Terrible mistake in Afghanistan.

[Chad]

Trillions of dollars.

And they say you guys can't afford universal health care...

They can always find more war money.

[colker]

The Taliban are not interested in international terrorism and their objectives are not aligned with groups such as ISIS. 40 years after the Soviets we continue to fail to understand the Pashtun.

I won´t understand any culture that forbids women to go to school. AQ found a hide out there.

[Mabouya]

The issue at the moment is not if the US and her allies handled the withdrawal poorly. That they did.

The issue is that it was a mistake to go in there in the first place, there were constant mistakes made by the US military in strategy, there were constant mistakes made by every administration leading up to the current one (and maybe some there too), constant mistakes made by members of both parties in the US Congress.

+1

I was going to say the same thing about "terrible mistakes" - the current situation is due a litany of errors made over the decades.

To suddenly start wringing your hands over the situation today in Afghanistan says more about what one feels regarding the current administration than anything else.

[bigbill]

Bill, as you well know, the US service academies teach the History of War so that the US commanders will avoid the mistakes of the past and prevent the kind of thinking that led to the French and the Maginot Line.

Yet, the US military always seems to be fighting the last war and this one was no exception.

The issue at the moment is not if the US and her allies handled the withdrawal poorly. That they did.

The issue is that it was a mistake to go in there in the first place, there were constant mistakes made by the US military in strategy, there were constant mistakes made by every administration leading up to the current one (and maybe some there too), constant mistakes made by members of both parties in the US Congress.

The Judy Woodruff interview of General McMaster, an obviously highly intelligent human, last night on the PBS Newshour was very telling in his retro/ late 50’s early 60’s use of language and rationalizations was extremely telling in how this all came to be the disaster it is. The thinking of one of the best military minds (and I would surmise his peers) was clearly a part of why there are/were no good options any more. It also shows that outsiders need to be involved in oversight rather than cheerleading. Sort of the every writer needs an editor thought.

So, it is not that the US did this withdrawal poorly; it is that the compounding errors of the preceding two decades guaranteed that no matter what option of withdrawal was taken it would be done poorly with disastrous results no matter what. There were no “good” options.

The phrase to apply to the US and her allies that comes to mind is “painted themselves into a corner”.

Edit to add this: There may be a related conversation to think about…is it that Military Academies “teach” military history instead of “educate” (from the Latin educo, educere, eductus…I lead out of) about it? In other words, because military tends to think in a command and control style does that go into their learning system in such a way that it prevents success in the very subject they are trying to pass on.

And also, if the overseers are only getting the data to help their oversight from the overseen won’t the oversight be meaningless?

What part of my post that you're quoting does your comment address? The US was maintaining peace with 2500 troops, not tens of thousands. Trump made a deal with the Taliban, but the Taliban was violating the agreement so there was no reason to honor it to the point of meeting a withdrawal deadline. I was deployed eight days after 9/11, we had the overwhelming support of Congress and the people of the US. We also had NATO. Our battle group had US, French, British, and Italian carriers, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese surface combatants, and aircraft of many nations. Our mistake was nation-building and mission creep.



To post now that the invasion was a mistake 20 years ago only means a person has an ability to predict the past in ever-increasing accuracy.

[guido]

There were a lot of people who thought the Afghan invasion and subsequent folly in Iraq were fools errands before they were undertaken.

Unfortunately too few of them were in government and too many who were in government were in the thrall of the oil companies and/or military industrial complex.

Until we reign in the flow of money to the pockets of legislators, the government will do their bidding not address the needs of the country and the world.

[Peter Polack]

...but the mistake was going in.

If you think the mistake was going IN to Afghanistan, then how do you think we should have responded to 9/11?
It's a serious question, not a rhetorical question. I'm curious as to what others think our response should have been.

[thollandpe]

If you think the mistake was going IN to Afghanistan, then how do you think we should have responded to 9/11?
It's a serious question, not a rhetorical question. I'm curious as to what others think our response should have been.

I remember how I felt on September 11, 2001. I flew a Gadsden flag. Partly because I was angry, and partly because I knew we, as a nation, would respond in anger.

And then a few days later, I read this letter that was published as an op/ed in a local newspaper. My Dad and I debated it for hours. The author made some excellent points, and in retrospect it’s not a perfect prediction but I think it has aged far better than some of the quotes from our own government on why we went in and how it was gonna go.

Bomb Afghanistan Back to the Stone Age
by Tamim Ansary
(email correspondence 9/15/01)

[Corso]

Did it have to be done in such irresponsible way towards thousands of people who colaborated w/ the US and now are running for their lives?

Colker, instead of playing armchair politician (in a situation Brazil did nothing to support the United States after 911), why don't you THANK the United States of America for sending millions of dollars and millions of doses of covid vaccines to Brazil?

You're welcome.

Yes, it was a messy-no win-situation from day one. I feel for the American (and NATO) soldiers and their families who were duty-bound to follow orders. Thousand killed and wounded.

President Biden says the "buck stops with him", but then blamed everyone else, as well as insulting the 66,000 Afgans who lost their lives fighting the Taliban. That number is climbing daily.

But yeah, I agree with you- one would assume we could have handled this better. Our current Commander in Chief is asleep at the wheel. No surprise.

[BBB]

Not that I will ever stray from being an arm-chair politician, but I imagine it must be a very heavy burden to bear when deciding whether or not to send your armed forces into harm's way.

Then overlay that burden with a horrific act of terrorism, public reaction ranging from bomb them back to the stone age to let Interpol arrest him and everything in between, some of the pressures within and without government as Guido mentions and presumably a realistic view that any military activity was going to result in a lot of people dying, then it is a very heavy burden indeed.

What should have happened? Hard question to answer.

[Saab2000]

This was guaranteed to be a shit show regardless of who would be POTUS/CIC. The previous president also planned a withdrawal and an earlier one.

Since the president isn’t personally in charge of ground logistics I would guess the responsibility for chaos lies elsewhere but it could be related to the timing of CIC orders.

I don’t think there’s any broad support in the US for keeping a US presence in Afghanistan. As mentioned, this was almost certainly a mistake at the highest levels in the emotional days and weeks after 9/11. While the place seemed to harbor terrorists it didn’t really seem to be the origin point of it. That would seem to have been elsewhere, primarily Saudi Arabia. OBL and most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi.

[ABiCi]

If you think the mistake was going IN to Afghanistan, then how do you think we should have responded to 9/11?
It's a serious question, not a rhetorical question. I'm curious as to what others think our response should have been.

Maybe accepted the Taliban's offer to hand Bin Laden over in October 2001?

[BBB]

I think some of these offers came with strings, and indeed there were offers to hand him over well ahead of 11-9, but again with strings.

Maybe they could have offered to hand him over to a neutral third party and for him to be tried in a similar manner to the way the Lockerbie bombers were tried.

The ICC was set up in mid-2002 and possibly he could have been tried there...but the US has a bit of a checkered history with this organisation (it voted against the Treaty of Rome along with China, Yemen etc for example).

[HorsCat]

Colker, instead of playing armchair politician (in a situation Brazil did nothing to support the United States after 911), why don't you THANK the United States of America for sending millions of dollars and millions of doses of covid vaccines to Brazil?

You're welcome.

Yes, it was a messy-no win-situation from day one. I feel for the American (and NATO) soldiers and their families who were duty-bound to follow orders. Thousand killed and wounded.

President Biden says the "buck stops with him", but then blamed everyone else, as well as insulting the 66,000 Afgans who lost their lives fighting the Taliban. That number is climbing daily.

But yeah, I agree with you- one would assume we could have handled this better. Our current Commander in Chief is asleep at the wheel. No surprise.

smh

[htwoopup]

What part of my post that you're quoting does your comment address? The US was maintaining peace with 2500 troops, not tens of thousands. Trump made a deal with the Taliban, but the Taliban was violating the agreement so there was no reason to honor it to the point of meeting a withdrawal deadline. I was deployed eight days after 9/11, we had the overwhelming support of Congress and the people of the US. We also had NATO. Our battle group had US, French, British, and Italian carriers, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese surface combatants, and aircraft of many nations. Our mistake was nation-building and mission creep.



To post now that the invasion was a mistake 20 years ago only means a person has an ability to predict the past in ever-increasing accuracy.

First, let me restate in case in was not clear that I am not posting about you or anyone else’s service and actions but about your bosses as a general (no pun intended) class.

This response is a little disjointed so bear with me.

At the time you were deployed, I was still going to funerals for 19 of my business associates and friends killed in the attack on my hometown.

Many in NYC and several whom I know in DC at the time were arguing for a mission against Saudi Arabia given the information that we had at the moment. Of course, this was a non-starter to the leaders of the political class as the US has never had the backbone to go after Saudi no matter how obscene their actions are.

Further, these same folks were arguing that the attack was a guérilla attack executed by 10-20 rag tag group and perhaps backed by a similar number and that we would best meet that attack with a counter attack by a carefully selected group of highly trained operatives on surgical missions.

Of course, this was rejected by the senior political class (we had a Macho Man VP, a Macho Man Sec of Defense, a Macho Man Sec of State, and a wannabe Macho Man President) and the senior warrior class as it was coming from the “suits”.

As a side note, two of my friends who argued for this surgical operation were fired at State when they refused to write the speech Powell gave at the UN about weapons of mass destruction because they said it was simply not true.

Also, note that Israel and Russia and some other nations are actually good at this type of operation. I mean even the dictator of Belarus has managed to pull this type of thing off. The US really is not very good at it historically. (Another side note is that the well researched book “The Quiet Americans” by Scott Anderson about the four guys who started the CIA is a great read).

Not only is the US not good at it, the default US position is round up the allies, deploy thousands of headcount in personnel, flotillas of warships, all kinds of missiles, aircraft occupying acres and acres of airfields and shock and awe.

I suppose that is what in your post got me on the riff…

You gave a headcount of personnel and talked about places they were deployed based on wars from more than 6 and 7 decades ago (ok, Kosovo was only a couple of years before Afghanistan starting 20 years ago).

And you said 2500 were keeping the peace which, to my understanding, is wrong. They were not keeping the peace. That was eyewash. The country had been lost due to the American military ceding the rural areas to the Taliban while putting a veneer over the optics of the urban areas. Which seems to be a recurring theme in American military history in Asia (and the Middle East).

It was so lost that the administration negotiated a troop withdrawal/ surrender with the Taliban without the involvement of the then current administration of the Afghan nation. How did we expect the Taliban to respect that government if we didn’t enough to make them involved? It didn’t matter if the Taliban lived up to it or not…the US said it was leaving to a bunch of guys who have fought for 20 years for the moment and were just acknowledged as winning…so what did anyone expect to happen, kumbaya?

So, the whole situation which is a classic American case of “might and power” Goliath once again being defeated by a smaller, more creative, more patient David comes true yet again. Hence, my edit to add about education vs teaching.

And it was a mistake know to be a mistake to a good number of folks but sometimes those in power only want to hear the advice they want to hear.

And, as I said the mistakes made by leadership of all political stripes and all senior warrior class types in their offices (perhaps compounded by rote taught as opposed to properly educated senior leadership in the field) meant that any option after 20 years (which is a generation) was going to suck.

As to those crying about the helpful Afghans left behind (and I am one of those crying) please remember that every war has that collateral damage…the Allies won WWII but what about the locals in say France who aided the Germans didn’t they have fear or if the Axis had won that war what about those who helped the Allies etc etc.

The timing of getting them out was not going to be clean by definition. And it is telling that the loudest voices about leaving them behind (both here in the US and in my other country Canada) are the same voices that are the loudest against immigration in general.

So, my apologies for the disjointed reply about far more than just your question but I had to get it off my chest.

[colker]

Colker, instead of playing armchair politician (in a situation Brazil did nothing to support the United States after 911), why don't you THANK the United States of America for sending millions of dollars and millions of doses of covid vaccines to Brazil?

You're welcome.

Yes, it was a messy-no win-situation from day one. I feel for the American (and NATO) soldiers and their families who were duty-bound to follow orders. Thousand killed and wounded.

President Biden says the "buck stops with him", but then blamed everyone else, as well as insulting the 66,000 Afgans who lost their lives fighting the Taliban. That number is climbing daily.

But yeah, I agree with you- one would assume we could have handled this better. Our current Commander in Chief is asleep at the wheel. No surprise.

Colker, instead of playing armchair politician (in a situation Brazil did nothing to support the United States after 911), why don't you THANK the United States of America for sending millions of dollars and millions of doses of covid vaccines to Brazil?

You insist on the silly notion that only americans should criticize the US: the most powerfull army in the world w/ a tradition of intervention everywhre. So.. no; i won´t thank you or anyone before criticizing a humanitarian disaster created by the US. Nor i will thank vaccines when it´s a measure that helps stop virus contamination everywhere including the US.

Armchair politician... is it anyone who is not a nationalist right winger? Btw, trumpists helped to make possible a global neofascist rise. Yes, americans supporting the widespread of fake news while routinely attacking pillars of democracy as professional journalism, inclusiveness and minority rights sure gave a bad example worldwide. Again, no thank you for that.

Trump was "talking" to the Taleban about leaving the place just like he peace talked to North Korea. Great success. BUt i digress...

[colker]

This was guaranteed to be a shit show regardless of who would be POTUS/CIC. The previous president also planned a withdrawal and an earlier one.



.. That would seem to have been elsewhere, primarily Saudi Arabia. OBL and most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi.

Pakistan. Seems the Pakistan forces had ties to AQ,

[colker]

If you think the mistake was going IN to Afghanistan, then how do you think we should have responded to 9/11?
It's a serious question, not a rhetorical question. I'm curious as to what others think our response should have been.

The US could have adopted the israeli "strike" politics: identify the militia and kill their commanders along w/ it´s support network. Seems the network was in Pakistan... they had a dubious stance on AQ w/ their army intwligence sympathethic to fundamentalism. Now, the US can´t heavy hand Pakistan as thy did on Iraq and Afhganistan, for political balance reasons.

In the end the invasion of Iraq and Afganistan demoralized the US army and that was the AQ victory!

[Scott G.]

Pakistan. Seems the Pakistan forces had ties to AQ,

The ISI, the Pakistani intelligence services provided part of the Afghan Taliban funding,
and secure refuge in Pakistan. The Pakistani civil government has little control over the ISI.
The Pakistani interest in Afghanistan is to keep India out, to avoid being surrounded
by India and an Indian aligned Afghanistan. When the US went into Afghanistan, we joined
a war already in progress with a goal that was somewhat inconvenient to our Pakistani 'Allies'.

[echappist]

The ISI, the Pakistani intelligence services provided part of the Afghan Taliban funding,
and secure refuge in Pakistan. The Pakistani civil government has little control over the ISI.
The Pakistani interest in Afghanistan is to keep India out, to avoid being surrounded
by India and an Indian aligned Afghanistan. When the US went into Afghanistan, we joined
a war already in progress with a goal that was somewhat inconvenient to our Pakistani 'Allies'.

Yeah, about those two "allies", Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

Partners of convenience at best, some serious back-stabbers at worst. The whole charade that Pakistan enacted when it was discovered that it effectively countenanced OBL's presence is something else. Not to be outdone, Pakistan then went after the people who helped to trace OBL (I really hope the U.S. took care of those who were of material help).

ETA: at least one of them is languishing.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49960979

[colker]

Yeah, about those two "allies", Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

Partners of convenience at best, some serious back-stabbers at worst. The whole charade that Pakistan enacted when it was discovered that it effectively countenanced OBL's presence is something else. Not to be outdone, Pakistan then went after the people who helped to trace OBL (I really hope the U.S. took care of those who were of material help).

ETA: at least one of them is languishing.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49960979

Pakistan is the real threat and the US cannot squash them lik it did in Iraq: Pakistan has nukes and armed forces harboring sympathies towards muslim fundamentalism.