Americans seem to have once again suddenly discovered that there is a place called Afghanistan. This only happens when something either really bad happens to Americans in the US because of something related to Afghanistan or because something really bad happens to Americans in Afghanistan. The rest of the time it doesn’t exist. It is one in a long list of Schroedinger’s states and societies that only exist if Americans pay attention to it. Which itself really only exists if America’s news media pays attention to it in such as way as to make it impossible to ignore. And right now America’s news media finally have a story they can use to show that President Biden is just like every other president and politician, so they’re going to run with it. Major’s nipping didn’t catch on. Neither did going less than 90 minutes to his long time US Secret Service fortified home in Delaware so he could see his grandkids. Neither did the attempt to make Republican representatives, senators, governors, and state legislators efforts pushing anti-COVID response garbage – from anti-masking to anti-vaccination – somehow Biden’s failing. But now they’ve got Afghanistan and they’re going to make as much hay with it as they possibly can.
Unfortunately the only parts of their jobs they tend to be good at is the access journalism and narrative framing part. I cannot tell you how many versions of “Biden saw Obama get rolled by the generals in 2009 and decided he wouldn’t let that happen to him” framing as to why Biden made the decisions he made that is allowing what is happening is happen right now. This is a lie. How do I know, because I know exactly what the Army Force Generation Cycle (AFORGEN) for deployments to Afghanistan was as of the end of January 2009. How do I know this? I know this because at the end of January 2009 I was sitting in the lobby of the Omni Hotel in Newport News on a break from the organizational planning team (OPT) I was the senior subject matter expert on and I received a call from the Chief of Staff of the US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) where I was employed and whose OPT to fix the program’s predeployment training was meeting in one of the conference rooms at the Omni because they were doing repairs to the meeting spaces at the program offices down the street. The Chief of Staff told me she’d just been contacted by the G5 – that’s the officer in charge of planning – from the 101st Airborne Division. He had contacted her because they wanted HTS to send one of the social scientists to do several predeployment prep courses for them at their Commanders’ Conference in July 2009. She pushed it to me as, at that time, I was the go to for handling these types of requests. What is the Commanders’ Conference? It is the predeployment preparation for the division command group (Commanding General, Deputy Commanding General, Command Sergeant Major, Division staff), each brigade combat team commander, deputy commander, executive officer, and command sergeant major, and each battalion commander, executive officer, and command sergeant major, and then an assortment of the officers and senior enlisted from the division, the brigades, and the battalions drawn from the intel and operations/planning sections (the 2 and 3 shops). Everything the 101st leadership formally received as predeployment prep on the politics, culture, society, religion, economy/economics, kinship groups and dynamics, which is how the DOD broadly defines culture, as well as extremism and counter-extremism and how to use open source information, what today is generally called open source intelligence (OSINT) about all of these categories, they got from my briefings in July 2009.
Why is this important? Because I was informed in January 2009 that the 101st Airborne was going to Afghanistan, minus one brigade that was going to Iraq. That’s about 10,000 personnel. Between January and July 2009 the generals requested a surge of Forces into Afghanistan similar to the 2006 surge in Iraq. President Obama even went to West Point to announce it in an address to the Corps of Cadets regarding how his nat-sec team was revising the US strategy in Afghanistan. When he announced the 30,000 number everyone in the news media immediately began opining about how he’d given the generals everything they wanted, how this is what happens with a neophyte president. That was then and is now a lie. What President Obama actually approved was 20,000 additional personnel because the 101st had already been set to go for several months. President Obama didn’t get rolled by the generals, he actually rolled them.
If the news media and all the commenters and talking heads and think tank “experts’ – everyone needs to remember O’Hanlon’s actual specialty is budget analysis, not low intensity warfare, the Middle East, and/or Central Asia – cannot get these simple facts right, which were not a state secret as everyone in the communities around FT Campbell knew for months that the 101st was going – the schools, the stores, the various community organizations, one of which came and made a presentation at that conference in July 2009 about the services available to assist the spouses and families of the Soldiers who would be deploying – then what else are they getting wrong?
One of the things they’re getting wrong is making this all about the US. Even the foreign correspondents like Richard Engel do this. To be really honest and really fair, almost everything we’ve done in Afghanistan since the initial months of the operation to scour the country for bin Laden and reduce the operational capabilities of al Qaeda and the Taliban has actually not been about the US. It has been about Afghanistan. Unfortunately this has all to often occurred through the prism of the US. Yes, it is certainly true that it is in the US’s best interests if there is a stable, small “d” democratic Afghanistan that exists and functions within the socio-cultural context of how all the various ethnic elements in Afghanistan might understand democracy. But that only works if the most senior host country nationals the US is partnering with actually care about all of that.
You want a good understanding of what is happening right now in Afghanistan and why – one you aren’t going to get from Richard Engel or Andrea Mitchell or anyone on CNN, let alone Fox – well here’s one from the guy who was the governor of Afghanistan’s Central Bank until yesterday. I’m going to copy and paste the thread:
1/The collapse of the Government in Afghanistan this past week was so swift and complete – it was disorienting and difficult to comprehend. This is how the events seemed to proceed from my perspective as Central Bank Governor.
2/Although much of the rural areas fell to the Taliban over the past few months, the first provincial capital to fall was just 1 week and two days ago! On Friday August 6th, Ziranj fell. Over the next 6 days, a number of other provinces fell – particularly in the north.
3/There were multiple rumors that directions to not fight were somehow coming from above. This has been repeated by Atta Noor and Ismael Khan. Seems difficult to believe, but there remains a suspicion as to why ANSF left posts so quickly. There is something left unexplained
Ahmady is referring to these two tweets from Ata Ahmad Noor, the former governor of Balkh province:
My dear countrymen! Despite our firm resistance, sadly, all the government & the #ANDSF equipments were handed over to the #Taliban as a result of a big organised & cowardly plot. They had orchestrated the plot to trap Marshal Dostum and myself too, but they didn’t succeed. 1/2
Marshal Dostum, myself, Balkh Govenor, Balkh MPs, Head of Balkh Provincial Council and few other officials are in a safe place now. I have a lot of untold stories that I will share in due course. Thanking all who proudly resisted to defend their land. Our path won’t end here.
Back to Ahmady’s thread:
4/Currency volatility and other indicators had worsened, but DAB were able to stabilize the macroeconomic environment relatively well during the last week – given the deteriorating security environment. Then came last Thursday
5/I attended my normal meetings. Ghazni fell in the morning. I left work, and by the time I went home – Herat, Kandahar, and Baghdis also fell. Helmand was also under serious attack
6/Friday – we received a call that given the deteriorating environment, we wouldn’t get any more dollar shipments. People spread rumors that I had fled on Friday. On Saturday, DAB had to supply less currency to the markets on Saturday, which further increased panic.
7/Currency spiked from a stable 81 to almost 100 then back to 86. I held meetings on Saturday to reassure banks and money exchangers to calm them down. I can’t believe that was one day before Kabul fell
8/On Saturday night, my family called to say that most government had already left. I was dumbfounded. A security assessment accurately forecast Taliban arrival to Kabul within 36 hours and its fall within 56 hours I got worried & purchased tickets for Monday as a precaution
9/On Sunday I began work. Reports throughout morning were increasingly worrisome. I left the bank and left deputies in charge. Felt terrible about leaving staff. But arrived at airport & saw that Mohaqeq, Rahmani, Massoud, etc were already there! Head of parliament seems content
10/Saw VP Danish leaving – reportedly for Qatar. By then it was rumored that VP Saleh had left. Ministers + others were waiting for a Fly Dubai & Emirates flights. Both were cancelled I secured a Kam Air flight Sunday 7pm. Then the floor fell: the President had already left
11/I knew right then my flight would be cancelled and there would be chaos. As expected employees & military left posts. Everyone ran through gates to on Kam Air flight. 300+ passengers boarded for a 100-seat plane. The plane had no fuel or pilot. We all hoped it would depart
12/However, I decided to disembark and spotted another military plane. It was surrounded by people trying to board, while the guard forces held people back and boarded their embassy staff. There was a rush. Some shots were fired. Somehow, my close colleagues pushed me on board.
13/It did not have to end this way. I am disgusted by the lack of any planning by Afghan leadership. Saw at airport them leave without informing others. I asked the palace if there was an evacuation plan/charter flights. After 7 years of service, I was met with silence
14/During last days, I feared not only risks related to Taliban, but fear of transition period once there is no chain of command. Once president’s departure was announced, I knew within minutes chaos would follow. I cannot forgive him for creating that without a transition plan
15/ I did not criticize them until now, but key figures Fazly & Mohib were too inexperienced in their roles, & was President’s failure that he never recognized such weaknesses. He himself had great ideas but poor execution. If I contributed to that, I take my share of the blame.
16/And it seems it’s only gotten worse today at HKIA.
And this. I will be trying to support any requests for assistance, but worry that given my personal experience at airport that any support for friends and colleagues be limited
Did I have a reason to worry? This is the text someone sent me: “Taliban come to <area> and were looking for you. They were asking about Ajmal Ahmady DAB Governor.” Whatever their personal views, I also had many personal enemies. Or maybe they just wanted to greet me
As Ahmady clearly indicates, as an Afghan government official, if the senior leadership of the Afghan government is not going to stay and do their jobs, let alone fight, why should any of their subordinates stay at their posts?
It also doesn’t help that the Russians and the PRC appear to have cut a deal with the Taliban:
Currently, only the embassies of Russia and China are functioning in Afghanistan. Both are being guarded by the Taliban, Russian ambassador to Kabul Dmitry Zhirnov told state TV channel Rossiya-1.
Not everything in Afghanistan is lost, however.
I knew it. I knew the lions of Panjshir wouldn’t back down. I knew they’d shelter Afghan women and minorities. What a bunch of fucking warriors. https://t.co/xLPK0N8Fmh
— John Phipps: Dr. Respectful (@GameDadJP) August 16, 2021
There are Afghans who will resist the Taliban. Massoud will not roll over. Afghans that can escape the Taliban will flee to the Panjir and swell his ranks. But the resistance of Massoud and his people show the reality that far too few Americans – elected officials, appointed officials, self declared subject matter experts on low intensity warfare, Afghan culture, etc – have ever been willing to actually internalize: only Afghans can ultimately determine what Afghanistan will be. If we show up with pallets of cash and C130s full of weapons and equipment they will gladly take it. But at the end of the day Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans, not to America. And it is Afghans that have to determine what it is they want it to be and if they are willing to fight for whatever that vision of Afghanistan is.
If I was advising anyone involved in this right now, and I am not, my recommendations would be to slowly and carefully rotate into Panjir Special Forces Operational Detachments-Alpha (ODAs), Civil Affairs Teams-Alpha (CAT-As), and Tactical PSYOP Teams (TSTs) comprised of Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and PSYOP Soldiers with significant Afghanistan experience, and with as many of the new 38G (military support to government*) military occupational specialty Civil Affairs personnel as possible on the CAT-As, into the Panjir. No more than 200 total personnel. Embed them with Massoud and his people. Let these very specialized Special Operators do what they’re best at in working with Massoud and his people because as we saw with ISIS’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban’s rule will quickly become unpleasant and unwelcome. And when that happens Massoud will have an opening.
President Biden will be giving a televised address on Afghanistan at 3:45 PM EDT today. Until then:
Open thread!
* Full disclosure: I was assigned, under Temporary Assigned Control (TACON) in October of 2012 to serve as the Cultural Advisor and subject matter expert to the Chief of Civil Affairs Branch to assist with the development of the 38G military occupational specialty (MOS), as well as the concepts and doctrine to support it. The 38G MOS is intended to take Civil Affairs back to its roots in World War II when it played a key role in helping to set the conditions to secure the peace after World War II ended and then assisted with the implementation of the Marshall Plan.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s an enormously important point I haven’t seen anyone make until today.
Let’s say you start planning for a mass evacuation.
And probably more.
It’s nice to envision everyone queuing up politely and the airplanes filling neatly. But it’s not gonna happen.
Just thought I’d stop back with a plug for my new digs!
Chris
Hey Adam, Afghanistan question (not immediately related to this mess):
Am I completely misremembering, or is the following a thing that actually happened? I seem to recall reading sometime in the 2000s that back after we initially took Afghanistan, there was a popular opinion in the loyajirga and a lot of the public that the old pre-communist monarchy should be brought back. But that the U.S. for whatever reason preferred Hamid Karzai, made it known to the loyajirga, and the rest was history. When I’ve tried googling this, however, I can’t find any references to back it up.
Is this in fact something that happened, or a bastardized version of something that happened, or has my memory just pulled a Trump and completely made something up out of thin air?
(I have no idea whether it would have worked out any better to do it that way, mind you. It’s just something that popped into my head when I started reading all those “well, we could have done it better if only…” takes this year).
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Adam: I don’t understand why the 101st already being scheduled to go to Afghanistan (so it was a 20K surge rather than 30K) precludes the possibility that Biden feels that Obama got rolled by the generals.
lee
Here is a Reuter’s article with this paragraph.
It has to be tough on the grunts when not only a significant amount of defense funds end up lining your leaders pockets but then those very leaders bailout leaving you nothing.
MagdaInBlack
I’ve been waiting for your post on this. Thank you.
JoyceH
@Chris:
My memory from that time is that the professional and middle class Afghanis were excited by the prospect of genuine representative democracy, but when they gathered together to establish it, they realized that the legislature would pretty much be ‘on paper’ with no real authority, and the allied forces had already parceled out control of the provinces to a series of tribal warlords, many of them the very same thugs that made the people welcome the Taliban when they took over. (One of them had a signature move of sprinkling gunpowder in prisoners’ eyes and then lighting it.)
I get irked by the commentary about how the US should stop trying to establish democracies overseas because they always fail. I don’t know whether or not we ought to try to establish democracies, but seems to me that the only times we REALLY tried, in Japan and the Axis after WWII, we succeeded. Every other foreign adventure favored ‘stability’ over democracy, which resulted in us backing a series of brutal strongmen.
Elizabelle
@Cheryl Rofer: Cheryl! Lovely to see you.
Now to catch up with the post and thread.
Timurid
Fortress Panjshir sounds like the Redeker Plan in real life…
rp
I been thinking about the fact that going into Afghanistan was one of the only — maybe the only — Bush foreign policy decision that I agreed with. And that’s because we went in to get Bin Laden, not build a democracy (or at least that’s how I understood it).
Leto
@lee: from a personal experience, what was toughest was watching the rampant corruption (up close and personal), and being told that this was “how they did things.” That this was “their culture” so we had to accept that.
Edit: to add, this was also the same commentary on Iraq. So idk.
piratedan
timing is everything I suppose….
it seems like the Chinese and the Russians have given their token to the Taliban to do as they wish…
For anyone who read the writing on the wall in August of 2020 when Trump rolled out his statements maybe could have gleaned that the fix was in… and decided to have closed up shop and got out… but there was a worldwide pandemic going on…
I do believe that the 4th estate was looking for ANYTHING that would allow them to exploit as click bait and this meets the bill, no matter on who placed the boulder on the hill, who leveraged it back into motion and who noted that it was rolling downhill into the valley below… didn’t matter to them, it allowed all of those folks who had to eat shit watching Joe be competent to finally get their bellow on.
Now I guess we have to see if there’s a collective will for the US and their allies to get those out who want to be out, by that I mean the interpreters, those who actually tried to build a national infrastructure, the educated and most essentially the women who took advantage of the opportunities offered.
I’m guessing that Joe is pretty po’ed at the Military and with the TFG for hollowing out the civil service expertise over the last 4 years, but he’ll take whatever the media will throw at him and deal it back in spades. Granted, there will be no self-reflection moment from the usual bad faith actors and I hope that those in charge and calling the shots will do what is in their power to mitigate the damage and save those that they can.
brendancalling
Thank you for this—I’ve been sharing it with worried friends.
It’s been nothing short of disgusting to watch CNN try to pin this on Biden, but I suspect like everything else this will be another media fail. As you note, “Major’s nipping didn’t catch on. Neither did going less than 90 minutes to his long time US Secret Service fortified home in Delaware so he could see his grandkids. Neither did the attempt to make Republican representatives, senators, governors, and state legislators efforts pushing anti-COVID response garbage – from anti-masking to anti-vaccination – somehow Biden’s failing.”
Personally I would like to see the likes of Chris Cillizza and the other bloviators (but especially Cillizza) packed into a plane and deposited in Helmand province. “So long, good luck!”
catclub
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I was wondering if that meant GWBush had planned a last minute surge, in Jan 2009.
I don’t think that is what Adam means, but not sure.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Yep. If Biden had kept 2,500 personnel in Afghanistan to manage an orderly withdrawal and get all the Afghans we need to out, it might have made things more orderly, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. All it would do is telegraph that we expected the government and military to collapse.
But we’d still see the same feeding frenzy of news media, Republicans, and think tank “experts” screaming. But instead it would be “why is Biden trying to bring Afghanistan down by evacuating everybody, why won’t he let the Afghans fight for Afghanistan”. Even if it was orderly, I would argue especially because if it was orderly, the screaming meemies would be screaming even louder right now.
CaseyL
Sounds to me like an effort already hamstrung by local corruption and tribalism was further undermined, deliberately, by Trump doing what his Russian handlers told him to do (e.g., release 5000 Taliban fighters).
I hope like hell that Biden’s address includes the treachery that led to this point.
PJ
@JoyceH:
The focus of the US occupation in Afghanistan was on anti-terrorism – rounding up supposed “terrorists” (anyone who got turned in by their enemy/neighbor for a handsome fee), torturing them, and then, when it turned out they knew nothing, turning them over to warlords who would try to ransom back to their families. Establishing an actual, functioning democracy in Afghanistan was never a focus for the Bush Administration.
Chris
@JoyceH:
A pet peeve of mine with Iraq was that it kept being discussed as “failing to bring democracy,” and… we didn’t fail to bring democracy. We didn’t try. The CPA disbanded the Iraqi Army, de facto disbanded the civil service (de-Baathification), and gutted the government’s revenue stream by turning it into a Fair Tax playground… and did absolutely nothing to fill the vacuum. We didn’t replace Saddam with democracy; we replaced it with literally nothing. It was the absolute opposite of all the money, manpower, and general effort we poured into Western Europe and Japan after 1945.
But you can’t tell that story, because the CPA vision of “nothing” in lieu of government is exactly what the AEI/Heritage/Hudson types who staff the GOP believe a perfect society should look like. And if we admit that that’s what fucked Iraq, we’re admitting that their vision is a complete delusion that can’t possibly sustain a working society.
(I didn’t follow Afghanistan as closely, but color me unsurprised that there was similarly no effort made to build a working government there).
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: That too.
Brachiator
Thanks very much for this clear assessment.
Major Major Major Major
Thanks, Adam, always good to see a sensible expert weigh in.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: That seems to be my recollection off the top of my head. But don’t quote me as I may be remembering it wrong.
Adam L Silverman
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: The narrative is that Obama rolled over and gave the generals exactly what they asked for. He didn’t. He knew what assets were in rotation and then gave them a bit less than 2/3rds of what they wanted. Which then got reported as giving them everything they wanted. That is not an accurate recounting of events.
Hoodie
@JoyceH: The only reason to REALLY TRY is because there is a long term economic and/or geopolitical value in really trying and there is a reasonable likelihood of success. That was the case with Japan and Europe after WWII because of the Cold War and because Japan and Germany were wealthy, modern industrial countries whose conventional armies were defeated in conventional war and still had people with the skills to effectively rebuild the country. Afghanistan’s just another sad, poor, ungovernable place like the horn of Africa that is of marginal interest to most people other than some local powers like Pakistan. It became temporarily important because of a nexus to a freakishly successful terrorist attack that could have come from a number of places other than Afghanistan. As Adam points out, most people weren’t paying attention to Afghanistan before today and probably won’t be tomorrow. Right now, it’s just a controversy to feed the partisan wars and give 24/7 cable news something to talk about until something else comes along (I guess they’re tired of talking about the Delta variant).
Mo MacArbie
“Cry and paste” is a lovely typo, and I forbid you to correct it.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Ah, thanks. If I’m crazy, at least I’m not the only one.
Out of curiosity, do you think it would have been a good idea?
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Adam L Silverman: Understood, thanks.
Adam L Silverman
@catclub: No it isn’t. The 101st was already queued up in the rotation cycle. The ARFORGEN cycle was set well before the request for a surge in Forces was requested.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: and then we have Rethugs in Congress not passing legislation to help speed up the special visa process, the malignant actors in the State Dept hamstringing the visa process, and all the other slow walking actions. Will never be able to adequately state just how much I hate them.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Or me for that matter!
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
An effort to do what?
I absolutely despise Trump, but disengaging from Afghanistan was inevitable. And this also meant making deals with the Taliban.
Adam L Silverman
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I don’t know Biden. He may have drawn that inference. We know from reporting that he, apparently did not agree with that decision. But the framing of the reporting around the 2009 troop surge into Afghanistan is, itself, incorrect.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: Yep and me too!
zhena gogolia
Thanks, Adam.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: The question of troop levels aside, Obama agreed to a surge rather than cutting losses and getting out 10 years ago. Is there any evidence that worked out?
Chris
@Hoodie:
Come to think of it, the closest analogy for Afghanistan in WW2 may be southern Italy. The liberation basically meant that the old Mafia-affiliated power structure went right back into place, with the Christian-Democratic Party legitimizing it and Washington deciding that they would henceforth be our local bulwark against the left.
(Not all of Italy was like in The Godfather, but a lot of politicians and elites in the rest of the country were fine with the south staying that way too).
There’s a school of thought that the Mafia had been so badly burned by Mussolini’s reforms that the postwar order could have pretty much finished it off if it wanted to. But that didn’t happen.
SpaceUnit
The US spent twenty years, a couple trillion dollars and countless lives to build an Afghan government and military that lasted a whole five minutes after we pulled out. If only we’d stayed there for fifty years, spent twenty trillion dollars and twice as many lives we could have ratcheted that up to as long as forty-five minutes. Maybe even an hour. . . long enough for a quick parade!
But then what do I know? I’m new to the comment section.
JPL
@Leto: That point appears to be forgotten among the reporters at MSM.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Good to see your input.
Relatedly, I am taken by the ~ 3500 troops that were “keeping the entire country peaceful” yet 7000+ troops (6000 US + 1000 UK) are being used/soon will be used to secure a single airport and evacuate people… :-/
Life is complicated, especially when a war is winding down and political power is shifting.
Thanks Adam.
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you for posting. I fear that we might need to hear from you often the next few days.
rp
I occasionally look at the RW instagram accounts to see what they’re pushing, and of course there are a lot of “Biden is the worst president ever and cut and ran from Afghanistan,” “Trump was tougher,” “things were under control until he took over,” takes. But what’s interesting is that in the comments there are a decent number of people saying “should we stay there forever?,” “this isn’t our problem,” and “20 years is long enough.” Early signs of a potential battle brewing on the right between the followers of cleek’s law and actual isolationists.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Sensibility takes all kinds.
catclub
I now replace Afghanistan with ‘Mississippi’ in that phrase, given its people and their response to sensible public health advice.
This is why we can’t have nice things – either a majority or a large minority refuse to allow that.
Dagaetch
My interpretation of the “Obama got rolled by the generals” story is less about the numbers, than that it appears the military already knew by then that the Afghan army wasn’t going to be in a position to stand on their own in the next 25 years, much less 5 years, but they smiled and said that a few more troops for a few more years was all that was needed to solve the problem. American generals (and, to be fair, most politicians) simply don’t want to be the one responsible for anything less than complete success, thus the continuous kick-the-can down the road mentality.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Bin Laden is dead?
Heidi Mom
Thank you for this, Adam. One question: Who is this Ahmad Massoud? Son of the late, revered leader, or someone with the same, not uncommon name? Reading the segment about the Panjshir was a little disorienting, like being transported back decades.
zhena gogolia
Not really OT, because I’ve been obsessively checking Twitter to keep up with this story. Now you have to sign up to see tweets, and the workaround (incognito window) is cumbersome. What is the downside to signing up with Twitter?
catclub
@Mo MacArbie: who says its a typo?
catclub
@Roger Moore: my answer was: Obama got re-elected.
Cermet
As I posted before – the only government that would have worked would have been a heavily based religious government; adding some taliban type Mullahs would have been essential as well – creating a semi-governing council that had real power to guide the government’s decisions. Another issue that was fatal was setting up a logistical heavy universal army in a tribal society – besides asking for corruption, such a supply dependent army requires a level of education among said supply soldiers far beyond anything the Afghan people can offer. Was there any way to create a proper Afghani army? That is a question I doubt even an expert on Afghanistan culture could answer.
Cacti
I’m about ready for the Biden administration to drop some rhetorical bombs on all of the media asshats who thoughtlessly and loudly supported Dubya getting us into two foreign quagmires.
Fuck the: NYT, WAPO, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, et al. I haven’t forgotten which side any of you motherfuckers were on back then.
rp
@Dagaetch: I think several things are simultaneously true:
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: Other than maintaining stabilization because we were there? No.
That said, it is important to remember that the next theater commander was GEN McChrystal. I used to explain to my students at USAWC that GEN McChrystal was toast the January before Hastings’ article ever appeared. And not because he showed up to meet Obama in ACUs, though that didn’t help. The speech he gave at Oxford under Chatham House rules (no disclosure of anything said in the room by the speaker so that he or she may be candid) that someone decided to leak to the press didn’t help either. Nor did one of the outside consultants from think tank world on his strategy development team leaking the strategy. But in JAN 2010 Fred Kagan wrote an op-ed about how McChrystal was failing to do political reconciliation. Exum then did a post on his CNAS blog on the same thing. This was followed up within two or three weeks with an Exum authored CNAS report on the failure to do so. And then Cordesman piled on with his own op-ed making the same assertion. All three of these guy helped McChrystal develop his strategy. All three of them gave that strategy less than five months to actually start showing results, which is just ridiculous. None of those three, from their perches in DC and NY, had any way of knowing just how much political reconciliation McChrystal was doing or how effective it was. But all three needed to protect their own butts. And that meant that McChrystal had to go.
And the think tankers also did this with three other of our theater commanders over there. They took advantage of their access to the NY Times and WaPo and of being in the same time zone as the White House and Congress and the Pentagon and all the major news media outlets to set the conditions to drive out four theater commanders in total. You can’t effectively execute your theater strategy if you’ve got a bunch of people in think tanks in DC and NY undermining you back in DC.
One final point, our doctrine on this is a failure itself. FM 3-24 delineates three possible sizes for an effective counterinsurgency deployment. Yet the historical examples they give to support why each one was effective are wrong. The only examples we have of a 3rd party doing an effective and successful counterinsurgency campaign are all of campaigns that used the maximum possible troop numbers. Not an intermediate or a light footprint. FM 3-24 has a large number of other historical and factual errors. I spent several years with some of my colleagues trying to get revisions made. The doctrine writers were not interested.
schrodingers_cat
Wasn’t Afghanistan lost when W started his Iraq misadventure? Biden is just acknowledging the inevitable after more than a decade and a half
The return of Taliban makes the entire subcontinent unstable. Having India, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the hands of zealots is not a recipe for stability in the region.
Adam L Silverman
@rp: Someone should mention some guy named Reagan and some place named Beirut.
zhena gogolia
@Cacti: My feelings exactly.
Cacti
Obama not declaring Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan after OBL was killed was a tragic mistake.
Adam L Silverman
@Heidi Mom: Ahmad Shah Massoud’s son.
Salt Creek
To understand the mess in Afghanistan, one has to remember how we got there. We start in 1992 then President Bush was debating Bill Clinton during a presidential debate. Bush brought up the fact that Clinton was a draft evader who took numerous deferments. At one point he raised his fist and stated “Mr. and Mrs America some day there will be a crisis! And he (pointing to Clinton) won’t be able to respond to the challenge, he won’t be able to raise an army in order to deal with the crisis .
Little did he know that it wasn’t Bill Clinton that failed his nation. but it was his own son that bore his name that turned out to be such a miserable failure during this time of crisis. In exactly the way he spelled out.
Of the list of recommendations that the Pentagon gave the Bush White House, a nation wide draft was not one of them. A Pearl Harbor response to a Pearl Harbor type event was not forthcoming.
We gave up trying to find Osama Bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora and instead focused on Iraq. A thoroughly meritless and immoral war, at the expense of a necessary and righteous one.
rp
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly. I can say with 100% confidence that I have no idea what I would have done in Obama’s shoes.
Adam L Silverman
@Mo MacArbie: I already have.
Leto
@Dagaetch:
Or, in the case of Gen Shinseki, they actually tell them what’s required to do the job and they’re fired. That’s the thing about civilian oversight: we’re ultimately going to do what you dictate. It’s much the same as when I’d tell my commander, “I need 10 peanuts to do this.” Commander then says, “Here’s two peanuts. Get it done.” Guess how many peanuts I’m getting? There’s a lot of blame to be tossed at the military, but there’s a hell of a lot of blame to be tossed at the politicians. Which, to be honest, goes back to the citizens themselves.
But wtf do I know; I’m just a retired TSgt.
Another Scott
@Chris:
CFR Timeline:
CFR testimony before the Senate in October 1998:
There was a lot of factionalism that goes back a very long time. It wasn’t just the US imposing Karzai on the country; but any choice the US made probably wouldn’t have ended up with extended conflict as we saw…
Cheers,
Scott.
glc
I’m not actually a big fan of Biden but his current incarnation is the best I’ve seen. Certainly not going to fault him for carrying through the liquidation of a failed policy. There’s a certain bravery to that, even.
One wishes the last twenty years had not been wasted. Perhaps they have not been, entirely. There are other areas where one could say something very similar.
hueyplong
@Adam L Silverman: Whenever I see “Reagan” and “Beirut” in the same sentence, my knee-jerk reaction is to say “Grenada.”
CaseyL
@Brachiator:
The effort to build a government, and an Army, that worked.
Booger
Adam,
It’s all well and good to have this airquotes informed commentary, but don’t you think we should give equal time to those who have played Call of Duty at one time or another from the comfort of Mom’s basement?
Won’t someone think of the 99th Chairborne?
Dagaetch
@rp: frankly, I hope that political reasons were very far down the list of why Obama did it. If he thought that it was worthwhile for some concrete reason, believing that it would succeed and bring democracy to a part of the world that has never known it, then that may have been naive but it is at least it’s a defensible reason. If he spent American lives and tens of billions of dollars for personal political reasons, then that may be in line with past American presidents, but that doesn’t make it acceptable to me, at all.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: I’m not sure trying it would have been any worse than anything else we did.
That said in January 2009 I was asked to make some inputs to one of the Canadian one stars who was rotating into the command group of ISAF. He specifically wanted to know how to do political reconciliation and how to build and then stabilize the government. My recommendations were to deemphasize the national government and focus on regional and local government and governance. If we could get those levels of government up and running, get the Afghans in the different villages, towns, cities, and provinces involved and participating and seeing that supporting those governments and the process that created them – some form of Afghan contextualized democracy – it would create space to then work on the final piece: the national government. Basically a from the ground up strategy. The one star agreed, but, of course, neither he, nor his four star boss were really driving the train at the end of the Bush 43 administration.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Truth.
sab
@Chris:I remember Juan Cole at Informed Comment suggesting that.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: You know enough to be correct here. Americans by and large did not care as long as they themselves didn’t have to do anything more than thank people that did for their service.
Dagaetch
@Leto: yeah, that’s fair. Not accepting anything less than complete success seems to be an American political problem overall. Of course for many RWNJs, they didn’t want to ‘win’ in Afghanistan or Iraq, they wanted to conquer them and make them servant states for…reasons. Oil?
Adam L Silverman
@hueyplong: Had to get the med school students out before the volleyball tournament!
Hoodie
@Leto: I remember from my engineering days the countless times we’d work on a bid for a program and the project management/marketing pukes would arbitrarily cut it so they could make the sale. They’d pat themselves on the back, give themselves bonuses, and be long gone when the contract went to shit because there was no way of doing what they promised at the price and schedule they agreed to.
rp
@Dagaetch: I don’t mean to suggest it was purely political in the sense of “I want to get reelected.” I’m sure he felt that there were solid military and foreign policy arguments in favor of the surge.
But “political” is also far more than getting reelected. Obama was in the middle of a horrible financial crisis, he was trying to withdraw from Iraq at the same time, he was the first AA president, etc., etc. I don’t think it’s fair to say that “political” considerations are completely irrelevant in a situation like that. It’s easy to say in hindsight (and, tbf, even at the time) that we should have pulled out of Afghan., but what if that decision had torpedoed all of Obama’s agenda and ability to get stuff done? There’s always a cost benefit analysis at play.
geg6
@rp:
This. Seconded.
germy
JPL
@zhena gogolia: None if you don’t post, and don’t have followers. If you make a mistake and do post, don’t read the notifications. They’ll stop after a few days. IMO
zhena gogolia
@JPL: Thanks!
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: No downside. I lurked for years before I started tweeting myself. I have found some lovely Twitter mutuals after I started tweeting since mid 2019 or so.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
They’ve already asked for my birthdate. It kind of makes me nervous.
Chief Oshkosh
Hi Adam, what’s your take on the piece in The Atlantic (I think) but Lt Col who was saying that all we did was rotate people in for one year terms and thus we were always doomed to fail. He essentially places all the blame on the military for those decisions. Seemed a little too far in one direction, but I guess it could’ve happened that way.
sab
@zhena gogolia: I signed up with twitter about five years ago and otherwise I ignore it. I haven’t discovered a downside.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And in one sentence Adam sums it all up.
That’s why I was thinking the Taliban was seeking victory threw bribery. It’s probably in the back of their minds that when the Russian and Chines money dries up it will be them on the run so best not to have anyone looking for revenge.
Adam L Silverman
@Chief Oshkosh: I wrote the same thing in my post on Friday night, though I phrased it a bit differently. His piece was right on the target.
Elizabelle
I tire of these military industrial complex journalists, who provide drama, drama, drama, without much context. It’s particularly irksome to see anything much from the FTF NY Times, home to Judith Miller, who from their august pages helped build the fraudulent case for invading Iraq. Remember her?
I detest the feeding frenzy. Also suspect that a lot of others feel the same way.
Joe Biden is showing more courage than ANY of them in deciding enough is enough. Suspect history will be kind to Biden on many fronts.
This whole episode is a divining rod for who is an honest reporter/outlet, and who is not.
Martin
The video of afghanis chasing the US plane down the runway is soul crushing.
Unfortunately afghanistan is a nation with one viable way of making money – opium. And any government that the US would approve of cannot support opium holding up the economy, therefore no US approved government could succeed.
I think it’s becoming pretty clear that nations that have nearly sole sources of revenue (petrostates, drug states, mineral states, etc.) are destined for rampant corruption.
frosty
@zhena gogolia: Do what I did for Facebook. My birthday there is January 1, 1905. Don’t give them any real info at all.
zhena gogolia
@frosty:
Oh, I guess I’ll just learn to live without it.
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks much. I’m behind on my sensible pundits reading. ;)
MagdaInBlack
@zhena gogolia: I just ran in to that problem today. I’ll let you know if I find a work around, cause I don’t need or want an account.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: “What did you do to help support the war, grandpa?”
“I did what my president told us all to do: GO SHOPPING!”
/sad trombone sound
@Hoodie: very familiar with that in the context of some of the large DoD comm programs (JITRS program comes to mind).
Adam L Silverman
@Chief Oshkosh:
https://balloon-juice.com/2021/08/12/the-united-states-has-started-a-non-combatant-evacuation-operation-in-afghanistan/
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
Lots of sites ask for your birthdate. There are strict legal requirements about collecting data on people under the age of 13, so they have to know if you’re older than that.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: I happened to look at the size of my cookies on one of my PCs a while ago. Twitter’s was 11 MB and was by far the largest.
I don’t have a Twitter account.
I hate to think what they’re doing with all that information…
But, it’s a losing battle at this point, and I’m not that interesting, so I don’t fret about it.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
Will we have a dedicated thread for Biden’s address, or shall we use this one??
Here’s a C-Span link. Nothing going on just yet.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?514113-1/president-biden-remarks-afghanistan&live
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: Water Girl is suppose to put up a post when Biden addresses the nation. I do hope that you will weigh in. Your content adds so much to the discussion.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: There is one scheduled from what I can see in the dashboard.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle: I’ve already seen pundits dismissing it contemptuously before it’s even given.
Elizabelle
Earl, Republican from Indiana, was just telling us all that this is proof we’re in Armageddon.
C-Span couldn’t get him off fast enough.
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
@Adam L Silverman: Agree.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle: The post is up.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: thank you!
raven
When you talk about Richard Engel I’m assuming you mean he speaks English ?
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia:
Honestly, nothing?
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Other question:
A long time ago I read General Zinni’s biography (not long after he retired from government service), and one of his theses was that the U.S. military as an institution is pathologically uninterested in learning to fight asymmetrical wars or any kind of “operations other than war.” Basically, their fantasy is to re-fight World War Two, and anything murkier than that shouldn’t happen.
Do you think that was a fair assessment, and if so, was there a real effort put into changing that in the decade and a half since (the book was published in 2003 or 2004)? Do you think withdrawing from Iraq/Afghanistan is going to send the military on another “no more OOTW, ever, nothing but conventional wars” kick (which according to him is what happened after Vietnam, and part of why Desert Storm made them so happy)?
Adam L Silverman
Watergirl’s post got hung up in the scheduler. And I’ve manually gone in and published it. It has a live feed for the address.
raven
@Martin: Yea, especially the guy with the shit eatin grin gleefully waving his arms at the camera.
SFBayAreaGal
@Adam L Silverman: The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan started with Reagan.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Why does he have an English accent?
J R in WV
When I was a kid, my dad was managing editor of a small town newspaper. There was a term of art in the editorial business back then, that will seem strange today.
Afghanistanism editorials were editorials about something which no one in the readership of the publication knew anything about, nor cared at all about.
Like writing editorials about pollution on Mars in the 1950s and ’60s, which is a scientific problem today!
Afghanistanism was the political equivalent of pollution of Mars. Here in WV, writing about problems in Afghanistan or Mongolia filled space without any chance of pissing people off, no cared about either place. Obviously, no political editorial term has changed meaning so much over the past 35 or 40 years.
Now any editorial about Afghanistan will piss of 65% of the readership, no matter the polities being favored. Amazing change in the language of editorial pages.
Barely on topic? I dunno, but there is today’s factoid from my holler.
Robert Sneddon
@Martin:
Afghanistan only prospers when it gets invaded. Lots of loose cash, goods, bribery and protection money, lonely invaders looking for negotiable affection, booze, drugs, weapons, you name it the Afghans will buy and sell it and make money. No invaders means they have to sell rocks to each other or steal their neighbour’s goats and that’s less fun.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Fixed.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Yes.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
We spend 20 years trying to do that.
Enough.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
“Afghanistan” is Pashum for “Vietnam.” We didn’t learn anything from 1962-1975. Never get into someone else’s civil war, unless you’re a glutton for punishment.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, fuck.
Mike in NC
Many years ago the late Colonel Harry Summers famously said, “We didn’t fight a war in Vietnam for ten years. We fought a one-year war there ten times.” Or words to that effect.
Kattails
@Cheryl Rofer: Nice to hear from you! Good points.
Quick story: About 20 years ago the tall ships were in Portland, ME, and my Dad, who had emphysema, wanted to see them. So we met up there and had a good day. Had to park way out and get bussed in but were assured busses would be available for return. Problem was, the busses for return kind of just pulled in wherever along one street, randomly. There were hoards of people wanting to get home. Dad could of course not run. No one payed attention to anyone else. You could not hear or get the crowd’s attention, there were no police in sight, it was absolute chaos and I couldn’t reach Dad to stay with him.
Finally muscled my way to the front and grabbed a seat, because I could force the bus to hold and give it to him, but his other friend managed to hold the door against everyone and get him on board. It was awful. And these were American holiday goers, desperate to get home to dinner. The situation of desperate people trying to get out against an incoming brutal regime which most likely wants them dead? I can’t imagine how they could make this orderly. What are you going to do, hold down the whole country while you tap and escort individuals to the airport? `
karen marie
Thank you very much, Adam. Your work brings a lot of much needed perspective.
Thank you, John Cole, for making this space!
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Good to hear from you Ms Rofer! Will be seeing you at LGM, but, really LGM is even more depressive than late nite BalloonJuice. Really!
Still catching pix of bobcats in the back yard? Mt Lions too?
Take care, keep in touch — cats OK, we all hope??
Kattails
@JPL: @zhena gogolia: Just ran into that and had the exact same reaction. I see that someone recommended a birthdate rather off the charts.
Problem is, it would be hard to avoid commenting now and again.
gene108
@zhena gogolia:
Another social media platform will track online usage & sell it to advertisers.
Unlike Facebook, where people initially wanted to connect with IRL people they know, so anonymity was not the user’s goal, there’s no reason to actually reveal any info about yourself besides the minimum.
Create a dummy Yahoo, Gmail, etc. email account, a name that tickles your fancy, & enjoy.
glc
@zhena gogolia: I’ve never joined Twitter and I follow several accounts without difficulty (Chrome/mac). So far.
Maybe this depends on how the individual accounts are set up; I know nothing about all that. I just bookmark the people whose tweets interest me (namely, four at the moment).
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s because it would have been an even more thought out plan than what they want to give him credit for, which is nothing. They wanted him to have pulled the whole thing out of his ass, and he doesn’t do that, denying them of one of their key points, that he’s in over his head, as all Democrats would be. The journalists work for their bosses who work for the owners of the places they write for. It may be their byline but the company byline is on the bottom line of their paychecks.
VOR
@Chris: Per Wikipedia, the last King of Afghanistan was Mohammed Zahir Shah. He was deposed in 1973 – almost 30 years previously. He was born in 1914 so he was almost 87 years old on 9/11. He actually went back to Afghanistan in April 2002 and died in 2007 at the age of 92.
Wikipedia says the US did not want to re-establish a monarchy and so pushed for Hamid Karzai as head of government. My guess is this was either an ideological decision or a Rumsfeld special.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Twitter doesn’t really care about connecting you back to your real identity, or at least they only care about that when you’re popular enough that the authenticity of your tweets is important. What they care about is being able to connect every place you go on the internet to every other place so they can create a targeted advertising profile. In practice, that will leave enough of a trail that they could figure out who you are, unless you are exceptionally careful to keep your online identities separated.
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
Regarding Twitter:
Feel free to lie to them. Tell them you’re 14, or 94, it doesn’t matter. Or just don’t give them ANY information about yourself — that’s probably the best alternative.
It’s none of their business who you are, where you are, etc. Except inasmuch as they can make money from that information…
Ruckus
@Leto:
Possibly more real info than some/many of the officers that you worked for.
I had 5 captains in 2 yrs on the destroyer I was stationed on, normally they served 18 months or so in command of one ship. Some of that was on them and some of that was on the Squadron Commander, who was given the command of the ship I was discharged from because the Pentagon did not advance him any farther and wanted him to retire, rumor was because he was basically unfit but firing him would make them look bad for not doing that a lot sooner. (Some of this was rumor, but from my experiences on two different ships under his general and direct command, I’d say there was a lot of truth to the concept.)
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Never asked this before by why did anyone think that a democracy could be formed from the outside in? Because I think a lot of people seemed to think that was the goal. And if that was, it was always going to fail. A working government in an area that is based upon economic strong arming, or deadly coercion is never going to give up power without a lot of loss of life.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Because we hated them so much the alternative was kill them all and they knew it. So everyone had an incentive to work to the same goal.
cwmoss
@JPL: I have a burner account just to be able to follow other accounts of people I find interesting (Popehat, Slava Malamud, etc). I see no downside. I had a real account for a while but got perma-banned with one of my very first tweets by suggesting to Ari Fleischer that since he won’t do the decent thing and self-deport to The Hague, he should do the next best thing and [bannable for advocating self-harm].
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. Gulp. I think.
J R in WV
@cwmoss:
This is really funny LOL — thanks! And so accurate and true!
sab
@VOR: Wasn’t Karzai an oil company lobbyist/fixer?
Mo MacArbie
Yes, after Iraq at the end of W’s term, a “surge” was just kinda what one did before declaring victory and going home.
Ruckus
@cwmoss:
I got a timeout ban for suggesting that I wouldn’t pay a plug nickel for sfb to jump off of a tall building.
I was told that I was condoning suicide or self harm, or at least condoning doing it for free.
I haven’t jumped through their hoops to get back on twitter. It’s fun when you have enough time to be on regularly, which I seem to find myself having these days but what they want from me is not worth it. And what they want isn’t much, but it’s too high a cost for twitter. So I’m off.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Other than refusal to listen to anyone who actually knew anything about Afghanistan, I have no idea. I would speculate that a lot of it was the result of the overwhelming arrogance of the nat-sec team that Cheney built for the Bush administration. Between him, his two most trusted aides Scooter Libby and David Addington, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Wurmser, etc, etc, etc, you were dealing with men, and they were almost exclusively men, who were convinced they had every answer to every question.
In reality they didn’t even understand the questions.
DCA
Some years back I read Thomas Barfield’s history of Afghanistan (definitely recommend), and remember that he said that most changes happen very abruptly: once it is clear what the winning side is likely to be, everyone joins it. He used the US invasion as his most recent example; now we have another, even faster one.
I also remember reading, just after 9/11, about the assasination of Masood, and thinking, well, Bin Laden wants the US to come to Afghanistan and get just as bogged down as every other invader. Thanks to the industrial and military might of the US, we took longer to fail than anyone else.
evodevo
@Chris:
Yeah…you are not alone…that’s the way I remember it too….the loya jirga and the “king” were supposed to be the way to go, and then all of a sudden there was Hamid Karzai…
LeftCoastYankee
Interesting until this line:
“Not everything in Afghanistan is lost, however.”
After that you suggest the best followup to ending a 20 year debacle is to continue it in a different way.
Wow….
Phoenix Woman
@Chris: The problem with the pre-communist monarchy is that it wasn’t stable or popular. Not only was the last king, the one who tried to modernize Afghanistan, assassinated, just about half of his predecessors were too, and at least one was killed by his own son
By the way, Trump made the Taliban takeover inevitable with Doha:
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1427504251140378626?s=19
Phoenix Woman
@Chris: Yup. Remember the study allegedly showing it had vast mineral deposits? Turned out to be deeply flawed and wrong.
Nobody in particular
Adam, just marvel at how quickly the MAGA crowd has morphed into The NEW Hate America crowd. As you said before, it would be comical if it weren’t so insane
@Adam L Silverman:
Well said. As Richard Feynman has said, echoing Einstein: It’s easy to learn all the names for things and lack any understanding of anything at all.
Nobody in particular
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.
Baruch Spinoza