Afghan "train, advise and assist" 1984 style

[Jimmy Higgins]

I did not say "people" I said "taliban people". The whole damn war was supposed to be about punishing them.

...for not giving us Osama bin Laden. Had they done that, W and the Neocons would likely have turned attention to Iraq and spinning the fight to Hussein and left the Taliban alone.

Yeah, that's not really true though. As early as September 13 the Taliban signaled willingness to do this.They simply required that we provide evidence of his involvement (at that exact time, Al Qaeda was still denying responsibility). Right before the actual invasion, they floated turning him over to third-party state. Indeed, its clear that they just wanted to save face somehow internally. All of this could have been settled diplomatically, or at least, with a small-scale military action without an occupation. We have plenty of Islamist states as allies that would have worked.

The Neocons did paint the Taliban into a corner, but we know via Richard Clarke that the talk about Iraq was immediate after the 9/11 attack.

The Taliban weren't exactly bargaining in good faith. The Taliban knew of the attack, and knew of bin Laden's involvement, and some didn't like the idea. So asking for evidence was maneuvering and not being honest.

 

[untermensche]

Yeah, that's not really true though. As early as September 13 the Taliban signaled willingness to do this.They simply required that we provide evidence of his involvement (at that exact time, Al Qaeda was still denying responsibility). Right before the actual invasion, they floated turning him over to third-party state. Indeed, its clear that they just wanted to save face somehow internally. All of this could have been settled diplomatically, or at least, with a small-scale military action without an occupation. We have plenty of Islamist states as allies that would have worked.

The Neocons did paint the Taliban into a corner, but we know via Richard Clarke that the talk about Iraq was immediate after the 9/11 attack.

The Taliban weren't exactly bargaining in good faith. The Taliban knew of the attack, and knew of bin Laden's involvement, and some didn't like the idea. So asking for evidence was maneuvering and not being honest.

Asking for evidence was asking to be treated as equals.

Would the US not present evidence to nations like France or Germany?

The Taliban wanted exactly what happened.

To bait the US into a futile and costly misadventure.

And humiliate the US in the end.

 

[atrib]

Do I blame the Afghan military? Not really. Here... we are abandoning you to either Taliban rule or a bloody civil war. Could you please have our backs as we leave?

As I said, sustained extermination campaign of taliban (initially by US forces, then by afghan army) should have been the real objective.

You cannot exterminate an ideology, you can only contain it. We are not dealing with a standing army representing a sovereign nation concentrated at large, well defined bases; we are dealing with many small, localized militant groups who are connected together with an informal hierarchy and a common goal. The Taliban also gets a lot of support from neighboring countries, and can easily cross international borders which a conventional invading force cannot do. And for many of the Taliban members, fighting for their cause is a part-time job; they are also farmers and laborers who get called upon to fight as needed. The only way to control the Taliban is to contain their activities and by disrupting cooperation between the different factions, which can only be achieved by having tens of thousands of troops on the ground, which is not sustainable in the long term. Attempting to kill off a large portion of the adult population of a country, many of whom may or may not be actively engaged in hostilities at any given time, amounts to genocide, and is counterproductive because it serves to attract more fighters to their cause.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, that's not really true though. As early as September 13 the Taliban signaled willingness to do this.They simply required that we provide evidence of his involvement (at that exact time, Al Qaeda was still denying responsibility). Right before the actual invasion, they floated turning him over to third-party state. Indeed, its clear that they just wanted to save face somehow internally. All of this could have been settled diplomatically, or at least, with a small-scale military action without an occupation. We have plenty of Islamist states as allies that would have worked.

The Neocons did paint the Taliban into a corner, but we know via Richard Clarke that the talk about Iraq was immediate after the 9/11 attack.

The Taliban weren't exactly bargaining in good faith. The Taliban knew of the attack, and knew of bin Laden's involvement, and some didn't like the idea. So asking for evidence was maneuvering and not being honest.

Asking for evidence was asking to be treated as equals.

Would the US not present evidence to nations like France or Germany?

The Taliban wanted exactly what happened.

To bait the US into a futile and costly misadventure.

And humiliate the US in the end.

We quite correctly did not want to reveal our intel sources. Bin Laden admitted he was behind 9/11, why do you continue with this old bit about no evidence?

 

[untermensche]

Asking for evidence was asking to be treated as equals.

Would the US not present evidence to nations like France or Germany?

The Taliban wanted exactly what happened.

To bait the US into a futile and costly misadventure.

And humiliate the US in the end.

We quite correctly did not want to reveal our intel sources. Bin Laden admitted he was behind 9/11, why do you continue with this old bit about no evidence?

If we couldn't prove it that does not give us the right to change the government.

The UN supported going in and getting al Qaeda. But nation building was Bush's idea.

 

[Swammerdami]

Hold on, wait, this treaty Biden was adhering to in the pull-out, that was supposed to be a bait-and-switch thing? But no one knew to switch? Shucks.

So, Trump fucked up yet ANOTHER transition? Noooooooooooooooo! Say it wasn't so.

Yeah, these idiots forgot to tell Biden it was a ruse. At least it explains why the deal was so bad.

Seymour Hersch made several serious charges against President John F. Kennedy, including one related (though opposite) to this.

JFK allegedly told insiders that he planned to reduce involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election. But LBJ didn't get the memo.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

This is about the mismanagement of three administrations to create a situation where a decent pull-out was possible.

This may shock you, but even after 20 years of mismanaged unnecessary war, it is still possible to do an organized and orderly withdraw of the troops.

I'm glad they're out, but dismayed at how badly the pull out was done. You're glad they're out, and happy that the guy who got them out is of your tribe.

Do you honestly believe that Untermensche is a fan boy supporting democrat??!

Yes, and he should stop pretending otherwise.

 

[lpetrich]

America’s Afghan War: A Defeat Foretold? - The New York Times - "Recent history suggests that it is foolish for Western powers to fight wars in other people’s lands and that the U.S. intervention was almost certainly doomed from the start.

When it comes to guerrilla war, Mao once described the relationship that should exist between a people and troops. “The former may be likened to water,” he wrote, “the latter to the fish who inhabit it.”

And when it came to Afghanistan, the Americans were a fish out of water. Just as the Russians had been in the 1980s. Just as the Americans were in Vietnam in the 1960s. And as the French were in Algeria in the 1950s. And the Portuguese during their futile attempts to keep their African colonies in the ’60s and ’70s. And the Israelis during their occupation of southern Lebanon in the ’80s.

Each time the intervening power in all these places announced that the homegrown insurgency had been definitively beaten, or that a corner had been turned, smoldering embers led to new conflagrations.

Then about the history of the Taliban seeming beaten, and then returning.

“In the long run all colonial wars are lost,” the historian of Portugal’s misadventures in Africa, Patrick Chabal, wrote 20 years ago, just as the Americans were becoming fatally embroiled in Afghanistan.

The superpower’s two-decade entanglement and ultimate defeat was all the more surprising in that the America of the decades preceding the millennium had been suffused with talk of the supposed “lessons” of Vietnam.

Then mentioning JFK being warned about Vietnam by French President Charles de Gaulle. “I predict that you will sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire, however much you spend in men and money,” and “Even if you find local leaders who in their own interests are prepared to obey you, the people will not agree to it, and indeed do not want you.”

This was while he was pulling his nation out of its attempt to keep in power in Algeria.

By 1968, American generals were arguing that the North Vietnamese had been “whipped,” as one put it. The problem was, the enemy refused to recognize that it had been defeated, and went right on fighting, as the foreign policy analysts James Chace and David Fromkin observed in the mid-1980s. The Americans’ South Vietnamese ally, meanwhile, was corrupt and had little popular support.

The same unholy trinity of realities — boastful generals, an unbowed enemy, a feeble ally — could have been observed at all points during the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan.

 

[lpetrich]

Joint Statement on the Situation of Women and Girls in Afghanistan - United States Department of State

This statement has been co-signed by Albania, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, European Union, Honduras, Guatemala, North Macedonia, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Senegal, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

Begin Text:

We are deeply worried about Afghan women and girls, their rights to education, work and freedom of movement. We call on those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan to guarantee their protection.

Afghan women and girls, as all Afghan people, deserve to live in safety, security and dignity. Any form of discrimination and abuse should be prevented. We in the international community stand ready to assist them with humanitarian aid and support, to ensure that their voices can be heard.

We will monitor closely how any future government ensures rights and freedoms that have become an integral part of the life of women and girls in Afghanistan during the last twenty years.

Then,
Ilhan Omar on Twitter: "More countries, especially Muslim majority countries and neighboring countries, need to join this urgent call to protect the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. The time is now." / Twitter

But every good right-winger knows that she's on the side of the Taliban.

 

[barbos]

Do I blame the Afghan military? Not really. Here... we are abandoning you to either Taliban rule or a bloody civil war. Could you please have our backs as we leave?

As I said, sustained extermination campaign of taliban (initially by US forces, then by afghan army) should have been the real objective.

You cannot exterminate an ideology, you can only contain it. We are not dealing with a standing army representing a sovereign nation concentrated at large, well defined bases; we are dealing with many small, localized militant groups who are connected together with an informal hierarchy and a common goal. The Taliban also gets a lot of support from neighboring countries, and can easily cross international borders which a conventional invading force cannot do. And for many of the Taliban members, fighting for their cause is a part-time job; they are also farmers and laborers who get called upon to fight as needed. The only way to control the Taliban is to contain their activities and by disrupting cooperation between the different factions, which can only be achieved by having tens of thousands of troops on the ground, which is not sustainable in the long term.

That's very nice, but how is that working for you so far?
US had spent trillions of dollars for ..... not having another 9/11. That's the metrics they use for success now.
I guess now US is OUT and Taliban is IN, prepare for 9/11, then rinse and repeat. But I think World Police should think of a new strategy, the one which is affordable and effective.

Attempting to kill off a large portion of the adult population of a country, many of whom may or may not be actively engaged in hostilities at any given time, amounts to genocide, and is counterproductive because it serves to attract more fighters to their cause.

No it does not. They are not attracted by opportunity to be killed. Well, some are, but the wast majority are attracted by the winning. ideology my ass. These are bunch of imbeciles manipulated by psychopaths.

 

[J842P]

We quite correctly did not want to reveal our intel sources. Bin Laden admitted he was behind 9/11, why do you continue with this old bit about no evidence?

At the time they asked for it he was denying responsibility. Afterwards, their stipulation was that he be sent and tried in a third-party nation.

 

[Gospel]

I did not say "people" I said "taliban people". The whole damn war was supposed to be about punishing them.

The Taliban are Afghanis. Complicated by the fact that the border was stupidly drawn to cut through Pashtun.
Tom

Even more important is the Emirates funded 911, Saudi Arabia trained the 911 attackers, and the attacks were planned in Afghanistan then Pakistan hosted the retirement home for Osama. America sure has great allies.

 

[ZiprHead]

[TWEET]<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fox News on FDA's approval of Pfizer vaccine:<br><br>Was it rushed?<br><br>*40 seconds pass*<br><br>What took so long? <a href="https://t.co/Id8NVmXKzI">pic.twitter.com/Id8NVmXKzI</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1429823392992145416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>[/TWEET]

Was it rushed?

*40 seconds pass*

What took so long?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You cannot exterminate an ideology, you can only contain it. We are not dealing with a standing army representing a sovereign nation concentrated at large, well defined bases; we are dealing with many small, localized militant groups who are connected together with an informal hierarchy and a common goal. The Taliban also gets a lot of support from neighboring countries, and can easily cross international borders which a conventional invading force cannot do. And for many of the Taliban members, fighting for their cause is a part-time job; they are also farmers and laborers who get called upon to fight as needed. The only way to control the Taliban is to contain their activities and by disrupting cooperation between the different factions, which can only be achieved by having tens of thousands of troops on the ground, which is not sustainable in the long term.

That's very nice, but how is that working for you so far?
US had spent trillions of dollars for ..... not having another 9/11. That's the metrics they use for success now.
I guess now US is OUT and Taliban is IN, prepare for 9/11, then rinse and repeat. But I think World Police should think of a new strategy, the one which is affordable and effective.

Attempting to kill off a large portion of the adult population of a country, many of whom may or may not be actively engaged in hostilities at any given time, amounts to genocide, and is counterproductive because it serves to attract more fighters to their cause.

No it does not. They are not attracted by opportunity to be killed. Well, some are, but the wast majority are attracted by the winning. ideology my ass. These are bunch of imbeciles manipulated by psychopaths.

Just because it didn’t work (a shit stain of an occupation plan that was abandoned in 2002), doesn’t mean extermination is feasible or successful.

Japan and Germany has had the US military infestations for a very long time. The Marshall Plan was used to help undo WWII in Europe. South Korea somehow managed to blossom into a democracy after decades.

Just a few more bombs or bullets is rarely going to make a difference. And the ‘kill em all’ mantra was kind of what the W Admin had in mind with Whatever it Takes. Didn’t work, you can’t do it, not without substantial home side losses.

 

[Trausti]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S84bntUzY1U[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Jayjay]

Maybe instead of local soldiers, the US should just hire an army of undercover imams who would preach that America's excellence and superiority in the eyes of Allah. If he locals in middle-east and elsewhere don't want to accept sensible western values, maybe they'll be more receptive to religious claptrap.

 

[barbos]

That's very nice, but how is that working for you so far?
US had spent trillions of dollars for ..... not having another 9/11. That's the metrics they use for success now.
I guess now US is OUT and Taliban is IN, prepare for 9/11, then rinse and repeat. But I think World Police should think of a new strategy, the one which is affordable and effective.

No it does not. They are not attracted by opportunity to be killed. Well, some are, but the wast majority are attracted by the winning. ideology my ass. These are bunch of imbeciles manipulated by psychopaths.

Just because it didn’t work (a shit stain of an occupation plan that was abandoned in 2002), doesn’t mean extermination is feasible or successful.

US have not even tried for it to not work.

Japan and Germany has had the US military infestations for a very long time. The Marshall Plan was used to help undo WWII in Europe.

I don't recall nazi insurgence of the 50-60s.

South Korea somehow managed to blossom into a democracy after decades.

Yes, that's what I call "mission accomplished".

Just a few more bombs or bullets is rarely going to make a difference. And the ‘kill em all’ mantra was kind of what the W Admin had in mind with Whatever it Takes. Didn’t work, you can’t do it, not without substantial home side losses.

Again, they never actually tried this strategy. Their strategy was to push taliban out and hope that over time they will cease to be relevant.
US failed to learn from soviet experience, who, by the way, did much better.

 

[Ford]

The Entirely Predictable Failure of the West's Mission in Afghanistan

It's right there at the beginning...

In early July, I met with a leading Taliban military commander. I asked when his fighters would arrive in Kabul. His answer: "They are already there."

That amusement park where Taliban soldiers were riding bumper cars? It has a "Fight Club" vibe when you read this:

"They’re already there, after all. They are the security guards at the restaurants, the ride operators, the cleaning staff. When the time is right, the place will be full of Taliban."

That was on the outskirts of town, but Taliban fighters had been infiltrating Kabul for months. Blending in with the population. Waiting. And they were able to do so because the Afghan security forces we poured so much money into simply didn't care. Oh, and the government we propped up was hopelessly corrupt. And the allies we worked with to overthrow the Taliban were murderous warlords who were just as bad as the Taliban.

And yeah, anyone paying attention could have told you that the Taliban would eventually take over after we left, but that fast?

Not even the higher-ups in the Taliban, it would seem, expected the country’s political leadership to implode so suddenly and President Ashraf Ghani to fly out of the city on Sunday, apparently finding shelter in the United Arab Emirates. The takeover of Kabul was "unexpected," Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the 53-year-old lead negotiator for the Taliban’s political arm, said in a video message.

Sigh...

 

[bilby]

The Entirely Predictable Failure of the West's Mission in Afghanistan

It's right there at the beginning...



That amusement park where Taliban soldiers were riding bumper cars? It has a "Fight Club" vibe when you read this:



That was on the outskirts of town, but Taliban fighters had been infiltrating Kabul for months. Blending in with the population. Waiting. And they were able to do so because the Afghan security forces we poured so much money into simply didn't care. Oh, and the government we propped up was hopelessly corrupt. And the allies we worked with to overthrow the Taliban were murderous warlords who were just as bad as the Taliban.

And yeah, anyone paying attention could have told you that the Taliban would eventually take over after we left, but that fast?

Not even the higher-ups in the Taliban, it would seem, expected the country’s political leadership to implode so suddenly and President Ashraf Ghani to fly out of the city on Sunday, apparently finding shelter in the United Arab Emirates. The takeover of Kabul was "unexpected," Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the 53-year-old lead negotiator for the Taliban’s political arm, said in a video message.

Sigh...

A friend of mine who worked for the British government in Afghanistan more decades ago than I care to recall, posted the following on FB five days ago:

I see that President Ghani is denying fleeing Afghanistan.

I can only assume that, like the captain of the Costa Concordia, he accidentally fell into the U.A.E and has been unable to find a rope to get back on board.

“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

Kinda disgusted but genuinely not surprised that he will not even accept responsibility for his failings. There are good Afghan politicians, but far too few.

 

[untermensche]

Maybe instead of local soldiers, the US should just hire an army of undercover imams who would preach that America's excellence and superiority in the eyes of Allah. If he locals in middle-east and elsewhere don't want to accept sensible western values, maybe they'll be more receptive to religious claptrap.

Sensible western values?

Like invading other nations, killing people indiscriminately, and trying to establish a foreign puppet government?