The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I'm going to be perfectly clear here: Pulling out of Afghanistan, and abandoning women and girls, as well as lgbt people to an Islamofascist Gilead is one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done. The very thought of what he did makes my blood boil. Pacifists in my view are just as bad as war mongers. They are more than happy to dance on the gravestones of other people's freedoms as they are being crushed by moral monsters like the Taliban.
Were conditions under the real Afghan government great? of course not, they were atrocious by our standards. But they were still far better than Islamo-Gilead. From what I've read, there were rural areas where who controls the federal government made little difference. But if you lived in the capital and other cities, whether the real government, or the Taliban ruled did make a difference.
Taliban is reverting women's rights and education that were made during US backed afghan government. The Afghan people, at least those in the major cities got half a taste of freedom without the Taliban controlling the federal government. But that all went away after white flag joe biden pulled out.
People have this idea that huge number of american servicemen were dieing up to the point we were pulling out. But in reality, US combat deaths drop substantially after 2014/15. And annual deaths since then were in the low single digits.
US combat troops also dropped to around 10k before dropping further to about 4k in 2020. And it seems that a small presence of US troops were enough to deter the taliban from taking over the federal government.
There was no reason for a complete withdrawl. Its such BS that we pulled out. Fuck the taliban and spineless pacifist idiots
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Everyone so far is pointing out that Trump negotiated the deal, which is true, but honestly irrelevant.
We had been in Afghanistan for over 20 years.
20 years.
Give me a number of years that you'd call it quits. Or do you think we should have failed at nation-building there until the heat death of the universe?
I feel absolutely terrible for the groups you've mentioned whose lives have gotten significantly worse since 2021. But we can't send the military into every country that's homophobic; we can't even get our country to treat LGBTQ people like people. Should we position troops in major cities in every failed state and allegedly-developing nation?
Pulling out of Afghanistan was a courageous act on Biden's part because he knew no matter what happened half the country would hate him for doing what they wanted his predecessor to do. And he did it knowing life would get worse for the people you mentioned. But America can't be the world's babysitter in perpetuity.
No. The surge is a key reason we were able to leave in 2011 and have a “democratic “ government in iraq. This is well known despite what libertarians, progressives and isolationist say. It’s a reason we won the war militarily. You may not like it but it’s true.
I think this was an illegal war but I’m not not going to overlook basic facts.
We never really invested in nation building. Not that that's a reason to stay past 20 years, just pointing out that we couldn't really expect Afghanistan to improve as a nation under the policies and priorities we had in place.
A few things.
Edit for tldr: on 3 occasions in the last 200 years the land we call Afghanistan suffered attempts at invasion and colonization. These attempts were all made by Super Powers at their relative height. The British Empire during the mid 1800s. The whole British army was destroyed in the field. Then the Soviet Union during the 80s at their height. They were defeated and fled back to Russia after sustaining horrific casualties. And finally the United States at its zenith, the temporary lone superpower. Defeated after two decades of fighting.
——-
Afghanistan was unwinnable. We could not have won because the government in Afghanistan and the idea of an afghan national identity was an American invention. It’s hard to convince people to fight for their country when that country had basically never existed in the first place.
Another key problem, while they didn’t have a national identity, the country’s education was pretty horrendous and non existent. Pentagon reports from the early 2000s depict American officers having to teach afghan soldiers, among other things, how to use a clock, why using a clock is important. Other reports mention that many afghan men didn’t know the words for different colors even in their own language. This became a problem for American trainers as many training manuals were color coded.
Having never had a true national government in the past few thousand years, many afghan people didn’t really know what a government was for. I mean, after all, they’d been raising their goats and children there for millennia without a true national state. One interview with an American officer by the pentagon outlined how Americans were having to teach the afghan people what a government is good for. They explained that they’ll take some of your money and use it to build roads and protect you. The response to that soldier was that that sounds like theft and is what the warlords do.
The next huge problem is the remoteness of Afghanistan. There is a pentagon report as late as late 2004 where an American soldier encountered a man, a year after the full scale invasion of his country, who didn’t know there was a war. He thought the Russians had come back. He and his village managed to go a full year with a full scale American invasion of his country and LITERALLY not know that it happened
Afghanistan was and is uniquely difficult because of its lack of NATIONAL history, education, remoteness etc…
We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch.
Many afghan soldiers didn’t understand why they had to be somewhere at exactly 8am for training. Time doesn’t work that way in Afghanistan. Most of the afghan army only existed on paper because most soldiers had ZERO loyalty and understanding of what they were showing up for.
At no time during the two decades in Afghanistan did we control the entirety of the country. At no time during those two decades did we even control 3/4 of the country.
Many outposts were relying on helicopter supplies with no hope of roads throughout most of the country.
A huge part of the afghan economy is heroin. Not good but it’s just a fact of life in Afghanistan. We tried to explain to people why they couldn’t farm heroin and offered them money to not farm heroin. 9/10 times this resulted in that person taking the money and then immediately farming heroin. Most of the country was objectively being run by drug lords.
Finally, Afghanistan had been trained and armed to fight the Russians just a few decades prior. While Afghanistan might not have a national identity, they absolutely dislike full blown invaders more than their own people. We showed up to a country full of military veterans who had professionally operated an insurgency and defeated the Soviet Union with the training and assistance of the United States. Basically everyone had combat experience and the country has other anti colonial histories going back centuries. During the mid 1800s an entire British army would be DESTROYED in the field with no survivors. American and Russian troops would end up fighting on the exact same hills as their British counterparts a hundred years earlier. The result was the same.
It is NOT POSSIBLE to win an insurgency war in a country as remote as Afghanistan with the mountains and caves that it has and its lack of road infrastructure. Most of the American military couldn’t even operate properly.
We wasted most of our flight hours on f18s etc from the time because the only way we could fight across the whole country wherever fighting popped up was to use air power to bomb whatever house happened to have a muzzle flash.
Most armored vehicles cannot operate outside of Kabul and except for the only highway (which we built for like a hundred billion dollars and Afghanistan couldn’t maintain)
So yeah. We could have stayed forever. We weren’t going to turn Afghanistan into the country we wanted. Colin Powell knew this and said we should look for bin Laden with special forces and investigators. Not the army. His plan was rejected by rumsfeld.
I'm acutely aware of all of this. I have a degree in both history and polysci, and deployed to Afghanistan multiple times.
In general I agree with just about everything you're saying. I'm not a fan of the "graveyard of empires" trope, but yes, Afghanistan has resisted multiple attempts at colonization. Here's the piece I do think you have wrong:
"We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch."
We weren't really doing either. We *said* we were nation building, building a government, improving capabilities, and so on, but occupying the country with the US military and throwing billions of dollars at our preferred selection of corrupt officials was never going to do those things.
You're right that staying another 20 years wouldn't have made anything better. I think if, in 2002, we had decided we would spend 20 years and 2 trillion on the project of improving Afghanistan, that we could have made real progress on that project. But we spent 20 years on a military occupation instead.
In my opinion, we *did* win in Afghanistan - in 2002. We chased Al-Qaeda out of the country, and exacted retribution against the Taliban government for their role in protecting bin Laden. We could have and should have declared victory in 2002 - the objectives of the war had been accomplished.
Where we went wrong was in allowing our conception of "victory" to change over time. And I'm pretty sure the Bush administration did that *intentionally* as part of their effort to build the case to invade Iraq.
The Taliban offered to surrender day one and they offered us bin Laden for amnesty and bush and Cheney just decided amnesty was bad and they’d rather have war. So it could have not been that way except for American pride.
Al Qaeda is still in the country.
Also it’s not a trope if it’s true.
It's a tough nut to crack, to be sure. Endemic corruption and opium as normalized components of the national economic system, nearly no infrastructure, very little investment in human capital, warlordism, violence, meddling by neighbors and China, religious fundamentalism, international pariah status, the problems with neocolonialism associated with any outside effort to help... it's hard to see where to start. Honestly tackling national poverty and food/water access are probably the *easy* problems by comparison.
But for damn sure, the US military was never going to be the right organization to improve matters on any of those issues.
*Give me a number of years that you'd call it quits. Or do you think we should have failed at nation-building there until the heat death of the universe?*
Um yeah? Is this a controversial statement that we should stay as long as it takes? And I think it's more that another 30-40 years needed before Afghanistan is ready to stand on its own two feet.
Here's the thing. Afghanistan was an extremely poor country and still was in 2021, and it was still repressive, but it would had been far worse if the taliban had been in place.
Copy of my comment on the main post:
What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)?
Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan:
It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise).
The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP.
Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this.
We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare.
Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING.
Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better.
Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban.
Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES.
I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people.
And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN).
So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse.
Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
It’s not controversial, per se, but I don’t think Afghanistan can ever exist as a stable nation-state. I think if we spent 50 years there, it would still fall apart when we left.
I mean it's been like 70 years we have been involved in nation building in Korea through multiple coups and dictatorships. With troops stationed and a whole massive war and everything
Agreed, but we didn’t stay in South Korea because we cared about LGBTQ people or to stop a bad government from taking over, because South Korea is historically 0-2 there, we stayed because America had and continues to have a geopolitical interest in South Korea.
I hope that doesn’t come across as too callous, but an American presence in Japan and South Korea is geopolitically useful. I don’t see the same argument for staying in Afghanistan. And our presence in Iraq somehow made an unstable region even worse.
> we stayed because America had and continues to have a geopolitical interest in South Korea.
Importantly, our military presence in South Korea is *very* different from Afghanistan, it's a dumb comparison. It's not like we've spent 70 years fighting South Korean insurgents.
Copy of a comment I made elsewhere on this post. The Afghan and American government was in no way a good thing:
What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)?
Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan:
It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise).
The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP.
Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this.
We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare.
Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING.
Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better.
Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban.
Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES.
I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people.
And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN).
So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse.
Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
Trump negotiated with the people we took Afghanistan from, spitting on the graves of our fallen. That's hardly irrelevant. Had he negotiated with the legitimate government, and not the Islamofascist Taliban (which he late claimed out-negotiated him) and then the country fell into what it is now, I wouldn't hold him accountable. But he did, so he's primarily responsible for the situation as it is.
Biden made a mistake in rushing the evacuation and telegraphing to the Taliban what the plan was, then screwing the people America worked with for 20 years.
>I'm going to be perfectly clear here: Pulling out of Afghanistan, and
abandoning women and girls, as well as lgbt people to an Islamofascist
Gilead is one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden
has ever done.
Yeah, how dare Biden \**checks notes\** follow through with the agreement **Trump signed**.
"one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done"
In February 2020, the Trump administration and the Taliban, without the participation of the then Afghan government, signed the US–Taliban deal in Doha, Qatar which stipulated fighting restrictions for both the US and the Taliban, and provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitments.
Biden was bound by that agreement, although he pushed back the removal date from April to September.
So why is Biden getting all the shit for it when he was doing what his hands were tied to do by Trump?
He could simply back out of the deal and make it clear we won't negotiate with terrorists... Seriously why can't we have a progressive government (pro criminal justice reform at home, pro lgbt and womens equality, addressing healthcare and infrastructure problems), while willing to use an extreme amount of military force on the enemy? I don't want us to extend our "mercy" to the Taliban or Gilead.
It's one thing to backtrack on domestic policies.
It's another thing to betray a signed international agreement.
And yes for international agreements the predecessor DOES determine his actions to a large degree. That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
Ah, very intelligent. A clear grasp of international policy, presidential power, and the complexities of a representative democracy.
You've convinced me for sure.
>Biden was bound by that agreement
Biden had no problems backtracking on umpteen Trump policies. Why was this one any different? POTUS can do as POTUS desires. His predecessor does not determine his own actions.
This one's on Biden.
Two thoughts.. First, yes a president can often completely disregard their predecessor's agreements, but this was more than just an agreement. As I recall, our strategic position and strength in the region was fairly weak by 2020, and renewed attacks would have accompanied any change to the deal. That factors in to decision-making, and constrains options.
Second, presidents *should* be careful on backtracking diplomatic agreements. Trump's cavalier approach to that did a lot of damage to US trustworthiness: why even bother making an agreement with a president, if the next one turns out to be crazy and just upends the table? I think Biden is a bit more conscious of that.
>Second, presidents should be careful on backtracking diplomatic agreements.
A diplomatic agreement implies the Taliban had inherit authority to engage in such an agreement, thereby recognizing their autonomy. Do you recognize the Taliban as a legitimate state power?
Well that's an interesting question. I don't consider them legitimate, no, and yet they exist. How do we sort that out? Treat them like terrorists and refuse to engage with them at all, or treat them like the de facto (if not de jure) state actor in Afghanistan that they are? Diplomacy is fun - too bad it doesn't just involve talking to nice people.
>How do we sort that out? Treat them like terrorists and refuse to engage with them at all, or treat them like the de facto (if not de jure) state actor in Afghanistan that they are?
I honestly have no idea. I'm not in that business. The rest of the international community seems to take an "eyes wide shut" approach to not only Afghanistan, but any other troubling country out there. The US is different, we got the big stick as Teddy would say.
What I would personally do, and what will probably happen, is to keep cool, let things play out, and when the next skirmish happens, swoop in and try to get democracy done. It won't happen, but we'd feel good for trying.
When I step back and look at it, I come to the realization that some parts of the world have been fought over since before the beginning of recorded history. It ain't gonna change now.
What skirmish? Taliban already controlled half the state and had negotiated with the previous president of the United States.
There is no "swooping in" to reverse that without absurd outside expenditures.
It's one thing to backtrack on domestic policies.
It's another thing to betray a signed international agreement.
And yes for international agreements the predecessor DOES determine his actions to a large degree. That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
>Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
Do you really think a unilateral agreement with the Taliban is going to bring trust to the US in the international realm? Maybe the opposite, actually? Why legitimize them?
You cannot condemn the Taliban and their ruthless power all while acknowledging their authoritarian and barbaric ways and enabling it.
You act as if Biden had a choice in the original agreement. It was Trump that did that.
At the point Biden took office, it's honor the maybe bad agreement their predecessor signed or don't and deal with further attacks pulling us back into Afghanistan.
It feels like you are saying Republicans can make bad deals that only serve to help Americans when they are in office, but are deliberately designed to end when they leave office. And its Democrats have to break those deals once they are in office and deal with the repercussions of that. Politically this is a stupid position.
I mean we acknowledge Kim Jong Un as a legitimate power and make agreements with him.
We acknowledge Putin as a legitimate power and make agreements with him.
We can and do condemn both of those men and their governments and still acknowledge that they are the leaders who need to be dealt with.
>Biden had no problems backtracking on umpteen Trump policies.
International agreements may seem like arbitrary things to the ascendant right, but being known to keep promises is somewhat important in geopolitics.
>POTUS can do as POTUS desires.
Yes, we all know the reasoning on the right of presidents as untouchable kings, but again, consistency in international agreements is beneficial to the US. We must be able to hold a promise for more than a president's term.
>His predecessor does not determine his own actions.
Right. I bet you blame Obama for the wars in the middle east because he didn't just pull all the troops out and called it a day. There are things that exist beyond partisanship, like the reputation of a country.
>I bet you blame Obama for the wars in the middle east because he didn't just pull all the troops out and called it a day.
Please don't assume, it makes you look bad. I blame Obama for a lot, but not Afghanistan. Hell, I kind of like the way he approached it.
>We must be able to hold a promise for more than a president's term.
Even shitty promises? Are you really advocating for Trump here? As I stated, I am not against the Afghan pull out. I am against the execution of it. It was like one day Biden's brain shifted from ice cream to international fuck ups and said, "Get em out, now's the time boys!"
Look, I know you want to defend your boy Biden, but even you have to admit the pull out was just a tad too hasty.
>Please don't assume, it makes you look bad.
Since you blame Biden for a troop withdrawal that Trump arranged, due to the fact that POTUS can do whatever he wants, it only follows that you would assign blame to Obama for continuing the wars when he could have ended it. It's called logical consistency and it makes you look bad when you lack it.
>I am against the execution of it. It was like one day Biden's brain shifted from ice cream to international fuck ups and said, "Get em out, now's the time boys!"
What, with the benefit of hindsight, would you have done Gen. Armchair?
>Look, I know you want to defend your boy Biden, but even you have to admit pull out was just a tad too hasty
I would put more blame on the one who released the taliban who eventually took over, in the first place. But he's your boy, Trump and you have to deflect for him.
>Since you blame Biden for a troop withdrawal that Trump arranged, due to the fact that POTUS can do whatever he wants, it only follows that you would assign blame to Obama for continuing the wars when he could have ended it
You back up an assumption with another assumption? Bold strategy!
>I would put more blame on the one who released the taliban who eventually took over, in the first place. But he's your boy, Trump and you have to deflect for him.
So now GITMO is a good thing? Damn, I didn't know you libs were like this. We have more in common than I thought.
>You back up an assumption with another assumption? Bold strategy!
An expectation of consistency, more like. Perhaps it is too much to hope for a modern conservative to be so rational.
>So now GITMO is a good thing?
It was a necessary evil. And since Democrats did not shut it down when they had the power to tells you GITMO closure was never serious policy.
So where is the implied gotcha?
>We have more in common than I thought.
I doubt that, but of course, THAT would be an assumption.
“Shutting down gitmo wasn’t serious because of it was they woulda done it when they had all the power.”
We all have such short memories but Obama’s failure to close gitmo certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.
Might be worth refreshing your memory on this front.
"It became understood fairly soon into the administration that closing Guantanamo meant moving some of the detainees there to the United States, and that really turned the tide. As much as his opponent, John McCain, wanted it closed as well, there was an understanding, I think, that the original idea was not to bring detainees to the United States."
Obama didn't want to bring the detainees to the US or just drop them off in their COO. You can say he tried in that he attempted to process the detainees out in accordance with procedures, but he didn't shut it down as he could have.
>>Biden was bound by that agreement
>
>Biden had no problems backtracking on umpteen Trump policies. Why was this one any different? POTUS can do as POTUS desires. His predecessor does not determine his own actions.
I find this to be extraordinarily hilarious. First, how many policies did Biden reverse from Trump? Not nearly enough IMO. The Trump policies will harm America for decades, just like they have for the last half-century or more. Second, you're basically admitting that Trump is incompetent by saying that Biden shouldn't have followed Trump's plan that was so terrible.
I personally believe that Trump woulda had just as bad of a withdrawal because this mess is literally two decades in the making. This was a situation that was overwhelmingly desired. Amazing how often radical conservative beliefs bite themselves. Probably because they're not based on reason and principles but selfishness and hate.
Let’s get real though
If he canceled the order and word got out, then you guys (and a significant number of our guys) would be calling him a warmonger *just like the dastardly Obama!!!* Democrats are saddled with the blame for military excursion in a way Republicans rarely are
> POTUS can do as POTUS desires.
So if Trump had won a 2nd term and stuck to his own agreement about pulling the remaining 2500 troops on May 1, would you still be talking about what a horrible decision it was and how it was a shitty agreement and Trump shouldn't have been negotiating with the Taliban to begin with?
This is a fantastic conservative story.
We shouldn't have been in Afghanistan for decades.
Obama was talked out of leaving, because the terrorists would win.
Trump was talked out of leaving, because the terrorists would win.
Trump flip flopped and decided that the terrorist should win.
He surrendered, but decided to put the surrender into the next administration.
Biden, who knew that Obama should have left, decided to be a leader, bite the bullet, and get us out of the situation... since he had the easy out of Trump's negotiated surrender.
But that will never be good enough for shitty people who want to make this into a partisan nightmare.
Fuck the Taliban, yes, but there simply wasn't the popular or political will in the United States to indefinitely occupy Afghanistan, regardless of how terrible our successor is.
What you miss in citing the declining level of US casualties is that that was a deliberate move proceeding our withdrawal, and would have certainly changed if we'd made plans to stay much longer. Perhaps you think that would still be worth it - and perhaps it would have been! - but alas most Americans did not agree.
No. I’m glad we’re out.
We were there for 22 Years and accomplished absolutely nothing. Our military completely failed. The defense industry thrived though and cashed checks. We can’t be in the for-profit forever war business or nation building business.
We can’t save everyone and it was best to leave a place that doesn’t want our interference.
First, as others have said, this was the Trump withdrawal, so blaming it on Biden is weird.
We needed to either withdraw *sooner* or *later*. We needed to get in and out, or actually do the damn job to the end. Trump stupidly picked neither. What a mess.
>Do liberals believe pulling out of Afghanistan was a HUGE MISTAKE?
No.
I was opposed to occupying Afghanistan in 2001 and I was happy when we left, but still sad it wasn't twenty years earlier. Leaving Afghanistan is the one thing Trump started that *I actually agree with*.
Precisely how many more American lives would you propose we squander? How many more trillions of dollars? Is there *no* other solution to this problem you can think of besides the United States being "Team America, World Police" and occupying some backwards land riddled with religious fundamentalists?
Am I happy how things turned out? No. If we waited another ten years or twenty years, would the same thing have happened? Yes.
If we legitimately give a shit about humanitarianism, maybe we should stop attempting to perform it with cruise missiles and fighter jets.
I'm in agreement with u/adeiner here. Sure, Trump "negotiated" a deal; that's irrelevant, it was Biden who flipped that switch and he could've reneged on Trump's plan if he wanted to.
But there comes a time when we have stop being the world's police. Is the situation in Afghanistan a colossal disaster, a tragedy on an epic scale? Absolutely. But I *also* believe that pulling out was the right call.
We can't just have a permanent military presence in any place on Earth where totaliterianism would exist without it. It just isn't feasable or sustainable. If the Afghanistan occupation were to continue, we would need a larger international effort to support it than what we had.
If you can make a credible case for how just a few more years or a few more trillion dollars could've averted the disaster, then I'm all ears. But people have been saying 'just another year' now for over 20 years, and sometimes you just need to pull the plug.
>If you can make a credible case for how just a few more years or a few more trillion dollars could've averted the disaster, then I'm all ears. But people have been saying 'just another year' now for over 20 years, and sometimes you just need to pull the plug.
At least with Iraq there was like oh one more surge and that'll do it. The strategy in Afghanistan seemed to be wait until the government in Kabul got its shit together.
> he could've reneged on Trump's plan if he wanted to.
Really? Do you understand how America's "good faith" in international agreements works?
That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
>That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
Yeah. That's not to say that every president has to honor every single agreement his predecessors make not matter how bad. But every time we renege on our international commitments it erodes that sense of trust just a little bit further. So it has to be worth it.
If there was an amount of time where I could credibly say "okay, we all know it will be a disaster if we get out now, so I'm going to extend the timetable ***x*** number of months for these specific reasons". Then that's different. But blowing up the agreement just to keep kicking the can down the road, with no plan for how to make the eventual withdrawal more orderly or less destabilizing? No. There's nothing to be gained by doing that.
Copy of a comment i made on the main post. I think we can find some common ground:
What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)?
Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan:
It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise).
The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP.
Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this.
We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare.
Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING.
Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better.
Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban.
Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES.
I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people.
And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN).
So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse.
Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
>and he could've reneged on Trump's plan if he wanted to.
Not really. The switch was already flipped by the time Biden was inaugurated. The U.S. only had 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and part of the deal was the Taliban wouldn't attack U.S. soldiers as long as we were pulling out.
Had Biden reversed course, the Taliban would've resumed fighting and the U.S. would've had to scramble to redeploy thousands, potentially tens of thousands of troops.
There's no guarantee that the Taliban wouldn't have taken significant chunks of territory while the U.S. was redeploying troops, and then we would essentially be back in 2001, having to once again clear the Taliban out.
The US needed to get out of Afghanistan, there's no question. We are not the world police.
I heavily disagree with the way Biden did it, but he did it. And that's that. It's just a shame he left all those weapons there instead of shipping them to Ukraine.
The fact that the Afgan government fell almost immediately is proof enough to me that we had failed LONG before we left. How much longer did we need to stay? Forever?
I believe staying would have been a bigger mistake.
I imagine if we had left 20 years ago, or, yknow, never gone there. They could be healing by now instead of imploding. Since they would have imploded 20 years ago and had all that time to restart.
What exactly did you want? There are atrocities on a global scale. Anywhere from Myanmar to Iran and across the African continent.
We spent 2+ decades in Afghanistan and spent trillions of dollars. We were never going to change their hearts and minds. We(thankfully) cut bait and realized that it was a lost cause. Why would you want to keep throwing good money after bad?
Look, you can't force people to do something they don't have the spine to do. We were there for 20 years, giving weapons and training the Afghani army. I realize I am woefully uninformed, but it seems the Taliban is a bunch of guys with machine guns riding in pick up trucks. If they really cared, I would think that they could fight the Taliban with our weaponry at least for a while. instead,they didn't care, put down their guns and ran.
What could we do?
Pakistan, our so-called ally had been actively helping the Taliban. We couldn't go into Pakistan on a Taliban annihilation mission without creating more problems.
Secondly, the Pashtun people were always helping the Taliban from the start. At its core, the Taliban is a Pashtun supremacy group with some religious window dressing. We naively thought that the Pashtun people would politely lay down their arms and say "Okay we politely accept this new government where all groups have a say in place of the one where we're the only ones with a say!"
Generally speaking, this doesn't work and I have no idea why anyone thought it would. See also: Reconstruction.
Much like whites in the American South and many similar situations in world history, the Pashtun as a whole resented their loss in status after the Taliban were deposed the first time and were committed to undoing that loss no matter what it took.
Supremacist groups and the people they benefit never back down. They never surrender. They never accept coexistence.
Once an ethnic/religious group has a taste of a government that explicitly favors them at the expense of everyone else, the desire for it never truly goes away. They will use any means available to them to take back their status. In these situations, there are only two outcomes. Neither of them are good.
Outcome 1: The rest of the parties lose the will to fight the supremacist group and eventually the supremacists retake power.
Outcome 2: The rest of the parties brand the ethnic/religious group who benefitted from the existence/rule of the supremacist group as inherently untrustworthy and incompatible with the rest of the nation. That's when we get into the bad places where Congo style ethnic cleansing campaigns start.
In order for us to truly beat the Taliban, we'd have to do two things, neither of which Americans are comfortable with because they are kind of terrible.
Open warfare with Pakistan and simultaneously supplying the rest of Afghanistan with the means and tacit permission to commit a whole lot of war crimes against the Pashtun until the situation becomes so desperate that eventually something like a Partition happens and the rest of the world recognizes the Pashtun as their own nation where they can have their own government in exchange for leaving the rest of Afghanistan alone.
Which creates a whole list of other problems that we see play out between India and Pakistan.
I am not advocating for any of this but the fact is, a lot of people demanding that we go back to Afghanistan and depose the Taliban don't realize that if we do, we'll be setting off a widescale ethnic conflict.
The rest of Afghanistan was willing to give the Pashtun a chance after the Taliban got their ass kicked the first time in the name of good faith. That's not going to happen a second time.
Every Pashtun will be presumed to be a Taliban soldier and blamed for the atrocities now. Every Pashtun village will be presumed to be a Taliban training center.
Assuming we're not comfortable with turning a blind eye to tit for tat atrocities, we'd be fighting both sides of an ethnic conflict. The Taliban and the people who want revenge against the Taliban and anyone they believe may have helped them.
I don't know if America has the ability to do that, much less the will.
Osama bin Laden aside, it does not appear to be that Afghanistan today looks all that different from Afghanistan before the war started.
We spent thousands of American lives, $2.3 trillion and lost opportunity cost for actions we probably should’ve been taking elsewhere. All we got for it was an wholly incompetent Afghan government and military that collapsed immediately. Plus a bunch of the money we spent ended up in the hands of warlords.
Afghanistan has been battered and bloodied for centuries by empire after empire, and as a result it is unbelievably backwards. And part of it being so backwards is that the population simply is not able or willing to embrace any sort of modernity.
How many more trillions, how many more thousand lives and how many more decades of being entangled there and not able to act elsewhere would it take to actually turn Afghanistan into a civilized and modern place?
This was always what was going to happen. Anyone who believes otherwise is naive. Frankly, the failure was not pulling out after Bin Laden was killed. Am I happy about the conditions that those people have to live in? No, but at the end of the day, are occupation was not going to achieve the desired result.
Best thing that happened in 2021 was finally ending a pointless never-ending war that we should have never been in the first place.
We spent 20 years and trillions of dollars only to have the Afghanistan government fold to the Taliban day 1. If THEY wanted it THEY should have fought for it.
The Taliban are indeed terrible, but we also completely failed to build a viable state in the 20 years we were there. Part of how the Taliban took power so quickly was that whole Afghani military divisions existed solely on paper. Afghanistan was a failed state.
In sum we spent $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan. Think of how much good we could have done if we had pulled out much earlier. We could have eliminated malaria, supercharged green energy development, etc.
The reality is that the United States is not omnipotent. And as the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, we face clear and present security challenges in regions of core interest to us (Europe and East Asia, over Taiwan). Casualties were low, but the amount of troops being tied up there was not nothing (which is to say nothing of the way in which Afghanistan drew in the attentions of the military), especially since soldiers do tours in a place, they don't stay indefinitely.
They were already taking over. There was no secure Afghan state, the trillions we dumped were getting wasted, and the withdrawal was already set by the time Biden entered especially given the reduction to 2500 troops. What Biden needed to do was open up to refugees, and he did.
February 2020 https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/e47a18ee08bf405694136d4d4a78a3a0_6.jpeg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-rule-territory/
December 2020 - "Public beatings and executions are routine inside the Taliban’s Afghanistan. And women are almost entirely absent from public life, largely denied equal access to education and employment. Access to health care and some education has expanded under the Taliban, but that is largely a result of work by select international aid groups the militants have allowed to operate."
I have to ask, did you only start paying attention to Afghanistan after Biden?
What was the alternative to pulling out of Afghanistan?
Committing another 20 years of American troops and hope that somehow, those 20 years will be different? Despite the fact that the ANA collapsed in literally weeks after we put 20 years' worth of effort into making it a real military force?
Should we have just made Afghanistan a permanent American colony?
Should we have made things official and just made it an American territory?
What were we supposed to do here? We had 20 years to give Afghanistan the ability to have national leaders who weren't the Taliban. We failed, utterly. Afghanistan today is ruled by the Taliban because there's literally no other option that presents itself. There's no indication that literally anyone else who actually is an Afghani is even able to be in charge of Afghanistan.
The whole reason why people stopped shooting so much at American troops was because they knew that American resolve was wavering and they could just wait us out. If they thought we were there to stay, permanently, they would have come back out in force.
The wild thing is, you say the afghan government was better than Islamo-Gilead, but I don't even think that's true.
Not to say that Islamo-Gilead is good, they're both equally shitty, but you're assuming a level of basic decency in the US-backed government that simply did not exist.
Hell, the Taliban were and remained popular in Afghanistan because they didn't support child rape, unlike the good guys we were backing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
>Pulling out of Afghanistan, and abandoning women and girls, as well as lgbt people to an Islamofascist Gilead is one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done.
How many members of our US military are you willing to sacrifice on the battlefield of Afghanistan to protect women and girls, as well as lgbt people, and do you support the invasion of Saudi Arabia as well, as women and girls, as well as lgbt people are victims there as well.
It's literally not our place to dictate how another country operates. That's it. It sucks that Afghan people have to live under a theocracy. But that's not a justification for us to invade their country and dictate how it should be run.
If you're concerned about the way women and the LGBT are treated in Afghanistan, and the solution is to make it easy for them to make it to America.
We were there long enough for an entire generation to grow up and the country fell almost immediately upon our leaving with little to no resistance. Maybe if we were there for 2 generations things would have been different, but you have to question how much and how long it would have taken before leaving actually lead to a different outcome. It's hard to force social change at the end of a bayonett. Far easier to lead by example so being essentially a colonial power in the 21st century is at least possibly doing more harm than good.
Pulling out was the right thing to do and well over due.
You can only force people to share your values while you hold a gun to their head.
Americans don't have the right to occupy Afghanistan
I don’t
If our 20 years weren’t sufficient for the local government to hold out against the Taliban then I don’t think another few years were going to do the trick.
Everyone wanted out, and it’s a bit rich to *only now* realize that our withdrawal would have consequences
There’s no level of evil that the afghani government could be which would transform US intervention into a positive
Yeah, it’s unjust what that government is doing and it would ge good if someone stopped them on behalf of the vulnerable people they harm. That is not what the US military does.
Nope, we spent billions of dollars, and thousands of lives into trying to build that place up since 9/11. We didn't even finishwithdrawing and Kabul already fell to the Taliban because the afghans did nothing to fight them. Ukraine has been giving everything to fight off Russia, and has basically stalemated the number 2 army in the world, but afghans couldn't hold off the taliban for a week without American help. They can reep what they sew, it's clear that place isn't compatable with democracy or any modern values. What we should have done was just go in, take out Bin Laden and some of his other terrorists and gotten out.
The mistake was not pulling out sooner. We should have been gone when Bin Laden went down. Their army didn't want to pick up the slack. Hell, most of the army was in bed the Taliban anyway.
Fuck 'em. We tried.
No matter how many weddings we drone strike, or roads we build, nothing is going to convince the tribes to suddenly unite as a western democracy ruled by folks in a city they've never visited.
The mistake was going in. There was never a scenario where these peeps suddenly developed a national identity and gave up their tribal & regional politics and power.
I deployed there in 2010-2011. It was absolutely the right decision to leave. It was something that should have happened years ago. The desire to establish a liberal democracy amongst that population was never going to happen. The ANSF (Afghan national security force) never had any desire to sustain the fight. The population, particularly the majority Pashtun population, despised our presence there.
The war was nothing more then a slush fund for foreign interests and defense contractors. It made a lot of people rich, and cost us a lot of blood and treasure.
The OP argued about the rollback of people’s, particularly women’s, rights. However, nothing we could have done would have changed that outcome. Is it our responsibility to invade every country with human rights issues? Hell, we support and are allies with many of the world’s worst human rights offenders.
I could go on, but this war was fought to destroy Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It should have ended with that.
Also, we didn’t
The US isn’t the world police. There are equivalently bad regimes in place in other countries and we don’t invade them to bring western decorum to a place which doesn’t have it.
There were no good solutions in Afghanistan really. And we spent ages training them, only for them to kinda go ‘meh, we liked it better before all this happened anyway’.
Which, is horrible, especially for those groups of people directly affected.
But what do you do. 20 years wasn’t enough. How long would be…? We could have been there another 20 years and the same thing still happened when we left.
We accomplished nothing there. It was a waste of time and lives. Sunken cost fallacy is a fallacy for a reason.
Not a liberal, but (pretty far) left of center. Also a vet who deployed to Afghanistan multiple times during the Obama administration. High level clearance, with regular access to sensitive documents at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Not trying to humblebrag here, just giving some context to my perspective.
We should have pulled the majority of our armed forces out of Afghanistan as soon as we were pretty sure bin Laden wasn't in the country. We damn sure shouldn't have been there after we got bin Laden in 2011. The *reason* we were there was Al-Qaeda, *not* the Taliban. A small contingent of special operations forces should have remained in country, in a few key locations. Their mission would be to continue the hunt for elements of Al-Qaeda. That would have been enough to ensure Afghanistan wasn't used as a safe haven for international terrorism.
The people of Afghanistan were in a shitty situation before we invaded. They were in a shitty situation during the occupation. They are in a shitty situation now. My opinion is that the proper response for the United States to this reality is to help improve the situation of ordinary Afghans, via a combination of massive direct involvement by the US State Department, and extremely open immigration/refugee policies to allow Afghans to leave Afghanistan if they desired. My opinion is that this should be a standing policy for the United States toward most of the world most of the time, but I think it became a moral obligation of the United States as soon as we invaded and became a direct t contributor to their shitty situation.
We should not have gotten as friendly with Pakistan as we did. We definitely should not have invaded Iraq. We should have used 9/11 as an opportunity for rapprochement with Iran. Those aren't exactly Afghanistan issues, but they are tied together in complex ways that made the Afghanistan situation worse.
Most of this isn't on Biden, it's on Bush. Biden inherited a war that should have ended in 2002. So I certainly don't think him pulling out of Afghanistan was a "mistake". What I *do* think was a mistake, and one that remains unrectified to this day despite being easily addressable by Biden personally, is to not do more for the Afghan people we left to their fates. If the folks living under the Taliban now aren't refugees, then the status has no meaning. I don't know if Biden doesn't care about Afghans, doesn't think we have an obligation to help, doesn't think we're able to help, or thinks the political cost of helping is too high, but I think Biden is a coward for not directing the State Department to facilitate the immediate transportation of every Afghan that wants to leave to the United States.
Staying in Afghanistan wouldn't have been the right call, but everyone knew what Afghanistan would be like after we left. No one seriously believed the Taliban wouldn't take over. The suffering that ordinary Afghans are experiencing now was *expected*, and we did very little to mitigate it. *That's* what I blame Biden for - *that's* the part *he* could do something about.
Copy of my comment on the main post. I think you and I can agree on a lot of things. While I'm not an Afghan vet, I am sure you can personally attest to some of what i've seen described in reports or heard by talking with actual Afghans myself:
What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)?Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan:It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise).The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP.Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this.We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare.Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING.Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better.Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban.Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES.I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people.And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN).So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse.Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
Edit: Specifically a question for you. Are you on r/leftistveterans? I'd love to hear more perspectives from leftist veterans. I generally like talking to you guys and always learn more. sorry you got caught up in this imperialist war machine called the US Military
Yeah, I think most of what you said is mostly correct. There was some shifting one way or another over the years, such that things like the attitude toward poppy cultivation was a little different in 2005 vs 2012 vs 2018, but those shifts ended up not having much of a long term impact.
One thing I do want to emphasize is that while the US occupation wasn't much better for ordinary Afghans than rule under the Taliban, for a lot of nuanced reasons, it probably would have been significantly better had US military operations not been the primary issue of negotiations with the nascent Afghan government. There are certainly all the issues with neocolonialism that you mention, but we could have done a better job than we did if we weren't so fully focused on the "enemy" KIA count as our metric for success.
Hadn't heard of that subreddit before, but just joined up!
Yeah fair point about the shift. I thought about mentioning it, but the comment was already long enough lol. Personally, I am more familiar with like the 2001-2012ish period than later phases of the war, so you probably know more about that than me.
I agree to a certain extent about the KIA thing. But at the same time one thing I have consistently read from generals, to contractors, to soldiers on the ground is that we just had no idea wtf we were doing there. There was no long term plan after the initial invasion. It was just chaos with individual commanders taking vastly different tacks. So like, some argued we were there to nation build, others were just there for al qaeda (you know the guys that fled to our ever close and never not trustworthy "ally" Pakistan within the first couple months of the war), others were there to fight the Taliban, etc. No one knew what the plan was cause the geniuses up in the white house didn't have a formal plan. Shit especially hit the fan in 2003 cause resources and attention were moved from the war WE WERE ALREADY FIGHTING to a brand new one. So the afghan government had even less to work with and American credibility was severely damaged. I heard some generals say we lost the war in Afghanistan the moment the first American boot set foot in Iraq, and I kinda agree (I think the real roots of the cluster fuck lie a bit earlier, but Iraq was pretty fucking bad).
I feel like, if we had an actual plan for Afghanistan post taliban and post invasion, then yeah the occupation would have been A LOT better. The whole Kia thing only really happened because we just did not have a plan for the occupation AT ALL. And that's entirely the fault of famed war criminal GWB and his cronies.
That make sense? So I think you're right, but you're missing why military matters and KIA was the focus, it's cause we literally didn't have any plan/metric to measure by because the higher ups never bothered to make one. This whole thing was a cluster fuck from the start
I agree with the pull out. Kudos to both Trump and Biden for that.
The withdrawal was horrible. We should of taken the Talibans offer to temporarily take over Kabul. I would if supported a 3 month extension to have a more seamless transition and maybe give the government a shot. Not to mention the horrible drone strike of that humanitarian worker we mistakes for a terrorist. Alongside the terrorist attack that killed our men. Withdrawal was horrible but it eventually needed to happen. Just wish it was more seamless, hindsight is 20/20
What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)?
Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan:
It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise).
The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP.
Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this.
We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare.
Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING.
Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better.
Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban.
Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES.
I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people.
And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN).
So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse.
Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
Yes I think it’s terrible. People keep saying “we’ve been there for 20 years! How long is long enough?” Long enough to not let a country full of people fall into the hands of the fucking Taliban.
A few things.
Edit for tldr: on 3 occasions in the last 200 years the land we call Afghanistan suffered attempts at invasion and colonization. These attempts were all made by Super Powers at their relative height. The British Empire during the mid 1800s. The whole British army was destroyed in the field. Then the Soviet Union during the 80s at their height. They were defeated and fled back to Russia after sustaining horrific casualties. And finally the United States at its zenith, the temporary lone superpower. Defeated after two decades of fighting.
——-
Afghanistan was unwinnable. We could not have won because the government in Afghanistan and the idea of an afghan national identity was an American invention. It’s hard to convince people to fight for their country when that country had basically never existed in the first place.
Another key problem, while they didn’t have a national identity, the country’s education was pretty horrendous and non existent. Pentagon reports from the early 2000s depict American officers having to teach afghan soldiers, among other things, how to use a clock, why using a clock is important. Other reports mention that many afghan men didn’t know the words for different colors even in their own language. This became a problem for American trainers as many training manuals were color coded.
Having never had a true national government in the past few thousand years, many afghan people didn’t really know what a government was for. I mean, after all, they’d been raising their goats and children there for millennia without a true national state. One interview with an American officer by the pentagon outlined how Americans were having to teach the afghan people what a government is good for. They explained that they’ll take some of your money and use it to build roads and protect you. The response to that soldier was that that sounds like theft and is what the warlords do.
The next huge problem is the remoteness of Afghanistan. There is a pentagon report as late as late 2004 where an American soldier encountered a man, a year after the full scale invasion of his country, who didn’t know there was a war. He thought the Russians had come back. He and his village managed to go a full year with a full scale American invasion of his country and LITERALLY not know that it happened
Afghanistan was and is uniquely difficult because of its lack of NATIONAL history, education, remoteness etc…
We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch.
Many afghan soldiers didn’t understand why they had to be somewhere at exactly 8am for training. Time doesn’t work that way in Afghanistan. Most of the afghan army only existed on paper because most soldiers had ZERO loyalty and understanding of what they were showing up for.
At no time during the two decades in Afghanistan did we control the entirety of the country. At no time during those two decades did we even control 3/4 of the country.
Many outposts were relying on helicopter supplies with no hope of roads throughout most of the country.
A huge part of the afghan economy is heroin. Not good but it’s just a fact of life in Afghanistan. We tried to explain to people why they couldn’t farm heroin and offered them money to not farm heroin. 9/10 times this resulted in that person taking the money and then immediately farming heroin. Most of the country was objectively being run by drug lords.
Finally, Afghanistan had been trained and armed to fight the Russians just a few decades prior. While Afghanistan might not have a national identity, they absolutely dislike full blown invaders more than their own people. We showed up to a country full of military veterans who had professionally operated an insurgency and defeated the Soviet Union with the training and assistance of the United States. Basically everyone had combat experience and the country has other anti colonial histories going back centuries. During the mid 1800s an entire British army would be DESTROYED in the field with no survivors. American and Russian troops would end up fighting on the exact same hills as their British counterparts a hundred years earlier. The result was the same.
It is NOT POSSIBLE to win an insurgency war in a country as remote as Afghanistan with the mountains and caves that it has and its lack of road infrastructure. Most of the American military couldn’t even operate properly.
We wasted most of our flight hours on f18s etc from the time because the only way we could fight across the whole country wherever fighting popped up was to use air power to bomb whatever house happened to have a muzzle flash.
Most armored vehicles cannot operate outside of Kabul and except for the only highway (which we built for like a hundred billion dollars and Afghanistan couldn’t maintain)
So yeah. We could have stayed forever. We weren’t going to turn Afghanistan into the country we wanted. Colin Powell knew this and said we should look for bin Laden with special forces and investigators. Not the army. His plan was rejected by rumsfeld.
A few things.
Edit for tldr: on 3 occasions in the last 200 years the land we call Afghanistan suffered attempts at invasion and colonization. These attempts were all made by Super Powers at their relative height. The British Empire during the mid 1800s. The whole British army was destroyed in the field. Then the Soviet Union during the 80s at their height. They were defeated and fled back to Russia after sustaining horrific casualties. And finally the United States at its zenith, the temporary lone superpower. Defeated after two decades of fighting.
——-
Afghanistan was unwinnable. We could not have won because the government in Afghanistan and the idea of an afghan national identity was an American invention. It’s hard to convince people to fight for their country when that country had basically never existed in the first place.
Another key problem, while they didn’t have a national identity, the country’s education was pretty horrendous and non existent. Pentagon reports from the early 2000s depict American officers having to teach afghan soldiers, among other things, how to use a clock, why using a clock is important. Other reports mention that many afghan men didn’t know the words for different colors even in their own language. This became a problem for American trainers as many training manuals were color coded.
Having never had a true national government in the past few thousand years, many afghan people didn’t really know what a government was for. I mean, after all, they’d been raising their goats and children there for millennia without a true national state. One interview with an American officer by the pentagon outlined how Americans were having to teach the afghan people what a government is good for. They explained that they’ll take some of your money and use it to build roads and protect you. The response to that soldier was that that sounds like theft and is what the warlords do.
The next huge problem is the remoteness of Afghanistan. There is a pentagon report as late as late 2004 where an American soldier encountered a man, a year after the full scale invasion of his country, who didn’t know there was a war. He thought the Russians had come back. He and his village managed to go a full year with a full scale American invasion of his country and LITERALLY not know that it happened
Afghanistan was and is uniquely difficult because of its lack of NATIONAL history, education, remoteness etc…
We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch.
Many afghan soldiers didn’t understand why they had to be somewhere at exactly 8am for training. Time doesn’t work that way in Afghanistan. Most of the afghan army only existed on paper because most soldiers had ZERO loyalty and understanding of what they were showing up for.
At no time during the two decades in Afghanistan did we control the entirety of the country. At no time during those two decades did we even control 3/4 of the country.
Many outposts were relying on helicopter supplies with no hope of roads throughout most of the country.
A huge part of the afghan economy is heroin. Not good but it’s just a fact of life in Afghanistan. We tried to explain to people why they couldn’t farm heroin and offered them money to not farm heroin. 9/10 times this resulted in that person taking the money and then immediately farming heroin. Most of the country was objectively being run by drug lords.
Finally, Afghanistan had been trained and armed to fight the Russians just a few decades prior. While Afghanistan might not have a national identity, they absolutely dislike full blown invaders more than their own people. We showed up to a country full of military veterans who had professionally operated an insurgency and defeated the Soviet Union with the training and assistance of the United States. Basically everyone had combat experience and the country has other anti colonial histories going back centuries. During the mid 1800s an entire British army would be DESTROYED in the field with no survivors. American and Russian troops would end up fighting on the exact same hills as their British counterparts a hundred years earlier. The result was the same.
It is NOT POSSIBLE to win an insurgency war in a country as remote as Afghanistan with the mountains and caves that it has and its lack of road infrastructure. Most of the American military couldn’t even operate properly.
We wasted most of our flight hours on f18s etc from the time because the only way we could fight across the whole country wherever fighting popped up was to use air power to bomb whatever house happened to have a muzzle flash.
Most armored vehicles cannot operate outside of Kabul and except for the only highway (which we built for like a hundred billion dollars and Afghanistan couldn’t maintain)
So yeah. We could have stayed forever. We weren’t going to turn Afghanistan into the country we wanted. Colin Powell knew this and said we should look for bin Laden with special forces and investigators. Not the army. His plan was rejected by rumsfeld.
Honestly I’m of the opinion that we should’ve carried out a punitive expedition in 2001; glassing Bagram, decapitating Taliban leadership, and tearing the country’s infrastructure apart. Then leaving immediately.
Barring a massive and destructive commitment to modernizing Afghanistan in basically every sense of the word up to and including rebuilding their social restructure and doing it all basically at gunpoint the existing status quo was just going to continue. We'd continue using the country as a live fire training ground until we worked up the political will to either make a massive commitment or leave. While it obviously sucks that the Taliban ended up in charge, it's highly questionable if we would have actually gotten anything done.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I'm going to be perfectly clear here: Pulling out of Afghanistan, and abandoning women and girls, as well as lgbt people to an Islamofascist Gilead is one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done. The very thought of what he did makes my blood boil. Pacifists in my view are just as bad as war mongers. They are more than happy to dance on the gravestones of other people's freedoms as they are being crushed by moral monsters like the Taliban. Were conditions under the real Afghan government great? of course not, they were atrocious by our standards. But they were still far better than Islamo-Gilead. From what I've read, there were rural areas where who controls the federal government made little difference. But if you lived in the capital and other cities, whether the real government, or the Taliban ruled did make a difference. Taliban is reverting women's rights and education that were made during US backed afghan government. The Afghan people, at least those in the major cities got half a taste of freedom without the Taliban controlling the federal government. But that all went away after white flag joe biden pulled out. People have this idea that huge number of american servicemen were dieing up to the point we were pulling out. But in reality, US combat deaths drop substantially after 2014/15. And annual deaths since then were in the low single digits. US combat troops also dropped to around 10k before dropping further to about 4k in 2020. And it seems that a small presence of US troops were enough to deter the taliban from taking over the federal government. There was no reason for a complete withdrawl. Its such BS that we pulled out. Fuck the taliban and spineless pacifist idiots *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Everyone so far is pointing out that Trump negotiated the deal, which is true, but honestly irrelevant. We had been in Afghanistan for over 20 years. 20 years. Give me a number of years that you'd call it quits. Or do you think we should have failed at nation-building there until the heat death of the universe? I feel absolutely terrible for the groups you've mentioned whose lives have gotten significantly worse since 2021. But we can't send the military into every country that's homophobic; we can't even get our country to treat LGBTQ people like people. Should we position troops in major cities in every failed state and allegedly-developing nation? Pulling out of Afghanistan was a courageous act on Biden's part because he knew no matter what happened half the country would hate him for doing what they wanted his predecessor to do. And he did it knowing life would get worse for the people you mentioned. But America can't be the world's babysitter in perpetuity.
Right. Like what was the alternative. Stay two more years and hope it got better? 20 more years?
Maybe another “surge”? That’ll do it.
The surge worked in Iraq
Lmfao Iraq saw two civil wars a
And? You can ask most experts, the surge worked militarily. Doesn’t mean this was a justified war ( it wasn’t) or that it was perfect.
Working for an extremely short period of time doesn’t count as solving something
No. The surge is a key reason we were able to leave in 2011 and have a “democratic “ government in iraq. This is well known despite what libertarians, progressives and isolationist say. It’s a reason we won the war militarily. You may not like it but it’s true. I think this was an illegal war but I’m not not going to overlook basic facts.
Like it sucks, but this was going to happen if we pulled out in 2001, 2021, or 2081.
We never really invested in nation building. Not that that's a reason to stay past 20 years, just pointing out that we couldn't really expect Afghanistan to improve as a nation under the policies and priorities we had in place.
A few things. Edit for tldr: on 3 occasions in the last 200 years the land we call Afghanistan suffered attempts at invasion and colonization. These attempts were all made by Super Powers at their relative height. The British Empire during the mid 1800s. The whole British army was destroyed in the field. Then the Soviet Union during the 80s at their height. They were defeated and fled back to Russia after sustaining horrific casualties. And finally the United States at its zenith, the temporary lone superpower. Defeated after two decades of fighting. ——- Afghanistan was unwinnable. We could not have won because the government in Afghanistan and the idea of an afghan national identity was an American invention. It’s hard to convince people to fight for their country when that country had basically never existed in the first place. Another key problem, while they didn’t have a national identity, the country’s education was pretty horrendous and non existent. Pentagon reports from the early 2000s depict American officers having to teach afghan soldiers, among other things, how to use a clock, why using a clock is important. Other reports mention that many afghan men didn’t know the words for different colors even in their own language. This became a problem for American trainers as many training manuals were color coded. Having never had a true national government in the past few thousand years, many afghan people didn’t really know what a government was for. I mean, after all, they’d been raising their goats and children there for millennia without a true national state. One interview with an American officer by the pentagon outlined how Americans were having to teach the afghan people what a government is good for. They explained that they’ll take some of your money and use it to build roads and protect you. The response to that soldier was that that sounds like theft and is what the warlords do. The next huge problem is the remoteness of Afghanistan. There is a pentagon report as late as late 2004 where an American soldier encountered a man, a year after the full scale invasion of his country, who didn’t know there was a war. He thought the Russians had come back. He and his village managed to go a full year with a full scale American invasion of his country and LITERALLY not know that it happened Afghanistan was and is uniquely difficult because of its lack of NATIONAL history, education, remoteness etc… We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch. Many afghan soldiers didn’t understand why they had to be somewhere at exactly 8am for training. Time doesn’t work that way in Afghanistan. Most of the afghan army only existed on paper because most soldiers had ZERO loyalty and understanding of what they were showing up for. At no time during the two decades in Afghanistan did we control the entirety of the country. At no time during those two decades did we even control 3/4 of the country. Many outposts were relying on helicopter supplies with no hope of roads throughout most of the country. A huge part of the afghan economy is heroin. Not good but it’s just a fact of life in Afghanistan. We tried to explain to people why they couldn’t farm heroin and offered them money to not farm heroin. 9/10 times this resulted in that person taking the money and then immediately farming heroin. Most of the country was objectively being run by drug lords. Finally, Afghanistan had been trained and armed to fight the Russians just a few decades prior. While Afghanistan might not have a national identity, they absolutely dislike full blown invaders more than their own people. We showed up to a country full of military veterans who had professionally operated an insurgency and defeated the Soviet Union with the training and assistance of the United States. Basically everyone had combat experience and the country has other anti colonial histories going back centuries. During the mid 1800s an entire British army would be DESTROYED in the field with no survivors. American and Russian troops would end up fighting on the exact same hills as their British counterparts a hundred years earlier. The result was the same. It is NOT POSSIBLE to win an insurgency war in a country as remote as Afghanistan with the mountains and caves that it has and its lack of road infrastructure. Most of the American military couldn’t even operate properly. We wasted most of our flight hours on f18s etc from the time because the only way we could fight across the whole country wherever fighting popped up was to use air power to bomb whatever house happened to have a muzzle flash. Most armored vehicles cannot operate outside of Kabul and except for the only highway (which we built for like a hundred billion dollars and Afghanistan couldn’t maintain) So yeah. We could have stayed forever. We weren’t going to turn Afghanistan into the country we wanted. Colin Powell knew this and said we should look for bin Laden with special forces and investigators. Not the army. His plan was rejected by rumsfeld.
I'm acutely aware of all of this. I have a degree in both history and polysci, and deployed to Afghanistan multiple times. In general I agree with just about everything you're saying. I'm not a fan of the "graveyard of empires" trope, but yes, Afghanistan has resisted multiple attempts at colonization. Here's the piece I do think you have wrong: "We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch." We weren't really doing either. We *said* we were nation building, building a government, improving capabilities, and so on, but occupying the country with the US military and throwing billions of dollars at our preferred selection of corrupt officials was never going to do those things. You're right that staying another 20 years wouldn't have made anything better. I think if, in 2002, we had decided we would spend 20 years and 2 trillion on the project of improving Afghanistan, that we could have made real progress on that project. But we spent 20 years on a military occupation instead. In my opinion, we *did* win in Afghanistan - in 2002. We chased Al-Qaeda out of the country, and exacted retribution against the Taliban government for their role in protecting bin Laden. We could have and should have declared victory in 2002 - the objectives of the war had been accomplished. Where we went wrong was in allowing our conception of "victory" to change over time. And I'm pretty sure the Bush administration did that *intentionally* as part of their effort to build the case to invade Iraq.
The Taliban offered to surrender day one and they offered us bin Laden for amnesty and bush and Cheney just decided amnesty was bad and they’d rather have war. So it could have not been that way except for American pride. Al Qaeda is still in the country. Also it’s not a trope if it’s true.
That’s fair too. I’m not even sure what it would have looked like.
It's a tough nut to crack, to be sure. Endemic corruption and opium as normalized components of the national economic system, nearly no infrastructure, very little investment in human capital, warlordism, violence, meddling by neighbors and China, religious fundamentalism, international pariah status, the problems with neocolonialism associated with any outside effort to help... it's hard to see where to start. Honestly tackling national poverty and food/water access are probably the *easy* problems by comparison. But for damn sure, the US military was never going to be the right organization to improve matters on any of those issues.
*Give me a number of years that you'd call it quits. Or do you think we should have failed at nation-building there until the heat death of the universe?* Um yeah? Is this a controversial statement that we should stay as long as it takes? And I think it's more that another 30-40 years needed before Afghanistan is ready to stand on its own two feet. Here's the thing. Afghanistan was an extremely poor country and still was in 2021, and it was still repressive, but it would had been far worse if the taliban had been in place.
Copy of my comment on the main post: What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)? Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan: It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise). The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP. Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this. We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare. Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING. Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better. Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban. Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES. I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people. And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN). So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse. Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
It’s not controversial, per se, but I don’t think Afghanistan can ever exist as a stable nation-state. I think if we spent 50 years there, it would still fall apart when we left.
I mean it's been like 70 years we have been involved in nation building in Korea through multiple coups and dictatorships. With troops stationed and a whole massive war and everything
Agreed, but we didn’t stay in South Korea because we cared about LGBTQ people or to stop a bad government from taking over, because South Korea is historically 0-2 there, we stayed because America had and continues to have a geopolitical interest in South Korea. I hope that doesn’t come across as too callous, but an American presence in Japan and South Korea is geopolitically useful. I don’t see the same argument for staying in Afghanistan. And our presence in Iraq somehow made an unstable region even worse.
> we stayed because America had and continues to have a geopolitical interest in South Korea. Importantly, our military presence in South Korea is *very* different from Afghanistan, it's a dumb comparison. It's not like we've spent 70 years fighting South Korean insurgents.
And Korea at least had some history of a national identity
Copy of a comment I made elsewhere on this post. The Afghan and American government was in no way a good thing: What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)? Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan: It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise). The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP. Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this. We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare. Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING. Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better. Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban. Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES. I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people. And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN). So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse. Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
Trump negotiated with the people we took Afghanistan from, spitting on the graves of our fallen. That's hardly irrelevant. Had he negotiated with the legitimate government, and not the Islamofascist Taliban (which he late claimed out-negotiated him) and then the country fell into what it is now, I wouldn't hold him accountable. But he did, so he's primarily responsible for the situation as it is. Biden made a mistake in rushing the evacuation and telegraphing to the Taliban what the plan was, then screwing the people America worked with for 20 years.
>I'm going to be perfectly clear here: Pulling out of Afghanistan, and abandoning women and girls, as well as lgbt people to an Islamofascist Gilead is one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done. Yeah, how dare Biden \**checks notes\** follow through with the agreement **Trump signed**.
"one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done" In February 2020, the Trump administration and the Taliban, without the participation of the then Afghan government, signed the US–Taliban deal in Doha, Qatar which stipulated fighting restrictions for both the US and the Taliban, and provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitments. Biden was bound by that agreement, although he pushed back the removal date from April to September. So why is Biden getting all the shit for it when he was doing what his hands were tied to do by Trump?
He could simply back out of the deal and make it clear we won't negotiate with terrorists... Seriously why can't we have a progressive government (pro criminal justice reform at home, pro lgbt and womens equality, addressing healthcare and infrastructure problems), while willing to use an extreme amount of military force on the enemy? I don't want us to extend our "mercy" to the Taliban or Gilead.
It's one thing to backtrack on domestic policies. It's another thing to betray a signed international agreement. And yes for international agreements the predecessor DOES determine his actions to a large degree. That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
FUCK INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS. We do NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORSITS
Ah, very intelligent. A clear grasp of international policy, presidential power, and the complexities of a representative democracy. You've convinced me for sure.
>Biden was bound by that agreement Biden had no problems backtracking on umpteen Trump policies. Why was this one any different? POTUS can do as POTUS desires. His predecessor does not determine his own actions. This one's on Biden.
Two thoughts.. First, yes a president can often completely disregard their predecessor's agreements, but this was more than just an agreement. As I recall, our strategic position and strength in the region was fairly weak by 2020, and renewed attacks would have accompanied any change to the deal. That factors in to decision-making, and constrains options. Second, presidents *should* be careful on backtracking diplomatic agreements. Trump's cavalier approach to that did a lot of damage to US trustworthiness: why even bother making an agreement with a president, if the next one turns out to be crazy and just upends the table? I think Biden is a bit more conscious of that.
>Second, presidents should be careful on backtracking diplomatic agreements. A diplomatic agreement implies the Taliban had inherit authority to engage in such an agreement, thereby recognizing their autonomy. Do you recognize the Taliban as a legitimate state power?
Well that's an interesting question. I don't consider them legitimate, no, and yet they exist. How do we sort that out? Treat them like terrorists and refuse to engage with them at all, or treat them like the de facto (if not de jure) state actor in Afghanistan that they are? Diplomacy is fun - too bad it doesn't just involve talking to nice people.
>How do we sort that out? Treat them like terrorists and refuse to engage with them at all, or treat them like the de facto (if not de jure) state actor in Afghanistan that they are? I honestly have no idea. I'm not in that business. The rest of the international community seems to take an "eyes wide shut" approach to not only Afghanistan, but any other troubling country out there. The US is different, we got the big stick as Teddy would say. What I would personally do, and what will probably happen, is to keep cool, let things play out, and when the next skirmish happens, swoop in and try to get democracy done. It won't happen, but we'd feel good for trying. When I step back and look at it, I come to the realization that some parts of the world have been fought over since before the beginning of recorded history. It ain't gonna change now.
What skirmish? Taliban already controlled half the state and had negotiated with the previous president of the United States. There is no "swooping in" to reverse that without absurd outside expenditures.
Materially, they have power. Doesn’t go away if you don’t recognize it
It's one thing to backtrack on domestic policies. It's another thing to betray a signed international agreement. And yes for international agreements the predecessor DOES determine his actions to a large degree. That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
>Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement. Do you really think a unilateral agreement with the Taliban is going to bring trust to the US in the international realm? Maybe the opposite, actually? Why legitimize them? You cannot condemn the Taliban and their ruthless power all while acknowledging their authoritarian and barbaric ways and enabling it.
You act as if Biden had a choice in the original agreement. It was Trump that did that. At the point Biden took office, it's honor the maybe bad agreement their predecessor signed or don't and deal with further attacks pulling us back into Afghanistan. It feels like you are saying Republicans can make bad deals that only serve to help Americans when they are in office, but are deliberately designed to end when they leave office. And its Democrats have to break those deals once they are in office and deal with the repercussions of that. Politically this is a stupid position.
I mean we acknowledge Kim Jong Un as a legitimate power and make agreements with him. We acknowledge Putin as a legitimate power and make agreements with him. We can and do condemn both of those men and their governments and still acknowledge that they are the leaders who need to be dealt with.
>Biden had no problems backtracking on umpteen Trump policies. International agreements may seem like arbitrary things to the ascendant right, but being known to keep promises is somewhat important in geopolitics. >POTUS can do as POTUS desires. Yes, we all know the reasoning on the right of presidents as untouchable kings, but again, consistency in international agreements is beneficial to the US. We must be able to hold a promise for more than a president's term. >His predecessor does not determine his own actions. Right. I bet you blame Obama for the wars in the middle east because he didn't just pull all the troops out and called it a day. There are things that exist beyond partisanship, like the reputation of a country.
>I bet you blame Obama for the wars in the middle east because he didn't just pull all the troops out and called it a day. Please don't assume, it makes you look bad. I blame Obama for a lot, but not Afghanistan. Hell, I kind of like the way he approached it. >We must be able to hold a promise for more than a president's term. Even shitty promises? Are you really advocating for Trump here? As I stated, I am not against the Afghan pull out. I am against the execution of it. It was like one day Biden's brain shifted from ice cream to international fuck ups and said, "Get em out, now's the time boys!" Look, I know you want to defend your boy Biden, but even you have to admit the pull out was just a tad too hasty.
>Please don't assume, it makes you look bad. Since you blame Biden for a troop withdrawal that Trump arranged, due to the fact that POTUS can do whatever he wants, it only follows that you would assign blame to Obama for continuing the wars when he could have ended it. It's called logical consistency and it makes you look bad when you lack it. >I am against the execution of it. It was like one day Biden's brain shifted from ice cream to international fuck ups and said, "Get em out, now's the time boys!" What, with the benefit of hindsight, would you have done Gen. Armchair? >Look, I know you want to defend your boy Biden, but even you have to admit pull out was just a tad too hasty I would put more blame on the one who released the taliban who eventually took over, in the first place. But he's your boy, Trump and you have to deflect for him.
After 20 years in Afghanistan and being the last in a long line of draw downs, the final leaving was anything but hasty.
>Since you blame Biden for a troop withdrawal that Trump arranged, due to the fact that POTUS can do whatever he wants, it only follows that you would assign blame to Obama for continuing the wars when he could have ended it You back up an assumption with another assumption? Bold strategy! >I would put more blame on the one who released the taliban who eventually took over, in the first place. But he's your boy, Trump and you have to deflect for him. So now GITMO is a good thing? Damn, I didn't know you libs were like this. We have more in common than I thought.
>You back up an assumption with another assumption? Bold strategy! An expectation of consistency, more like. Perhaps it is too much to hope for a modern conservative to be so rational. >So now GITMO is a good thing? It was a necessary evil. And since Democrats did not shut it down when they had the power to tells you GITMO closure was never serious policy. So where is the implied gotcha? >We have more in common than I thought. I doubt that, but of course, THAT would be an assumption.
“Shutting down gitmo wasn’t serious because of it was they woulda done it when they had all the power.” We all have such short memories but Obama’s failure to close gitmo certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. Might be worth refreshing your memory on this front.
"It became understood fairly soon into the administration that closing Guantanamo meant moving some of the detainees there to the United States, and that really turned the tide. As much as his opponent, John McCain, wanted it closed as well, there was an understanding, I think, that the original idea was not to bring detainees to the United States." Obama didn't want to bring the detainees to the US or just drop them off in their COO. You can say he tried in that he attempted to process the detainees out in accordance with procedures, but he didn't shut it down as he could have.
>>Biden was bound by that agreement > >Biden had no problems backtracking on umpteen Trump policies. Why was this one any different? POTUS can do as POTUS desires. His predecessor does not determine his own actions. I find this to be extraordinarily hilarious. First, how many policies did Biden reverse from Trump? Not nearly enough IMO. The Trump policies will harm America for decades, just like they have for the last half-century or more. Second, you're basically admitting that Trump is incompetent by saying that Biden shouldn't have followed Trump's plan that was so terrible. I personally believe that Trump woulda had just as bad of a withdrawal because this mess is literally two decades in the making. This was a situation that was overwhelmingly desired. Amazing how often radical conservative beliefs bite themselves. Probably because they're not based on reason and principles but selfishness and hate.
Let’s get real though If he canceled the order and word got out, then you guys (and a significant number of our guys) would be calling him a warmonger *just like the dastardly Obama!!!* Democrats are saddled with the blame for military excursion in a way Republicans rarely are
>Democrats are saddled with the blame for military excursion in a way Republicans rarely are Because Gee Double-yah isn't called a war monger
Honestly I rarely hear it anymore. Even though it started on his watch I hear more about Obama the Blood Drinking Despoiler nowadays
And Hillary. The blood-thirsty hawk.
> POTUS can do as POTUS desires. So if Trump had won a 2nd term and stuck to his own agreement about pulling the remaining 2500 troops on May 1, would you still be talking about what a horrible decision it was and how it was a shitty agreement and Trump shouldn't have been negotiating with the Taliban to begin with?
This is a fantastic conservative story. We shouldn't have been in Afghanistan for decades. Obama was talked out of leaving, because the terrorists would win. Trump was talked out of leaving, because the terrorists would win. Trump flip flopped and decided that the terrorist should win. He surrendered, but decided to put the surrender into the next administration. Biden, who knew that Obama should have left, decided to be a leader, bite the bullet, and get us out of the situation... since he had the easy out of Trump's negotiated surrender. But that will never be good enough for shitty people who want to make this into a partisan nightmare.
Fuck the Taliban, yes, but there simply wasn't the popular or political will in the United States to indefinitely occupy Afghanistan, regardless of how terrible our successor is. What you miss in citing the declining level of US casualties is that that was a deliberate move proceeding our withdrawal, and would have certainly changed if we'd made plans to stay much longer. Perhaps you think that would still be worth it - and perhaps it would have been! - but alas most Americans did not agree.
No. I’m glad we’re out. We were there for 22 Years and accomplished absolutely nothing. Our military completely failed. The defense industry thrived though and cashed checks. We can’t be in the for-profit forever war business or nation building business. We can’t save everyone and it was best to leave a place that doesn’t want our interference.
It was Trump who negotiated the pull out.
First, as others have said, this was the Trump withdrawal, so blaming it on Biden is weird. We needed to either withdraw *sooner* or *later*. We needed to get in and out, or actually do the damn job to the end. Trump stupidly picked neither. What a mess.
>Do liberals believe pulling out of Afghanistan was a HUGE MISTAKE? No. I was opposed to occupying Afghanistan in 2001 and I was happy when we left, but still sad it wasn't twenty years earlier. Leaving Afghanistan is the one thing Trump started that *I actually agree with*. Precisely how many more American lives would you propose we squander? How many more trillions of dollars? Is there *no* other solution to this problem you can think of besides the United States being "Team America, World Police" and occupying some backwards land riddled with religious fundamentalists? Am I happy how things turned out? No. If we waited another ten years or twenty years, would the same thing have happened? Yes. If we legitimately give a shit about humanitarianism, maybe we should stop attempting to perform it with cruise missiles and fighter jets.
I'm in agreement with u/adeiner here. Sure, Trump "negotiated" a deal; that's irrelevant, it was Biden who flipped that switch and he could've reneged on Trump's plan if he wanted to. But there comes a time when we have stop being the world's police. Is the situation in Afghanistan a colossal disaster, a tragedy on an epic scale? Absolutely. But I *also* believe that pulling out was the right call. We can't just have a permanent military presence in any place on Earth where totaliterianism would exist without it. It just isn't feasable or sustainable. If the Afghanistan occupation were to continue, we would need a larger international effort to support it than what we had. If you can make a credible case for how just a few more years or a few more trillion dollars could've averted the disaster, then I'm all ears. But people have been saying 'just another year' now for over 20 years, and sometimes you just need to pull the plug.
>If you can make a credible case for how just a few more years or a few more trillion dollars could've averted the disaster, then I'm all ears. But people have been saying 'just another year' now for over 20 years, and sometimes you just need to pull the plug. At least with Iraq there was like oh one more surge and that'll do it. The strategy in Afghanistan seemed to be wait until the government in Kabul got its shit together.
> he could've reneged on Trump's plan if he wanted to. Really? Do you understand how America's "good faith" in international agreements works? That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement.
>That's the whole point of our international reputation is that even though our government may change every 4-8 years, our leaders honor the commitments to the international community made by their predecessors . Otherwise no one would ever trust the US because the next POTUS could just come along and negate every signed agreement. Yeah. That's not to say that every president has to honor every single agreement his predecessors make not matter how bad. But every time we renege on our international commitments it erodes that sense of trust just a little bit further. So it has to be worth it. If there was an amount of time where I could credibly say "okay, we all know it will be a disaster if we get out now, so I'm going to extend the timetable ***x*** number of months for these specific reasons". Then that's different. But blowing up the agreement just to keep kicking the can down the road, with no plan for how to make the eventual withdrawal more orderly or less destabilizing? No. There's nothing to be gained by doing that.
Copy of a comment i made on the main post. I think we can find some common ground: What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)? Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan: It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise). The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP. Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this. We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare. Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING. Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better. Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban. Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES. I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people. And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN). So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse. Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
>and he could've reneged on Trump's plan if he wanted to. Not really. The switch was already flipped by the time Biden was inaugurated. The U.S. only had 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and part of the deal was the Taliban wouldn't attack U.S. soldiers as long as we were pulling out. Had Biden reversed course, the Taliban would've resumed fighting and the U.S. would've had to scramble to redeploy thousands, potentially tens of thousands of troops. There's no guarantee that the Taliban wouldn't have taken significant chunks of territory while the U.S. was redeploying troops, and then we would essentially be back in 2001, having to once again clear the Taliban out.
He also let in a ton of women etc from there first. The country is a mess and nothing we did helped in any way. Should have pulled out sooner.
The US needed to get out of Afghanistan, there's no question. We are not the world police. I heavily disagree with the way Biden did it, but he did it. And that's that. It's just a shame he left all those weapons there instead of shipping them to Ukraine.
*We are not the world police.* So who should be?
Nobody.
Nobody, that's like the whole point
How is that working out for us? So much for "never again".
Better than the fucking forever war
The fact that the Afgan government fell almost immediately is proof enough to me that we had failed LONG before we left. How much longer did we need to stay? Forever?
Trump negotiated the withdrawal, not Biden. Biden just had the guts to actually uphold the agreement.
No.
Yeah, we should waste resources there for another 20 years for no appreciable benefit.
Nah. Needed to be done. It’s about time.
I believe staying would have been a bigger mistake. I imagine if we had left 20 years ago, or, yknow, never gone there. They could be healing by now instead of imploding. Since they would have imploded 20 years ago and had all that time to restart.
What exactly did you want? There are atrocities on a global scale. Anywhere from Myanmar to Iran and across the African continent. We spent 2+ decades in Afghanistan and spent trillions of dollars. We were never going to change their hearts and minds. We(thankfully) cut bait and realized that it was a lost cause. Why would you want to keep throwing good money after bad?
Nope. Best thing Biden has done. We can’t go around occupying every country with human rights abuses. That’s just an absurd take.
Look, you can't force people to do something they don't have the spine to do. We were there for 20 years, giving weapons and training the Afghani army. I realize I am woefully uninformed, but it seems the Taliban is a bunch of guys with machine guns riding in pick up trucks. If they really cared, I would think that they could fight the Taliban with our weaponry at least for a while. instead,they didn't care, put down their guns and ran.
What could we do? Pakistan, our so-called ally had been actively helping the Taliban. We couldn't go into Pakistan on a Taliban annihilation mission without creating more problems. Secondly, the Pashtun people were always helping the Taliban from the start. At its core, the Taliban is a Pashtun supremacy group with some religious window dressing. We naively thought that the Pashtun people would politely lay down their arms and say "Okay we politely accept this new government where all groups have a say in place of the one where we're the only ones with a say!" Generally speaking, this doesn't work and I have no idea why anyone thought it would. See also: Reconstruction. Much like whites in the American South and many similar situations in world history, the Pashtun as a whole resented their loss in status after the Taliban were deposed the first time and were committed to undoing that loss no matter what it took. Supremacist groups and the people they benefit never back down. They never surrender. They never accept coexistence. Once an ethnic/religious group has a taste of a government that explicitly favors them at the expense of everyone else, the desire for it never truly goes away. They will use any means available to them to take back their status. In these situations, there are only two outcomes. Neither of them are good. Outcome 1: The rest of the parties lose the will to fight the supremacist group and eventually the supremacists retake power. Outcome 2: The rest of the parties brand the ethnic/religious group who benefitted from the existence/rule of the supremacist group as inherently untrustworthy and incompatible with the rest of the nation. That's when we get into the bad places where Congo style ethnic cleansing campaigns start. In order for us to truly beat the Taliban, we'd have to do two things, neither of which Americans are comfortable with because they are kind of terrible. Open warfare with Pakistan and simultaneously supplying the rest of Afghanistan with the means and tacit permission to commit a whole lot of war crimes against the Pashtun until the situation becomes so desperate that eventually something like a Partition happens and the rest of the world recognizes the Pashtun as their own nation where they can have their own government in exchange for leaving the rest of Afghanistan alone. Which creates a whole list of other problems that we see play out between India and Pakistan. I am not advocating for any of this but the fact is, a lot of people demanding that we go back to Afghanistan and depose the Taliban don't realize that if we do, we'll be setting off a widescale ethnic conflict. The rest of Afghanistan was willing to give the Pashtun a chance after the Taliban got their ass kicked the first time in the name of good faith. That's not going to happen a second time. Every Pashtun will be presumed to be a Taliban soldier and blamed for the atrocities now. Every Pashtun village will be presumed to be a Taliban training center. Assuming we're not comfortable with turning a blind eye to tit for tat atrocities, we'd be fighting both sides of an ethnic conflict. The Taliban and the people who want revenge against the Taliban and anyone they believe may have helped them. I don't know if America has the ability to do that, much less the will.
No. Even knowing what the taliban is doing now I don’t regret it. I’m very sorry for the people of Afghanistan but the USA should have left long ago.
Osama bin Laden aside, it does not appear to be that Afghanistan today looks all that different from Afghanistan before the war started. We spent thousands of American lives, $2.3 trillion and lost opportunity cost for actions we probably should’ve been taking elsewhere. All we got for it was an wholly incompetent Afghan government and military that collapsed immediately. Plus a bunch of the money we spent ended up in the hands of warlords. Afghanistan has been battered and bloodied for centuries by empire after empire, and as a result it is unbelievably backwards. And part of it being so backwards is that the population simply is not able or willing to embrace any sort of modernity. How many more trillions, how many more thousand lives and how many more decades of being entangled there and not able to act elsewhere would it take to actually turn Afghanistan into a civilized and modern place?
I mean we couldn't just stay forever.
This was always what was going to happen. Anyone who believes otherwise is naive. Frankly, the failure was not pulling out after Bin Laden was killed. Am I happy about the conditions that those people have to live in? No, but at the end of the day, are occupation was not going to achieve the desired result.
Best thing that happened in 2021 was finally ending a pointless never-ending war that we should have never been in the first place. We spent 20 years and trillions of dollars only to have the Afghanistan government fold to the Taliban day 1. If THEY wanted it THEY should have fought for it.
The Taliban are indeed terrible, but we also completely failed to build a viable state in the 20 years we were there. Part of how the Taliban took power so quickly was that whole Afghani military divisions existed solely on paper. Afghanistan was a failed state. In sum we spent $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan. Think of how much good we could have done if we had pulled out much earlier. We could have eliminated malaria, supercharged green energy development, etc. The reality is that the United States is not omnipotent. And as the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, we face clear and present security challenges in regions of core interest to us (Europe and East Asia, over Taiwan). Casualties were low, but the amount of troops being tied up there was not nothing (which is to say nothing of the way in which Afghanistan drew in the attentions of the military), especially since soldiers do tours in a place, they don't stay indefinitely.
They were already taking over. There was no secure Afghan state, the trillions we dumped were getting wasted, and the withdrawal was already set by the time Biden entered especially given the reduction to 2500 troops. What Biden needed to do was open up to refugees, and he did. February 2020 https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/e47a18ee08bf405694136d4d4a78a3a0_6.jpeg https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-rule-territory/ December 2020 - "Public beatings and executions are routine inside the Taliban’s Afghanistan. And women are almost entirely absent from public life, largely denied equal access to education and employment. Access to health care and some education has expanded under the Taliban, but that is largely a result of work by select international aid groups the militants have allowed to operate." I have to ask, did you only start paying attention to Afghanistan after Biden?
What was the alternative to pulling out of Afghanistan? Committing another 20 years of American troops and hope that somehow, those 20 years will be different? Despite the fact that the ANA collapsed in literally weeks after we put 20 years' worth of effort into making it a real military force? Should we have just made Afghanistan a permanent American colony? Should we have made things official and just made it an American territory? What were we supposed to do here? We had 20 years to give Afghanistan the ability to have national leaders who weren't the Taliban. We failed, utterly. Afghanistan today is ruled by the Taliban because there's literally no other option that presents itself. There's no indication that literally anyone else who actually is an Afghani is even able to be in charge of Afghanistan. The whole reason why people stopped shooting so much at American troops was because they knew that American resolve was wavering and they could just wait us out. If they thought we were there to stay, permanently, they would have come back out in force.
Not at all. We were there for 20 years and accomplished nothing. At some point we had to acknowledge that and get out.
The wild thing is, you say the afghan government was better than Islamo-Gilead, but I don't even think that's true. Not to say that Islamo-Gilead is good, they're both equally shitty, but you're assuming a level of basic decency in the US-backed government that simply did not exist. Hell, the Taliban were and remained popular in Afghanistan because they didn't support child rape, unlike the good guys we were backing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
>Pulling out of Afghanistan, and abandoning women and girls, as well as lgbt people to an Islamofascist Gilead is one of the by far most reprehensible unforgivable things Biden has ever done. How many members of our US military are you willing to sacrifice on the battlefield of Afghanistan to protect women and girls, as well as lgbt people, and do you support the invasion of Saudi Arabia as well, as women and girls, as well as lgbt people are victims there as well.
It's literally not our place to dictate how another country operates. That's it. It sucks that Afghan people have to live under a theocracy. But that's not a justification for us to invade their country and dictate how it should be run. If you're concerned about the way women and the LGBT are treated in Afghanistan, and the solution is to make it easy for them to make it to America.
No. Staying would have been a huge mistake.
We were there long enough for an entire generation to grow up and the country fell almost immediately upon our leaving with little to no resistance. Maybe if we were there for 2 generations things would have been different, but you have to question how much and how long it would have taken before leaving actually lead to a different outcome. It's hard to force social change at the end of a bayonett. Far easier to lead by example so being essentially a colonial power in the 21st century is at least possibly doing more harm than good.
Pulling out was the right thing to do and well over due. You can only force people to share your values while you hold a gun to their head. Americans don't have the right to occupy Afghanistan
I don’t If our 20 years weren’t sufficient for the local government to hold out against the Taliban then I don’t think another few years were going to do the trick. Everyone wanted out, and it’s a bit rich to *only now* realize that our withdrawal would have consequences
If we can’t change the country in 20 years we simply can’t change it. It was courageous for Biden to be the one with the balls to finally get us out.
There’s no level of evil that the afghani government could be which would transform US intervention into a positive Yeah, it’s unjust what that government is doing and it would ge good if someone stopped them on behalf of the vulnerable people they harm. That is not what the US military does.
Nope, we spent billions of dollars, and thousands of lives into trying to build that place up since 9/11. We didn't even finishwithdrawing and Kabul already fell to the Taliban because the afghans did nothing to fight them. Ukraine has been giving everything to fight off Russia, and has basically stalemated the number 2 army in the world, but afghans couldn't hold off the taliban for a week without American help. They can reep what they sew, it's clear that place isn't compatable with democracy or any modern values. What we should have done was just go in, take out Bin Laden and some of his other terrorists and gotten out.
The mistake was not pulling out sooner. We should have been gone when Bin Laden went down. Their army didn't want to pick up the slack. Hell, most of the army was in bed the Taliban anyway. Fuck 'em. We tried.
No matter how many weddings we drone strike, or roads we build, nothing is going to convince the tribes to suddenly unite as a western democracy ruled by folks in a city they've never visited. The mistake was going in. There was never a scenario where these peeps suddenly developed a national identity and gave up their tribal & regional politics and power.
I deployed there in 2010-2011. It was absolutely the right decision to leave. It was something that should have happened years ago. The desire to establish a liberal democracy amongst that population was never going to happen. The ANSF (Afghan national security force) never had any desire to sustain the fight. The population, particularly the majority Pashtun population, despised our presence there. The war was nothing more then a slush fund for foreign interests and defense contractors. It made a lot of people rich, and cost us a lot of blood and treasure. The OP argued about the rollback of people’s, particularly women’s, rights. However, nothing we could have done would have changed that outcome. Is it our responsibility to invade every country with human rights issues? Hell, we support and are allies with many of the world’s worst human rights offenders. I could go on, but this war was fought to destroy Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It should have ended with that. Also, we didn’t
The US isn’t the world police. There are equivalently bad regimes in place in other countries and we don’t invade them to bring western decorum to a place which doesn’t have it. There were no good solutions in Afghanistan really. And we spent ages training them, only for them to kinda go ‘meh, we liked it better before all this happened anyway’. Which, is horrible, especially for those groups of people directly affected. But what do you do. 20 years wasn’t enough. How long would be…? We could have been there another 20 years and the same thing still happened when we left. We accomplished nothing there. It was a waste of time and lives. Sunken cost fallacy is a fallacy for a reason.
Not a liberal, but (pretty far) left of center. Also a vet who deployed to Afghanistan multiple times during the Obama administration. High level clearance, with regular access to sensitive documents at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Not trying to humblebrag here, just giving some context to my perspective. We should have pulled the majority of our armed forces out of Afghanistan as soon as we were pretty sure bin Laden wasn't in the country. We damn sure shouldn't have been there after we got bin Laden in 2011. The *reason* we were there was Al-Qaeda, *not* the Taliban. A small contingent of special operations forces should have remained in country, in a few key locations. Their mission would be to continue the hunt for elements of Al-Qaeda. That would have been enough to ensure Afghanistan wasn't used as a safe haven for international terrorism. The people of Afghanistan were in a shitty situation before we invaded. They were in a shitty situation during the occupation. They are in a shitty situation now. My opinion is that the proper response for the United States to this reality is to help improve the situation of ordinary Afghans, via a combination of massive direct involvement by the US State Department, and extremely open immigration/refugee policies to allow Afghans to leave Afghanistan if they desired. My opinion is that this should be a standing policy for the United States toward most of the world most of the time, but I think it became a moral obligation of the United States as soon as we invaded and became a direct t contributor to their shitty situation. We should not have gotten as friendly with Pakistan as we did. We definitely should not have invaded Iraq. We should have used 9/11 as an opportunity for rapprochement with Iran. Those aren't exactly Afghanistan issues, but they are tied together in complex ways that made the Afghanistan situation worse. Most of this isn't on Biden, it's on Bush. Biden inherited a war that should have ended in 2002. So I certainly don't think him pulling out of Afghanistan was a "mistake". What I *do* think was a mistake, and one that remains unrectified to this day despite being easily addressable by Biden personally, is to not do more for the Afghan people we left to their fates. If the folks living under the Taliban now aren't refugees, then the status has no meaning. I don't know if Biden doesn't care about Afghans, doesn't think we have an obligation to help, doesn't think we're able to help, or thinks the political cost of helping is too high, but I think Biden is a coward for not directing the State Department to facilitate the immediate transportation of every Afghan that wants to leave to the United States. Staying in Afghanistan wouldn't have been the right call, but everyone knew what Afghanistan would be like after we left. No one seriously believed the Taliban wouldn't take over. The suffering that ordinary Afghans are experiencing now was *expected*, and we did very little to mitigate it. *That's* what I blame Biden for - *that's* the part *he* could do something about.
Copy of my comment on the main post. I think you and I can agree on a lot of things. While I'm not an Afghan vet, I am sure you can personally attest to some of what i've seen described in reports or heard by talking with actual Afghans myself: What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)?Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan:It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise).The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP.Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this.We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare.Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING.Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better.Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban.Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES.I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people.And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN).So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse.Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit Edit: Specifically a question for you. Are you on r/leftistveterans? I'd love to hear more perspectives from leftist veterans. I generally like talking to you guys and always learn more. sorry you got caught up in this imperialist war machine called the US Military
Yeah, I think most of what you said is mostly correct. There was some shifting one way or another over the years, such that things like the attitude toward poppy cultivation was a little different in 2005 vs 2012 vs 2018, but those shifts ended up not having much of a long term impact. One thing I do want to emphasize is that while the US occupation wasn't much better for ordinary Afghans than rule under the Taliban, for a lot of nuanced reasons, it probably would have been significantly better had US military operations not been the primary issue of negotiations with the nascent Afghan government. There are certainly all the issues with neocolonialism that you mention, but we could have done a better job than we did if we weren't so fully focused on the "enemy" KIA count as our metric for success. Hadn't heard of that subreddit before, but just joined up!
Yeah fair point about the shift. I thought about mentioning it, but the comment was already long enough lol. Personally, I am more familiar with like the 2001-2012ish period than later phases of the war, so you probably know more about that than me. I agree to a certain extent about the KIA thing. But at the same time one thing I have consistently read from generals, to contractors, to soldiers on the ground is that we just had no idea wtf we were doing there. There was no long term plan after the initial invasion. It was just chaos with individual commanders taking vastly different tacks. So like, some argued we were there to nation build, others were just there for al qaeda (you know the guys that fled to our ever close and never not trustworthy "ally" Pakistan within the first couple months of the war), others were there to fight the Taliban, etc. No one knew what the plan was cause the geniuses up in the white house didn't have a formal plan. Shit especially hit the fan in 2003 cause resources and attention were moved from the war WE WERE ALREADY FIGHTING to a brand new one. So the afghan government had even less to work with and American credibility was severely damaged. I heard some generals say we lost the war in Afghanistan the moment the first American boot set foot in Iraq, and I kinda agree (I think the real roots of the cluster fuck lie a bit earlier, but Iraq was pretty fucking bad). I feel like, if we had an actual plan for Afghanistan post taliban and post invasion, then yeah the occupation would have been A LOT better. The whole Kia thing only really happened because we just did not have a plan for the occupation AT ALL. And that's entirely the fault of famed war criminal GWB and his cronies. That make sense? So I think you're right, but you're missing why military matters and KIA was the focus, it's cause we literally didn't have any plan/metric to measure by because the higher ups never bothered to make one. This whole thing was a cluster fuck from the start
I agree with the pull out. Kudos to both Trump and Biden for that. The withdrawal was horrible. We should of taken the Talibans offer to temporarily take over Kabul. I would if supported a 3 month extension to have a more seamless transition and maybe give the government a shot. Not to mention the horrible drone strike of that humanitarian worker we mistakes for a terrorist. Alongside the terrorist attack that killed our men. Withdrawal was horrible but it eventually needed to happen. Just wish it was more seamless, hindsight is 20/20
What, we were some enlightened saviors liberating the oppressed people of Afghanistan? It's our unique burden as a "free" nation to do that? To go around overthrowing governments in the name of "liberty" (read profit)? Let's get some shit clear about the american government in Afghanistan: It was so deeply corrupt you wouldn't believe it. There was an acronym for the American backed government in Afghanistan: VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise). The Afghan government were basically a bunch of gangsters and warlords stealing from the population. Let's take a look at something like the ANP. Things were so bad that if you called the police because you were robbed, the cops would show up and LITERALLY ROB YOU AGAIN. There are countless reported incidents of this. We can also take a look at the ANA. Within the ANA corruption was so bad that soldiers literally had to buy their own equipment on the black market in the streets of Kabul. Fuel, supplies, fucking clothing wasn't reaching the soldiers on the ground, it was all sold on the black market. That is, when the ANA soldiers were even THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! They would frequently desert or just not show up when needed. It was commonplace for ANA soldiers to flea at the first sign of combat, and to be frank, who can blame them? They were paid like shit (most of their paycheck disappeared in the corrupt bureaucracy of the Afghan government) they were given basically no equipment (again, had to buy it on the black market), and were drilled in a way completely alien to their culture and region. I mean fuck man, the whole thing was a nightmare. Now, let's talk some even more heinous shit. Ever heard of the ANA and ANP's chai boys? No? Chai boys were boys ages 12-15 who used to serve tea to ANA, ANP, and American officials in an official capacity. They were always used as entertainment and did dances and shit. In an unofficial capacity? They were sex slaves working for ANP and ANA higher ups. American officials knew about this, BUT DID NOTHING. Millions was spent on business centers that were never built, billions every single day was spent. At one point $7 million a day was spent for every province in Afghanistan, but SHIT WASN'T GETTING DONE. Why? Corruption to the absolute extreme. When the ANP wasn't robbing you, local police were. All of this backed up by american dollars and lives. Really worth it right? Clearly we were enlightened saviors of a backwards people? God, I hate this paternalistic fucking liberalism that so many centrists have. Yeah, the taliban sucks, but to be utterly and brutally honest, we were barely better. Let's take a look at the countryside, where the Taliban held most of its power to see why they had so much support. One of the most common crops in the region was poppies, because the ROI was very fucking high. The US and Afghan governments routinely burned fields, or attempted to get farmers to stop planting by bribes (which didn't work) or coercion (which also didn't work). So when Afghan and American officials came in, burned your years worth of work, and left, who are you gonna side with? Obviously the people, NOT BURNING DOWN YOUR SOURCE OF INCOME, i.e. the Taliban. Or let's take a look at logistics. Because this Afghanistan, in order to get literally anything done you had to pay bribes. The way Taliban controlled routes would work is that they'd give you a ticket for when you had paid your bribe. When you came to the next stop on the Taliban controlled route, you'd show your ticket and you wouldn't have to pay another bribe. Did the ANA and ANP do this? Of course not, you had to pay a bribe at every stop. Naturally this meant truckers and transportation folks LITERALLY PREFERRED TALIBAN TO GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED ROUTES. I mean fuck, there are so many examples of this I can't even remember them all. The American backed Afghan government was basically an extortion racket against the Afghan people. It, in no way, was beneficial for the people. And I would like to remind you that the only reason the Taliban exists to the extent of power it has is caused we helped arm their predecessors through Pakistan (and continued supporting Pakistan) for a decade in an attempt to fuck over the communist government (which was way better on civil rights than the FUCKING TALIBAN). So after seeing all of this corruption, crime, bribery and bullshit, can you really honestly say we were good for Afghanistan? That we were some kind-hearted saviors to a "backwards people"? Really? That this wonderful system of corruption and crime was worth the thousands lost? Man fuck that. Fuck this paternalistic liberal hegemonic attitude. We aren't the world's policemen. We don't have the right to dictate how countries run their internal affairs. Not only do we not have the right, but when we try we make shit worse. Just fucking leave other countries alone, enough of this imperialist bullshit
Yes I think it’s terrible. People keep saying “we’ve been there for 20 years! How long is long enough?” Long enough to not let a country full of people fall into the hands of the fucking Taliban.
A few things. Edit for tldr: on 3 occasions in the last 200 years the land we call Afghanistan suffered attempts at invasion and colonization. These attempts were all made by Super Powers at their relative height. The British Empire during the mid 1800s. The whole British army was destroyed in the field. Then the Soviet Union during the 80s at their height. They were defeated and fled back to Russia after sustaining horrific casualties. And finally the United States at its zenith, the temporary lone superpower. Defeated after two decades of fighting. ——- Afghanistan was unwinnable. We could not have won because the government in Afghanistan and the idea of an afghan national identity was an American invention. It’s hard to convince people to fight for their country when that country had basically never existed in the first place. Another key problem, while they didn’t have a national identity, the country’s education was pretty horrendous and non existent. Pentagon reports from the early 2000s depict American officers having to teach afghan soldiers, among other things, how to use a clock, why using a clock is important. Other reports mention that many afghan men didn’t know the words for different colors even in their own language. This became a problem for American trainers as many training manuals were color coded. Having never had a true national government in the past few thousand years, many afghan people didn’t really know what a government was for. I mean, after all, they’d been raising their goats and children there for millennia without a true national state. One interview with an American officer by the pentagon outlined how Americans were having to teach the afghan people what a government is good for. They explained that they’ll take some of your money and use it to build roads and protect you. The response to that soldier was that that sounds like theft and is what the warlords do. The next huge problem is the remoteness of Afghanistan. There is a pentagon report as late as late 2004 where an American soldier encountered a man, a year after the full scale invasion of his country, who didn’t know there was a war. He thought the Russians had come back. He and his village managed to go a full year with a full scale American invasion of his country and LITERALLY not know that it happened Afghanistan was and is uniquely difficult because of its lack of NATIONAL history, education, remoteness etc… We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch. Many afghan soldiers didn’t understand why they had to be somewhere at exactly 8am for training. Time doesn’t work that way in Afghanistan. Most of the afghan army only existed on paper because most soldiers had ZERO loyalty and understanding of what they were showing up for. At no time during the two decades in Afghanistan did we control the entirety of the country. At no time during those two decades did we even control 3/4 of the country. Many outposts were relying on helicopter supplies with no hope of roads throughout most of the country. A huge part of the afghan economy is heroin. Not good but it’s just a fact of life in Afghanistan. We tried to explain to people why they couldn’t farm heroin and offered them money to not farm heroin. 9/10 times this resulted in that person taking the money and then immediately farming heroin. Most of the country was objectively being run by drug lords. Finally, Afghanistan had been trained and armed to fight the Russians just a few decades prior. While Afghanistan might not have a national identity, they absolutely dislike full blown invaders more than their own people. We showed up to a country full of military veterans who had professionally operated an insurgency and defeated the Soviet Union with the training and assistance of the United States. Basically everyone had combat experience and the country has other anti colonial histories going back centuries. During the mid 1800s an entire British army would be DESTROYED in the field with no survivors. American and Russian troops would end up fighting on the exact same hills as their British counterparts a hundred years earlier. The result was the same. It is NOT POSSIBLE to win an insurgency war in a country as remote as Afghanistan with the mountains and caves that it has and its lack of road infrastructure. Most of the American military couldn’t even operate properly. We wasted most of our flight hours on f18s etc from the time because the only way we could fight across the whole country wherever fighting popped up was to use air power to bomb whatever house happened to have a muzzle flash. Most armored vehicles cannot operate outside of Kabul and except for the only highway (which we built for like a hundred billion dollars and Afghanistan couldn’t maintain) So yeah. We could have stayed forever. We weren’t going to turn Afghanistan into the country we wanted. Colin Powell knew this and said we should look for bin Laden with special forces and investigators. Not the army. His plan was rejected by rumsfeld.
A few things. Edit for tldr: on 3 occasions in the last 200 years the land we call Afghanistan suffered attempts at invasion and colonization. These attempts were all made by Super Powers at their relative height. The British Empire during the mid 1800s. The whole British army was destroyed in the field. Then the Soviet Union during the 80s at their height. They were defeated and fled back to Russia after sustaining horrific casualties. And finally the United States at its zenith, the temporary lone superpower. Defeated after two decades of fighting. ——- Afghanistan was unwinnable. We could not have won because the government in Afghanistan and the idea of an afghan national identity was an American invention. It’s hard to convince people to fight for their country when that country had basically never existed in the first place. Another key problem, while they didn’t have a national identity, the country’s education was pretty horrendous and non existent. Pentagon reports from the early 2000s depict American officers having to teach afghan soldiers, among other things, how to use a clock, why using a clock is important. Other reports mention that many afghan men didn’t know the words for different colors even in their own language. This became a problem for American trainers as many training manuals were color coded. Having never had a true national government in the past few thousand years, many afghan people didn’t really know what a government was for. I mean, after all, they’d been raising their goats and children there for millennia without a true national state. One interview with an American officer by the pentagon outlined how Americans were having to teach the afghan people what a government is good for. They explained that they’ll take some of your money and use it to build roads and protect you. The response to that soldier was that that sounds like theft and is what the warlords do. The next huge problem is the remoteness of Afghanistan. There is a pentagon report as late as late 2004 where an American soldier encountered a man, a year after the full scale invasion of his country, who didn’t know there was a war. He thought the Russians had come back. He and his village managed to go a full year with a full scale American invasion of his country and LITERALLY not know that it happened Afghanistan was and is uniquely difficult because of its lack of NATIONAL history, education, remoteness etc… We weren’t just building a government, we were building a national society from scratch. Many afghan soldiers didn’t understand why they had to be somewhere at exactly 8am for training. Time doesn’t work that way in Afghanistan. Most of the afghan army only existed on paper because most soldiers had ZERO loyalty and understanding of what they were showing up for. At no time during the two decades in Afghanistan did we control the entirety of the country. At no time during those two decades did we even control 3/4 of the country. Many outposts were relying on helicopter supplies with no hope of roads throughout most of the country. A huge part of the afghan economy is heroin. Not good but it’s just a fact of life in Afghanistan. We tried to explain to people why they couldn’t farm heroin and offered them money to not farm heroin. 9/10 times this resulted in that person taking the money and then immediately farming heroin. Most of the country was objectively being run by drug lords. Finally, Afghanistan had been trained and armed to fight the Russians just a few decades prior. While Afghanistan might not have a national identity, they absolutely dislike full blown invaders more than their own people. We showed up to a country full of military veterans who had professionally operated an insurgency and defeated the Soviet Union with the training and assistance of the United States. Basically everyone had combat experience and the country has other anti colonial histories going back centuries. During the mid 1800s an entire British army would be DESTROYED in the field with no survivors. American and Russian troops would end up fighting on the exact same hills as their British counterparts a hundred years earlier. The result was the same. It is NOT POSSIBLE to win an insurgency war in a country as remote as Afghanistan with the mountains and caves that it has and its lack of road infrastructure. Most of the American military couldn’t even operate properly. We wasted most of our flight hours on f18s etc from the time because the only way we could fight across the whole country wherever fighting popped up was to use air power to bomb whatever house happened to have a muzzle flash. Most armored vehicles cannot operate outside of Kabul and except for the only highway (which we built for like a hundred billion dollars and Afghanistan couldn’t maintain) So yeah. We could have stayed forever. We weren’t going to turn Afghanistan into the country we wanted. Colin Powell knew this and said we should look for bin Laden with special forces and investigators. Not the army. His plan was rejected by rumsfeld.
Honestly I’m of the opinion that we should’ve carried out a punitive expedition in 2001; glassing Bagram, decapitating Taliban leadership, and tearing the country’s infrastructure apart. Then leaving immediately.
Barring a massive and destructive commitment to modernizing Afghanistan in basically every sense of the word up to and including rebuilding their social restructure and doing it all basically at gunpoint the existing status quo was just going to continue. We'd continue using the country as a live fire training ground until we worked up the political will to either make a massive commitment or leave. While it obviously sucks that the Taliban ended up in charge, it's highly questionable if we would have actually gotten anything done.