Posted on 08/23/2021 8:46:36 AM PDT by Wuli
Current and former political, military and intelligence officials are trying to pin responsibility for the catastrophe in Afghanistan on everyone but themselves. Some say what happened was inevitable. One retired senior military commander said we should have built the Afghan security forces to look more like the Taliban. President Biden blamed the Afghans as well as his predecessor. Such statements are infuriating.
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The fall of Afghanistan is, more than anything else, the result of U.S. political-military arrogance and incompetence at the senior levels over the past 20 years. Blaming the Afghans and claiming that only a political solution could bring peace are smoke screens.
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The Afghan failure is the result of a fundamental design flaw in U.S. Afghan policy that shaped the government in Kabul
It was clear by 2005 that the U.S. approach wasn’t working. But rather than adjust, every administration either ignored the evidence or reinforced failure. The military continued to rotate units into the country as if Afghanistan were an extension of its National Training Centers. When “winning” was eliminated from America’s political-military list of acceptable terms, leaders focused on getting out with a veneer of honor.
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If there is a diplomatic don’t-do checklist, the U.S. did everything on it. American diplomacy reinforced the Taliban’s claim that Afghan government was a “puppet regime.” This dishonors the sacrifice of Americans and Afghans who fought for decades for a better Afghanistan. The Biden administration gave the Taliban the final green light in its announcement of its unconditional exit and the ending of meaningful combat support, with enough time for the Taliban to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
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(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The basic flaw as believing we could drag them out of the 7th century.
We should never have set one boot on the ground there.
The analysis didn’t mention that we were trying to impose 21st Century decadent wokesterism on a 7th Century tribal country. That was never going to work.
All we really needed was a few hundred reliable recruited spies.
The basic flaw is that the political leadership of this country since the 1990s has been comprised almost entirely of retarded, draft-dodging baboons.
The Afghan soldiers had zero food, zero bullets, and zero money. They were cut off from the ability to be alive. What exactly were they supposed to do? Also after the USA military left, there was zero air support and zero information on what was going on.
Bus was putatively a Republican and decided we could build a nation there.
The Basic Flaw in U.S. Afghan Strategy
The basic flaw is joe the resident and his band of groupies.
Bush was putatively a Republican and decided we could build a nation there.
Every male willing to leave his wife and children behind should be detained.
While the women and children are rescued.
The flaw was inherent in the arrogant, progressive, bureaucratic and careerist bubble-think of Washington DC planners.
“The Afghan soldiers had zero food, zero bullets, and zero money. They were cut off from the ability to be alive. What exactly were they supposed to do? Also after the USA military left, there was zero air support and zero information on what was going on.”
Just for the record, I don’t believe it was the US that cut them off (as happened in Vietnam in 1975, with Biden’s help), but that nothing is reaching the lines as it’s all being skimmed from above.
After this disaster we need to rethink how the USA fights wars.
The big problem is we invade these places, and make clear our presence is temporary. We need to put down roots.
The Roman and British Empires were not constantly rotating troops on 6 month deployments. They sent ambitious citizens eager for wealth and land, and put them in charge with the intention that they stay permanently in the occupied territory.
No, this analysis goes along with the fiction that we were looking to win—and therefore have to end—the war. The military-industrial complex hasn’t fought to win since the 1940s.
There’s a strategy? Must have missed that one.
We beat the Taliban by giving support to the tribal structure that already existed, money, air support, intel, and a handful of special forces guys to coordinate it all. Somewhere in there was the key to keeping the Talibs out long term.
In my opinion, our biggest problem was precisely that we did NOT want to engage in “nation building.” The Romans did, and they wanted to build a nation that they dominated and that was in the long run another part of the Empire.
They imposed their way of doing things, their laws, their culture and built their nation.
It’s fashionable to carp about “nation building,” but the truth is that we didn’t really do it and didn’t try. Once the US, under Bush, let Iraq enshrine Islam in its constitution and use Islamic law, I knew it was all over.
The same is true of Afghanistan, but much more so, because Iraq actually had had a sort of secular Westernized government (Saddam, awful though he may have been) and they had some of the concepts although Islamic law got in the way. But if we had just come in, taken it over, and set it up our way, it would have been a stable point in the ME for years.
And actually, I think that’s what the people of the country thought and hoped we would do.
The basic flaw is the failure to understand the limits of what can be achieved with military force. The original goal- punish the Taliban and make them miserable in retaliation for 9/11 was achievable and was achieved. Imposing liberal democracy by JDAM was not. We should done the former and gotten out. Fixing Afghanistan was not our problem, but we made it ours.
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