Posted on 08/15/2021 5:13:15 PM PDT by White Lives Matter
How wrong this assessment was is now clear for everyone to see. A week ago, the U.S. said Afghanistan could withstand the Taliban for 90 days. Today, the (70,000-strong) Taliban is in control of the capital, the much-vaunted Afghan army has disintegrated, and tens of thousands of Afghans – whose collective force could stop the Taliban, if only it had the organization to do so – are fleeing to any place and by any means they can.
Conventionally, the United States did everything right; it installed a government, equipped and trained an army with four times the Taliban’s manpower, an air force, and top of the line American military materiel, and even now is apparently flying sorties against Taliban targets. Yet everywhere the Taliban is in control, and they did so, in many places, apparently without firing a shot.
So what the hell happened?
I’m a tech guy, not a military guy. And in terms of the kind of tech I’m into it’s that weird decentralized crypto tech like Bitcoin, not SaaS.
I do know enough about the war to know that when the Taliban went toe to toe with American and NATO soldiers, the Taliban got its ass kicked basically every single time. No air force, no navy, and no artillery meant that whenever the Taliban revealed themselves on the battlefield they were guaranteed to be cut to pieces by various pieces of intimidating American hardware like A-10 Warthogs or 50-caliber rifles.
It appears the Taliban tried something different this time around. Open source reporting shows that rather than rocking up and going toe to toe with the Afghan national army, they appear to have simply called everyone in the entire country, instead, told them they were in control, and began assuming the functions of government as they went:
(Excerpt) Read more at prestonbyrne.com ...
There was 1 for sure and possibly 2 episodes (memory is not real sure on the number) like that on the old TV show The Saint. They bluffed that the good guys had taken the country and met no resistance whatsoever. 🙂
The one I can be sure of happened in the Middle East, and the other one happened in South America, if my memory on that one is accurate. 🙂
called everyone in the entire country, instead, told them they were in control, and began assuming the functions of government as they went:
/\
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Sounds familiar.
called everyone in the entire country, instead, told them they won, and began assuming the functions of government as they went:
WhatsApp has unique benefits in the fight against the Taliban, who also rely on the app to update their superiors and check in with their fighters. The battle has become a war of small, quick tactical gains — a district here, a village there — and for this, the advantages of the app, they say, far outweigh the potential vulnerability.
WhatsApp is an American product. It can be switched off by its parent, Facebook, Inc, at any time and for any reason. The fact that the Taliban were able to use it at all, quite apart from the fact that they continue to use it to coordinate their activities even now as American citizens’ lives are imperiled by the Taliban advance which is being coordinated on that app, suggests that U.S. military intelligence never bothered to monitor Taliban numbers and never bothered to ask Facebook to ban them.
Incompetence ?
Or
Complicit ?
PronunciamientoLooks like Wikipedia is going to have to add Dari and Pashto translations and "Islamic nations" to their definition.
A pronunciamiento (Spanish: [pɾonunθjaˈmjento], Portuguese: pronunciamento [pɾunũsiɐˈmẽtu]; "proclamation, announcement or declaration") is a form of military rebellion or coup d'état particularly associated with Spain, Portugal and Latin America, especially in the 19th century.
Well, as they might say, when it comes to a battle of wits, Government bureaucrats are unarmed.
Not terribly different, if true, from what Lenin did in 1917. He did have to secure the capital before he issued his pronunciamento, though.
I posted an article last night that alluded to the Chinese having pow-wows with ‘pakistan taliban’ about extending diplomatic ties to the afghanistan taliban (pretty much one and the same?) around Jul 28 (not sure if the date is signif). China came out today with the old carrot/stick - “we'll build you roads, long long time!” I wouldn't put it past China to have ‘contributed’ to the firepower and or logistics of the Taliban that allowed them to sweep towns without doing much entering of towns. China knowing Beijing Biden would do zipity doo da.
my two cents to add to the equation
Exactly! The mistake, going all the way back to Bush, was to try to build Afganistan as a modern centralized liberal state. That was never going to work even if we had been there a hundred years. Afganistan is a tribal medieval society and we should have work with it as such. As the saying goes: When life deals you lemons, make lemonade.
It was easy. They used one of my strategies. Buy off the local leadership; both military and civilian. China bankrolled them.
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