Saigon 2: Sharia Boogaloo
Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
41–50 of 225 posts
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#42It's interesting to note that DRA (the pro-Soviet Afghanistan government) has fought for 3 whole years after the Soviets have left Afghanistan. And it was with the almost complete lack of military support from the USSR (you know, the Union collapse and all) and with Taliban being actively funded by the US and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the current government probably will fall even before the US will finish its humiliating retreat and it does not look like Russia or China have substantially supported Taliban, at the very least it most certainly was not on the US scale of 30 years ago.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#43I was told in January this year by many gleeful people they were so happy that "competence" was coming back into the US administration. What an absolute bunch of morons and their failures. *Edit: to answer the questions about "what should have been done instead", here is my reply from further down the page: I would have liked to see a withdrawal that did not turn back the clock 20 years to where we were in August 200…
Are you trying to blame this on the Biden administration? Seriously? What would you want to see happen?
Yes. Seriously yes. I would have liked to see a withdrawal that did not turn back the clock 20 years to where we were in August 2001, squandering all the blood and treasure that has been expended in 2 decades.
"Explainers" are why this is happening - weak minded people who prefer marketing (appearance of performance) over results. Surprising to me considering the heated replies to the other thread on the front page about how "story-telling" to appeal to VCs is fake news, and we should all be concerned about product quality first.
US governance (both domestic and foreign) has devolved into nothing more than marketing sizzle instead of product quality.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#44Fall 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.
In these parts of the world, 'defecting to the winning side' is a basic survival skill. As soon as the US stopped its support it was obvious who'd win (the people still getting state support from Pakistan). So why should a smart faction fight and die? To make the people who aren't there anymore look better?
I think you're overestimating Pakistan's capability. It gave Taliban leaders shelter at their worst moment, and that is about the only leverage ISI had.
The moment Taliban started to carve out territory inside Afghanistan, that leverage was gone. There's some gratitude, but also lots of resentment among Taliban leadership about the way they were treated by the Pakistani authority.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would the talibans do with the money? It is quite obvious the Afghan army has a more expensive operation than talibans with rifles and pickups. I guess the Afghan army should have focused more on quality than size to be able to afford talanted soldiers.
I don’t think that’s a valid question. What would they do with money? Buy more weapons, I guess? Invest in training. Hire more recruits.
Both you and the parent poster are missing the forest through the trees.
The failure is not in money, training, or conscription. The failure is in not giving the army any reason to fight.
If you don't give a rat's ass about your cause, and there's a serious possibility of defeat, why would you keep fighting?
The problem is that in twenty years, the coalition-supported government failed to make enough of its constituents give a rat's ass about their cause. They might not like the Taliban much, but they seem to prefer to live under them, than die for what is perceived as a corrupt, self-serving, ineffective government.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#46What 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.
>>>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 campaigns for more specifics.
Can you articular which particular aspects of our nation-building and counter-insurgency techniques are distinct from our equally-failed predecessors? Have you considered that the objective may not have been to erect a fully-functional Afghan government and military, but instead to conduct a multi-decade delaying action to stymie Chinese expansion for as long as possible?
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#47Worth quoting this passage from an insightful article[1]
People fought in Afghanistan, and people died, but not always in the obvious way. They had been fighting for so long, twenty-three years then, that by the time the Americans arrived the Afghans had developed an elaborate set of rules designed to spare as many fighters as they could. So the war could go on forever. Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again. War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup basketball, a contest among friends, a tournament where you never knew which team you’d be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomorrow. On Tuesday, you might be part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield. And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of the Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was part of everyday life. It was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose.
Battles were often decided this way, not by actual fighting, but by flipping gangs of soldiers. One day, the Taliban might have four thousand soldiers, and the next, only half that, with the warlords of the Northern Alliance suddenly larger by a similar amount. The fighting began when the bargaining stopped, and the bargaining went right up until the end. The losers were the ones who were too stubborn, too stupid or too fanatical to make a deal. Suddenly, they would find themselves outnumbered, and then they would die. It was a kind of natural selection.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#48What 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.
Remember that it was 20 very profitable years for some. Check the stock tickers, see what companies stocks have skyrocketed.
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#49What 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.
I think it’s more a failure of the people who sent them there than the forces themselves. This is a management issue. For all of the failings of the current US president, getting the hell out of an endless, unnecessary war is a good thing.
I disagree that getting out is a good thing. It means a terrorist organization will control a nation and harbor terrorists once again in the future (remember the same Taliban sheltered 9/11 terrorists and is still allied with al Qaeda!). It means we lose a foothold in the region, militarily and economically. It means rivals like China expand their influence and force projection at our expense, since they plan to recognize the Taliban government and invest in their infrastructure via their belt and road initiative (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-s...).
We should have at least kept a smaller force around as a presence to maintain continuity. See this “rescue plan for Afghanistan” from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board for more suggestions that aren’t blindly exiting Afghanistan in a few short months: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-rescue-plan-for-afghanistan-t...
Re: Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse
#50Fall 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.
The corruption is so bad soldiers in hospitals starved to death. It's clear that in the past 30 years afganistan did not have a functioning government at all. Its not about popular support, its a failure of 'statebuilding' https://observers.france24.com/en/20200218-afghanistan-corru...
Most of the Afghan government just pocketed as much money as possible and stashed in (and their families) in Dubai:
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-11-04/the...