It worked last time! Only took 10 years for the Ruskies to tuck tail and run.
Taliban >> U.S. at Nation Building
Russia Prepares
1979 Soviet Tanks Roll Into Afghanistan
2021, It's On!
It worked last time! Only took 10 years for the Ruskies to tuck tail and run.
Taliban >> U.S. at Nation Building
Russia Prepares
1979 Soviet Tanks Roll Into Afghanistan
2021, It's On!
Nobody cares?
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content...size=770%2C770
Honestly just tryna get my head 'round how my country—and others, sure—sent young asylum seekers back to this nightmare, deporting them even as it became clear to everyone how the Talibans' resurgence would play out.
So Kabul is now a country?
Yes, Kabul is the country surrounded by Afghanistan. That is probably not comfortable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
It appears more Afghani are willing to live under Taliban control than fight to avoid it. If your country was being taken over by Taliban and your army was incapable of stopping this, what would you do, personally speaking?
Democracy isn't something that just springs up in a couple of years. Most people will continue to live their lives as normally as they can.
How true that is! Just look at Sweden and the UK. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
tf when you spend 2 trillion dollars, two decades and two hundred thousand lives on a nation building project that holds up for about six minutes after you leave.
Seems that only a very small minority of Afghani citizens wanted democracy. Go figure.
Meh. Just Meh.
Maybe that My pillow guy was on to something. When he predicted that the antiwoman, antigay, antivax asshole was returning to power this weekend we all just assumed he was referring to trump, not the Taliban.
Oh, please, the US has been marking time in Afghanistan for at least a decade. The last serious effort to change the status quo was in 2009-2011, and that was half-hearted at best. Obama was offered a much more robust option but chose for a more modest approach that wasn't expected to achieve any real substantive gains. It's notable that at the time, Biden was advocating for a much more limited effort, heavily relying on special forces in a counterterrorism role with zero effort at nation building. Since things wound down in 2011/2012, the US has been managing the situation indefinitely, but not putting in the attention or resources necessary to change things. Trump and Biden have both been pretty darned clear that they don't give a shit about Afghanistan.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
No one should be surprised that this happened as soon as we pulled out; the only question was how long it would take. I'll admit to being somewhat surprised it took days instead of weeks... but it's not really shocking. The thing that's really inexcusable (even if it's not a fundamental strategic error) is the treatment of the Afghan interpreters/etc., and the generally poor execution of the 'handover', such as it was, to Afghan forces. But the former, while a tragedy and a major moral failing, does not substantively affect the situation, and the latter would only have delayed the inevitable had it been handled properly.
I do find it a bit rich how many people were harping on the US' continued (and relatively modest) presence in Afghanistan without offering a robust alternative... and how many of them are now aghast at the results.
Once the cities started falling without a fight, the government officials claiming Kabul would fall in 90 days looked increasingly delusional. It was obvious Kabul would fall without a fight and it would happen in days rather than months.
Oh, absolutely, once places like Kunduz fell with no appreciable resistance, the writing was on the wall. If you had asked me back before Bagram was evacuated, though, I would have given the government a few weeks, with the possibility of a core around Kabul holding on for longer. But it quickly became apparent that there was not the will nor the capability to mount a substantial defensive action.
Not sure what you're disagreeing with?Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
That we spent all that time and money on nation building... Or that there's any surprise at the results.
I mean, that's what we were supposed to be doing. That was the justification for our being there, originally. That we did not in fact do that was the implied critique I was going for.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
The current regime the US micromanaged into place wasn't exactly something to write home about. It was barely more than a poorly disguised money laundering operation. Something like 30% of the "warlords" the US considered allies were pedophiles. Beyond the built in conditioning that such things were normal you have a population that was either split that the current state of affairs wasn't a beacon of democracy and the other part thinking that things were better for them before the cheap lipstick was painted over it. It's a no win situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
The world, and especially the US, failed hard on helping people get out of the situation. But that's par for the course.
Silver lining?
GOP Admits Trump Just Ain't All That!
Dumb american voters,
Trump Would Have Done It Better!
2001 just won't let go.
GTA 3 is coming out this holiday season, Brittany isn't under the control of her dad, and the Taliban are back in control.
Edit: forgot about affleck and lopez
The price of opioids and saffron should slowly decrease as the supply skyrockets. I mean those are two things you just cannot effectively sanction.
The Swedish diplomatic mission has evacuated all Swedish personnel, leaving local employees - who have been begging to be evacuated for months - to fend for themselves, with no information or even a goodbye. Their emails and calls have gone unanswered throughout these events. The minister responsible has had no comments other than that we're apparently following the plans that have been drawn up, but, as recently as a week ago, there was no plan for the local staff. Now making some noise about maybe sending some additional planes, but the window for evacuating even those who can get to the airport is rapidly closing, while many others have no realistic prospects of getting there - not least those who'll have to go dark before our lazy-ass govt. deigns to contact them. Throughout Afghanistan, people who have worked closely with our soldiers have been left to their fates, despite struggling for years - under constant threat of torture and execution - to be granted asylum in Sweden. Most have been given the runaround, referred to other countries who've (understandably) referred them back to us. It's just so pathetic and gross. And I can't shake the feeling the final betrayal was as much due to people prioritizing vacations over the lives of friends and colleagues as it was due to callous political disregard.
I think you underestimate the absolute need for denial in a crisis of this sort. If western governments had visibly planned for events as they panned out the fall of the Afghan government would have taken mere hours in stead of days.
As we can see - in hindsight - being in willful denial can backfire just as hard. With the same effects on the lives of the same people.
With the only difference that you have the appearance of having made an effort in stead of appearing to have made a serious dick move.
I think comparing the two is offensive and dumb.
Watching people fall from a plane as Americans fled is a sickening metaphor.
2000-2019: the fucking around
2020-????: the finding out
on the other hand:
Twitter Link
I can't speak for the objectives in the UK, but it's far from clear that the US ever had a clear objective of nation building in Afghanistan. There were - and still are - a multiplicity of viewpoints in the US about the justification and objectives of the war in Afghanistan. The common denominator was to degrade the terrorist networks that existed in Afghanistan and deny them the safe haven that had been provided by the Taliban. But beyond that, there were substantial divisions about the rest of the scope. Some, especially the neoconservative wing of the Republican party, felt that this was an opportunity to build a strong, centralized, American-friendly democracy in a crucial region of the world. Others focused more on the humanitarian angle (e.g. allowing freedoms for women, improving education, etc.) without explicitly expecting a full-on nation building exercise. Still others focused on the strategic value of a strong American military presence adjacent to Iran, central Asia, and the AfPak region (without specific expectations of an emergent democracy).Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
The point is that with such a diversity of views and little coherent policy (let alone little willingness to commit the resources needed to achieve any of these aims), I think it's rather much to suggest that the US was 'supposed' to be doing anything, other than disrupting Al Qaeda safe havens and hunting down their leadership.
This lack of strategic focus is a hallmark of most postwar American interventions; certainly the US has a lot of resources and a lot of firepower (not to mention the projection capability to bring these to bear), but rarely is there a unified strategy consensus that is implemented in a sustained and thoughtful manner. This outcome is not the exception, but the rule.
Right. So the objective was to lay waste to the Taliban and not put anything in its place. :rolleyes:
30,000 in Taiwan? :weird:
Twitter Link
I mean, I recognise we're just trading differently worded versions of the same critique here but:Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
The justification for remaining in Afghanistan after the destruction of the Al Qaeda bases and the initial overthrow of the Taliban was that we were supposed to be making Afghanistan into a country that would be able to exist without western occupation - whatever form that might have taken, or else what the fuck we were even doing there, merely delaying the day the Taliban would retake the country for as many years as was politically feasible? Or were the brain geniuses running the whole thing just envisaging permanent occupation?
The complete failure to establish anything in Afghanistan that wasn't entirely dependant on the occupation despite having had two decades in which to do so is a damning indictment of the American state and military. Just an absolutely devastating fuck up. This is on top of the fuck up of the actual withdrawl.
Really, you gonna leave the UK out of this rant? UK might have just been a follower in this endeavor but lets talk operation AJAX in Iran and all the mushroom cloud rhetoric leading up to the devastation in Iraq. :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
UK's a junior partner in Afghanistan with no real power to set the overall strategy. I don't doubt we would have contrived an equivalent fuck up if we'd been in the driving seat, but we weren't. Other, unrelated foreign policy fuck ups which the UK did take a more role in aren't in the scope of this thread.
Nothing is unrelated in this part of the world. Kashmir, Pakistan? Unrelated? No.
Well, yes, colonialism is also to blame if you want to get meta about it.
And let's not forget how much opium and saffron the UK purchases each year. :sour:
Frankly, even though the Afghanistan Papers identified colossal US policy fuckups wrt the creation and training of Afghan military and police forces going all the way back to the early days of the invasion—and continuing throughout the US occupation—I blame Being for the whole mess.
