Clausewitz famously said in his book On War that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Following this logic, I don't see any reason that Afghanistan government wouldn't collapse. I mean, for what will their troops fight, and for whom will their troops fight? Most of the people there do support Sharia law per Pew Research. Afghanistan people are famous for being independent and for fighting foreign occupation to death. So, the troops were not fighting for their ideals, neither for their people. Besides, they knew they would lose. The US intelligence said the government would fall in 90 days. Then why would the troops fight their own people for a losing war, especially given that Taliban will exact bloody reprisal on those who didn't surrender?
Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
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Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#212What a failure of the US armed forces here. 20 damn years staying in the country with the only 2 goal - to help Afghans build an army and help defend themselves and to eradicate the Taliban. They failed miserably in both. Trillions spent and many lost lives. Why would we ever pour money into such a terrible, incompetent system? Of course, the cycle keeps repeating itself and we keep growing the military.
You simply can't foster a regime, for the fostered government is by definition a puppet that simply does not command enough support of its people. What's surprising to me is the US government never learns despite so many failures around the world. And an honest question: why do American people think that it's so damn important to spread American democracy at the cost of waging wars? Pew Research said 94%+ of Afghanis…
And for that matter, G.W. Bush is the worst president in the US as he occupied two countries for no good reasons. His occupation destroyed lives, weakened American economy, and fostered generations of anti-American extremists. It's a forever shame on the US and its people.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Taliban is absolute horrible. US tried to do a good thing here. For me this is a failure of the Afghan people who are not willing to fight for their rights, especially the rights of their wives, sisters and daughters. At least US tried to make a difference. EU is very passive in that sense (I'm from EU).
A failure of the Afghan people! Hahaha, OK. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And ah, okay, the war in Afghanistan was to liberate women? Meanwhile the US is in bed with the Saudi's.
Exactly. Afghanistan people want Taliban, yet we're telling them no no no, you want our democracy. The US was "a nation of hypocrites", and still is.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>>Why would we ever pour money into such a terrible, incompetent system? Not that the US DoD is in any way a model of efficiency, but I suspect you are vastly underestimating the difficulty of the problem set. Over the past 200 years, the British, Soviet, and American empires have all failed to pacify Afghanistan. Probably the Mongols and Alexander the Great struggled too, I need to dig into the history of those cam…
Does china really have designs on Afghanistan? For what purpose? (I mean this as an honest question, i don't know that much of the geopolitics of the region)
China would be happy if US stayed and maintained stability in the region, so US didn't lose, they created a problem for China. The military industry made a lot of money, Afghanistan has been the training ground for terrorists attack in Pakistan (recently a bus bomb against Chinese), and Xinjiang. Let's see how Taliban manage the country. If Afghanistan become stable, then US might not be very happy about it.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was told in January this year by many gleeful people they were so happy that "competence" was coming back into the US administration. I share your frustration - this withdrawal literally couldn't have been done worse. They were so ill prepared they left weapons for the Taliban to pick up, seemingly had zero plan for evacuation of their embassies and failed to tell allied embassies. A withdrawal was definitely on…
I'm frustrated by the withdrawal too but let's not forget we had twenty years to help build a functioning army. It's not as though things were going really great and then oops, we left too suddenly. We've been failing at this--and the Afghan army has been failing to step up--for decades.
> [..] let's not forget we had twenty years to help build a functioning army.
Sure, 20 years of failure - we shouldn't have been there in the first place. But accepting your losses and performing an abysmal withdrawal process is entirely different.
> It's not as though things were going really great and then oops, we left too suddenly.
It was better than the Taliban overrunning every major city in a week. They must have been doing something to keep them inline. They deliberately waited for the withdrawal process to be mostly complete.
> [..] the Afghan army has been failing to step up [..]
This was very shocking and disheartening, the majority abandoned their posts and let them overrun the cities. All of that training and investment only to have it thrown away.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> multi-decade delaying action to stymie Chinese expansion for as long as possible? That wasn't in the original brief, and I've never heard it before in the 20 years? Frankly if it's an expensive unpacifiable area, let China have it. They can sink effort into an unwinnable war instead. Also, having consulted a map, how do you expect China to physically get there?
China, at least, is not limited by public perception, and will have no qualms about doing war crimes, and they will call it conquering. On the other hand, it seems a lot of Afghan soldiers deserted to the other side. They see no upside to the new Afghan regime.
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Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I called this one in real time right as I watched the planes hit the towers. Knew we'd kill hundreds of thousands of people in the middle east before we had to pull out defeated. I didn't quite expect it to take 20 years though. Then protested Iraq and they cheered our freedom of speech, then rolled tanks into Baghdad anyway and the WMDs weren't there, just like Scott Ritter told them. That worked out well. Real…
Hell, if you zoom out from the Middle East, you can go all the way back to Vietnam. (I don't know much about Korea.) That's over six decades of being wrong--sixty years of belligerence with nothing to show for it but a horrific body count and whole generations turned against us.
>>>That's over six decades of being wrong--sixty years of belligerence with nothing to show for it but a horrific body count
The problem with this argument is we have no way of definitively proving it one way or the other. If Communist Vietnam hadn't spent 10 years and a million lives dislodging the US, could Communism have overtaken SE Asia? Would Vietnam have had the military experience necessary to depose the Khmer Rouge after that regime killed ~25% of Cambodia's population? How many excess deaths would you be counting if Thailand's Communist insurgency had eventually turned into a Khmer Rouge clone (itself having copied the worst excesses of Mao's Cultural Revolution)? https://www.cia.gov/static/e73ecdedf076611c592b1d8397cbe61a/...
Bottom line: Hindsight is 20/20. Don't assume that the outcome we have is the worst one possible and therefore all has been for naught. That said.....hold people accountable for shit decision-making, and there definitely has been that in spades.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are too hard on US. Afgan Army had 300 thousand soldiers trained and well equiped. If Afgans do not want to fight Taliban themselves what US can do?
No idea why they dont want to fight ? Have a look at https://observers.france24.com/en/20200218-afghanistan-corru...
The corruption is incredible, even this 6 year old article (discussing a book on corruption) knew about it:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev...
E.g. an excerpt:
> [A]s Chayes studied the graft of the Karzai government, she concluded that it was anything but benign. Many in the political élite were not merely stealing reconstruction money but expropriating farmland from other Afghans. Warlords could hoodwink U.S. special forces into dispatching their adversaries by feeding the Americans intelligence tips about supposed Taliban ties. Many of those who made money from the largesse of the international community enjoyed a sideline in the drug trade. Afghanistan is often described as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly trying, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether”—the enrichment of its own members. Washington supported Hamid Karzai and his ministers and adjutants in the hope that they could establish a stable government, help pursue Al Qaeda, and keep the Taliban at bay. But the Karzai government wasn’t a government at all, Chayes concluded. It was “a vertically integrated criminal organization.”
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are fighting for it. It's just hard to see from you perspective because they are fighting against who you want to win.
So how do you explain all the Afghan refugees right now? Seems like they all love the Taliban so much they want to get out as soon as possible.
The many that collaborated with the US forces in any way fear retaliations. And if history provide insight, heads might roll. Look at what happened with French woman that slept with germans after WW2. Life is harsh and injust by default.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#220Fall of Saigon v2. Although I have to say the speed at which the Taliban took over once the US pulled out is pretty astonishing: it's clear they have a strong level of popular support.
Vietnam ultimately became a pretty nice country a few years after the US government finally gave up on trying to turn it into hell on earth, and it’s only getting better. If this really is Saigon 2.0, 20 years from now Afghanistan will be a peaceful country with active tourism. With the Taliban seemingly making efforts to appease China for economic gain, who knows, it just might happen.
More like Saudi Arabia but they don't have lot's of oil just poppy.