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Afghanistan

Lefty Specialist Aug 16 2021 06:11 AM

Finally, a subject less painful than the Mets. So after 20 years, a gazillion dollars, and 4000 or so dead, the government folds like a cheap suit the minute we say we're leaving. Happened so fast that most likely a great deal of those who helped the US during those 20 years will be killed for their trouble. It'll once again be a hellhole for women and girls. It'll be a failed state run by warlords again and the next bin Laden is probably hiding in the hills somewhere. And so much has been wasted. The problem isn't that we got out, it's that we got out long after it made any sense to stay in.

Fman99 Aug 16 2021 07:06 AM Re: Afghanistan

The only thing surprising about it is the speed over which these events have taken place. I assumed that there'd be a 1-2 year period where the local government gradually lost its gains, as happened in the 1973-1975 time frame between the U.S pulling out of South Vietnam and the fall of Saigon. But apparently not. The tragedy is the fully barbaric treatment of women that will accompany these regime changes.

Johnny Lunchbucket Aug 16 2021 07:33 AM Re: Afghanistan

The pictures from the airport, geezus

TransMonk Aug 16 2021 08:04 AM Re: Afghanistan

Sad and inevitable. Decades of blame to go around toward several presidential administrations.

seawolf17 Aug 16 2021 10:16 AM Re: Afghanistan

=TransMonk post_id=74667 time=1629122682 user_id=71] Sad and inevitable. Decades of blame to go around toward several presidential administrations.

And all we're going to hear is a bunch of shitty, white, rich assholes pointing fingers at each other.

Edgy MD Aug 16 2021 10:31 AM Re: Afghanistan

I haven't looked. I had an idea that this is where we were going, and I couldn't. I eventually owe the victims a look, but so far, I can't. I definitely don't think it was inevitable.

TransMonk Aug 16 2021 10:51 AM Re: Afghanistan

Edgy MD wrote: I definitely don't think it was inevitable. Why not? It had a tiny chance of not being inevitable 20 years ago (Bush et al squashed that pretty quickly), but the past ten years have been just a reluctance to remove the band-aid. Trying to control Afghanistan didn't work out for the Brits or the Soviets...I'm not sure how we thought it was going to go any differently for US.

kcmets Aug 16 2021 11:26 AM Re: Afghanistan

Prez to address the nation at 3:45. BetsPoint currently has the over/under at 4:25.

batmagadanleadoff Aug 16 2021 01:05 PM Re: Afghanistan

The Washington Post was all over this story two years ago. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/ Intro: A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

Johnny Lunchbucket Aug 16 2021 01:18 PM Re: Afghanistan

I read that piece yesterday. What a wreck

MFS62 Aug 16 2021 05:29 PM Re: Afghanistan

This was doomed from the very beginning. It shouldn't have been a war, but a "search and destroy" mission, with the purpose of finding, and eliminating, those who had abetted in the attacks of 9/11. The scope slowly expanded and it seemed silly to me at the time. Saudis funded, planned and bankrolled the 9/11 attacks. To concentrate our response in Afghanistan was like having someone insult your date in a bar, and then beating the crap out of the guy the insulter hid behind. A time to leave would have been when Bin Laden was captured and killed. The US could have declared mission accomplished (NOT the George W. Bush kind) and brought the troops home. The Taliban weren't as organized or well armed as they later became and could have been controlled by the government. The movement of forces to wage a war into the country would have been a logistical problem for Combat Developments Command in 1966* (When I was there) and still was when the US decided to ramp up their forces. Russia, with their significant armed forces and sharing a common border, had problems and couldn't achieve victory in a long war. The US, thousands of miles away, with no seaport there to offload supplies, was forced to do everything by air, and was handicapped from the beginning and continued to be until the recent evacuations. Moreover, this is a religious war, and combatants through History have found those difficult, if not impossible to "win" unless the victor was prepared to either enslave or murder the losers. And the US doesn't state that as policy. So, what kind of victory did we hope to achieve? I think they still can't clearly state those objectives, but the Taliban can - to install a Caliphate in Afghanistan. And they are about to succeed. What will follow will be a tragic bloodbath. But will we learn anything? Probably not. Later * = https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a050373.pdf

Edgy MD Aug 16 2021 06:19 PM Re: Afghanistan

Edgy MD wrote: I definitely don't think it was inevitable. Why not? It had a tiny chance of not being inevitable 20 years ago (Bush et al squashed that pretty quickly), but the past ten years have been just a reluctance to remove the band-aid. Trying to control Afghanistan didn't work out for the Brits or the Soviets...I'm not sure how we thought it was going to go any differently for US. It's not always about us. Certainly, in the fullness of time, all armies fall and all military positions are ceded, so I guess in that sense, our withdrawal was as inevitable as any other circumstance that comes to pass, but I certainly don't think there was a meaningful time stamp that said a withdrawal had to happen now, under these circumstances, leaving citizens to this fate.

Lefty Specialist Aug 17 2021 09:41 AM Re: Afghanistan

We weren't going to change Afghanistan. To think we could was the height of arrogance, matched by the British and the Russians who failed before us. The very fact the government collapsed so totally in a blink of an eye tells you how pointless the last 20 years have been. The Afghans didn't want us there any more than we wanted to be there. There was no 'mission' except to train the Afghans to defend their country against the Taliban. So when crunch time came, they surrendered to the Taliban- thereby proving the wisdom of getting out before one more life was lost or billion squandered. We could easily have been there another 20 years, banging our head against the same wall and paying the price. Better to rip the band-aid off and be done with it. And remember (since Republicans don't want you to) that this withdrawal was negotiated by the Trump Administration. He even wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David for the signing, until less-crazy people prevailed. All that has been deleted hastily in their rush to blame Biden for the problem.

batmagadanleadoff Aug 17 2021 11:46 AM Re: Afghanistan

Jeez, the majority of Afghans (50% +1) support the Taliban. The Soviets, with an invading force maybe 10x the size of the Americans were sent home crawling.

DocTee Aug 18 2021 09:35 AM Re: Afghanistan

Long before the Russians and the Americans, the British were humbled here too: If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white, Remember it's ruin to run from a fight: So take open order, lie down, and sit tight, And wait for supports like a soldier. Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . . When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier. Go, go, go like a soldier, Go, go, go like a soldier, Go, go, go like a soldier, So-oldier of the Queen! from A Young British Soldier by Rudyard Kipling

Lefty Specialist Aug 19 2021 05:12 PM Re: Afghanistan

Seth Meyers with a Closer Look at Afghanistan with bonus Mets content. Yes, you heard that right. Wait for it. [YOUTUBE]DV5_2YFe5yc[/YOUTUBE]

Ceetar Aug 22 2021 06:25 PM Re: Afghanistan

I don't get why everyone's saying this was 20 years of futility and uselessness. The people that started this to get rich and powerful did so. It was a rousing success. It was a calculated part of a process to cower the American people in fear and propaganda and America first republicanism jingoism. From the bush second term, to the patriot act, to present day gassing immigrants. It's all been an extremely successful political move. sure all the lies about it didn't work out, but like, the republicans don't mean anything they say. they're not actually pro-life, small government, etc. It's all just misdirection in order to gain power and influence, which they've done.

MFS62 Aug 24 2021 05:34 AM Re: Afghanistan

Some background on what happened by someone who knows the country very well - she covered it as an NPR reporter for over 10 years. The link is to her blog, and the story is an "8 minute read". https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august Later

Lefty Specialist Aug 24 2021 05:58 AM Re: Afghanistan

Wow. That was a great read. I was wondering why the old government guys were chummier with the Taliban than would be normal in this kind of a situation. Getting their background makes that clearer now. Thanks.

metsmarathon Aug 24 2021 11:30 AM Re: Afghanistan

my god, what a long, drawn-out bedshitting this has been. seemingly at every chance to fuck up what we'd wanted to do in afghanistan, we did. up until the inevitable conclusion. i find it difficult to parse out the blame to everywhere it needs to go. biden shares some. i don't think he owns the lions share. but he's the most recent, the most recently visible, and the final fuckup. I don't know how much he truly could have done differently, but different things could have and should have been done. first and foremost, we should have anticipated to least rosy of the evacuation scenarios, and planned accordingly. we clearly did not. or maybe 20 years of lying to ourselves caught up with us when we needed to hear our own truth, and we couldn't quite imagine the clearly imaginable.

MFS62 Aug 24 2021 11:42 AM Re: Afghanistan

first and foremost, we should have anticipated to least rosy of the evacuation scenarios, and planned accordingly. we clearly did not. There is something in the military called the "6 P's". It stands for "Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance". It seems like nobody heeded those 6 P's. In project management, we learn that every plan should have a contingency plan. It is specific to the possible scenarios you can identify that could affect the plan. It also seems like nobody had one of those , either. Later

kcmets Aug 24 2021 12:15 PM Re: Afghanistan

Anyone recognize this bloke? He gets A LOT of face time on the news and is always seemingly posing and better dressed than the others. He looks particularly evil to me, not that any of them wouldn't chop my head off and shove it up my ass if I was there. [FIMG=650]https://www.thecranepool.net/images/talistar.jpg[/FIMG]

MFS62 Aug 24 2021 12:26 PM Re: Afghanistan

I could be wrong, but he looks like he could be in the right field bleachers at YS III. Later

Ceetar Aug 24 2021 01:04 PM Re: Afghanistan

I mean ENDING the war is incalculably the best option. I'm certainly not qualified to parse military strategy, but from what I've seen there weren't a lot of good options and really no one thought it would be days not months that the government collapsed. But I mean, still 90% of the blame falls on the Bush admin war criminals.

Frayed Knot Aug 24 2021 04:35 PM Re: Afghanistan

It wasn't even a military strategy failure, or certainly not only a military strategy failure. It was a political failure of those who thought that not only could a country that's had zero history of self-governance become self-governing (aka: nation building) but that those running the show had the ability to select which locals had the capabilities of doing so. Most of the money spent there wound up falling into black holes of corruption and kleptocracy and never had a prayer of accomplishing the far-fetched dreams the folks spending it imagined it might.

Lefty Specialist Aug 25 2021 05:53 AM Re: Afghanistan

Las Vegas blackjack tables are full of people who are losing but have too much invested. So they stay too long and lose too much. Nobody had the guts to get out of Afghanistan, because they all knew the aftermath would be a shitshow. So they kept throwing more chips in. Bush didn't have the guts to leave. Obama didn't have the guts, even after he got bin Laden and could have declared victory. Trump didn't have the guts, even though he railed against foreign entanglements. And even when he negotiated with the Taliban to leave, he made sure it would happen after the election. Biden was left holding the bag, and to his credit, he pushed on through. The ending was always going to be a shitshow. The next week will determine how big of a shitshow it actually is.

kcmets Aug 25 2021 06:52 AM Re: Afghanistan

Excellent nutshell.

metsmarathon Aug 25 2021 12:58 PM Re: Afghanistan

i don't necessarily think that the mission was doomed from the start, but our execution of that mission damned sure doomed it from the start. Nation-building is certainly possible, but not when you piss away all the goodwill you bring with you, nearly right off the bat. and not when you reward whoever is willing to take as fast as possible the most bags of money you wave around. certainly not when you abandon the values you're claiming to instill into the new nation. it takes planning and patience. and a lot less guns. but we were in a rush to claim victory and clearly thought we could get out as quickly as we got in. but you can't do that when you're building a nation from the ground up. you go in for the long haul, and treat it appropriately. not with quick fixes and truckloads of money, but with strategic actions and long term vision. There were good things we were doing over there, and good things we intended to do. and certainly vastly more good that we were capable of having done. which is what makes this a tragedy even moreso. that all that good will be undone, and rapidly. instead, we habitually chased quick fixes and too often used iron fists. and we entrenched the corruption and kleptocracy that would prevent popular buy-in. ultimately, and nearly from the start, we lost the integrity of our mission and abandoned our values. not only in afghanistan, but also in iraq - a different but similarly completely blundered beast.

Edgy MD Aug 25 2021 04:55 PM Re: Afghanistan

That's my nutshell.

ashie62 Aug 26 2021 12:39 PM Re: Afghanistan

Two weeks ago there should been 400 planes and an aircraft carrier available. Let the Pentagon finish this unhindered. One incompetent administration has been followed by another. It is beyond obvious.

kcmets Aug 26 2021 01:10 PM Re: Afghanistan

[BLOCKQUOTE]Senate Majority Leader Schumer: "Those responsible for attack in Kabul 'will be sought and brought to justice.'"[/BLOCKQUOTE] I swear this guy is a babbling hologram sometimes. They ain't gonna do dick.

ashie62 Aug 26 2021 04:45 PM Re: Afghanistan

Babbling hologram indeed.

kcmets Aug 28 2021 08:05 AM Re: Afghanistan

=kcmets post_id=75597 time=1630005057 user_id=53]They ain't gonna do dick.

Perhaps I stand corrected, seems we may have 'droned' one of the

ISIS-K dirt bags. Only saw quick blurb on MSNBC so far...

Ceetar Aug 28 2021 09:42 AM Re: Afghanistan

I mean we've been indiscriminately murdering Arabs in the middle east for two decades, it's kind of the whole point.

nymr83 Aug 28 2021 09:45 PM Re: Afghanistan

=Ceetar post_id=75781 time=1630165320 user_id=102] I mean we've been indiscriminately murdering Arabs in the middle east for two decades, it's kind of the whole point.

Afghans aren't Arabs.

Ceetar Aug 29 2021 10:41 AM Re: Afghanistan

=nymr83 post_id=75839 time=1630208755 user_id=54] =Ceetar post_id=75781 time=1630165320 user_id=102] I mean we've been indiscriminately murdering Arabs in the middle east for two decades, it's kind of the whole point.

Afghans aren't Arabs.


tell war criminal bush.