sure, even today. Hell, they can even be fun. "Fuck you Pats fan! You suck!" can be fun, and it is leveraging our own biology to create tribes so we can all get emotionally invested in something we care about. But it isn't real - there isn't ACTUALLY any difference between a Chiefs fan and a Bucs fan that requires that to go beyond some good fun, and we would not be ok with someone refusing someone a job, or insisting that their daughter to associate with a rival NFL fan.
Tribalism sucks, overall. The human emotional response to group membership is not useful enough to justify the damage it does. And it is not necessary for the cases you are citing where there is objective and rational reasons to create and cooperate in groups. The objective, rational reasons are adequate in those cases, indeed, I would argue that the power of the group in question almost by definition should NOT extend beyond the rational and objective reasons.
Tribes in Afghanistan are most assuredly banding together to defend themselves against other people with different ideas or interests. Just because you can't tell the difference between a Pashtun and a Tadjik doesn't mean that none exists,
The question is whether those differences are actually material though. Your argument is that the actual differences don't matter - that as long as the purple Drazi know they are purple Drazi, and the blue Drazi know that they are blue Drazi, it's reasonable for them to fight each other over resources, because, well, they are different in their own eyes, and that is enough.
My argument is that that is NOT enough, and that this is a group whose only REAL difference is the group itself, not anything material.
If there is something actually materials and ratioanlly different that means that a dispute on the basis of those differences is in fact material, then that dispute is not tribalism - it is just a conflict over resource allocation that needs to be figured out.
The difference is the latter scenario is amenable to some kind of reaonable, rational resolution that can be mediated, and can be finalized, at least in theory.
You can look at the actual facts and reality of the dispute, and come up with some kind of structure for its resolution.
With a dispute where the groupings are arbitrary (IE tribal), no such resolution is possible, other than simple force, because the dispute is simply about group membership and the implicit assumption that membership in some group rather then another is why one ought to get more or less of whatever resource. "America is a Christian country! Therefore Christians should get to pray in schools, and not Muslims!"
Quote
and the division and securing of scarce resources certainly results in tension between what these groups perceive as their interests.
Of course. And those tensions are more easily and rationally resolved when you have different groups, rather then tribes, disputing their interests.
"We should get the land because we are Americans!" versus "We should get the land because we have more people with fewer resources, hence it is more humane to consider our concerns over those who already have their own land and resources"
Quote
If you're part of a group that has fought several wars against you neighbours in living memory, then tribal membership becomes a lot more rational than it seems for someone in the West, whose only wars in the last seventy years have been distant, impersonal, colonial affairs.
If you are part of a group that finds itself constantly being in wars against your neighbours who in any kind of rational, objective, and secular measure are actually not really different then you, then you should consider whether your tribal allegiances have served you particularly well as a means of defining how to resolve disputes
Quote
Honestly, your entire line of argumentation is kind of silly. Saying the the problem with human group membership is the emotional response that is inherent in humanity is profoundly unhelpful, especially as we watch groups that have tried to base themselves on objective and rational sets of shared values begin to crumble as the age of universal prosperity in the West begins to come to an end.
Those groups who define themselves based on rational, shared values are in fact the ones who have managed to avoid a bunch of wars against their neighbors. Indeed, in large part their success at stopping the constant warring was in fact at least in part driven by their rejection of tribalism in favor of rational, shared values.
To the extent that that is ending, it is because, again at least in part, due to going back to embracing tribalism and the rejection of reason and rationality in favor of emotive in/out group thinking. See Trumpism.
Tribalism is ubiquitous; what differs it the nature and scope of tribal identification. For hunter-gatherers, it is their band; from there you can have extended families, fictive kinship identifications, ethnic identification stories. We perceive Afghanistan as tribal because in the present era, tribal identification at the level of the nation-state has become normative, to the degree to which we barely notice the use of symbols and shared mythology in separating us from them. Afghanistan seems tribal and dysfunctional because it is out of step and retrograde in the context of a world system where nation-states are the recognized and generally accepted principal units of political interaction.
Some major states on the world stage are not nation-states, so I think it's possible to overestimate the role of the nation-state as norm.
FWIW I think the geographically defined sovereign state is the norm.
In the interest of spamming the thread: if you look at places like Latin America or Africa nation-states are few and far between.
The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning. Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.
Quote from: DGuller on August 19, 2021, 03:10:15 PM
The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning. Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.
Sometimes I envy you. Your tribe is easily recognizable (hardbass and Adidas tracksuits) and numbers many millions.
Quote from: DGuller on August 19, 2021, 03:10:15 PM
The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning. Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.
The Taliban has proven to be quite effective
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 19, 2021, 03:19:48 PM
Quote from: DGuller on August 19, 2021, 03:10:15 PM
The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning. Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.
The Taliban has proven to be quite effective
Maybe but the Taliban is not a tribe.
In all of the madness, a feel-good photo from the evacuations (and noc to my fellow USAF bros):
(https://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20210819&t=2&i=1572310283&w=780&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=2021-08-19T004412Z_41508_MRPRC2V7P990S3B_RTRMADP_0_AFGHANISTAN-CONFLICT)
Quote from: Valmy on August 19, 2021, 03:29:52 PM
Maybe but the Taliban is not a tribe.
They are an ethnically coherent group sharing an ideology, religious belief and sense of communal connection. Looks like a tribe to me.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 19, 2021, 03:35:56 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 19, 2021, 03:29:52 PM
Maybe but the Taliban is not a tribe.
They are an ethnically coherent group sharing an ideology, religious belief and sense of communal connection. Looks like a tribe to me.
Movements like the Ustase would be a tribe under that definition. It is too broad.
The Taliban could be seen conceptually as a tribe, in the specific sense of Pashtun tribes, they are not a singular tribe, they have members from a number of the major Pashtun tribes. They have a smaller membership of non-Pashtuns, that has varied over time (they have had times when they've been more open to non-Pashtuns and times when not so much.)
Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns? I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 19, 2021, 06:21:14 PM
Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns? I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.
I think that's about right - somewhere from the high 30s to 50% but we don't really know.
But because most of the other groups speak Dari that's actually the majority language while Pashto is mainly spoken by Pashtuns.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 19, 2021, 06:21:14 PM
Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns? I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.
Wiki says 42%.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 19, 2021, 06:21:14 PM
Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns? I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.
42%, I checked earlier today. If only your memory of names was as good as your memory of numbers! :P
EDIT: Ah, grilled by Larch.
I think at least some of the estimates of ethnic % and tribal maps date to the pre-Soviet times, FWIW. So I do think there's a little inaccuracy in some of those numbers. Pashtun is definitely the plurality ethnic group in the country though. I think there may be less Tajiks and Uzbeks in country than officially believed.
Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/us/politics/afghanistan-biden.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab)
Quote
An Afghan military that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Mr. Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed in brought an ignoble end to America's longest war.
WASHINGTON — President Biden's top advisers concede they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taliban that now threatens Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.
The past 20 years show they should not have been.
If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban. The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to Mr. Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks.
Commanders did know that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: the deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone arms. In the past several days, the Afghan forces have steadily collapsed as they battled to defend ever shrinking territory, losing Mazar-i-Sharif, the country's economic engine, to the Taliban on Saturday.
Mr. Biden's aides say that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and military in perpetuity. In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks.
In the end, an Afghan force that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Mr. Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed would alter the course of events combined to bring an ignoble close to America's longest war. The United States kept forces in Afghanistan far longer than the British did in the 19th century, and twice as long as the Soviets — with roughly the same results.
[...]
It wasn't Sweden's longest war. :showoff:
In broadstrokes, I agree with Owen Jones on something. Am I the baddie? :(
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/19/afghanistan-crisis-britain-foreign-policy-delusional
QuoteEven the crisis in Afghanistan can't break the spell of Britain's delusional foreign policy
As MPs lamented the unfolding disaster in parliament, they showed no sign of learning from it
If historians of the future wish to understand the ignorance and hubris that accompanied the decline of the west's power, this week's emergency parliamentary debate on Afghanistan will provide an insightful case study. The delusions that have long characterised British foreign policy remained intact when Iraq was destroyed for the sake of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction; when British soldiers were forced into a humiliating retreat from Iraq's southern city of Basra at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia militias; and when Libya was left as a failed state. It seemed unlikely that the Taliban casually waltzing into Kabul would finally break the spell.
Take the much celebrated contribution from Theresa May, who asked, "Where is global Britain on the streets of Kabul?" and rued the repercussions of Britain depending "on a unilateral decision taken by the United States". The former prime minister is a fantasist: Britain has not had a foreign policy independent of the United States since the 1950s, and indefinite occupation of Afghanistan, which has been proposed as an alternative to withdrawal, effectively means transforming the country into a colony.
...
Quote from: garbon on August 20, 2021, 02:44:52 AM
In broadstrokes, I agree with Owen Jones on something. Am I the baddie? :(
(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/436/943/93f.jpg)
Yeah I sort of agree, but with Jones it needs to be in broadstrokes and I need to be kind of squinting. It also helps if you don't see his social media because I'm really not sure this is quite the right take :lol:
QuoteI see it's "let's rehabilitate Theresa May, architect of Windrush" time again!
What's it for this time?
*spins wheel*
Assailing Boris Johnson for not unilaterally turning Afghanistan into a British colony.
Cooooooooool! You're all completely normal rational human beings!
Interesting that apparently the countries who were trying to push against withdrawal most strongly at one of the NATO or G7 meetings before this happened were Italy and the UK.
There is also a report in the Times that the UK wasn't part of the discussions between the US and Taliban (which is fine and to be expected) but also weren't updated/informed by the US about their withdrawal plans or the proposed pace of withdrawal which I think is bad. If that goes for the rest of NATO I think it goes some way to explaining why European countries appear to have been caught on the hop - they were actually caught on the hop/surprised.
It feels like that could be right, it certainly hasn't felt like a coordinated NATO withdrawal but rather the US getting out ASAP and everyone following and everyone having to make their own urgent plans. But it is disappointing and surprising from Biden - especially given that this is withdrawal from the only Article 5 mission in NATO's history.
Yeah, I did only copy the start of his opinion piece as felt it then devolved from there. :D
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 20, 2021, 06:30:15 AM(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/436/943/93f.jpg)
:lol:
Quote from: alfred russel on August 12, 2021, 03:49:55 PM
I say the Orioles suck because when they play baseball they lose most of their games...You can counter that it is unfair to judge them in baseball because they'd make a killer water polo squad, but I prefer to judge them by their ability to accomplish the tasks they are actually undertaking.
Speaking of which my beloved Orioles lost their 15th straight yesterday. We are just a few losses away from history making ineptitude. 6 losses to the club record of 21!
Telling that the airport in Kabul that so many are trying to escape through is officially named the 'Hamid Karzai International Airport' - someone who led one of the most corrupt governments in the world.
I think if it had been named 'Ahmad Shah Massoud International Airport' it would have been a sign of a less bleak future for a democratic Afghanistan.
In related news Russian govt sources have stated that the Panjshir valley is becoming the centre of resistance to the Taliban. :hmm:
Good we should start funding them.
I don't see it becoming a national movement, but things are definitely heating up.
Massoud's National Resistance Front (technically backing former vice president Amrullah Saleh) is looking to be getting fairly entrenched in the Panshir Valley.
Meanwhile apparently in Baghlan province, locals had came to an agreement: the Taliban can rule, but they may not enter villages or homes. Over the last couple of days Taliban forces started doing just that, house to house searches. Shortly after a former military prison commandant apparently organized several hundred villagers with small arms, they killed 30 of the Taliban and took 20 captive. The Taliban is promising a reprisal. This shows some of the difficulty with governing Afghanistan. The Afghans have a very different definition of "governing" than most people. To them governing means they vaguely acknowledge you are the boss. But when you try to enter into their affairs, there is trouble.
There are increasing rumblings related to the Hazara Shiite minority arming up as well.
New Yorker cover: "Exit Strategy"
(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/611fd331d52fbedc295409ca/master/w_380,c_limit/2021_08_30.jpg)
:lol:
The leader in the Economist is pretty scathing.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/21/the-fiasco-in-afghanistan-is-a-grave-blow-to-americas-standing
Quote from: Malthus on August 24, 2021, 05:02:58 PM
The leader in the Economist is pretty scathing.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/21/the-fiasco-in-afghanistan-is-a-grave-blow-to-americas-standing
Who cares. He can fuck off.
Quote from: Malthus on August 24, 2021, 05:02:58 PM
The leader in the Economist is pretty scathing.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/21/the-fiasco-in-afghanistan-is-a-grave-blow-to-americas-standing
Consistent media warmongering is utter bullshit.
QuoteBiden has gotten more bad press over a week of messy-but-successful-so-far evacuations than Obama and Trump combined got across 12 years of Americans actually dying in pursuit of a failed policy.
Frightening political implications.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1428791771023163396
My mom is very angry that the press is attacking Biden over this. I have absolute no problem it. I'm not interested in another personality cult. If Biden's decision was wrong, then it's fine to attack him over it. I think it was the correct decision, but I'm open to arguments that it isn't. Who knows what it will look like 5, 10 years down the line.
I'm just tired of goddamn war.
Sure probably a competent country could have done that much better but we have been pretty dysfunctional for awhile.
And maybe Biden fucked it up somehow. I don't know. He is the President, all he should be doing is simply telling the military and the State Department when he wants the war to end and they should handle the details. So it is probably likely this would have ended up fucked up no matter who the President was, but I have zero problem with Biden getting shit for it because, after all, if the bureaucrats and military had pulled it off brilliantly he would also be getting the credit.
But it was the right policy and it ultimately will be better for both the US and Afghanistan. I wanted him to do this so I am hardly going to be upset with him for it, even doing it in a shitty way. It is not like I can expect exceptional accomplishments from our government much anymore.
Empires and wars are just messy to end. The European Empires also ended in chaos and death for the most part but it was still the right thing to do to end them.
But the backlash is giving me heartburn because I want this to just be the beginning, we have many more wars and engagements to end. Biden paying a bigger political cost for ending them than the previous assholes paid for starting and sustaining them worries me a lot. Politicians have only so much courage.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 24, 2021, 08:28:05 PM
I'm just tired of goddamn war.
Yep. Once the Cold War ended the American people have been clear: end the wars. Morale and a sense of purpose have been falling apart ever since. It is dangerous to continue it for much longer.
Quote from: Valmy on August 24, 2021, 08:46:34 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 24, 2021, 08:28:05 PM
I'm just tired of goddamn war.
Yep. Once the Cold War ended the American people have been clear: end the wars.
And so they did. And yet despite ending the wars, American soil was attacked.
Saying Bush handled it wrong doesn't change the fact there are no easy solutions.
The belief that there will no consequences or fallout from the Taliban takeover is wishful thinking.
Quote from: ulmont on August 24, 2021, 06:08:51 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 24, 2021, 05:02:58 PM
The leader in the Economist is pretty scathing.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/21/the-fiasco-in-afghanistan-is-a-grave-blow-to-americas-standing
QuoteBiden has gotten more bad press over a week of messy-but-successful-so-far evacuations than Obama and Trump combined got across 12 years of Americans actually dying in pursuit of a failed policy.
Frightening political implications.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1428791771023163396
There is no contradiction between criticizing Obama and Trump's policy of pursuing intervention in Afghanistan and Biden's policy of abandoning it.
Both can fairly be criticized and quibbling over which merits the higher criticism is just that: quibbling. Iglesias had a decent point before tipping over into hysteria with his "frightening" comment. I would be a lot more frightened as a human being in Afghanistan right now then a Beltway pundit fretting about the misuse of national security issues in political discourse.
Over 70k people have been successfully evacuated with no casualties so far. Seems like a success to me.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 24, 2021, 09:00:35 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 24, 2021, 08:46:34 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 24, 2021, 08:28:05 PM
I'm just tired of goddamn war.
Yep. Once the Cold War ended the American people have been clear: end the wars.
And so they did. And yet despite ending the wars, American soil was attacked.
Um what wars did we end? American soil was attacked why? Because of our freedom? It is because we were involved over there. But anyway I certainly have no issue going after AQ and punishing their Taliban Allies.
QuoteSaying Bush handled it wrong doesn't change the fact there are no easy solutions.
The belief that there will no consequences or fallout from the Taliban takeover is wishful thinking.
I don't know if there are any easy or correct solutions in Afghanistan but it seems pretty clear we are not likely to do much to find them. And even if we were not a total disastrous mess is it more likely we know better than the Afghanis themselves?
And oh there will be consequences to a Taliban takeover. Likely very bad ones. But are the consequences of continuing to kill innocent civilians and endanger our own soldiers in an endless, fruitless, and pointless war any less? A million people died when the British left India, but they were still right to do it.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 24, 2021, 09:45:01 PM
Over 70k people have been successfully evacuated with no casualties so far. Seems like a success to me.
That a fact? That makes me feel a bit better.
Edit: Link?
Quote from: Valmy on August 24, 2021, 09:52:32 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 24, 2021, 09:45:01 PM
Over 70k people have been successfully evacuated with no casualties so far. Seems like a success to me.
That a fact? That makes me feel a bit better.
Edit: Link?
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1430284203808133121
Quote from: President BidenWe have helped to evacuate 70,700 people since August 14. This is a testament to the efforts of our brave service women and men, to our diplomats on the ground in Kabul, and to the Allies still standing with us.
Ah well as much as I love our beloved President he might be presenting facts in an overly rosy way. But here is hoping that is the case. I am certainly fine with helping out the Afghans who bet on the USA.
I do take Minsky's point that perhaps there was a level of sustainable commitment that wasn't trying to rebuild the country and that wasn't super costly in American lives and treasury - and which wouldn't cause American state policy to have an unconscionable amount of Afghan blood on its hand. I'm not sure whether that was the status quo prior to withdrawal or something else, but it's a reasonable point I think. And if the Taliban victory leads to spectacularly adverse outcomes down the road, then having maintained that reasonable commitment will look eminently reasonable in hindsight.
Quote from: Valmy on August 24, 2021, 09:51:56 PM
Um what wars did we end?
The United States was not at war in September 2001 - had not been at war for years. The last military conflict it had been involved in was Kosovo -- more than three years earlier. The last conflict before that was the restoration of Aristide in Haiti in the mid 90s.
QuoteAmerican soil was attacked why?
No secret there - the person responsible gave the reasons:
"It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves."
There are references to wars and conflicts here - but mostly not ones involving the US, other than notably Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the US intervened *in defense* of Muslims. The US is nonetheless held responsible because in bin Laden's conspiratorial and paranoid worldview, the US was responsible for all evils in the world of Islam by definition. They didn't hate us for our freedom. They hated us because they hated us. Reason had nothing to do with it.
What did have something to do with it was the tepid response to al Qaeda's attacks during the 90s. The first WTC center bombing resulted in an effective criminal prosecution in the SDNY but did not bring the broader organization to American attention. Clinton responded to the wave of embassy bombings with a symbolic missile launch and nothing else despite intelligence that AQ was planning more attacks. AQ operatives planned the attack on the US Cole - again no response. And bin Laden's response was to escalate . . .
The deserved backlash against the many errors of the Bush administration should not cause us to forget why and how that policy developed and obtained support in the first place. It was based on a kernel of truth - that sitting back and hoping that dangerous overseas zealots would confine their violence to overseas targets was very far from a foolproof strategy.
US policy on the use of military intervention - like US policy in many domains - is prone to pendulum-like cycles. During the height of the Bush years in 2003-06, the pendulum swung hard and far to intervention, but since then the pendulum has been swinging back, and what we are seeing now is a signal that perhaps it has swung too far the other way.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 24, 2021, 09:45:01 PM
Over 70k people have been successfully evacuated with no casualties so far. Seems like a success to me.
It is a success in the sense that after putting itself in a nearly untenable position, the US has done a good job of making the best of an awful situation, using whatever shreds of negotiating leverage it has left, and mounting an impressive logistical effort. It is a humanitarian Dunkirk. Fair to call it success but the kind of success you really don't want to repeat.
And the hourglass is almost run out:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/asia/kabul-airport-afghanistan-intl-hnk/index.html
QuoteThe Taliban said Tuesday that they were "not allowing the evacuation of Afghans anymore" and warned that the US must stick to next week's deadline to pull out, as a frantic Western evacuation operation at Kabul airport picked up pace.
Or what? What are the Taliban going to do exactly? Bunch of empty threatening bullshit bravado.
You guys should deal with it the same way you deal with the southern "Chinese" straits, call their bluff and force the issue.
After 20 years of forcing the issue the US is tired of winning.
Well they could start shooting anyone trying to access the airport without their leave. Just to take one example. I doubt the US carrier battle groups in the Paciific could do much to deter murder in Kabul.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 25, 2021, 01:56:37 AM
Well they could start shooting anyone trying to access the airport without their leave. Just to take one example. I doubt the US carrier battle groups in the Paciific could do much to deter murder in Kabul.
Har har, you know what I mean. Easy enough to form an armoured column and get the folks you want out. The US embassy for example is 6km away from the airport.
Give me a break now. This isn't Mogadiscio.
Easier if you don't have to.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy
Quote from: Zoupa on August 25, 2021, 02:01:09 AM
This isn't Mogadiscio.
It certainly is not. The US is in no mood to fight a major battle in the city of Kabul.
I increasingly suspect this seems smart politics from Biden.
"Yeah we fucked Afghanistan but American lives are more important" pisses off a lot of people...And of course there's the actual fucking over of Afghanistan to think about....
But are the Republicans really going to be able to take the opposite POV there? He's ate their lunch.
If he ate their lunch, their lunch was poisoned.
Look at his approval ratings: here is the realclearpolitics average. On August 1 it was 51.3% approve, 43.5% disapprove. Today it is 46.6% approve, 48.9% disapprove.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 06:18:07 AM
If he ate their lunch, their lunch was poisoned.
Look at his approval ratings: here is the realclearpolitics average. On August 1 it was 51.3% approve, 43.5% disapprove. Today it is 46.6% approve, 48.9% disapprove.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
Come election time in a two party system however the main factor that matters is are you less detestable than the opposition.
I don't think approval rating really tells us much when we're talking about a Democrat going sharply rightwards. Plenty on the left may hate him for this ... but it'll take a massive change in approach from the Republicans to get them to vote for them instead. The only slim possibility is if the Republicans put up someone not as detestable as Trump and they just don't vote in key states.
The logistics guys are really the stars of the show in this. Very impressive.
Quote from: The Brain on August 25, 2021, 03:59:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on August 25, 2021, 02:01:09 AM
This isn't Mogadiscio.
It certainly is not. The US is in no mood to fight a major battle in the city of Kabul.
Agreed. This seems like an easy opportunity to call Taliban's bluff and put them in their place. I don't think they want a confrontation any more than the US does, and being wiped out by the US forces in Kabul is not the image they want right now.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 06:25:41 AM
The logistics guys are really the stars of the show in this. Very impressive.
I disagree. 70k in 10 or so days is not a great accomplishment, especially when you cram 600 people on a single plane.
For context prepandemic passenger traffic at London Heathrow was over 80 million, or over 200k per day, and it has 2 runways. So that is over 100k passengers per day per runway, and those passengers are not agreeable to being packed liked sardines on a cargo plane. I get the different operating context so you don't have to tell me that Kabul is not London.
The first (and possibly only :( ) Afghan refugees to make it over here were met by demonstrators burning tires and hurling racist abuse. Despicable.
(https://nltimes.nl/sites/nltimes.nl/files/styles/news_article_full_desktop_2x/public/2021-08/ANP-436183781.jpg?h=31570097)
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 07:34:59 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 06:25:41 AM
The logistics guys are really the stars of the show in this. Very impressive.
I disagree. 70k in 10 or so days is not a great accomplishment, especially when you cram 600 people on a single plane.
For context prepandemic passenger traffic at London Heathrow was over 80 million, or over 200k per day, and it has 2 runways. So that is over 100k passengers per day per runway, and those passengers are not agreeable to being packed liked sardines on a cargo plane. I get the different operating context so you don't have to tell me that Kabul is not London.
Since it is a completely different context, I don't know what your point is.
Quote from: Valmy on August 24, 2021, 10:06:48 PM
Ah well as much as I love our beloved President he might be presenting facts in an overly rosy way. But here is hoping that is the case. I am certainly fine with helping out the Afghans who bet on the USA.
They weren't supposed to be betting on us; they were supposed to be betting on themselves. We were supposed to be helping them create a sustainable democratic government for themselves, and the Afghan army necessary to defend it.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 08:23:47 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 07:34:59 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 06:25:41 AM
The logistics guys are really the stars of the show in this. Very impressive.
I disagree. 70k in 10 or so days is not a great accomplishment, especially when you cram 600 people on a single plane.
For context prepandemic passenger traffic at London Heathrow was over 80 million, or over 200k per day, and it has 2 runways. So that is over 100k passengers per day per runway, and those passengers are not agreeable to being packed liked sardines on a cargo plane. I get the different operating context so you don't have to tell me that Kabul is not London.
Since it is a completely different context, I don't know what your point is.
I don't know how much it has changed but the plan was to fly out one plane per hour. The numbers of people evacuated line up with that pace. That shouldn't be a logistical challenge for the US military with a modern runway.
It appears that the situation is extremely chaotic outside of the airport. The US military controls the airport.
Is the 70k in total or just the US?
I saw latest UK figures in the Guardian. So far 10k have been airlifted including about 6.5k Afghans, 2,500 Brits (+dependants). The rest are embassy staff and citizens of another 38 countries.
There's at least 2,000 more Afghans who worked for the British government and an "unidentified number of 'special cases' - human rights activists, judges, LGBTQ+ advocates and others" authorised for airlift by the FCDO. But it's really not clear how long we have and it still feels likely that some people we should be getting out will be trapped.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 08:31:16 AM
It appears that the situation is extremely chaotic outside of the airport.
That's where the people are coming from who are supposed be in the airplanes, so it's a pretty significant problem.
And while the US military may be in control of the runways, that hardly creates a logistical equivalent to London. Heathrow operates the way it does because there is a large and continuous flow of supplies into the airport from the one of the most logistically dense parts of the world. And that is without the additional challenge of supplying 5000 soldiers on the ground in 90 degree heat. As for Kabul, look at a map and start drawing circles around the city. How far out do you need to go to find a place where the US military has a base that can fly in significant amounts of supplies?
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 08:46:16 AM
Is the 70k in total or just the US?
According to Biden is his speech yesterday there were 19 US military flights and 31 "coalition" flights in a 12 hour period. 50 in total.
As of yesterday I had heard we'd (specifically the United States) had flown out 58,000 people. We also know the following numbers:
15,000 - reported total of Americans in country when the evacuation started
34,500 - Afghans in country with authorized visas to travel to the United States under special status
18,000 - Afghans who have applied for but not been granted visas
So in theory 58,000 is pretty damn close to our total expected maximum of 67,500. But it is, I believe, the case that some of the 58,000 we've shipped out have been foreign nationals bound for allied nations, and the exact breakdown is not known or hasn't been reported.
There's also likely some % of those above who either actually don't intend to leave Afghanistan, or who have found other ways to leave. For example the 15,000 Americans number has long been said to be a little shaky--you are encouraged but not required to check in with the Embassy when you land in Afghanistan as an American, and ditto for leaving. But not everyone does both, or some people check in but don't check out. So in those cases we actually don't even know if the person is in country.
Despite the hyperbole I'm much less concerned about people with American passports, I actually think even after 8/31, the Taliban is unlikely to block an American citizen from getting out, at least in the next few months while it tries to negotiate us releasing billions of their sovereign wealth that's locked in U.S. banks (I would hope we release none of it--I'm content to watch Afghanistan fall into the economic abyss its backwards tribal people want by supporting the Taliban.)
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 08:31:16 AM
I don't know how much it has changed but the plan was to fly out one plane per hour. The numbers of people evacuated line up with that pace. That shouldn't be a logistical challenge for the US military with a modern runway.
It appears that the situation is extremely chaotic outside of the airport. The US military controls the airport.
Full disclosure: I don't know much about military logistics, but getting fuel to the planes seems like it would be difficult and coordinating aircraft so they stay out of each other's way is probably harder than it looks.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 09:57:47 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 08:31:16 AM
I don't know how much it has changed but the plan was to fly out one plane per hour. The numbers of people evacuated line up with that pace. That shouldn't be a logistical challenge for the US military with a modern runway.
It appears that the situation is extremely chaotic outside of the airport. The US military controls the airport.
Full disclosure: I don't know much about military logistics, but getting fuel to the planes seems like it would be difficult and coordinating aircraft so they stay out of each other's way is probably harder than it looks.
You actually don't have to know much about military logistics, or honestly anything at all, to understand that AR making a nonsense post where he assumes the evacuation is going slowly because Kabul airport isn't operating in an equivalent manner to Heathrow is something you can safely just ignore. It falls into a familiar bucket for his posts it's either obvious trolling or so manifestly stupid as to be unworthy of further commentary.
I've never said the evacuation is going slowly, nor do I think that it is.
I'm not even sure we should be trying to evacuate some of the US citizens there, considering they were told months ago that we were pulling out and advised to leave the country.
Quote from: Malthus on August 24, 2021, 05:02:58 PM
The leader in the Economist is pretty scathing.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/21/the-fiasco-in-afghanistan-is-a-grave-blow-to-americas-standing
"and so force the Taliban to the negotiating table."
Unfortunately for the United States, the Taliban had already come to the negotiating table, and had negotiated the surrender of Afghanistan without reference to American policy.
This wasn't a sudden event. It had been brewing for years. In the post 9/11 rush Americans might have been more willing to fight and spend vast sums to invade and occupy in the name of globalization, this is a different era. Different policies are going to have to be considered to balance security needs with the need to ensure the expansion of the global economy.
I do find it curious with the evacuation that theres no talk of taking people out via over land routes with neighbouring countries. Surely this should be covered under the withdrawal and be mostly safe?
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 11:00:30 AM
I do find it curious with the evacuation that theres no talk of taking people out via over land routes with neighbouring countries. Surely this should be covered under the withdrawal and be mostly safe?
I suspect that is because most of the press is focussed on the situation in Kabul. I would suspect people in the northern part of the country would find it relatively easy to just cross the border.
But I don't know.
And it's the people in Kabul who are probably most at risk of reprisals.
Yeah, I'm thinking even from Kabul looking at a map though- its not that far from Islamabad (I think one of those expensive but not very impressive tarmacced roads flows that way?) and the Tajik border.
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 11:12:57 AM
Yeah, I'm thinking even from Kabul looking at a map though- its not that far from Islamabad (I think one of those expensive but not very impressive tarmacced roads flows that way?) and the Tajik border.
It's about 300km. That's a fair stretch when you have to do it without getting caught.
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 11:12:57 AM
Yeah, I'm thinking even from Kabul looking at a map though- its not that far from Islamabad (I think one of those expensive but not very impressive tarmacced roads flows that way?) and the Tajik border.
Sure - but the Taliban will likely ask questions of why the (inevitable) thousands of people are fleeing and there will be repraisals. In addition Pakistan is an ally of the Taliban and is probably not going to be particularly welcoming to the groups who are trying to flee them. Iran would be more of a fit especially for Dari speakers and Shi'ite Muslims, but the political situation there is already difficult for the regime so they've actually passed some of the most draconian anti-illegal immigration laws in the world specifically targeting Afghans - I think there's a 20-25 year sentence. Further along, immigration is now a huge issue in Turkey - they are building a wall along a chunk of the Turkey-Iran border (again, aimed at Afghans) - and unlike in 2015 when Erdogan accepted millions of Syrians there's no sign Turkey will welcome Afghans.
I'm less sure about the Central Asian states but my understanding is they may only welcome people from "their" ethnic groups. And then there's China.
I have no doubt there'll be thousands if not millions of Afghan refugees over-land but at this stage it doesn't look like Syria did in 2015 when Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon absorbed millions of refugees (and are still struggling with the economic and political consequences). All of the neighbours seem pretty anti-accepting any refugees. They will still come because of the desperate situation but they will be escaping that and then travelling through or across various other forms of oppression to get out.
Quote from: Neil on August 25, 2021, 10:46:02 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 24, 2021, 05:02:58 PM
The leader in the Economist is pretty scathing.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/21/the-fiasco-in-afghanistan-is-a-grave-blow-to-americas-standing
"and so force the Taliban to the negotiating table."
Unfortunately for the United States, the Taliban had already come to the negotiating table, and had negotiated the surrender of Afghanistan without reference to American policy.
This wasn't a sudden event. It had been brewing for years. In the post 9/11 rush Americans might have been more willing to fight and spend vast sums to invade and occupy in the name of globalization, this is a different era. Different policies are going to have to be considered to balance security needs with the need to ensure the expansion of the global economy.
The trust of the article is not that the decision to withdraw had been made, but rather that the implementation of the withdrawal has not been handled in a manner to America's advantage. There was no particular political pressure to withdraw so suddenly. The assertion is that the US made an error in relying, wildly overoptomistically, on the soundness of the Afghan government and army.
I'm not sure there will be a significant need for millions of Afghan refugees. The number of "collaborators" with the regime is probably less than 200,000 AFAIK. I don't think they're defining "anyone who had a government or military job" as a collaborator, especially since large numbers of those very people are the ones who did the surrender-for-cash deals with the Taliban in the first place.
People fled Syria because they were afraid of war or they were afraid of ISIS, ISIS was actively going into villages and committing genocide against basically anyone who wasn't a conservative Sunni Muslim. The Taliban wasn't like that even in the 90s. The vast majority of these rural tribal people are going to stay in their villages. Any refugees will likely come from the cities (which are only around 30% of the population) and a few specific ethnic groups like the Hazara who had been targeted for specific abuse previously.
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 11:38:52 AM
The trust of the article is not that the decision to withdraw had been made, but rather that the implementation of the withdrawal has not been handled in a manner to America's advantage. There was no particular political pressure to withdraw so suddenly. The assertion is that the US made an error in relying, wildly overoptomistically, on the soundness of the Afghan government and army.
Not an invalid opinion, but I think ignores Biden's actual reason for doing it--Biden hated that we were there, and has always wanted out. He wanted out 10 years ago. He finally had the power and the ability to get it done, and did so. Delaying it would be the risk to Biden's mindset--he likely knew there would be "bad political optics" whenever the U.S. withdrew, so if he waits too long it affects either the 2022 congressional election cycle or even later--the 2024 Presidential election cycle. There's also inherent risk that "conditions on the ground" could have changed in a way that would have made withdrawing even harder. For example, if the Taliban hadn't been getting peaceful handovers, but an actual huge "shooting war" had broken out that was looking to go on for years, it might have made it harder for Biden to leave, and even hard to resist calls for more involvement. If anything, the very rapid and relatively bloodless (compared to a civil war) collapse made it even easier for Biden to stand his ground.
The Economist article is predicated that we care about one of either: a) playing some sort of "Great Game" in central Asia with China and Russia b) a long term stable, democratic Afghan government. I'm not actually sure Biden or most Americans care about either of those things. Internationalists might. They aren't a political force in U.S. politics any longer.
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 11:38:52 AM
The trust of the article is not that the decision to withdraw had been made, but rather that the implementation of the withdrawal has not been handled in a manner to America's advantage. There was no particular political pressure to withdraw so suddenly. The assertion is that the US made an error in relying, wildly overoptomistically, on the soundness of the Afghan government and army.
There has been mounting pressure for a withdrawal for years, although I grant you there was no immediate crisis.
The problem with the article is that is that if it's not proposing continuing the occupation, then it wants all the fruits of victory, without actually having to have won. You can argue with how Biden framed the situation to the media, but the simple fact remains that the country had pre-negotiated their submission to the Taliban and were only waiting for the Americans to withdraw before they could finally end the war. Continuing the occupation was a waste at that point, and every death on either side was senseless.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 25, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 11:38:52 AM
The trust of the article is not that the decision to withdraw had been made, but rather that the implementation of the withdrawal has not been handled in a manner to America's advantage. There was no particular political pressure to withdraw so suddenly. The assertion is that the US made an error in relying, wildly overoptomistically, on the soundness of the Afghan government and army.
Not an invalid opinion, but I think ignores Biden's actual reason for doing it--Biden hated that we were there, and has always wanted out. He wanted out 10 years ago. He finally had the power and the ability to get it done, and did so. Delaying it would be the risk to Biden's mindset--he likely knew there would be "bad political optics" whenever the U.S. withdrew, so if he waits too long it affects either the 2022 congressional election cycle or even later--the 2024 Presidential election cycle. There's also inherent risk that "conditions on the ground" could have changed in a way that would have made withdrawing even harder. For example, if the Taliban hadn't been getting peaceful handovers, but an actual huge "shooting war" had broken out that was looking to go on for years, it might have made it harder for Biden to leave, and even hard to resist calls for more involvement. If anything, the very rapid and relatively (compared to a civil war) made it even easier for Biden to stand his ground.
The Economist article is predicated that we care about one of either: a) playing some sort of "Great Game" in central Asia with China and Russia b) a long term stable, democratic Afghan government. I'm not actually sure Biden or most Americans care about either of those things. Internationalists might. They aren't a political force in U.S. politics any longer.
I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".
If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 11:12:57 AM
Yeah, I'm thinking even from Kabul looking at a map though- its not that far from Islamabad (I think one of those expensive but not very impressive tarmacced roads flows that way?) and the Tajik border.
Elphinstone had the same idea.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 25, 2021, 11:53:27 AMNot an invalid opinion, but I think ignores Biden's actual reason for doing it--Biden hated that we were there, and has always wanted out. He wanted out 10 years ago. He finally had the power and the ability to get it done, and did so. Delaying it would be the risk to Biden's mindset--he likely knew there would be "bad political optics" whenever the U.S. withdrew, so if he waits too long it affects either the 2022 congressional election cycle or even later--the 2024 Presidential election cycle.
Yeah, the shit he's taking for ending this war is annoying. There would always have been bad optics but considering the circumstances there have been no US military casualties and it would only take one Taliban with a mortar tube sitting in a Kabul backyard to shut down the airport. Considering the last 20 years, it's on par or even slightly better. Seems the US and the Taliban have a deal.
I just worry the next President will be too scared to ever withdraw any US forces ever from pointless shithole entanglements.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 11:26:49 AM
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 11:12:57 AM
Yeah, I'm thinking even from Kabul looking at a map though- its not that far from Islamabad (I think one of those expensive but not very impressive tarmacced roads flows that way?) and the Tajik border.
Sure - but the Taliban will likely ask questions of why the (inevitable) thousands of people are fleeing and there will be repraisals. In addition Pakistan is an ally of the Taliban and is probably not going to be particularly welcoming to the groups who are trying to flee them. Iran would be more of a fit especially for Dari speakers and Shi'ite Muslims, but the political situation there is already difficult for the regime so they've actually passed some of the most draconian anti-illegal immigration laws in the world specifically targeting Afghans - I think there's a 20-25 year sentence. Further along, immigration is now a huge issue in Turkey - they are building a wall along a chunk of the Turkey-Iran border (again, aimed at Afghans) - and unlike in 2015 when Erdogan accepted millions of Syrians there's no sign Turkey will welcome Afghans.
I'm less sure about the Central Asian states but my understanding is they may only welcome people from "their" ethnic groups. And then there's China.
I have no doubt there'll be thousands if not millions of Afghan refugees over-land but at this stage it doesn't look like Syria did in 2015 when Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon absorbed millions of refugees (and are still struggling with the economic and political consequences). All of the neighbours seem pretty anti-accepting any refugees. They will still come because of the desperate situation but they will be escaping that and then travelling through or across various other forms of oppression to get out.
I was thinking less about these places as an end destination and more as safer places where they can be loaded on planes to go to their final destination
The Taliban do have a promise not to attack during the withdrawl and they've been sticking to that so far, so it does seem it would have been potentially a smarter option to do some in this way than the current mess around the airport.
I expect Biden expected to take a bit of a hit right now. The real impact on future presidents potentially withdrawing is going to come from long term impacts.
If the Afghanistan withdrawal looks like it'll have an impact on the 2022 House elections, on the 2024 Presidential one then it might have an impact on future decisionmaking. If he loses some percentage points for a two, three, four months and then recover I don't think it's going to have much of an adverse effect on future presidents.
I'm a little skeptical of the claims that America has taken a "reputational" hit. I don't think most of our allies are our allies because of our reputation. It's because we've been the largest economic and military power since the 1940s. Obviously China is catching up with us and in many cases has caught up, that means it is all but inevitable China develops some countries in its orbit who decide it is more beneficial to work with China vs us. That's not really something that's going to change based on our "reputation."
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 25, 2021, 11:50:10 AM
I'm not sure there will be a significant need for millions of Afghan refugees. The number of "collaborators" with the regime is probably less than 200,000 AFAIK. I don't think they're defining "anyone who had a government or military job" as a collaborator, especially since large numbers of those very people are the ones who did the surrender-for-cash deals with the Taliban in the first place.
People fled Syria because they were afraid of war or they were afraid of ISIS, ISIS was actively going into villages and committing genocide against basically anyone who wasn't a conservative Sunni Muslim. The Taliban wasn't like that even in the 90s. The vast majority of these rural tribal people are going to stay in their villages. Any refugees will likely come from the cities (which are only around 30% of the population) and a few specific ethnic groups like the Hazara who had been targeted for specific abuse previously.
Hopefully - there are already 2.5 million Afghan refugees from the 90s to the current conflict (which, while light on international troops has had significant civilian casualties). I think that might increase partly bcause of genuine social change - th number of women in education who I imagine will not want to stay - but also the risk of more conflict/resistance to Taliban power where the Taliban have quite modern weapons. At the minute we've got people fleeing the anticipation of Taliban rule - I think that will increase significantly as they start to implement it.
Also the overwhelming majority of Syrians who've fled the country weren't fleeing ISIS - they are Sunni Muslims who were fleeing Assad's regime in its fightback. That's partly why Turkey accepted so many - I don't think they would be as welcoming for non-Sunni Syrians.
QuoteNot an invalid opinion, but I think ignores Biden's actual reason for doing it--Biden hated that we were there, and has always wanted out. He wanted out 10 years ago. He finally had the power and the ability to get it done, and did so. Delaying it would be the risk to Biden's mindset--he likely knew there would be "bad political optics" whenever the U.S. withdrew, so if he waits too long it affects either the 2022 congressional election cycle or even later--the 2024 Presidential election cycle. There's also inherent risk that "conditions on the ground" could have changed in a way that would have made withdrawing even harder. For example, if the Taliban hadn't been getting peaceful handovers, but an actual huge "shooting war" had broken out that was looking to go on for years, it might have made it harder for Biden to leave, and even hard to resist calls for more involvement. If anything, the very rapid and relatively (compared to a civil war) made it even easier for Biden to stand his ground.
Yeah I also there's an argument that two previous Presidents have won elections on a commitment to withdraw or significantly reduce the US presence in Afghanistan and both have been flummoxed in trying to do that, so they've had to reverse course. I think that also plays into why Biden feels he has to do it.
And frankly Matt Zeitlin was sharing a bit from Biden's memo in 2009 - which I think is right. I don't think this analysis is wrong:
QuoteI do not see how anyone who took part in our discussions could emerge without profound questions about the viability of counterinsurgency. Our military will do its part: They will clear anything we ask them to clear. They will hold anything we ask them to hold. But no one can tell you with conviction when, and even if, we can produce the flip sides of COIN that are required to build and transfer responsibility to the Afghans: an effective and sustainable civilian surge, a credible partner in Kabul, basic governance and services, and competent Afghan security forces. We simply can't control these variables, yet they're essential to the success of COIN.
I think his point is accurate and without that - it really is just imperial holding of land to avoid the risks of not holding that land. As you just a Great Game.
QuoteAnd oh there will be consequences to a Taliban takeover. Likely very bad ones. But are the consequences of continuing to kill innocent civilians and endanger our own soldiers in an endless, fruitless, and pointless war any less? A million people died when the British left India, but they were still right to do it.
Yeah I think the end of empire handovers are an interesting comparison - because the UK worked with almost anyone to mask the fact that it was constantly withdrawing from a position of weakness and utter powerlessness (especially where there had been civil wars in that country). The British state really valued an orderly ceremony - flag raising and flag dropping etc - to present an image of power in defeat and, frankly, I think to blame any post-independence conflict on the fractious "natives" not the withdrawing imperial power (that has started to turn, but it worked for a while in India, Palestine, maybe Yemen).
The one I think is most comparable is probably withdrawing from British Palestine. There are disputes around why Britain withdrew but I think broadly London felt the Mandate had failed utterly, that there was nothing they could do to solve that problem; that staying forever was not possible or desirable (this was when Attlee was considering withdrawing entirely from the British Empire east of Suez); and that war was inevitable but it wasn't for the British to stop it - and that might not even be possible. It as seen at the time as basically a humiliation and a catastrophic failure of Britain's responsibilities. In Whitehall I think there was a sense (which I think we'd now challenge) that the violence in India-Pakistan happened despite British efforts, but happened in Palestine because Britain made no efforts - it just withdrew and let the Arabs and Jews fight it out.
Obviously I slightly wonder how much that impacted Britain's reputation globally or its view as an ally in the context of the wider cold war - the next year NATO was founded, a year later Britain was participating in Korea and Suez was the bigger humiliation. I think the US's future conduct and capacity matters more - it should cause some reconsideration in Europe given the nature of the withdrawal, but it won't because that might lead to some difficult policy decisions. Similarly I think if China funded the Taliban or they were obviously chasing the US out of the country - rather than this being a policy decision by a US president - it might be different.
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 12:08:11 PM
I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".
If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.
The Economist leader is premised that there was some (unknown even to the author of the piece) method of implementation of the withdrawal that could handled in a manner to America's advantage and would enhance or maintain its "power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends." I don't agree. I also think that the Economist's view of a world where normally intelligence is perfectly unflawed, planning is utterly non-rigid, leaders are never, ever capricious, and concern for allies is paramount is childish and naïve.
There was no good path for the US out of Afghanistan after its government decided to replace the Taliban with a fictional national government. There certainly wasn't a way for Biden's administration to oversee an ANG victory over the Taliban. At best, the US could have continued the slaughter indefinitely.
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 12:18:12 PM
I was thinking less about these places as an end destination and more as safer places where they can be loaded on planes to go to their final destination
The Taliban do have a promise not to attack during the withdrawl and they've been sticking to that so far, so it does seem it would have been potentially a smarter option to do some in this way than the current mess around the airport.
I get that - but from what I understand the crackdowns in Iran and Turkey are about Afghans trying to transit not settle. Similarly I think Pakistan will probably cooperate with the Taliban in deporting anyone fleeing them - I could be wrong.
It probably was something worth trying for - but you'd need the agreement of all the transit countries too, which might not have been forthcoming (especially if there wasn't a commitment from the US/Europe etc to take the refugees in the end - which seems unlikely). Also I get why the Taliban agree to a month for people to get to Kabul airport - though there has been violence by the Taliban to people outside the airport - I'm not sure why they'd agree to a free for all across the country over land.
Much of the British Empire was possible because they established systems where relatively small military commitments by British forces worked with local natives organized into British military units to keep order and discipline, and ran by a joint government of British officials and local leadership. The whole system doesn't work when the locals aren't on board, and a lot of the ways the British kept the locals on board weren't working any longer.
There's similarities to Afghanistan, in that the only way it was ever going to work to our advantage is if a native government and military of strength and viability emerged. Otherwise it was just us using raw military power to keep it going, which just isn't sustainable.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 12:33:14 PM
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 12:18:12 PM
I was thinking less about these places as an end destination and more as safer places where they can be loaded on planes to go to their final destination
The Taliban do have a promise not to attack during the withdrawl and they've been sticking to that so far, so it does seem it would have been potentially a smarter option to do some in this way than the current mess around the airport.
I get that - but from what I understand the crackdowns in Iran and Turkey are about Afghans trying to transit not settle. Similarly I think Pakistan will probably cooperate with the Taliban in deporting anyone fleeing them - I could be wrong.
It probably was something worth trying for - but you'd need the agreement of all the transit countries too, which might not have been forthcoming (especially if there wasn't a commitment from the US/Europe etc to take the refugees in the end - which seems unlikely). Also I get why the Taliban agree to a month for people to get to Kabul airport - though there has been violence by the Taliban to people outside the airport - I'm not sure why they'd agree to a free for all across the country over land.
I think you smoked a crack pipe if you think Pakistan is going to go after Pashtun people who cross from Afghanistan into Pashtun territory of Pakistan, unless Pakistan is up for major violence inside its own country.
The typical person who would try to emigrate from Afghanistan to Pakistan would be a Pashtun who was part of an anti-Taliban tribe, and felt they had affiliations with a tribe across the border that would help them out. I doubt Pakistan will desire to get involved in that.
Some urbanized Afghan lawyer from Kabul trying to drive to Islamabad or something, yeah I could see Pakistan deporting him.
Yeah - totally agree on that. There'll be tribal movement.
I meant more the types of refugees transiting to the West.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 25, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Not an invalid opinion, but I think ignores Biden's actual reason for doing it--Biden hated that we were there, and has always wanted out.
That isn't true. Some remarks he made in the Senate in 2007:
Quotein Afghanistan, success still is possible. Failure is
not thinkable. How can we turn things around? Very briefly, we need to do three things:
First, establish security. If we should be surging forces anywhere, it's in
Afghanistan, not Iraq. NATO troops are necessary, but not sufficient. We've also got to
train the Afghan police and army—which means, for starters, paying them decent
salaries....
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2007_hr/070308-biden.pdf
He did change his tune not long afterward.
Quote from: grumbler on August 25, 2021, 12:32:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 12:08:11 PM
I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".
If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.
The Economist leader is premised that there was some (unknown even to the author of the piece) method of implementation of the withdrawal that could handled in a manner to America's advantage and would enhance or maintain its "power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends." I don't agree. I also think that the Economist's view of a world where normally intelligence is perfectly unflawed, planning is utterly non-rigid, leaders are never, ever capricious, and concern for allies is paramount is childish and naïve.
There was no good path for the US out of Afghanistan after its government decided to replace the Taliban with a fictional national government. There certainly wasn't a way for Biden's administration to oversee an ANG victory over the Taliban. At best, the US could have continued the slaughter indefinitely.
That certainly would be childish and naive, if that was what was being claimed.
Seems a false dichotomy to me. Stating that an action was implemented badly is not the same thing as demanding perfection.
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 11:00:30 AM
I do find it curious with the evacuation that theres no talk of taking people out via over land routes with neighbouring countries. Surely this should be covered under the withdrawal and be mostly safe?
I remember reading reporters saying that the Taliban went after the land border passes very quickly, and thus they were open for a very brief and chaotic time (there were images of a bridge border with one of the northern stans that was collapsed with traffic of Afghans running away, including a fair amount of military units) until they were closed, so I don't think that route was really feasible.
This map is from the 22nd of July, and back then as you can see the Taliban already controlled most border crossings:
(https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Afghanistan_Border-crossings-and-control_July-22_2021-01.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C769)
And in fact there's images/video today from the Spin Boldak border crossing:
https://twitter.com/natiqmalikzada/status/1430575665925935107?s=20
Edit: And to be clear - those pictures aren't verified but that is exactly the problem. We know so little about what is going on outside of Kabul (airport).
Where is the map that shows how much of Pakistan is controlled by the Taliban?
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 01:04:58 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 25, 2021, 12:32:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 12:08:11 PM
I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".
If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.
The Economist leader is premised that there was some (unknown even to the author of the piece) method of implementation of the withdrawal that could handled in a manner to America's advantage and would enhance or maintain its "power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends." I don't agree. I also think that the Economist's view of a world where normally intelligence is perfectly unflawed, planning is utterly non-rigid, leaders are never, ever capricious, and concern for allies is paramount is childish and naïve.
There was no good path for the US out of Afghanistan after its government decided to replace the Taliban with a fictional national government. There certainly wasn't a way for Biden's administration to oversee an ANG victory over the Taliban. At best, the US could have continued the slaughter indefinitely.
That certainly would be childish and naive, if that was what was being claimed.
Seems a false dichotomy to me. Stating that an action was implemented badly is not the same thing as demanding perfection.
But the argument isn't that the Biden administration was irresponsible in anything, just that "its intelligence was flawed" (like all intelligence), "its planning rigid" (like all planning), "its leaders capricious" (like all leaders) and "its concern for its allies minimal" (an emo argument that presumes the writer actually knows the real concerns of the Biden Administration leadership). These are dumb arguments, in the absence of a proposed strategy that lacks some or all of those "flaws."
Also they seem like criticisms of the last 20 years rather than the withdrawal alone.
With perfect hindsight there is no question that Biden blundered. Clearly the plan was not withdraw all troops and then reinsert 5000.
So then the question is how realistic was the contingency that the Afghan govt would collapse more quickly than expected and how much planning was done in the event of that contingency. As to the former, it is very hard to see ex ante how a quick collapse would not have been considered as a plausible outcome, even if not the probable one. Thus, a failure to have a contingency plan for that event would be a serious mistake. And I have seen no evidence of such contingency planning and much evidence that there wasn't - namely the confused improvised nature of the initial US response and comments from sources inside the administration expressing surprise and shock and playing the blame game.
As for the impact on allies, what matters is not what the Biden administration intended or perceived but the perception of the affected allies. And it is clear that key American allies are unhappy and believe that the US has treated them shabbily. You can argue with that all you want but it doesn't change the reality of those beliefs or the consequences that may follow.
Oh yeah - not informing other NATO allies (who are there because of article 5) of your timetable, not coordinating is really bad. And at least Italy and the UK feel they were misled by what they were told previously by the administration. It is very bad and unlike most Trump scandals with allies - this is actually material and affecting people.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 03:29:34 PM
Oh yeah - not informing other NATO allies (who are there because of article 5) of your timetable, not coordinating is really bad. And at least Italy and the UK feel they were misled by what they were told previously by the administration. It is very bad and unlike most Trump scandals with allies - this is actually material and affecting people.
Where is the evidence NATO alllies were uninformed of the withdrawal timetable?
Can't find the article but it was reported here from MoD and military sources that they had no advance knowledge of the timetable (though were aware of the general withdrawal). And in part that's probably because it was in response to a crisis - according to the NYT it's only in mid-August that the US intelligence agencies warned they couldn't provide advance warning if Kabul was about to be attacked. My understanding is that's when Biden decided to pull out immediately ASAP.
Biden announced the August 31st deadline publicly months ago. Even if he was incompetent or thoughtless enough to not discuss this with NATO before making this announcement, surely him announcing it publicly should have provoked some kind of reaction from NATO? Like maybe they should have asked the US for more information. Granted I have learned to never assume wisdom or competence from my government but it seems unlikely this policy was not at least mentioned to NATO before Joe Biden announced the date to the media.
Quote from: Valmy on August 25, 2021, 03:46:23 PM
Biden announced the August 31st deadline publicly months ago. Even if he was incompetent or thoughtless enough to not discuss this with NATO before making this announcement, surely him announcing it publicly should have provoked some kind of reaction from NATO? Like maybe they should have asked the US for more information. Granted I have learned to never assume wisdom or competence from my government but it seems unlikely this policy was not at least mentioned to NATO before Joe Biden announced the date to the media.
For the military - not for embassies, all nationals plus the Afghans who've worked with us. The current issue is not the withdrawal of troops but the need to immediately and absolute evactuate everyone.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 03:46:21 PM
Can't find the article but it was reported here from MoD and military sources that they had no advance knowledge of the timetable (though were aware of the general withdrawal). And in part that's probably because it was in response to a crisis - according to the NYT it's only in mid-August that the US intelligence agencies warned they couldn't provide advance warning if Kabul was about to be attacked. My understanding is that's when Biden decided to pull out immediately ASAP.
That doesn't make any sense.
Right, Biden had been publicly mentioning the anniversary of September 11th as his red line date to have every soldier out of country for quite some time. I'm not saying Biden didn't maybe fail to make some "formal notification" but when it's in the Washington Post I think it's safe to say it wasn't exactly a secret date.
I'm frankly not sure how different a "contingency planned" withdrawal would look from what has actually happened. The whole issue is the core plan was to withdraw troops but leave thousands of civilian employees. I don't know of a situation where you suddenly end up with like 15 days to get everyone out, where it's not going to be chaotic and hectic to get it done, regardless of a contingency plan or not. I also am not really sure we have evidence there was "no contingency" plan, the existence of chaos and disorder isn't proof that a plan was not drawn up, just proof that such a plan did not work well. But there is really no mechanism to do an evacuation of this size with very few troops on the ground, in basically 15 days, that won't be chaotic.
Imagine if the Afghan national government had held out for another year, and then very suddenly in a month's time span all of this happened. We'd be in the exact same situation then, except with 0 troops in country. What would the "contingency" plan look like? I assume it'd look a hell of a lot like what we're seeing right now, 5000+ U.S. troops rapidly deployed to take control of the Kabul airport and rapidly getting people out of the country.
The only way you avoid the chaos is to change the day number from 15 to some number much greater than 15. The French actually started processing all of their Afghan employee visas many months ago, and letting all of those people leave. That's fine, but the French employees is a pretty small number. The 45-50,000 Afghans we were issuing visa to make up a large part of some of the more important parts of the governmental bureaucracy. We certainly could have started getting all over those people out back in March, but then I think we'd be dealing with fallout from "Biden's decision to destroy the Afghan government by gutting it of many of its experts and professionals", and since they'd be leaving before the collapse, it'd be painted as the reason for the collapse, or at least blamed on accelerating it.
There is not some magic wand situation that would've made this clean, at all.
Since the war was lost a long time ago and everyone knew it was, it seems unlikely to me that details regarding the withdrawal itself will have a long-term political impact. Except in the UK, depending on how many animals get brought out.
I'd tend to agree with that, I don't think this even amounts to as much as Benghazi (since it doesn't have the loss of U.S. life Benghazi did.) And Benghazi was mostly a thing to cry about by people who were never voting Democrat anyway, so it had minimal political impact. It was political entertainment for the right, not an actual mover of votes.
Now I can see someone saying Biden didn't "warn" them that he was moving all of the American civilians out, because that decision was not made until this month, and had to be made rapidly due to the extremely rapid collapse of the Afghan national government. Biden coudn't have warned NATO he was evacuating our Embassy back in June when it was not our plan to evacuate our Embassy at ALL back then. It was expected it would continue to operate after things were left in the Ghani government's hands.
I'm seeing news reports State's count of Americans still in country is 1500, 500 of which they are in contact with and who want to get out, 1000 of which appear to either be not responding to State or not wanting out. At this point the 1000 I'm kinda fine with whatever, they're making a choice to not be communicating.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 25, 2021, 03:56:44 PM
At this point the 1000 I'm kinda fine with whatever, they're making a choice to not be communicating.
Unless they're being prevented from communicating, of course, as may be the case for some.
Quote from: Valmy on August 25, 2021, 03:46:23 PM
Biden announced the August 31st deadline publicly months ago.
In his April speech he said September 11. Then he moved that up to August 31 in June. But by that time, Bagram had already been evacuated without advance warning.
Quote from: The Brain on August 25, 2021, 03:51:49 PM
Since the war was lost a long time ago and everyone knew it was, it seems unlikely to me that details regarding the withdrawal itself will have a long-term political impact. Except in the UK, depending on how many animals get brought out.
The UK is where the impact is most likely to be felt, given the Tory "strategy" of moving away from security collaboration with the feckless Europeans post-Brexit and putting all the eggs in cooperation with the rock-solid, reliable Americans.
Sorry I wasn't clear because I think you're all talking about something different - I don't necessarily mean the policy decision, from my memory of the story it was operational (which is why the story's coming from the military and the MoD).
Because they weren't in the room with the US and Taliban in the last month - which is fine - military commanders were not aware of the types of contingency plans the US was drawing up. Especially as if the US kept it's embassy in place most of the rest of NATO would follow. They weren't informed of what was going on, or how the US intended to withdraw or the pace of withdrawal - all of those have direct impacts on all of the US's allies wtihdrawal plans.
It also explains why for the first few days after the US began its withdrawal NATO allies appeared to be so surprised and flat-footed. They didn't know.
Quote from: grumbler on August 25, 2021, 03:03:13 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 01:04:58 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 25, 2021, 12:32:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 12:08:11 PM
I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".
If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.
The Economist leader is premised that there was some (unknown even to the author of the piece) method of implementation of the withdrawal that could handled in a manner to America's advantage and would enhance or maintain its "power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends." I don't agree. I also think that the Economist's view of a world where normally intelligence is perfectly unflawed, planning is utterly non-rigid, leaders are never, ever capricious, and concern for allies is paramount is childish and naïve.
There was no good path for the US out of Afghanistan after its government decided to replace the Taliban with a fictional national government. There certainly wasn't a way for Biden's administration to oversee an ANG victory over the Taliban. At best, the US could have continued the slaughter indefinitely.
That certainly would be childish and naive, if that was what was being claimed.
Seems a false dichotomy to me. Stating that an action was implemented badly is not the same thing as demanding perfection.
But the argument isn't that the Biden administration was irresponsible in anything, just that "its intelligence was flawed" (like all intelligence), "its planning rigid" (like all planning), "its leaders capricious" (like all leaders) and "its concern for its allies minimal" (an emo argument that presumes the writer actually knows the real concerns of the Biden Administration leadership). These are dumb arguments, in the absence of a proposed strategy that lacks some or all of those "flaws."
Those statements are conclusions that follow from the description of events in the rest of the article. They are not made in the air based on nothing.
For example, take the assertion that the intelligence was flawed. This is based on the administration apparently not having a clue that the Afghan government it spent years supporting would collapse so rapidly. The Economist wrote that it, too, did not predict such a rapid collapse - but then, it isn't the government in charge of overseeing the whole process.
You can argue that all intelligence is flawed, and that is surely true. But some flaws are more glaring than others. Not knowing that the Afghan government and military was so completely worthless, and that the Taliban would take over so very easily, must rank as a pretty significant "flaw".
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 03:12:12 PM
Also they seem like criticisms of the last 20 years rather than the withdrawal alone.
In the leader, they are expressly criticisms of the withdrawal process. Not of the last 20 years.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 25, 2021, 04:12:10 PM
The UK is where the impact is most likely to be felt, given the Tory "strategy" of moving away from security collaboration with the feckless Europeans post-Brexit and putting all the eggs in cooperation with the rock-solid, reliable Americans.
Not for this thread - but that's just not true.
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 04:26:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 03:12:12 PM
Also they seem like criticisms of the last 20 years rather than the withdrawal alone.
In the leader, they are expressly criticisms of the withdrawal process. Not of the last 20 years.
Yeah but my point is they build on twenty years of the same failure. So the flawed intelligence around the brittleness of Ghani's is a fair criticism - my suspicion is it's a consequence of a previous twenty years of intelligence failures. That might, for example, explain why the Taliban resurgence was a surprise etc. So I don't understand how you can separate them (and I think they are fair criticisms) to apply to the withdrawal only, and unless you have a solution for those issues don't you just end up with the same issues 20 years down the line?
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 04:34:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 04:26:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 25, 2021, 03:12:12 PM
Also they seem like criticisms of the last 20 years rather than the withdrawal alone.
In the leader, they are expressly criticisms of the withdrawal process. Not of the last 20 years.
Yeah but my point is they build on twenty years of the same failure. So the flawed intelligence around the brittleness of Ghani's is a fair criticism - my suspicion is it's a consequence of a previous twenty years of intelligence failures. That might, for example, explain why the Taliban resurgence was a surprise etc. So I don't understand how you can separate them (and I think they are fair criticisms) to apply to the withdrawal only, and unless you have a solution for those issues don't you just end up with the same issues 20 years down the line?
I don't understand this point (or maybe don't agree with it).
Assuming one is now President and has inherited a particular situation from one's predecessors. That situation may be screwed up. You have decisions to make as to what to do about that situation. Your decisions will be based on your understanding of that situation at the time you make the decision, correct? You, or your advisors, will be expected to understand just how screwed up the situation is.
You can't be faulted for the situation being screwed up, that was something your predecessors did.
However, it seems perfectly just for you to be faulted for *not knowing how screwed up the situation actually is*, and taking action based on that misunderstanding. That's the failure being alleged here.
Biden's predecessors are to blame for getting America into Afghanistan and staying there. If Biden did not correctly understand how brittle the Afghan government was, that was his fault, and his alone (as the "buck" of his advisors stops with him). It may be explicable that his advisors continued along with the same misunderstandings as previously, but ultimately he has to wear it - that is, in effect, part of his job.
So I think there's two sides - one is the media criticism angle.
The Economist has backed the mission in Afghanistan for 20 years, they admit they have been blind-sided by what has happened. My point is that what has happened is as a result of that legacy of policy failures and the leader should include some acknowledgement and some reflection, perhaps, on how it went so wrong and what, over the years the Economist got wrong. Rather than an "o brave new world" attitude to these issues which are noted but the only proposed policy change was to delay withdrawal or to stay - again without explanation of how, having done that, the US would improve its flawed intelligence, rigid strategy etc. Especially as Ghani's already fled.
On Biden - I think he's responsible for this withdrawal as a policy decision but I don't think he's to blame for the flawed intelligence or rigid strategy or whatever else. As I say this all - including the assessment of the Afghan government - builds on twenty years of failure, of a blind eye being turned to increasingly corrupt local partners, of a huge intelligence failure. And I don't think leaders can be blamed for things that were entirely outside the mainstream on a subject - I think there's some suggestions of buck passing among intelligence agencies now. I know it is obvious now but I thnk of the Afghan expert on Twitter who'd made their own predictions basically people should own those predictions because they were uniformally wrong. I think you can blame a leader if they're encouraging or enabling groupthing - which I don't know if Biden has. But in general I don't think it's fair to expect a leader to have some insight that is both more accurate and entirely different from the wider foreign policy establishment and, from what I understand, the intelligence agencies or defence. We don't generally elect savants.
Ironically I think the only recent President who probably did was was Trump. I often think about that South Carolina debate (where I think he won the nomination) by saying the unsayable as a Republican candidate - Bush didn't keep us safe, 9/11 happened under him, Iraq was a disaster. But that's not Biden - he is, probably, the most foreign policy establishment seeped President since Bush 41.
Quote from: Malthus on August 25, 2021, 04:24:09 PM
Not knowing that the Afghan government and military was so completely worthless, and that the Taliban would take over so very easily, must rank as a pretty significant "flaw".
That was a known fact. Different Defense memos clearly establish that Afhgan security force are mostly unreliable and corruption is endemic. Various generals warned Biden that the Afghan army wasn't ready to hold the country alone, but Biden wanted out anyway since they couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear: a precise date on when they'd be ready.
Now, here's a text by a 3* Afghan general about his sense of betrayal by the US:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html
QuoteSami Sadat
General Sadat is a commander in the Afghan National Army.
For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted heavy casualties. Then I was called to Kabul to command Afghanistan's special forces. But the Taliban already were entering the city; it was too late.
I am exhausted. I am frustrated. And I am angry.
President Biden said last week that "American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves."
It's true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that's because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr. Biden's tone and words over the past few months. The Afghan Army is not without blame. It had its problems — cronyism, bureaucracy — but we ultimately stopped fighting because our partners already had.
It pains me to see Mr. Biden and Western officials are blaming the Afghan Army for collapsing without mentioning the underlying reasons that happened. Political divisions in Kabul and Washington strangled the army and limited our ability to do our jobs. Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years crippled us, as did a lack of clear guidance from U.S. and Afghan leadership.
I am a three-star general in the Afghan Army. For 11 months, as commander of 215 Maiwand Corps, I led 15,000 men in combat operations against the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan. I've lost hundreds of officers and soldiers. That's why, as exhausted and frustrated as I am, I wanted to offer a practical perspective and defend the honor of the Afghan Army. I'm not here to absolve the Afghan Army of mistakes. But the fact is, many of us fought valiantly and honorably, only to be let down by American and Afghan leadership.
Two weeks ago, while battling to hold the southern city of Lashkar Gah from the Taliban, President Ashraf Ghani named me commander of Afghanistan's special forces, the country's most elite fighters. I reluctantly left my troops and arrived in Kabul on Aug. 15, ready to fight — unaware how bad the situation already was. Then Mr. Ghani handed me the added task of ensuring the security of Kabul. But I never even had a chance: The Taliban were closing in, and Mr. Ghani fled the country.
There is an enormous sense of betrayal here. Mr. Ghani's hasty escape ended efforts to negotiate an interim agreement for a transition period with the Taliban that would have enabled us to hold the city and help manage evacuations. Instead, chaos ensued — resulting in the desperate scenes witnessed at the Kabul airport.
It was in response to those scenes that Mr. Biden said on Aug. 16 that the Afghan forces collapsed, "sometimes without trying to fight." But we fought, bravely, until the end. We lost 66,000 troops over the past 20 years; that's one-fifth of our estimated fighting force.
So why did the Afghan military collapse? The answer is threefold.
First, former President Donald Trump's February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Doha doomed us. It put an expiration date on American interest in the region. Second, we lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to our combat operations. Third, the corruption endemic in Mr. Ghani's government that flowed to senior military leadership and long crippled our forces on the ground irreparably hobbled us.
The Trump-Taliban agreement shaped the circumstances for the current situation by essentially curtailing offensive combat operations for U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. air-support rules of engagement for Afghan security forces effectively changed overnight, and the Taliban were emboldened. They could sense victory and knew it was just a matter of waiting out the Americans. Before that deal, the Taliban had not won any significant battles against the Afghan Army. After the agreement? We were losing dozens of soldiers a day.
Still, we kept fighting. But then Mr. Biden confirmed in April he would stick to Mr. Trump's plan and set the terms for the U.S. drawdown. That was when everything started to go downhill.
The Afghan forces were trained by the Americans using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes. We lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.
Contractors maintained our bombers and our attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.
The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared. Real-time intelligence on targets went out the window, too.
The Taliban fought with snipers and improvised explosive devices while we lost aerial and laser-guided weapon capacity. And since we could not resupply bases without helicopter support, soldiers often lacked the necessary tools to fight. The Taliban overran many bases; in other places, entire units surrendered.
Mr. Biden's full and accelerated withdrawal only exacerbated the situation. It ignored conditions on the ground. The Taliban had a firm end date from the Americans and feared no military reprisal for anything they did in the interim, sensing the lack of U.S. will.
And so the Taliban kept ramping up. My soldiers and I endured up to seven Taliban car bombings daily throughout July and the first week of August in Helmand Province. Still, we stood our ground.
I cannot ignore the third factor, though, because there was only so much the Americans could do when it came to the well-documented corruption that rotted our government and military. That really is our national tragedy. So many of our leaders — including in the military — were installed for their personal ties, not for their credentials. These appointments had a devastating impact on the national army because leaders lacked the military experience to be effective or inspire the confidence and trust of the men being asked to risk their lives. Disruptions to food rations and fuel supplies — a result of skimming and corrupt contract allocations — destroyed the morale of my troops.
The final days of fighting were surreal. We engaged in intense firefights on the ground against the Taliban as U.S. fighter jets circled overhead, effectively spectators. Our sense of abandonment and betrayal was equaled only by the frustration U.S. pilots felt and relayed to us — being forced to witness the ground war, apparently unable to help us. Overwhelmed by Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why they were not providing air support. Morale was devastated. Across Afghanistan, soldiers stopped fighting. We held Lashkar Gah in fierce battles, but as the rest of the country fell, we lacked the support to continue fighting and retreated to base. My corps, which had carried on even after I was called away to Kabul, was one of the last to give up its arms — only after the capital fell.
We were betrayed by politics and presidents.
This was not an Afghan war only; it was an international war, with many militaries involved. It would have been impossible for one army alone, ours, to take up the job and fight. This was a military defeat, but it emanated from political failure.
Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat commanded the Afghan National Army's 215 Maiwand Corps in southwestern Afghanistan. Before that, he served as a senior director in Afghanistan's national intelligence agency. He is a graduate of the Defense Academy of the U.K. and holds a master's degree from King's College London.
I don't think Biden had any doubts about the worthlessness of the Afghan Army, just based on things he was reported to have been saying in meetings w/senior defense and intelligence officers back in the 2010s under Obama. I do think he genuinely thought they would hold out no less than three months and possibly more than a year, everything we've seen to hit press has suggested that was the range of estimates coming in from official intelligence, defense and State sources. FWIW there was a dissent cable sent in from something like 25 State officials saying they believed Afghanistan would collapse rapidly, however even their estimate wasn't as grim as the 11 or so days it actually took. And being a dissent cable means it was not a majority opinion, and we aren't sure Biden saw it--we do know that SecState Blinken did, though.
There's different degrees of worthlessness.
Like believing an Army is deeply corrupt and likely to slowly lose guys to desertion and steadily lose ground in bitter fighting is a lot different from believing literally 150,000+ guys were going to surrender all the major cities of the country, including the capital, with almost no shots being fired and with high level agreements between provincial level commanders and political leaders to accept money in exchange for said surrenders.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 25, 2021, 03:24:04 PM
With perfect hindsight there is no question that Biden blundered. Clearly the plan was not withdraw all troops and then reinsert 5000.
So then the question is how realistic was the contingency that the Afghan govt would collapse more quickly than expected and how much planning was done in the event of that contingency. As to the former, it is very hard to see ex ante how a quick collapse would not have been considered as a plausible outcome, even if not the probable one. Thus, a failure to have a contingency plan for that event would be a serious mistake. And I have seen no evidence of such contingency planning and much evidence that there wasn't - namely the confused improvised nature of the initial US response and comments from sources inside the administration expressing surprise and shock and playing the blame game.
As for the impact on allies, what matters is not what the Biden administration intended or perceived but the perception of the affected allies. And it is clear that key American allies are unhappy and believe that the US has treated them shabbily. You can argue with that all you want but it doesn't change the reality of those beliefs or the consequences that may follow.
I think that it's a fair cop that the US military/intelligence/diplomatic planning communities should have considered that there would be no Afghan National Government ten minutes after the US left Bagram AB. I'm not sure how they could have confirmed that scenario without the withdrawal of troops, in which case the only option would be re-insertment, which is exactly what happened.
US allies are always unhappy and bitching about "being treated shabbily," starting with France and the Netherlands in the American Revolution. But that's fair, because the US is always unhappy and bitching about "being treated shabbily" by those same allies, starting with France and the Netherlands in the American Revolution.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 07:34:59 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 06:25:41 AM
The logistics guys are really the stars of the show in this. Very impressive.
I disagree. 70k in 10 or so days is not a great accomplishment, especially when you cram 600 people on a single plane.
When the media is loudly declaring your plan to evacuate 50k people impossible and you then evacuate 70k people, you look good to the public.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 25, 2021, 07:02:57 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on August 25, 2021, 07:34:59 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 25, 2021, 06:25:41 AM
The logistics guys are really the stars of the show in this. Very impressive.
I disagree. 70k in 10 or so days is not a great accomplishment, especially when you cram 600 people on a single plane.
When the media is loudly declaring your plan to evacuate 50k people impossible and you then evacuate 70k people, you look good to the public.
Yup
Spain has announced that they expect to finish evacuation flights by Friday, as apparently the US wants to reserve full use of the airport since Saturday to be able to evacuate all their remaining people. Other countries that have already finished their own evacuations are Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Netherlands and Belgium, while France expects to finish by Friday as well. So far we've evacuated 1242 people, some of which are to be settled in different EU countries (Denmark, Germany, Poland and Lithuania, apparently). There are still 600 Afghan former employees of the Spanish forces to be evacuated from the country, but it seems that many of them have loads of trouble to get to Kabul, as Spain was deployed in a province 800 Km. away from it, and once in Kabul getting into the airport itself.
Spain seems to have run a quite efficient evacuation program these days according to what I'm reading, with a relatively meagre presence in the ground (only around 100 people, between military personnel, policemen that formerly protected the embassy and diplomatic personnel, including the ambassador, who is still in the country). A group of 60 spec ops soldiers are the only ones that are able to leave the airport in order to escort people into it, so I can only imagine how terrible the situation must be there.
Spain is also going to act as a hub for receiving Afghans that worked with different EU countries and institutions, hosting them temporarily before they're settled in their final destinations, as well as being part of the network of US military bases in Europe (Spain, Germany, Italy and Kosovo) where the US is going to temporarily host around 25.000 Afghans (4.000 of them will stay in Spanish bases).
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 25, 2021, 06:20:43 PM
I don't think Biden had any doubts about the worthlessness of the Afghan Army, just based on things he was reported to have been saying in meetings w/senior defense and intelligence officers back in the 2010s under Obama. I do think he genuinely thought they would hold out no less than three months and possibly more than a year, everything we've seen to hit press has suggested that was the range of estimates coming in from official intelligence, defense and State sources. FWIW there was a dissent cable sent in from something like 25 State officials saying they believed Afghanistan would collapse rapidly, however even their estimate wasn't as grim as the 11 or so days it actually took. And being a dissent cable means it was not a majority opinion, and we aren't sure Biden saw it--we do know that SecState Blinken did, though.
There's different degrees of worthlessness.
Like believing an Army is deeply corrupt and likely to slowly lose guys to desertion and steadily lose ground in bitter fighting is a lot different from believing literally 150,000+ guys were going to surrender all the major cities of the country, including the capital, with almost no shots being fired and with high level agreements between provincial level commanders and political leaders to accept money in exchange for said surrenders.
I think that's right.
And I'd add I think even more importantly the state evaporated. In the space of two weeks every single provincial governor had handed over power to the Taliban and the President had fled. I think there is a bit of chicken and egg here because I don't know how much the army didn't fight because the thing they were meant to defend and whose orders they were meant to follow disappeared, and how much the provincial governors just decided to get out because the army wasn't fighting. I think it is really tough though to know what the ANA is meant to do when the Afghan state just disappears - arguably the army could effectively become the state and step in but I think that takes a very strong level of coherence and sort of identity within the army that didn't exist.
In a way I think the failure of the Afghan state is the even bigger failure here - it's not just the US or coalition allies, that was a project of the UN, of Western NGOs etc and it failed utterly - plus everyone ran away.
QuoteUS allies are always unhappy and bitching about "being treated shabbily," starting with France and the Netherlands in the American Revolution. But that's fair, because the US is always unhappy and bitching about "being treated shabbily" by those same allies, starting with France and the Netherlands in the American Revolution.
Fair - I have seen a date on the moan now - that as late as 12 August the US was telling allies that they intended to keep their embassy in Kabul and would make sure the airport was running.
Separately the UK and US are now warning their citizens not to wait at the gates of the airport because there's security risks - I think of terrorist attacks in the crowd which would be awful given the level of crowding :(
Terrorism is generally a tactic of insurgents. Groups in charge generally don't launch terrorist attacks on the people they govern in areas they control.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 26, 2021, 05:41:48 AM
Terrorism is generally a tactic of insurgents. Groups in charge generally don't launch terrorist attacks on the people they govern in areas they control.
They have forbidden Afghans from leaving the country. they may attack to make their point: stay or die trying to leave.
Explosion outside Kabul airport :(
Edit: No reports on casualties but apparently a suicide bomber at a choke point and someone else with a gun.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 26, 2021, 05:41:48 AM
Terrorism is generally a tactic of insurgents. Groups in charge generally don't launch terrorist attacks on the people they govern in areas they control.
The specific security warnings that have been released suggested ISIS in Afghanistan could be looking to do a terrorist attack on civilians. Afghanistan has lots of bad people and groups in it, not just the Taliban. The foreign terror group presence is very low right now, but they do have an active presence.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 26, 2021, 09:12:43 AM
Explosion outside Kabul airport :(
Edit: No reports on casualties but apparently a suicide bomber at a choke point and someone else with a gun.
Really mystified at the reasons behind this.
Of course if you're going to be a suicide bomber you've already got a few screws lost and have been brainwashed into alien thinking.
But under the circumstances its just weird.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 26, 2021, 09:41:27 AM
Afghanistan has lots of bad people and groups in it, not just the Taliban. The foreign terror group presence is very low right now
Anyone care to hazard a guess on the likely future direction of those numbers?
I mean it will certainly go up. That isn't justification for a permanent presence in the country.
And as expected, a terrorist attack left 5 dead near the Kabul airport.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 26, 2021, 09:41:27 AM
The specific security warnings that have been released suggested ISIS in Afghanistan could be looking to do a terrorist attack on civilians. Afghanistan has lots of bad people and groups in it, not just the Taliban. The foreign terror group presence is very low right now, but they do have an active presence.
Yeah - and ISIS have condemned the Taliban who they don't consider real jihadists but who have instead won this victory through negotiation and compromise. So it wouldn't be a massive surprise if they started more regular attacks except instead of dealing with the Afghan army and state (backed by the US) they will be facing against the Taliban (backed by Pakistan). I wouldn't be surprised if there's an up-tick in ISIS attacks.
Worth noting that ISIS generally don't like the Taliban - they consider them apostates who are basically Islamo-nationalists who govern through tribal law and customs and only concern themselves with Afghanistan rather than the world and ISIS's take on a pure Islamic state/law. They also think that the Taliban are far too close to Pakistan and particularly are not anywhere near strong enough on Shi'ite Muslims.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 26, 2021, 10:08:46 AM
I mean it will certainly go up. That isn't justification for a permanent presence in the country.
Of course it's a justification, the real question is whatever it is a sufficient justification in terms of cost vs benefit.
Got a feeling there may be airstrikes soon.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 10:57:05 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 26, 2021, 10:08:46 AM
I mean it will certainly go up. That isn't justification for a permanent presence in the country.
Of course it's a justification, the real question is whatever it is a sufficient justification in terms of cost vs benefit.
No, there is no such question. Evidence suggests it is not a sufficient justification.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 26, 2021, 11:07:51 AM
No, there is no such question. Evidence suggests it is not a sufficient justification.
What evidence would that be?
The only concrete evidence I am aware of is the historical datum of what happened the last time the Taliban were in charge in Afghanistan and allowed Islamic terror groups to organize on their soil.
This is about to get messy...
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 11:35:44 AM
The only concrete evidence I am aware of is the historical datum of what happened the last time the Taliban were in charge in Afghanistan and allowed Islamic terror groups to organize on their soil.
Well they control tons of territory in Pakistan. They can sponsor Islamic terror groups there just as well. Is there something special about the dirt in Afghanistan that makes Islamic terror groups more dangerous if they are based there than in Pakistan?
Look so long as the Taliban has a powerful state sponsor we are unwilling to challenge we are never going to defeat them. It is impossible. So why spend time, treasure, and demoralize our country over an impossible mission? We would be better off using our strength for missions that are possible.
Look I would rather we not fight any non-defensive wars at all. But if we are going to be this global spanning empire who needs to make sure nobody in fucking central Asia is being naughty then at least lets do missions that are not impossible.
Quote from: viper37 on August 26, 2021, 10:20:28 AM
And as expected, a terrorist attack left 5 dead near the Kabul airport.
It is almost like there is a war there or something.
Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2021, 12:54:05 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 26, 2021, 10:20:28 AM
And as expected, a terrorist attack left 5 dead near the Kabul airport.
It is almost like there is a war there or something.
Yeah, these days, even Afghanistan is not safe. :(
Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2021, 12:40:36 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 11:35:44 AM
The only concrete evidence I am aware of is the historical datum of what happened the last time the Taliban were in charge in Afghanistan and allowed Islamic terror groups to organize on their soil.
Well they control tons of territory in Pakistan. They can sponsor Islamic terror groups there just as well. Is there something special about the dirt in Afghanistan that makes Islamic terror groups more dangerous if they are based there than in Pakistan?
Yes a lot more. There are al Qaeda affiliates laying low in the FATA but they have to lay low because Pakistan does not tolerate their operation in Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban is tolerated only because the ISI still finds them useful in the greater game. So it would be a significant development if jihadi movements could cease their clandestine status and operate safely with state support. Just as it was a significant development for al Qaeda's development to obtain refuge and state backing in Sudan and Afghanistan.
QuoteSo why spend time, treasure, and demoralize our country over an impossible mission?
The theoretical mission to decisively defeat the Taliban was impossible.
The actual mission to contain the Taliban was not only possible, it had been succeeding for years with declining costs over time.
Via Leo Carella and a little out of date given Biden and Guardian figures - but to be honest this is far more than I expected. And really surprised at Italy - again interesting that UK and Italy were apparently most keen on staying, it seems a bit surprising:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9sY9toXEAEv0U_?format=jpg&name=small)
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 01:19:55 PM
The actual mission to contain the Taliban was not only possible, it had been succeeding for years with declining costs over time.
The Taliban is kind of self-containing. They can overrun Afghanistan, but beyond that there isn't that far to go. Maybe they can mess around in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but that's China's problem.
The GOP just got their new Benghazi.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 26, 2021, 02:57:32 PM
Via Leo Carella and a little out of date
A lot of out date. The Canadian number is 3700 as of today. The troubling thing is the Canadian operation has ended. The acting Chief of Staff is quoted in the Globe and Mail that our operations had to end because the Americans needed the runway to withdraw their troops by the deadline. That does not seem a very plausible explanation. The Americans could surely have worked around a couple extra Canadian flights. Thousands of people who could have come to Canada will be left behind as a result.
Meanwhile, our PM, in the middle of an election, is reported to have said that he would not take personal responsibility for the failure to get those people out. The buck stops - somewhere other than his desk. For the small minority of you not fixated by Canadian politics, this PM was first elected during an election in which he greatly benefited from the picture of a drowned young kurdish boy washed up on a Greek beach, who could have come to Canada. He made a lot hay boasting that things would be different under his government. This might not end well for him.
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 03:05:00 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 01:19:55 PM
The actual mission to contain the Taliban was not only possible, it had been succeeding for years with declining costs over time.
The Taliban is kind of self-containing. They can overrun Afghanistan, but beyond that there isn't that far to go. Maybe they can mess around in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but that's China's problem.
Well except for when they assist the people who fly planes into tall buildings.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 03:43:59 PM
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 03:05:00 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 01:19:55 PM
The actual mission to contain the Taliban was not only possible, it had been succeeding for years with declining costs over time.
The Taliban is kind of self-containing. They can overrun Afghanistan, but beyond that there isn't that far to go. Maybe they can mess around in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but that's China's problem.
Well except for when they assist the people who fly planes into tall buildings.
And there are better alternatives vis-a-vis airline security than an unending, half-hearted occupation.
More US troops have died from hostile fire in the withdrawal from Afghanistan than died in the two years prior to the withdrawal.
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 03:47:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 03:43:59 PM
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 03:05:00 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 01:19:55 PM
The actual mission to contain the Taliban was not only possible, it had been succeeding for years with declining costs over time.
The Taliban is kind of self-containing. They can overrun Afghanistan, but beyond that there isn't that far to go. Maybe they can mess around in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but that's China's problem.
Well except for when they assist the people who fly planes into tall buildings.
And there are better alternatives vis-a-vis airline security than an unending, half-hearted occupation.
Perhaps, my point is that your claim that the Taliban cannot have effects beyond its borders with the exception of Pakistan is not accurate. You may stop the same kind of attack with greater airline security. But stopping all possible attacks from an adversary that once again has the time and safety to plan and implement attacks is a different very resource intensive project.
Why would a terrorist bother flying a plane when unmanned vehicles are so cheap and easy to use?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 03:56:51 PM
Why would a terrorist bother flying a plane when unmanned vehicles are so cheap and easy to use?
Stop thinking like its 2021. We only plan to win the last war.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 03:51:56 PM
Perhaps, my point is that your claim that the Taliban cannot have effects beyond its borders with the exception of Pakistan is not accurate. You may stop the same kind of attack with greater airline security. But stopping all possible attacks from an adversary that once again has the time and safety to plan and implement attacks is a different very resource intensive project.
But not as resource intensive as conquering and occupying Afghanistan.
It sounds like you're making an argument that the US should wage war against any and all prospective threats.
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 04:03:35 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 03:51:56 PM
Perhaps, my point is that your claim that the Taliban cannot have effects beyond its borders with the exception of Pakistan is not accurate. You may stop the same kind of attack with greater airline security. But stopping all possible attacks from an adversary that once again has the time and safety to plan and implement attacks is a different very resource intensive project.
But not as resource intensive as conquering and occupying Afghanistan.
It sounds like you're making an argument that the US should wage war against any and all prospective threats.
Not at all. We are talking about Afghanistan and the threats which will now emanate from that country. The war was already fought there. All for naught.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 03:56:51 PM
Why would a terrorist bother flying a plane when unmanned vehicles are so cheap and easy to use?
Depends on what you want to do with it. There's isn't a commercially-available drone large enough to do something like 9/11. I suppose you could use drones to deliver bombs, but that kind of small-scale havoc can be planned out in any number of ways and doesn't rely on a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan. That's the equivalent of somebody driving a rental truck into pedestrians and then going on a stabbing spree.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 04:06:17 PM
Not at all. We are talking about Afghanistan and the threats which will now emanate from that country. The war was already fought there. All for naught.
But since threats already emanated from Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon (not to mention far more serious threats from Russia and China), and we're able to deal with those threats without occupation, I guess maybe we shouldn't get too panicky about how the West is in constant danger unless they spend tens of billions to continue the occupation.
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 04:15:04 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 04:06:17 PM
Not at all. We are talking about Afghanistan and the threats which will now emanate from that country. The war was already fought there. All for naught.
But since threats already emanated from Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon (not to mention far more serious threats from Russia and China), and we're able to deal with those threats without occupation, I guess maybe we shouldn't get too panicky about how the West is in constant danger unless they spend tens of billions to continue the occupation.
Do you think the Taliban have the same considerations as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China when deciding to attack the West. Do you think anyone is Lebanon has the resources to do anything?
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 04:27:17 PM
Do you think the Taliban have the same considerations as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China when deciding to attack the West. Do you think anyone is Lebanon has the resources to do anything?
Hezbollah. But whatever mischief they cause, they can be relied on to keep the likes of Daesh down in their own area of influence.
FFS the very least we can do is operate a shredder - apparently there's concerns that the UK embassy still had documents identifying Afghan workers.
Separately - but semi-relatedly - I see a story that the US has given the Taliban at the airport a list of names of U.S. citizens, green card holders & Afghan allies to grant entry into the outer perimeter of the city's airport. That might be fine but it seems trusting.
There's also concerns about the data stored by telecoms companies because they will hold records of people calling and being called by Western diplomats, NGOs etc plus whose phones they were identifying the individual. The fear is this data will basically provide a list for the Taliban to comb through at their leisure once Kabul airport's closed.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 04:27:17 PM
Do you think the Taliban have the same considerations as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China when deciding to attack the West. Do you think anyone is Lebanon has the resources to do anything?
They have some of the same ones. But it's hard to say how well the Taliban can be deterred by means short of occupation. They didn't attack the West last time they formed a government. Maybe the last twenty years of occupation will have put them in a space where they would want to attack, but there are likely better methods for staving off this hypothetical attack using unknowable means than full occupation of Afghanistan.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has the resources and capabilities to plan the kind of small-scale attacks that you seem to be concerned about.
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 04:41:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 04:27:17 PM
Do you think the Taliban have the same considerations as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China when deciding to attack the West. Do you think anyone is Lebanon has the resources to do anything?
They have some of the same ones.
Interesting, I would have thought, as just one example, that Saudi Arabia would be much more concerned about keeping their ties with the US than supporting attacks on it. While the Taliban have no good relations with the US to preserve. Not sure how your claim they have the same considerations holds any water.
Quote
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has the resources and capabilities to plan the kind of small-scale attacks that you seem to be concerned about.
I am not sure I would call the attacks on 9/11 small scale. It seems the only way your claim works is if there are only small scale attacks, whatever that might mean.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 05:27:02 PM
Interesting, I would have thought, as just one example, that Saudi Arabia would be much more concerned about keeping their ties with the US than supporting attacks on it. While the Taliban have no good relations with the US to preserve. Not sure how your claim they have the same considerations holds any water.
The US holds significant portions of the Afghan financial reserves and controls access to the global economy. There are all kinds of diplomatic and economic levers that they can pull. They control humanitarian and developmental aid. They control sanctioning. The US can launch airstrikes into Afghan territory with impunity. They also have the ability to recognize the Taliban regime, although that's a longshot. The US can engage with countries in other ways aside from occupying their territory.
QuoteI am not sure I would call the attacks on 9/11 small scale. It seems the only way your claim works is if there are only small scale attacks, whatever that might mean.
Are we talking about things that the Taliban did, or are we talking about 9/11?
Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2021, 12:40:36 PM
Well they control tons of territory in Pakistan. They can sponsor Islamic terror groups there just as well. Is there something special about the dirt in Afghanistan that makes Islamic terror groups more dangerous if they are based there than in Pakistan?
because Pakistan will not allow terrorist training grounds to operate openly like in Afghanistan, for fear of reprisals by the US. Therefore, they will "covertly" help the Talibans and AQ, but not as openly as the Talibans did from '93 to 2001, culiminating in the WTC attacks.
ISIS is more of a nuisance than anything else in Afghanistan, not a real threat to the Talibans' power, unlike Syria and Iraq.
It's possible the Talibans have learnt their lessions and will not openly invite terrorist groups to train in Afghanistan. Doubtful, but possible. And I think they will eventually, in a not so distant future, reach a compromise with ISIS.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 03:41:34 PM
For the small minority of you not fixated by Canadian politics, this PM was first elected during an election in which he greatly benefited from the picture of a drowned young kurdish boy washed up on a Greek beach, who could have come to Canada. He made a lot hay boasting that things would be different under his government. This might not end well for him.
The bolded part is highly hypothetical. Canada only increased the rate at which refugees were coming, overwhelming our system in the process; they never went beyond the numbers promised by the Conservatives.
Also, the government has decided only 2-3 weeks ago to repatriate Afghanis to Canada, and many of these 3700 were sent to "safe 3rd countries".
Canadian government officials said Thursday that Canada has received applications from about 8,000 Afghans to resettle in Canada and managed to airlifted about 3,700 people from Kabul airport – not all of whom are headed for Canada.From the Liberal gazette (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-evacuates-last-of-canadian-nationals-afghan-refugees-at-kabul/)
Quote from: Neil on August 26, 2021, 04:41:12 PM
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has the resources and capabilities to plan the kind of small-scale attacks that you seem to be concerned about.
Hezbollah does not seem to be much concerned with the world outside Lebanon and Israel.Even Hamas does not seem that interested in striking western countries. Nowadays, at least, their focus is on Israel.
If they somehow managed to destroy Israel, we might have to deal with them. For the moment, they are not a concern to us, unlike AQ and ISIS who have demonstrated the capability to commit and/or inspire attacks in western countries, including Canada.
For someone who does not like the Liberals, you seem to have a lot of faith in Trudeau to appropriately protect Canadian citizens. ;)
Quote from: viper37 on August 26, 2021, 07:45:55 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 03:41:34 PM
For the small minority of you not fixated by Canadian politics, this PM was first elected during an election in which he greatly benefited from the picture of a drowned young kurdish boy washed up on a Greek beach, who could have come to Canada. He made a lot hay boasting that things would be different under his government. This might not end well for him.
The bolded part is highly hypothetical. Canada only increased the rate at which refugees were coming, overwhelming our system in the process; they never went beyond the numbers promised by the Conservatives.
Also, the government has decided only 2-3 weeks ago to repatriate Afghanis to Canada, and many of these 3700 were sent to "safe 3rd countries".
Canadian government officials said Thursday that Canada has received applications from about 8,000 Afghans to resettle in Canada and managed to airlifted about 3,700 people from Kabul airport – not all of whom are headed for Canada.
From the Liberal gazette (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-evacuates-last-of-canadian-nationals-afghan-refugees-at-kabul/)
In the case of that boy, he had Canadian sponsors who were trying to bring him to Canada. The government came under heavy fire because it was reported that the application had been rejected. So, no not at all hypothetical. The paper work was in for him to come. The government later claimed that there had been no rejection but the local MP had a different version of events.
The point is there are thousands of people in a similar situation that have been left behind in Afghanistan. Including people who had already been accepted for entry into Canada.
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 08:11:48 PM
The point is there are thousands of people in a similar situation that have been left behind in Afghanistan. Including people who had already been accepted for entry into Canada.
I know that. But I never voted for the LPC in my entire life as I dislike hypocrites and liars.
Last Italian Air Force flight is out of Afghanistan - around 5,000 people airlifted out. But strong signs this is ending very soon.
Quote from: viper37 on August 26, 2021, 07:39:53 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2021, 12:40:36 PM
Well they control tons of territory in Pakistan. They can sponsor Islamic terror groups there just as well. Is there something special about the dirt in Afghanistan that makes Islamic terror groups more dangerous if they are based there than in Pakistan?
because Pakistan will not allow terrorist training grounds to operate openly like in Afghanistan, for fear of reprisals by the US. Therefore, they will "covertly" help the Talibans and AQ, but not as openly as the Talibans did from '93 to 2001, culiminating in the WTC attacks.
ISIS is more of a nuisance than anything else in Afghanistan, not a real threat to the Talibans' power, unlike Syria and Iraq.
It's possible the Talibans have learnt their lessions and will not openly invite terrorist groups to train in Afghanistan. Doubtful, but possible. And I think they will eventually, in a not so distant future, reach a compromise with ISIS.
Oh so Pakistan was cool letting them use their territory as a base to attack our troops but they were too afraid of reprisals to do other things? That is a very specific level of fear. Pakistan has nukes, they know damn well we would never touch them.
And they were sponsoring the Taliban and were responsible for them taking over Afghanistan in the 1990s. Pakistan was at least as responsible for 9/11 as the Taliban were.
But hey if the Taliban want to be bombed again then they can do their old tricks. But we pay tons of money for this massive security state, maybe they can stop terrorist attacks.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 26, 2021, 04:33:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 26, 2021, 04:27:17 PM
Do you think the Taliban have the same considerations as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China when deciding to attack the West. Do you think anyone is Lebanon has the resources to do anything?
Hezbollah. But whatever mischief they cause, they can be relied on to keep the likes of Daesh down in their own area of influence.
The Taliban are no friends to ISIS either.
True...but it doesn't seem totally inconceivable that a faction of the Taliban could take control that is more sympathetic to those with an ISIS-like mentality/sympathy.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 26, 2021, 03:20:28 PM
The GOP just got their new Benghazi.
We will see. But if so, this is how we get endless empire and endless wars. Everybody has such a thirst for blood that any movement towards peace sets off the political alarm bells. While GWB can get re-elected after starting two disastrous wars.
But they can go fuck themselves in their warmongering asses. Most of the American people want peace. The Benghazi thing was a reaction to just generally how much the American people hated the Libyan intervention which is why it had legs. Hopefully this will not.
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 27, 2021, 09:00:03 AM
True...but it doesn't seem totally inconceivable that a faction of the Taliban could take control that is more sympathetic to those with an ISIS-like mentality/sympathy.
Well sure they share a common mentality but that is exactly why they are not sympathetic to each other.
Quote from: Valmy on August 27, 2021, 09:01:08 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 26, 2021, 03:20:28 PM
The GOP just got their new Benghazi.
We will see. But if so, this is how we get endless empire and endless wars. Everybody has such a thirst for blood that any movement towards peace sets off the political alarm bells. While GWB can get re-elected after starting two disastrous wars.
But they can go fuck themselves in their warmongering asses. Most of the American people want peace. The Benghazi thing was a reaction to just generally how much the American people hated the Libyan intervention which is why it had legs. Hopefully this will not.
Yeah. Reagan could get away with abandoning Lebanon after US soldiers were killed by terrorists and Clinton could survive a pull-out of Somalia. I don't think you could do that now.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 27, 2021, 09:37:05 AM
Yeah. Reagan could get away with abandoning Lebanon after US soldiers were killed by terrorists and Clinton could survive a pull-out of Somalia. I don't think you could do that now.
Well I hope not.
But if we are going to punish every politician who ends a war and rewards every one who starts one then we have no ground to complain when we end up in tons of wars around the world.
The situation now seems ripe for foreign nationals who have not made it out, to be taken as hostages by ISIL-K and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan.
How will the West deal with a Lebanon style carousel of hostage taking?
Another danger is once the Western forces leave, assuming there's no attempt to shot down one of the last departing aircraft, could be Afghan interpreters and others being used as human shields at likely retaliatory targets for the airport bombing that are selected by the Biden administration, a la Saddam in the Gulf War.
Quote from: Valmy on August 27, 2021, 08:55:37 AM
Oh so Pakistan was cool letting them use their territory as a base to attack our troops but they were too afraid of reprisals to do other things? That is a very specific level of fear. Pakistan has nukes, they know damn well we would never touch them.
Pakistan's ISIS helped the Talibans, not Al-Queida. Bush, as President of the USA, declared war on Afghanistan because the Talibans refused to surrender the AQ militants who planned and organized the terrorist attack.
The Talibans did openly support and work hand in hand with Al-Queida and Oussama Bin Laden. Pakistan never officially worked with the Talibans, and they always had some kind of plausible deniability. Of course, everyone knew Pakistani's intelligence service, and likely the government were turning a blind eye to the Talibans' activities. but AQ's actions were on a whole other level.
QuoteAnd they were sponsoring the Taliban and were responsible for them taking over Afghanistan in the 1990s. Pakistan was at least as responsible for 9/11 as the Taliban were.
AQ was responsible for 9/11, not the Talibans. The Talibans refused to surrender AQ making them accomplice in a terrorist act, when Article 5 of NATO had been invoked.
There's a difference between actively harboring and helping an ennemy of the State escape justice, while turning a blind eye to your citizens and citizens of another country criss-crossing your border to hide from ennemy airstrikes after attacking the US & coallition troops.
Was it enough to justify attacking Pakistan? Certainly. Enough to
really justify attacking a country with nukes? Unlikely. Had Pakistan harbored the AQ militants who trained for, planned and organized 9/11, the US would have invaded Pakistan, nuke or not. But turning a blind eye while enemy combatants seek refute in a lawless zone AND providing some intel to help the US&NATO? Nah, not worth it.
This is like Saudi Arabia. You know some member of the government are working with ISIS and Al-Queida. You know the top level of the government will shut their eyes on this. You know Saudi Arabia is a cancer in the muslem world, constantly funding religious fanatics, the same way the USSR was funding communist groups all across the world, I guess. Yet, the US, nor any occidental country will declare war on Saudi Arabia. Iran is engaged in a proxy war in Yemen against Saudi Arabia. Yet, SA does not directly attack Iran and Iran does not directly attack SA. But everyone there knows each another is helping enemy combatants strike at their respective armies.
Quote
But hey if the Taliban want to be bombed again then they can do their old tricks. But we pay tons of money for this massive security state, maybe they can stop terrorist attacks.
I don't think you are paying tons of money for the Talibans to improve their security. Well, the US kind of like throwing money around, as much as Justin Trudeau does, so it's hard to keep track of whom they're paying or not, so who knows, really? :P
But I'm pretty confident the US isn't collaborating with the Talibans on security matters.
Quote from: Valmy on August 27, 2021, 09:01:08 AM
Most of the American people want peace.
So did most of the Romans in the 5th century. ;)
UK's last purely civilian flight has left Kabul. All the remaining flights will also be pulling out the remaining essential diplomats and military personnel.
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 28, 2021, 11:17:11 AM
UK's last purely civilian flight has left Kabul. All the remaining flights will also be pulling out the remaining essential diplomats and military personnel.
Did you get the dogs out?
News coming in about a US missile strike on a suspected suicide car bomber nr Kabul airport, reports of secondary explosions from vehicle, but no indications of civilian deaths/injuries yet.
Meanwhile Biden is off to salute the Kabul fallen:
Quote
Biden to honour service members killed at Kabul airport
US President Joe Biden has travelled to the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to honour the 13 US service members killed in the suicide bomb attack on Kabul airport on Thursday.
Up to 170 people, most of them Afghan civilians, died in the attack, which Islamic State's Afghanistan branch said it carried out.
The president and First Lady Jill Biden will "meet the families of fallen American service members who gave their lives to save Americans, our partners, and our Afghan allies in Kabul," Mr Biden's schedule says.
They will then honour the transfer of the troops' remains from an aircraft flown to the base.
Did Trump ever do this?
I remember film of LBJ doing this and I think Nixon might have?
Quote from: mongers on August 29, 2021, 10:04:36 AM
Did Trump ever do this?
He called the families to tell them how he was the greatest President ever.
Quote from: viper37 on August 29, 2021, 10:22:26 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 29, 2021, 10:04:36 AM
Did Trump ever do this?
He called the families to tell them how he was the greatest President ever.
He also said that soldiers who got killed are losers, no?
Quote from: Solmyr on August 30, 2021, 12:37:48 AM
Quote from: viper37 on August 29, 2021, 10:22:26 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 29, 2021, 10:04:36 AM
Did Trump ever do this?
He called the families to tell them how he was the greatest President ever.
He also said that soldiers who got killed are losers, no?
Capturer soldiers are losers (according to him). Not sure about those who get killed, but it's possible he said that too.
https://www.newsweek.com/stuart-scheller-resigns-commission-after-being-relieved-command-afghanistan-remarks-1624127
QuoteStuart Scheller Resigns Commission After Being Relieved of Command for Afghanistan Remarks
Marine Officer Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller said on Sunday that he is resigning his commission after being dismissed from command over his remarks about the U.S. troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"I'm currently not pending legal action and I could stay in the Marine Corps for another three years, but I don't think that's the path I am on. I'm resigning my commission as a United States Marine effective now," he said in a new video posted on his Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. "I have forfeited my retirement, all entitlements, I don't want a single dollar."
Scheller also recalled that his boss asked him about what he was trying to accomplish by posting a video criticizing the Afghanistan withdrawal.
"Now it was a very tough question for me and my response was I want senior leaders to accept accountability," Scheller said. All I asked for was accountability of my senior leaders when there are clear, obvious mistakes that were made. And had they done that I would have gone back into rank and accomplished what I wanted."
Towards the end of the 10-minute video, Scheller warned of the consequence of going after stability and money, which, he said, can make a person "a slave to the system."
"I don't need a single dollar. I just need every single person that's willing to go back outside the wire every single day to wear a blue collar, and just go into work every single day and feed their families," he said. "Those are the people that I need. Follow me and we will bring the whole f****** system down."
This week, Scheller gained widespread attention after demanding accountability and criticizing senior military leadership for their handling of the U.S. troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Scheller pointed out mistakes made throughout the evacuation process in a four-minute video posted on social media on Thursday, shortly after the ISIS-K bombing outside the Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members and many Afghans.
His video went viral and sparked controversy, with some commentators praising Scheller's notes about the operation and others criticizing him for calling out his senior leaders while in uniform and urging him to resign.
"Stuart Scheller would make a better Secretary of Defense than Lloyd Austin," wrote Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, in a tweet.
Donald Trump Jr. weighed in, as well, saying it was "disgrace" that Scheller had been relieved.
Scheller wrote in a Facebook post on Friday that he has been relieved due to the public criticism made after his clip went viral.
In a response to Newsweek, Maj. Jim Stenger, Marine Corps spokesperson, stated:
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was relieved of command by Col. David Emmel, Commanding Officer of School of Infantry-East, due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command.
This is obviously an emotional time for a lot of Marines, and we encourage anyone struggling right now to seek counseling or talk to a fellow Marine. There is a forum in which Marine leaders can address their disagreements with the chain of command, but it's not social media.
Meanwhile in China the state-controlled Global Times said the Scheller story showed the "low morale" in the U.S. military.
Newsweek contacted Scheller for further comments but didn't receive an immediate response.
Obvs. my family likes the guy. :)
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/s960x960/240529156_371751204586140_5949326786325547747_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=xCWjx7y5SW0AX8lbI9n&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=4057ee46af08a2daf2f7cce8a07d82ff&oe=6131EE1B)
Seems kind of weird to claim that before the operation is even completed. Whatever mistakes the military or bureaucrats made in this operation would need to be reviewed once the operation is finished.
It's official, the last US aircraft has left Kabul; mission over (at least for a while)
Quote from: Syt on August 30, 2021, 09:44:20 AM
https://www.newsweek.com/stuart-scheller-resigns-commission-after-being-relieved-command-afghanistan-remarks-1624127
QuoteStuart Scheller Resigns Commission After Being Relieved of Command for Afghanistan Remarks
Marine Officer Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller said on Sunday that he is resigning his commission after being dismissed from command over his remarks about the U.S. troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"I'm currently not pending legal action and I could stay in the Marine Corps for another three years, but I don't think that's the path I am on. I'm resigning my commission as a United States Marine effective now," he said in a new video posted on his Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. "I have forfeited my retirement, all entitlements, I don't want a single dollar."
Scheller also recalled that his boss asked him about what he was trying to accomplish by posting a video criticizing the Afghanistan withdrawal.
"Now it was a very tough question for me and my response was I want senior leaders to accept accountability," Scheller said. All I asked for was accountability of my senior leaders when there are clear, obvious mistakes that were made. And had they done that I would have gone back into rank and accomplished what I wanted."
Towards the end of the 10-minute video, Scheller warned of the consequence of going after stability and money, which, he said, can make a person "a slave to the system."
"I don't need a single dollar. I just need every single person that's willing to go back outside the wire every single day to wear a blue collar, and just go into work every single day and feed their families," he said. "Those are the people that I need. Follow me and we will bring the whole f****** system down."
This week, Scheller gained widespread attention after demanding accountability and criticizing senior military leadership for their handling of the U.S. troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Scheller pointed out mistakes made throughout the evacuation process in a four-minute video posted on social media on Thursday, shortly after the ISIS-K bombing outside the Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members and many Afghans.
His video went viral and sparked controversy, with some commentators praising Scheller's notes about the operation and others criticizing him for calling out his senior leaders while in uniform and urging him to resign.
"Stuart Scheller would make a better Secretary of Defense than Lloyd Austin," wrote Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, in a tweet.
Donald Trump Jr. weighed in, as well, saying it was "disgrace" that Scheller had been relieved.
Scheller wrote in a Facebook post on Friday that he has been relieved due to the public criticism made after his clip went viral.
In a response to Newsweek, Maj. Jim Stenger, Marine Corps spokesperson, stated:
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was relieved of command by Col. David Emmel, Commanding Officer of School of Infantry-East, due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command.
This is obviously an emotional time for a lot of Marines, and we encourage anyone struggling right now to seek counseling or talk to a fellow Marine. There is a forum in which Marine leaders can address their disagreements with the chain of command, but it's not social media.
Meanwhile in China the state-controlled Global Times said the Scheller story showed the "low morale" in the U.S. military.
Newsweek contacted Scheller for further comments but didn't receive an immediate response.
Obvs. my family likes the guy. :)
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/s960x960/240529156_371751204586140_5949326786325547747_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=xCWjx7y5SW0AX8lbI9n&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=4057ee46af08a2daf2f7cce8a07d82ff&oe=6131EE1B)
He should have be fired.
Only being relieved of your current command for public insubordination during an active operation as a military officer seems rather lenient.
He should have written his Congressman or Senator.
Quote from: Razgovory on August 30, 2021, 05:58:36 PM
He should have written his Congressman or Senator.
He'll be a Representative or Senator before long.
Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2021, 03:10:45 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 28, 2021, 11:17:11 AM
UK's last purely civilian flight has left Kabul. All the remaining flights will also be pulling out the remaining essential diplomats and military personnel.
Did you get the dogs out?
Apparently the dogs got out, but 68 staff of the animal shelter had to be left behind. They were in the group of people that would have been given a spot on a plane, but apparently 150 dogs/cats were more important to the cunt running the dog shelter.
QuoteBut speaking to LBC on Saturday, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair Tom Tugendhat said: "The difficulty is getting people into and out of the airport and we've just used a lot of troops to bring in 200 dogs, meanwhile my interpreter's family are likely to be killed.
"As one interpreter asked me a few days ago 'why is my five-year-old worth less than your dog?'," the Conservative MP added.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-58370218 (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-58370218)
What a fucking disgrace.
There are very few humans more valuable to me than my cat.
Quote from: Threviel on August 31, 2021, 12:27:55 AM
Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2021, 03:10:45 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 28, 2021, 11:17:11 AM
UK's last purely civilian flight has left Kabul. All the remaining flights will also be pulling out the remaining essential diplomats and military personnel.
Did you get the dogs out?
Apparently the dogs got out, but 68 staff of the animal shelter had to be left behind. They were in the group of people that would have been given a spot on a plane, but apparently 150 dogs/cats were more important to the cunt running the dog shelter.
QuoteBut speaking to LBC on Saturday, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair Tom Tugendhat said: "The difficulty is getting people into and out of the airport and we've just used a lot of troops to bring in 200 dogs, meanwhile my interpreter's family are likely to be killed.
"As one interpreter asked me a few days ago 'why is my five-year-old worth less than your dog?'," the Conservative MP added.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-58370218 (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-58370218)
What a fucking disgrace.
This guy seems to have an army of 30+ ladies showering him with praise on Twitter. My favourite was "the world is watching" - yes, with disgust.
I'd ask who let the dogs out, but I already know it was PM Johnson. :smarty:
This is not a good look for the UK.
So, the final number seems to be 123,000~ evacuated.
I think that's a pretty good number.
Spain evacuated 2,200 people (the majoriy of them Afghan collaborators). I was surprised at so many.
We're still waiting for the final breakdown but the UK got out 15,000. The numbers are a little confusing because there were 5,000 British nationals (including dual citizens) and 8,000 Afghans, presumably the rest were citizens of the 38 other countries the MoD have mentioned (I wonder if that's just smaller countries who have no capacity to run their own airlift but have citizens who need to get out - possibly Ireland, or Malta). But over 10,000 of the airlifted were eligible for Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy which is for locally employed staff and their family.
My assumption is that's most of the 8,000 Afghans plus some of the 5,000 Brits who are dual nationals married or related to an Afghan perhaps, or one of the 2,000 other nationalities? I don't know. A full breakdown would be quite helpful.
But I'm the same as Cel - it is a lot more by the UK and by Western countries in general than I thought would be possible and the operational military/foreign office-y people have done incredible stuff to get that number of people out. But it is, certainly for the UK, still not everyone who we owe and who we need to get out - there's no clear numbers on this but I think at least 1,000 people with ARAP status didn't get airlifted out. ARAP was only meant to cover 20,000 people on the government's estimates and they expected to get 5,000 out in this year - the fact that we've got 10,000 out in this airlift suggests to me that (as per) the government is wildly underestimating the figures and there's possibly a lot of Afghans who worked for or with the British who are now faced with the Taliban :(
I hope we can reach a deal with the Taliban that they'll allow people with ARAP status or a visa to come to the UK to leave - but I don't know if that's plausible. If we double all the ARAP numbers (just like the 5 to 10,000 - which I get is crude) it seems like there could be as many as 30,000 Afghans left behind and at risk.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 31, 2021, 04:40:24 AM
So, the final number seems to be 123,000~ evacuated.
I think that's a pretty good number.
We were estimating there were only 60,000 core taliban fighters.
Quote from: alfred russel on August 31, 2021, 11:43:05 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 31, 2021, 04:40:24 AM
So, the final number seems to be 123,000~ evacuated.
I think that's a pretty good number.
We were estimating there were only 60,000 core taliban fighters.
The important thing is that they're all out.
:pinch:
Strong, pretty corruscating piece by Ross Douthat. I'm struggling to disagree with much in this:
QuoteJoe Biden's Critics Lost Afghanistan
Aug. 31, 2021
By Ross Douthat
A month ago I thought I was a cynic about our 20-year war in Afghanistan. Today, after watching our stumbling withdrawal and the swift collapse of practically everything we fought for, my main feeling is that I wasn't cynical enough.
My cynicism consisted of the belief that the American effort to forge a decent Afghan political settlement failed definitively during Barack Obama's first term in office, when a surge of U.S. forces blunted but did not reverse the Taliban's recovery. This failure was then buried under a Vietnam-esque blizzard of official deceptions and bureaucratic lies, which covered over a shift in American priorities from the pursuit of victory to the management of stalemate, with the American presence insulated from casualties in the hopes that it could be sustained indefinitely.
Under this strategic vision — to use the word "strategic" generously — there would be no prospect of victory, no end to corruption among our allies and collateral damage from our airstrikes, no clear reason to be in Afghanistan, as opposed to any other failing state or potential terror haven, except for the sunk cost that we were there already. But if American casualty rates stayed low enough, the public would accept it, the Pentagon budget would pay for it, and nobody would have to preside over anything so humiliating as defeat.
In one way, my cynicism went too far. I guessed that the military and the national-security bureaucracy would be able to frustrate the desire of every incoming U.S. president to declare an endless-seeming conflict over, and I was wrong. Something like that happened with Obama and Donald Trump in their first years in office, but it didn't happen with Joe Biden. He promised withdrawal, and — however shambolically — we have now actually withdrawn.
But in every other way the withdrawal has made the case for an even deeper cynicism — about America's capacities as a superpower, our mission in Afghanistan and the class of generals, officials, experts and politicos who sustained its generational extension.
First, the withdrawal's shambolic quality, culminating in yesterday's acknowledgment that 100 to 200 Americans had not made the final flights from Kabul, displayed an incompetence in debparting a country that matched our impotence at pacifying it. There were aspects of the chaos that were probably inevitable, but the Biden White House was clearly caught flat-footed by the speed of the Taliban advance, with key personnel disappearing on vacation just before the Kabul government dissolved. And the president himself has appeared exhausted, aged, overmatched — making basic promises about getting every American safely home and then seeing them overtaken by events.
At the same time, the circumstances under which the Biden withdrawal had to happen doubled as a devastating indictment of the policies pursued by his three predecessors, which together cost roughly $2,000,000,000,000 (it's worth writing out all those zeros) and managed to build nothing in the political or military spheres that could survive for even a season without further American cash and military supervision.
Only recently the view that without U.S. troops, the American-backed government in Kabul would be doomed to the same fate as the Soviet-backed government some 30 years ago seemed like hardheaded realism. Now such "realism" has been proven to be wildly overoptimistic. Without Soviet troops, the Moscow-backed government actually held out for several years before the mujahideen reached Kabul. Whereas our $2,000,000,000,000 built a regime that fell to the Taliban before American troops could even finish their retreat.
Before this summer, in other words, it was possible to read all the grim inspector general reports and document dumps on Afghanistan, count yourself a cynic about the war effort and still imagine that America got something for all that spending, no matter how much was spent on Potemkin installations or siphoned off by pederast warlords or recirculated to Northern Virginia contractors.
Now, though, we know that in terms of actual staying power, all our nation-building efforts couldn't even match what the Soviet Union managed in its dotage.
Yet that knowledge has not prevented a revival of the spirit that led us to this sorry pass. I don't mean the straightforward criticisms of the Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal. I mean the way that in both the media coverage and the political reaction, reasonable tactical critiques have often been woven together with anti-withdrawal arguments that are self-deceiving, dubious or risible.
The argument, for instance, that the situation in Afghanistan was reasonably stable and the war's death toll negligible before the Trump administration started moving toward withdrawal: In fact, only U.S. casualties were low, while Afghan military and civilian casualties were nearing 15,000 annually, and the Taliban were clearly gaining ground — suggesting that we would have needed periodic surges of U.S. forces, and periodic spikes in U.S. deaths, to prevent a slow-motion version of what's happened quickly as we've left.
Or the argument that an indefinite occupation was morally necessary to nurture the shoots of Afghan liberalism: If after 20 years of effort and $2,000,000,000,000, the theocratic alternative to liberalism actually takes over a country faster than in its initial conquest, that's a sign that our moral achievements were outweighed by the moral costs of corruption, incompetence and drone campaigns.
Or the argument that a permanent mission in Afghanistan could come to resemble in some way our long-term presence in Germany or South Korea — a delusional historical analogy before the collapse of the Kabul government and a completely ludicrous one now.
All these arguments are connected to a set of moods that flourished after 9/11: a mix of cable-news-encouraged overconfidence in American military capacities, naïve World War II nostalgia and crusading humanitarianism in its liberal and neoconservative forms. Like most Americans, I shared in those moods once; after so many years of failure, I cannot imagine indulging in them now. But it's clear from the past few weeks that they retain an intense subterranean appeal in the American elite, waiting only for the right circumstances to resurface.
Thus you have generals and grand strategists who presided over quagmire, folly and defeat fanning out across the television networks and opinion pages to champion another 20 years in Afghanistan. You have the return of the media's liberal hawks and centrist Pentagon stenographers, unchastened by their own credulous contributions to the retreat of American power over the past 20 years. And you have Republicans who postured as cold-eyed realists in the Trump presidency suddenly turning back into eager crusaders, excited to own the Biden Democrats and relive the brief post-9/11 period when the mainstream media treated their party with deference rather than contempt.
Again, Biden deserves plenty of criticism. But like the Trump administration in its wiser moments, he is trying to disentangle America from a set of failed policies that many of his loudest critics long supported.
Our botched withdrawal is the punctuation mark on a general catastrophe, a failure so broad that it should demand purges in the Pentagon, the shamed retirement of innumerable hawkish talking heads, the razing of various NGOs and international-studies programs and the dissolution of countless consultancies and military contractors.
Small wonder, then, that making Biden the singular scapegoat seems like a more attractive path. But if the only aspect of this catastrophe that our leaders remember is what went wrong in August 2021, then we'll have learned nothing except to always double down on failure, and the next disaster will be worse.
There is no general as powerful, wise and farsighted as the Armchair variety.
Isn't that comment sort of his point - is his criticism wrong? And has there been any self-criticism (even self-awareness) or attempt to learn the lessons by the people who were in charge or are in charge now?
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 02, 2021, 04:14:30 AM
Isn't that comment sort of his point - is his criticism wrong? And has there been any self-criticism (even self-awareness) or attempt to learn the lessons by the people who were in charge or are in charge now?
He answered that right towards the end of his speech, 'No more nation-building'
OvB will be along to dismiss Douthat as a troll.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 01, 2021, 05:29:35 PMOur botched withdrawal is the punctuation mark on a general catastrophe, a failure so broad that it should demand purges in the Pentagon, the shamed retirement of innumerable hawkish talking heads, the razing of various NGOs and international-studies programs and the dissolution of countless consultancies and military contractors.
Yeah but there won't be any consequences. US elites are trash.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 01, 2021, 05:29:35 PM
Strong, pretty corruscating piece by Ross Douthat. I'm struggling to disagree with much in this:
The author is missing half the equations: what it costs to not stay in Afghanistan:
- increase difficulty in finding reliable allies in the Middle East, in a time where the US is facing increased competition by Russia.
- increase difficulty in getting reliable intelligence on terror networks in the Middle East
- seeing Afghanistan once again become a training ground for terrorists who wants to commit attacks on the West.
- having China and Russia establish their own foothold in the area, increasing the destabilization of neighboring countries, some in which the US have military bases or agreement to let their planes fly in.
- giving Russia a win.
Quote from: viper37 on September 02, 2021, 09:05:58 AM
The author is missing half the equations: what it costs to not stay in Afghanistan:
I think the talk on costs is very much focused on the cost to the US in staying - I think it needs to acknowledge that there's been growing Taliban control since the US/NATO moved to a more "light-touch" droney presence and that was based on actual fights between the Taliban and the Afghan Army. So we also need to consider in this "low-cost" operation that the number of civilian deaths per year has been over 10,000 for the last six years and it has grown every year as the Taliban fight for and won more territory. There is obviously a moral/ethical consideration there, but I think the authors point is right that it is delusional to think the ANA would turn around themselves - so at some point in order to maintain their low cost presence the US/NATO would need to have a higher cost/heavier touch to roll-back Taliban successes or to defend more and more strategic points.
A key part of the low-cost nature of this wasn't that it was because the fighting had abated, but that the US/NATO weren't doing it.
Quote- increase difficulty in finding reliable allies in the Middle East, in a time where the US is facing increased competition by Russia.
- increase difficulty in getting reliable intelligence on terror networks in the Middle East
In relation to the Middle East the US is stuck with the same old (and to varying degrees) unreliable allies its always had: Egypt, Saudi, Oman, Bahrain, the UAE and Israel. That network hasn't significantly changed in decades - Afghanistan was never a key part of it - and it's not likely to change any time soon (absent another revolution). It has all of the costs and benefits that we know.
In the sub-continent I think there is a shift which will affect US intelligence on terror networks - the old unreliable ally is Pakistan and I think that relationship is changing quite significantly. Afghanistan is part of that, but the bigger force is the rise of China and the move from the US to develop relations with India as part of its wider Indo-Pac strategy, so India are part of the quad. At the same time China is very close to Pakistan and developing that relationship. I don't think Afghanistan is a significant factor in those developments I think the driver is China and those are bigger forces. And again the last 20 years has been the US and NATO with a Pakistani "ally", if the US is perceived by Pakistan to be closer to India (because it's necessary from a competition with China perspective) I suspect that any forces in Afghanistan could face an even more difficult challenge without Pakistan as an "ally" - hard as that is to believe.
Quote- seeing Afghanistan once again become a training ground for terrorists who wants to commit attacks on the West.
Maybe. I think there is a bit of wait and see on this. I think ISIS are right that the Taliban are basically more Islamo-nationalists (even seeing the footage of their military parade today - as grim as it is, it's all about the "dear country" not the ummah or the Caliphate). They might open their country to terrorists who want to attack the West - they did in the past but primarily to groups with links to the fight in the 80s and the civil war (of which there are fewer - except for Uyghurs - in this iteration). But I think there is a possibility they might not (except possibly for Uyghurs at some point - and I don't think it's impossible that in 20-30 years the US is actually considering supporting mujahadeen fighting a Chinese backed government in Afghanistan). I think the risk of that is different than ISIS in Syria or Iraq.
And I think Biden/the US will keep the option of targeting Afghanistan with missiles or special forces in just the same way they did Sudan.
Quote- having China and Russia establish their own foothold in the area, increasing the destabilization of neighboring countries, some in which the US have military bases or agreement to let their planes fly in.
This is the tension of China and Russia cooperating - China wants stability, Russia wants instability. But again I think Afghanistan is nothing compared to Pakistan in terms of the impact this aspect has.
I also think this is a fundamentally imperialist/great game argument. We have to be there, to stop others from being there. I don't think that's the basis the US/NATO went in and I think if this is the basis for staying then it should be made explicitly by people.
And if we are looking at it from the perspective of great power competition - what is being sacrificed in order to keep a presence in Afghanistan? What are the things we cannot do or the relationships we cannot develop as a consequence of that decision? For example, does it require a level of relations with Pakistan which places a limit on the relationship you can have with India - because, if so, developing the relationship with India in my view is more important to competing with China than maintaining a presence in Afghanistan. The balance may come out in favour of staying in Afghanistan but, again, I think you need to actually make that case and explain it (including the trade-off of things you can't do because of the states involved or the resource cost etc) rather than let it ride on the coat-tails of protecting human rights through the Afghan government and counter-terrorism.
Quote- giving Russia a win.
I don't mind that.
But for me the really key point is that in 20 years the US, NATO, the UN, every NGO in the world etc have failed to build a state with a minimal level of legitimacy. We need to understand why - if we think there's a possibility that this will be the type of mission we do again. But I haven't seen anyone backing staying explain what they'd do differently in the future - so we'd just be propping up the same failure for longer which I don't understand and possibly repeating it because there'd be no attempt to learn. And this isn't a criticism of the US, they're just the biggest, this goes for all the NATO allies, the EU police training mission, the UN, the NGO sector - all of it.
The wider point is that I agree with Benjamin Haddad that Biden's speech on this is actually a strong and eloquent repudiation of liberal internationalism. It was fundamentally very realist - the US is focusing on a narrow description of American interests and focusing on threats to those vital interests (so not just no Afghanistan, but no Kosovo, or Bosnian intervention) and great power competition. That might be the right policy choice and a necessary shift as we're moving from the 90s "end of history" moment to one defined by the rise of China and aggressive Russian power.
I think the bigger consequence is Europe should be listening to that carefully (but won't), because the real risk for us is that actually narrowly European interests may no longer be interpreted in the US as necessarily American interests.
Also Oman! (Maybe)
But, yeah, plucky little Jordan :)
I, for one, welcome Chinese overlordship in Afghanistan.
Quote from: Razgovory on September 02, 2021, 10:19:15 AM
I, for one, welcome Chinese overlordship in Afghanistan.
They are big into genocide of Muslims, so business as usual for Afghans?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 01, 2021, 10:14:12 PM
There is no general as powerful, wise and farsighted as the Armchair variety.
He called his shot a couple years ago, and nailed it. He may be just an armchair general, but his statements are wiser and more factual than the public statements of our actual generals. Whether that is because he has more wisdom and foresight than our generals, or our generals lack integrity, or some combination, I leave up to you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/opinion/afghanistan-washington-post.html
QuoteLies Have Kept Us in Afghanistan. But the Truth May Not Set Us Free.
In fighting successfully to publish documents showing that United States officialdom has been telling lies for years about our military endeavors in Afghanistan, The Washington Post has shown how little has changed since the Vietnam era — and yet also how much more sustainable, strangely, our own era's quagmires seem to be.
The sameness lies in the substance of the revelations. In the Afghanistan document trove, as in the Pentagon Papers, you can see military and civilian officials feeding the press over-optimistic assessments of a likely unwinnable conflict, conducting clever statistical manipulations to create illusions of success, telling hard truths in private while lying subtly or baldly in their public statements. All quagmires seem to require a similar culture of bureaucratized dishonesty, a similar mask of optimism with the death's head underneath.
The differences begin with the absence of a draft and a much lower American casualty rate, but they extend to the larger political and cultural landscape as well. The Pentagon Papers weren't the first great disillusioning moment of the Vietnam era; by the time they came out, public trust in government had already fallen considerably from its early-1960s high.
But the country had not yet fully lost the capacity to be shocked by official lying, and the political and military establishments had not yet grown used to conducting foreign policy without strong public support. As Americans decided the war was unwinnable and its architects dishonest, policymakers responded by abandoning the war itself. The agony of Vietnam seemed endless at the time, but the American troop presence rose and fell in a simple arc, climbing from 1964 until 1968 and falling thereafter. Three years after the Pentagon Papers were published, we weren't in Vietnam anymore.
The Afghanistan revelations, on the other hand, arrive in an America already so distrustful that it's hard to imagine how it could be disillusioned further. Over 50 percent of the country still trusted the federal government to do the right thing at least most of the time in the early Nixon years; today the equivalent figure is 17 percent. The Washington Post's reporting should be shocking, but in the current environment it's hard to imagine any reader actually being shocked.
And with the absence of shock, it seems, comes an absence of antiwar energy as well. The newly disillusioned America of 1971 wanted withdrawal from Vietnam and got it within a few short years; the more cynical America of 2019 has favored withdrawal from Afghanistan for almost a decade without getting it.
This disconnect has no doubt contributed something to the instability of our politics; both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, in their different ways, drew on forever-war fatigue in their winning presidential runs. But the permanence of the policy is the more remarkable fact: American disillusionment with the war in Afghanistan has been substantial and stable since 2012, and yet without much domestic controversy, or even much attention, thousands of American soldiers are still there.
Admittedly, our troop presence has declined substantially since the Obama-era surge of troops and the much smaller early-Trump-administration troop increase. So it's possible that in a Trump second term or a Bernie Sanders presidency it will finally trace a slow descent to zero — with or without a deal of some sort with the Taliban — and after 20 years or so we'll finally discover that even endless wars can end.
But it's also possible that in cutting troop numbers the Pentagon is groping toward sustainability rather than an endpoint — toward some figure that's deemed sufficient to manage stalemate, to preserve certain American objectives and prevent the embarrassment of real defeat.
In that case, despite the similar pattern of deception and denial, Afghanistan could represent something very different from the Vietnam experience. Vietnam proved that despite a certain amount of patriotic naïveté, Americans ultimately wouldn't put up with a seemingly unwinnable war founded on lies and self-delusion. But Afghanistan may yet prove that given an all-volunteer military, the right amount of cynical detachment at home and a low enough casualty rate in the theater itself, Americans will accept a war where there is no prospect for victory, and no clear objective save the permanent postponement of defeat. More even than our Indochina debacle, it could bury George Patton's dictum about our addiction to victory, our contempt for defeat, by proving that 21st-century Americans have learned to swallow stalemate.
In which case the documents published by The Post will tell a story of how policymakers lied their way not toward a Vietnam-style debacle but through a strategic transition — one which, when complete, won't require quite so much official lying, because nobody will even be paying attention anymore.
Seen in this sort of hypothetical hindsight, the first 10 years of the Afghanistan War represented a last experiment in conventional war, nation-building, idealistic democracy promotion ... but in the second decade, the conflict gradually became just the largest example of the endlessly multiplying, low-casualty police actions that have defined our grand strategy under Obama and now Trump.
And this strategy, for all its possible defects, has one obvious advantage for national security policymakers: It frustrates popular opposition by never supplying a strong reason — whether in mass casualties or clear military defeats — for antiwar sentiment to leave the rightward and leftward fringes and become a major popular concern. As Samuel Moyn of Yale Law School put it last year in a perceptive essay for The New Republic, the more "contained" American warfare becomes — the more our wars look like Afghanistan in 2019, rather than Afghanistan in 2010, Iraq in 2005 or Vietnam in 1968 — "the more likely it is that the war will continue indefinitely."
You can agree with this diagnosis without fully embracing antiwar anguish or despair. As with other features of our decadence, a Pax Americana sustained by indefinite police actions, indefinitely frozen conflicts and indefinite postponements of defeat is hardly the worst geopolitical scenario imaginable, and definitely preferable to certain bloodier alternatives.
But there is still something unusually grim about reading The Post's catalog of the official deceptions that have carried us through 18 years in Afghanistan, and then considering the possibility that it could be years, decades, even generations before the last American soldier finally dies for these mistakes.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 02, 2021, 09:24:05 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 02, 2021, 09:05:58 AMreliable allies in the Middle East
:lol:
ok, reliable is too strong a word, obviously.
But you'll risk seeing more countries shifting to the USSR, endangering US interests in the region.
Quote from: Grey Fox on September 02, 2021, 10:24:58 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 02, 2021, 10:19:15 AM
I, for one, welcome Chinese overlordship in Afghanistan.
They are big into genocide of Muslims, so business as usual for Afghans?
As long as white guys ain't the ones doing the extermination, the left is usually ok with all this genocide thing. I remember a lot of protests when the US invaded Afghanistan, and later when they invaded Iraq. I can't remember seeing any about the current situation in Afghanistan. I mean, outside of Afghanistan.
It is impractical and disingenuous to compare the left of 20 years ago & todays.
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 10:48:51 AM
He called his shot a couple years ago,
You mean 18 years into the war?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 02, 2021, 04:19:25 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 10:48:51 AM
He called his shot a couple years ago,
You mean 18 years into the war?
Our generals and senior national security leadership were giving assessments just a couple of months ago that can now only be seen as "Baghdad Bob" routines.
Your comment was that "There is no general as powerful, wise and farsighted as the Armchair variety." If it took him 18 years to figure shit out and say it out loud, that is better than our actual generals.
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 10:48:51 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/opinion/afghanistan-washington-post.html
QuoteLies Have Kept Us in Afghanistan. But the Truth May Not Set Us Free.
Admittedly, our troop presence has declined substantially since the Obama-era surge of troops and the much smaller early-Trump-administration troop increase. So it's possible that in a Trump second term or a Bernie Sanders presidency it will finally trace a slow descent to zero — with or without a deal of some sort with the Taliban — and after 20 years or so we'll finally discover that even endless wars can end.
But it's also possible that in cutting troop numbers the Pentagon is groping toward sustainability rather than an endpoint — toward some figure that's deemed sufficient to manage stalemate, to preserve certain American objectives and prevent the embarrassment of real defeat.
In that case, despite the similar pattern of deception and denial, Afghanistan could represent something very different from the Vietnam experience. Vietnam proved that despite a certain amount of patriotic naïveté, Americans ultimately wouldn't put up with a seemingly unwinnable war founded on lies and self-delusion. But Afghanistan may yet prove that given an all-volunteer military, the right amount of cynical detachment at home and a low enough casualty rate in the theater itself, Americans will accept a war where there is no prospect for victory, and no clear objective save the permanent postponement of defeat. More even than our Indochina debacle, it could bury George Patton's dictum about our addiction to victory, our contempt for defeat, by proving that 21st-century Americans have learned to swallow stalemate.
In which case the documents published by The Post will tell a story of how policymakers lied their way not toward a Vietnam-style debacle but through a strategic transition — one which, when complete, won't require quite so much official lying, because nobody will even be paying attention anymore.
...
You can agree with this diagnosis without fully embracing antiwar anguish or despair. As with other features of our decadence, a Pax Americana sustained by indefinite police actions, indefinitely frozen conflicts and indefinite postponements of defeat is hardly the worst geopolitical scenario imaginable, and definitely preferable to certain bloodier alternatives.
I actually agree with 95% of this. Douthat finds it distasteful; I find it to be a cold acceptance of complex and ugly reality. There is no glorious victory to be had, nor is there any clean and safe withdrawal with zero fallout. You pick your poison. Biden picked the poison of a messy withdrawal over the poison of messy maintenance or glacially slow wind-down. It isn't the poison I would have picked. But there were no good options.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 02, 2021, 04:14:30 AM
Isn't that comment sort of his point - is his criticism wrong? And has there been any self-criticism (even self-awareness) or attempt to learn the lessons by the people who were in charge or are in charge now?
Hard to say - that statement lumps in a lot of very different people in very different context doing pieces of different things over 20 years.
America isn't run by Napoleon; four different Presidential administrations have owned this mess and more cabinet iterations than that; this is before getting into the civil-military interactions and the various responsibilities of the Joint Chiefs, the regional commands, and the combat commands. You could (e.g.) point a finger at Don Rumsfeld. But he's dead. And if he was alive he'd say it was never really done the way he would have done it. Power in America is always divided and fragmented; there are many virtues to that in a democracy, but it does tend to diffuse responsibility. Accountability is left to elections. Messy and perhaps unsatisfactory, especially for those who want a few witches to burn, but it's about the best we've figured out for now.
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 04:28:43 PM
Your comment was that "There is no general as powerful, wise and farsighted as the Armchair variety." If it took him 18 years to figure shit out and say it out loud, that is better than our actual generals.
Except that his 2019 article does not really say the same things as his 2021 article. His 2019 article did not propose a withdrawal and in 2019, he stated the case for sustainability that he seems to reject in 2021.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 02, 2021, 04:38:02 PM
Hard to say - that statement lumps in a lot of very different people in very different context doing pieces of different things over 20 years.
America isn't run by Napoleon; four different Presidential administrations have owned this mess and more cabinet iterations than that; this is before getting into the civil-military interactions and the various responsibilities of the Joint Chiefs, the regional commands, and the combat commands. You could (e.g.) point a finger at Don Rumsfeld. But he's dead. And if he was alive he'd say it was never really done the way he would have done it. Power in America is always divided and fragmented; there are many virtues to that in a democracy, but it does tend to diffuse responsibility. Accountability is left to elections. Messy and perhaps unsatisfactory, especially for those who want a few witches to burn, but it's about the best we've figured out for now.
But I don't think we're looking for one witch to burn - any more than just burning Biden really helps. Isn't that exactly Douthat's point?
Responsibility for the failure is diffuse and across civil and military - across not just government but also the private sector and NGOs and international organisations. A lot of those people who have helped contribute to this failure - from liberal hawks in the media to various civil and military or academics - are on the media primarily looking to blame Biden for this messy withdrawal as if it is the singular failure of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean there is no responsibility or no mistakes to learn from.
The lessons need to be learned of what did we get wrong but it's across each of those institutions and sort of all together. Some of that will be political leaders, other bits will be operational. Now I don't know about a purge across institutions, but everyone involved should have their credibility severely dented by this rather than being welcomed onto TV sofas or op-ed pages to opine as foreign policy wise men. Or it would be nice if some of them showed a little humility and explained the mistakes they made rather than being able to pivot so comfortably into the strident explanation of why what Biden's done is wrong (which is the same as their explanation for why withdrawing would be a mistake at any point under any leader for the last 20 years).
I've mentioned before but I have a friend who worked in Bosnia for several years (for one of these NGOs that's been in Afghanistan). I remember him once saying that every Western diplomat or military attache who'd been in Bosnia for more than a year thought there was a reasonable to strong chance of another civil war - that it would not take much of a crisis for the institutions we (the US, the EU, the UN, NATO etc) have carefully cultivated for 25 years to collapse because no-one really buys into them - people buy into their community leadership but not the structure that's meant to hold those groups together. I always thought that might be a little bit overblown but looking at this I'm not so sure.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 02, 2021, 04:54:31 PM
But I don't think we're looking for one witch to burn - any more than just burning Biden really helps.
That's why i used the plural.
QuoteIsn't that exactly Douthat's point?
There are 2 points, in tension with each other. Once is searching for people to shame, punish, and even silence. Another is to learn from mistakes. Doing one does not always facilitate the other.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 02, 2021, 05:28:08 PM
There are 2 points, in tension with each other. Once is searching for people to shame, punish, and even silence. Another is to learn from mistakes. Doing one does not always facilitate the other.
I think they're linked - learning from mistakes also identifies them and some, I think, can in certain circumstances deserve punishment. Similarly I don't think a bit of shame is a bad idea because I don't think we're socially in a place where we can rely on people personally feeling shame or guilt for their own mistakes. But I don't take him literally when he says NGOs and development studies should be burned to the ground :P I think that's just hyperbole - except maybe their concepts and their basic ideas do need to have a bit of a year zero given that they've got it very wrong.
I don't think asking for a period of silence from the people who've run our policy and implementation in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, until they've actually considered what went wrong
Maybe in different times but I think we live in an age of people not behaving with a great deal of shame and of pivoting - I think it's astonishing for example to see Frum or Bill Kristol or Jennifer Rubin shift from their positions in the early 2000s to heroes of the anti-Trump resistance with no pause over whether, maybe, the politics and policies contributed to this moment. Not to mention that they failed on their own terms. I find it incredible there's no consequence, even in public opinion, for that - at least Kissinger would normally get protesters.
And it's not necessarily silence - but should media outlets reach out to people who've been wildly wrong for twenty years for commentary, or should they maybe focus on the people (who were around - certainly after 2008) saying there were mistakes here.
It seems to be something special about foreign and national security policy. You know we don't really go to the CEOs of banks or the chiefs of financial regulators in 2000-2008 for their commentary on what to do about the financial sector. Fox might because they'll say what'll get the audience going - but I expect better of the rest of the media, unless it's an interview about what went wrong.
Edit: At core I suppose I just don't feel this is a moment that has me thinking "people are really good at self-criticism and dealing with their own mistakes, we should definitely give them a media platform" :lol: And I feel that is part of how we have, socially, ended up here.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 02, 2021, 04:41:40 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 04:28:43 PM
Your comment was that "There is no general as powerful, wise and farsighted as the Armchair variety." If it took him 18 years to figure shit out and say it out loud, that is better than our actual generals.
Except that his 2019 article does not really say the same things as his 2021 article. His 2019 article did not propose a withdrawal and in 2019, he stated the case for sustainability that he seems to reject in 2021.
QuoteBut it's also possible that in cutting troop numbers the Pentagon is groping toward sustainability rather than an endpoint — toward some figure that's deemed sufficient to manage stalemate, to preserve certain American objectives and prevent the embarrassment of real defeat.
In that case, despite the similar pattern of deception and denial, Afghanistan could represent something very different from the Vietnam experience. Vietnam proved that despite a certain amount of patriotic naïveté, Americans ultimately wouldn't put up with a seemingly unwinnable war founded on lies and self-delusion. But Afghanistan may yet prove that given an all-volunteer military, the right amount of cynical detachment at home and a low enough casualty rate in the theater itself, Americans will accept a war where there is no prospect for victory, and no clear objective save the permanent postponement of defeat. More even than our Indochina debacle, it could bury George Patton's dictum about our addiction to victory, our contempt for defeat, by proving that 21st-century Americans have learned to swallow stalemate.
In which case the documents published by The Post will tell a story of how policymakers lied their way not toward a Vietnam-style debacle but through a strategic transition — one which, when complete, won't require quite so much official lying, because nobody will even be paying attention anymore.
He was not advocating "sustainability" in 2019. He was arguing that our profoundly dishonest officialdom were hoping for a stalemate to avoid a defeat, and held out the possibility that they might succeed. It is not hard to see how distasteful he found this - just a possible outcome.
Of course it isn't a possible outcome anymore. But it seems self evidently true. If we still maintained a significant military presence in Afghanistan, it is unlikely the Taliban would be in Kabul, even if the cause was just as failed.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 02, 2021, 04:54:31 PM
Responsibility for the failure is diffuse and across civil and military - across not just government but also the private sector and NGOs and international organisations. A lot of those people who have helped contribute to this failure - from liberal hawks in the media to various civil and military or academics - are on the media primarily looking to blame Biden for this messy withdrawal as if it is the singular failure of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean there is no responsibility or no mistakes to learn from.
No mention of the Afghan people.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 02, 2021, 06:43:32 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 02, 2021, 04:54:31 PM
Responsibility for the failure is diffuse and across civil and military - across not just government but also the private sector and NGOs and international organisations. A lot of those people who have helped contribute to this failure - from liberal hawks in the media to various civil and military or academics - are on the media primarily looking to blame Biden for this messy withdrawal as if it is the singular failure of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean there is no responsibility or no mistakes to learn from.
No mention of the Afghan people.
Which makes sense. Why would you hold the Afghan people responsible for the fall of a deeply unpopular government that was foisted upon them largely against their will? That's like blaming the collapse of Soviet policy in the Baltics in 1991 on those pesky Lithuanians.
Quote from: Neil on September 02, 2021, 07:07:20 PM
Which makes sense. Why would you hold the Afghan people responsible for the fall of a deeply unpopular government that was foisted upon them largely against their will? That's like blaming the collapse of Soviet policy in the Baltics in 1991 on those pesky Lithuanians.
Because those deeply unpopular governments were foisted upon them through elections.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 02, 2021, 06:43:32 PM
No mention of the Afghan people.
No. I mean obviously I think they, unlike the other people I've listed, have borne a lot of the cost. As I mentioned civilian deaths pa have been over 10,000 for the last 6 years and I think the number of civilian deaths has been climbing year on year for over a decade.
But I don't think they really had significant agency in terms of deciding how to structure their state after 2001 - I don't know that they would have chosen a republic with division of powers between three branches etc if it was just up to the Afghan people. But I'd include Ghani, Karzai and the various other corrupt nobs and nabobs we sustained in that criticism because I think they did help shape the type of state we were trying to create but the choice was, ultimately, ours. It was also those institutions from all states, international orgs, private sector contractors, NGOs who were in charge of implementing decisions to try to build and support a durable Afghan state (with certain principles around human rights and democracy). We thought we had the expertise and could do this. As I've mentioned I think there's far too much talk about the ANA and not nearly enough focus on the state that we built, which evaporated in a fortnight.
Maybe that was the only type of option that was available to us because of our politics and values etc - in which case I wonder if we're suited to nation-building in complex or divided societies? I think it worked in Kosovo because one side won - I think everywhere else we've tried to help construct a post-conflict state there are problems and questions of sustainability.
Perhaps we should have been just ruthless and entirely focused on the counter-terrorism side. Or maybe indifferent and basically said that we'd help convene a loya jirga so rely on local powerful figures to decide the nature of the state and support it for stability but that's it. From what I understand that would probably be a monarchy, with a lot of warlord power and not great human rights (not wildly different from other allies in the region). Again I don't think the Afghan people really have agency in that decision.
So I don't think the Afghan people are responsible for the state we built failing to win legitimacy in their eyes anymore than I think they're responsible for the failure of Najbullah's regime to do the same.
I think responsibility isn't necessarily a great framing - but it's clear there is a level of domestic popular support for the Taliban and that there is support for local warlords (as there often is in civil wars). For me the bigger issue is why, after all the money spent and the advice of the best and the brightest from around the world was our alternative not able to build foundations or enough legitimacy to compete with warlordism or the Taliban. I think legitimacy is a bit like a pyramid of needs that starts with basic things: security, trust, economics. In the case of Afghanistan we constructed a state that struggled to provide security outside of the cities against armed insurgent groups, was very corrupt (especially in the bits people interacted with in regular life in the cities - like the police) and was trying to stop the cultivation of a common cash crop. I think - if it delivered on those points (which might have required more support but maybe less money from the West) then you can start to rely on other buttressing bits of legitimacy like elections, rights etc.
QuoteBecause those deeply unpopular governments were foisted upon them through elections.
When was the last fair election in Afghanistan? I think the last one without significant fraud allegations (or with turnout over 50% - those two factors may be linked) was in 2004.
I think Iraq was a mistake on its own terms, but I think that also played a role here.
But elections on their own mean anything if the state doesn't have popular legitimacy (and, by contrast, a state can have popular legitimacy without elections).
Well, my impression is there was a lot more *allegation* of electoral fraud (like, every election) than there was substantiated fraud.
But I agree with you that the mission to build a flourishing democracy with protections for women was a pipe dream. We catered to a small minority of educated Afghans in Kabul. Like Iran, without the Shah and SAVAK.
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 06:24:42 PM
He was not advocating "sustainability" in 2019. He was arguing that our profoundly dishonest officialdom were hoping for a stalemate to avoid a defeat, and held out the possibility that they might succeed. It is not hard to see how distasteful he found this - just a possible outcome.
He wasn't advocating in the sense that he didn't take any concrete position on what should be done going forward. And that is another mark of the armchair general - trenchant critique of the mistakes other have made in the past (once the returns are in and the results undeniable), demands for accountability for their conduct, but all while shying away from takin any responsibility oneself for the hard choices to be made - even the attenuated and cheap responsibility of putting one's credibility on a columnist on the line.
Sheilbh - Perhaps our differing responses says more about differences in our respective backgrounds then anything else :)
I take your point on the Frums and Kristols of the world, but they have received their punishments - more severe than that which could be dealt by lefty bien pesants. They have been rendered powerless and irrelevant in the very conservative moment they worked to create and shape. From my perspective, jumping on the ashes of their burnt up reputations has little return. America is in a fight for its soul; I'll take allies wherever they can be found, even if they failed to say all their Hail Marys after confession.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 02, 2021, 09:13:49 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 02, 2021, 06:24:42 PM
He was not advocating "sustainability" in 2019. He was arguing that our profoundly dishonest officialdom were hoping for a stalemate to avoid a defeat, and held out the possibility that they might succeed. It is not hard to see how distasteful he found this - just a possible outcome.
He wasn't advocating in the sense that he didn't take any concrete position on what should be done going forward. And that is another mark of the armchair general - trenchant critique of the mistakes other have made in the past (once the returns are in and the results undeniable), demands for accountability for their conduct, but all while shying away from takin any responsibility oneself for the hard choices to be made - even the attenuated and cheap responsibility of putting one's credibility on a columnist on the line.
He called his shot--the war was unwinnable and the narrative we were getting full of lies. Our options were to leave and watch collapse, or stay indefinitely.
You may dismiss that as trivial, but our leadership was optimistic on the Afghan military holding its own just a few months ago.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 02, 2021, 08:45:16 PM
Well, my impression is there was a lot more *allegation* of electoral fraud (like, every election) than there was substantiated fraud.
I think it's more than that. In 2009 there were such serious allegations of fraud around the first round (which Karzai claimed to have won 50%+) that he was pressured into doing a run-off/second round but his opponent (Abdullah Abdullah) withdrew because he said he had no faith that there wouldn't be the same fraud. In 2014 the EU sent six observers who said what they observed justified far wider investigations, again Abdullah Abdullah lost. The same result happened in 2019 Ghani narrowly beating Abdullah - and it led to a crisis that the US had to step in and negotiate a solution.
Maybe despite the failure of the Afghan state to establish basic services or a non-corrupt police force, it did succeed in organising fair elections. I think it's more likely they were fair enough for people outside Afghanistan to go along with things.
Even setting that aside though - turnout in 2004 was 85%. In every subsequent election it was around or under 50% - I think that is an indiciation of people's view of the state and perhaps of the elections. It maybe should have set off some alarm bells with Western diplomats, advisers etc as a bit of a canary in the coalmine.
QuoteBut I agree with you that the mission to build a flourishing democracy with protections for women was a pipe dream. We catered to a small minority of educated Afghans in Kabul. Like Iran, without the Shah and SAVAK.
The point, I think, isn't that it was a pipe dream it might have been possible - but that it was our pipe dream, so if it worked or not is on us. As I say my observation would be that we are not great at building democratic solutions with wide legitimacy and support in divided post-conflict societies. That is really difficult in any circumstance. Afghanistan is an extreme example, but the failure of popular legitimacy - and of it just being a tool for elites within each community to divvy up the gains and swap seats/power - is a criticism I've heard of Bosnia and Northern Ireland as well.
You know this is why I have an issue with the criticism of the ANA rather than the state we built. But would any of us fight for a state that was perceived as not elected in fair elections, that's appealing to Pashtun nationalism to counter the Taliban (I think the ANA was low Pashtuns but I could be wrong), was (rightly) suspected of doing backroom deals with the enemy and was very corrupt?
And I'm not sure Iran is a useful comparison - as you say the situations were different, but also what happened is different. Iran was a revolution and it's not the only revolution were the most committed, the most disciplined and often the most extreme take power during the tumult and then eliminate their enemies.
There's huge differences but the historical parallel I keep thinking of is post-war China/Chinese civil war - where there is this similar incredibly rapid and sort of cascading state collapse. Again it makes me think that we underestimated the corrosive nature of corruption in a state. You know, during the last 20 years there have been several years where the volume of money sent by the international community in aid was larger than Afghanistan's GDP. I think you can have the best controls in the world and that situation will create huge amounts of corruption.
Incidentally - which I only recently found out - weird to think that Afghanistan's had two Presidents who studied at Columbia (Ghani and Taraki of the Communist regime). That's one more than the US has had. It's a bit like in the 60s and 70s when you had loads of LSE or Sorbonne graduates governing countries around the world :lol:
Biden called it 10 years ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1433566975612133376
Quote from: Ryan GrimOn the morning of October 9, 2009, Obama learned that he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize. That afternoon, his generals, cabinet, and vice president met with him to debate the war in Afghanistan.
Biden repeatedly posed a key question nobody could answer, but nobody cared
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-UNhQwWEAA9ISV?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Now that's a frank, honest discussion right there. A professional telling it like it is. Petraeus 4ever.
Oh wait, he was talking about the Afghan government?
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 04:04:10 AM
I increasingly suspect this seems smart politics from Biden.
"Yeah we fucked Afghanistan but American lives are more important" pisses off a lot of people...And of course there's the actual fucking over of Afghanistan to think about....
But are the Republicans really going to be able to take the opposite POV there? He's ate their lunch.
https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/september-national-poll-americans-say-us-lost-war-in-afghanistan-blame-bush
While he was eating their lunch, Emerson ran a Trump vs. Biden presidential poll and Trump ended up one point. His net approval rating entered into negative territory.
Election is in 2024, not now. People will be glad we got out, if they think about it at all.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 04, 2021, 07:44:10 AM
Election is in 2024, not now. People will be glad we got out, if they think about it at all.
Hopefully 2024 features neither Trump nor Biden.
As I've said before it seems a huge error to read too much into favourability ratings for a centrist when up against an extemist.
Those who have turned against Biden in recent polls are likely to come from the left. Not turning out is the best that the Republicans can hope for there.
Yep. The extremism in Trump's base has a much better chance at being energized in '24, and really that kind of fervor will be at a low boil almost all of the time. Biden, and the Dem's, greatest enemy is general voter apathy/lack of enthusiasm.
They had the Trump-hate factor going for them in '20. I think it's going to hurt a lot for them in '22/'24, I fear.
Quote from: Tyr on September 04, 2021, 08:00:59 AM
As I've said before it seems a huge error to read too much into favourability ratings for a centrist when up against an extemist.
Those who have turned against Biden in recent polls are likely to come from the left. Not turning out is the best that the Republicans can hope for there.
This is simply wrong.
2020 was epic turnout compared to recent US elections, and Biden won the tipping point state by 0.6%. That means that even if turnout stays at the 2020 high water mark, Republicans only need to flip the vote by 0.6%, or 3 in 1000 voters. Republicans aren't in some deep hole that they need to dig out of and need to pin their hopes on democrats not turning out.
The Emerson poll indicates that, as of today, public opinion has shifted 6 points in republican favor since their last poll right before the election. It is just one data point and there is a margin of error in that, and elections are a long time off, but the past few weeks really have been bad for democrats in terms of public opinion.
The last election was before Trumps attempted coup and other post election shenanigans. This crashed his popularity outside of the cult.
Apathy is the enemy. Tackle that and the republicans should be kept out of power as he's left with the tribalists only.
I actually think Trump v Biden rematch is Biden's best chance of reelection. I think Trump actually has a fairly unique voter he appeals to that simply won't come out to vote for anyone else. This is somewhat shown by the many voters of his that didn't care to vote in 2018 or in various other interim elections where his name wasn't on the ballot. So that's a big positive for the GOP in running Trump again, but I also think Trump will bring just as many anti-Trump voters back to the polls in 2024, including many who are disillusioned with Biden. Like the whole premise of a Biden vote for many people (myself included) was to get Trump out of office, there was never an expectation, given Biden's history, that he was going to be a great President. I was hoping for "not a disaster" and even if he turns out a disaster he's still better than Trump, so I'd still vote for him over Trump. But there's a ton of Republicans I'd vote for over Biden, as long as they didn't adopt Trump's anti-democratic messaging.
As much as it is hard for some people to admit, Trump has a secret sauce that isn't easily replicated. It's not dissimilar from Obama, for what it's worth, the Dems never found a way to figure out how to get the "obama voters" back to the polls when Obama wasn't on the ballot, which is highly suggestive he had a unique appeal to people who otherwise were low propensity voters or less likely to vote Democrat.
I think a Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley candidacy in 2024 will face much stronger headwinds against a generic Democrat because those candidates don't inspire anyone particularly like Trump does, and put the GOP more at risk of suffering from its poor demographic positioning--one of the worst aspects of Trump's coalition shifting is he drove educated white people out of the party. These are the nerd voters who are always properly registered, always going to get their ballot in no matter what the rules are, they're going to vote for every school board, county commissioner, off year Congressional etc race. He traded them in for a bunch of ignorant rednecks that may come out again if he runs but will tune out a ton of politics otherwise.
Will Biden even run for reelection?
I thought it was pretty understood he planned to be a one term president.
I don't know that anyone around Biden or his campaign has ever really said that though. I think it's a widespread assumption - but given that the Democrats are the party of RBG, Feinstein, Pelosi and Breyer etc. So we know there will be zero pressure on anyone to retire and make rule for the next generaton of leaders ever.
I'm not sure Harris has so far worked out as hoped and I'm not sure there's any other obvious alternative for 2024 if he does decide not to run again.
Quote from: Tyr on September 04, 2021, 01:33:04 PM
Will Biden even run for reelection?
I thought it was pretty understood he planned to be a one term president.
He's left the option open when asked...which simply makes good political sense even if your understanding is true.
I don't think it is a good idea for him to run again...but that always makes for a dangerous situation as a one-term Pres, in terms of the rest of his term flows, how a successor candidate works becomes pretty delicate, etc.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 04, 2021, 01:44:38 PM
I don't know that anyone around Biden or his campaign has ever really said that though. I think it's a widespread assumption - but given that the Democrats are the party of RBG, Feinstein, Pelosi and Breyer etc. So we know there will be zero pressure on anyone to retire and make rule for the next generaton of leaders ever.
I'm not sure Harris has so far worked out as hoped and I'm not sure there's any other obvious alternative for 2024 if he does decide not to run again.
Biden is a politician and how many politicians step aside for altruistic reasons? He started out in the Senate when legit almost 20% of the body was born in the 19th century and his mentor was none other than Bob Byrd, who soiled himself so much they are still trying to get the smell of pee and poo out of the chamber.
I certainly don't count on him stepping aside though I certainly hope he does.
I don't think it's necessarily altruism - I think young Democrats are badat harassing and forcing out their elder to make space for them. There's an unhealthy amount of deference and respect and wait your turn. The US is unusual in the democratic world in how gerontocratic it is, I don't think politicians in other countries are more altruistic, I think they might be more impatient/there's less of a structural emphasis on seniority and waiting your turn (I also wonder if part of it is that in the UK, at least, the best money-making opportunities are after you've left parliament - so you need to get out while you're still young enough to do that).
I've said it elsewhere but I really hope every single person who knows him is strongly urging Breyer to step down now so Biden can appoint his replacement with a Democratic Senate, because, in the nicest way possible he's 83. I'm sure the world would be thrilled to read his memoir anyway.
Sheilbh, but we are really dependent on altruism for Biden stepping aside. An independently elected US president just has enormous patronage and institutional power that will make it impossible to beat in a primary without the primary becoming destructive to the party's general election chances.
It would be far easier for democrats to push out schumer or pelosi.
I totally agree - it's why I don't really know that he will. And don't really get why everyone is saying he's so likely to be a one term president.
Given the record of the Democrats with their elderly (RBG, Pelosi, Breyer, Feinstein etc) I'm not even sure people would be willing to informally tell him to think about stepping aside. They'd want to respect him and respect the office - which is bullshit, they should want to win.
Quote from: alfred russel on September 04, 2021, 07:13:12 AM
Quote from: Tyr on August 25, 2021, 04:04:10 AM
I increasingly suspect this seems smart politics from Biden.
"Yeah we fucked Afghanistan but American lives are more important" pisses off a lot of people...And of course there's the actual fucking over of Afghanistan to think about....
But are the Republicans really going to be able to take the opposite POV there? He's ate their lunch.
https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/september-national-poll-americans-say-us-lost-war-in-afghanistan-blame-bush
While he was eating their lunch, Emerson ran a Trump vs. Biden presidential poll and Trump ended up one point. His net approval rating entered into negative territory.
:hmm:
QuoteSpencer Kimball, Director of Emerson College Polling, said "Historically, this data reminds me of 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt failed to win the Republican nomination from then President Taft and created a third party dooming the Republican chances against Woodrow Wilson. This data suggests that Republicans want either Trump or a Trumpian candidate to be their nominee, or half of them may split from the party."
Regarding the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, it appears neither party has an enthusiasm advantage at this point, with 71% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans saying they are very likely to vote in the midterms.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on September 04, 2021, 01:21:49 PM
I think a Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley candidacy in 2024 will face much stronger headwinds against a generic Democrat because those candidates don't inspire anyone particularly like Trump does, and put the GOP more at risk of suffering from its poor demographic positioning--one of the worst aspects of Trump's coalition shifting is he drove educated white people out of the party. These are the nerd voters who are always properly registered, always going to get their ballot in no matter what the rules are, they're going to vote for every school board, county commissioner, off year Congressional etc race. He traded them in for a bunch of ignorant rednecks that may come out again if he runs but will tune out a ton of politics otherwise.
Isn't Biden the epitome of generic democrat though? Dosen't that undermine the idea that he needs to run against Trump to win?
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 04, 2021, 04:00:27 PM
I've said it elsewhere but I really hope every single person who knows him is strongly urging Breyer to step down now so Biden can appoint his replacement with a Democratic Senate, because, in the nicest way possible he's 83. I'm sure the world would be thrilled to read his memoir anyway.
His book on how the court shouldn't be political literally just came out this week! Not exactly timed well given current events.
Quote from: Tyr on September 04, 2021, 01:33:04 PM
Will Biden even run for reelection?
I thought it was pretty understood he planned to be a one term president.
He said he wanted to run again. But It's still 3 years away, a lot could happen.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on September 04, 2021, 10:50:01 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on September 04, 2021, 01:21:49 PM
I think a Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley candidacy in 2024 will face much stronger headwinds against a generic Democrat because those candidates don't inspire anyone particularly like Trump does, and put the GOP more at risk of suffering from its poor demographic positioning--one of the worst aspects of Trump's coalition shifting is he drove educated white people out of the party. These are the nerd voters who are always properly registered, always going to get their ballot in no matter what the rules are, they're going to vote for every school board, county commissioner, off year Congressional etc race. He traded them in for a bunch of ignorant rednecks that may come out again if he runs but will tune out a ton of politics otherwise.
Isn't Biden the epitome of generic democrat though? Dosen't that undermine the idea that he needs to run against Trump to win?
Ehh, I don't think Biden can't win against a non-Trump Republican, I just think Trump is actually his best chance. Biden may be a generic Dem in some ways but he has some significant political liabilities:
-Extreme old age
-Poor public speaker
-A long history of not doing great with running lots of his previous campaigns (his 2020 campaign was ran basically perfectly though)
-Little motivation for lots of the lefty Dems who sometimes stay home, your Bernie or Busters--they likely voted for him in 2020 due to fear of another Trump, I'm not sure fear of a guy like Marco Rubio works the same way
If Trump runs again 2024 will be an election about whether America stands for Western values or autocracy, and I actually think it will be ran as such. I think Biden has a much better chance in that election than in what I'd term a "normal" election, akin to say, the 2012 or 2008 elections.
For all the talk of leftie Democrats staying home - they are the ones who seem most pleasantly surprised by Biden (even if he's not Bernie) because, unlike Obama, he has actually delivered on getting out of Afghanistan and domestically he's pushing a more left-wing agenda than they anticipated. It's more the sort of Leon Panetta, Robert Rubin establishment-y figures who seem most frustrated. From what I can see the left were really underwhelmed with Obama but aren't yet with Biden.
Incidentally saw someone mentione it and I don't know how open the Soviet archives still are and research in Afghanistan is going to be really difficult but I feel like there's a very interesting book in the Soviet invasion from the USSR, Afghan and American perspective.
Looks like Massoud jr. inherited only half of his father's genes. :(
Quote from: Maladict on September 06, 2021, 10:56:50 AM
Looks like Massoud jr. inherited only half of his father's genes. :(
that's how it's supposed to work...
Quote from: Maladict on September 06, 2021, 10:56:50 AM
Looks like Massoud jr. inherited only half of his father's genes. :(
His situation is more difficult. I don't think Sr. was ever completely surrounded and cut off in the valley.
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
Quote from: Maladict on September 07, 2021, 12:51:06 PM
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
I am shocked, shocked to hear there are no women and almost no ethnic minorities in their government as well!
PS: 20 years ago to this day, Massoud was murdered by Molenbeek-Saint Jean/Sint Jans islamists.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 06:51:45 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 07, 2021, 12:51:06 PM
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
I am shocked, shocked to hear there are no women and almost no ethnic minorities in their government as well!
PS: 20 years ago to this day, Massoud was murdered by Molenbeek-Saint Jean/Sint Jans islamists.
indeed. I can't blame the eastern european countries for not wanting endless boatloads of muslims in their countries. They've seen what happens if you do.
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on September 09, 2021, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 06:51:45 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 07, 2021, 12:51:06 PM
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
I am shocked, shocked to hear there are no women and almost no ethnic minorities in their government as well!
PS: 20 years ago to this day, Massoud was murdered by Molenbeek-Saint Jean/Sint Jans islamists.
indeed. I can't blame the eastern european countries for not wanting endless boatloads of muslims in their countries. They've seen what happens if you do.
Well I would hope so given that boatloads of Muslims have been living in Eastern Europe for 500 years.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 11:19:56 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on September 09, 2021, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 06:51:45 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 07, 2021, 12:51:06 PM
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
I am shocked, shocked to hear there are no women and almost no ethnic minorities in their government as well!
PS: 20 years ago to this day, Massoud was murdered by Molenbeek-Saint Jean/Sint Jans islamists.
indeed. I can't blame the eastern european countries for not wanting endless boatloads of muslims in their countries. They've seen what happens if you do.
Well I would hope so given that boatloads of Muslims have been living in Eastern Europe for 500 years.
Boatloads of muslims in Baltic(stan I guess), Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the like? :hmm:
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:05:01 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 11:19:56 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on September 09, 2021, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 06:51:45 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 07, 2021, 12:51:06 PM
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
I am shocked, shocked to hear there are no women and almost no ethnic minorities in their government as well!
PS: 20 years ago to this day, Massoud was murdered by Molenbeek-Saint Jean/Sint Jans islamists.
indeed. I can't blame the eastern european countries for not wanting endless boatloads of muslims in their countries. They've seen what happens if you do.
Well I would hope so given that boatloads of Muslims have been living in Eastern Europe for 500 years.
Boatloads of muslims in Baltic(stan I guess), Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the like? :hmm:
Baltics? Czechia? Slovakia? No.
Hungary, Romania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, and Russia yes!
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 01:06:51 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:05:01 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 11:19:56 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on September 09, 2021, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 06:51:45 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 07, 2021, 12:51:06 PM
Unconfirmed reports that the Taliban has destroyed Senior's tomb in the valley.
And they elected hardliners as their leaders. So much for the moderation.
I am shocked, shocked to hear there are no women and almost no ethnic minorities in their government as well!
PS: 20 years ago to this day, Massoud was murdered by Molenbeek-Saint Jean/Sint Jans islamists.
indeed. I can't blame the eastern european countries for not wanting endless boatloads of muslims in their countries. They've seen what happens if you do.
Well I would hope so given that boatloads of Muslims have been living in Eastern Europe for 500 years.
Boatloads of muslims in Baltic(stan I guess), Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the like? :hmm:
Baltics? Czechia? Slovakia? No.
Hungary, Romania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, and Russia yes!
Hungary and Romania that's still a no. I don't know where you got that idea, take or leave the wave of illegal immigrants going through Hungary in recent years.
The others, save Russia, are prime examples of balkantardism, hardly a success story.
As for Russia, it's not great too, though Putin accommodates muslims quite well, for his own and oligarchs' purposes.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:11:14 PM
Hungary and Romania that's still a no. I don't know where you got that idea,
The Muslims themselves left evidence for their passing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakoval%C4%B1_Hasan_Pa%C5%9Fa_Mosque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esmahan_Sultan_Mosque
Are we just going to pretend the Turks and Tatars played no role in Eastern European history?
Also: are there any parts of Eastern Europe we are prepared to call a big success story at this point?
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 01:17:47 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:11:14 PM
Hungary and Romania that's still a no. I don't know where you got that idea,
The Muslims themselves left evidence for their passing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakoval%C4%B1_Hasan_Pa%C5%9Fa_Mosque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esmahan_Sultan_Mosque
Are we just going to pretend the Turks and Tatars played no role in Eastern European history?
Never said they played no role, that would be you.
Where are those boatloads of muslims in Hungary and Romania, since 500 years, again by the way?
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:20:58 PM
Never said they played no role, that would be you.
I was only saying Eastern Europe has indeed seen what boatloads of Muslims can do having had boatloads of them pass through many times, and many stay, for past 500 years. You said that wasn't true in Hungary and Romania despite that being obviously false.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:20:58 PM
Where are those boatloads of muslims in Hungary and Romania, since 500 years, again by the way?
In the 19th and early 20th century things got a little hot for them, along with other religious and ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe.
But there are a few of them left in both countries.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 01:24:50 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:20:58 PM
Never said they played no role, that would be you.
I was only saying Eastern Europe has indeed seen what boatloads of Muslims can do having had boatloads of them pass through many times, and many stay, for past 500 years. You said that wasn't true in Hungary and Romania despite that being obviously false.
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
As for Hungary, no real muslim settlement as well but a huge depopulation due to being a battlefield location between Habsburgs and Ottomans.
At best, you're mixing up very different situations out of ignorance.
QuoteAt best, you're mixing up very different situations out of ignorance.
Not necessarily out of ignorance. I certainly get that having Albanians and Bosniaks around is different then having millions of Arabs or Central Asians moving in. Albanians are Muslims but they are also East Europeans that everybody is used to. But when the Turks and Tartars first rode in that was not the case.
But still surely having lots of Muslims making up majorities of multiple countries and having served as overlords of others for 500 years is indeed seeing what happens when there are lots of Muslims around.
Also there were a lot of Circassian and other (mainly Muslim) refugees from the Caucasus around the Balkans, including Romania, for at least periods of that time. Europe's neighbourhood to the South East is largely Muslim. It'd be sort of extraordinary if that wasn't at least semi-permeable connection over the last 500 years.
And this kind of goes to the civilisational turn in Europe I was talking about. You can be a Europe of universal values which will indeed mean immigration and refugees, or you can be a Europe of "preserving our European way of life" and emphasising Europe's "Christian heritage". I think that is a fight right now, because obviously Europe contains countries and parties and people who have different views on that.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 01:43:06 PM
QuoteAt best, you're mixing up very different situations out of ignorance.
Not necessarily out of ignorance. I certainly get that having Albanians and Bosniaks around is different then having millions of Arabs or Central Asians moving in. Albanians are Muslims but they are also East Europeans that everybody is used to. But when the Turks and Tartars first rode in that was not the case.
But still surely having lots of Muslims making up majorities of multiple countries and having served as overlords of others for 500 years is indeed seeing what happens when there are lots of Muslims around.
Majority of multiple countries is still wrong.
The only case is Albania, notorious for its "fake" muslims, among muslims cf. "Religion of Albanians is Albania". It's the country of Skanderberg, a figure hardly known as islamic. I guess you don't known many Albanians. :P
Even with Muslim Bosnians it's a plurality and not a majority.
Basically, you mixed up Balkans and Eastern Europe and oversimplified the Balkan situation (™balkantard™ ©Tamas).
They are just as Muslim as Europeans are Christians I am aware :P
And Kosovo is also a country -_-
And you're welcome for us making that happen.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:01:33 PM
They are just as Muslim as Europeans are Christians I am aware :P
And Kosovo is also a country -_-
And you're welcome for us making that happen.
You hit the nail on the head, unwittingly.
Kosovo is part of Albania for Albanians, more evidence that you don't really know what you are talking about. :D
As for me, if Austria had managed to hold onto Serbia, from the 18th century before you ask, many problems would have been avoided later.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:01:33 PM
They are just as Muslim as Europeans are Christians I am aware :P
Quite. I mean if we have to accept Protestants - and, I'm told, we do - then I don't think there's much to be gained from us no true Scotsmans people's beliefs or religions.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:08:53 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:01:33 PM
They are just as Muslim as Europeans are Christians I am aware :P
Quite. I mean if we have to accept Protestants - and, I'm told, we do - then I don't think there's much to be gained from us no true Scotsmans people's beliefs or religions.
As for accepting Protestants, canada dry Protestants such as Anglicans (hello High Rite) or even 50 % catholic à la Lutherans is no big deal. Nice straw man though.
Sure, Al-Quran bashers sure have a lot in common with Bible Bashers yet that does not get automatically European status. Remember, this is not the US or UK, multiculturalism is rejected by most of Europe. Specially, in Eastern Europe, referred by Valmy earlier on.
So that's a different point.
What I was saying was that Albanians are Muslims, that's all.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:08:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:01:33 PM
They are just as Muslim as Europeans are Christians I am aware :P
And Kosovo is also a country -_-
And you're welcome for us making that happen.
You hit the nail on the head, unwittingly.
Kosovo is part of Albania for Albanians, more evidence that you don't really know what you are talking about. :D
As for me, if Austria had managed to hold onto Serbia, from the 18th century before you ask, many problems would have been avoided later.
I am aware the Austrians had Serbia in the 18th century. I don't know what insanity leads you to believe I know nothing about what I am talking about. OMG did you know what nationalist Albanians claim?!!! I am sure they claim half the Balkans :P
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:10:42 PMRemember, this is not the US or UK, multiculturalism is rejected by most of Europe. Specially, in Eastern Europe, referred by Valmy earlier on.
You don't say? :lol:
I don't think anybody should be expecting Eastern Europeans to be taking immigrants of any kind, nor should we want them to.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:14:25 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:10:42 PMRemember, this is not the US or UK, multiculturalism is rejected by most of Europe. Specially, in Eastern Europe, referred by Valmy earlier on.
You don't say? :lol:
I don't think anybody should be expecting Eastern Europeans to be taking immigrants of any kind, nor should we want them to.
Well, since you had bizarre ideas about Eastern Europe, I went back to the basics, just to be sure. :P
I would however add Eastern Europe does not want specifically muslim immigrants, because for instance Poland has plenty of –real– refugees and immigrants from Ukraine. Quite an achievement, given all the recent bad blood between the two countries.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 01:49:00 PM
Also there were a lot of Circassian and other (mainly Muslim) refugees from the Caucasus around the Balkans, including Romania, for at least periods of that time. Europe's neighbourhood to the South East is largely Muslim. It'd be sort of extraordinary if that wasn't at least semi-permeable connection over the last 500 years.
And this kind of goes to the civilisational turn in Europe I was talking about. You can be a Europe of universal values which will indeed mean immigration and refugees, or you can be a Europe of "preserving our European way of life" and emphasising Europe's "Christian heritage". I think that is a fight right now, because obviously Europe contains countries and parties and people who have different views on that.
Circassians expelled from Russia, itself not really opposed to Islam, did not last long in the area, and left very few traces in the Balkans following the upheaval of WWI. Ottoman last-ditch attempt divide and conquer through manipulation of peoples was a failure.
As for the Europe of universal values, you will eventually have to choose between muslim/Al-Quran bashing immigrants and LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ eventually. Atheists or Jews are also at a peril, though this is an aspect of the French banlieue experience not very known outside of France it seems.
Besides, the unquestioned, unlimited mass-immigration of non-assimilable populations is only a very recent development, as an unintended effect of the family regrouping of the '70s. Supported primarily by people not living in the ethno-religious enclaves (banlieues) in question.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:17:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:14:25 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:10:42 PMRemember, this is not the US or UK, multiculturalism is rejected by most of Europe. Specially, in Eastern Europe, referred by Valmy earlier on.
You don't say? :lol:
I don't think anybody should be expecting Eastern Europeans to be taking immigrants of any kind, nor should we want them to.
Well, since you had bizarre ideas about Eastern Europe, I went back to the basics, just to be sure. :P
I would however add Eastern Europe does not want specifically muslim immigrants, because for instance Poland has plenty of –real– refugees and immigrants from Ukraine. Quite an achievement, given all the recent bad blood between the two countries.
I have no bizarre ideas about Eastern Europe. You are just taking little details and blowing them out of proportion in a hilariously dishonest way. OMG YOU THINK KOSOVO IS A COUNTRY!!! I mean please.
I don't know - maybe try multiculturalism. It seems to have better success at assimilating lots of communities than whatever you're talking about - I say having lived for five years in London's most famous "SHARIA NO GO ZONE" :P
Edit: Although I do find it striking that firing women for wearing a headscarf = not discriminatory. Poland/Hungary passing anti-LGBT laws = an affront to European values. I think that's pretty contradictory.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:19:37 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:17:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:14:25 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:10:42 PMRemember, this is not the US or UK, multiculturalism is rejected by most of Europe. Specially, in Eastern Europe, referred by Valmy earlier on.
You don't say? :lol:
I don't think anybody should be expecting Eastern Europeans to be taking immigrants of any kind, nor should we want them to.
Well, since you had bizarre ideas about Eastern Europe, I went back to the basics, just to be sure. :P
I would however add Eastern Europe does not want specifically muslim immigrants, because for instance Poland has plenty of –real– refugees and immigrants from Ukraine. Quite an achievement, given all the recent bad blood between the two countries.
I have no bizarre ideas about Eastern Europe. You are just taking little details and blowing them out of proportion in a hilariously dishonest way. OMG YOU THINK KOSOVO IS A COUNTRY!!! I mean please.
Again ask Albanians, Kosovo is to be part of Albania. Interim county if you will.
"little details" (sic).You were totally wrong about Hungary and Romania, hardly a detail.
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:22:38 PM
I don't know - maybe try multiculturalism. It seems to have better success at assimilating lots of communities than whatever you're talking about - I say having lived for five years in London's most famous "SHARIA NO GO ZONE" :P
Edit: Although I do find it striking that firing women for wearing a headscarf = not discriminatory. Poland/Hungary passing anti-LGBT laws = an affront to European values. I think that's pretty contradictory.
If I wanted a nasty civil war, with a dismantling of the social state before, I would certainly try multiculturalism. So non merci. :)
Since the headscarf is discriminatory, blaming women for catching the eye of men (themselves all perverts by the islamist logic) it's a catch-22 I guess.
What incident are you referring to btw? I hope you are still not mixing up the face veil ban with the headscarf, a Languish classic.
The recent CJEU ruling from a month or two ago.
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:12:28 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:08:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 02:01:33 PM
They are just as Muslim as Europeans are Christians I am aware :P
And Kosovo is also a country -_-
And you're welcome for us making that happen.
You hit the nail on the head, unwittingly.
Kosovo is part of Albania for Albanians, more evidence that you don't really know what you are talking about. :D
As for me, if Austria had managed to hold onto Serbia, from the 18th century before you ask, many problems would have been avoided later.
I am aware the Austrians had Serbia in the 18th century. I don't know what insanity leads you to believe I know nothing about what I am talking about. OMG did you know what nationalist Albanians claim?!!! I am sure they claim half the Balkans :P
Not just the hardcore nationalist, which is why it's both funny and relevant.
If it was any insanity, it was yours though it's no excuse I guess. :P
As for Kosovo, it's not just claimed by Albanians, it's Albanian now. Take or leave protochronism, hardly limited to Albanians (hello Eastern Europe and Balkans).
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:33:04 PM
The recent CJEU ruling from a month or two ago.
Not the Brexit you voted for? :P
It was supposed to leave your multiculturalist theoretical theocracy alone, and, more importantly, continentals free from your nefarious influence. :D
You're free now from he CJEU. Enjoy!
No big deal around here for obvious reasons, the only part with religious laws comparable to Germany would be Alsace-Moselle. Some overseas territories have specific religious laws but not necessarily close to the former model.
I voted Remain I'll have you know :P
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:47:41 PM
I voted Remain I'll have you know :P
Voting against your multiculturalist interests? How self-sacrificing of you. :lol:
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:36:40 PM
Not just the hardcore nationalist, which is why it's both funny and relevant.
If it was any insanity, it was yours though it's no excuse I guess. :P
As for Kosovo, it's not just claimed by Albanians, it's Albanian now. Take or leave protochronism, hardly limited to Albanians (hello Eastern Europe and Balkans).
WTF are you talking about?
Yes I am entirely aware that the whole Kosovo deal was us being manipulated by Albanian nationalists. Can I even make a joke without you going off in weird WTF directions?
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2021, 03:32:52 PMYes I am entirely aware that the whole Kosovo deal was us being manipulated by Albanian nationalists. Can I even make a joke without you going off in weird WTF directions?
I don't think that holds up at all.
There are political actors in all conflicts and none of them are ever going to be saints. But unlike looking back at Afghanistan - there were war crimes in Kosovo and NATO action stopped them. Not only that but the resulting revolution has been a good thing. I think it's the last positive intervention/attempt at nation building.
Maybe there are factors from it we can learn for how to do nation building - assuming that may happen again. Two things that occur to me are that there is a majority population in Kosovo (which is different than building peaceful institutions in a more divided society - Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Iraq) and it has in the EU near it and neighbours going through the accession process - so there's a regional framework that it can slip into that can act as a stabilising presence, even if it is probably unlikely that any of its neighbours will actually join (that also applies to Northern Ireland and Bosnia).
Is it possible to nation build in a divided society without a regional framework (also a key difference with, say, Japan and Germany)?
It's nice to see Duque laying out his assumptions and chain of reasoning a bit instead of the smug sniping he usually does.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 02:50:01 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:47:41 PM
I voted Remain I'll have you know :P
Voting against your multiculturalist interests? How self-sacrificing of you. :lol:
:blink:
I don't get it.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:30:39 PM
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
When I was in Dobruja the Islamic heritage was evident in many places, not just the various mosques that still remain.
Muslim place names and other toponyms, decorative elements in secular/domestic architecture, monuments and cemeteries.
And that's after a lot it was destroyed when the Ottomans left.
edit: almost forgot, there's a whole museum in Tulcea dedicated to its multicultural past.
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 05:06:54 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:30:39 PM
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
When I was in Dobruja the Islamic heritage was evident in many places, not just the various mosques that still remain.
Muslim place names and other toponyms, decorative elements in secular/domestic architecture, monuments and cemeteries.
And that's after a lot it was destroyed when the Ottomans left.
edit: almost forgot, there's a whole museum in Tulcea dedicated to its multicultural past.
Reading failure I see.
Valmy mentioned specifically lots of muslim people who had been there for 500 years (boatloads) in Romania (and Hungary) but switched goalposts by invoking monuments or ruins, which exist.
He mixed up Balkans and Eastern Europe (broader) basically.
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 05:06:54 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:30:39 PM
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
When I was in Dobruja the Islamic heritage was evident in many places, not just the various mosques that still remain.
Muslim place names and other toponyms, decorative elements in secular/domestic architecture, monuments and cemeteries.
And that's after a lot it was destroyed when the Ottomans left.
edit: almost forgot, there's a whole museum in Tulcea dedicated to its multicultural past.
IIRC in the Bulgarian part of Dobruja is one of the places where the country's Turkish minority is located, right?
Quote from: The Larch on September 10, 2021, 05:20:10 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 05:06:54 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:30:39 PM
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
When I was in Dobruja the Islamic heritage was evident in many places, not just the various mosques that still remain.
Muslim place names and other toponyms, decorative elements in secular/domestic architecture, monuments and cemeteries.
And that's after a lot it was destroyed when the Ottomans left.
edit: almost forgot, there's a whole museum in Tulcea dedicated to its multicultural past.
IIRC in the Bulgarian part of Dobruja is one of the places where the country's Turkish minority is located, right?
Not necessarily.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Ethnic_composition_of_Bulgaria%2C_2011.PNG)
PS: map does not show Muslim Slavs such as Pomaks but they are far fewer.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 10, 2021, 05:18:31 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 05:06:54 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:30:39 PM
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
When I was in Dobruja the Islamic heritage was evident in many places, not just the various mosques that still remain.
Muslim place names and other toponyms, decorative elements in secular/domestic architecture, monuments and cemeteries.
And that's after a lot it was destroyed when the Ottomans left.
edit: almost forgot, there's a whole museum in Tulcea dedicated to its multicultural past.
Reading failure I see.
Valmy mentioned specifically lots of muslim people who had been there for 500 years (boatloads) in Romania (and Hungary) but switched goalposts by invoking monuments or ruins, which exist.
He mixed up Balkans and Eastern Europe (broader) basically.
I don't think he meant that any of them are still living there aged 500 :P
But rather they have been a significant presence going back 500 years through several waves of immigration/settlement.
And the results of that past are still very much visible, even if not many remain at present.
Southern Dobruja's population was still >50% Muslim (wiki) by the time it became part of Romania proper. Your assertion that 'Romania never had many staying' is just not true.
There's a crapton of Turkish words in the Hungarian language, a couple of nice mosques are still around, and it is said the bath culture originates from the Ottomans.
That doesn't change the fact that Ottoman occupation was a deeply traumatic and negative experience and a de facto holocaust for the nation, with large swaths of lands depopulated due to 150 years of skirmishing, wars, and slaving raids.
You do not want to convince Hungarians to let Muslims in by referring to the Ottoman period. In fact Orban used it for the exact opposite.
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 06:32:12 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 10, 2021, 05:18:31 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 05:06:54 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2021, 01:30:39 PM
Being invaded repeatedly is no guarantee of permanent settlement.
Many muslims staying in Romania and Hungary is obviously false. Do you have any idea of the religious make-up of the populations in these countries nowadays?
Romania never had many staying, thanks to Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and others, plus a vassal statuts keeping muslims settlers out in exchange for submission.
When I was in Dobruja the Islamic heritage was evident in many places, not just the various mosques that still remain.
Muslim place names and other toponyms, decorative elements in secular/domestic architecture, monuments and cemeteries.
And that's after a lot it was destroyed when the Ottomans left.
edit: almost forgot, there's a whole museum in Tulcea dedicated to its multicultural past.
Reading failure I see.
Valmy mentioned specifically lots of muslim people who had been there for 500 years (boatloads) in Romania (and Hungary) but switched goalposts by invoking monuments or ruins, which exist.
He mixed up Balkans and Eastern Europe (broader) basically.
I don't think he meant that any of them are still living there aged 500 :P
But rather they have been a significant presence going back 500 years through several waves of immigration/settlement.
And the results of that past are still very much visible, even if not many remain at present.
Southern Dobruja's population was still >50% Muslim (wiki) by the time it became part of Romania proper. Your assertion that 'Romania never had many staying' is just not true.
Are you sure you read wiki (the ultimate source obviously) correctly? The link I saw says 35 % for 1930 when it was Romanian, with Romanians having to bring settlers from other parts of Romania.
Southern Dobrogea ;) was only part of (Greater) Romania for like 20-25 years and you are forgetting the Christian Gagauz which may be classified as Turks (ethnicity vs religion)? They are also found in Moldavia/Bessarabia and have a troubled *ahem* relationship with Romania.
You are gasping at straws with a very selective and limited example. Area was slightly Bulgarian back then and now 2/3 Bulgarian (Bulgarians slavicised non-muslim Turks? Maybe, but that's for another
discussion). Would spice up the Slav Macedonian debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobruja (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobruja)
Ethnicity 1930
All 378,344
Bulgarian 143,209 (37.9%)
Turkish 129,025 (34.1%)
Roma 7,615 (2%)
Tatar 6,546 (1.7%)
Romanian 77,728 (20.5%)
Quote from: Tamas on September 10, 2021, 06:42:15 AM
There's a crapton of Turkish words in the Hungarian language, a couple of nice mosques are still around, and it is said the bath culture originates from the Ottomans.
That doesn't change the fact that Ottoman occupation was a deeply traumatic and negative experience and a de facto holocaust for the nation, with large swaths of lands depopulated due to 150 years of skirmishing, wars, and slaving raids.
You do not want to convince Hungarians to let Muslims in by referring to the Ottoman period. In fact Orban used it for the exact opposite.
Not arguing with the past Turkish influence. Your conclusion is what I was getting to.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on September 10, 2021, 06:52:29 AM
Are you sure you read wiki (the ultimate source obviously) correctly? The link I saw says 35 % for 1930 when it was Romanian, with Romanians having to bring settlers from other parts of Romania.
Southern Dobrogea ;) was only part of (Greater) Romania for like 20-25 years and you are forgetting the Christian Gagauz which may be classified as Turks (ethnicity vs religion)? They are also found in Moldavia/Bessarabia and have a troubled *ahem* relationship with Romania.
You are gasping at straws with a very selective and limited example.
A drop from >50% in 1912 or whenever the war ended to 35% by 1930 doesn't seem that inconceivable?
I think my phrasing in the original post made it pretty clear it was anecdotal from personal experience. I have the time nor the inclination to be a keyboard warrior on these topics. Well, I do have the time, actually. And I couldn't resist a cheap shot when I read that sentence on wikipedia while reading up on the history of Islam in Romania for my own enjoyment. It brings back pleasant memories of my time Romania, I should go back there some time.
The source should be Zachary T. Irwin, "The Fate of Islam in the Balkans: A Comparison of Four State Policies" in you're interested. It does say Turkish, not Islamic, to be fair.
Quote from: Maladict on September 10, 2021, 09:47:50 AM
I think my phrasing in the original post made it pretty clear it was anecdotal from personal experience. I have the time nor the inclination to be a keyboard warrior on these topics. Well, I do have the time, actually. And I couldn't resist a cheap shot when I read that sentence on wikipedia while reading up on the history of Islam in Romania for my own enjoyment.
:lol:
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:22:38 PM
I don't know - maybe try multiculturalism.
What is multiculturalism? Eating a kebab? Segregating swimming pools?
If it's the former I'm all for it. If the latter then no, thanks.
Quote from: Iormlund on September 11, 2021, 02:45:21 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2021, 02:22:38 PM
I don't know - maybe try multiculturalism.
What is multiculturalism? Eating a kebab? Segregating swimming pools?
If it's the former I'm all for it. If the latter then no, thanks.
How would it mean segregating swimming pools?
Segregation and keeping the races in their own place is literally the opposite of multi-culturalism no?
He's talking about separating genders to please conservative Muslims, I presume.
I see the Taliban leadership discussions today descended into a physical fight :ph34r:
Also I assume Adam Curtis is saving whatever this was for his next movie (Burial soundtrack over the top, Adam Curtis: "but this was a fantasy....") :lol: :blink:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_lS9whX0AImFPg?format=jpg&name=small)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_lS9_TX0Aom7Up?format=jpg&name=small)
It's a kinder, gentler Taliban after all:
QuoteTaliban official says strict punishment, executions, will return
Taliban leader Mullah Nooruddin Turabi says punishments such as 'cutting off hands' was necessary for 'security' as it had a deterrent effect.
One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its strict rule of Afghanistan during the 1990s says the group will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public.
In an interview with The Associated Press news agency, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed outrage over the Taliban's executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, and he warned the world against interfering with Afghanistan's new rulers.
"Everyone criticised us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments," Turabi told the AP, speaking in Kabul.
"No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran."
Since the Taliban overran Kabul on August 15 and seized control of the country, Afghans and the world have been watching to see whether they will recreate their harsh rule of the 1996-2001 period.
Turabi's comments pointed to how the group's leaders remain entrenched in a deeply conservative, hardline worldview, even if they are embracing technological changes, like video and mobile phones.
'Peace and stability'
Turabi, now in his early 60s, was justice minister and head of the so-called Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – effectively, the religious police – during the Taliban's previous rule.
At that time, the world denounced the Taliban's punishments, which took place in Kabul's stadium or on the grounds of the sprawling Eid Gah Mosque, often attended by hundreds of Afghan men.
Executions of convicted murderers were usually by a single shot to the head, carried out by the victim's family, who had the option of accepting "blood money" and allowing the culprit to live. For convicted thieves, the punishment was amputation of a hand. For those convicted of highway robbery, a hand and a foot were amputated.
Trials and convictions were rarely public and the judiciary was weighted in favour of Islamic scholars, whose knowledge of the law was limited to religious injunctions.
Turabi said that this time, judges – including women – would adjudicate cases, but the foundation of Afghanistan's laws will be the Quran. He said the same punishments would be revived.
"Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security," he said, saying it had a deterrent effect. He said the cabinet was studying whether to do punishments in public and will "develop a policy".
In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, Turabi – who returned to Afghanistan after 20 years of exile in Pakistan – also said the new justice system will mirror the previous Taliban order, though with some "changes".
"Our deeds will show that we are not like the Americans who say that they stand for human rights but committed terrible crimes. There will be no more torture and no more hunger," Turabi said, as he explained that the new prison staff will include members of the old system and the Taliban mujahideen.
"We have a constitution but we will introduce changes to it and, based on those changes, we will revise the civil and criminal codes and the rules for civilians. There will be much less prisoners because we will follow the rules of Islam, humane rules."
Turabi did not comment on the killing of four people during the protest in Kabul on September 10, or mounting evidence of the torture against journalists and civilians still being carried out in prisons.
"People worry about some of our rules, for example cutting hands. But this is public demand. If you cut off a hand of a person, he will not commit the same crime again. People are now corrupt, extorting money from others, taking bribes," he told Al Jazeera.
"We will bring peace and stability. Once we introduce our rules, no one will dare to break them."
'Changed from the past'
In recent days in Kabul, Taliban fighters have revived a punishment they commonly used in the past – public shaming of men accused of small-time theft.
On at least two occasions in the last week, Kabul men have been packed into the back of a pick-up truck, their hands tied, and were paraded around to humiliate them. In one case, their faces were painted to identify them as thieves. In the other, stale bread was hung from their necks or stuffed in their mouth. It was not immediately clear what their crimes were.
Wearing a white turban and a bushy, unkempt white beard, the stocky Turabi limped slightly on his artificial leg. He lost a leg and one eye during fighting with Soviet troops in the 1980s.
Under the new Taliban government, he is in charge of prisons. He is among a number of Taliban leaders, including members of the all-male interim Cabinet, who are on a United Nations sanctions list.
During the previous Taliban rule, he was one of the group's most ferocious and uncompromising enforcers. When the Taliban took power in 1996, one of his first acts was to scream at a woman journalist, demanding she leave a room of men, and to then deal a powerful slap in the face of a man who objected.
Turabi was notorious for ripping music tapes from cars, stringing up hundreds of metres of destroyed cassettes in trees and signposts. He demanded men wear turbans in all government offices and his supporters routinely beat men whose beards had been trimmed. Sports were banned, and Turabi's legion of enforcers forced men to the mosque for prayers five times daily.
In this week's interview with the AP, Turabi spoke to a woman journalist. :o
"We are changed from the past," he said.
He said now the Taliban would allow television, mobile phones, photos and video "because this is the necessity of the people, and we are serious about it". He suggested that the Taliban saw the media as a way to spread their message.
"Now we know instead of reaching just hundreds, we can reach millions," he said. He added that if punishments are made public, then people may be allowed to video or take photos to spread the deterrent effect.
The United States and its allies have been trying to use the threat of isolation – and the economic damage that would result from it – to pressure the Taliban to moderate their rule and give other factions, minorities and women a place in power.
But Turabi dismissed criticism over the previous Taliban rule, arguing that it had succeeded in bringing stability. "We had complete safety in every part of the country," he said of the late 1990s.
Even as Kabul residents express fear over their new Taliban rulers, some acknowledge grudgingly that the capital has already become safer in just the past month. Before the Taliban takeover, bands of thieves roamed the streets, and relentless crime had driven most people off the streets after dark.
"It's not a good thing to see these people being shamed in public, but it stops the criminals because when people see it, they think 'I don't want that to be me,'" said Amaan, a store owner in the centre of Kabul. He asked to be identified by just one name.
Another shopkeeper said it was a violation of human rights but that he was also happy he can open his store after dark.
When I read this I was reminded of this Doonesbury comic from April 4, 1979:
(https://i.imgur.com/9WhN1vX.png)
Not quite the Age of Voltaire; but this will put them into the Elizabethan Period:
Taliban release media guidelines, ban shows with female actors (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/taliban-release-media-guidelines-ban-shows-with-female-actors-2021-11-23/)
I'm sure all the women parts will be played by slim and willowy young boys; just like in Shakespeare's day. :)
This kind of thing would have been a killer 20 years ago during Taliban I but I'm curious how it will work today. Afterall TV has long since ceased to be the dominant medium. And the taliban doesn't strike me as too digitally sophisticated.
Will they be buying off the shelf chinese great firewall filters?
Post-victory life is presenting unique problems to the Taliban rank-and-file. Interesting interviews.
QuoteAnother thing I don't like, not only about Kabul but broadly about life after the fatha, are the new restrictions. In the group, we had a great degree of freedom about where to go, where to stay, and whether to participate in the war.
However, these days, you have to go to the office before 8 AM and stay there till 4 PM. If you don't go, you're considered absent, and [the wage for] that day is cut from your salary. We're now used to that, but it was especially difficult in the first two or three months.
...There is another thing I dislike and that's how restricted our lives are now, unlike anything we experienced before. The Taleban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Life's become so wearisome; you do the same things every day. Being away from the family has only doubled the problem.
I sometimes miss the jihad life for all the good things it had. Similarly, in the beginning, I yearned for the village, but I've now become accustomed to my new circumstances.
In our ministry, there's little work for me to do. Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We're connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/b980cc876ff7c40ca1d7b90f1c7112e7/tumblr_okbnrd1D6L1r2aobgo1_500.gif)
New Lives in the City (https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/context-culture/new-lives-in-the-city-how-taleban-have-experienced-life-in-kabul/)
They're probably loving the Ukraine war :lol: