I can’t bring myself to link to any of the browbeating, Monday morning quarterbacking, prevaricating, sophist balderdash being written about Afghanistan today. I’ll limit my comments to this. The Taliban are Afghans. They plan to stay in Afghanistan. We didn’t.
There’s lots of blame to go around and I hope fingers will be pointed at, among others, our intelligence agencies. We will hash and rehash Afghanistan over the period of the next 40 years. Not a word that is said will change the facts.
So, what do you think about Justin Fields? Should he start?
How ’bout dem Bears?
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Weighing everything; I still think withdrawal made more sense.
But the statement the Taliban are Afghans seems somewhat irrelevant. It’s like saying Kaiser Wilhelm is German.
One item that should be looked into very soon is how many of our allies have militaries wholly dependent on US military logistics. Analysts say that’s one of the reasons the Afghan army fell apart so quickly — they couldn’t operate or maintain equipment without US contractors; assumed US airlift to supply troops in the field; and their doctrine was that US would provide air superiority.
If there were multiple crisis — our allies can’t assume US military logistics will be everywhere at the same time.
No, it’s not irrelevant. Our entire experiment was predicated on assumptions that included that the Taliban would give up and that they didn’t have considerable support among the Afghan people. I doubt those assumptions were correct. The Taliban just had to wait. We’d leave. They’d win. They were never giving up and never going anywhere else because they were Afghans.
Everybody except the French. Maybe the Brits although the British military isn’t what it used to be. There are very few militaries in the world capable of doing their own logistics. Remember the Libyan bombing? Without U. S. logistics the French and Brits would have given up after a week.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan is not what is at issue here. What is chilling people’s confidence in Biden’s competence is how the withdrawal was conducted, amidst the intel that was made available to him. People in the know said that the Afghan military, despite the long term U.S. presence, still didn’t even know how to put fuel in the equipment. And, with Biden giving a timeline up front about leaving, the Taliban was able to fortify it’s numbers and strategy, so it was good to go when the U.S. scurried away, leaving thousands behind to face the enemy.
Here’s my way of putting it.
If the Taliban had killed 100,000 or 500,000 Americans instead of 3,000 — that no matter how much the Taliban desired to regain power or stay in Afghanistan, it wouldn’t. Now it is also possible that instead of invasion; there would be no recognizable Afghanistan to stay in either.
It is also plausible if the American goal was solely focused on keeping the Taliban from extensive power and not about purely building democracy, etc; a more hardnosed American policy of arms and copious amounts of cash for any non-Taliban militia/warlord and staying out of Afghanistan may have been more sustainable.
Now ask yourself whether the Taliban did not kill more Americans because that was beyond their capability or because that was not consistent with their objective? I think the latter. They were fighting a 4GW. We are very bad at that. They didn’t want to confront the U. S. military directly. They just wanted to make it painful enough that we would give up. It worked.
As to your second paragraph I think that area denial has always been the objective. As to “arms and copious amounts of cash” isn’t that what we did? The problem is that the Afghans were perfectly willing to accept our arms and cash without delivering anything in return.
The answer is it was beyond Bin Laden’s technical capability. Al Queda training camps were trying to develop biological / chemical warfare agents.
You could call it the “Iranian model”. Train and arm para-militias that parallel to the state.
Iraq is not Afghanistan; but when ISIS nearly swept Iraq 8 years ago; only the Shia backed militias kept Baghdad from falling (notice how the US backed Iraqi army also basically fell apart in that instance as well).
I don’t pretend that an Iranian model is something that Americans could execute within the ethical/diplomatic framework that Americans are comfortable with.
“Now ask yourself whether the Taliban did not kill more Americans because that was beyond their capability or because that was not consistent with their objective? I think the latter.”
Oh, they tried killing Americans, many times, especially early on. They quickly learned that was a good cost-benefit for them, so they switched to indirect tactics, as guerilla forces always do.
“I don’t pretend that an Iranian model is something that Americans could execute within the ethical/diplomatic framework that Americans are comfortable with.”
Proxy forces have never been our thing, and the Iranians have the advantage of a government that doesn’t leak like a sieve.
On the subject at hand, I think leaving Afghanistan is the correct move, and I was glad to see that Biden double-down on it in his speech yesterday, and even threw Obama under the bus. And, shockingly, he full up admitted that the administration did not anticipate rapid Taliban gains. I can’t remember the last time a President admitted error, much less in a national televised address.
Anyway, the fact that he doubled down on withdrawal, and gave his reasons for doing so (which are sound IMO) – to me, proved my instincts about him not being a part of the DC Natsec blob were correct.
But as an Afghan vet who has a lot emotionally and morally invested in this conflict, which dominated a large part of my professional and personal life, it’s been a very difficult few days. It’s hard to put into words and really the only people I’ve been able to talk to who really understand are other vets. I’ve known since 2005 that we would never accomplish anything lasting in Afghanistan. So on one hand, I’m glad we are leaving and have been wanting that for a very long time. But I feel a lot of anger that it took 16 years for our political leadership to finally catch up. The public was ready to leave at least five years ago and still the DC blob was too cowardly to do anything but mark time. I’m angry at 16 years of moving goalposts and political cowardice that cost the lives of my friends and colleagues. Now that’s we’re at the endgame, I can no longer deny that their sacrifices were for nothing except for in the small ways that we keep faith with our brothers and sisters in arms. What a sad fucking waste.
But what put me over the edge was/is the rank incompetence of our exit. I give Biden a lot of credit for making the hard decision to leave that Bush, Obama, and Trump didn’t have the courage to do. But there’s no sugar-coating that fact that the Biden administration has fucked this up so massively – in a way I didn’t think was possible. They completely misjudged the situation and they didn’t plan for this even though this outcome was likely.
There’s nothing that can be done about that now, and lives are still very much at risk, so I’ll limit my finger-pointing to Biden and the administration generally for now. It remains to be seen how this massive oversight happened, but I suspect it will be deception from DC blob courtiers.
For now, I think what’s being done on the ground right now is the best that can be expected given the realities of the situation. I hope the Taliban don’t get overconfident and start some shit, that would be bad for everyone and we would take our pound of flesh from them the hard way.
“On the subject at hand, I think leaving Afghanistan is the correct move, and I was glad to see that Biden double-down on it in his speech yesterday, and even threw Obama under the bus.”
I, too, think it was the right move. I’ll bet most at this blog do as well. I bet a majority of Americans do. But I don’t think that’s the issue at hand. It is how poorly it was handled and all the negative knock-on effects, well documented and commented upon.
A resection of a portion of the colon may be the correct action to treat Stage 3 colon cancer, and agreed upon by patient and the medical team. But if the patient woke up and found that an arm had been amputated, their gut was grossly infected and they suffered a stroke during surgery people would be asking a lot of questions about planning and execution. I don’t think “I stand by my decision to do a colon resection” would be accepted very well.
” found that an arm had been amputated, their gut was grossly infected and they suffered a stroke ”
How many thousands of Americans have died in the last 3 days? I lost count.
Steve