Might it be possible that a group of nationalist fighters in a country that has a multi-hundred year history of ejecting foreign invaders would choose just lie in wait until the foreigners were leaving, once the foreigners announced their intention to leave? Do you think that thought even crossed Kinzinger’s mind? Even this guy knows the score:
“We got the [Afghan forces] we deserve,” Douglas Lute, an Army lieutenant general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, told government interviewers.
If the U.S. government had ramped up training between 2002 and 2006, “when the Taliban was weak and disorganized, things may have been different,” Lute added. “Instead, we went to Iraq. If we committed money deliberately and sooner, we could have a different outcome.”
That quote is from an absolutely damning installment from a 2019 Post series on Afghanistan. It details the corruption among Afghan police, which one Navy official called “the most hated institution” in Afghanistan. Ryan Crocker called them “useless” because “they are corrupt down to the patrol level.” Another advisor called them “stealing fools” who wasted ammo by firing their shiny new rifles constantly. The notion that this institution was going to do anything but fold once we left, or that we were somehow making progress with them in the past year even though we got nowhere with them in prior years, is laughable.
When I look at our COVID response and see all the wasted opportunity and massive human stupidity, I have the same feeling as I had when I first heard that Bush wanted to invade Iraq. I wonder if 19 years from now, we’ll still be reading about how Democrats are to blame for stupid Republican COVID decisions. My guess is that we will.
Mike in NC
The odds are excellent that someday in the not too distant future we will see another idiot named Bush sitting in the White House.
Van Buren
In the horrifying alternate universe where TFG won reelection, the media would have no trouble at all blaming Afghanistan on Team D. Not only will COVID be Biden’s fault, but when the Atlantic and the Gulf are meeting up in Orlando, that will be Democrats’ fault as well.
Matt McIrvin
Iraq mostly gets blamed on Democrats already. To hear Republicans talk about it now, Hillary Clinton was President from 2001 to 2009.
smith
@Matt McIrvin: And why was Obama so slow to respond to Katrina? And how could he have let 9/11 happen?
Just Chuck
@Matt McIrvin:
No thanks.
West of the Rockies
You can be relentlessly cynical, MM.
Cermet
This isn’t fully correct; without installing a highly religious based government, anything we do after that mistake will lead to failure. Afghanistan is an extremely religious country and making it a secular democracy was failure #1, 2 and 3.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
People with few possessions and not much else to lose can afford to fight occupiers together. Throw in an absurd level of tribal/clan loyalties, ignorance and extremist faith, and you get Afghanistan. Wall the place off from air travel and trade, cut off SWIFT access.
It was REALLY smart in the 70s and 80s to ally with fundamentalist Muslims against secular Soviet-aligned states, wasn’t it (they were also “helpful” voices in getting population control efforts shuttered). Fuck Zbigniew Brzezinzki, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, JPII, Ratzinger and the like.
IbnBob
It’s been pretty obvious for an awful long time that the only way we could have continued fighting the Taliban would have been some form of colony or client/protectorate. Make Afghanistan the 51st state?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Barry McCaffrey, who I never remember showing any dovish or even reluctantly hawkish tendencies, has addressed Kinzinger’s fantasy: trump promised the Taliban we’d get out if they stopped shooting. Biden is acting on that deal before they start shooting again. What we’re seeing now is the Taliban had penetrated further in to the Afghan government and military than we knew, because we have never– as Cermet indicates above– really learned anything about this country and culture, even after twenty years.
craigie
But that’s completely logical, because as we know only Democrats and liberals have agency. Conservatives are the Zeligs of history.
bbleh
I wonder if 19 years from now, we’ll still be reading about how Democrats are to blame for stupid Republican COVID decisions.
Well, of course we will. Otherwise Republicans would throw a practiced hissy-fit, and the MSM would lose eyeballs and hence ad revenue, and publishers and owners would get disapproving looks from their fellow Republicans, and editors and reporters wouldn’t be invited to the good cocktail parties, and none of that is good for anyone’s career.
Chris
Sounds like the NYPD.
No wonder our neocons didn’t see anything wrong with them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know Twitter Nixon is really a playwright and I have no idea who Mr JT is, some twitter rando, but I think this is probably right.
Fair Economist
@Chris: I’ll bet the wingnuts who have screwed up our police by filling it with sociopaths and gun nuts were paid billions to do the same to the Afghani. And this is the result.
ChuckInAustin
I don’t think we ever had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. I thought the top number was 15-20k
Villago Delenda Est
I’d like to see Kinzingers DD 214, if you don’t mind. He like all talking heads should be on a pike when it comes to opining about military operations that they are utterly ignorant of.
Yutsano
*sigh*
All our arguments don’t matter. The Narrative has been set. Joe Biden lost Afghanistan. And The Narrative can never be wrong.
@ChuckInAustin: General Shinseki had as I recall said we would need something like 300,000 troops in Afghanistan to have any chance. But this whole exercise that lasted 20 years was nothing but a pretext so Dubya could find some justification to invade Iraq. There was never any serious effort by his administration to hold Afghanistan because for Dubya it was an afterthought.
Mike in NC
I’ve seen this movie before: American politician with little to no foreign policy experience (LBJ, Dubya, Trump) gets fed a lot of bad advice from poor quality hires (McNamara, Rice, Powell, Pompeo) while the military leadership paints a rosy picture of the situation on the ground that’s completely at odds with reality. It will happen again.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
More I think about it, wonder what the world would look like with a strong secular Syria, strong secular Egypt, strong secular Turkey, strong secular Iraq, a strong secular Iran and a strong secular Afghanistan? How much better would it be?
WaterGirl
OT, but something good – brendancalling made it over the Canadian border and is on his way to see his son.
zhena gogolia
@Yutsano:
I believe he said 400,000.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Great!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Afghan Hawks should man, up and put their money were their mouth is an organize a private special forces operation with their own money, take out the Taliban leadership and show us how the pros do it. Too much talk-talk out Conservatives and not enough Do-Do.
Kay
Magical thinking. Someone had to make an actual decision and no one else was willing to do that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano:
Sloane Ranger
Here in the UK there have been lots of interviews with injured veterans or the family members of service people who were killed there which basically boil down to I lost a limb, my son died, all for no meaning. We have betrayed the Afghans. Backbenchers are also slamming the Foreign and Defence Secretaries for not doing anything. One has even likened it to Suez.
The point is, once the US decided to pull out, we had to follow suit. We simply don’t have the men and resources to do otherwise and these people are fooling themselves and others by pretending we do. Likewise, the dead and injured did their duty. That is not meaningless. There were failures but these weren’t the fault of the ordinary squaddie/junior officer on the ground. Both the British and US government’s bear a lot of responsibility. They made a lot of very poor decisions, particularly in the early days, including invading the country to start with. But the lion’s share of the responsibility for today’s clusterfuck rests with the Afghan leadership at national and local level. We have both spent years training the Afghan military and millions of pounds and dollars in supplying them and that has all been wasted by corrupt and cynical Afghan politicians and tribal leaders playing one side off against the other.
It was a mistake to invade in the first place and anyone who knew the history of the country said so at the time but was shouted down, but it’s been 20 years now. It’s not our responsibility to police Afghanistan and oversee it’s development in perpetuity.
Sorry if this is a bit incoherent.
Leto
@Yutsano:
@zhena gogolia:
Gen Shinseki was specifically talking about Iraq, and clashing with Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz about the number needed for that shit show (500k) during Congressional testimony. But same thing really.
Anyway
The evil Saudi regime doesn’t get enough attention/ blame. They know how to play DC and the village and have bought up influence by funding think tanks and pundits. Looking at you, Tom Friedman …
Chris
@Fair Economist:
We’ve sent a bunch of police advisers to Central American nations to “advise” them with their gang problems, which have pretty much only gotten worse ever since. Because all we encourage them to do is “hit hard, jail lots of people, and just generally be a right-wing jaw-breaking asshole.” Doesn’t help that the anti-gang assistance is contingent on them passing and applying counterproductive “tough on crime” laws.
Ohio Mom
I think I’ve said this before, I thought we’d go into Afghanistan for a month or two, break a lot of stuff, declare victory and leave. Duh, don’t bet on my predictions.
In my hazy memory, I confuse the voices against going into Afghanistan and those against going into Iraq. A fair number of lefty-bloggers made terrible calls (and then later made apologies) but I do remember Atrios standing firm against each war.
Chris
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I mean, to be fair, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq’s regimes were all secular and they invited revolution because they were all corrupt as hell and repressive as hell. Same with Afghanistan with that mess of a socialist republic the Soviets invaded to prop up.
As with the “government” we’ve propped up in Afghanistan, there’s a pretty big credibility problem.
Steeplejack
Kay
None of them. Not then and not now and if they can’t who can? There’s no second set of experts to ask that we somehow forgot to ask over 20 years. That person or plan will not magically appear.
Robert Sneddon
@Sloane Ranger:
The stramash in Afghanistan is a NATO effort after the US invoked Clause 5 of the Treaty back in 2001. If the US has negotiated a withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan then all the NATO troops stationed there have to go. That includes the British, the French and the soldiers and staffs of whatever other NATO nations are still there carrying out “training” of the Afghan state forces (there has officially been no combat role for NATO in Afghanistan since, I think, 2005 when victory was declared by President GW Bush).
Geminid
@Mike in NC: I think Cheney and Rumsfeld had a lot more say in Bush’s decision making than than did his Secretary of State or National Security Advisor. Condoleeza Rice was chosen for her lack of clout.
zhena gogolia
@Leto:
As soon as I typed it, I thought, oh, that was Iraq.
Ohio Mom
@IbnBob: Make Afghanistan the 51st state, as if we don’t already have too many states full of violent, intolerant fundamentalists?
raven
@Mike in NC: fuck lbj
Citizen Alan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hell, I would be happy with the strong secular United States at this point. Instead, half the country consists of shiite baptists!
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s very difficult finding myself agreeing with Nixon even though I know it’s not him.
RSA
@ChuckInAustin:
This timeline has U.S. forces at 100,000 in 2010-11:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2016/07/06/a-timeline-of-u-s-troop-levels-in-afghanistan-since-2001/
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
The military-industrial complex and the American gunhumpers would never allow that.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rumsfeld thought that with precision weaponry American airpower was virtually omnipotent. A former Navy pilot himself, Rumsfeld had a pilot’s vision of warfare. American airpower did help win a quick victory against Iraq’s army, but Rumsfeld was ignoring the potential of an assymetrical insurgency.
Yutsano
@Leto: It really does show that after the initial invasion and the amazing coalition they somehow assembled (they got fucking SWEDEN involved!) it was never a serious consideration after that. Bin Laden hadn’t been caught. Taliban were blowing up our soldiers* and equipment right and left. There was no serious attempts to build up a stable government. I’m sorry for you and any of your fellow airmen who lost battles over there. But we needed to get out. I think Biden had this planned from the getgo.
*okay so I’m doing the thing I hate and lumping soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard under one term. But am sometimes lazy.
sab
@Kay: Those experts can’t get security clearance, because they don’t join Groupthink.
Kent
You are essentially asking what the world would be like without Islam. Which essentially has no tradition of secular government, separation of church and state, etc.
Chris
@Yutsano:
I thought back to the immediate post-9/11 era a couple months ago when Rumsfeld died, and all I could think was:
1) It’s absolutely staggering that this much international and domestic goodwill was pissed away so quickly and so badly. I really struggle to think of another time when we had so much going for us and yet still managed to fuck it up so badly on the foreign policy front.
2) It’s tragic, in a whole other way, that the aftermath of 9/11 is probably the last time in my lifetime that the United States as a whole had a broad bipartisan consensus to align behind a president on something… and the only thing we could think to spend that consensus on was torture, warrantless wiretapping, a criminal war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and another war that even if it could be justified and might have worked out in theory, was never going to in practice because the people in charge were too obsessed with the first three things.
Mary G
I can’t remember the name, but several people I follow on Twitter were showing a video of some Afghan general’s house that was almost as ostentatious as TFG’s T**** Tower gold-encrusted penthouse. They were also saying that ordinary Afghan soldiers had not been paid in months. The guy is probably in another country buying new ugly furniture with the money America was foolish enough to pay him.
Just an all-around shitshow that I admire the hell out of President Biden’s bravery in calling an end to knowing that every atrocity committed against Afghan women in the coming months, and there’s going to be a lot of them, will be laid at his feet by Republicans and even some Democrats. Alexander Vindman’s been doing the rounds for his book Here Right Matters that came out this week, and Biden did the right thing.
Mike in La
listening to NPR while doing errands this morning. Not a single interviewee, not a single employee of NPR could remember that bush/cheney pulled out of Afghanistan to go shock and awe (inflict terrorism) on Iraqis. Collective amnesia all around.
Butter Emails
@Mary G:
Nah. He almost certainly took bribes from the Taliban to surrender his command and switch sides. Probably still living it up in the house.
sab
@Ohio Mom: I knew we wouldn’t do that or just that. That is why I was so adamantly opposed.
I remember sitting in a bar with my new, non-drinking husband, seriously aghast when we invaded Iraq.
Nothing in the last twenty years has made me feel better. Troops were every bit as good as we expected. But why were we there? Why were ours dying. How would we make things better. How could we avoid making things worse.
Spanky
The one – sole! – sensible thing that Rumsfeld has ever done is to die when he did.
Suzanne
@Chris: I think Americans need to do a lot of soul-searching here. There were plenty of shitty people in power, but the American public overwhelmingly supported this. We tried really hard to make revenge into a virtue, and we pretended that was self-sacrifice and heroism and love of country. It wasn’t. It was bloodthirst and bigotry and — of course — pretending that patriarchy held the answer to every problem.
The right wing is now memory-holing their support for both of the wars, pretending that “elites” and neocons gave us a war we didn’t want. Fuck that. As someone who always opposed these adventures, I remember how many people supported them both.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris: The Bush admin fucked up their own military victories, twice, but not consolidating their successes because Neo-Cons don’t do nation building. They also ensured no political solution was possibly by labeling the Taliban as incurably EVIL.
scav
@Suzanne: Yup. There’s even been pious longings for the post 9-11 “unity” in these threads.
Robert Sneddon
@Yutsano: There was no ‘Coalition’ in Afghanistan, just NATO. Here’s a list of NATO nations (noting that a number of Eastern European countries joined NATO after 2001). Countries like Turkey fought in Afghanistan and lost troops there defending the US from a bunch of Saudi religious nutters hidden in caves.
The “Coalition of the Willing” fought in Iraq, not NATO. This Coalition failed to include a lot of NATO nations such as France who, all the time the US right-wing were going on about “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” and “Freedom Fries” had military forces present in Afghanistan to get shot at for no particularly coherent reason.
RSA
Mr, Kinzinger, if victory had been within our grasp, Taliban wouldn’t have been able to take over the country in a hot Kabul minute.
Spanky
Has anyone on the talking heads shows brought up John Kerry’s famous and now ancient question?
BTW, I found this on Youtube just a few days ago, and thought how timely and relevant his commentary still is.
trollhattan
Huh, a quote for every occasion.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Suzanne: The military-industrial complex and the American gunhumpers would never allow that.
I was working in aforesaid complex and those companies loathed it with a passion. There is a pile of money to be made in a cold war with the CCP, nothing to be made fighting with a bunch of yokel militias. What drove the Forever War was because the Neo-Cons want war for the sake of war. As the Rumsfeld quote shows, the Neo-Cons were more interested in Iraq because there was more shit to blow up, not that it solved the problem.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
TBF The Allen Wrench Brigade performed admirably, especially when it came to rebuilding.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Spanky: It’s easy, you forget your humanity, ask the stupid question, then yell and scream a lot when that last man deserts while fragging you on the way out.
Robert Sneddon
@Butter Emails:
I recall reading a press report about a warlord tribal leader in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation back in the 1980s. He fought against the Russians during the initial invasion, turned his coat and signed up with them as more and more Russian troops were deployed to try and ‘stabilise’ the region, joined the Mujahadeen to fight against the Russians when they settled in to stay, cut a deal with the Kabul puppet government while the Russians weren’t looking and later joined the Northern Alliance once the Russians started to make noises about leaving. He got paid every time.
His fellow Afghans though he was a genius.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I still say “neocons don’t do nation-building” is the biggest unlearned lesson of the last twenty years (much like all other lessons that would imply putting the blame primarily on the GOP).
Germany and Japan were rebuilt by New Dealers. Iraq and Afghanistan were rebuilt (if the term may be so abused) by Reaganites. And boy, does it show.
raven
Halfway around the world tonight
In a strange and foreign land
A soldier packs his memories
As he leaves Afghanistan
And back home, they don’t know too much
There’s just no way to tell
I guess you had to be there
For to know that war was hell
And there won’t be any victory parades
For those that’s coming back
They’ll fly them in at midnight
And unload the body sacks
And the living will be walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seems to care these days
When a soldier makes it home
They’ll say it wasn’t easy
Just another job, well done
As the government in Kabul falls
To the sounds of rebel guns
And the faces of the comrades
Being blown out of the sky
Leaves you bitter with the feeling
That they didn’t have to die
And there won’t be any victory parades
For those that’s coming back
They’ll fly them in at midnight
And unload the body sacks
And the living will be walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seems to care these days
When a soldier makes it home
Halfway around the world tonight
In a strange and foreign land
A soldier unpacks memories
That he saved from Vietnam
Back home they didn’t know too much
There was just no way to tell
I guess you had to be there
For to know that war was hell
And there wasn’t any big parades
For those that made it back
They flew them in at midnight
And unloaded all the sacks
And the living were left walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seemed to care back then
When a soldier made it home
The night is coming quickly
And the stars are on their way
As I stare into the evening
Looking for the words to say
That I saw the lonely soldier
Just a boy that’s far from home
And I saw that I was just like him
While upon this earth I roam
And there may not be any big parades
If I ever make it back
As I come home under cover
Through a world that can’t keep track
Of the heroes who have fallen
Let alone the ones who won’t
Which is why nobody seems to care
When a soldier makes it home
Chris
@RSA:
Yep.
There’s a pop narrative that the Tet Offensive that says it actually was the end of the war and all that was left was a mop-up operation, if only the liberal media hadn’t reported it as a failure and made us cut and run… which similarly disregards what the Tet Offensive showed us about the enemy’s capacities.
Suzanne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Plenty of the American GenPop wanted war for the sake of war, too.
Military worship makes me really upset the older I get. It is a way of getting us to value all the wrong things. Might over compassion, force over diplomacy. Here in all these neighborhoods and boroughs in PA, there are banners hung up on the commercial streets with photos of “local boys” who fought and some died in wars in the last 100 years. A block away, there is a small public square with an old military cannon and a plaque with names of soldiers from the neighborhood, under the words “LEST WE FORGET”.
But we’ve forgotten schoolteachers and janitors and mothers who died in childbirth and doctors and nurses and those who stock grocery store shelves and those who help disabled and sick and old people. Only soldiers are worth remembering, apparently. Americans love wars.
Jay C
@RSA:
This. I’ve seen a lot of online commentary (some of it actually cogent, surprisingly, for online commentary) arguing the point that the incredibly swift collapse of “the Afghan Government” is probably evidence that some sort of “fix” has been in, probably for a while: that numerous foreign and Afghan players have been assuming that the Taliban were going to win and take over once major foreign forces weren’t there to respond with advanced weaponry. That it is happening NOW has been suspected to be an opportunistic move to embarrass the Biden Administration: now that their Useful Idiot (Trump) isn’t around….
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
And you are assuming that Islam and being progressive don’t really mix. I know this to be false.
Sloane Ranger
@Robert Sneddon: I’m sure you’ve listened to or watched the news recently and you know that’s not what our politicians are saying.
Madeleine
@WaterGirl: Great news!! Thanks!
MazeDancer
Until today, if I thought about Afghanistan, and I rarely did, it was the place is completely corrupt, we made some small good happen for women and girls, and all war is wrong.
Today, there is part of me willing to carpet bomb the country into non-existence because the women and girls are all better off dead.
But all war is wrong.
This thread from some who served two tours in Afghanistan helps me understand why Mr. Biden was willing to take any blame just to get us out of there.
Yutsano
Feh. I can’t even watch YouTube right now. I’m gonna immerse myself in some Ducktales and waffles.
@Amir Khalid: The histpry of Islam in Afghanistan was amazingly rich and vibrant, based on Sufi teachings. Then the Soviets invaded and the Saudis took it upon themselves to bring Wahhabi foreign teachings. Afghanistan might never recover from this.
I know you know this. It’s more for the crowd.
nasruddin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m afraid this is the truth, but I hope for some detailed analysis and self reflection. Another piece, I am guessing, is that the opportunity to do something constructive was there, but we blew it almost from the start. We should’ve negotiated with the defeated Taliban early on & made sure the new government had them on the inside. Would that have worked out? Dunno.
Chris
@Suzanne:
Yeah. I’ve come to loathe the soldier-worship for exactly this reason. “Support our troops” in practice always means “fuck everybody else,” and it’s fed the militarization of society in that soldiers or those who claim to speak for them feel entitled to butt into increasingly every conversation in national politics, wave the flag, and expect that to be the final word. Remember when the Fight For Fifteen really took off and one of the hot takes was “waaaah but isn’t it deeply unfair to THE TROOPS!!! that some burger-flipper at Wendy’s might make more money than them?” You’re literally not allowed to do anything for anybody, ever, because THE TROOPS!!! have it worse and so it’d be disrespectful to them.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
great news!
catclub
@ChuckInAustin:
/p>
I think Obama boosted it up to about 165k troops. Biden was not a fan of that, if i remember incorrectly.
Major Major Major Major
I want to know who the brain geniuses are who told Biden the Afghan military would actually want to slow the Taliban’s advance. Many aspects of the current fiasco stem from this. Much of the badness was inevitable but not the logistical failures.
smith
@Chris: The fact that they’re paid so poorly suggests that we don’t really honor them at all. We just like to make things go boom.
Major Major Major Major
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Didn’t we have one in the 80s?
nasruddin
@Mike in NC: The thing about experience, especially experience in cultures not your own, is that experience in one area is not always transferable to another.
I doubt experience in Iraq has all that much carryover to Afghanistan. Of course it is possible to screw up both things equally badly because one is buck ignorant about both and one’s judgement is completely bad on every account in the first place.
catclub
@Robert Sneddon:
There was a coalition of the Saudis and the Pakistani security services funding the Taliban for the entire time, to make sure any other Afghan government failed.
Raoul Paste
@catclub: The funding sources for the Taliban don’t get enough media attention
Suzanne
@smith:
Eh. They don’t deserve more honor or support than any other person. I agree that they need to be paid more, because I think everybody needs to be paid more. But what they do is not more important for society than anyone else.
The differential in “honor” or “support” for the troops is a way of enforcing toxic patriarchy in American society. As opposed to “feminine” values like listening, consensus-building, and trying to find mutual understanding.
cain
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That can only happen if there are strong economies in those countries. But all of them have inherent corrupt politics that channels money and influence to the very few.
Young men especially in poor economic state tend to embrace religion and it’s more poorer aspects of it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
What do you all think of this person’s take: “We needed to leave, but not like this”?
I hope that Biden is planning on doing those air strikes on military equipment left behind
cain
I see what you did there.
Just Chuck
@Chris:
Including, ultimately, the troops.
Just Chuck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The Taliban have a lot of fighter pilots and mechanics and spare parts, eh? They’ll probably sell most of it. It’s obvious the poster was typing that with one hand.
Jay C
@Amir Khalid:
Can you give us some examples, then, Amir? Or rather, remind us of what exceptions there are to the assumption?
No snark intended at all: it’s just that it seems (and yes, this is coming from an American whose main sources of information are mainly – not exclusively – American, so some bias is unavoidable), that in countries (and sub-countries/regions) where “Islam” is recognized as the “official” religion, most of what Westerners would think of as “progressive” values are, to say the least, frowned on: if not actively suppressed.
Social values, I mean, mainly: Islam seems to be OK accepting outside ideas in the economic sphere, and even some “progressive” political concepts (like limited democracy): but in terms of social structures and strictures, it’s hard not to conflate “Muslim society”/”Muslim state” with “authoritarian misogynistic theocracy” .
I’m sure there ARE exceptions: but not (apparently) well-known…
Dave
Anecdotal but I believe very revealing.
I was in Afghanistan as part of the “Surge” in 2011-2012. A reserve Civil Affairs bloke assigned to what was believed to be a quiet district that had been occupied by the Polish who were slated to have the 82nd replace them.
The 82nd, the State guys, etc all believed it really was a quiet district; and it was because what we will call the Taliban already owned it.
I’m about 95% confident that the Polish there had a live and let live agreement with the opportunity to earn some cash on the side. This was never a 100% confirmed and never would be (no way the politics of that would play) but let’s say things got squirrelly when my team was there.
82nd arrives believing the district is secure but they miss it’s quiet because there has been no need for it not to be. So the 82nd acts which causes the Taliban to act etc etc. The caveat being that it was incredibly clear, at least to me, that they were fairly carefully calibrating their actions to avoid decisive blowback.
We couldn’t leave the gates without a patrol turning into an ongoing low to mid-level scrum it was also clear they weren’t trying their hardest and so in the six months they were on the ground our COP suffered about 10% WIA/KIA.
In a district that I’m certain for years had nothing but green or yellow slides. That until they went kicking would have been claimed as pacified.
Sad reality is I suspect I was more aware of what the situation than 95% of people and it was blatantly clear I was paddling in the kiddie pool with my floaties on.
All these people pretending there was a win state there when the operational picture was so delusional are merely protecting that illusion.
Only thing that has surprised me is I thought it would take a few more months but here we are.
germy
Robert Sneddon
@Raoul Paste:
The NATO effort in Afghanistan flooded the country with wealth and the Taliban benefited from this in bribes and coercion and protection and other ways. Members of the Taliban ended up working for the invaders, selling them food and building materials and driving trucks and even providing security cover in some convoy situations to protect them against bandits near the border with Pakistan.
Never forget, the Taliban are almost all native Afghans. They probably all voted in the ‘democratic’ elections for the President of Some Parts of Kabul over the years.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Just Chuck:
Now that I think about it, yeah, where are they going to get spare parts and fuel for these machines?
Just Chuck
@Jay C: The modern histories of Egypt and Turkey were, up until recently, that of successful secular states. Iraq too, tho it was hardly a free society. For a current example, how about Indonesia? 270 million people and 85% Muslim.
germy
Engel is the Chief NBC Adrenaline Junkie. Why didn’t he help them get their voices heard?
Dave
@Dave: And needless to say corruption was everywhere and not the tolerable well this guy is skimming a bit but overall it’s getting done just such blatant corruption that I genuinely believe that ISAF Main was unwilling to process it because of what it revealed about the reality of the situation.
smith
@Suzanne: I agree with you, just wanted to point out that the “honor” and “support” of actual troops are fake.
Dave
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): One thing I have almost no concerns about is the Taliban scraping together any form of effective Air Force.
Notice how the army, police, government crumbled? The air force would be no different hell it would present a nice juicy target to win a PR round.
Just Chuck
@Just Chuck: They’ll have some of the pilots and mechanics, yes. Not saying they’d be starting from absolute scratch, but I don’t think they can sustain it. Takes a lot of fuel and parts just to train.
Er, that was @Goku, but somehow I managed to start talking to myself…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Chris: yes. And they conveniently miss the fact that if minimum wage was raise may the poor kids who join the military because they see it as the only option, might be able to do something else. Many of the people I served with were from poor neighborhoods in New Orleans, LA, small dying Midwest towns, Rust belt cities and the reservations.
germy
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
Excellent point. Another thing that’s always bothered me about the military worship is the, “they fought for our freedoms” which hasn’t been true since WW2.
germy
Almost Retired
At the very least, I hope the US is extraordinarily generous with the green cards and visas and such for our allies and Afghan activitists, etc. I don’t know where you draw the line as to who gets out. But I hope that enough are rescued that more “Little Kabul” neighborhoods start popping up in major US Cities (Fremont, CA has a significant one).
greenergood
Way late to the thread – 60 per cent of the students at the University of Herat were women. They have now been barred from entering the university, and sent ‘home’ to ‘wait’.
Suzanne
@smith: Well, yeah. But rhetorical support is still something.
I know I repeatedly bring up Joan Williams’ book “White Working Class”, but she points out a lot of important stuff. One of the things she points out is that lots of working-class men find “women’s work” to be emasculating and it’s only the more stereotypically “manly” work that they want, like law enforcement, construction, or military service.
So, instead of giving respect or equal pay to “women’s work”…. we go get embroiled in dumbshit wars. And we pretend that it’s honorable and self-sacrificing. It isn’t. It’s a job.
raven
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Be careful what you wish for.
mrmoshpotato
Oh, you won’t have to wait 19 years.
Yutsano
@Suzanne: Honestly, you would think that getting more of these yokels into a profession like nursing would be easy. Male nurses are around a lot of females, which would increase their chances of finding a spouse. But nope. That’s “women’s work” and they can’t handle that.
To be fair, that’s not the culture I grew up around. Instead, we would have the occasional dumb Marine or sailor* for Thanksgiving but after that my interactions with them would be limited. A lot of these idiots also find they hate military life (they’ve never really had discipline in their lives) and wash out after four years and go back home where they might get in with the sheriff if they’re lucky. They basically waste the only possible career they possibly could have for nothing.
*I was a really smart kid by the age of eight. I could talk around our dinner guests and it annoyed my dad.
jimmiraybob
The date sounds familiar. Oh yeah, Trump’s Doha Agreement with the Taliban, the deal that lit the fuse for today’s implosion. Of course it’s now Uncle Joe’s fault for not terminating the agreement and sending in a half million combat troops to deal with the Taliban who have been preparing for over a year and a half to collect on their side of the bargain (/gallows sarcasm). Or am I getting something wrong.
Poe Larity
10/11/2000 debate:
Clearly, President Gore screwed up.
Mary G
We reap what we sow:
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
I remember when Walter Cronkite died (2009) wingnuts (aplenty, even then) cursed him for losing Vietnam for us.
zhena gogolia
Dave
@zhena gogolia: If that man had one talent it’s knowing how to craft a bad deal that screws everyone over worse than it does him.
Chris
@Yutsano:
I’ve had a theory for a while that one of our problems with police departments is that they’re littered with people who loved the idea of being in the military, but couldn’t hack it in the real one…
… so the police is ideal for them. They get to play with most of the same toys, without any of the discipline that made the Army such a drag, and with all the comforts that come with it being a 9-5 job close to home.
It’s practically like being a kid playing soldier in your back yard again. Only you get paid for it, and when you get a little too enthusiastic with your Super Soaker and douse the neighbors by accident, there’s no Mom and Dad to ground you for a week.
Jay C
@trollhattan:
Yeah, I recall following a link to an archive about 15 years ago of a piece filed by then(WWII)-war-correspondent Walter Cronkite: a harrowing account of accompanying glider-borne troops for Operation Market Garden (as typical, the glider crashed on landing, Cronkite and the soldiers barely escaped with their lives). It had precisely one comment on it: a bitter screed by some asshole calling Cronkite a “traitor” who “lost the Vietnam War” for us. Old BS dies hard…
Cermet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): First off, mass murder of civilians – and that is what would also occur – is a war crime; not that that stops us. Next, useless killing of enemy soldiers just makes a more bitter winner. Nothing now would change the outcome except, maybe nukes. That BS aside, the Taliban won and its best to step aside, allow all the deals to occur enabling less bloodshed and then do the smart thing: cut & run
Except for guns and a few light weapons like mortars, the Taliban gain nothing – Jets, helicopters, even most military versions of trucks/Humvee’s and the like require massive infrastructure and parts that don’t exist there.
Mary G
Thread (can be hard to read) of reports from Afghani women on the ground in Kabul:
The first one is striking; it’s one of a guy painting over advertisements featuring women.
Chris
@Jay C:
Blaming Walter Cronkite has been the military’s way to avoid responsibility for fucking up Vietnam for half a century. And probably will be for half a century to come.
Cermet
@Jay C: Indonesia is a rather nice country and a real democracy. See someone already pointed that out.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Yutsano: I honestly don’t think it matters what “the narrative” on the end of this war is. I have plenty of Fox news brainwashed dopes on my Facebook feed. They jump on every stupid meme that parrots whatever controversy of the day the.conservative propaganda complex is pushing. It has been complete silence on Afghanistan.
The only people who care about whose to blame for how we got out and that the place instantly fell apart are dipshit foreign policy analysts in green rooms in DC and NYC, and there aren’t enough of them to sway an election. I doubt this moves the needle at all, ever on any US election anywhere. People who know what is what know there was no good time or way to get out so why not now. The rest aren’t swaying public opinion by even micro meter.
zhena gogolia
@Dave:
Yep.
BigJimSlade
@Chris: Not really arguing the New Dealers vs neocons point, but the New Dealers got to rebuild 2 countries with a super-strong, even cult-like, national identity (even if this was recent for Germany). Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty much the opposite. I’m not sure New Dealers could’ve overcome that. It would’ve been a better effort, though.
Soprano2
@Chris: My husband can tell you about the Tet Offensive from a first person point of view. He would say both that it was wrongly reported in the U.S. and that it showed what the N. Vietnamese could do. It certainly was not the end of the war
He worked with the South Vietnamese teaching tactics and shooting. He says we made all the same mistakes in Afghanistan that we did there, and that if we refuse to understand the people in a country we’re doomed to failure.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne:
I don’t think anything I have ever said aloud has pissed off people who claim to be Christian as much as when I asked idly what Jesus would have done had he been president on 911. Because not one American Christian in 10,000 would have ever considered turning the other cheek and loving those who hate you as viable responses.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cermet:
Where did that tweeter say anything about mass murdering civilians?
Matt McIrvin
@Sloane Ranger: War is possibly the most predictable venue for the sunk-cost fallacy.
sdhays
I really don’t understand how anyone, ANYONE, can look at what’s happening now in Afghanistan and not feel totally betrayed by just about the entirety of the US foreign policy establishment, both inside and outside the government. And that Biden was totally right back in 2009 when he pushed the Obama Administration to get out. Just weeks ago, I actually believed that the the Afghan government would be tottering for at least a year or two while the Afghan military was forced to cede more and more ground. But instead, within WEEKS of the final American withdrawal, the “President of Afghanistan” is fleeing the country and Kabul is essentially the Taliban’s.
As others have said, we (poorly) spent 20 years and $1 TRILLION in Afghanistan, and if after all of that, it fell this quickly, anyone suggesting that this is Biden’s fault is not a serious person. We really should have been out of there years and years ago. Every fucking “Serious Person” who has kept pushing for continued occupation of Afghanistan for the past 15 years should be forced to leave public policy or public commentary and take up knitting (no offense to knitters – hand knitted stuff is awesome!) or something similar that keeps them quiet and limits the damage they can do.
Mike in NC
Maybe some clever person translated “The Art of the Deal” into Pashtun and they knew what they were reading was bullshit.
Pappenheimer
@Amir Khalid: Many in the West assume there are no progressive Moslems, or that they are a tiny minority who can’t
@Amir Khalid: A lot of Americans have never heard of any progressive Moslems. Of course, I have also been told that Obama was both a Muslim and a Communist, and I have to admit I’ve never met that combination.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Citizen Alan:
What did they say in response, if I may ask?
raven
@Soprano2: I’m sure he knows the shock troops in Tet were largely VC and not NVA.
Chris
@BigJimSlade:
Put it like this: when the CPA ended up in charge of Iraq, the first thing they did was to disband the military; de facto disband the civil service through de-Baathification; and destroy the government’s revenue stream by turning it into a Fair Tax playground. In other words, they Drowned The Government In The Bathtub. And they didn’t even try to do anything to fill the vacuum with their own people, because the Bushies had expressly told them not to bother planning for the aftermath because we wouldn’t be there that long, and had sent way less troops into Iraq than were needed to keep the country under any kind of occupation.
Compare and contrast Germany and Japan, where the postwar occupation was very aware of the need to 1) not completely destroy the state, and 2) commit a shit ton of men and resources to a long-term occupation. (Which, of course, they’d started planning for all the way back in 1942, because they weren’t idiots).
So, yeah. It might or might not have worked in the end. It certainly would have been a better effort.
Or to put it another way, if you asked the WW2 era leadership to handle an invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, they might very well have failed. But if you asked the Dubya era leadership to handle Germany and Japan, they would have fucked it up horribly from end to end.
waratah
I thought my grandfather said it was the Turks that would silently cross over during the night to the winning side.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
Picking up trash, the more and the nastier in their shoulder bag gets them a bonus. So that would get them $8.75/hr. A one dollar bonus over the shithead minimum wage. The rest of the country should get $15/hr, just in case you were wondering. For the first time in their lives they would be doing something useful and getting paid what they are worth.
Cermet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Sending in a c-130 gun ship will kill many civilians as it rains death upon military units – road routes are used by civilians and taliban units will bunch up at said villages. Massive attacks as indicated by the poster’s boxed quotes would have killed many civilians.
Soprano2
@Mary G: That thread confirms what I’ve been thinking the past few days, that many of the men in most of Afghanistan aren’t that sad to see the Taliban take over. They aren’t trying that hard to stop it.
Soprano2
@raven: I’m sure you’re right, I’m not sure of that stuff. They sound like a lot of the same people to me.
sdhays
@Ruckus: Good idea. They can explain to the dog shit which country should be invaded next and how many other people’s lives they’re “willing” sacrifice for that effort.
Another Scott
@Dave: Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cermet:
Oh. I didn’t realize that. Well then I agree, that sounds horrible and is a terrible idea
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
They have been in a war zone for a very long time. We were there for a very long time and accomplished what?
I’d bet that a lot of people that had been in that situation, anywhere, would like stability and living over perfect or even good government. Do they like the Taliban? I’d bet some yes, many no. But living in a war zone can not be a lot of fun. Many of the citizens have not much to lose past their lives. We live in a country that is very wealthy compared to theirs, even people low on the totem pole in the US often are better off than a lot of other countries citizens when there is a war on in their country. And we can and need to do a lot better for us before we tell and try to force the rest of the world how they need to live. And yes the Taliban is horrible and women will have zero agency, which is very, very wrong. I’d ask, how much better did we make their country in 20 yrs?
raven
@Soprano2: I assume he was MACV?
Another Scott
@MazeDancer: Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
I don’t even want them trying to take over dog shit. They obviously aren’t worthy.
Geminid
@Pappenheimer: It’s true that a lot of Americans have not heard of progressive Muslims. But we are very incurious about foreign affairs and people. The current crisis illustrates this in a way. Afghanistan has been a slow motion failure for years now, but most Americans paid little or no attention until the events of the past week. This time next month, Afghanistan will only be occasionally noticed, even if the bloodshed continues.
Patricia Kayden
Thanks Trump.
nasruddin
@sdhays:
I am thinking (absent any evidence of course) that the fix was in on this on the Afghani side for some time (note that the Pres Ghani & some other officials vanished safely & rapidly). On the other hand Blinken looked like a deer in the headlights this morning on Tapper – Mr Biden &al had NO IDEA Afghanistan was going to roll up like a Persian carpet. Put that together – where was the “intelligence” for the American operation coming from? The US was puffing on the hash pipe & getting what it wanted to hear from its friends. I suspect some of those “translators” clamoring for visas are among them. They were just doing their job as they saw it but we have a real serious intelligence problem that is probably ubiquitous.
If Mr Biden’s team did know this was going down this way they are putting on a convincing naivete act. Let’s hope there’s been some negotiating behind the scenes so there’s no further developments.
Geminid
@Mike in NC: The Taliban did not need a team of psycologists to tell them that trump cared about no one but trump. They just told him what he wanted to hear and then went about their business.
But I am struck by the way trump focused on getting us out of Afghanistan in a way he focused on little else besides his reelection. It could be trump was just building his isolationist brand. But I sometimes wonder if trump was fulfilling an obligation to his master Putin.
sab
@Geminid: Or the Saudis.
Geminid
@sab: Well, the Russians and the Saudis talk to each other plenty, and I bet they are more candid with each other than they are with the U.S.
Brachiator
@Cermet:
We need to leave, but there will be no deals enabling less bloodshed.
Interesting point. I suppose this is true. Did the Afghan army have any jets or helicopters, or was this maintained and operated by the US and Brits, etc?
I suppose that the Taliban will use some other equipment until it breaks down.
Geminid
@Brachiator: The Afghan government had helicopters, and a small fleet of light fighter bombers. The Taliban will at least be able to get parts for some of their helicopters, Russian models designed for high altitude flying.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: Oh man!!
Doug is a master.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dan B
@Yutsano: Our relationship with the Saudi’s is toxic. They plan to build a multi billion dollar linear city that will have to go underground to survive the heat apocalypse. They stick to their tribal era Islam and their oil. Will they be able to desalinate enough water and grow food indoors?
Sufism is lovely. War destroys the beautiful.
IbnBob
@Ohio Mom:
kinda my point
eddie blake
“when you’re wounded and left on afghanistan’s plains,
and the women come out to cut up what remains,
jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
an’ go to your gawd like a soldier.”
Another Scott
@Geminid: It sounds like there’s not going to be any more fighting, at least that’s the spin.
AlJazeera:
True? Who knows.
I’m sure most of the population is tired of 40+ years of war.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
Anyone remember how many combat deaths we had in Germany in February of 1965?
Just writing the statement should have been a good indication that we were making no progress in Afghanistan.
dilbert dogbert
The invaders were not ejected. They came like the Spanish seeking the Golden Cities. Finding none they left.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Probably not.
They may be feeling apprehensive. Cessation of hostilities is not the same thing as peace.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Well, I did not say there would be more fighting. But fighting or no, the Taliban are going to keep those helicopters flying if they can. The Taliban could never win control of the entire country last time they were in power. They seem to be in a good position to achieve it this time around, but they will not take peace for granted.
Robert Sneddon
@Jinchi:
Actually there were a number of combat deaths in Afghanistan earlier this year, attacks and suicide bombings but the casualties were limited to Afghan Army and police and no white people were harmed so those deaths don’t count. See also “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Laura Too
@raven: (66) Thanks. That song always distills the wars in a way that nothing else does.
Geminid
@Brachiator: Taliban leadership may mean it about the amnesty. Combat commanders may take a different view of things. Hopefully, they will go along and not settle scores.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
It would be a hopeful gesture.
We will see what happens.
The Moar You Know
@Almost Retired: At this point, I can say pretty confidently that nobody’s getting out. Our forces aren’t there yet and Kabul’s going to fall by Wednesday at the latest. This “30-90” days thing we’ve been hearing is bullshit. A lot of Americans are going to die.
Butter Emails
@The Moar You Know:
I doubt this will occur as it would almost certainly trigger a new full scale invasion.
nasruddin
@Geminid: I remind you all that Afghanistan has some history of overrunning its neighbors in recent times. Ethnic ties cross every one of its borders.
joel hanes
@sdhays:
We really should have been out of there years and years ago.
We should have left the month after they let Bin Laden get away at Tora Bora.
nasruddin
@Brachiator:
Maybe what we are hearing as “amnesty” is part of the fix that was in that led to the fall of the Afghan client state. We just don’t have any understanding of shifting, transactional alliances that is common in Afghanistan. You’d have to go back to the days of feudalism in Europe for that.
In other words the amnesty deals happened a while ago. The map sure suggests something….
Mary G
Another Scott
@The Moar You Know: Maybe not.
DW.com (last updated at 21:44 GMT, about 2 hours ago):
So far, the Taliban seems to have no interest in preventing foreigners, etc., from leaving.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
(via CharlesPPierce)
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
As of about 27 minutes ago:
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@nasruddin: So what neighbors do you think are vulnerable to a Taliban attack?
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
We have all been here before.
Reminds me of the final airlifts out of South Vietnam.
Geminid
@nasruddin: And what would the Taliban stand to gain?
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
The Taliban want the Americans out as soon as possible. Killing Americans would complicate and delay things.
Americans are safe. The Afghan people, not so much.
Soprano2
@raven: I don’t know. He was Army, I think he was a 1st or 2nd lieutenant when he was there. He went to OCS, but didn’t have a degree. He was a captain when he was RIF’d in 1972, stationed at Ft. Wood. He wanted to make the Army a career but wasn’t willing to go back to being an enlisted man.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
But all over the country, how many local scores will be settled?
topclimber
@Brachiator: And yet, heartbreaking as those pictures were, I don’t think Vietnam saw wholesale slaughter of the losers and today is a potential ally against China.
Too bad the neocons of the day didn’t understand that we were fighting against folks who wanted to run their own country.
Perhaps via diplomatic vs. military engagement with the Afghanis, we might see a similar result.
nasruddin
@Geminid: All of them, except Iran, are vulnerable. I wonder how stable Pakistan really is. That would be the prize. There’s a lot of former or disputed Afghan territory in Pakistan.
Then there’s nearby Kashmir. That’s a box of dynamite.
Once US & NATO are out of their patch, then we will see what their program is, & maybe the cost of all the alliances with old rivals they have made. The last time it was Al Qaeda. That didn’t work so well. Maybe they will turn inward & be content to burn western books and beat women. Doubt it.
Geminid
@nasruddin: You’re right, Kashmir would be a possible area for Taliban meddling. By 2020, the Northern Alliance held the only part of Afghanistan unconquered by the Taliban, and this land bordered on. India may well have been their suppliers. Since Pakistan’s ISI was the Taliban’s sponsor, the Pakistanis could require the Taliban to lend a hand in their campaign to undermine India’s rule in Kashmir.
Would the Taliban comply? Maybe to some extent. They could always let ISI elements in northern Afghanistan work their mischief. But it seems to me the Taliban know they have their hands full reuniting and rebuilding a nation of 40 million fractious people. Job one is probably establishing firm control over their own forces. They have been united by a common enemy for 20 years. Now divisions may arise as political leaders return from exile and deal with commanders who never left. The ISI could meddle here. But as you point out, meddling in Afghanistan could blow back on Pakistan, itself not so stable a country.
nasruddin
@Geminid:
I’m not sure we know who’s really in the driver’s seat. People keep talking about the ISI … if the ISI is truly still running the Taliban, then that is one of the most successful intelligence operations in history & that ISI faction should be in charge by weight of its prestige and capability.
On the other hand, maybe ISI is more like part of Taliban’s Pakistan department. Maybe Pakistan is going to go thru some (more) things. Pakistan nukes … what a prize that would be.
Rebuilding? Oh well they are certainly very capable of learning and adapting but this hasn’t been part of their skill set during their history. Uniting against a common enemy and for religion, tho, that works. Why won’t they just keep doing what succeeds?
I just had this thought: the Bay of Pigs is not such a big deal really, except that it sets you up for the Cuban missile crisis.