View Full Version : ISIS and Afghan Taliban
So apparently they're blowing each other up now. (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/even-taliban-sickened-isis-savage-6237769) And Taliban spokesperson has termed it barbaric of course. the phrase about irony being so thick that you can cut it with a knife fits perfectly.
While I'm all heart for the wrongly accused ones and pretty liberal when it comes to religion, I can't help but feel a slight twinge of satisfaction about this.
Interesting questions are, what are the states directly involved going to do. Afghanistan might be happy to let them rip each other to shreds and then deal with whoever lives. I'm sure the West will have a similar outlook. Pakistan though, they're close to the Afghan Taliban, unofficially speaking, seeing as how they're mediating with them on the Afghan government's behalf ever since Ashraf Ghani took the office. However there are also fresh rumours (http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/intel-analyst-pakistan-financing-isis/) that they're funding ISIS at least for the time being.
Should be interesting to watch it unfold now, what with Mullah Omar also gone and the Taliban splintering.
As if things weren't confusing enough, you would expect Al-Quaida and the Taliban would be allies. Allas, if they weaken eachother..
Didn't the Taliban once say that ISIS were too extreme for them?
I remember Jon Stewart joked about it.
Either way I'm not surprised that ISIS is pretty much incapable of having allies, it seems that you either join them or you are an enemy.
They sure are good at making enemies, popcorn time if they piss of the Taliban.
They are already in open conflict since early June I think, which was around when I'd first read the news that they were trying to make inroads into Taliban territory.
I of the Storm
08-13-2015, 14:42
I don't think making allies is even part of ISIS' agenda. Since they declared themselves the caliphate, every muslim state who doesn't join them joyfully is ultimately an enemy.
So maybe it's popcorn time, maybe the Taliban will kind of crumble when their more fundamentalist factions switch sides.
Pretty f***ed up lately, even more so than a while ago, what with Turkey and their little war against the Kurds.
They could make it really difficult for ISIS but since they are enemies with the Kurds too, they rather not weaken them too much.
"drop the bomb, exterminate them all..." I often find myself remembering that line.
"it seems that you either join them or you are an enemy." Hmmm, remind me someone... But who?
"it seems that you either join them or you are an enemy." Hmmm, remind me someone... But who?
Hitler?
Didn't the Taliban once say that ISIS were too extreme for them?
I remember Jon Stewart joked about it.
Either way I'm not surprised that ISIS is pretty much incapable of having allies, it seems that you either join them or you are an enemy.
They've been fighting with the other Jihadist factions in Syria as well. It's interesting that they've been able to be so successful with so many enemies on all sides.
Pretty f***ed up lately, even more so than a while ago, what with Turkey and their little war against the Kurds.
They could make it really difficult for ISIS but since they are enemies with the Kurds too, they rather not weaken them too much.
The Syrian Kurds seem to be committed to establishing a democratic government and I really hope Turkey will leave the YPG alone but since they follow the same ideology as the PKK they probably won't. In fact it's been reported (but take it with a grain of salt) that Turkey has fired on the YPG while they were engaged with ISIS. The YPG also claims that three of its fighters were deported while in the middle of receiving medical treatment in Turkey and instead of being sent to the Kurdish controlled border crossing they were to deported to one controlled by Jihadists and taken prisoner.
Meanwhile Turkey has been accused of aiding ISIS by letting ISIS recruits freely cross the border into Syria and not really doing much to combat ISIS. I know the PKK are considered a terrorist organization and it's not all black and white but still I'd rather have libertarian socialists on my border than Islamic fascists. I guess Turkey disagrees.
rory_20_uk
08-19-2015, 09:17
The worst thing the West EVER did was to get directly involved in these psuedo-religious wars be that in Africa, the Middle East or Central Asia. We end us spending a fortune, everyone hates us and we get blamed for not creating a New Switzerland.
Left to their own devices they'll happily slaughter each other and even attract disaffected extremists from the West to go over as well.
Provide if anything low tech weaponry to whichever side is loosing and leave them to it. That the Taliban and ISIS are now killing each other is just another example of this which stretches over a large chunk of the countries where Islam is the dominant religion which is a religion of peace and tolerance of course.
~:smoking:
The worst thing the West EVER did was to get directly involved in these psuedo-religious wars be that in Africa, the Middle East or Central Asia. We end us spending a fortune, everyone hates us and we get blamed for not creating a New Switzerland.
Left to their own devices they'll happily slaughter each other and even attract disaffected extremists from the West to go over as well.
Provide if anything low tech weaponry to whichever side is loosing and leave them to it. That the Taliban and ISIS are now killing each other is just another example of this which stretches over a large chunk of the countries where Islam is the dominant religion which is a religion of peace and tolerance of course.
~:smoking:
Problem is that the West is already too involved to make a clean exit. If not directly through 'allies'. And some of those allies might be supporting one or the other or as it seems right now, both groups, with 'aid' they might well be getting from the West.
Shaka_Khan
07-07-2021, 05:32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IEpdY81snw
Looks like another
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB5Ysq2Mgbw
Furunculus
07-07-2021, 23:07
well done, taliban. :rolleyes:
Gotta say, the collapse in Afghanistan is happening far faster than I'd ever imagined. I've never been confident in the Afghan National Army (ANA) but their abandoning major cities like Herat and Ghazni without much of a fight is worrisome. They can't just hold Kabul and hope to win.
Terrible knowing that tomorrow morning I'll likely read about Kandahar having fallen already based on the videos I saw of ANA vehicles just barreling out of the city to flee.
Gotta say, the collapse in Afghanistan is happening far faster than I'd ever imagined. I've never been confident in the Afghan National Army (ANA) but their abandoning major cities like Herat and Ghazni without much of a fight is worrisome. They can't just hold Kabul and hope to win.
Terrible knowing that tomorrow morning I'll likely read about Kandahar having fallen already based on the videos I saw of ANA vehicles just barreling out of the city to flee.
Already taken (https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-afghanistan-taliban-26d485963b7a0d9f2107afcbc38f239a), I'm afraid. Not a fan of the warlords' kleptocracy, but Afghanistan's feature looks even bleaker now. I don't think the internationally recognized government has any hope of keeping Kabul, to be honest. Morale is around zero and the soldiers simply surrender or just desert. The Taliban will probably face regional uprisings, but only after their opponent has collapsed. Only a major foreign intervention can save it, but so far the priority seems to be just the evacuation (https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-us-troops-embassy-kabul-355c48ec08fb7eb75e1e279e99c3dabf). ANA desintegrated super quickly and in stark contrast to the Democratic Republic, which actually survived the USSR and crushed the Mujaheddin in Jalalabad.
Hooahguy
08-13-2021, 04:03
Looks like we will get the 21st century version of the Fall of Saigon. Just terrible. I gotta say that the Biden admin really screwed the pooch on this one. The US withdrawal was far too quick, and the ceasefire from last year allowed the Taliban to gain strength before their impending final victory. We should have done it right, and drawn it out much longer to allow for everyone who helped us to get out, as they face certain death.
On a side note, I cant wait for the inevitable Ken Burns documentary about this.
Montmorency
08-13-2021, 04:25
As far as I can tell they've swept through almost the entire North by now - though I still expect governing it is another matter. But maybe I'm wrong and everyone (except the Taliban) is just tired of 50 years of nonstop war (the experience of which led to radical compensatory transformations in other societies, but maybe this what it looks like...)
I think I've posted before about scholarship suggesting that large differences between the level of morale of combatants allow greatly-inferior forces to overwhelm those that are larger or better-equipped on paper. I suppose the difference between the Taliban and the ANA (in paper capabilities) is not even as large as that between the Iraqi Army and early IS in that regard.
FWIW here's a small Afghan channel where villagers(?) try foreign, mostly Indian and American, stuff, launched last year off the trend of South Asian "Try" channels. Lately a number of the channel's guests have been fleeing their homes.
https://www.youtube.com/c/WMW555/videos
Hooahguy
08-13-2021, 04:52
Its not just a morale issue, its also corruption and incompetence. I have quite a few friends who are veterans who served in Afghanistan, and to a man they agree that the ANA were hopeless wrecks. Almost no morale to speak of, theft was rampant, and soldiers would desert left and right even when things were relatively good. The government has been completely inept for some time so how can they mount an effective response in these conditions? Nation building in a land which does not want to be a nation was doomed from the start.
Already taken (https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-afghanistan-taliban-26d485963b7a0d9f2107afcbc38f239a), I'm afraid. Not a fan of the warlords' kleptocracy, but Afghanistan's feature looks even bleaker now. I don't think the internationally recognized government has any hope of keeping Kabul, to be honest. Morale is around zero and the soldiers simply surrender or just desert. The Taliban will probably face regional uprisings, but only after their opponent has collapsed. Only a major foreign intervention can save it, but so far the priority seems to be just the evacuation (https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-us-troops-embassy-kabul-355c48ec08fb7eb75e1e279e99c3dabf). ANA desintegrated super quickly and in stark contrast to the Democratic Republic, which actually survived the USSR and crushed the Mujaheddin in Jalalabad.
Wasn't happy to see you were right that Kandahar had already fallen. The major military presence in Kandahar has always been down at KAF (Kandahar Airfield) where 205th Corps is based and seems to still be there though the are cutoff from Kabul so unless they go to Pakistan they're completely isolated.
The senior ANA officers that I worked with were all with the pro soviet Afghan Army so at the top in terms of experience there's no excuse for the failures. After the Soviet Union collapsed though the funds for the army dried up and the logistical links for keeping all the soviet equipment in working order also fell apart.
Before the pull out it's not like foreign forces were even securing much of the country, NATO was pretty much just relegated to a few bases with very few countries actually doing combat roles so it's not like the Afghan military hadn't been in the driver seat yet.
I suppose the difference between the Taliban and the ANA (in paper capabilities) is not even as large as that between the Iraqi Army and early IS in that regard.
Its not just a morale issue, its also corruption and incompetence.
Absolutely, I recall seeing my S3 Operations Officer counterpart at the Battalion(Kandak) level out in the marketplace selling the firewood that Kabul had sent to keep troops warm in the winter. The police Kandaks I worked with kept all the medical and fuel supplies at the HQ forcing the outposts to need to trade or sell their ammo to the locals just to get the gasoline to run the generator to pump drinking water out of the ground. The corruption and incompetence was mind boggling when I was there (I left in Dec 2013) but at the base level the Soldiers that had been in for a few years seemed fairly commited to actually fighting. The desertions were definitely common but mostly among the new recruits or anyone that got in trouble (in an illiterate military discipline is done through beatings and corvee).
Looks like we will get the 21st century version of the Fall of Saigon. Just terrible. I gotta say that the Biden admin really screwed the pooch on this one. The US withdrawal was far too quick, and the ceasefire from last year allowed the Taliban to gain strength before their impending final victory.
I agree whole heartedly, a more managed approach where at the very least we could provide the air power that we never really helped the Afghan Air Force buildup.
The current Afghan Government has been in power for twice as long as the Taliban ever were, it's a whole generation of people that have grown up under it and to see it all fall apart so quickly is surreal.
Montmorency
08-14-2021, 02:09
The immorality and irresponsibility of the American strategy of withdrawal isn't in the precise timetable or in airstrikes or whatever (let's be frank, a hundred tons or two of aerial munitions can't affect the Taliban's operational progress anymore). It's in the failure to extract asylum seekers aggressively (https://apnews.com/article/immigration-taliban-3259f18671b663b99abb72da8fc5991e), beforehand.
Bring Afghans stateside by the tens of thousands and sort them out here, with full financial support, as we should have been doing since February (practically speaking). We owe even more as a responsible party, but it's never too late to step up.
Spmetla, I think after all the military misadventures of the United States aimed at statebuilding, in all parts of the world, we can conclusively affirm that military occupations can't reasonably create stable conditions from underlying instability. If anything, it only aggravates the situation, doesn't it? Soldiers can't build governments, and governments can't administer jurisdictions that are gripped by insurgency. If America can't prop up even Cuba or Haiti, maybe it should realize that it spends money only to create more problems in these circumstances. (Which isn't to say that there's nothing America could or should do, but American hard power has a terribly-ignoble record... Stick to core competencies.)
Two (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979) different maps (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/12/10-maps-to-understand-afghanistan-interactive) of current dispositions.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/84DC/production/_119921043_afghanistan_control_map_13_aug_640-nc.png
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/INTERACTIVE_AUG13AFGHANISTAN-EIGHTEEN-FALLEN_18CITIES-01.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C770
The immorality and irresponsibility of the American strategy of withdrawal isn't in the precise timetable or in airstrikes or whatever (let's be frank, a hundred tons or two of aerial munitions can't affect the Taliban's operational progress anymore). It's in the failure to extract asylum seekers aggressively, beforehand.
The failure to stand by those that worked hand in hand and shared danger like the many interpreters is truly embarrassing and deeply shameful to the US. Extracting all asylum seekers however would be overboard, we'd be pretty much having to transplant entire cities to the US.
conclusively affirm that military occupations can't reasonably create stable conditions from underlying instability. If anything, it only aggravates the situation, doesn't it?
They can but it's a matter of what risk to the soldiers are acceptable and how many are available, to actually do a military occupation of Afghanistan would have taken hundreds of thousands which was never an option. Instead we had enough soldiers to secure big bases and cities but not the countryside where most Afghans live meaning we could do 'raids' against the Taliban but at the end of the day we'd always give up whatever village or district the operation was in.
That's why relying on Afghan police, military and 'local police'/militias was the approach that was tried.
I'll agree though that an outside military with no linguistic or cultural understanding absolutely aggravates the situation. That's why I think this should have remained a special operations war. Once big army got involved establishing massive FOBs with thousands of troops and then trying to enforce NATO standards of security around the FOBs and all the roads linking the FOBs it absolutely aggravated the situation.
Soldiers can't build governments, and governments can't administer jurisdictions that are gripped by insurgency.
At no point did NATO Soldiers govern Afghanistan. The second half is correct, it's the catch-22 of counter insurgency. Instability and insurgency stops commerce and day to day life which fuels resentment. To paraphrase Mao, an insurgent is like a fish and the population is like the sea, how does a fisherman eliminate all of one type of fish in the sea?
maybe it should realize that it spends money only to create more problems in these circumstances
Looking at the last 20 years in Afghanistan (and Iraq) there really wasn't any long term plan and that in itself is major problem of the US and the Western World in general, we aren't planning beyond 2-10 year timelines effectively.
After 9/11 launching some cruise missiles at Al Queda bases in Afghanistan wasn't going to be acceptable to US domestic opinion. I think even in alternate universe with Al Gore in charge the US would have go to war with Al Queda and the Taliban. The US was running on the 'high' of being the sole superpower, Russia was in a laughable state, China was hardly more than a regional threat, the US got to be the 'good guy' in Desert Storm and Yugoslavia. There's no way that the 9/11 attacks would not create a demand for a military response.
In hindsight perhaps the war should have been essentially a 'great raid' in invade to oust Al Queda, team up with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban and then leave completely. The whole nation building part was started with as you demonstrated no real track record for it though instead of looking to Cuba and Haiti (why Cuba though?) I'd look to Somalia. US/UN failure there was the earliest indicator that western militaries and governments don't have the expertise and patience to fix a failed state.
The terrible example of Libya is probably what would have served US interests best in Afghanistan. Military action to get rid of what we consider bad or at least placate domestic opinion, then fund a rump government and hope it can secure its country. If it can't it's really no issue so long as the problem doesn't spill over the borders (the collapse of Mali under Tuareg invasion and then the use of Libya by people smugglers to Europe).
The response to ISIS is a good example of what should probably have been done in Afghanistan, SOF elements working with local militias/militaries to fight the 'bad guys'. The Taliban were initially kicked out using the above method, sadly staying and trying to help is what hurt the most. A SOF fight which fights the 'bad guys' but doesn't really aggravate the local population can work and keeps the US from getting into nation building.
American hard power has a terribly-ignoble record... Stick to core competencies.)
Well intentioned hard power with ignoble record whenever it is we throw in the towel, yes. The military is retooling for the peer to peer threats that are China and Russia and eager to forget all about counter insurgency again. SOF and the SFABs will be the tools of choice instead of military occupation to create stability.
US soft power however is at least being used intentially again, hated how Trump loved the idea of hard power yet decried wars and undermined all the government elements that are used for soft power.
rory_20_uk
08-14-2021, 15:09
Accepting he risk of being accused of using a retrospectroscope, what the USA should have done can be seen in what they did to get Bin Laden - a surgical strike by highly trained experts after some proper CIA work. Yes, highly illegal. But that has never been a concern, has it? What would it achieve? Sod all - but this was always about settling scores rather than any, y'know, use
Whilst NATO etc could tie up their forces in training the locals to kill the locals there is a finite amount of forces and many more local areas that need attention - be that North Africa, the Middle East, Ukraine (from a Eurocentric view point); Central America and the ASEAN from a more America-centric view; the countries surrounding Afghanistan can provide easily adequate assistance if they choose - and given that this is Pakistan, China, Iran and the other -stans well, they range from not friendly to openly hostile so having to deal with this mess if anything a benefit. If the UN wants to drop off some blue hats to get shot at well good on them.
~:smoking:
Shaka_Khan
08-15-2021, 09:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e51V92zkmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlYddwVMEGs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJFP1ze7o-4
rory_20_uk
08-15-2021, 12:14
Some analysts in the USA thought Kabul could hold for 3 months. Is this another case of analysts creating work that the masters want?
American, French, Israeli, German, British troops to name a few could hold it for that time if not longer. There are armies around the world whose soldiers have fought against all the odds to the last man but there was never a chance this was going to happen - the Taliban have advanced at the speed the Afghan soldiers can run and the HumVees drive the advance has been as speedy as - ISIS did in Iraq.
Either Biden was lied to by his advisors when he said the Afghanistan could continue without the USA and allies or else he lied. Neither is particularly encouraging.
~:smoking:
Pannonian
08-15-2021, 12:51
Some analysts in the USA thought Kabul could hold for 3 months. Is this another case of analysts creating work that the masters want?
American, French, Israeli, German, British troops to name a few could hold it for that time if not longer. There are armies around the world whose soldiers have fought against all the odds to the last man but there was never a chance this was going to happen - the Taliban have advanced at the speed the Afghan soldiers can run and the HumVees drive the advance has been as speedy as - ISIS did in Iraq.
Either Biden was lied to by his advisors when he said the Afghanistan could continue without the USA and allies or else he lied. Neither is particularly encouraging.
~:smoking:
Or he was making the best of what he'd been left with. The US obliged to withdraw, and observers both domestically and in Afghanistan holding him to his predecessor's promise.
rory_20_uk
08-15-2021, 12:55
Or he was making the best of what he'd been left with. The US obliged to withdraw, and observers both domestically and in Afghanistan holding him to his predecessor's promise.
I'm 100% behind the withdrawal. I was against the intervention from the start as a waste of time and money.
He has chosen to pretend that it wouldn't implode which of course it would. There's nothing there that resembles a state, just a group of thieves looting America's money.
Again, to criticise over a few lies compared to his predecessors wasting vast amounts of lives and money there's no comparison.
~:smoking:
The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, they're not," Biden said on July 8. "They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable
That (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/taliban-gains-ground-biden-grapples-ghosts-saigon-n1276727) didn't age very well (https://www.businessinsider.com/us-evacuate-kabul-embassy-as-taliban-storm-the-afghan-capital-2021-8).
Helicopters were photographed leaving the embassy compound. Two US military officials told the Associated Press that smoke could be seen rising from the roof of the building as officials destroyed sensitive documents.
Shaka_Khan
08-15-2021, 18:16
I wonder what happened to Proletariat and the other hardliners who used to be active here in 2003?
Some analysts in the USA thought Kabul could hold for 3 months. Is this another case of analysts creating work that the masters want?
American, French, Israeli, German, British troops to name a few could hold it for that time if not longer. There are armies around the world whose soldiers have fought against all the odds to the last man but there was never a chance this was going to happen - the Taliban have advanced at the speed the Afghan soldiers can run and the HumVees drive the advance has been as speedy as - ISIS did in Iraq.
Either Biden was lied to by his advisors when he said the Afghanistan could continue without the USA and allies or else he lied. Neither is particularly encouraging.
I imagine that the analysts had data and opinions and probably believed those assessments. There haven't been significant NATO forces in Afghanistan for a long time, most of the security has been in their hands for a long time too. To think that the withdrawal from the few bases that still had NATO forces there would cause the complete and total collapse of the Afghan security forces is mind boggling. I and my Army buddies are absolutely stunned at how totally and completely the Afghan Army and Police have just given up the field.
Biden does bear a lot of blame though, there's a reason that Mattis resigned over Trump's wanting to just leave Afghanistan and Syria full stop. Trump's 'peace deal' with the Taliban was a farce and Biden following through with it was stupid.
However, if the Afghan military and police really have so little will to fight then so be it, apparently we should have left ten years ago after the successful Bin Laden raid. The human tragedies that will unfold as the Taliban transition from rebels to rulers will be horrible to watch as with a battlefield victory there's really no 'negotiate.' They may moderate some things and allow more freedom than the 90s because it's probably impossible to put the internet/global communication genie back in the bottle but when they talk of amputations and stonings being a matter for the courts and 'allowing' women to leave the house by themselves it seems the medieval sharia 'roots' remain and it may just be a matter of time before they bring the sharia law down on everyone. Only time will tell, I've been so wrong that who knows.
He has chosen to pretend that it wouldn't implode which of course it would. There's nothing there that resembles a state, just a group of thieves looting America's money.
It saddens me to see how true this seems to be.
Pannonian
08-15-2021, 19:52
I'm 100% behind the withdrawal. I was against the intervention from the start as a waste of time and money.
He has chosen to pretend that it wouldn't implode which of course it would. There's nothing there that resembles a state, just a group of thieves looting America's money.
Again, to criticise over a few lies compared to his predecessors wasting vast amounts of lives and money there's no comparison.
~:smoking:
I wouldn't even call them lies. Just necessary talking up, even when you know what you're saying is false, because you can hardly tell the people on the ground they are useless. The statesman's equivalent of "It was lovely meeting you, have a nice day".
Montmorency
08-15-2021, 20:56
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/15/afghanistan-mapping-the-advance-of-the-taliban-interactive
Rundown of the dramatic past week in Afghanistan.
https://i.imgur.com/vLxmKYW.gif
Any idea of Taliban losses throughout this offensive? I don't trust the government's estimates of course. To capture so much territory without a fight or with token resistance suggests negotiations behind the scenes with individual commanders and warlords, beyond a mere collapse of will.
I'm 100% behind the withdrawal. I was against the intervention from the start as a waste of time and money.
He has chosen to pretend that it wouldn't implode which of course it would. There's nothing there that resembles a state, just a group of thieves looting America's money.
Again, to criticise over a few lies compared to his predecessors wasting vast amounts of lives and money there's no comparison.
~:smoking:
To be fair to Biden, IIRC (https://www.syracuse.com/news/2012/06/joe_biden_in_leaked_memo_told.html) he opposed Obama's surge and recommended more rapid withdrawal during his time as VP.
My response to spmetla's post was brewing since before the news of the total surrender of the Afghan government arrived, so read it, once it's up, with even greater emphasis on the Biden's damaging lack of urgency in the withdrawal.
Biden does bear a lot of blame though, there's a reason that Mattis resigned over Trump's wanting to just leave Afghanistan and Syria full stop. Trump's 'peace deal' with the Taliban was a farce and Biden following through with it was stupid.
Damned if you do or don't, in that US foreign policy credibility has been hobbled so already. Biden was already delaying Trump's timetable, and there were reasonable arguments in the early days that it would be instrumentally more useful for the new administration to be seen to carry through major decisions of its predecessor (in contrast to the behavior of that previous administration). But the strongest argument is that the situation had been unsalvageable from Day 1 for all sorts of reasons, had just been sliding through various new degrees of unsalvageable in the years since, and as the French learned even more painfully in 1954, there is no better goddamn peace deal around the proverbial corner when you can barely even afford to cut your losses and run.
Again, bottom line (see upcoming reply), Biden had half a year to expedite the evacuation along the lines I recommend. Logistics was no issue, narrowsighted politics was. Just tell Republicans and the media to pound sand and do it. But American presidents have pretty much never prioritized just or forward-looking foreign policy over domestic pressures.
But more important than presidents, spmetla: The entire "blob" (security-military policy complex) of the US and its government is a fuck-up. One of the reasons why Sanders seemed a promising candidate was his vow to reject so much bogus coming from the same people on foreign policy who have been disastrously wrong their entire careers, and yet maintain an iron grip on our foreign policy. We can't even stop to criticize an individual president for decisions that follow wholly from the broken logics of this irredeemable wagging tail.
What are we going to do about that?
On Afghanistan, both Trump & Biden have been swimming against the main currents of opinion among military leaders (who want to avoid the conclusion that this is an embarrassing failure *on their part*) and a lot of reporters are very comfortable openly siding with the generals. They are also willfully not contextualizing questions like "how could the endgame have gotten this slipshod?" with the reality that the people charged with carrying out the Trump/Biden policy consistently opposed it and wanted the implementation to go badly.As recently as yesterday, they were still hoping that turning the Trump/Biden withdrawal policy into an embarrassing shitshow would successfully bully the White House into reversing course the way they squeezed Obama in 2009 and Trump in 2017.
This was the map *before* the early-Trump escalation, and the Taliban *continued to gain ground* during the escalation years.
[see tweet]
Since Trump started moving to withdrawal they've been pretending withdrawall is the reason for Taliban advances. If the new president hadn’t been Obama’s VP it probably would’ve worked. They’d have told him “oh Trump messed this up, we just need a temporary surge of forces to push the Taliban back for a few years and get us a better bargaining position for a negotiated peace.” But because Biden was in the room where it happened in 2009-2016 he’d already seen this play out and ripped off the band-aid. It’s ugly and unfortunate, but I think better than the alternative course available.
Who's going to punish the generals and security analysts for their crimes against America and Afghanistan, for knowingly promoting endless failing conflict like some Orwellian parody?
Remember this story from 2019?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
Who's going to punish the generals and security analysts for their crimes against America and Afghanistan, for knowingly promoting endless failing conflict like some Orwellian parody?
Sadly we only seem to punish Officers and politicians for sexual impropriety and blatant corruption. Incompetence and dishonesty are not punished by the institutions or the people that vote in the checks on the institutions
Montmorency
08-16-2021, 06:22
Heartbreaking (2-minute) interview.
https://twitter.com/saadmohseni/status/1425175053050777607
https://i.imgur.com/0PgScII.jpg
Even Nicholas Kristof (https://twitter.com/NickKristof/status/1426934079837011969) avers:
Time is running out for the US to give instant visas on the tarmac to at-risk Afghans, such as interpreters and women's rights advocates, get them on planes out of the country, and sort things out later. That's not optimal, but it's the right thing to do.
Fun fact: The Communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan outlasted the Soviet Union.
"No one wants to be the last man to die delaying the inevitable."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbtSBxwBUgg
When the rain comes pourin' down
When the rain comes pourin' down, I'll be up and gone
When the rain comes pourin' down
I'm leavin' when the rain comes pourin' down
I've got my bags stacked by the door
Packed with my promises and yours
Every forecast was true, this old romance is through
I finally saw the light, so let it pour
When the rain comes pourin' down
When the rain comes pourin' down, I'll be up and gone
When the rain comes pourin' down
I'm a leavin' when the rain comes pourin' down
I guess you're love has dried up like mine
Tied to another place and time
So let the pressure drop, this lyin's got to stop
We done burned all the fruit that's cut the vine
When the rain comes pourin' down
When the rain comes pourin' down, I'll be up and gone
When the rain comes pourin' down
I'm a leavin' when the rain comes pourin' down
(DITTY)
Rain, rain, I'm goin' away
and I'm not coming back another day
So shine, shine, I'll leave all this behind
I know there's got to be a better way
When the rain comes pourin' down
When the rain comes pourin' down, I'll be up and gone
When the rain comes pourin' down
I'm leavin' when the rain comes pourin' down
Montmorency
08-16-2021, 07:18
https://i.imgur.com/yNSw8mI.jpg
Prologue:
This is not a "collapse," it is a popular uprising against us led by an opponent with none of our resources.
Preface: What I say about the proper scope and speed of evacuation and refugee programs for Afghanistan must be put in context of the fact that we probably couldn't physically extract such a number of persons without the managed consent of the Taliban, or the participation of Pakistani assets. You know, since there evidently wouldn't be anyone fighting behind the asylees' backs to secure their extraction, no matter the head start. Maybe it's still possible to have the Taliban peacefully expatriate those they want to be rid of and we need to take anyway - or maybe that's what we're currently working on; I dunno.
The failure to stand by those that worked hand in hand and shared danger like the many interpreters is truly embarrassing and deeply shameful to the US. Extracting all asylum seekers however would be overboard, we'd be pretty much having to transplant entire cities to the US.
Most Afghan refugees don't have a strong preference for America as a destination - and regardless I would say we should take a million of them if need be. So at the very least we should have made preparations to support thousands of them in Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and anywhere else, in abeyance. For the trillions we've spent on Afghanistan what's another ten billion on hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods? Of those who are interested in asylum in the US, every one of them deserves to have a safe space while they await a rapid and limited processing, which safe space could most directly manifest as a sojourn on American soil until the decision. The Biden administration is doing something like this to a very limited extent by allowing claims to be processed outside Afghanistan, IIRC (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/desperation-us-scours-countries-willing-house-afghan-refugees-2021-08-13/), but physically transporting asylees to safety in the first case sounds best to me. Would it have sped the collapse of the central Afghan government in a rapid brain-and-heart drain? Yes, but at the rate we've observed the true collapse, it's hard to argue for big distinctions. The situation now will be even more destructive and disruptive beyond Afghan borders, unfinished as it is. Like I said, we should have been working furiously on the human aspect of withdrawal for years since, but even Biden had a little time to maneuver here as long as he was willing to commit the necessary resources and diplomacy, and tell the American media and Republicans to get bent.
After 9/11 launching some cruise missiles at Al Queda bases in Afghanistan wasn't going to be acceptable to US domestic opinion. I think even in alternate universe with Al Gore in charge the US would have go to war with Al Queda and the Taliban.
If we do alternate worlds, why not one where Gore reads the reports and averts 9/11, or where we negotiate with the Taliban to get results, or where we leave after a year, having accomplished the counterterrorist mission (whether or not bin Laden himself is neutralized)? A President can get away with a lot with 80% approval ratings. AS WE KNOW LOL
The US was running on the 'high' of being the sole superpower, Russia was in a laughable state, China was hardly more than a regional threat, the US got to be the 'good guy' in Desert Storm and Yugoslavia. There's no way that the 9/11 attacks would not create a demand for a military response.
Righteous anger is one thing, mindless bloodthirstiness with world-devastating results is a shameful other. It will never cease to horrify me how we had the whole neighborhood's sympathy over a baseball through the kitchen window and rode it to firebomb the nearby trailer park and threaten everyone else over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9r0haVPDAo
In hindsight perhaps the war should have been essentially a 'great raid' in invade to oust Al Queda, team up with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban and then leave completely. The whole nation building part was started with as you demonstrated no real track record for it though instead of looking to Cuba and Haiti (why Cuba though?) I'd look to Somalia. US/UN failure there was the earliest indicator that western militaries and governments don't have the expertise and patience to fix a failed state.
That example, along with Haiti, wasn't illustrating the aspect of military intervention against an enemy, but that of using military assets or aid to prop up the government we preferred. The US desperately needs to learn that being surrounded by richer, stronger, peer countries is better for its long-term interests than trying to exert violent imperial control with minimal intellectual and non-military social investment - even when those countries don't all share the American government's views on something. Democracy nationally and internationally have shared fates. Suicidal hypocrisy is one of the worst things about this country. Actually, correction: more like a murder-suicide pact. Lots of murder.
The terrible example of Libya is probably what would have served US interests best in Afghanistan. Military action to get rid of what we consider bad or at least placate domestic opinion, then fund a rump government and hope it can secure its country. If it can't it's really no issue so long as the problem doesn't spill over the borders (the collapse of Mali under Tuareg invasion and then the use of Libya by people smugglers to Europe).
The response to ISIS is a good example of what should probably have been done in Afghanistan, SOF elements working with local militias/militaries to fight the 'bad guys'. The Taliban were initially kicked out using the above method, sadly staying and trying to help is what hurt the most. A SOF fight which fights the 'bad guys' but doesn't really aggravate the local population can work and keeps the US from getting into nation building.
Without expanding the scope of the conversation too much, rebuilding Libya, linked to the Mediterranean as it was, should have been vastly easier than Afghanistan, so long as one wasn't excessively bothered about the condition of the far interior. But we didnt try, to the point that thousands of migrants could bite Europe in the ass as a political problem. Imagine the EU and US spending $2 trillion on the Libyan economy itself: Misrata could look like Monte Carlo. The problem is that we're terrible at long-term commitment as groups and individuals and will happily suffer (or allow others to suffer) over long periods to avoid disrupting a terrible status quo.
At no point did NATO Soldiers govern Afghanistan.
Exactly. They couldn't have. What government Afghanistan did have, we dissolved by force, with little to replace it.
It's worth pointing out that the one real case (AFAIK) of successful reconstruction under military governance or guardianship, US-occupied Germany and Japan, featured at bottom a security environment where all sources of instability exclusive of the occupation itself had been stamped out already. When you look at Haiti under Clinton through Obama, for example, it's not exactly a warzone but a society so impoverished and insecure, with few national constituencies and bases of power, that a foreign military presence can at best kick the can down the road. I can't find the article now, but it was pointed out that Haiti was only worse off on numerous indicators following US and UN missions there, and that this shows the general concept true of external armed forces being unconducive to lasting stabilization. Foreign soldiers can freeze a collapse or a conflict in the short term, perhaps, but they contribute nothing to actually developing the economy or the civil society by their mere presence. You need much more for that... Meanwhile, and this is the critical part, when you have those foreign soldiers propping up some weak and unpopular government, it actually weakens its ability to build legitimacy and exert its sovereignty over the jurisdiction, sort of like how free clothing and foodstuffs in earlier phases of international assistance to struggling African countries happened to impair the health of domestic textiles and agricultural industries - because they were being crowded out.
On the Right, between 1980-2016 especially, we often heard warnings that government investment would crowd out the private sector in a vicious cycle of economic stagnation (military Keynesianism exempted), but this theory may have always held more true on the level of interactions between states and societies.
The principle arguably even applies to the ANA, who I hear were used as auxiliaries to the US mission to the end, equipped to fight a conventional and technological war without the experience or technology to do it alone. Meaning in practice the ANA was never put in a position to fight its real-world enemies unassisted.
Thus I repeat: Soldiers can't build governments, not by nor with gunpoint. Or in another phrasing, 'Infantry take and hold ground, not develop it.'
I want the US to involve itself in nationbuilding at home and abroad. The military just doesn't have much role in that. Something along the lines of this old talk (some of which hasn't aged well), which to simplify recommends something like a Department of War and a Department of Everything Else (Nationbuilding, or Peace according to Marianne Williamson). Battle space vs. transition space vs. peace space in his words: "You can't ask the same 19-year old to do it day in and day out."
Well intentioned hard power with ignoble record whenever it is we throw in the towel, yes. The military is retooling for the peer to peer threats that are China and Russia and eager to forget all about counter insurgency again. SOF and the SFABs will be the tools of choice instead of military occupation to create stability.
US soft power however is at least being used intentially again, hated how Trump loved the idea of hard power yet decried wars and undermined all the government elements that are used for soft power.
From what little I know of US diplomacy with the Taliban in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, it was progressing well on core objectives of mitigating the Taliban's endorsement of international terrorism, until Bush and the New American Century neocons decided to take their American-boot-up-the-ass show on the road. Soft power is just everything besides hard power, itself almost exclusively military force, despite frequent framing that treats soft power as but the domain of the The Simpsons and Will Smith and Elton John. What was preventing us from taking Iran as a partner in 2001? There's a lot of ruin in a nation, and the US retains - despite everything - a fair amount of power to constrain the export, diffusion, and re-import of corruption, state failure, and economic exploitation. In 2001 meanwhile the US was unmatched in relative power anywhere and anytime. How many licks does it take to get to the ruin of a nation?
The US security establishment has never understood that friendly-but-transactional relations with democratic peer nations, and even illiberal troublemakers, is worth uncountably more than a constellation of temporarily-leashed autocratic commodity/poverty farms. It's part of what's been undermining us domestically and abroad since the end of the Victorian era. Without indulging in what-ifs, it's plain to see that on the day of the 9/11 attacks, we had ample opportunity and approbation to treat the matter as an international criminal conspiracy and to work to bring the whole Middle East into a healthier state of being. The 2000 election and the entire response to 9/11 are some of the very greatest blunders, hinges, in all of history, and many people won't survive them ongoing. That's worth a lot of disappointment.
A decent starting point would be to faithfully orient national strategy around the literal text of the Weinberger Doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberger_Doctrine).
The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.
From what little I know of US diplomacy with the Taliban in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, it was progressing well on core objectives of mitigating the Taliban's endorsement of international terrorism, until Bush and the New American Century neocons decided to take their American-boot-up-the-ass show on the road.
The major lynch-pin for the invasion of Afghanistan was that the Taliban refused to evict Al Queda and Bin Laden based on the Pashtun Wali concept of protecting their 'guests' no matter who comes knocking on the door. The operations in the Tora Bora Mtns almost got Bin Laden but he escaped over into Pakistan and for whatever reason the Bush Admin didn't put the pressure needed on Pakistan to pursue him. In hindsight we gave them an ultimatum much like Austro-Hungary did to to Serbia before WWI.
Soft power is just everything besides hard power, itself almost exclusively military force, despite frequent framing that treats soft power as but the domain of the The Simpsons and Will Smith and Elton John.
I understand what soft power is, in the government the major elements of power that can be exerted are DIME or diplomatic, information, military, and economic. I highly highly doubt soft power would have coughed up Bin Laden, unfortunately some criminal elements can only be eliminated with a combination of soft and hard power though the ramped up drone strikes etc.. done from Bush/Obama/Trump onward have certainly go overboard on the hard power part primarily because there are so many ungoverned regions in which these groups base themselves.
What was preventing us from taking Iran as a partner in 2001? There's a lot of ruin in a nation, and the US retains - despite everything - a fair amount of power to constrain the export, diffusion, and re-import of corruption, state failure, and economic exploitation. In 2001 meanwhile the US was unmatched in relative power anywhere and anytime. How many licks does it take to get to the ruin of a nation?
Nothing was preventing us from partnering Iran in 2001 besides the Bush administrations pig headedness. After the example of the gulf war a a decade earlier and toppling the Taliban in Iran's backdoor the Iranians very rightly feared they were next. If I recall correctly from what I read in the "Persian Puzzle" ten years ago the Iranians pretty much offered us everything we'd been asking for to reestablish relations and deescalate tensions between us and they were completed rebuffed by Bush Jr and Co which then proceeded to invade Iraq.
The year 2001 certainly was filled with potential and it's hard to believe twenty years later how those key decisions made have led us to the unfortunate position now.
The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.
I agree with most of the ideas of the Weinberger Doctrine but unfortunately it comes from an era with slightly clearer lines than now, there's a lot of what ifs and gray area that it doesn't address.
To start, I don't think anyone ever commits US troops without the intent of winning, but ignorance, overconfidence and so on make initial assessments with the 'fog of war' difficult. I would agree on the well defined military objectives that are tied to a political objective. That's generally what's been undertaken, the problem is the short sighted look beyond the military solution. In Iraq, the military pretty much did what it was asked, defeat Saddam Hussein's army, there wasn't a plan to occupy the country and provide security for ten years. The military plan seemed to assume that there'd be some sort of peace deal and then they go home, the Bush Admin forgot to consider that when engaging in regime change there's no one left with the legitimacy to make peace with.
The reassessment of the size forces is certainly one of the most scrutinized things that actually does happen which is what led to the deluge of hiring military contractors so that basic things like base security can be accomplished without having ot bring in a few hundred more troops that add to the much scrutinized troop numbers.
The last two are a bit difficult for the gray area aspect, special operations, drone strikes, cyber warfare etc... are largely done without vetting public opinion and with only a few key members of congress/senate notified. Sending regular formations of Soldiers somewhere certainly gets public debate.
The other problematic aspects are we have a lot of treaty allies now and as the US is the keep over the current world order versus the 'revisionist' powers of Russia and China this involves a lot of support for countries that aren't clear allies but have some tacit US agreements to maintain their territorial sovereignty (for example Ukraine, Taiwan). The willingness to use force is sadly as important as the ability to use it which is why the pendalum swing from pacifism/appeasement to militarism/hegemony are so dangerous to ourselves and the world. Putin may be an SOB but at least his allies know where he stands, same with the PRC when it comes to their interests.
Sending the navy to deter pirate attacks or escort vessels in a dangerous area can lead to conflict, routine air patrols and training can lead to incidents like the Hainan island crash.
The 2000 election and the entire response to 9/11 are some of the very greatest blunders, hinges, in all of history, and many people won't survive them ongoing. That's worth a lot of disappointment.
Couldn't agree more, as a patriotic guy seeing a generation of our effort, revenue, and standing wasted is incredibly disappointing.
To get back on topic though, talking with friends and chatting on facebook and other social media today, there's certainly a lot of soul searching going on today by Afghan veterans. I am and remain ashamed of our hurried and unplanned departure, while every administration has led up to this point I still lay may blame for the immediate debacle on the Trump for dealing with the Taliban that undermined the little legitimacy left for the actual Afghan government and then with Biden for doing this stupid hurried pullout. Call it ripping the bandaid off, sure, but it didn't have to be with leaving bases in the middle of the night without letting the ANA know, without a plan to help the translators that worked with us, without a pledge of support to the Afghan government and people.
I truly feel terrible for the Afghans that wanted a modern life that are now stuck there, I can only hope that I'm as wrong about the Taliban's intentions on ruling as I was about the ANA willingness to fight. Having my dad talk to me about where he was when Saigon fell and then see that imagine of a CH-47 evacuating the US Embassy in Kabul to match the parallel perfectly. To think this year started out with an attempted coup by the sitting president and then has led to this by my preferred "America is Back" candidate is depressing.
Shaka_Khan
08-16-2021, 14:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8b2460YoAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7X2G0mnBM
Montmorency
08-17-2021, 06:53
Pro-Taliban Y'all-Qaida meme.
https://i.imgur.com/E7AsYy7.jpg
Biden speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02grem9YXkg) on Afghanistan today. Over-the-horizon counterterrorism. The Afghan government and military are contemptible and unsalvageable. Don't involve American troops in this business. New information: Ghani government asked Biden admin to slow down evacuation to avoid precipitating panic.
Tragic 2005 story (https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/sports/clinging-to-their-dream-on-fields-near-and-far.html) on a National Guardsman pointlessly killed in Iraq due to a lack of training and equipment. Captures the essence of the whole broader conflict.
More stories on how the ANA was totally overmatched, undertrained for their independent mission, undersupplied (by massive corruption and bad logistics), in pay arrears forever, and basically bribed by the Taliban Mongol-style into surrender. This is, by the way, another component of incredible mission failure by the US, since propping up the ANA was exactly the domain of the American military and state department to a T. ANA failure is a systemic failure by the American military and government, not a political failure. But it makes more sense if you interpret the continued intervention as being more about lining the pockets of military-industrial corporations, security contractors, and other interested actors on the take, rather than achieving a concrete military or strategic outcome. The common Afghan soldier, especially the serious ones, has been betrayed many times over. But we're disturbingly good at facilitating the betrayal of allied fighters once we have no use for them...
https://observers.france24.com/en/20200218-afghanistan-corruption-rations-soldiers-army-eat
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/15/a-tale-of-two-armies-why-afghan-forces-proved-no-match-for-the-taliban
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistan-army-collapse-taliban-11628958253
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/world/asia/afghanistan-rapid-military-collapse.html
This story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html) reviews the point directly, reiterating the old leaked internal documents from State and Defense - that the US military was never honestly preparing the ANA for anything useful, knew about it, and lied about it, because the security establishment believes that any level of deceit towards the American public and political class is justified in the pursuit of it's harebrained internal consensuses. Every discrete actor or group here, at every level of American government and society from President to the voting public, messed up continuously. This is what people talk about when they say it feels shameful to be an American. How is one to be proud of 'with great power comes great failure, better luck next time'?
In the summer of 2011, Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV made a round of public appearances to boast that he had finally solved a problem that had kept U.S. troops bogged down in Afghanistan for a decade. Under his watch, he asserted, U.S. military advisers and trainers had transformed the ragtag Afghan army and police into a professional fighting force that could defend the country and keep the Taliban at bay... In fact, according to documents obtained for the forthcoming Washington Post book“The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” U.S. military officials privately harbored fundamental doubts for the duration of the war that the Afghan security forces could ever become competent or shed their dependency on U.S. money and firepower. “Thinking we could build the military that fast and that well was insane,” an unnamed former U.S. official told government interviewers in 2016.
Senior U.S. officials said the Pentagon fell victim to the conceit that it could build from scratch an enormous Afghan army and police force with 350,000 personnel that was modeled on the centralized command structures and complex bureaucracy of the Defense Department. Though it was obvious from the beginning that the Afghans were struggling to make the U.S.-designed system work, the Pentagon kept throwing money at the problem and assigning new generals to find a solution.
Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/turningbones/status/1427148689387278340) pointing out that Trump's Winter 2020 deal ending sanctions, limiting air strikes (?), exchanging 5000 Taliban prisoners for 1000, had the immediate effect of permanently undermining ANA readiness and set the stage for the mass distributed surrender of ANA forces this summer (it wasn't just hashed out in a few weeks, it was a long time down the pike).
Reminder (https://twitter.com/Rashidajourno/status/1329254624600018944) of Coalition war crimes in Afghanistan, including calculated mass execution of civilians and their posthumous addition to official "kill lists" (Joint Priority Effects List).
The major lynch-pin for the invasion of Afghanistan was that the Taliban refused to evict Al Queda and Bin Laden based on the Pashtun Wali concept of protecting their 'guests' no matter who comes knocking on the door. The operations in the Tora Bora Mtns almost got Bin Laden but he escaped over into Pakistan and for whatever reason the Bush Admin didn't put the pressure needed on Pakistan to pursue him. In hindsight we gave them an ultimatum much like Austro-Hungary did to to Serbia before WWI.
I wasn't around to follow the events in realtime, so my awareness is limited to items such as this (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5).
President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.
Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty". In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".
Speaking of which, fill me in: did George Bush (https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fndupress.ndu.edu%2FPortals%2F68%2FDocuments%2FBooks%2Flessons-encountered%2Flessons-encountered_Ch1.pdf%3Aq8Bqc6n8nWaOfbOWSh26Iz7RZDE&cuid=5155794) ever specify that neutralizing bin Laden was a primary goal of the "War on Terror," or was it all just a pretext for launching the crusade against the Axis of Evil, with Afghanistan being a mere roadstop on the way to manufacturing consent for the conquest of Iraq that Bush and co had explicitly campaigned on since before the election?
The President wanted a plan that featured the rapid use of military force and the insertion of troops on the ground as soon as possible. It should be noted here that some Defense officials believed that the terrorists likely had the help of a state sponsor and that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was the most likely suspect.9
The issue of simultaneously attacking Iraq was brought up at Camp David by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, but the suggestion had little support among the National Security Council (NSC) principals and was sidelined by the President. The timing was not fortuitous. However, on September 26, President Bush asked Rumsfeld in private to “look at the shape of our plans on Iraq” and asked for “creative” options.10 [B]In any event, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) planning for a potential war in Iraq would begin in earnest in November 2001 before the conclusion of the initial fighting in Afghanistan.11
In terms of Value Over Replacement, it's plainly been historicist bias not to rank Bush and Trump as among the three worst presidents in our history. These contemporary bottom threes (https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/articles/ranking-americas-worst-presidents) are mostly defensible, but seeing Bush moved out of the bottom 10 is an outrageous revision.
But this is also tangential to what I was getting at, which is that
I understand what soft power is, in the government the major elements of power that can be exerted are DIME or diplomatic, information, military, and economic. I highly highly doubt soft power would have coughed up Bin Laden, unfortunately some criminal elements can only be eliminated with a combination of soft and hard power though the ramped up drone strikes etc.. done from Bush/Obama/Trump onward have certainly go overboard on the hard power part primarily because there are so many ungoverned regions in which these groups base themselves.
What I mean is, kinetic measures against OBL himself were always going to be more about revenge than degrading credible opposition capabilities (noting that a clean operation eliminating him with limited geopolitical collateral would have bothered very few people). Whereas preventing the use of Afghanistan as a staging and training ground for transnational networks into the future was, theoretically and intellectually, the highest objective behind the invasion. Before 2001 the human rights picture in Afghanistan or the Taliban's legitimacy was a niche activist interest. My point therefore is that following the attacks I suspect our subkinetic array of sticks and carrots was sufficient to bend the Taliban towards our purposes, cheaply if incrementally improving its security and human rights landscape.
Recalling the debates around Syria and Ukraine, I continue to lament that right-wing Trotskyism (https://sci-hub.do/10.2307/20047213),
he neoconservatives who went through the Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power. Neoconser vatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to "export democracy," in Muravchik's words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism. It saw its adversaries on the left as members or representatives of a public sector-based new class. The neoconservatives also got their conception of intellectual and political work from their socialist past. They did not draw the kind of rigid distinction between theory and practice that many academics and politicians do. Instead they saw theory as a form of political combat and politics as an endeavor that should be informed by theory. They saw themselves as a cadre in a cause rather than as strictly independent intellectuals. And they were willing to use theory as a partisan weapon.
like most things Right, seems to retain elite-tier clout no matter the results, yet imagining a hard-left American administration trying to pick up where the Soviets left off in a proper "liberatory" war of choice is farcical: The governing party would suffer a historic landslide defeat at the nearest opportunity like few moments in our history have seen - regardless of how well or poorly operationalized the adventure may have been.
I truly feel terrible for the Afghans that wanted a modern life that are now stuck there, I can only hope that I'm as wrong about the Taliban's intentions on ruling as I was about the ANA willingness to fight. Having my dad talk to me about where he was when Saigon fell and then see that imagine of a CH-47 evacuating the US Embassy in Kabul to match the parallel perfectly. To think this year started out with an attempted coup by the sitting president and then has led to this by my preferred "America is Back" candidate is depressing.
Biden's brand was optimism, decency, and good feelings, just like Obama's was unity and prosperity through cerebral dealmaking, and Trump's was getting the right sort of people back in power again. These brands reflect/arise from both their political fortunes and their underlying personalities. Biden was never going to go turbo-Carter and tell the sane part of the American - or Afghan - public to plan for the rest of their lives on the Rollercoaster to Hell. (Though his address linked at the top of the post is fairly sober and forthright.)
Tangential note: Even with half a million troops in Afghanistan on rotation, defeating the Taliban would arguably be out of reach without somehow leashing the Pakistani government. And even then, the Saudi and Iranian and Russian and Chinese governments...
And to think we had their diplomatic support/approval for many potential courses of action in late 2001... It serves one well to remember that the old adage isn't "Swing that big stick all about like you're cosplaying Leatherface (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxRigGcXrrI)."
https://i.imgur.com/OSy9fOI.png
ReluctantSamurai
08-18-2021, 01:11
There were clear winners during 20 years of war in Afghanistan:
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-war-defense-stocks/
If you purchased $10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defense contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295. This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613. That is, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58 percent during the Afghanistan War.
Montmorency
08-18-2021, 02:40
What the...
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/polling/lbvgnnggapq/Afghanistan_Snap_Topline.pdf
https://i.imgur.com/k1DkpRe.png
https://i.imgur.com/oDvYueL.png
https://i.imgur.com/lmayZ1s.png
There were clear winners during 20 years of war in Afghanistan:
Pakistan and the United States Have Betrayed the Afghan People (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/16/pakistan-united-states-afghanistan-taliban/)
Although these numbers are staggering, much of U.S. investment did not stay in Afghanistan. Because of heavy reliance on a complex ecosystem of defense contractors, Washington banditry, and aid contractors, between 80 and 90 percent of outlays actually returned to the U.S. economy. Of the 10 to 20 percent of the contracts that remained in the country, the United States rarely cared about the efficacy of the initiative. Although corruption is rife in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction repeatedly identifies bewildering corruption by U.S. firms and individuals working in Afghanistan.
In many cases, U.S. firms even defrauded Afghans. In 2010, one military official with the International Security Assistance Force explained to New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall that “without being too dramatic, American contractors are contributing to fueling the insurgency.” As it neglected to tackle Pakistan and tried to do security on the cheap, Washington also strongarmed the Afghan government it into so-called “peace talks” with the Taliban. More than anyone, the Afghan government understood the Taliban and their Pakistani handlers could not be trusted to honor their commitments, such as they were.
BITCH
I said
between 80 and 90 percent of outlays actually returned to the U.S. economy.
Stop exporting corruption!
The spectacle of the peace talks was important in Washington, which hoped to create a fiction of power transition to cover the process of a negotiated U.S. defeat. There was genuinely nothing to discuss: The Afghan government was committed to constitutional rule of law—including elections, howsoever problematic—while the Afghan Taliban were committed to overturning the constitution and opposed elections as non-Islamic. The Taliban used the spectacle of the peace process as a recuperative retreat to revivify and emplace their forces while stashing weapons as they awaited U.S. withdrawal.
Bitch
Shaka_Khan
08-18-2021, 14:27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yla5p7EWW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQfaes57TAY
It feels strange that this is being discussed as history. There are adults who were born after 9/11 now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD1oEu3aeSE
I wouldn't say that the US ignored Pakistan's funding, it's more that we were logistically stuck working with either them or the Russians and CIS states. Whenever we put pressure on Pakistan suddenly our supplies that were being moved through Pakistan began being attacked by 'militants' and Pakistan cannot and does not want to take control of the Northwest Frontier Province which is semi-autonomous and largely the support zone for the Taliban.
The US sold Pakistan equipment to do counter-terrorism and most of that ended up just shoring up their frontier with India.
There was a window of opportunity to put pressure on Pakistan in 2001-2003 but once we invaded Iraq it was clear we had no leverage to deal with Pakistan.
As for US incompetence in contracting, well that's a given. Sheer corruption and mismanagement all the way up and down though that stems largely from a Defense industry that up until two years ago has never even attempted being audited. Contracting mismanagement, pricing markups by suppliers and so on are the norm even within the US.
Read the below report on the burnpits at FOB Salerno. The US contracted to build incinerators to replace the burn pits and then never used them. FYI it is a case study in the Army's ILE for mid level officers in trying to rectify the Army's mismanagement in contract control by teaching the responsibilities for it. Bear in mind that military Officers generally don't have a business background so when they are suddenly in charge of checking work quality and contracts for compliance they aren't too good at it which is compounded by rotating troops out every nine months.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS06/20131029/101427/HHRG-113-AS06-Wstate-SopkoJ-20131029.pdf
EDIT: No the link to the actual inspection, without the DoD certs on your PC you can't view the original even though unclassified. Here's a report SIGAR did for congress that highlights many of the key points below.
As for the polling data, most Americans have been completely ignorant about the war in Afghanistan for the last 20years. Talking with friends that are suddenly outraged at the quick pullout they seem to have the impression that US Soldiers were in the 'trenches' up until a few weeks ago and then suddenly left when in actuality the ANA has been in the lead for fighting the Taliban for the past five years, US/NATO commitments were really in air power, training, and advising not so much fighting anymore. US casualties have only been in the dozens per year the last few years and hasn't had a combat KIA in years either.
The spectacle of the peace talks was important in Washington, which hoped to create a fiction of power transition to cover the process of a negotiated U.S. defeat. There was genuinely nothing to discuss: The Afghan government was committed to constitutional rule of law—including elections, howsoever problematic—while the Afghan Taliban were committed to overturning the constitution and opposed elections as non-Islamic. The Taliban used the spectacle of the peace process as a recuperative retreat to revivify and emplace their forces while stashing weapons as they awaited U.S. withdrawal.
This is why I still lay blame on Trump too for even negotiating with the Taliban, it undermined the Afghan government and legitimized the Taliban. Any power sharing should have been based around having the Taliban join the political process through elections and perhaps greater autonomy for the provinces/districts.
Meanwhile Ashraf Ghani has fled to the UAE and the first Vice President of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh has vowed to keep fighting the Taliban and has fled to the Panshir valley to continue the resistance. This together with the protests in Jalalabad that in which three people were killed by the Taliban and the rumors of arrests in Herat and Kandahar make the situation tenuous for all Afghans to include the Taliban. Transitioning from resistance to rule is always dangerous and difficult, most conquerors make poor rulers and the Talibans deal with the devil that is narco-terrorism will be difficult to break.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/defiant-afghanistans-former-vice-president-amrullah-saleh-vows-new-fight-with-taliban/article35956937.ece
Afghanistan's defiant vice president Amrullah Saleh said on August 17 he is “the legitimate caretaker President” after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
“Clarity: As per d constitution of Afg, in absence, escape, resignation or death of the President the FVP becomes the caretaker President. I am currently inside my country & am the legitimate care taker President. Am reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus,” he posted on Twitter.
It appears Amrullah Saleh has retreated to the country's last remaining holdout: the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul.
"I won't disappoint millions who listened to me. I will never be under one ceiling with Taliban. NEVER," he wrote in English on Twitter on August 15, before going underground.
A day later, pictures began to surface on social media of the former Vice-President with the son of his former mentor and famed anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud in Panjshir — a mountainous redoubt tucked into the Hindu Kush.
Mr. Saleh and Massoud's son, who commands a militia force, appear to be putting together the first pieces of a guerilla movement to take on the victorious Taliban, as fighters regroup in Panjshir.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/18/mujahideen-resistance-taliban-ahmad-massoud/
Ahmad Massoud is the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan.
In 1998, when I was 9 years old, my father, the mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, gathered his soldiers in a cave in the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan. They sat and listened as my father’s friend, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, addressed them. “When you fight for your freedom,” Lévy said, “you fight also for our freedom.”
My father never forgot this as he fought against the Taliban regime. Up until the moment he was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001, at the behest of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, he was fighting for the fate of Afghanistan but also for the West.
Now this common struggle is more essential than ever in these dark, tense hours for my homeland.
I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban. We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected since my father’s time, because we knew this day might come.
We also have the weapons carried by the Afghans who, over the past 72 hours, have responded to my appeal to join the resistance in Panjshir. We have soldiers from the Afghan regular army who were disgusted by the surrender of their commanders and are now making their way to the hills of Panjshir with their equipment. Former members of the Afghan Special Forces have also joined our struggle.
But that is not enough. If Taliban warlords launch an assault, they will of course face staunch resistance from us. The flag of the National Resistance Front will fly over every position that they attempt to take, as the National United Front flag flew 20 years ago. Yet we know that our military forces and logistics will not be sufficient. They will be rapidly depleted unless our friends in the West can find a way to supply us without delay.
Opinion by David Ignatius | Good intentions and seductive illusions: Scenes from Afghanistan’s long descent
The United States and its allies have left the battlefield, but America can still be a “great arsenal of democracy,” as Franklin D. Roosevelt said when coming to the aid of the beleaguered British before the U.S. entry into World War II.
To that end, I entreat Afghanistan’s friends in the West to intercede for us in Washington and in New York, with Congress and with the Biden administration. Intercede for us in London, where I completed my studies, and in Paris, where my father’s memory was honored this spring by the naming of a pathway for him in the Champs-Élysées gardens.
Know that millions of Afghans share your values. We have fought for so long to have an open society, one where girls could become doctors, our press could report freely, our young people could dance and listen to music or attend soccer matches in the stadiums that were once used by the Taliban for public executions — and may soon be again.
The Taliban is not a problem for the Afghan people alone. Under Taliban control, Afghanistan will without doubt become ground zero of radical Islamist terrorism; plots against democracies will be hatched here once again.
No matter what happens, my mujahideen fighters and I will defend Panjshir as the last bastion of Afghan freedom. Our morale is intact. We know from experience what awaits us.
But we need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies.
America and its democratic allies do not just have the fight against terrorism in common with Afghans. We now have a long history made up of shared ideals and struggles. There is still much that you can do to aid the cause of freedom. You are our only remaining hope.
Montmorency
08-18-2021, 23:20
Fun fact: The majority of living Afghanis, including the Taliban themselves, are younger than the US mission in Afghanistan, the sociological implications of which would be a fascinating area of study if there were anyone with the means or ability to study it.
We've changed Afghanistan's cultures profoundly, in an absolute manner of speaking.
Couple choice quotes (https://www.thedailybeast.com/taliban-at-gates-of-kabul-as-afghanistan-collapses-without-us-support):
A 30-year-old Afghan soldier from Jallaabd, who was just ten when the U.S. freed his country from the Taliban’s grip, told The Daily Beast he “can’t believe what happened.” On Saturday night, he says he and his contingent were told by their superior to surrender. “We did, we had a plan to fight for a while but no one asked us for fight. This is the most ridiculous moment of my life.”
He says he and other soldiers wanted to fight. “This is a drama that happened and we still have no idea what will be the fate of our country.”
Meanwhile, a Taliban fighter named Hafiz Haji told The Daily Beast, “We reached the presidential palace gate—the presidential guards quickly got down off their post... we are inside the place, we are now in the palace, we did it indeed! Captured everything, lots of weapons in the palace depot.”
A source in Kabul told The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity that the Taliban had sought a peaceful transfer of power without fighting. They also revealed that Ali Ahmad, the former minister of interior, will likely be made the head of an interim caretaker government.
A senior Afghan official in Kabul expressed his frustration to The Daily Beast as the situation deteriorated throughout the day. “The fall of Kabul dishonors the sacrifice of over 150,000 Afghan lives, over 3,000 of NATO soldiers’ lives, 20 years of reconstruction efforts and over a trillion U.S. dollars. It is the beginning of hopelessness and bottomless uncertainty for the long-suffering Afghans. May Allah protect us because all the worldly superpowers came, killed us, failed and left us in lurch.”
Read the below report on the burnpits at FOB Salerno. The US contracted to build incinerators to replace the burn pits and then never used them. FYI it is a case study in the Army's ILE for mid level officers in trying to rectify the Army's mismanagement in contract control by teaching the responsibilities for it. Bear in mind that military Officers generally don't have a business background so when they are suddenly in charge of checking work quality and contracts for compliance they aren't too good at it which is compounded by rotating troops out every nine months.
Good point. US Grant's Wild West administration in the Orient. The link is broken though.
Back to Panjshir then, war never changes.
Checked the link and I guess you need DoD certs installed to view the page so linked a different page with a bunch of summaries form SIGAR for congress though it doesn't mention FOB Salerno specifically.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS06/20131029/101427/HHRG-113-AS06-Wstate-SopkoJ-20131029.pdf
Also, Panshir was never in the past run by the Taliban so I'm no surprised they are resisting. The quotes you had especially of the Afghan Soldier is why I'm so surprised that the ANA cut and run completely. Despite the corruption and ineptitude they had in the past fought the Taliban quite willingly and without US advisors right along side.
The double shame for the US with our pullout would be that if there is another northern alliance that gets some success that we'd not deal with them at all because the administration probably just wants to be done with Afghanistan even if it means treating the Taliban as the rightful government.
I'm really curious as to what Russia and China will do in the country. China besides using the propaganda value of the US not being faithful in their dispute with Taiwan has no love for the Taliban as they've in the past support the Uighurs. The Russians as well don't want the Taliban to then export their brand to the rest of central asia where Russian influence is already waning.
So many unknowns...
Hooahguy
08-19-2021, 01:19
As for the polling data, most Americans have been completely ignorant about the war in Afghanistan for the last 20years. Talking with friends that are suddenly outraged at the quick pullout they seem to have the impression that US Soldiers were in the 'trenches' up until a few weeks ago and then suddenly left when in actuality the ANA has been in the lead for fighting the Taliban for the past five years, US/NATO commitments were really in air power, training, and advising not so much fighting anymore. US casualties have only been in the dozens per year the last few years and hasn't had a combat KIA in years either.
There's an interesting poll (https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/polling/lbvgnnggapq/Afghanistan_Snap_Topline.pdf) that came out this week that shows that Americans don't really know what we should do about Afghanistan anymore.
I mean look at these numbers:
24985
Also something tells me that a good number of participants haven't actually been following the war and the withdrawal plans like they claim. Ultimately this boils down to the fact that Americans wanted out of Afghanistan, but wanted out quietly so we wouldn't have to pay attention just like we havent paid attention for 20 years. But now that Afghanistan collapsed we are being forced to recognize our failure and we didnt want to face it.
Meanwhile Ashraf Ghani has fled to the UAE and the first Vice President of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh has vowed to keep fighting the Taliban and has fled to the Panshir valley to continue the resistance. This together with the protests in Jalalabad that in which three people were killed by the Taliban and the rumors of arrests in Herat and Kandahar make the situation tenuous for all Afghans to include the Taliban. Transitioning from resistance to rule is always dangerous and difficult, most conquerors make poor rulers and the Talibans deal with the devil that is narco-terrorism will be difficult to break.
As more info starts to come out its hard to see Ghani as anything but a villain in this story. Read stories of units being ordered to stand down and saw video of officers ordering crying soldiers to turn over their weapons, so it will be interesting and sad to know what exactly happened. I agree with you that Trump shares equal blame in this debacle- not including the Afghan government in Doha doomed it as we all knew they couldn't survive on their own.
As for the Afghan forces themselves, I think people are kidding themselves if they think they could have stood on their own if it wasn't for the betrayal from the top. There was far too much corruption, drug use, and ineptitude to allow for that. This short video (https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/p6g47t/interesting_insight_into_the_abysmal_state_of_the/) popped up on Reddit yesterday which really just hammers that home. Now make no mistake, there were Afghan soldiers and units who stood and fought (as we see whats going on in Panjshir now), but it would never have been enough. I am definitely following news of the resistance closely, since I feel that the Taliban is going to have a harder time maintaining control this time around as we now have a generation of Afghans who havent lived under Taliban rule as Monty said.
Shaka_Khan
08-19-2021, 03:27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umxnbsx1rK4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh7bLfNP9Bc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc31UtE2mUE&t=1s
Montmorency
08-19-2021, 03:55
That's the very poll I posted, and what's also bemusing is that both Obama and Trump get half the respondents' approval for Afghanistan handling, just ahead of Bush's 47% (with equal shares from both parties!).
Yeah, so we're never going to learn the lessons of the past 20 years, huh?
I recall now that, from the Afghan channel I mentioned earlier, the one woman guest had fled to Turkey earlier in the year after being physically threatened, but last month was reportedly on the way back - relocating to Kabul. I'm sure there's an appropriate gif here. I've made some big mistakes in my life, but I'm not sure if any of that magnitude.
Hooahguy
08-19-2021, 04:08
Oops, somehow missed your post- I should have scrolled up, sorry about that Monty. :sweatdrop:
Also this fun little story just popped up on my newsfeed. No idea how true it is but if so, hooo boy.
Trump’s Pledge to Exit Afghanistan Was a Ruse, His Final SecDef Says
(https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/08/trumps-pledge-exit-afghanistan-was-ruse-his-final-secdef-says/184660/)
President Donald Trump’s top national security officials never intended to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, according to new statements by Chris Miller, Trump’s last acting defense secretary.
Miller said the president’s public promise to finish withdrawing U.S. forces by May 1, as negotiated with the Taliban, was actually a “play” that masked the Trump administration’s true intentions: to convince Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to quit or accept a bitter power-sharing agreement with the Taliban, and to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan for counterrorism missions.
In a conversation this week with Defense One, Miller revealed that while serving as the top counterterrorism official on the National Security Council in 2019, he commissioned a wargame that determined that the United States could continue to conduct counterterrorism in Afghanistan with just 800 American military personnel on the ground. And by the end of 2020, when he was acting defense secretary, Miller asserted, many Trump administration officials expected that the United States would be able to broker a new shared government in Afghanistan composed primarily of Taliban officials. The new government would then permit U.S. forces to remain in country to support the Afghan military and fight terrorist elements.
That plan never happened, in part because Trump lost his reelection bid in November. And at least one other former senior Trump administration official questioned Miller’s retelling. But in revealing it, Miller challenged recent assertions that Trump is to blame for setting up this week’s chaotic scenes unfolding across Kabul. Miller alleged that despite Trump’s frequent public pledges to end the Afghanistan war and bring home all U.S. troops, many senior national security officials in his administration believed a total withdrawal was not inevitable.
Sounds like a load of baloney to avert blame if you ask me. But if its true then why wasnt the Biden team briefed on such a plan? If I had to guess it was intentional.
Shaka_Khan
08-19-2021, 11:10
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/world/asia/taliban-afghanistan-al-qaeda.html
The Taliban Are Back. Now Will They Restrain or Support Al Qaeda?
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/taliban-frees-thousands-of-prisoners-including-al-qaeda-and-isis-fighters/
Taliban Frees Thousands of Prisoners, Including al Qaeda and ISIS Fighters
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3493502/taliban-already-offering-safe-haven-al-qaeda-afghanistan/
TERROR 'HAVEN' Taliban is ALREADY offering ‘safe haven’ to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in bid to create ‘cradle of jihad’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umxnbsx1rK4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD2RobR9bEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwc3z65xXqU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfbS_8K-a7g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqzlbvmDhoI
Shaka_Khan
08-19-2021, 16:15
This is going on during the Department of Defense briefing. There's a suspicious vehicle near the Library of Congress...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1UQKO8jqME
Hooahguy
08-19-2021, 18:47
This is going on during the Department of Defense briefing. There's a suspicious vehicle near the Library of Congress...
Seems unrelated to the Pentagon briefing- this is the guy (https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1428392832377708549?s=20) in the Truck. Just another far-right terrorism incident. Especially since the Pentagon is on the other side of town anyways.
Interesting read by RAND report:
Collapse in Afghanistan: Early Insights from RAND Researchers
https://www.rand.org/blog/2021/08/collapse-in-afghanistan-early-insights-from-rand-researchers.html?utm_source=AdaptiveMailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7014N000001SnimQAC&utm_term=00v4N00000aZwMHQA0&org=1674&lvl=100&ite=3540&lea=847742&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0w4N000009IRT1QAO
Excerpt:
What's the most likely scenario for Afghans who are trying to flee?
Culbertson: Regardless of what the United States does at this point, it may be that hundreds of thousands of people will flee and then live in squalid camps for decades, while options for resettlement to another country, return to Afghanistan, or securing citizenship in Pakistan or Iran remain low. This will only add to the world's 82 million refugees and internally displaced people who live in similar conditions and have dim prospects for durable solutions.
Will Afghanistan become a safe haven for terrorist groups like the last time the Taliban was in charge, before the 9/11 attacks? Should we expect a threat to the U.S. homeland?
Robinson: The Biden administration has pledged to maintain an “over the horizon” counterterrorism capability to disrupt any threats that arise from Afghanistan. But without an intelligence presence on the ground, the ability to detect emerging threats will be limited.
Russia and China have some incentive to deter and disrupt terrorist activity that could spill over into Central Asian states and China's Xinjiang province. Similarly, neighboring Iran has some incentive to deflect a spillover of radical Sunni elements into its Shia-majority country—although Iran has acted as a safe haven for al Qaeda elements at times, for tactical reasons.
Andrew Radin: I agree that the ability of the United States to unilaterally observe and act against a terrorist threat in Afghanistan or coming from groups in Afghanistan will likely be far more limited under a Taliban-control government. The Taliban are almost certain to reject any U.S. military action in the country, and if the United States does take military action against their will, then they could retaliate against any U.S. diplomatic presence in the country. The U.S. State Department sought assurances from the Taliban that they would not attack the U.S. embassy and its personnel and conditioned future assistance on the Taliban's treatment of Americans.
Campbell: I think events will have to play out before we can determine with more certainty the immediate threat to the U.S. homeland.
It's safe to say that an Afghanistan where the Taliban is the dominant political player is going to be much more accommodating to al Qaeda and like-minded groups. But there are a couple of factors that will determine the extent to which those groups pose a threat internationally.
For one thing, the Taliban has long craved international recognition that it is a viable political entity and worthy of being accepted as the rightful leader of the Afghan state. As such, I don't believe that they want to go back to being a pariah state if they can avoid it. Given their current momentum, I think the Taliban can achieve a preferable outcome of becoming the dominant actor in a revamped political order that at least has the guise of being inclusive. Under such a scenario, they can justifiably surmise that a portion of the international community will at least begrudgingly accept their role. Evidence suggests that regional leaders are maneuvering to engage with and likely come to terms with Taliban leadership.
Radin: Yes, the Taliban's policy toward terrorist groups will have an important effect on the future threat of terrorism from Afghanistan. The Taliban does have a history of a close relationship with al Qaeda, including hosting the group prior to 2001. At the same time, the Taliban committed in the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement to preventing groups such as al Qaeda from using Afghan soil to threaten the United States or its allies. However, there may be reason to doubt the Taliban's assurances. U.S. officials have previously said that they are not fully satisfied with the Taliban's compliance with the peace agreement.
Another consideration is that al Qaeda is far weaker now than it was in 2001. A United Nations report suggests that al Qaeda has about 400 to 600 personnel in Afghanistan.
The threat from ISIS-K, the only other significant group that may pose an external threat in the near to medium term, is less worrisome. The Taliban is a clear enemy of ISIS-K and fought them fiercely in 2019.
Finally, what are some of the geopolitical implications of the rapid collapse in Afghanistan?
Derek Grossman: China is likely to soon welcome and legitimize the Taliban's leadership. Although Beijing's official position is to support Afghan national reconciliation, it has simultaneously been engaging officially with the Taliban since 2019 and unofficially for the last several years to prepare for the Taliban regaining power. Notably, during July 2021, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed Taliban representatives to China in a highly visible sign of warming China-Taliban relations.
China has two key and interrelated objectives in post-U.S. Afghanistan.
First and foremost, as Linda mentioned, Beijing seeks stability in Afghanistan to avoid any potential spillover into China's northwest province of Xinjiang. Xinjiang is home to the ethnic Uyghur minority, some of whom Beijing assesses are part of a separatist and terrorist group known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). To date, China has mostly relied upon its “ironclad brother” Pakistan to do the heavy lifting and prevent terrorists from entering Xinjiang or otherwise supporting ETIM's cause. But this time, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said, “We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-Muslims anywhere in the world. But what we are not going to do is interfere in China's internal affairs.”
China's second priority is to secure access to Afghanistan's natural resources. According to one 2014 report, Afghanistan may possess nearly a trillion dollars' worth of extractable rare-earth metals locked within its mountains. To access these metals, China will first require stability to build highways, roads, and rail into and throughout the country. Beijing is already involved in several projects, although Kabul had resisted formal participation in China's Belt and Road Initiative to avoid getting on the wrong side of the United States. This may change soon.
China and Pakistan are likely to remain closely aligned on Afghanistan, and this is yet another positive for Beijing as the Taliban consolidates its power.
Campbell: The geostrategic effect could be profound, as China, Russia, and even Iran could benefit from the new political order in Kabul. Depending on what transpires, this may prove to be a huge loss for the United States.
rory_20_uk
08-20-2021, 09:46
A movement has taken over Afghanistan by force of arms... the very same force that America deposed 20 years ago which would be viewed under international law as the crime. You can't choose someone else's head of state, recognise them and say everything is now legitimate. Unless you have most of the guns in which case everyone else smiles at the biggest bully.
There will doubtless be many refugees due to this. As there outside of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Israel. Having millions of refugees is never "good" but this is the case in many countries around the world with American involvement in the situation in quite a few of them (if we add the flow of guns and drugs in Central America the number increases). It is such a shame that the millions who are terrified of the Taliban were unable to fight against them.
The same holds true for Terrorism. Pakistan alone has enough land for all the camps, let alone all the other current failed states along with those that actively dislike the West. To point out the obvious, the architects of 9/11 fled to Afghanistan, but they most likely plotted in Saudi Arabia and some trained in the USA itself.
The UK apparently finally seems to be realising that the word "Great" is in relation to Brittany, and nothing more. I thought that the Suez Crisis had been the wake up call that we are, at best, a Tier 2 power that likes to have a few powerful toys to pretend to be able to keep up with the big boys but is fooling no one but themselves. And that the "Special Relationship" is closer to being in an abusive relationship where the USA loves us as long as we do everything they want ideally before they ask and to do otherwise might make them upset which is our fault, rather than accepting we are useful, and generally do have similar views on matters but that's it. Israel gets far more support and treats the USA far worse. If after all the empty speeches and shock dies down this reality remains then that is a small step forward.
~:smoking:
Montmorency
08-22-2021, 07:31
The UK apparently finally seems to be realising that the word "Great" is in relation to Brittany, and nothing more. I thought that the Suez Crisis had been the wake up call that we are, at best, a Tier 2 power that likes to have a few powerful toys to pretend to be able to keep up with the big boys but is fooling no one but themselves.
Arthur Conan Doyle's Watson fought in Afghanistan. So did BBC's Watson.
Good summaries of the situation from February 2020.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2021/08/why-afghanistans-security-forces-suddenly-collapsed.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-biden-administration.html
https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1428849518901071880
Can't find the article I read for citation, but it really highlights the alarming incompetence of our military-security establishment that, observing the Taliban had gone in a couple of months from controlling fewer than a fifth of districts in Afghanistan in the spring, to fully 50% by mid-July, still produced estimates on the Kabul regime's survivability based on the seeming assumption that it would suddenly begin to wage Nazi-style endsieg for 3 to 6 months. Kabul 2021 was never going to be Berlin 1945!!!
Hypothetical Battle of Kabul in someone's mind, maybe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU7WQMM6ZNw
Whoever entertained that should really be demoted or fired above all others. For all that Biden is blameless for, I must express disappointment, attendant to his deep experience with foreign policy and the executive, that he couldn't apply the common sense to see through this of all BSes in time to react (or he did perceive but cynically hoped he could complete the withdrawal of Americans before the downfall). It's commendable that he called the Blob's bluff on the Forever War, but you can't go cruise control on big decisions. The US government took proximate actions intended to stave off panic and disintegration (no expansive Afghan expatriation in the spring) that somewhat-predictably concluded in panic and disintegration. At the very least, there was a month before the fall of Kabul where the equation had very visibly changed, and it was appropriate to seek more time from the Taliban and to temp-surge to secure Kabul for non-combat operations. Now we are "at the mercy of their whims," smug and relaxed though the Taliban be in their moment of triumph, with insurgents escorting foreigners to the airport and asking (https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3145543/how-i-left-afghanistan-taliban-escort-airport) for selfies (https://nypost.com/2021/08/19/what-the-taliban-said-as-they-escorted-me-out-of-an-afghan-city/) with them (https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-womanaoife-macmanus-tells-of-taliban-escort-to-airport-before-afghanistan-evacuation-40770504.html). I really hope the government is quietly negotiating some type of asylee expatriation program with the Taliban to head off some of the expected liquidations.
Biden was not alone in that failure. But his administration should have known that such a collapse was at least a significant possibility, especially since some of the president’s intelligence said as much weeks ago.
With such information available, the White House should have done more to protect American citizens and allies in Afghanistan. The administration could have better prepared for mass evacuations at Kabul’s airport. It could have expedited the processing of the 18,000 applications in the the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program’s backlog. It could have allowed Afghans who lacked visas, but could demonstrate a legitimate basis for fearing Taliban reprisals, to fly to Guam to await in safety the assessment of their eligibility for asylum. And the White House could have laid the groundwork for mass refugee admissions to the U.S. by setting a much higher annual cap than it did earlier this year (or even abolishing that cap entirely).
Current reporting suggests that such measures weren’t taken primarily because the president feared domestic political backlash. As one anonymous administration official told Politico this week, “It’s like they want the credit from liberals for ending the Trump cruelty to immigrants and refugees but they also don’t want the political backlash that comes from actual refugees arriving in America in any sort of large numbers.”
Those who fought to extend America’s war in Afghanistan have every incentive to divert our attention from these revelations. They would like the public to miss the forest for the trees — by mistaking Biden’s tactical errors for strategic ones. The primary lesson of the past week could be that the U.S. war in Afghanistan was a catastrophe and that those who misled the public about the Afghan army’s strength deserve little input on future policy, no matter how many stars they have on their uniforms or diplomas they have on their walls. Alternatively, if news coverage focuses exhaustively on the shortcomings of Biden’s withdrawal, while largely ignoring what our client state’s abrupt collapse tells us about our two-decade-long occupation, then the lesson of Kabul’s fall could be quite favorable for Beltway hawks: Presidents shouldn’t end wars in defiance of the military brass unless they wish to become unpopular. Unfortunately, we are currently hurtling toward that latter outcome. In recent days, much of the mainstream media has comported itself as the Pentagon’s Pravda. Reporters have indignantly asked the White House how it could say that America doesn’t have a vital national security interest in maintaining a military presence near Tajikistan... American military leaders in Kabul systematically lied to the public about how well the war against the Taliban was going, so as to insulate their preferred foreign policy from democratic contestation.
If Biden did not withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year, he would have violated the agreement that Donald Trump had struck with the Taliban in February 2020. There is every reason to believe that Trump’s deal deterred the Taliban from targeting U.S. troops; 2020 witnessed fewer U.S. casualties in Afghanistan than any previous year of the conflict. And there is little doubt that an abrogation of that agreement would have led the Taliban to ramp up attacks on U.S. forces, which would in turn have led the U.S. to deploy more troops, triggering a broader escalation in the war.
Such an escalation would have likely been inevitable, even in the absence of Trump’s agreement. In the years before that deal, the Taliban was steadily gaining territory and killing Afghan security forces in such large numbers the U.S. government started concealing battlefield death tolls. Keeping Ghani’s kleptocracy indefinitely aloft with a few thousand American soldiers and scant U.S. casualties was simply not an option.
More critically, U.S. casualties are not the only measure of the harms of prolonging a civil war that America lacked the will and wherewithal to win. Afghan soldiers’ lives matter. So do the lives of Afghan civilians, many of whom would prefer stability under the Taliban to perpetual insurgency under Ghani. For ordinary Afghans, the conflict has meant “elevated rates of disease due to lack of clean drinking water, malnutrition, and reduced access to health care,” according to the Watson Institute’s “Costs of War” project. The institute’s research concludes, “Nearly every factor associated with premature death — poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, environmental degradation — is exacerbated by the current war.” Between 2007 and 2017, the share of Afghan civilians living below the poverty line rose from 34 percent to 55 percent, even as the nation’s average income grew by 40 percent — a reality that testifies to the humanitarian costs of the war we waged, the profound corruption of the government whose name we waged it in, and the graft of the U.S. military contractors whose interests the war best served.
The Washington Post’s Susannah George reports that one of the main reasons the Taliban was able to take over the country so fast with so little fighting was because it had a well-executed plan to negotiate with or coerce security forces and provincial leaders to get them to desert, surrender, or switch sides:
The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official. Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers. The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces realized they would soon no longer be able to count on American air power and other crucial battlefield support and grew receptive to the Taliban’s approaches.
…
The Doha agreement, designed to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, instead left many Afghan forces demoralized, bringing into stark relief the corrupt impulses of many Afghan officials and their tenuous loyalty to the country’s central government. Some police officers complained that they had not been paid in six months or more.
At Defense One, retired brigadier general and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy Mark Kimmitt also emphasized the Taliban’s “deft use of information operations”:
While many of the world’s armies struggle with this concept, the Taliban have mastered the core elements of public relations, psychological operations, and propaganda. Its brilliant public-relations campaigners created sophisticated propaganda for its own forces, talking about inevitable victory, focusing on “messages to its soldiers and … maintaining unity among them by reminding them of their continuous series of conquests.” For the broader world, they have conducted an “image offensive” to convince the world of a more moderate “Taliban 2.0.” And against the ANDSF, they have been running an equally successful psyops operation to persuade a large number of Afghan units to surrender or withdraw from the battlefield. Many commanders “just surrendered in return for amnesty, which the Taliban granted them and let them go home.”
Further reflections on soft power: The Taliban won the war on it, diplomatically and financially and discursively from the international stage to the contest by village and outpost and city. Their coercive capacities were necessary, but secondary. In a standup fight without guile and finesse, only brawn more like the 20th-century days, the Taliban would have had to wage a protracted and exhausting final campaign despite their fighting elements' unit-for-unit martial superiority. The US desperately needs to learn from this, whether for the sake of its empire or for the sake of its survival.
Retired U.S. Army colonel Mike Jason, who was one of countless officers who worked to train security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, highlights at The Atlantic how those forces had no institutional backbone:
We did not successfully build the Iraqi and Afghan forces as institutions. We failed to establish the necessary infrastructure that dealt effectively with military education, training, pay systems, career progression, personnel, accountability — all the things that make a professional security force. Rotating teams through tours of six months to a year, we could not resolve the vexing problems facing Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s armies and police: endemic corruption, plummeting morale, rampant drug use, abysmal maintenance, and inept logistics. We got really good at preparing platoons and companies to conduct raids and operate checkpoints, but little worked behind them. It is telling that today, the best forces in Afghanistan are the special-forces commandos, small teams that perform courageously and magnificently — but despite a supporting institution, not because of one.
Jason adds that the U.S. military “can and should be blamed for the collapse of security forces in Afghanistan” and that what has happened to the Afghan forces keeps him up at night. “For more than 20 years,” he writes, “no matter what was reported, what we read in the headlines, efforts to build and train large-scale conventional security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq have mostly been an aimless, ham-fisted acronym soup of trial and error that never became the true main effort, and we are to blame for that.”
The media (https://popular.info/p/where-are-the-anti-war-voices) have always been incredibly biased in favor of American intervention under any condition. May have to give that Chomsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) chap a look.
Yesterday's newsletter detailed how the media is largely overlooking voices that supported Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. Instead media reports are almost exclusively highlighting criticism of the withdrawal — often from people complicit in two decades of failed policy in Afghanistan.
We have reason to believe that this is not an accident. On Wednesday, Popular Information spoke to a veteran communications professional who has been trying to place prominent voices supportive of the withdrawal on television and in print. The source said that it has been next to impossible:
I’ve been in political media for over two decades, and I have never experienced something like this before. Not only can I not get people booked on shows, but I can’t even get TV bookers who frequently book my guests to give me a call back…
I’ve fed sources to reporters, who end up not quoting the sources, but do quote multiple voices who are critical of the president and/or put the withdrawal in a negative light.
I turn on TV and watch CNN and, frankly, a lot of MSNBC shows, and they’re presenting it as if there’s not a voice out there willing to defend the president and his decision to withdraw. But I offered those very shows those voices, and the shows purposely decided to shut them out.
In so many ways this feels like Iraq and 2003 all over again. The media has coalesced around a narrative, and any threat to that narrative needs to be shut out.
Who is on TV? As Media Matters has documented, there are plenty of former Bush administration officials criticizing the withdrawal.
Is it really about execution?
Much of the criticism of Biden's decision to withdraw has focused on the administration's "execution." The critics claim the withdrawal was poorly planned, chaotic, and unnecessarily put Americans — and their Afghan allies — in danger.
Some of these claims may be true. It's hard to know, for example, how many people have been left behind since evacuations are ongoing. But, with a few exceptions, the criticisms of Biden's execution are being made by people who opposed withdrawal altogether.
For example, in a scathing column published in the Washington Post, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticizes the execution of the withdrawal. But she also makes clear that she does not think the U.S. military should have left.
Twenty years was not enough to complete a journey from the 7th-century rule of the Taliban and a 30-year civil war to a stable government. Twenty years may also not have been enough to consolidate our gains against terrorism and assure our own safety. We — and they — needed more time.
Rice's argument for why the withdrawal was executed poorly is very similar. She says that waiting a few more months, until winter, would have made it more difficult for the Taliban to fight and "given the Afghans a little more time to develop a strategy to prevent the chaotic fall of Kabul."
But Rice's argument makes clear that it is impossible to disentangle the execution of the withdrawal with the broader policy failures of the last two decades. It may be more difficult for the Taliban to fight in the winter, but the Taliban did not need to fight. Afghan security forces simply evaporated.
The twenty-year effort to build up these institutions — touted by Rice and much of the national security establishment — was a total failure. An orderly evacuation would require some period of time between the end of U.S. military operations and the collapse of the Afghan security forces. What has transpired over the last week demonstrated that wasn't possible.
Absent functional Afghan institutions, it's up to the U.S. military to facilitate an evacuation. That is largely what happened. Thousands of U.S. troops are in Afghanistan securing the Kabul airport and trying to get people out of the country.
Was the status quo sustainable?
Another argument, advanced by former UK official Rory Stewart in the Washington Post, is that the U.S. military footprint was quite small and should have been retained indefinitely:
You would be forgiven for thinking the U.S. was getting itself out of another Vietnam War: fantastically dangerous and expensive, achieving nothing, and impossible to sustain. But in truth, U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014; troop levels had decreased to about 2,500; and there have been no American combat fatalities since February 2020.
When he became president, Biden took over a relatively low-cost, low-risk presence in Afghanistan that was nevertheless capable of protecting the achievements of the previous 20 years.
What Stewart ignores is that the low levels of violence in recent months coincided with the Trump administration's announcement that the U.S. military presence would end in 2021. If, instead, the Biden administration announced that it was staying indefinitely, the situation could have changed dramatically.
The small U.S. military footprint also came with a high cost to Afghan civilians. With few troops on the ground, the military increasingly relied on air power to keep the Taliban at bay. This kept U.S. fatalities low but resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties. A Brown University study found that between 2016 and 2019 the "number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent." In October 2020 "212 civilians were killed."
https://i.imgur.com/8vONMcd.png
^^^Still columnist at NYT. Three-time Pulitzer prize winner.
The Onion has been imitating reality for a long time after all.
https://i.imgur.com/IkjgwsD.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9XHBdUy.jpg
Shaka_Khan
08-23-2021, 03:23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3gK8KOL6sU
Hooahguy
08-24-2021, 00:48
Ah Mark Levin, the guy wrote a book about Marxism and yet thought the Frankfurt school was the Franklin school. :rolleyes:
Anyways the whole "oh no Afghanistan will be a safe haven for terrorists" folk seem to forget that even without Afghanistan as a safe haven, terror cells have managed to commit many major acts of terror since 2001. Terrorists dont need an Afghanistan to plan terror attacks. Plus counter-terror intelligence has improved greatly in the past 20 years, so all the hand-wringing about how we are going to have another 9/11 feels really hollow.
Montmorency
08-24-2021, 02:01
Thankfully, the airlift (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/23/afghanistan-news-evacuations-ramp-up-aug-31-deadline-spotlight/8237288002/) itself has been proceeding well since it began. DoD is good at mission logistics, not much else.
To help speed evacuations, the Air Force is sending nearly three dozen C-17 transport planes to Kabul on Monday, CNN reports, adding that as many as 20,000 people are awaiting an airlift.
American evacuations from Afghanistan picked up speed over the weekend, with President Joe Biden telling the country on Sunday afternoon that 11,000 people had been airlifted out of Kabul in the previous 30 hours.
According to a White House pool report on Monday, from 3:00 a.m. EDT to 3:00 p.m. EDT, about 10,900 people were evacuated from Kabul. Of those, 6,660 people were evacuated on 15 U.S. military flights and about 4,300 on 34 coalition flights.
The pool report notes that: "Since August 14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of approximately 48,000 people. Since the end of July, we have re-located approximately 53,000 people."
White House officials say every Afghan being newly granted admission to the United States is undergoing biometric and biographic security screening at stops overseas before arrival in the United States.
The officials spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to brief reporters on details of the processing. From the single arrival point of Dulles International Airport, new Afghan arrivals were going on to military bases around the United States for further processing. They do not include U.S. citizens, green card holders or their families.
Each person was undergoing a COVID-19 test on arrival in the U.S. and officials were working on arranging COVID vaccinations for those who want them. Each new Afghan arrival was being connected to a refugee organization that would help them resettle in homes around the United States.
I imagine most must have been Afghans given the number. By the Taliban's grace our oversights won't hurt too much.
The biggest military evacuation in US history is going pretty well (https://jabberwocking.com/the-biggest-military-evacuation-in-us-history-is-going-pretty-well/)
I have had it with coverage of the Kabul evacuation. The plain fact is that, under the circumstances, it's going fairly well. Both Americans and Afghan allies are being flown out safely and bloodshed on the ground is surprisingly limited. Sure, the whole operation is going to take a few weeks, but what did everyone expect?
But you'd never know this thanks to an immense firehose of crap coming from the very people we should least believe. This includes:
The hawks who kept the war in Afghanistan going for years with lies and happy talk, and who are now desperate to defend themselves.
Republicans who figure this is a great opportunity to sling partisan bullshit. Their favorite is that Biden has destroyed America's standing in the world, an old chestnut for which there's no evidence whatsoever.
Trumpies trying to avoid blame for the execution of their own plan. It is gobsmacking to hear them complain about slow processing of Afghan allies when they were the ones who deliberately hobbled the visa process in the first place.
Democrats who, as usual, are too damn cowardly to defend the withdrawal for fear of—something. It's not always clear what.
Reporters who are sympathetic to all this because they genuinely care about the danger that the withdrawal poses for people they knew in Afghanistan.
The only real mistake the military made in this operation was in not realizing just what a terrible job they had been doing all along. Everything else flows from that. If the Afghan government had been able to hold off the Taliban for even a few weeks, everything would have been fine. But they didn't even try. Ghani just grabbed a few suitcases of cash and took off.
All by itself, this should tell you how hopeless the situation in Afghanistan has been all along. After 20 years, the Afghan military, even with plenty of warning about when we planned to leave, was unable, and in many cases unwilling, to fight. It's laughable to think that another few months would have made any difference. It's equally laughable to hear from the "light footprint" gang, who think that we could have kept a few thousand troops in Afghanistan forever and avoided any kind of fighting even after the Taliban cease-fire was over.
As for all the Americans being airlifted out, I suppose it's bad form to point out that they were told to leave months ago? If they had a lick of common sense most of them wouldn't be stuck in Kabul and elsewhere waiting to be rescued.
The sophisticated attitude these days is to say that, of course, we needed to leave Afghanistan, but surely we could have executed the withdrawal more competently? Maybe, but I'd like to hear the plan. The problems we've run into were baked into the cake long ago, and the actual evacuation itself has been run with courage and guts. "There's a whole nother story line that media could follow," Cheryl Rofer says. "The people who are working to keep the flights running, the people who get on the flights, the people who are helping others to get to the airport, the people who are running the logistics."
Amen to that. This is by far the biggest military evacuation in US history, and it's being handled surprisingly well. Maybe that will change tomorrow. Anything could happen. But so far the US media has been suckered into a narrative that's almost precisely the opposite of the truth. It needs to stop.
Pannonian
08-26-2021, 18:51
Terrorist attacks on Kabul airport, killing dozens, including 4 US marines. Attributed to an ISIS group. Taliban vow revenge on ISIS.
Unfortunately predictable, RIP to all those killed and speedy recovery to the wounded.
Set me straight here, but from what I can gather the Bonn Agreement established a Constitutional Commission that then presented a version of the old monarchist constitution to an inherently American-backed elite conclave (loya jirga) for approval. Under those conditions it's hard to say that the Afghan people confirmed this constitution, and its state, in terms of either Afghan-traditional or modern Western legitimacy.
But more to the point, we've been hearing for years that the GIROA was considered ineffectual by the population and was widely disliked and disrespected. This can be true even where most Afghanis distrust the Taliban. There's kind of an incestuous effect in foreign perceptions here, where foreign media and military were most closely interacting with those Afghans who were most Westernized or otherwise most committed to the success of the government, which could color one's impression of attitudes just as much as being in a Twitter bubble.
Sorry to jump threads Monty but I had no Biden related thing to post too so just replying to this here. The Loya Jirga was mostly selected by each districts tribal leaders. There were some quotas for the diaspora, women, minorities, etc.. but it was a close to a plebiscite as one could get at the time. Yeah, the American backed guys like Karzai had outsized influence but there was no perfect solution, besides, they like any other constitutional government had the power to amend things. That it had the initial backing of most Afghans is sorta seen by the great turnout in the 2004 and 2005 elections.
The decline in the voting turnout to Taliban threats and disillusion with the government could be seen as a declining legitimacy in a sense but that doesn't make Taliban rule any more legitimate. At least the GIROA had some sort of mandate from the masses until the last few years when the threat of violence made only a minority of people vote.
In hindsight there should have been the olive branch to the Taliban between 2003-2005 to get them involved in the political process but imagine that would have been a none starter for Bush Jr and they would have put the pressure on Karzai and the interim government that that was not going to happen.
But they literally couldn't operate air combat or transport missions without American logistics or contractors! To quote Col. Mike Jason(ret.) from the other thread again,
Absolutely true, but that was to try and stem the corruption. Put an Afghan in charge of the specialized logistics and a lot of the stuff seems to 'disappear' somehow. Also, the US and NATO actually do the same as it's more efficient to have a contractor there for years on end instead of switching green suits out every 6-9 months, especially for equipment that's normally not in our inventory like MATVs, MRAPs, and Mine Rollers.
We often joked on the advisory side how the ANA G4/S4 (Quartermaster Officers) had more power than the G3/S3 (Operations Officers) which is the total opposite of how Western militaries work. Can't do an operation unless you get those fuel and ammo vouchers stamped.
In a way the current operation is like Dunkirk, a major strategic and operational defeat followed by wildly successful extraction of available human assets. As for Taliban recognition, the G7 tacitly admitted that there is a path to recognition when they said it will be a unified decision either way.
Well I know I'll disagree in the that it only became a defeat when we decided we would pullout. It is a successful extraction for the most part but besides the bomb attack today it hasn't been under fire like Dunkirk. If the airport had been under combat conditions as in the ANA fighting and the Taliban rocketing the airport while the evacuation was happening I could see the parallel work more but at Dunkirk the French kept fighting unlike the ANA. The Dunkirk parallel only works if the British then concede Nazi control of the continent and stop fighting them so that the war can end though I'm just being a smartass here, I actually do get your point.
We never lost the war in Afghanistan (so not quite Vietnam), we just thoroughly lost the peace. We knew how to wage war, but we didn't know - and hardly tried - to build peace. The structure of the GIROA reflected that.
Quoted for truth.
As for the current situation with the bombing. The ISIS-K rivalry with Taliban has certainly surfaced again and I imagine that any efforts by the Taliban to 'moderate' as needed to actually govern will cause ISIS-K to leach off the more radical Taliban members. It also shows why not securing other airfields was so stupid by the US. Kabul Airport is convenient for evacuating Kabul residents, yes, but from a security standpoint it's impossible to fully secure an airport in an urban areas without securing a good portion of the urban area too. In hindsight Bagram Air Base should have been the last foothold before pulling out while also doing the same at some of the other key airfields in the country.
Pannonian
08-27-2021, 00:12
Q for the Americans: is Biden blamed for these bombings, or is there an understanding that it was done by a group separate from the Taliban? In particular, I'd like to know the left's take on things. I know that Trump and his core will be laying on the blame.
Hooahguy
08-27-2021, 01:11
Like most things, its become partisan: the GOP is calling for Biden to be impeached/resign, and the Dems/left are telling them to go touch grass. Ive been fairly critical of how the pullout was executed, but I dont see how this attack could have been really prevented. From reports it looks like ISIS is going after the Taliban too so I cant imagine that the Taliban are too happy with all this either.
Today's events sucked in a huge way, but it was sadly inevitable. Huge crowds of people make for a target rich environment. With densely packed chokepoints, a mass casualty event was all but guaranteed. Frankly Im surprised it didnt happen earlier.
Montmorency
08-27-2021, 05:35
Yippee for the forever war.
https://i.imgur.com/ln5sDIa.jpg
Rep the light footprint gang.
https://i.imgur.com/XrmrtRB.jpg
Lest we forget, the Communist terror bombing of Herat in 1979, Guernica on the Hari, is what instigated the unending civil war proper.
U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-drones/u-s-drone-strike-kills-30-pine-nut-farm-workers-in-afghanistan-idUSKBN1W40NW) [2019]
By Ahmad Sultan, Abdul Qadir Sediqi
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout in Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians resting after a day’s labor in the fields, officials said on Thursday.
Maybe if you got all the wars wrong you are not an expert for a TV show but just a person who keeps getting foreign policy wrong.
Henry Kissinger on why America failed in Afghanistan (https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/08/25/henry-kissinger-on-why-america-failed-in-afghanistan)
It was not possible to turn the country into a modern democracy, but creative diplomacy and force might have overcome terrorism, says the American statesman
:daisy:
Why is the leading light of American imperial atrocity still getting published?
spmetla, this whole thread should cheer you considerably, but I don't know how to feel.
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1431067884223037445
Q for the Americans: is Biden blamed for these bombings, or is there an understanding that it was done by a group separate from the Taliban? In particular, I'd like to know the left's take on things. I know that Trump and his core will be laying on the blame.
As far as I can tell the left are happy with Biden on Afghanistan, other than with him not doing much more to assist refugees from there (and Latin America), filtered through their constitutional dissatisfaction with the overall centrism of his politics. Nothing new on that front. The hard left, to the extent they mention Biden at all on Afghanistan, typically do so to remind us of the role he played in enabling the early War on Terror, and to condemn him for not unilaterally foreclosing American militarism worldwide. I suspect the left (and libertarians) who most prioritize anti-war politics have improved their estimation of Biden, at least for now, in solidarity against the bad criticisms of him.
Here's (https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/23/afghanistan-the-miserable-performance-of-the-mainstream-media/) as good an example of left coverage as any, though of course there's hundreds of relevant ones.
In hindsight there should have been the olive branch to the Taliban between 2003-2005 to get them involved in the political process but imagine that would have been a none starter for Bush Jr and they would have put the pressure on Karzai and the interim government that that was not going to happen.
Between the international community, Pakistan, the ethnic/regional divisions, ISK (notably a Taliban splinter faction), the loyalist resistance, and civil societal dissent, in many ways the Taliban will be forced into power sharing unless they think they can bet on the Assad solution or on regional expansionism. But they appear to have been working on a portfolio of local accommodations over the past years, so it feels as though a relatively-stable government is on the table.
Absolutely true, but that was to try and stem the corruption.
When you put it that way, it just reinforces my impression of "boondoggle."
If the airport had been under combat conditions as in the ANA fighting and the Taliban rocketing the airport while the evacuation was happening I could see the parallel work more but at Dunkirk the French kept fighting unlike the ANA.
Clearly, without the Taliban's at-least tacit cooperation, Kabul would look less like Dunkirk and more like Dien Bien Phu (where constant fire from the looming hills and the loss of defensive positions around the strip quickly precluded the possibility of aircraft landings and thus condemned the foreign contingent to ultimate capture). Though realistically in that environment there really would be a US surge to bloodily retake enough of the capital to secure the evacuation of US and allied nationals, or a street battle with advancing Taliban fighters would have been ongoing from August 15th to that end, either way with very bad results for Kabul residents and Afghan asylum seekers, and I suppose any foreigners outside Kabul. A placated opposition has its benefits; there were many worse scenarios for the fall of the government than we've experienced.
As for the current situation with the bombing. The ISIS-K rivalry with Taliban has certainly surfaced again and I imagine that any efforts by the Taliban to 'moderate' as needed to actually govern will cause ISIS-K to leach off the more radical Taliban members. It also shows why not securing other airfields was so stupid by the US. Kabul Airport is convenient for evacuating Kabul residents, yes, but from a security standpoint it's impossible to fully secure an airport in an urban areas without securing a good portion of the urban area too. In hindsight Bagram Air Base should have been the last foothold before pulling out while also doing the same at some of the other key airfields in the country.
It depended on what the Taliban could tolerate, didn't it? Regarding Bagram, if I'm not misremembering, I heard that it's a defensible location for an airfield, with only one accessible path leading into the base, but then by that token Bagram would be useless as an evacuation point if the Taliban simply cut off access (without even resorting to an attack). As politically savvy as the Taliban have been, if I were Biden I wouldn't feel confident leaving behind a handful of isolated FOBs or even attempting to retake some airstrips for temporary operations. The refugee situation is best handled diplomatically; the Taliban were always, in the most optimistic intelligence assessments, the rising de facto government and you have to deal with them in that capacity for results.
Montmorency
08-27-2021, 06:50
Here's the information (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/26/us-officials-provided-taliban-with-names-of-americans-afghan-allies-to-evacuate-506957) I was looking for earlier on coordination with the Taliban:
The Biden administration has been coordinating the evacuation effort and airport security with the Taliban, which is running the checkpoints outside the airport’s outer perimeter. Officials have been “in daily communication” with Taliban commanders about who to let in, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters this week.
Good.
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.
The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.
Basically appropriate, "Afghan allies" isn't much of an undercover category today.
Since the fall of Kabul in mid-August, nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated, most of whom had to pass through the Taliban's many checkpoints. But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials.
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”
Asked about POLITICO's reporting during a Thursday news conference, President Joe Biden said he wasn't sure there were such lists, but also didn't deny that sometimes the U.S. hands over names to the Taliban.
"There have been occasions when our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said this, for example, this bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through," he said. "So, yes there have been occasions like that. To the best of my knowledge, in those cases, the bulk of that has occurred and they have been let through.
[...]
The list issue came up during a classified briefing on Capitol Hill this week, which turned contentious after top Biden administration officials defended their close coordination with the Taliban. Biden officials contended that it was the best way to keep Americans and Afghans safe and prevent a shooting war between Taliban fighters and the thousands of U.S. troops stationed at the airport.
This all improves my confidence in the administration's seriousness in governance.
After the fall of Kabul, in the earliest days of the evacuation, the joint U.S. military and diplomatic coordination team at the airport provided the Taliban with a list of people the U.S. aimed to evacuate. Those names included Afghans who served alongside the U.S. during the 20-year war and sought special immigrant visas to America. U.S. citizens, dual nationals and lawful permanent residents were also listed.
“They had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport,” one U.S. official said.
But after thousands of visa applicants arrived at the airport, overwhelming the capacity of the U.S. to process them, the State Department changed course — asking the applicants not to come to the airport and instead requesting they wait until they were cleared for entry. From then on, the list fed to the Taliban didn’t include those Afghan names.
As of Aug. 25, only U.S. passport and green card holders were being accepted as eligible for evacuation, the defense official said.
Uh oh, looks like the Biden admin has hit its limit for Afghan refugees.
Montmorency
08-29-2021, 01:46
Couple (https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/08/explosion-at-hkia#comment-5509429496) pieces (https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/25/no-one-can-win-here/) on Afghanistan:
When I was about 25, I had a terrible break-up with a woman I really loved as best I could. I was an asshole. Not deliberately abusive, but I was a junkie and manipulative and suicidal and so angry all the time. Toxic as fuck. When we broke up, I just left. There were all kinds of reasons I might have wanted to "go back and check up on her." She was kind of a mess herself. The people she surrounded herself with sucked. I was very sure that I was going to get clean and be a decent guy. Between the ages of 25 and 30, the only thing I'm sure I did right was not trying to go back to her. Not checking on her (because we would have ended up entangled somehow).
Was she in a good place when I left? Fuck no. Could i have been anything but terrible for her, despite my best intentions? No.
To me, this is American imperialism. We have entangled ourselves so deeply in so many places, and made a mess of absolutely everything. All that said, is there anything we can do right now that is better than walking away? No. It's a situation that sucks. It hurts like hell, and it should. But here we are.
eta: we were both charming and crazy smart. years later, she got back in touch with me. our lives were both good. we e-mailed for a little while, and then lost touch. she won on jeopardy! one night, and lost on the second and while she was in los angeles her husband bought her a pair of prada tights. her calves were a little too fat, and she threw a tantrum about that, but they had a great time anyway. i got married to a wonderful woman. the ex and i lost touch again, but i was so thankful for both of us.
I disagree in strict terms that there's nothing for us to do. We could hypothetically, though politically impossible, pursue closer aid and development ties with the Taliban in order to invest in the reconstruction of the country to an extent we were apparently unwilling to undertake for 20 years, but...
“No one can win here,” I found myself whispering as I looked at the distant mountain peaks surrounding Bagram Airfield. Single file out of the C-130 we came. It was 2013, a point at which we were told the war was all but over. We were not here to fight; we artillerymen were here to train the Afghans to shoot their Soviet-era howitzers and supervise. Most of the younger soldiers were disappointed, feeling as though they’d missed the war and were relegated to cleanup crew. I was one of them, itching to be a part of history, active history. At the back of my mind were the memories of watching the towers fall, watching the news coverage as soldiers entered Afghanistan. The silence surrounding my father’s Vietnam Era service. I hadn’t joined right out of high school, but the urge to be a part of history never went away. The urge to do rather than to speak. I found myself in my mid-20s, with a wife and children back home, surrounded by mountains larger than I’d ever seen, with a duffel bag on my back and an ill-fitting boonie cap on my head half a world away just so I could feel like I did something. I believed in America. I believed in democracy. And a healthy democracy demands participation. This was my service to the country. My civic duty. My moral duty.
“Looks exactly like Arizona!” echoed back and forth between the Arizonians in our platoon. They felt oddly at home. I felt foreign. The terrain very unlike my native New England. Speaking a non-native language. Carrying a gun. I felt a defiance in the mountains. You do not belong here, they were saying in chorus. Nowhere else have I felt a terrain more alive than Afghanistan. The glowing purple mountains, the stark lines in the rocks, the snow that fell so unnaturally slow. Every rock pulsed with a soul. I fell in love with it instantly. I fell in love with the sunsets, the snow, and the defiant mountains. A bittersweet romance from the moment boot touched tarmac.
Equally alive are the people whom the mountains have chosen. A selection of tribes who mirror the mountains in beauty and complexity. Prior to deployment, I had immersed myself in Afghan history and politics. I’d read every book I could. I also received an abbreviated training in Dari, which alongside Pashto are the two official languages of Afghanistan. The idea was that every platoon, regardless of job, would have one Dari and one Pashto speaker. With only so many interpreters and since we were no longer technically fighting, but training, having someone around at all times with a passing knowledge of terms was thought to be helpful. My elementary level Dari proved to be an open door to the Afghans I met. My faulting attempts at speaking with them was always met with surprise and enthusiasm.
I found myself torn between so many differing sides of reality. I was madly in love with Afghanistan – its people, its land, its soul – All of which both embraced me and held me at arm’s length. You do not belong here, said the mountain chorus. Most of my fellow Americans did not share my love. Uninterested in the humanity of the land, they were content to stay to themselves, get the job done, hopefully kill someone, and then get the fuck back to ice cold beer and football on tv. I don’t blame them. My love affair with Afghanistan has given me nothing but heart break. Many nights I would find myself sitting cross-legged in front of a tv watching an Iranian soap opera, drinking chai and chewing sugar candies with the Afghan interpreters. The shows improved my conversation skills and the interpreters were always willing to point things out for me to pick up. These nights like any other night of friends sitting around watching tv. Except the moments they would speak Pashto between themselves, and the M4 carbine of mine I left resting on the door frame, that reminded us of our differences. Of a gap between what could be and what was. I would return to the American side those nights to snide remarks and questions regarding my feelings toward the Afghans. Many of the Afghans I worked with would say of me, “You are not American! You are Afghan!” They said this as a compliment. The truth was, I was neither Afghan, nor American. I was foreign. On all fronts.
I was, and am, a lover. I love people. I love the land. I found myself, much like all of us, trying to grapple with what it was to be a citizen of your country. What it was to be a part of a piece of the Earth. So much gray area. All one human race? One nation helping to build another? Most Afghans aligned more with their tribe than the made up “Afghan” national idea. Were we truly helping these people? Were we avenging 9/11? There were, and still are, no clear answers. An existential crisis distilled in the air of that region.
Our job, as well, was one of contradiction. We were not, as stated, training the Afghans to shoot artillery. There was a team who oversaw the Afghan battery of old Russian D 30 howitzers. On the other side of the base was our guns. When we were fired upon or needed to assist an Afghan platoon out on patrol, both Afghans and Americans would be called up. But only one fired at the enemy. The Afghans would be allowed to shoot, always before us, and never at the target. They were not trusted yet and the consensus from the team overseeing them was that they were a long way off from being ready. Our platoon was left feeling as though we were doing something, while being told we were not to be open about the something we were doing. The Combat Action Badge, that shiny piece of metal non-infantry combat men covet, was denied on the grounds that the Afghans officially engaged, not us.
No end in sight. No clarity. It felt as though, on all sides, there never had been clear cut objectives. The existential paradox of that region radiating off those mountains confused and obliterated any idea of linear goals. Reflecting those mountains, the Afghans were never clear either. Many Afghans we worked with would hoot and holler when our guns went off. They’d cheer and yell “Yes! America!” But, in the quiet of the night, in the glow of an Iranian soap opera, I would hear brief wistful talk over the chai, “Sometimes I do miss the Taliban. At least with them you knew things. No smut around. People did right.” The divide between a religious state and a liberal nation were on display. Even the Afghans were unsure of our intentions, unsure of their own leadership, and unsure of what path would give them what they truly wanted.
I’m sitting on a granite boulder on the edge of a pine forest. Woods and mountains. The only places I feel at home anymore. Only wild areas show any clarity. I’m on my phone, talking with a battle buddy from deployment. He too moved to the woods for clarity. We’ve been watching the American troop withdrawal. Seeing the bodies cling to the same C 130s that brought us there. Receiving the million and one emails from every veteran organization under the sun with links to crisis lines and resources to talk. I think about the Vietnam vets. The support they lacked. How truly on their own they were when Saigon fell. I owe them a lot. Many crying alone. Many sitting at wood’s edge alone. They found each other. They built vet centers. They advocated and lobbied so that soldiers like me would not be alone like them. I sit alone in the woods, a place I wouldn’t have been able to get to had it not been years of help from all those organizations and crisis lines they built. My friend is nonchalant about the Taliban’s quick retaking of Afghanistan. Numb, I feel. Both of us. Numb to all.
So hard to not be cynical. To shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh well, so much death and suffering for nothing.” It would be true, of course, to say that. But it feels so inhumane. However, we just experienced twenty years of people not telling the truth. Not being brutally honest and it only brought more suffering. It feels as though we all wanted a linear story. What is our purpose? How do we get to it? Without those questions answered there’s no winning, whatever winning would mean. What was it we wanted to do with Afghanistan? What is it the Afghans want? Again, we are in an existential grey area. To feel nothing. To feel too much. Maybe my friend and I are just overwhelmed and our brains are protecting us from what could happen if we dwell on it. I am, after all, more content to be alone in the woods. “Fuck it, man, I’m just going for a hike,” my friend says before hanging up. “Me too,” I say, slide off the boulder, and walk into the woods. Only two days later we’re on the phone again, “I’m just so torn up,” he says, “I don’t know what to think or feel.” Me too. I think about the news coverage. The phone calls I’m receiving from concerned people, many of whom I haven’t spoken with in years. Why care now? Why the moral outrage now? Afghanistan’s withdrawal is just the newest outrage of the month for people. Last month was the Uighurs (remember that genocide still happening?) and tomorrow will be something else. And the people of Afghanistan will continue to die and the veterans will continue to mourn. I never much respected moral outrage, less so now. The same inclination against it brought me to serve. I needed to do something. Action. I find that many people love to be outraged, but few are willing to follow that up with action. Moral outrage has its place, it can humanize us animals. Provided we do something to help, even something small. But it can also be addicting. Make you feel good. Feel like a good person. Then go back to your beer and tv – no sacrifice required. Sadly, this is the majority position. I don’t blame them, though. Entering into these things, truly entering into them, requires a blood sacrifice. It requires your time and your effort with no hope of reward. It’s not thirty second videos you watch one after the other, it’s a rich story in which you must be a character and hold out until the end.
And me, and all of those decades of veterans. And all those Afghans. Families. Children. We stand before those mountains having offered our blood sacrifices. Years of it. Palms outstretched, waiting for an answer. For connection and honesty. To feel victory. As though we did something and won.
Montmorency
08-30-2021, 23:50
So we're out. The war, at least for us, has informally formally concluded. Plans for international cooperation with the Taliban on safe passage of asylees out of the country, as well as any foreign national stragglers.
Articles (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/biden-deserves-credit-not-blame-for-afghanistan/619925/) on the successful (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/08/29/afghanistan-war-exit-joe-biden-critics-wrong/5639051001/) aspects of the evacuation (https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/08/20/journalists-getting-suckered-by-ass-covering-sources-on-afghanistan/).
End of an era for sure. I'm apprehensive about the future but will hope that Afghanistan has brighter times than it looks at the moment.
Montmorency
08-31-2021, 05:48
What an era. spmetla, do you have any insight on the drone strike aimed at eliminating an 'imminent ISIK-K threat" shortly before the final exfiltration? News reports indicate this attack, whose target seems to have been engineer Zemarai Ahmadi, also killed 8 children and a former ANA/interpreter from the same family. If the target was appropriate, a suicide bomber as claimed, that's still an, um, incredible ratio.
rory_20_uk
08-31-2021, 09:41
Yes - its "self defence" to fire a missile from a drone in someone else's country inside their capital city if you think they might be approaching the airport you've currently occupying. And you can even then say you take civilian deaths seriously after killing loads of civilians.
The mess due to the abrupt withdrawal is a mess and although was never going to be clean this was worse than it could have been; this was - if not done by the USA - state sponsored killing.
~:smoking:
ReluctantSamurai
08-31-2021, 17:02
Yes - its "self defence" to fire a missile from a drone in someone else's country...
Just imagine if a foreign country decided a particular group in the US presented an "existential" threat to their own country and decided on a drone strike to kill members of that group without consulting the US government. OMG WWIII would ensue...:rolleyes:
What we are going to see is more of the same in Afghanistan, just in a different form.
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2757501/pentagon-press-secretary-john-f-kirby-and-army-major-general-william-hank-taylo/
We are in -- not in a position to dispute it right now, Idrees, and as the general said, we're assessing and we're investigating. Look, make no mistake, no military on the face of the Earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the United States military and nobody wants to see innocent life taken. We take it very, very seriously.
[from Gen Taylor]
Commanders will always minimize collateral damage. That is one of the key tenets of what we -- how we operate. In this case, just like Mr. Kirby said, that this strike prevented a high profile attack against both, you know, coalition, U.S. forces, and other Afghan civilians. And so as we looked at the information that we had during the time of the strike, we took all those measures in place. And the decision was made to strike and thwart that attack.
Tell that to the thousands of civilians killed by drone/air attacks around the world in the past, and the 8 children you just killed with the latest drone strike...jeeesus the hypocrisy.
Now here's the intentionally vague part:
[question from reporter]
And -- and then can you -- a little bit more on the -- the continuing strike from ISIS-K. After the U.S. is completely out on the 31st, will you coordinate with the Taliban or get them notice that you plan to conduct more strikes against ISIS?
[answer from Press Sec John Kirby]
I don't think it's useful to get into hypothetical operations for future operations one way or the other. The only thing I would tell you is that the president has made it very clear that we will maintain robust over-the-horizon counterterrorism capability, the kinds of capabilities that you've seen us use in just the last 24/36 hours, and -- and we'll have the ability to react in ways that are in keeping with our national security interests and help prevent attacks on the homeland. We still have that capability. We will use that capability.
[reporter question]
And then does the U.S. -- does the Pentagon or CENTCOM or whomever it would be -- to have the authority to continue to -- to conduct strikes against ISIS-K after August 31st, or do those decisions have to go to the president on a case-by-case basis?
[Kirby answer]
The commander -- the commander on the ground has the authorities he needs right now. I'm not going to talk about authorities going forward. I will say this, not -- in terms of, I know what you're asking, you know, specific approval authority for each and every strike. I -- I won't talk about policy decisions going forward, except to say that the entire interagency, certainly the entire military chain of command understands the -- the existence of this threat and the possibility of this threat to continue to exist over time, and we have the capability to deal with it.
And now the real answer:
[reporter question]
If the IS-K terrorists continues terrorism in Afghanistan even after the withdrawal of U.S. troops on the 31st, will the United States get involved with it in the War on Terror again?
[Kirby response]
The president has made it clear that our combat mission, our -- the war we have been fighting in Afghanistan, that -- that's going to end and it's going to end very soon here. But what's not going to end is our commitment, especially here at the Defense Department, to protect the American people from -- from threats and particularly from any terrorist threat that could emanate from Afghanistan again.
So there you have it---boots-on-the-ground: out; drone strikes and other air attacks: in. And the US wonders why many groups of Muslims hate Americans?
What an era. spmetla, do you have any insight on the drone strike aimed at eliminating an 'imminent ISIK-K threat" shortly before the final exfiltration? News reports indicate this attack, whose target seems to have been engineer Zemarai Ahmadi, also killed 8 children and a former ANA/interpreter from the same family. If the target was appropriate, a suicide bomber as claimed, that's still an, um, incredible ratio.
I've got no actual intel on it so I'm operating off the same info as everyone else. One of the problems in the global war on terror are that they enemy is based out of the civilian population. They don't exactly create bomb factories in an industrial area, it's typically someone's home. Usually the whole family assists in the process too. Like I've mentioned, I've had an interpreter get fired because we found out he was communicating with and informing for the Taliban so it's very possible. It's very possible that the suicide bomber was coerced too, we saw it happen in Iraq all the time that someone would be forced to wear a vest or drive a vehicle to a check point and someone else would detonate the bomb remotely with the coercion being the threat of violence against the family. So it may be that this bomber was willing to kill himself to protect his family and ironically that got his family killed.
Usually the US would be able to investigate afterward together with the ANA/ANP but as it's all in Taliban control now there's no way to verify after the fact outside the intel communities intercepts of ISIS/Taliban communications and informants.
Fighting any sort of against civilian based 'insurgents' be it religious as in this case or communist as in past wars in Africa and Asia, will sadly always have civilian casualties. The enemy doesn't wear uniforms, don't have 'bases' and instead operate out of homes. They don't mind endangering their or others families as they'll either be martyrs to the cause or collaborators that deserve to die with the plus side that even if a target is legitimate there will always be collateral to spin the coverage and message afterward.
Yes - its "self defence" to fire a missile from a drone in someone else's country inside their capital city if you think they might be approaching the airport you've currently occupying. And you can even then say you take civilian deaths seriously after killing loads of civilians.
You saw the amount of deaths that a suicide bomb can cause in a crowded area. If the guy was a bomber then it's tragic that his family suffered too but less tragic than the dozens to hundreds that could have been killed. If the intel was faulty and it was another group of innocents then yes, a closing warcrime.
As for the occupation, it's clearly been with the tacit okay of the Taliban otherwise as Montemorcy has pointed out it'd be a Dien Bien Phu type of fight going on.
Tell that to the thousands of civilians killed by drone/air attacks around the world in the past, and the 8 children you just killed with the latest drone strike...jeeesus the hypocrisy.
Kill a dozen to save a hundred? The morality in this type of fight is never clear cut.
Just imagine if a foreign country decided a particular group in the US presented an "existential" threat to their own country and decided on a drone strike to kill members of that group without consulting the US government. OMG WWIII would ensue...
You could say that's exactly what happened and led to the US going to war in Afghanistan. Al Queda attacked the US in New York and in D.C. in order to fight the infidels 'occupying' (having Air bases in Saudi Arabia due to the Iraqi threat) the land of Mecca. They perceive the US, UK, and Israel as an existential threat to muslims. The Pentagon was attacked, the White House was targeted, and of course the twin towers were brought down. Everything happening now is still a trickledown effect of that event.
So there you have it---boots-on-the-ground: out; drone strikes and other air attacks: in. And the US wonders why many groups of Muslims hate Americans?
They were attacking Americans long before drone strikes and air attacks. Helping muslims in Kosovo, the Mujahadeen against the Soviets and so on never helped. Bringing peace between Israel and Egypt only brought scorn and the death of the Egyptian President who agreed to peace (the US through the MFO organization still maintains that peace too). The past twenty years of war in the middle east are of course good reasons for them to hate us but even if the US were to completely isolate itself there will still be muslim extremists that attack us. For US civilians abroad the greatest threat is terrorism from muslim extremists, domestically it's from right-wing extremists shooting up our own citizens.
Unfortunately there are violent people that want to spread Islam by the Sword. They attack our civilians so 'we the west' attack them and unfortunately kill their civilians. We may end the formal 'War on Terror' but the war goes on as it's a clash of civilizations. It goes back before european colonies, before Ottoman invasions, before reconquistas and crusades. Their extremists want to kill us and don't care about the costs, there's always the option of taking the attacks and turning the other cheek though. That option is usually unacceptable so we're always left with the no good options of kill them and some innocents or let them kill us and some innocents. It's a dirty war, no side is clean, no matter how hard we try to keep clean.
ReluctantSamurai
08-31-2021, 23:33
They perceive the US, UK, and Israel as an existential threat to muslims. The Pentagon was attacked, the White House was targeted, and of course the twin towers were brought down. Everything happening now is still a trickledown effect of that event.
As far as Afghanistan was concerned, most of it was unnecessary...the Taliban had volunteered to turn over Bin Laden. The war hawks saw things the way they always do...might makes right.
They were attacking Americans long before drone strikes and air attacks.
And who do you think aided and abetted that process? We did:
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/who-responsible-taliban
Many Afghan specialists criticized the United States for merely walking away from Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union. Ed Girardet, a journalist and Afghanistan expert, observed, "The United States really blew it. They dropped Afghanistan like a hot potato." Indeed, Washington's lack of engagement created a policy void in which radical elements in the ISI eagerly filled.
Islamist commanders like Hikmaytar, upset with the U.S.-led coalition in the Persian Gulf, broke with their Saudi and Kuwait patrons and found new backers in Iran, Libya, and Iraq. [Granted, while the break was sudden, the relationship with Tehran was not. Hikmaytar had started much earlier to collaborate with Iran]. It was only in this second phase of the Afghan war, a phase that developed beyond much of the Western world's notice, that Afghan Arabs first became a significant political, if not military, force in Afghanistan.
Is the United States responsible for creating the Afghan Arab phenomenon? It would be a gross over-simplification to ascribe the rise of the Taliban to mere "blowback" from Washington's support of radical Islam as a Cold War tool. After all, while many mujahidin groups are fiercely religious, few adhere to the combative radicalism of the Arab mercenaries. Nor can one simply attribute the rise of Islamic fundamentalism to U.S. involvement, for this ignores the very real fact that a country preaching official atheism occupied Afghanistan. Nevertheless, by delegating responsibility for arms distribution to the ISI, the United States created an environment in which radical Islam could flourish. And, with the coming of the Taliban, radical Islam did just that.
And of course, our support for the Mujahidin.
That option is usually unacceptable so we're always left with the no good options of kill them and some innocents or let them kill us and some innocents. It's a dirty war, no side is clean, no matter how hard we try to keep clean.
Been hearing that sort of rhetoric since the Vietnam War. Didn't buy it then, don't buy it now. In this country, you are far and away more likely to get killed by some right-wing gun activist screaming my FREEEEEEDOMS before yours, than any of those 8 children killed in the most recent drone strike growing up and coming to the US as a Jihadist.
As far as Afghanistan was concerned, most of it was unnecessary...the Taliban had volunteered to turn over Bin Laden. The war hawks saw things the way they always do...might makes right.
They 'sorta' offered up Bin Laden if you accept that the US would have to provide solid proof that he was behind the attacks together with that they would only give him up to a third party, not the US. Their offer was certainly not a straight up concession which we turned down. The US posture of no negotiation and unconditional compliance with our demands was of course unacceptable to the Taliban too. You remember the blood lust in the immediate post-9/11 period though, Bush negotiating with the Taliban would have been domestically unacceptable.
Been hearing that sort of rhetoric since the Vietnam War. Didn't buy it then, don't buy it now. In this country, you are far and away more likely to get killed by some right-wing gun activist screaming my FREEEEEEDOMS before yours, than any of those 8 children killed in the most recent drone strike growing up and coming to the US as a Jihadist.
In this specific example though, those 8 kids were killed in fear that there'd be another attack on the airport killing dozens to hundreds. Doesn't make it right to do, but when it comes to weighing 'us' versus them the decision makers in each country usually choose 'us'.
What would your choice, be? You've got a 70% chance that person X can kill 100 people, killing him may kill 8 totally innocent kids. Do you strike or wait for the attack that you likely can't stop if you don't use the opportunity to strike while you know person X is in a certain location. There's no such thing as perfect intel, just % confidence in the data and analysis, I'm sure the intel that warned of the car bombing that killed all those people a few days ago had a person that a drone strike could have killed but without that precipitating event that then skewed the decision making to saving our own versus the deaths in a drone strike, right or wrong intel analysis. It doesn't make it right, those eight kids are dead, zero future for them and not by their choice. However if the intel was right, then perhaps dozens to hundreds of people do have a future. It's life and death gambles, it's dirty, and wrong but there are no easy black and white choices.
I agree for the most though, that's why I mentioned right wing extremists as our primary domestic threat. Peoples fears aren't logical though, one 'outsider' attacking always has an outsized effect. Eating less cheeseburgers and emphasizing more fitness culture in our youths would save far more lives than the money spent to fight terrorists. The fear of terrorists versus health complications isn't logical, something in the human psyche of attacks on the tribe rather than what can we do.
Internationally though it tends to be islamists that attack tourist locations, bomb embassies, kidnap foreigners and sell them to other terrorist groups ect...
Islamists extremists aren't even the most dangerous terrorists in the world but they are the most dangerous to the international community. The Naxalites maoists in India do more attacks and damage to India than any other group and are the largest terrorist organization in the world (excluding now the Taliban). They don't garner international efforts to kill them as their attacks are domestic in scope and not really aimed at the west. The same is true in the Philippines, the New People's Army is a much bigger threat to Philippine stability than the various moro groups in the south, the NPA doesn't try and target foreigners though so they don't really get the attention. In short they don't mess with 'the west' so there's no need for 'us' to mess with them, none of our business, right?
The difference with Islamist extremism is it's international character. The aforementioned maoist groups no longer have the outright backing of the Soviets and the PRC, they confine themselves to domestic attacks which is generally acceptable in the international order. Islamic groups tend to export their terrorism and usually aim it at the west due to a host of reasons including support for Israel, the threat of western liberal concepts to conservative reactionary religions, and revenge for any attacks against the Ummah.
Nevertheless, by delegating responsibility for arms distribution to the ISI, the United States created an environment in which radical Islam could flourish. And, with the coming of the Taliban, radical Islam did just that.
US support for the Mujahadeen was an enabling element of the Taliban, yes, but the primary thing was the lack of any central control to limit Afghan warlord abuses following the soviet departure. US didn't create the environment though, could blame the soviets for their invasion, could blame their communist revolution that overthrew the king in Afghanistan. The creation of Pakistan as a state with Islam as its central identity as the neighboring country is more to blame than anything. Even Ghandi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan together couldn't get the extremists in British India to accept Hindi majority rule. Might be easy to blame the British but even if the Mughal state had survived to present day I doubt that muslim minority rule would conditions for peace there in regards to Mughal attitudes to central asia.
Montmorency
09-01-2021, 02:10
Asshole (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/opinion/us-afghanistan-pakistan-taliban.html) argues that we should have stayed in Afghanistan for generations and patiently watched the society change. He never explains why this would have been a reasonable option, why the American people should endorse it, why it would be of concrete benefit to the Afghan people, or why it would reduce international tensions.
A look at our own history is instructive. Corruption was endemic in New York, Boston and Chicago through much of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. It took us time to grow the institutions and legal structures that would eventually make corruption the exception rather than the norm.
And that is why a decade later after 9/11, Pakistan welcomed the return of the United States — and U.S. assistance. It would work with us against Al Qaeda. But we soon learned that the Taliban were a sticky matter. I was ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. I pushed Pakistani officials repeatedly on the need to deny the Taliban safe havens. The answer I got back over time went like this: “We know you. We know you don’t have patience for the long fight. We know the day will come when you just get tired and go home — it’s what you do. But we aren’t going anywhere — this is where we live. So if you think we are going to turn the Taliban into a mortal enemy, you are completely crazy.”
Clearly, what the United States was lacking in Afghanistan was unlimited "patience" then. Might as well have claimed it as a territory and promised a path to statehood, to the maximal reassurance of skeptical regional actors. We were halfway there with the Philippines, and that involved hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths as well, so...
How about we generate some of that patience toward rescuing our own country first, and once we've built out a credible roadmap, we can collaboratively and peacefully export that model. Or are American bombs and bullets in perpetuity, irrespective of human suffering, the one and only key to good things in this world? :wall:
The more reserved frustrations of an Afghan general (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html).
Justin Amash (https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1432794465039704067) is one of the few principled conservatives in government.
There was no perfect time or way to exit Afghanistan. President Biden directed the evacuation of more than one hundred thousand people and got our troops out. I disagree with the president on a lot, but I’m grateful he pushed through despite all the pressure.
This is also an interesting idea (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/declaration-war-president-Congress.html), for Biden to threaten to withdraw from all foreign deployments that Congress does not affirmatively license before the end of his presidency, but he won't do it because it would give all the milsec and media people a stroke on the spot.
Broken clock mic drop (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/opinion/afghanistan-biden.html):
A month ago I thought I was a cynic about our 20-year war in Afghanistan. Today, after watching our stumbling withdrawal and the swift collapse of practically everything we fought for, my main feeling is that I wasn’t cynical enough.
My cynicism consisted of the belief that the American effort to forge a decent Afghan political settlement failed definitively during Barack Obama’s first term in office, when a surge of U.S. forces blunted but did not reverse the Taliban’s recovery. This failure was then buried under a Vietnam-esque blizzard of official deceptions and bureaucratic lies, which covered over a shift in American priorities from the pursuit of victory to the management of stalemate, with the American presence insulated from casualties in the hopes that it could be sustained indefinitely.
Under this strategic vision — to use the word “strategic” generously — there would be no prospect of victory, no end to corruption among our allies and collateral damage from our airstrikes, no clear reason to be in Afghanistan, as opposed to any other failing state or potential terror haven, except for the sunk cost that we were there already. But if American casualty rates stayed low enough, the public would accept it, the Pentagon budget would pay for it, and nobody would have to preside over anything so humiliating as defeat.
In one way, my cynicism went too far. I guessed that the military and the national-security bureaucracy would be able to frustrate the desire of every incoming U.S. president to declare an endless-seeming conflict over, and I was wrong. Something like that happened with Obama and Donald Trump in their first years in office, but it didn’t happen with Joe Biden. He promised withdrawal, and — however shambolically — we have now actually withdrawn.
But in every other way the withdrawal has made the case for an even deeper cynicism — about America’s capacities as a superpower, our mission in Afghanistan and the class of generals, officials, experts and politicos who sustained its generational extension.
First, the withdrawal’s shambolic quality, culminating in yesterday’s acknowledgment that 100 to 200 Americans had not made the final flights from Kabul, displayed an incompetence in departing a country that matched our impotence at pacifying it. There were aspects of the chaos that were probably inevitable, but the Biden White House was clearly caught flat-footed by the speed of the Taliban advance, with key personnel disappearing on vacation just before the Kabul government dissolved. And the president himself has appeared exhausted, aged, overmatched — making basic promises about getting every American safely home and then seeing them overtaken by events.
At the same time, the circumstances under which the Biden withdrawal had to happen doubled as a devastating indictment of the policies pursued by his three predecessors, which together cost roughly $2,000,000,000,000 (it’s worth writing out all those zeros) and managed to build nothing in the political or military spheres that could survive for even a season without further American cash and military supervision.
Only recently the view that without U.S. troops, the American-backed government in Kabul would be doomed to the same fate as the Soviet-backed government some 30 years ago seemed like hardheaded realism. Now such “realism” has been proven to be wildly overoptimistic. Without Soviet troops, the Moscow-backed government actually held out for several years before the mujahideen reached Kabul. Whereas our $2,000,000,000,000 built a regime that fell to the Taliban before American troops could even finish their retreat.
Before this summer, in other words, it was possible to read all the grim inspector general reports and document dumps on Afghanistan, count yourself a cynic about the war effort and still imagine that America got something for all that spending, no matter how much was spent on Potemkin installations or siphoned off by pederast warlords or recirculated to Northern Virginia contractors.
Now, though, we know that in terms of actual staying power, all our nation-building efforts couldn’t even match what the Soviet Union managed in its dotage.
Yet that knowledge has not prevented a revival of the spirit that led us to this sorry pass. I don’t mean the straightforward criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal. I mean the way that in both the media coverage and the political reaction, reasonable tactical critiques have often been woven together with anti-withdrawal arguments that are self-deceiving, dubious or risible.
The argument, for instance, that the situation in Afghanistan was reasonably stable and the war’s death toll negligible before the Trump administration started moving toward withdrawal: In fact, only U.S. casualties were low, while Afghan military and civilian casualties were nearing 15,000 annually, and the Taliban were clearly gaining ground — suggesting that we would have needed periodic surges of U.S. forces, and periodic spikes in U.S. deaths, to prevent a slow-motion version of what’s happened quickly as we’ve left.
Or the argument that an indefinite occupation was morally necessary to nurture the shoots of Afghan liberalism: If after 20 years of effort and $2,000,000,000,000, the theocratic alternative to liberalism actually takes over a country faster than in its initial conquest, that’s a sign that our moral achievements were outweighed by the moral costs of corruption, incompetence and drone campaigns.
Or the argument that a permanent mission in Afghanistan could come to resemble in some way our long-term presence in Germany or South Korea — a delusional historical analogy before the collapse of the Kabul government and a completely ludicrous one now.
All these arguments are connected to a set of moods that flourished after 9/11: a mix of cable-news-encouraged overconfidence in American military capacities, naïve World War II nostalgia and crusading humanitarianism in its liberal and neoconservative forms. Like most Americans, I shared in those moods once; after so many years of failure, I cannot imagine indulging in them now. But it’s clear from the past few weeks that they retain an intense subterranean appeal in the American elite, waiting only for the right circumstances to resurface.
Thus you have generals and grand strategists who presided over quagmire, folly and defeat fanning out across the television networks and opinion pages to champion another 20 years in Afghanistan. You have the return of the media’s liberal hawks and centrist Pentagon stenographers, unchastened by their own credulous contributions to the retreat of American power over the past 20 years. And you have Republicans who postured as cold-eyed realists in the Trump presidency suddenly turning back into eager crusaders, excited to own the Biden Democrats and relive the brief post-9/11 period when the mainstream media treated their party with deference rather than contempt.
Again, Biden deserves plenty of criticism. But like the Trump administration in its wiser moments, he is trying to disentangle America from a set of failed policies that many of his loudest critics long supported.
Our botched withdrawal is the punctuation mark on a general catastrophe, a failure so broad that it should demand purges in the Pentagon, the shamed retirement of innumerable hawkish talking heads, the razing of various NGOs and international-studies programs and the dissolution of countless consultancies and military contractors.
Small wonder, then, that making Biden the singular scapegoat seems like a more attractive path. But if the only aspect of this catastrophe that our leaders remember is what went wrong in August 2021, then we’ll have learned nothing except to always double down on failure, and the next disaster will be worse.
ReluctantSamurai
09-01-2021, 02:56
However if the intel was right...
Ay, and there's the rub. The intel is too often wrong. There was a piece written a ways back by an officer who was in charge of coordinating drone strikes in the Middle East, and he didn't have a lot of positive things to say about how those strikes were handled from intel gathering to the actual strike. I'll see if I can dig it up....:shrug:
And from many different sources that I've read (which certainly doesn't make me qualified in any way to speak definitively about drone warfare), drone strikes often increase terrorist attacks for a period of time afterwards as a matter of vengeance...:shrug:
Montmorency
09-01-2021, 03:06
Some miserable graphics from this Economist retrospective (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/08/21/from-saigon-to-kabul-what-americas-afghan-fiasco-means-for-the-world).
Why does the foreign mainstream media - or is it just the Commonwealth media - seem to be reflexively pro-Americans-making-and-keeping-warzones? And to think people always used to enjoin looking to foreign news sources for more objective perspectives on American foreign policy.
Yes - its "self defence" to fire a missile from a drone in someone else's country inside their capital city if you think they might be approaching the airport you've currently occupying. And you can even then say you take civilian deaths seriously after killing loads of civilians.
The mess due to the abrupt withdrawal is a mess and although was never going to be clean this was worse than it could have been; this was - if not done by the USA - state sponsored killing.
~:smoking:
It's important to separate the intelligence failures before and during the Taliban offensive from the conduct of this or any civilian evacuation. For the record, the actual exfiltration of Afghans - and the refugee situation was always going to be messy since most people have a bias against cutting bait (?) until catastrophe is under their noses* - went quite well. The main reasons why it went as well as it did, in terms of volume of persons safely moved, is because of the Taliban's active cooperation (the linchpin) and our own military's well-known proficiency in moving lots of people in a short time. The latter is legitimately our specialty.
Neither the city nor the airport were under siege, a circumstance that would have dramatically lowered the quota for refugees and produced the equivalent of a year's worth of Afghan casualties in a week, dozens to hundreds of American deaths on top. For an extraction of this nature, what we saw is almost as good as it gets. The implication of that proposition should really be not to create such messes for ourselves and others, that we'll later need to hop out of, in the first place...
I've got no actual intel on it so I'm operating off the same info as everyone else. One of the problems in the global war on terror are that they enemy is based out of the civilian population. They don't exactly create bomb factories in an industrial area, it's typically someone's home. Usually the whole family assists in the process too. Like I've mentioned, I've had an interpreter get fired because we found out he was communicating with and informing for the Taliban so it's very possible. It's very possible that the suicide bomber was coerced too, we saw it happen in Iraq all the time that someone would be forced to wear a vest or drive a vehicle to a check point and someone else would detonate the bomb remotely with the coercion being the threat of violence against the family. So it may be that this bomber was willing to kill himself to protect his family and ironically that got his family killed.
Usually the US would be able to investigate afterward together with the ANA/ANP but as it's all in Taliban control now there's no way to verify after the fact outside the intel communities intercepts of ISIS/Taliban communications and informants.
Fighting any sort of against civilian based 'insurgents' be it religious as in this case or communist as in past wars in Africa and Asia, will sadly always have civilian casualties. The enemy doesn't wear uniforms, don't have 'bases' and instead operate out of homes. They don't mind endangering their or others families as they'll either be martyrs to the cause or collaborators that deserve to die with the plus side that even if a target is legitimate there will always be collateral to spin the coverage and message afterward.
No idea how to weigh the accuracy of such claims, but family members from the scene allege that not only were the two men killed not terrorists, they were asylees waiting for approval to be evacuated. To be sure, if true then this incident constitutes the single worst "botching" of Biden's withdrawal. Of course, it's also possible sigint was on the ball and these men were using such pretexts to infiltrate the perimeter for another devastating attack. I wonder if we'll ever know.
They were attacking Americans long before drone strikes and air attacks. Helping muslims in Kosovo, the Mujahadeen against the Soviets and so on never helped. Bringing peace between Israel and Egypt only brought scorn and the death of the Egyptian President who agreed to peace (the US through the MFO organization still maintains that peace too). The past twenty years of war in the middle east are of course good reasons for them to hate us but even if the US were to completely isolate itself there will still be muslim extremists that attack us. For US civilians abroad the greatest threat is terrorism from muslim extremists, domestically it's from right-wing extremists shooting up our own citizens.
Unfortunately there are violent people that want to spread Islam by the Sword. They attack our civilians so 'we the west' attack them and unfortunately kill their civilians. We may end the formal 'War on Terror' but the war goes on as it's a clash of civilizations. It goes back before european colonies, before Ottoman invasions, before reconquistas and crusades. Their extremists want to kill us and don't care about the costs, there's always the option of taking the attacks and turning the other cheek though. That option is usually unacceptable so we're always left with the no good options of kill them and some innocents or let them kill us and some innocents. It's a dirty war, no side is clean, no matter how hard we try to keep clean.
This kind of 'in sorrow' method would be easier for critics of American styles of engagement to accept if it was paired with genuine economic and social incentives to Muslim countries that would benefit the people, besides offering alternatives to violent confrontation from that part of the grassroots. How much do American policy makers care about regional security and keeping terrorism (Muslim or otherwise) out of the homeland Heimat? It seems like for the most part we're about alienating "clash of civilizations" anxiety and dealing weapons and money to noxious local elites over maximizing human wellbeing (or even minimizing militant activity). Is "over the horizon" to be more than a euphemism for shooting at a leaking dike?
For instance, how many Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees are Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan hosting? Ballpark 10 million? Though Pakistan, like certain other governments, seems committed to digging its own grave, these are the pillars of the Middle East. How much more can they take? How much more do we expect them to take, sight unseen? If the contagion of instability overburdens them, I assume it will just engender more self-defeating Clash of Civilizations militarism from the "Western" end, rather than being received as a straightforward and preventable humanitarian catastrophe that we had large part in.
How can the West defend itself if it can't transcend jealous indifference and complacent cruelty to preserve common interests and spot looming challenges not over, but sprawled all along, the horizon? Surprised pikachus abound.
But actionable foresight is at odds with human nature by all appearances, whether in pandemics or climate change or above all the survival of the national state. At the very least we must try to learn from our failures on paper.
(Speaking of which, ReluctantSamurai you're going to get a kick out of this document (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/workshop.pdf), especially the "Effects on Society at Large" section.)
Those Economist graphs:
https://i.imgur.com/BE2XqIq.png
https://i.imgur.com/0qEyiPd.png
https://i.imgur.com/Avtmccp.png
What would your choice, be? You've got a 70% chance that person X can kill 100 people, killing him may kill 8 totally innocent kids. Do you strike or wait for the attack that you likely can't stop if you don't use the opportunity to strike while you know person X is in a certain location.
One suggestion I heard is that the US perimeter should have been widened to reduce the risk of security breaches becoming mass casualty events. But in the end, as alluded to above, we don't have access to the exact information, or its reliability, available to decision makers in this instance. It's best not to miss the forest for the trees!
ReluctantSamurai
09-01-2021, 04:15
Jeezus do I love these quotes:
Additionally, national, local, and state officials all operated in the same way. At best, they communicated half-truths, or even out-right lies. As terrifying as the disease was, the officials made it more terrifying by making little of it, and they oftenunderplayed it. Local officials said things like “if normal precautions are taken, there is nothing to fear” but then they would close all businesses.
“Worry kills more people than the disease itself,” a Chicago public health official was quoted as saying. Other quotes were: “Don’t get scared,” and “The so-called Spanish influenza is nothing more or less than old fashioned grippe.”
Communication was rarely honest, because honesty would hurt morale. One of the first newspapers that started telling the truth in Milwaukee saw its editor jailed, so they stopped telling the truth. In Philadelphia, after a public health official finally closed all public gatherings and public funerals, the newspaper said, “This is not a public health measure.”
There was a lot of cognitive dissonance. People heard from authorities and newspapers that everything was going fine, but at the same time, bodies were piling up. Imagine your spouse lying dead in bed for six to eight days. There were coffin shortages. The dead were piled up where they died. There were police going around asking people to “bring out their dead.”
There is a tremendous amount of wishful thinking that the virus won’t come here. In 1918 the shaping of the cognitive environment varied dramatically from location to location some places elected officials and public officials locked arms on some things. Some tentative evidence shows that social distancing interventions did help. However, Baltimore is a case example of how to do it wrong (e.g., not close the schools). In Baltimore there were fights between elected officials and public health officials. Another example of doing it wrong was Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, the Mayor actually told the public to ignore the public health officials.
There's a few others, but I realize my response would be better placed in the COVID thread. For sake of continuity, I put it here.
We haven't learned a GD thing in 100 years, apparently....:shrug:
Ay, and there's the rub. The intel is too often wrong. There was a piece written a ways back by an officer who was in charge of coordinating drone strikes in the Middle East, and he didn't have a lot of positive things to say about how those strikes were handled from intel gathering to the actual strike. I'll see if I can dig it up....
And from many different sources that I've read (which certainly doesn't make me qualified in any way to speak definitively about drone warfare), drone strikes often increase terrorist attacks for a period of time afterwards as a matter of vengeance...
No idea how to weigh the accuracy of such claims, but family members from the scene allege that not only were the two men killed not terrorists, they were asylees waiting for approval to be evacuated. To be sure, if true then this incident constitutes the single worst "botching" of Biden's withdrawal. Of course, it's also possible sigint was on the ball and these men were using such pretexts to infiltrate the perimeter for another devastating attack. I wonder if we'll ever know.
Absolutely agree with both you guys, big thing I was trying to point out is that there is someone trying to make decisions in that fog of war. We'd been warned about possible ISIS-K attacks for days into the evacuation, I'm sure a decision maker erred on not doing strikes in the city prior to the big suicide attack last week. Now the pendulum likely swung to conducting a strike and erring on the side of security and damn the collateral. Probably also weighing in was the pile-on that Biden is getting from everyone that suddenly remembered that Afghanistan and the Taliban exist and his trying to deflect the criticism of being 'soft' through his making such a difficult decision no previous administration has done.
The intel is often times wrong, as for the neighbors and family, it's always hard to judge. You can't ignore them, they might be completely right and the US just bombed good people for no reason which has happened all too often.
Despite my arguments on here I'm very on the fence with drone strikes as I am with cruise missile strikes as it takes the danger away too much from our side. When there's an actual pilot that may get shot down or actual soldiers on the ground to spill blood and die that makes people weigh the risks much more. If 13 US servicemembers hadn't been blown up last week I'm sure the decision to conduct the drone strike wouldn't have happened no matter how many Afghans had been killed in the suicide attack. With that one bomb attack causing 16% of the KIA sustained by the US (13/77) since we stopped taking a lead in fighting back in 2014 the threat of another successful attack seems to have made the decision makers weigh 'our' security over questionable intel and 'collateral damage.'
This kind of 'in sorrow' method would be easier for critics of American styles of engagement to accept if it was paired with genuine economic and social incentives to Muslim countries that would benefit the people, besides offering alternatives to violent confrontation from that part of the grassroots.
For instance, how many Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees are Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan hosting? Ballpark 10 million? Though Pakistan, like certain other governments, seems committed to digging its own grave, these are the pillars of the Middle East. How much more can they take? How much more do we expect them to take, sight unseen? If the contagion of instability overburdens them, I assume it will just engender more self-defeating Clash of Civilizations militarism from the "Western" end, rather than being received as a straightforward and preventable humanitarian catastrophe that we had large part in. Part of it too that those neighboring countries meddle in their neighbors politics too. Turkey has contributed to instability hosts migrants and also uses them as pawns in the threat of the migrant hordes coming into Europe.
How can the West defend itself if it can't transcend jealous indifference and complacent cruelty to preserve common interests and spot looming challenges not over, but sprawled all along, the horizon? Surprised pikachus abound.
But actionable foresight is at odds with human nature by all appearances, whether in pandemics or climate change or above all the survival of the national state. At the very least we must try to learn from our failures on paper.
(Speaking of which, @ReluctantSamurai you're going to get a kick out of this document, especially the "Effects on Society at Large" section.)
Well part of the problem in those countries hosting so many refugees is that they are just put into a camp and kept there forever. The Palestinians in Lebanon were never given a chance at integrating so they just ended up being a stateless, hostile entity that further destabilized Lebanon and led to the civil war.
Part of it is that people keep expecting the all or nothing solutions, especially with Israel. Demands that Israel go back to 1948 borders with so many decades in between seem as likely as getting Russia to give up Crimea.
As for help, well, the West sends an incredible amount of aid to those nations. That foreign aid unfortunately becomes part of the problem too, give country X million for education, they then cut their education by X million and reallocate into other things suddenly building a dependency.
How much do American policy makers care about regional security and keeping terrorism (Muslim or otherwise) out of the homeland Heimat? It seems like for the most part we're about alienating "clash of civilizations" anxiety and dealing weapons and money to noxious local elites over maximizing human wellbeing (or even minimizing militant activity). Is "over the horizon" to be more than a euphemism for shooting at a leaking dike?
Well it's a damned if you and damned if you don't world. Support a dictatorship in Egypt that keeps regional stability, maintains trade through the Suez, and abides by it's peace treaty with Israel or support a democratically elected Islamist that wants to start a regional war to kick Israel out of the Holy Land. Support pro-democracy elements in Syria and Libya against brutal dictatorships but not actually send in troops to either eliminate the dictatorship (syria) or create some on the ground security for the transitional government (Libya). Support the Shah in Iran to support british oil or support the democratic elements there that might create enough instability for the soviets to expand their influence. Support Turkey as it slides into dictatorship or standby principles and kick it out of NATO only to see it become our biggest opponent in the region eclipsing even Iran?
Hands off foreign policy won't work, too much military intervention won't work either. Being a global cash cow is politically a dead end and in the long run doesn't help.
It'd be great if the US didn't have to engage the middle east so much but the post-colonial woes of France and the UK combined with the US betrayal of them in the Suez crisis haven't fostered a leadership role for Europe in the middle east despite them being the best ones to do so with the regional knowledge, neighborly interest, and historic (for better and worse) ties. This viewpoint is of course western centric, the idea that an outside power broker is necessary seems ludicrious but the Arab infighting nationalism vs. political Islam, the Sunni/Shia woes, neo-Ottomanism, and recurring flareups in Palestine together with US/NATO/EU actions (military, economic, diplomatic etc) that incite the muslim mainstream against the west while ruining themselves economically by spending on militaries that are larger than their economies can realistically afford.
Seamus Fermanagh
09-01-2021, 17:42
ReluctantSamurai
A query good sir...
Almost all of those who deem themselves our enemies are also fully aware of the futility of facing the USA military in a conventional fashion. Not being any stupider than anyone else, these opponents almost always adopt an insurgency approach so as to minimize or avoid the nearly insurmountable conventional advantage of the USA. Some of those enemies operate not simply with the support (coerced or otherwise) of a local population as do most insurgencies, but by actively basing themselves in and among such populations (whether because culturally/ideologically they draw no distinctions between combatant and non-combatant; because they are callously exploiting our views on non-combatants, or by happenstance with little thought).
Since this is the condition that obtains and is likely to do so in future, RS, how can/should the USA use military force (violence) against these enemies?
rory_20_uk
09-01-2021, 19:41
Perhaps another thing to look into is why peoples all over the world have such a "strong" view of the USA as opposed to, say, Germany, or indeed even China. Spoiler alert... it has a lot to do with all the killing, invading and so on for the last 60 or so years.
Perhaps calming down and not firing cruise missiles / drone attacks might be a nice change of pace - perhaps even wait for a situation where people are complaining the USA isn't getting involved as opposed to their lives being ruined with either sanctions or other, more violent interventions.
~:smoking:
ReluctantSamurai
09-01-2021, 22:58
Since this is the condition that obtains and is likely to do so in future, RS, how can/should the USA use military force (violence) against these enemies?
My reply is to stop using the stick approach in the Middle East, and everywhere else, for that matter. How about doing some of the things that Monty hinted at with economic and social incentives. In fact, we could be doing a huge service to countries outside the G20 by lifting patent rights on vaccines (even if only temporary) so that these countries could at least get a start on controlling SARS-2. Ease economic sanctions against certain countries for the very same reason.
Why is it so GD important that (X) militant get targeted for a drone strike, when all involved know there will be civilian casualties? Who gave us the right to cut short innocent lives because of our political agenda?
Yes, I understand there are radical militants around the world who want to do us harm even if we acted in a benevolent manner, for either cultural or religious reasons. I would venture, however, that hacking from foreign countries like Russia, China, and Iran, cause far more damage (ie the recent pipeline hack, among others) than a radical Jihadist who somehow manages to evade our border security.
That was the long answer....the short---stop all drone strikes except in extreme cases where intel is so overwhelming, and the target so extremely dangerous, that it warrants the risk of civilian deaths....:shrug:
Seamus Fermanagh
09-01-2021, 23:25
A cogent response, thank you. I even find myself agreeing with a number of points you make.
Vaccine: Lift the patents and compensate the companies (it is not as though we aren't tossing them wads of cash anyway) or maintain the patents but buy tons of it and give it away. Both for economic improvements for the USA in the long term and basic human decency it would be the right thing to do.
Cyber-war: This is a war we can fight and win. It is, as you and other have noted, a greater threat to the USA than any terrorist operation. We lose people in automobile related incidents, every month, in nearly the same number as those killed on 9-11-2001 by terrorists. We lose more to opioid abuse every month than died on 9-11-2001. The potential for economic and physical harm from cyber attacks dwarfs anything short of a nuclear strike (terror sponsored or otherwise).
Carrot v Stick: We use the former but not enough and not well. We do not factor in the needed bribes to get aid sent in proper amounts. We do not educate others and send them home. I would probably accept the use of the 'stick' under more circumstances than you advocate, but cannot disagree that it should be used less and used more effectively.
NOTE: How do we change the media coverage? The standard terrorist attack films much better than a cyber strike and its counters. This sort of thing makes it difficult to get a pol to focus on what matters most as a threat v what affects her reelection most.
Pannonian
09-01-2021, 23:50
My reply is to stop using the stick approach in the Middle East, and everywhere else, for that matter. How about doing some of the things that Monty hinted at with economic and social incentives. In fact, we could be doing a huge service to countries outside the G20 by lifting patent rights on vaccines (even if only temporary) so that these countries could at least get a start on controlling SARS-2. Ease economic sanctions against certain countries for the very same reason.
Why is it so GD important that (X) militant get targeted for a drone strike, when all involved know there will be civilian casualties? Who gave us the right to cut short innocent lives because of our political agenda?
Yes, I understand there are radical militants around the world who want to do us harm even if we acted in a benevolent manner, for either cultural or religious reasons. I would venture, however, that hacking from foreign countries like Russia, China, and Iran, cause far more damage (ie the recent pipeline hack, among others) than a radical Jihadist who somehow manages to evade our border security.
That was the long answer....the short---stop all drone strikes except in extreme cases where intel is so overwhelming, and the target so extremely dangerous, that it warrants the risk of civilian deaths....:shrug:
Violence wins votes among enough voters to win elections. Or perhaps more precisely, lack of violence loses enough votes to lose elections. Either voters grow up enough to recognise that machismo isn't an effective policy driver. Or you go with wherever democracy drives you, however inefficient the direction.
Compare with China's neocolonialism. Not something that our societies would tolerate. But by heck they are effective at getting foreign influence through coercion.
Montmorency
09-02-2021, 01:51
You've got to respect the people (https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august) who tried to integrate into and deeply comprehend Afghan society. Moreover, this is some thicc investigative journalism. NB. This is a Jewish woman embedding directly into Afghan society.
I’ve been silent for a while. I’ve been silent about Afghanistan for longer. But too many things are going unsaid.
I won’t try to evoke the emotions, somehow both swirling and yet leaden: the grief, the anger, the sense of futility. Instead, as so often before, I will use my mind to shield my heart. And in the process, perhaps help you make some sense of what has happened.
For those of you who don’t know me, here is my background — the perspective from which I write tonight.
I covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR, making my way into their former capital, Kandahar, in December 2001, a few days after the collapse of their regime. Descending the last great hill into the desert city, I saw a dusty ghost town. Pickup trucks with rocket-launchers strapped to the struts patrolled the streets. People pulled on my militia friends' sleeves, telling them where to find a Taliban weapons cache, or a last hold-out. But most remained indoors.
It was Ramadan. A few days later, at the holiday ending the month-long fast, the pent-up joy erupted. Kites took to the air. Horsemen on gorgeous, caparisoned chargers tore across a dusty common in sprint after sprint, with a festive audience cheering them on. This was Kandahar, the Taliban heartland. There was no panicked rush for the airport.
I reported for a month or so, then passed off to Steve Inskeep, now Morning Edition host. Within another couple of months, I was back, not as a reporter this time, but to try actually to do something. I stayed for a decade. I ran two non-profits in Kandahar, living in an ordinary house and speaking Pashtu, and eventually went to work for two commanders of the international troops, and then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (You can read about that time, and its lessons, in my first two books, The Punishment of Virtue and Thieves of State.)
From that standpoint — speaking as an American, as an adoptive Kandahari, and as a former senior U.S. government official — here are the key factors I see in today’s climax of a two-decade long fiasco:
Afghan government corruption, and the U.S. role enabling and reinforcing it. The last speaker of the Afghan parliament, Rahman Rahmani, I recently learned, is a multimillionaire, thanks to monopoly contracts to provide fuel and security to U.S. forces at their main base, Bagram. Is this the type of government people are likely to risk their lives to defend?
Two decades ago, young people in Kandahar were telling me how the proxy militias American forces had armed and provided with U.S. fatigues were shaking them down at checkpoints. By 2007, delegations of elders would visit me — the only American whose door was open and who spoke Pashtu so there would be no intermediaries to distort or report their words. Over candied almonds and glasses of green tea, they would get to some version of this: “The Taliban hit us on this cheek, and the government hits us on that cheek.” The old man serving as the group’s spokesman would physically smack himself in the face.
I and too many other people to count spent years of our lives trying to convince U.S. decision-makers that Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were. Note: it took me a while, and plenty of my own mistakes, to come to that realization. But I did.
For two decades, American leadership on the ground and in Washington proved unable to take in this simple message. I finally stopped trying to get it across when, in 2011, an interagency process reached the decision that the U.S. would not address corruption in Afghanistan. It was now explicit policy to ignore one of the two factors that would determine the fate of all our efforts. That’s when I knew today was inevitable.
Americans like to think of ourselves as having valiantly tried to bring democracy to Afghanistan. Afghans, so the narrative goes, just weren’t ready for it, or didn’t care enough about democracy to bother defending it. Or we’ll repeat the cliche that Afghans have always rejected foreign intervention; we’re just the latest in a long line.
I was there. Afghans did not reject us. They looked to us as exemplars of democracy and the rule of law. They thought that’s what we stood for.
And what did we stand for? What flourished on our watch? Cronyism, rampant corruption, a Ponzi scheme disguised as a banking system, designed by U.S. finance specialists during the very years that other U.S. finance specialists were incubating the crash of 2008. A government system where billionaires get to write the rules.
Is that American democracy?
Well…?
Pakistan. The involvement of that country's government -- in particular its top military brass -- in its neighbor’s affairs is the second factor that would determine the fate of the U.S. mission.
You may have heard that the Taliban first emerged in the early 1990s, in Kandahar. That is incorrect. I conducted dozens of conversations and interviews over the course of years, both with actors in the drama and ordinary people who watched events unfold in Kandahar and in Quetta, Pakistan. All of them said the Taliban first emerged in Pakistan.
The Taliban were a strategic project of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI. It even conducted market surveys in the villages around Kandahar, to test the label and the messaging. “Taliban” worked well. The image evoked was of the young students who apprenticed themselves to village religious leaders. They were known as sober, studious, and gentle. These Taliban, according to the ISI messaging, had no interest in government. They just wanted to get the militiamen who infested the city to stop extorting people at every turn in the road.
Both label and message were lies.
Within a few years, Usama bin Laden found his home with the Taliban, in their de facto capital, Kandahar, hardly an hour’s drive from Quetta. Then he organized the 9/11 attacks. Then he fled to Pakistan, where we finally found him, living in a safe house in Abbottabad, practically on the grounds of the Pakistani military academy. Even knowing what I knew, I was shocked. I never expected the ISI to be that brazen.
Meanwhile, ever since 2002, the ISI had been re-configuring the Taliban: helping it regroup, training and equipping units, developing military strategy, saving key operatives when U.S. personnel identified and targeted them. That’s why the Pakistani government got no advance warning of the Bin Laden raid. U.S. officials feared the ISI would warn him.
By 2011, my boss, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Taliban were a “virtual arm of the ISI.”
And now this.
Do we really suppose the Taliban, a rag-tag, disjointed militia hiding out in the hills, as we’ve so long been told, was able to execute such a sophisticated campaign plan with no international backing? Where do we suppose that campaign plan came from? Who gave the orders? Where did all those men, all that materiel, the endless supply of money to buy off local Afghan army and police commanders, come from? How is it that new officials were appointed in Kandahar within a day of the city’s fall? The new governor, mayor, director of education, and chief of police all speak with a Kandahari accent. But no one I know has ever heard of them. I speak with a Kandahari accent, too. Quetta is full of Pashtuns — the main ethnic group in Afghanistan — and people of Afghan descent and their children. Who are these new officials?
Over those same years, by the way, the Pakistani military also provided nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. But for two decades, while all this was going on, the United States insisted on considering Pakistan an ally. We still do.
Hamid Karzai. During my conversations in the early 2000s about the Pakistani government’s role in the Taliban’s initial rise, I learned this breathtaking fact: Hamid Karzai, the U.S. choice to pilot Afghanistan after we ousted their regime, was in fact the go-between who negotiated those very Taliban’s initial entry into Afghanistan in 1994.
I spent months probing the stories. I spoke to servants in the Karzai household. I spoke to a former Mujahideen commander, Mullah Naqib, who admitted to being persuaded by the label and the message Karzai was peddling. The old commander also admitted he was at his wits’ end at the misbehavior of his own men. I spoke with his chief lieutenant, who disagreed with his tribal elder and commander, and took his own men off to neighboring Helmand Province to keep fighting. I heard that Karzai’s own father broke with him over his support for this ISI project. Members of Karzai’s household and Quetta neighbors told me about Karzai’s frequent meetings with armed Taliban at his house there, in the months leading up to their seizure of power.
And lo. Karzai abruptly emerges from this vortex, at the head of a “coordinating committee” that will negotiate the Taliban’s return to power? Again?
It was like a repeat of that morning of May, 2011, when I first glimpsed the pictures of the safe-house where Usama bin Laden had been sheltered. Once again — even knowing everything I knew — I was shocked. I was shocked for about four seconds. Then everything seemed clear.
It is my belief that Karzai was a key go-between negotiating this surrender, just as he did in 1994, this time enlisting other discredited figures from Afghanistan's past, as they were useful to him. Former co-head of the Afghan government, Abdullah Abdullah, could speak to his old battle-buddies, the Mujahideen commanders of the north and west, and their comrades within the Afghan armed forces. You may have heard some of their names as they surrendered their cities in recent days: Ismail Khan, Dostum, Atta Muhammad Noor. The other person mentioned together with Karzai is Gulbuddin Hikmatyar -- a bona fide Taliban commander, who could take the lead in some conversations with them and with the ISI.
As Americans have witnessed in our own context — the #MeToo movement, for example, the uprising after the murder of George Floyd, or the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — surprisingly abrupt events are often months or years in the quiet making. The abrupt collapse of 20 years’ effort in Afghanistan is, in my view, one of those cases.
Thinking this hypothesis through, I find myself wondering: what role did U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad play? An old friend of Karzai's, he was the one who ran the negotiations with the Taliban for the Trump Administration, in which the Afghan government was forced to make concession after concession. Could President Biden truly have found no one else for that job, to replace an Afghan-American with obvious conflicts of interest, who was close to former Vice President Dick Cheney and who lobbied in favor of an oil pipeline through Afghanistan when the Taliban were last in power?
Self-Delusion. How many times did you read stories about the Afghan security forces’ steady progress? How often, over the past two decades, did you hear some U.S. official proclaim that the Taliban’s eye-catching attacks in urban settings were signs of their “desperation” and their “inability to control territory?” How many heart-warming accounts did you hear about all the good we were doing, especially for women and girls?
Who were we deluding? Ourselves?
What else are we deluding ourselves about?
One final point. I hold U.S. civilian leadership, across four administrations, largely responsible for today’s outcome. Military commanders certainly participated in the self-delusion. I can and did find fault with generals I worked for or observed. But the U.S. military is subject to civilian control. And the two primary problems identified above — corruption and Pakistan — are civilian issues. They are not problems men and women in uniform can solve. But faced with calls to do so, no top civilian decision-maker was willing to take either of these problems on. The political risk, for them, was too high.
Today, as many of those officials enjoy their retirement, who is suffering the cost?
Followup post (https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/failing-states):
I write this post with the dizzying impression of having stepped into a hall of mirrors.
In international development circles, it’s fashionable to speak of “fragile” or “failing” states. But such states are deceptive. They are in fact run by sophisticated networks. These networks may be failing at governing, but governing is not their objective. Self-enrichment is. And at that they are highly successful.
NB. The preferred term for such units is "feral" state. They're a common feature of cyberpunk and science-fiction.
Now consider the McMansions that have sprung up like growths around Washington in the past twenty years. Consider the properties in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, the pay packages and portfolios, the offshore bank accounts — and the no-bid tenders — enjoyed by executives of defense contracting and financial investment firms, pharmaceutical and fossil fuel giants, and the lawyers and brokers who service them. Under administrations of both parties, many of those executives have cycled in and out of government.
This is the story explored in On Corruption in America — And What Is at Stake.
What is at stake, indeed? Now consider the public policies these executives have influenced or authored. They include two lost wars, a financial meltdown that nearly brought down the world economy, an addiction crisis and a bungled response to a global pandemic, both of which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. And the destruction of the irreplaceable habitat upon which we depend for our very survival, which has reached runaway speed in the same two decades. As I write, heaven — meaning the earth — is burning. Or flooded out.
This is what I mean by “Afghanistan holds up a mirror to us.” How competently have our own leaders been governing for the past twenty years? Meanwhile, how successful have they been at achieving that other objective: adding zeroes to their bank accounts? Which of those was in fact their primary objective?
Given the consequences, are terrorists really the greater threat to our homeland?
Those are the questions that have been flooding my mind. I’ll return to them below. But let me first take up some of yours.
Warning: many issues were surfaced, none of them simple. This post is long. Italicized headings and underlined sub-headings should help you skip to those that interest you.
How to help. One of you wrote questioning the international relief organizations I mention below. They all have marred records, and the caution was well-founded. I double-checked. One of the best groups working on the ground in Afghanistan, at least the north and west, is the Relief Organization for Afghan Women and Children (ROAWC), with offices in Kabul and Mazar-i Sherif. Support can be provided through Goodweave, which works to end child labor in the region.
My trusted friend who has been in development since 2002 -- and has implemented numerous projects through ROAWC -- says this about his earlier recommendation in favor of well-known international organizations. His experience with The International Rescue Committee, OxFam, and Save the Children UK is based on their performance on the ground. In my own experience, the activities of such large humanitarian groups depend on who is implementing them in a specific context. So if you do donate to any of them -- or any others -- I recommend you ensure that your money goes to a fund earmarked exclusively for Afghanistan.
And please, if any of you has connected with organizations in your own area and learned of ways you can assist incoming refugees, inform me via my “contact” form. I will post a separate blog as I gather information on other ways to help.
And now…back to cold-blooded analysis.
Revenue streams. More than at any time in a century, money is what we count — and what counts. It means social standing. It means winning. And who controls Afghanistan, controls great sums of money.
-- A number of you have correctly pointed to opium. The Taliban controlled that trade when they were in power. Credited for shutting down production in 2000, they were in fact pulling an OPEC move. The market was glutted and prices were low, and Taliban warehouses were full.
After 2001, the international community’s approach to Afghan opium focused on cultivation, not trafficking, and not on any of the well-known kingpins. I spoke to numerous farmers whose fields were dense with the strangely beautiful, tulip-like poppy blooms. The farmers were ashamed. But there were no banks, no loans. After six years of drought, many of their pomegranate and apricot trees were dead. Fruit trees take a half dozen years to begin producing. Poppy is an annual crop, and a hardy one. Desperate, farmers turned to opium traffickers. The loans they received came at 100% interest, to be repaid not in cash, but in poppy. If you missed your payment, some said, you owed double the next year. In that context, eradicating poppy in the field was counterproductive. It only forced farmers to put more land into production to pay off their ballooning debts.
We have heard that the Taliban return to Afghanistan, which picked up momentum from around 2006, was largely financed by opium. There is truth to that assessment.
Also true is that many of our Afghan government partners had a hand in that same trade. President Karzai’s late half-brother Ahmad Wali, for example, and the governor of Kandahar and then Jalalabad, Gul Agha Shirzai, ran rival trafficking networks. You can read more about that dynamic in The Punishment of Virtue.
Back in power, the Taliban will control the traffic once more, including developments in refining opium into more easily transported heroin and perhaps other derivatives. But I expect the same type of rivalry to emerge among different Taliban trafficking networks as existed between Karzai’s and Shirzai’s.
I have no doubt that some Pakistani officials also now stand to profit from the opium industry.
As for any U.S. involvement in that trade, I have no personal insight. But close ties, especially between the CIA and several key figures (including Ahmed Wali Karzai, Shirzai and Razziq — a brutal border police chief who became Gen. David Petraeus’s spearhead for a surge into the region) lent at least tacit approval to trafficking activities, and protection in the eyes of the population.
-- Afghanistan’s strategic location is a second major financial asset.
Picture the three great basins of civilization: Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the Iranian plateau. Picture a massive, craggy rock wall dividing them. Afghanistan owns two doors in that wall. Southern spurs of the ancient Silk Road ran through that land. Part of why Pakistan’s military government spun up the Taliban in the first place was likely to clear the highways for long-distance trade. After 2001, customs dues — or bribes for allowing drivers to dodge them — poured into the coffers of the strongmen who controlled the main crossings (clockwise from the south: Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i Sherif, and Jalalabad). Now the Taliban gain access to that revenue.
Note: anyone who claims to be able to estimate the revenues from any of these sources, or even to place them in relationship to each other, should be asked to provide his or her sources. I defy anyone to arrive at an accurate estimate of the total sums.
-- I include in the above statement the international assistance that has poured into Afghanistan for two decades, with little or no oversight. “No effective measures were taken to abate corruption,” one of you commented to “The Ides of August.” An Indian engineer, the writer was part of the team that rebuilt the main highways linking Kabul to Kandahar and Herat, losing forty-two colleagues out of a hundred, he tallied.
Billions of dollars in international humanitarian and development money has washed through Afghanistan yearly since 2001, not to mention military assistance. (Totals are impossible to calculate. US congressional appropriations add up to approximately $86 b., from 2001-2020, according to Forbes Magazine. Add private philanthropy, and all assistance from other countries.)
Presuming that a Taliban regime hopes to tap into some of that financing, the money spigots may represent the only leverage the international community has left.
Washington’s stubborn embrace of the Pakistani government. The why of it honestly beats me. Here is some informed speculation about possible factors.
-- Loyalty. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there was almost no expertise within the U.S. government on Afghanistan — a country and people we pivoted away from once they finished helping us bring down the Soviet Union. Whatever U.S. “expertise” there was resided within the agency that had supported the Afghan fighters against the Soviets: the CIA. Its support had been funneled through its Pakistani counterpart, the ISI. That control was Islamabad’s condition for allowing U.S. personnel to operate among the refugees living inside Pakistan. After 9/11, Washington reached for the same formula, relying heavily on the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, the ISI. Personal ties between intelligence operatives also count for a lot.
-- Too big to fail. I wonder: Who would have had the job of breaking the news to the American public, if the U.S. government had changed course? Who would have informed us that a billion dollars of our money had been paid every year to the very government that was ginning up the guerrilla forces our fellow-citizens were fighting — as though we had been financing North Vietnam while fighting the Vietcong? How would that person justify contributions to the agency that was harboring our supposed arch-enemy, Usama bin Laden? What about the conversation with a grieving Gold Star family? Who would sit down with the parents and explain that they had helped pay for the IED that killed their daughter?
One of you, a Vietnam vet, wrote in to “The Ides of March" about how his own superior officers were more interested in 'how they looked' to their chain of command than the truth, no matter the consequences for U.S. national security or those whose lives were lost. I think he understands what I’m getting at.
-- A suicide bomber twice the size of California. Pakistan is a nuclear country, as is its neighbor, India. Islamabad’s communications with Washington have always included a subtext: ‘Watch out: get too tough on us and we might just blow ourselves up.
-- Conducting operations. Once they swing into action, organizations — and not just the military — often let day-to-day operations overshadow their ultimate objectives. Consider places where you’ve worked. Does this description fit? To win the war in Afghanistan, it was necessary to confront Pakistan. But to continue conducting operations in Afghanistan, it was necessary to mollify Pakistan, so our supply convoys could keep driving its roads, and our drones could keep picking off targets inside that country. Note: that meant that only ISI-approved targets were struck.
Pakistan’s objective? For an informed view of the Pakistani government’s motivations and practices, read The Wrong Enemy, by Carlotta Gall. Bear in mind that my thoughts are less well-grounded than her work, but here are a few:
-- The term “strategic depth,” which often comes up in this context, is wonky and vague. The sense of it may be that the Pakistani government, in its preoccupation with India, wants to control the territory at its rear. Or, short of controlling it, wants it too chaotic to matter. Note: Pakistanis’ assertions that India represents a genuine existential threat to their country are unfounded. It is Pakistan, not India that has mounted most of the cross-border violence in the past two decades, usually via extremist proxies analogous to the Taliban. (Remember the Mumbai Bombing?)
Why is that? Why, if you’re afraid of someone, would you punch them in the eye? Why does Islamabad want to keep India riled up?
Perhaps because those making the decisions in Islamabad are the leaders of a military dictatorship. A good pretext for asking your citizens to allow unelected military officers to rule them is the fear of an existential military threat.
-- Pashtuns, also called “Pathans” in Pakistan, comprise very roughly 15% of that country’s population. It was not in the interest of its military rulers for a largely Pashtun nation next door to develop into a prosperous, happy, democratic country. Pakistani Pashtuns might start agitating for a similar democracy at home.
-- U.S. and Afghan officials engaged in provocation, unwittingly in some cases, willfully in others. Think back on our friend the Indian engineer, whom I quoted above. What was he even doing working on the Kandahar to Kabul road? He and his team of 100 Indians deployed on a highway that close to the border were guaranteed to arouse Pakistani suspicions. USAID should not have contracted their company.
Why did the Afghan government permit India to set up three consulates, including one in Kandahar? What was that consulate, other than a listening post? Did the Indian government spare many thoughts for the likely impact on Afghanistan and its people?
And why did Afghan government and security officials provide vocal support and safe haven inside Afghanistan for separatist Pakistani Baluchis? Nose-thumbing, if you’re the little guy, can cost you more than your nose. These Afghan officials were handing Islamabad a pretext.
-- Roads. As per the “revenue streams” section above, long-distance ground transport, especially for heavy agricultural goods, is important to Pakistan. As are the associated smuggling and trafficking opportunities to certain Pakistanis.
Other countries. Pakistan is not the sole villain here, as a number of you noted.
-- That other purported U.S. ally, the Saudi Arabian regime, has for decades been exporting a virulent distortion of Islam, and funding fundamentalist madrassas — religious schools-cum-training camps — across the region, including in Pakistan.
One member of our little community adds the depth of lived experience to this sketch of Saudi activities. She is an Afghan-American who, in the late 1980s, lived with her family in Saudi Arabia, near the border with Yemen. Usama bin Laden and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, she tells me, were already comrades at the time. Gulbuddin had a network of fellow-tribesmen who owned shops in Mecca, and he collected donations through them. More chillingly: there was, she says, a well-known pipeline of Afghan women the two were supplying to their followers in the region. Bin Laden and Gulbuddin would then pocket the brideprice.
Gulbuddin, always close to the ISI, is remembered for his troops' wanton shelling of Kabul, in a battle for control of the city after the Soviet-backed government eventually fell, in 1992. They reduced as much as a third of the city to rubble, and assassinated numerous journalists, women, and university professors during those years. Hikmatyar has boasted of helping Bin Laden escape pursuing U.S. and Afghan troops in 2001 and 2002.
-- China, a diplomatic and financial backer of the Pakistani government, also stands to gain from its client’s proxy control of Afghanistan. Not that there was likely to be much resistance from Kabul under any Afghan government to Beijing’s brand of development investment. A Chinese company, for example, holds the contracts to exploit an enormous untapped copper deposit a few dozen miles outside Kabul. And then there’s the Belt and Road initiative.
-- The Russian embassy remains open. Evidence for years has indicated covert Russian support for the resurgent Taliban. Meanwhile, the Embassy wined and dined some U.S. officials, including, to my knowledge, ISAF intelligence chief Mike Flynn, in 2009 and 2010.
Asymmetric warfare. Though U.S. officials have been calling the conflict in Afghanistan an “insurgency” for years, they have not been fighting the war that way. This is the principle criticism I reserve for the officers I’ve worked for. They are supposed to know something about warfare.
Afghans are competent fighters — they drove out the Soviets, after all. So why was it so important that we spend so much effort teaching them to fight? Why do we keep hearing about the air support we were supplying, supposedly so critical to the Afghan war effort? Has any reporter asked why the Afghan military needed air cover when the Taliban didn’t?
The problem is, we built a conventional army in Afghanistan, rather than the type of clever, nimble unit that we ourselves depended on in the field — special forces. An agile, deceptive, mobile team that can easily melt away into rough terrain will almost always defeat a lumbering conventional army, dependent on its cinderblock headquarters and long supply chains. Read Freedom by my lifelong friend Sebastian Junger.
So why did we spend two decades and billions of dollars to try to build the Afghan army into one of those? Who was banking the bulk of those dollars? Did Afghans themselves intuit that such a flat-footed army would never beat hardened guerrillas? Did that realization add to their sense of doom once we were gone?
Our own military, descended from the Minutemen of the American Revolution, has come to resemble the Redcoats those 18th century insurgents fought. What an irony. As special advisor to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, I found myself — a rank civilian — begging him not to send a Stryker brigade into the densely cultivated orchards of Arghandab District, north of Kandahar. The lanes between those walled orchards are just too narrow for oversized, high-tech Stryker vehicles. That’s OK, McChrystal assured me, the troops could always be dismounted.
What an absurd proposition: You’d strip a brigade of the very asset it was built and trained and conditioned to use? How physically fit are soldiers accustomed to sitting in vehicles all day? Are they even in shape to patrol difficult terrain on foot?
The result was catastrophic. More than a dozen frustrated and out-of-control officers were court-martialed or otherwise disciplined for their behavior in the field, including the notorious homicide of several villagers, "for sport." The brigade's casualty rate was disturbingly high. After an investigation, the commander was barred from future combat deployments.
Becoming the Redcoats also meant we forgot how asymmetric warfare works.
In such contests, the poorer, “weaker” insurgents aren’t trying to rack up the bodies of opposing soldiers. That’s conventional warfare. Insurgents aim to achieve the maximum psychological impact for as little human and material investment as possible. They target emblematic people and kill them in demonstrative ways. They hang the body to a sacred tree, like some gruesome offering. They pin a note to the dead man’s tunic: “If you do what he did, this will happen to you.” They disfigure a young woman’s face with acid.
Or they put a half dozen guys up in an unfinished building in downtown Kabul with a couple of rusty mortar-launchers. This is 2011. The guys shoot at the U.S. embassy and ISAF headquarters across the street. They shut down the whole strategic complex for more than nineteen hours.
If those fighters had wanted to kill people, they would have. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to demonstrate to the whole of Afghanistan that they could. It was to demonstrate U.S. vulnerability — to Afghans and to Americans.
In other words, the Taliban communicate with actions, not words. They communicate to the side of our brains that understands body language. If you want to get a sense of their intentions, watch what they do.
But we Westerners have been neglecting that side of our brains for a long time. We like meanings spelled out in words. The Taliban are delighted that we cling to their words this way, endlessly parsing them in media and intelligence analyses. That focus allows them to send double messages: words to us, contrary gestures to those who know how to read them.
Why am I only hearing this now? I can almost feel the dismay in many of your comments.
The bulk of the information in my “Ides of August” post is developed in my first book, The Punishment of Virtue. It came out in 2006. I was afraid of the explosive nature of the revelations about Karzai. But in the end, the only reviewer or interviewer who noticed them was an inner-city talkshow host in Pittsburg.
The Kabul press corps did a remarkable job. Re-read Dexter Filkins’ 2011 New Yorker article “The Afghan Bank Heist” Earlier, he reported on these issues for the New York Times. Matt Rosenberg was probing Afghan government corruption for the Wall Street Journal. Or look up work by some of the best Canadian reporters, including Declan Walsh and Graeme Smith.
But television coverage was sparse. Afghanistan is rough terrain. And these stories are hard to get with quick, top-heavy in-and-outs. It took me two years living in Kandahar to realize that what I had reported to NPR listeners back in December 2001 about Afghan ground forces fighting the Taliban was false. I had been handed a cover-story.
And there was Iraq. And there was the 2008 financial meltdown...
But perhaps most important is this: We hadn’t lost yet. So there was no way to prove the validity of what I was saying.
When you haven’t lost -- when calamity somehow hasn’t yet struck -- it’s easy to assume you’ll “muddle through.” That’s how many officials put it at the time: The Afghan government will muddle through. We'll muddle through.
Now, Afghanistan is waving a mirror in our faces. Calamity hasn’t struck -- not real calamity. Not yet. But let’s not assume our democracy will “muddle through.”
What I would have done differently. That is a long-answer question. A taste is available in the “Afghanistan Action Plan” I distributed to top U.S. civilian and military officials in January 2009. I continued to provide equally detailed, though sometimes more tailored, planning documents to my superiors through 2011. A truly inclusive peace process would have involved bringing together people whom ordinary Afghans recognized as representing them, not just the officials of the two entities most held in equal contempt: their own government and the Taliban.
“Democracy” and “freedom.” I have read a number of thoughtful comments on these interwoven themes, and a few not so thoughtful ones. ‘We should never have tried to bring democracy to Afghanistan,’ goes one of the tropes I’ve heard repeated over the years. ‘Why did we get sucked into nation-building?’ ‘It should have just been a counter-terror mission.’ ‘Every other great power has failed in Afghanistan, what were we thinking?’
What would have happened if we had just toppled the Taliban regime and left? Minus the cost, would the result have been better? If that was the way to go, why didn't we do that in Germany and Japan after World War II. Seems we still have troops there? Does a country like Afghanistan need more help or less help than a Germany in birthing a representative democracy?
And were we really trying to bring democracy to Afghanistan, anyway? Were we nation-building? That’s what some of you have been poignantly wondering.
If we were, why were there so few mentors for Afghan government officials, and so many for Afghan army officers? Is it easier to run a city than to command an infantry company?
Decisions aren’t on-off switches. It doesn’t just matter what you decide to do — stay or go, for example. At least as important is how you do it.
And if it was democracy we were peddling, what kind of democracy?
What is the condition of our democracy?
That is the question this fiasco poses.
A word, in closing, for “essential workers.” Entry- and mid-level civil servants have been going without sleep for days, trying to salvage at least something from the wreckage. Trying to incarnate a scrap of human decency, while their higher-ups defend their decisions. Like medical personnel and garbage collectors around the world, these are the truly essential workers.
My heart goes out to them in thanks.
AMERICA STOP EXPORTING CORRUPTION
ReluctantSamurai
A query good sir...
Almost all of those who deem themselves our enemies are also fully aware of the futility of facing the USA military in a conventional fashion. Not being any stupider than anyone else, these opponents almost always adopt an insurgency approach so as to minimize or avoid the nearly insurmountable conventional advantage of the USA. Some of those enemies operate not simply with the support (coerced or otherwise) of a local population as do most insurgencies, but by actively basing themselves in and among such populations (whether because culturally/ideologically they draw no distinctions between combatant and non-combatant; because they are callously exploiting our views on non-combatants, or by happenstance with little thought).
Since this is the condition that obtains and is likely to do so in future, RS, how can/should the USA use military force (violence) against these enemies?
To add to Samurai's response with slightly different framing:
Pick enemies more judiciously, and with a different toolset. Don't accept the inevitability of entanglement with foreign insurgencies. (We should be planning on RoEs for domestic insurgencies, btw.)
Less laconically, are you guys aware of that Youtube channel that attempts to hike cross-countries in a perfectly straight line? Even when it involves traversing private properties, scaling ravines, or trudging through bogs and rivers. They do it for the adventure.
We don't have to take the international relations Straight Line challenge!! Let's get off the trolley and take the Road Less Traveled instead.
NOTE: How do we change the media coverage? The standard terrorist attack films much better than a cyber strike and its counters. This sort of thing makes it difficult to get a pol to focus on what matters most as a threat v what affects her reelection most.
We've watched how the media covered Trump for 5 years, and how it covered the late extrication from Afghanistan. There are some very strong editorial tendencies among mainstream media, simultaneously financial and ideological/normative. I have seen these biases termed "pro-Empire." Admittedly all our ideas on progressive internationalism are pie in the sky without solving the media puzzle, and it's fair to argue that if we can't solve the media puzzle, we couldn't even be expected to succeed on straight implementation. I don't have any ideas.
Prior to WW2, the NYT's coverage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party was - according to archival research - overwhelmingly either neutral or pro-Nazi. Maybe we just need Congress to declare war on something instead of the Executive for a change.
Compare with China's neocolonialism. Not something that our societies would tolerate. But by heck they are effective at getting foreign influence through coercion.
I think America and Europe have, potentially, a better value proposition in that we can offer development with less of the rampant inegalitarianism, neocolonialism, and hostage-taking clientelism. Potentially. But China has a track record of living up to its, uh, what it advertises and no more, and we don't, so it's hard to place a bet on 'Western justice.'
ReluctantSamurai
09-02-2021, 03:09
Violence wins votes among enough voters to win elections. Or perhaps more precisely, lack of violence loses enough votes to lose elections.
There is a certain value for current and wannabe legislators in pandering to war-hawks. However, in the case of US foreign policy, it's the big weapons/munitions businesses that exert the most influence. I posted on that earlier, where defense industry stocks outperformed the S&P 500 standard by almost 60% since 2001.
Pointedly, we have just wound down 20 years of war in Afghanistan, and Congress is now considering INCREASING the defense budget.....AGAIN.
I also think that in the current state of affairs here in the US, Republican legislators and candidates are calling for an INCREASE of violence. That mentality has trickled all the way down to local situations where you have politicians advocating violence against school board members if they institute mask mandates for school children.
We are so effed, IMHO....:shrug:
Montmorency
09-02-2021, 04:24
I'm surprised this hasn't been commented on, but the Supreme Court has approved the Texas abortion ban (near-unlimited liability for being associated with abortion after 6 weeks). Roe and Casey considered likely to be fully defunct within a year.
In responding to Rory earlier, I forgot to include the footnote to
the refugee situation was always going to be messy since most people have a bias against cutting bait (?) until catastrophe is under their noses*
*While there were thousands of natives ready to go anytime for months, they were concentrated among special visa/refugee programs that the Trump administration all but shut down; reconstituting these programs bureaucratically was a challenge. The Biden admin's culpability depends on one's willingness to waive requirements of documentation and attestation. We might also have consulted more sensitively and emphatically with NATO allies, who apparently felt they weren't given enough notice to arrange the evacuation of their civilians and allies, whom they also allege were deprioritized in the exfiltration from Kabul - though it's not clear how they may have benefited materially from more respectful consultation.
“The so-called Spanish influenza is nothing more or less than old fashioned grippe.”
Is this the real life, or is it fantasy?
Well part of the problem in those countries hosting so many refugees is that they are just put into a camp and kept there forever. The Palestinians in Lebanon were never given a chance at integrating so they just ended up being a stateless, hostile entity that further destabilized Lebanon and led to the civil war.
Part of it is that people keep expecting the all or nothing solutions, especially with Israel. Demands that Israel go back to 1948 borders with so many decades in between seem as likely as getting Russia to give up Crimea.
As for help, well, the West sends an incredible amount of aid to those nations. That foreign aid unfortunately becomes part of the problem too, give country X million for education, they then cut their education by X million and reallocate into other things suddenly building a dependency.
Well it's a damned if you and damned if you don't world. Support a dictatorship in Egypt that keeps regional stability, maintains trade through the Suez, and abides by it's peace treaty with Israel or support a democratically elected Islamist that wants to start a regional war to kick Israel out of the Holy Land. Support pro-democracy elements in Syria and Libya against brutal dictatorships but not actually send in troops to either eliminate the dictatorship (syria) or create some on the ground security for the transitional government (Libya). Support the Shah in Iran to support british oil or support the democratic elements there that might create enough instability for the soviets to expand their influence. Support Turkey as it slides into dictatorship or standby principles and kick it out of NATO only to see it become our biggest opponent in the region eclipsing even Iran?
We need much more than aid, we need a comprehensive program of wealth transfer. If that sounds scary, remember that it's a positive-sum, not a zero-sum, project. The groundwork involves transnational standards and regulatory bodies on labor rights, industrial and environmental codes, and the like, beginning with the G7, G2, OECD; the ongoing negotiations on a minimum corporate tax are a very belated demonstration. Then it involves subsidizing private investment and interstate partnerships and professional education and training, and much more, in lower-wealth (not just Islamic) countries. If globalists claim that globalization promotes peaceful interactions between countries, then imagine what economic integration through directly helping build middle classes would achieve (note that there's a lot of opportunity in this for participating Westerners as well, in the short and long term). We must NOT look to perpetuate compliant resource cows! Democratic countries can disagree with each other, learn to live with it. A resilient and wealthy international community is pretty much the cure to most of our ills. All the above also has the natural effect of relieving push factors in permanent international migration, if that's considered a priority.
(Indeed, that the costs and causes of migration are so straightforwardly addressed, even along coarse lines (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-14/economic-nobel-winner-s-policy-idea-could-help-refugees), just makes the perfidy of European xenophobes all the more heinous. A transparent, standards-based system of very generous payments to poor countries, with enforceable oversight and local democratic buy-in, to develop domestic institutions for absorbing and integrating global refugees, plus a quota and resource-sharing convention to spread the burden. That's like the very bare minimum if you just don't want the mud people polluting your blood culture, but ineffectual xenophobes want to have their cake (racist fearmongering and oppression) and eat it too (refugee boats for naval target practice).)
Of course, raw mercantilist economic investment as such isn't bound to produce the desired result - look at the Gulf states, or Belt and Road. The objective is to bootstrap self-sustaining, mutually-reliant and diverse economies with empowered citizenries. It means (civilian) boots on the ground, not aid checks. It's a messy and contested long-term process of exchange. But it's part of what has to happen if we don't want Africa and the Eastern Med in 50 years to resemble an apocalyptic wasteland, one putting relentless pressure on a sclerotic Festung Europa whose majority population consists of over-60s (Millenials and Zoomers!).
As with so many challenges, procrastination since 2001 and earlier makes these tasks much harder in every respect, but all the more necessary from even a self-interested view. You know what would have been the exact place to test out these motives? Post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. The West has squandered so much time and more since the end of the Cold War...
My heart (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/opinion/afghanistan-us-withdrawal.html) breaks for the suffering we will leave behind in Afghanistan. But we do not know how to fix Afghanistan. We failed in that effort so completely that we ended up strengthening the Taliban. We should do all we can to bring American citizens and allies home. But if we truly care about educating girls worldwide, we know how to build schools and finance education. If we truly care about protecting those who fear tyranny, we know how to issue visas and admit refugees. If we truly care about the suffering of others, there is so much we could do. Only 1 percent of the residents of poor countries are vaccinated against the coronavirus. We could change that. More than 400,000 people die from malaria each year. We could change that, too.
“I want America more forward-deployed, but I want it through a massive international financing arm and a massive renewable energy arm,” Senator Murphy told me. “That’s the United States I want to see spread across the world — not the face of America today that’s by and large arms sales, military trainers and brigades.”
Hands off foreign policy won't work, too much military intervention won't work either. Being a global cash cow is politically a dead end and in the long run doesn't help.
It'd be great if the US didn't have to engage the middle east so much but the post-colonial woes of France and the UK combined with the US betrayal of them in the Suez crisis haven't fostered a leadership role for Europe in the middle east despite them being the best ones to do so with the regional knowledge, neighborly interest, and historic (for better and worse) ties. This viewpoint is of course western centric, the idea that an outside power broker is necessary seems ludicrious but the Arab infighting nationalism vs. political Islam, the Sunni/Shia woes, neo-Ottomanism, and recurring flareups in Palestine together with US/NATO/EU actions (military, economic, diplomatic etc) that incite the muslim mainstream against the west while ruining themselves economically by spending on militaries that are larger than their economies can realistically afford.
The record of our coercive and authoritarian solutions in the region everywhere isn't a secret. Just saying, if the Homeland is the #1 priority it's odd to continue to invest in corrosive, unethical measures that, at best, objectively won't preserve security.
The American Establishment can't be acting like a Befuddled TV Commercial Husband who doesn't know how sinks or yogurt function.
I doubt Egypt's Morsi, for example, was poised to invade the Holy Land, and if he detectably were, that seems like an easy lesson to remediate...
Referring to the 2006 report on lessons from the 1919 pandemic quoted by Samurai, I can sometimes empathize with pessimistic conservatism, on the core axiom of the futility of human betterment. Our times carry the distinct odor of moldering Long Defeat. But we know exactly what we need to do, and on a basic level how to do it; if we inexorably can't execute due to some flaw or lacuna in our constitutions or cultures, that points more closely to nihilism than to any conservative philosophy, conservatism indeed then being recast as the Original Sin that ultimately condemns the species.
We are so effed, IMHO....:shrug:
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-madison-cawthorn-promotes-false-election-claims-warns-bloodshed-if-n1278114):
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., on Sunday promoted false claims about election fraud and warned that there could be “bloodshed” over any future elections Republicans consider to be rigged.
“The things that we are wanting to fight for, it doesn’t matter if our votes don’t count,” he said at the Macon County Republican Party headquarters in Franklin, North Carolina. “Because, you know, if our election systems continue to be rigged, and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place, and it’s bloodshed.”
Cawthorn’s spokesman, Luke Ball, said Tuesday in a statement that the lawmaker was advocating against violence.
“In his comments, Congressman Cawthorn is clearly advocating for violence not to occur over election integrity questions," Ball said. "He fears others would erroneously choose that route and strongly states that election integrity issues should be resolved peacefully and never through violence.”
A video of Cawthorn's remarks was first posted by the county party on Facebook but has since been taken down. A brief clip of his comments still appears on Twitter and has been verified by NBC News. Lawmakers are currently back in their districts for Congress' annual August recess.
The 26-year-old freshman lawmaker, the youngest member of Congress, has repeated false claims made by former President Donald Trump that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Cawthorn then implied that he would resort to using a gun if necessary to defend against voter fraud in the future.
“I will tell you, as much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there is nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American,” said Cawthorn, who added that they need to “passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states.”
rory_20_uk
09-02-2021, 11:06
I think America and Europe have, potentially, a better value proposition in that we can offer development with less of the rampant inegalitarianism, neocolonialism, and hostage-taking clientelism. Potentially. But China has a track record of living up to its, uh, what it advertises and no more, and we don't, so it's hard to place a bet on 'Western justice.'
I don't think that we do. The West doesn't even know what it is trying to do most of the time.
The West has two diametrically opposite approaches to dealing with the world - "Western values" are great and are to be fought for and exported, or else different societies have their own approaches and we should respect different cultures. And the constant vacillating between the two is what causes the mess we see where the only easy way to square the circle is to pretend that the two are the same - and really anyone would want the Western Values if only they understood. For some the only way to make them understand is to kill them, sadly. And often their families. And anyone nearby. And anyone who takes offence at these killings. Honestly - they really are so difficult to work with!
Or we conflate what others want for what we want others to want - Aung San Suu Kyi is a great example as we seemed to think she wanted to be a head of state in Western Europe and she wanted to be head of state. She didn't heroically put up with house arrest to help the downtrodden, she did it until she got the power.
China on the other hand, are clear that their way is the best way for China and that they have little interest in how countries work outside of China and that's that. Countries like that. If you do what you agreed to do you'll get what you want. Countries might get into debt from this and be beholden to China? Yes - and Western companies do exactly the same thing. Countries end up giving long term leases for assets? I don't think the West can really take the moral high ground on this either.
Countries therefore now have increasingly two options - one is a purely transactional approach. And one that is highly unlikely to change for years. The other is so capricious that policy can radically change in a handful of years, previous friends overthrown after being accused of owning weapons the West sold them.
In a nutshell, we constantly overvalue what we have compared to what others might actually want.
~:smoking:
I think the biggest problem for the "West" is it has no goals anymore, where does the US or the EU want to be in fifty years or a hundred years, how to we work to achieve that etc....
If the EU had a long range plan and clear policies in regards to the neighborhood then it could make plans to work toward that. We makes plans for climate change, for green energy, but not coherent foreign policy.
I hate the attempted hegemonic way of China but as you guys have said it makes it clear where they stand.
The US is especially bad at this and has been completely lost since the end of the Cold War. I think it just like Europe has achieved a "end of history" stance and just wants to maintain the status quo. We aren't even clear in regards to our neighbors or allies. When we expand NATO do we consider the reactions from Russia, will those reactions make us less secure than if we expanded NATO membership? We want to contain China and are pursuing DIME engagements with the countries in the region, what's the long term goal and how does that tie into China?
That's not to say there's no long term planning being done, I've seen US, UK, German, and EU white papers on the next twenty years and next fifty years but that's just the products of the government and not necessarily with the knowledge or even backing of the its people. That's why NATO countries can say they want to create more military deterrent against Russia but in reality don't really match it in terms of what would effectively deter further aggression in the Ukraine or the Baltics. The US war on drugs focused on interception of smuggling not so much on the domestic use that fuels the smuggling through high demand. How does the UK and its Commonwealth fit into the future? Is it just going to be a cultural exchange and sporting club?
Russia wants warm water ports, buffers-states with NATO in Europe and a non-threatening middle east/central asia.
China wants regional hegemony to resume their 'rightful place' as the middle kingdom with no neighborhood threats, especially from the US, Japan, India, or Russia.
What does the US, UK, or EU want that that can be clearly defined? A democratic and/or stable mediterranen? Energy independence? Colonization of the moon or mars? Strong industrial base? The US can't define clear goals for its relations with Mexico or Cuba much less the middle east, how can that be rectified?
Montmorency
09-03-2021, 01:45
I don't think that we do. The West doesn't even know what it is trying to do most of the time.
The West has two diametrically opposite approaches to dealing with the world - "Western values" are great and are to be fought for and exported, or else different societies have their own approaches and we should respect different cultures. And the constant vacillating between the two is what causes the mess we see where the only easy way to square the circle is to pretend that the two are the same - and really anyone would want the Western Values if only they understood. For some the only way to make them understand is to kill them, sadly. And often their families. And anyone nearby. And anyone who takes offence at these killings. Honestly - they really are so difficult to work with!
Or we conflate what others want for what we want others to want - Aung San Suu Kyi is a great example as we seemed to think she wanted to be a head of state in Western Europe and she wanted to be head of state. She didn't heroically put up with house arrest to help the downtrodden, she did it until she got the power.
China on the other hand, are clear that their way is the best way for China and that they have little interest in how countries work outside of China and that's that. Countries like that. If you do what you agreed to do you'll get what you want. Countries might get into debt from this and be beholden to China? Yes - and Western companies do exactly the same thing. Countries end up giving long term leases for assets? I don't think the West can really take the moral high ground on this either.
Countries therefore now have increasingly two options - one is a purely transactional approach. And one that is highly unlikely to change for years. The other is so capricious that policy can radically change in a handful of years, previous friends overthrown after being accused of owning weapons the West sold them.
In a nutshell, we constantly overvalue what we have compared to what others might actually want.
~:smoking:
I agree, but my point is that "Western values" - to paraphrase Gandhi - while pretty good, have rarely been tried before. Our biggest flaw, besides the caprice you note, is our hypocrisy. Where the potential lies is in matching Chinese inducements with genuine generative good will among peers. Don't laugh.
The big prerequisite does seem to be to get the Euro-Anglosphere populations to proactively identify with the wellbeing and advancement of their own nations, rather than fractal individualism and the fatalism of decline. Nation building at home! We're not yet at the stage of placing what hope remains in a 2099 Hegelian Caesar unifying the scattered domains of Oceania and Eurasia into a Neo Holy Roman Empire...
Look, recall the topic. By all accounts, upwards of a hardly-exaggerated 99% of all the countless billions of American government spending on Afghanistan has ended up within 4 categories:
1. In American pockets.
2. In the pockets of Afghan elites (who often played for both sides, or their own)
3. Up in smoke - literally - on the battlefield
4. In the Taliban's arsenal
Try to imagine inverting these allocations to make the 99% the 1% (no double meaning intended), or inverting the proportion of military personnel to civilians - technicians, teachers, nurses, entrepreneurs... - or inverting the process of engagement from imposed violence to consensual co-discovery.
Wouldn't it be nice to build something for a change? If not 'there', starting here, to prove that we can.
Pannonian
09-03-2021, 03:17
I agree, but my point is that "Western values" - to paraphrase Gandhi - while pretty good, have rarely been tried before. Our biggest flaw, besides the caprice you note, is our hypocrisy. Where the potential lies is in matching Chinese inducements with genuine generative good will among peers. Don't laugh.
The big prerequisite does seem to be to get the Euro-Anglosphere populations to proactively identify with the wellbeing and advancement of their own nations, rather than fractal individualism and the fatalism of decline. Nation building at home! We're not yet at the stage of placing what hope remains in a 2099 Hegelian Caesar unifying the scattered domains of Oceania and Eurasia into a Neo Holy Roman Empire...
Look, recall the topic. By all accounts, upwards of a hardly-exaggerated 99% of all the countless billions of American government spending on Afghanistan has ended up within 4 categories:
1. In American pockets.
2. In the pockets of Afghan elites (who often played for both sides, or their own)
3. Up in smoke - literally - on the battlefield
4. In the Taliban's arsenal
Try to imagine inverting these allocations to make the 99% the 1% (no double meaning intended), or inverting the proportion of military personnel to civilians - technicians, teachers, nurses, entrepreneurs... - or inverting the process of engagement from imposed violence to consensual co-discovery.
Wouldn't it be nice to build something for a change? If not 'there', starting here, to prove that we can.
How would you do that? It's hard enough getting a high enough proportion of government funds to those who are supposed to receive it at home, and we control the government and the populace is positively inclined and are educated to cooperate. 30 bn GBP meant to prop up the health service during covid and instead directed to friends of the Tory government. I don't suppose it's any more efficient on your side of the water.
Government is inclined to waste. With the Republican and Tory governments, you have the added friction of not having any intention of directing the funds to those that need it, but instead to friends of the government. You'll never get the proportion of money to your 4 categories to 1%,
Montmorency
09-03-2021, 04:39
How would you do that? It's hard enough getting a high enough proportion of government funds to those who are supposed to receive it at home, and we control the government and the populace is positively inclined and are educated to cooperate. 30 bn GBP meant to prop up the health service during covid and instead directed to friends of the Tory government. I don't suppose it's any more efficient on your side of the water.
The starting point has to be enforceable pan-national regulatory floors alongside shared governmental subsidies to private investment abroad (with high priority to oversight mechanisms). Rich countries should supply capital, technology, education, and expertise, while poor countries have to find democratic buy-in and independently generate domestic institutions capable of guiding the distribution of resources and investment toward broad benefit. The difficult part is achieving shared political will and operational stability; I don't think the details on paper would be hard to figure out for expert commissions, who would ultimately be laying a framework for millions of private actors.
These aspirations would have to be realized over decades, but the US could, for example, multiply this agency by 10 and expand its scope without breaking a sweat.
https://www.dfc.gov/
Government is inclined to waste. With the Republican and Tory governments, you have the added friction of not having any intention of directing the funds to those that need it, but instead to friends of the government. You'll never get the proportion of money to your 4 categories to 1%,
It's a rhetorical device. In principle, if a government project cannot avoid 99% waste as to its formal objectives, it should not exist and should never have existed. Yet most government projects are not quite that wasteful somehow.
Pannonian
09-03-2021, 05:26
The starting point has to be enforceable pan-national regulatory floors alongside shared governmental subsidies to private investment abroad (with high priority to oversight mechanisms). Rich countries should supply capital, technology, education, and expertise, while poor countries have to find democratic buy-in and independently generate domestic institutions capable of guiding the distribution of resources and investment toward broad benefit. The difficult part is achieving shared political will and operational stability; I don't think the details on paper would be hard to figure out for expert commissions, who would ultimately be laying a framework for millions of private actors.
These aspirations would have to be realized over decades, but the US could, for example, multiply this agency by 10 and expand its scope without breaking a sweat.
https://www.dfc.gov/
It's a rhetorical device. In principle, if a government project cannot avoid 99% waste as to its formal objectives, it should not exist and should never have existed. Yet most government projects are not quite that wasteful somehow.
Afghanistan does not have an industrial capacity, so anything remotely modern has to be brought in from outside. The US does not speak Afghan languages, most Afghans do not speak the Americans' language, so intermediaries have to be used. The US wanted to encourage independence and autonomy, so accounting was lax.
If you don't want wastage, don't do nation building. If you want to reduce wastage, there are ways of doing so. Either you let them work their way up from a low level, thus working with their own resources supplemented by yours. Or you go full on neocolonialism a la China, where you supply materials and workers, and end up with modern infrastructure. If you're more altruistic than China, then you might go the Soviet route and train up a class that runs the infrastructure. But you have to accept that the most efficient way of avoiding wastage is to retain control of the process. Which goes against liberal democratic ideals.
rory_20_uk
09-03-2021, 14:03
Afghanistan does not have an industrial capacity, so anything remotely modern has to be brought in from outside. The US does not speak Afghan languages, most Afghans do not speak the Americans' language, so intermediaries have to be used. The US wanted to encourage independence and autonomy, so accounting was lax.
If you don't want wastage, don't do nation building. If you want to reduce wastage, there are ways of doing so. Either you let them work their way up from a low level, thus working with their own resources supplemented by yours. Or you go full on neocolonialism a la China, where you supply materials and workers, and end up with modern infrastructure. If you're more altruistic than China, then you might go the Soviet route and train up a class that runs the infrastructure. But you have to accept that the most efficient way of avoiding wastage is to retain control of the process. Which goes against liberal democratic ideals.
I don't think that nation building requires wastage. Massive cost with no direct returns on investment yes - but that isn't wastage if the goal is a functioning country. For example, building useful infrastructure is expensive and will only provide future utility. But it isn't wastage. Perhaps knowing that the locals will destroy it before it was built makes it wastage?
I'm not sure that encouraging independence and autonomy requires or benefits from lax accounting when the end result was massive theft and a complete dislocation of the "functioning" of the state from what the actual country can provide. Even directly giving the money to the local warlords would have been better. And when that is the case, the concept is so deeply flawed it should be stopped at that point.
One of the reasons that Afghanistan has reached its current state was the USSR providing training / indoctrination that deposed a society that was slowly modernising in a relatively positive and inclusive way to a Communist state that then proceeded to wreck the place, leading to a take over by religious zealots. I'd not call that "altruistic". Blinkered, perhaps.
I do agree that realistically, if you want something to happen then one has to keep control. That is as true when repainting a house as it is rebuilding a country. Liberal democratic ideals forget that the very liberal democratic ideals are built on a vast number of other structures such as a (mostly) working system of laws and can't just be beamed in - and the fantasy that it is self evidently is the "best" is one of the most corrosive concepts that go around.
~:smoking:
Pannonian
09-03-2021, 20:27
I don't think that nation building requires wastage. Massive cost with no direct returns on investment yes - but that isn't wastage if the goal is a functioning country. For example, building useful infrastructure is expensive and will only provide future utility. But it isn't wastage. Perhaps knowing that the locals will destroy it before it was built makes it wastage?
I'm not sure that encouraging independence and autonomy requires or benefits from lax accounting when the end result was massive theft and a complete dislocation of the "functioning" of the state from what the actual country can provide. Even directly giving the money to the local warlords would have been better. And when that is the case, the concept is so deeply flawed it should be stopped at that point.
One of the reasons that Afghanistan has reached its current state was the USSR providing training / indoctrination that deposed a society that was slowly modernising in a relatively positive and inclusive way to a Communist state that then proceeded to wreck the place, leading to a take over by religious zealots. I'd not call that "altruistic". Blinkered, perhaps.
I do agree that realistically, if you want something to happen then one has to keep control. That is as true when repainting a house as it is rebuilding a country. Liberal democratic ideals forget that the very liberal democratic ideals are built on a vast number of other structures such as a (mostly) working system of laws and can't just be beamed in - and the fantasy that it is self evidently is the "best" is one of the most corrosive concepts that go around.
~:smoking:
The Soviet way was more altruistic than the current Chinese way, which doesn't even train a class to run said infrastructure, but instead does the old colonialist thing of importing its own officers and engineers, so the host country is left with physical infrastructure but is reliant on the colonising country to keep it running.
Montmorency
09-04-2021, 00:16
Afghanistan does not have an industrial capacity, so anything remotely modern has to be brought in from outside. The US does not speak Afghan languages, most Afghans do not speak the Americans' language, so intermediaries have to be used. The US wanted to encourage independence and autonomy, so accounting was lax.
If you don't want wastage, don't do nation building. If you want to reduce wastage, there are ways of doing so. Either you let them work their way up from a low level, thus working with their own resources supplemented by yours. Or you go full on neocolonialism a la China, where you supply materials and workers, and end up with modern infrastructure. If you're more altruistic than China, then you might go the Soviet route and train up a class that runs the infrastructure. But you have to accept that the most efficient way of avoiding wastage is to retain control of the process. Which goes against liberal democratic ideals.
To be clear, I am not proposing that rich countries send social workers to active war zones. Better to send them out before their destinations become active war zones. Lebanon is not Afghanistan. Partner states have to be able to pull their weight in the process even as we build their capacity to pull weight. We can't do anything for Afghanistan along these lines until the political environment there becomes much stabler, notwithstanding that Afghanistan is a truly advanced case best left until we've proven we can master the basics elsewhere. For god's sake, most of the Afghans are unlettered and uneducated, i.e. where decolonized Africa was 50 years ago (more now that the most educated and skilled are tending to flight).
But the wastage in Afghanistan was never following a lack of control - just the opposite, we held maximal control over where money went. We just didn't apply oversight, nor did we prioritize civil planning or social infrastructure. Our priority was always proximate warfighting or its support, which is where money and organization went. What money did go to reconstruction, tended to be managed by other Americans and not Afghans (other than friendly elites).
That's why the Afghan people got next to nothing.
For more information, this recent Congressional Research Service (https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R45122.pdf) summary estimated that Congress, over 20 years, budgeted $60 billion to governance, development, civilian operations, and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. That's 3% of total direct expenditures of $2 trillion, or 6% if you believe the government's estimate of $1 trillion (granted that this estimate does not include interest on debt). Disbursement was generally managed by the Department of State or USAID. Some of the most recent disbursements were conditioned on the GIROA's progress in peace talks with the Taliban. Undoubtedly some of this money went to NGOs and to private Afghans with good motives and results, but whatever the micro-results, most of the money seems to have funded American contractors' salaries or government officials's corruption. Evidently this situation is not a mere product of mismanagement by the Afghan state or people that the US government failed to take over.
How many times do I have to point out that we export corruption?
Thus the ephemeral results:
Afghanistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) has grown an average of 7% per year since 2003,
but growth rates averaged between 2% and 3% in recent years and decades of war have stunted
the development of most domestic industries. President Ghani said in July 2020 that 90% of
Afghans live below the government-determined poverty level of two dollars a day. The
withdrawal of a U.S. force much smaller than that of a decade ago would seem to have less
dramatic second-order economic effects for Afghanistan than did the post-2012 drawdown, which
helped spur a “drastic economic decline.”
We have to actually care about what happens with money. See here for an extensive SIGAR report (https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-41-LL.pdf) from this July on failures of monitoring and evaluating in US government contracting. A huge problem was that, as I mentioned previously, our strategic goals through which individual grants and contracts were filtered proved to be incoherent or implausible from the beginning. Without a proper roadmap, it is even "possible to do the wrong thing perfectly." In a systematic program of wealth transfer the dynamic framework needs to be established and reviewed before the first grant or loan or subsidy is issued, and there need to be interlocking systems of M&E flowing from each state party and participating organization.
I don't think that nation building requires wastage. Massive cost with no direct returns on investment yes - but that isn't wastage if the goal is a functioning country. For example, building useful infrastructure is expensive and will only provide future utility. But it isn't wastage. Perhaps knowing that the locals will destroy it before it was built makes it wastage?
I'm not sure that encouraging independence and autonomy requires or benefits from lax accounting when the end result was massive theft and a complete dislocation of the "functioning" of the state from what the actual country can provide. Even directly giving the money to the local warlords would have been better. And when that is the case, the concept is so deeply flawed it should be stopped at that point.
One of the reasons that Afghanistan has reached its current state was the USSR providing training / indoctrination that deposed a society that was slowly modernising in a relatively positive and inclusive way to a Communist state that then proceeded to wreck the place, leading to a take over by religious zealots. I'd not call that "altruistic". Blinkered, perhaps.
I do agree that realistically, if you want something to happen then one has to keep control. That is as true when repainting a house as it is rebuilding a country. Liberal democratic ideals forget that the very liberal democratic ideals are built on a vast number of other structures such as a (mostly) working system of laws and can't just be beamed in - and the fantasy that it is self evidently is the "best" is one of the most corrosive concepts that go around.
I'm speaking of a mutualist system with the core goal of building the target country's state, economic, and social capacity. It's not something done sub silentio in the good old boys' club or the international airport hotel's lounge room, but one of the most significant and publicized programs in the history of countries on both ends.
To be clear, I am not proposing that rich countries send social workers to active war zones. Better to send them out before their destinations become active war zones. Lebanon is not Afghanistan. Partner states have to be able to pull their weight in the process even as we build their capacity to pull weight. We can't do anything for Afghanistan along these lines until the political environment there becomes much stabler, notwithstanding that Afghanistan is a truly advanced case best left until we've proven we can master the basics elsewhere. For god's sake, most of the Afghans are unlettered and uneducated, i.e. where decolonized Africa was 50 years ago (more now that the most educated and skilled are tending to flight).
While that does make sense the problem is that before they collapse it's usually hard to get domestic support to take action, it just looks like bankrolling another country. That scene at the end of Charlie Wilson War with the line of pretty much of "you're not the congressmen of Afghanistan."
Egypt would be a good country to look at, they haven't had unemployment rates below 8% since the 90s and a third of the country is considered in poverty, the Northern Sinai has been violent and unstable ever since Israel left Gaza in 2005 when Hamas groups extended their ties into the Sinai. Egypt is a vital pillar to security in the Middle East, North Africa and thanks to the Suez world trade in general. We maintain ties with the current dictatorship because after seeing that democracy there produced Morsi which while saying the necessary things about Israel for stability did otherwise through the Muslim Brotherhood ties with other extremists and terrorists (it is considered a terrorist organization by several countries around the world).
Egypt needs engagement and needs ground up help for its people but what can realisitically be done there? Making the agriculture more efficient would mean mega-corporations instead of the millions of poor farmers they currently have. They are generally resource poor so heavy industry is not a natural direction. The current reliance on tourism is okay but that depends on other countries being rich enough to visit and deterring enough terrorists that people actually want to visit (having been there I'd highly recommend Luxor, amazing!).
The Afghan literacy is a huge problem and that was actually one of the brights spots in the ANA and ANP is that both had literacy programs that did work as their paperbacked admin and logistics required literate soldiers. Illiterate ones literally just made tea and did manual labor like cleaning so advancement to even corporal required literacy.
But the wastage in Afghanistan was never following a lack of control - just the opposite, we held maximal control over where money went. We just didn't apply oversight, nor did we prioritize civil planning or social infrastructure. Our priority was always proximate warfighting or its support, which is where money and organization went. What money did go to reconstruction, tended to be managed by other Americans and not Afghans (other than friendly elites).
That's why the Afghan people got next to nothing.
It didn't help that the locals kinda ruined infrastructure too. In Kandahar province there were miles of solar power street lighting systems put out to reduce crime and people planting IEDs at night so the Taliban encouraged people to knock down the lights and steal the solar panels which went to everyone's rooftops.
We build cellphone towers, the Taliban blow them up. We build schools the kids get coerced not to go, or blown up, the infrastructure is necessary but without security it'd be equally pointless. That's why the focus was on security.
As for the warfighting, it does make sense that we tried to pump money into Afghan security forces as there's no way foreign troops would have the cultural or even linguistic ability to bring security through patrolling and checkpoints. We can fight Taliban and patrol for IEDs and deter their ability to patrol but it would take Afghan security forces to actually do the counter-insurgency. As we've seen though the soldiers didn't trust their leaders or the government and the people certainly didn't trust the soldiers. Apparently they were there for a pay check.
The focus on security should have also focused on corruption (US/NATO and Afghan) as that in the end undermined security more than anything else.
Think the only real examples of successful nation-building have been the handful of countries that were colonized and had peaceful transfers of power (excluding settler nations like the Australia, Canada and NZ). The US got close to nation building success with the Philippines which after colonization was on the path to full independence in 1948 but WW2 destroyed a lot of the good the US had built in infrastructure and governence.
Montmorency
09-04-2021, 04:29
In Afghanistan I suspect the loss ratio was far from total for what productive infrastructure was created, making it a better long-term bet for investment than Afghanized security forces (even assuming less congenital dysfunction of design). But you're reiterating the primary operational obstacles I mentioned.
Egypt's military dictatorship - is probably unwilling and unable to nurture democratic buy-in. I don't know how kleptocratic its ruling class is, but I'm going to assume they're pretty kleptocratic. They won't build institutions that offer common Egyptians a stake.
A minimum level of security is required to sustain a burst in business and development activity. A hundred thousand American, German, Australian, etc. youths and professionals won't 'deploy' for a 'tour of duty', especially beyond any metropoles, if they get targeted on a monthly basis or more (even if we can never expect perfect safety). Last I checked a few years ago, even Egypt's military repression couldn't keep militance and terrorism from spiraling out of control.
So Egypt's not a great candidate either. Lebanon is a better option because it's small in size and population, poor but fairly educated and acculturated, and any major agreement demands Hezbollah's integration anyway, which should substantially repress the risk of violence.
For the sake of thought exercise, I'm interested in what y'all can come up with. Assume the problem of Western political will is overcome: what's the best scope and target country for a model program along the lines I've described? (The best answer is still Eastern Europe, maybe the Balkans, but let's see some creativity.)
Pannonian
09-04-2021, 08:59
In Afghanistan I suspect the loss ratio was far from total for what productive infrastructure was created, making it a better long-term bet for investment than Afghanized security forces (even assuming less congenital dysfunction of design). But you're reiterating the primary operational obstacles I mentioned.
Egypt's military dictatorship - is probably unwilling and unable to nurture democratic buy-in. I don't know how kleptocratic its ruling class is, but I'm going to assume they're pretty kleptocratic. They won't build institutions that offer common Egyptians a stake.
A minimum level of security is required to sustain a burst in business and development activity. A hundred thousand American, German, Australian, etc. youths and professionals won't 'deploy' for a 'tour of duty', especially beyond any metropoles, if they get targeted on a monthly basis or more (even if we can never expect perfect safety). Last I checked a few years ago, even Egypt's military repression couldn't keep militance and terrorism from spiraling out of control.
So Egypt's not a great candidate either. Lebanon is a better option because it's small in size and population, poor but fairly educated and acculturated, and any major agreement demands Hezbollah's integration anyway, which should substantially repress the risk of violence.
For the sake of thought exercise, I'm interested in what y'all can come up with. Assume the problem of Western political will is overcome: what's the best scope and target country for a model program along the lines I've described? (The best answer is still Eastern Europe, maybe the Balkans, but let's see some creativity.)
Start from the other direction. If a group in these countries can gain and retain power using methods antithetical to our ideals, why would they measure society using our metrics? If a patriarchy that their society is already predisposed to being can cement their power using religion, why would they start using your metrics to improve society? You can see elements of this in the US and UK as well, with differing groups using their own culture wars to solidify their power in their targeted populace.
Egypt's military dictatorship - is probably unwilling and unable to nurture democratic buy-in. I don't know how kleptocratic its ruling class is, but I'm going to assume they're pretty kleptocratic. They won't build institutions that offer common Egyptians a stake.
That's why I pointed Egypt out, we talk about influencing other countries to do things that benefit their people and the region but what if they're not receptive?
So Egypt's not a great candidate either. Lebanon is a better option because it's small in size and population, poor but fairly educated and acculturated, and any major agreement demands Hezbollah's integration anyway, which should substantially repress the risk of violence.
I'd say Lebanon is actually more difficult, there's no true 'majority' population making the government weak and divided on any important actions, Syria/Iran have an interest in a weak Lebanon that allows Hezbollah's military to threaten Israel and conduct actions when Syria/Iran/Lebanon dare not openly. The Palestinian refugee camps are numerous and large and need to be dealt with too.
Any Western action in a large way in Lebanon would also draw in a Russian counter-action as they and Syria see Lebanon as vital to their security and port of Tartus.
For the sake of thought exercise, I'm interested in what y'all can come up with. Assume the problem of Western political will is overcome: what's the best scope and target country for a model program along the lines I've described? (The best answer is still Eastern Europe, maybe the Balkans, but let's see some creativity.)
I'm game for this thought exercise, but perhaps it'd deserve a thread of it's own. The questions would also have to be who is doing what action. EU actions in Ukraine don't get quite they counter-action from Russia as US/NATO actions do even though there's some gray area between the organizations.
I could see the following countries of topics of discussion in sort of the following groups.
Functioning countries that need reform, human rights help, modernization, corruption help: Egypt, Ukraine, Turkey, Romania.
Countries in recovery or being destabilized that could collapse: Lebanon, Tunisia, Sri Lanka.
Countries straight up opposed but causing regional problems through domestic actions: Belarus, Myanmar, Philippines.
Failed states or recovering from civil war: Somalia, Libya, Syria, Iraq.
Even with hypothetical capability through more western will the myth of the Western World has faded with a lot of other countries. The 2008 Banking Crisis/Euro-zone austerity problems destroyed the West's credibility as the best way to have wealth and stability. This combined with the ability in capitalism to straight up buy your opponents companies and infrastructure instead of developing it themselves makes the West look like on the decline. The lack of quick and effective action (military or otherwise) in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria have eroded confidence in Western resolve for any buffer states. The ongoing hyper-individualism together pro-LGBT as priorities for human rights seem to threaten tribal/conservative societies which then support reactionaries that might 'save them' from genderless futures without a religion or traditional culture. When from the outside we look like a sex addicted culture but can't even sustain our population growth and need immigration for sustainable growth then it makes people question whether what we do is good for them.
Most of the world wants a western standard of living and perhaps some of our liberties. Our social values, cultural attitudes, and the balance of community versus individual are much harder sells.
Like I've said, the west seems to lack a vision of itself in the future. We're good at imagining dystopian futures, what's the future the west wants for itself that's worth fighting for (figuratively and perhaps literally).
Montmorency
09-06-2021, 04:44
Start from the other direction. If a group in these countries can gain and retain power using methods antithetical to our ideals, why would they measure society using our metrics? If a patriarchy that their society is already predisposed to being can cement their power using religion, why would they start using your metrics to improve society? You can see elements of this in the US and UK as well, with differing groups using their own culture wars to solidify their power in their targeted populace.
The last sentence is an all-important fact, the prerequisite hurdle for bare survival, but most countries aren't dominated by religious or other groups with worldviews antithetical to any level of rigorous international cooperation (even when that cooperation stands to benefit their own societies most). You're just repeating the argument that we can't expect more than limited engagement with countries like Afghanistan, which I already agree with you on. Let's concede that Taliban Afghanistan, Juche North Korea, and Putinate Russia, and all the like, are off limits for grand projects of socioeconomic engineering. Now what?
That's why I pointed Egypt out, we talk about influencing other countries to do things that benefit their people and the region but what if they're not receptive?
What I'm talking about, essentially this (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/10/case-for-climate-reparations-crisis-migration-refugees-inequality/) but with less partisan framing, would be a mobilization of resources unprecedented in history for its aim and scope. There are plenty of other ways countries can and do influence each other, existing methods. Some of these aren't great, such as military/security aid and cooperation that tends to just prop up authoritarian governments for nothing (e.g. Egypt using it to detain tens of thousands of political prisoners), but there are others, such as international mediation between Egypt and Sudan's water disputes or Egypt-EFTA agreements.
Just to be straight on what we're talking about. There is a whole spectrum of engagement and intervention and one can't conflate one point with another. The UN may be sending peacekeepers to Afghanistan to pretend to oversee whatever aid it chooses to direct there, and whether or not that will help the situation, it is one tool that is available and feasible in the short term.
To say that not everything is possible between everyone is not to say that countries have no mechanisms at all for influencing each other. If all we can do with Egypt currently is threaten the structure of their military aid or economic relations, then we should explore the available options based on our goals and principles.
I'd say Lebanon is actually more difficult, there's no true 'majority' population making the government weak and divided on any important actions, Syria/Iran have an interest in a weak Lebanon that allows Hezbollah's military to threaten Israel and conduct actions when Syria/Iran/Lebanon dare not openly. The Palestinian refugee camps are numerous and large and need to be dealt with too.
Any Western action in a large way in Lebanon would also draw in a Russian counter-action as they and Syria see Lebanon as vital to their security and port of Tartus.
That's why the democratic buy-in is important. Theoretically right now would be the best time to pursue a comprehensive international program of investment in Lebanon, since it has basically had no government for a year (since the Beirut incident), the majority of people are living in poverty, and the economy is undergoing one of the very worst contractions (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-01/world-bank-lebanon-s-crisis-among-world-s-worst-since-1850s) in modern global history. Does one doubt that the Lebanese people as explicit counterparty would reject a credible offer of a rigorous influx of foreign resources and personnel alongside political reformation? Incidentally, the fractured and desperate environment could even allow for a field test of the theory of government by sortition, to weaken the lingering grip of Lebanese elites on future development, though I doubt this experiment would ever be included in proposals. Stacking the Lebanese legislature and executive with random commoners probably wouldn't even produce worse results than Lebanon has seen tbh.
But that is exactly what we are living today in Lebanon. The end of an entire way of life. I read the headlines about us, and they are a list of facts and numbers. The currency has lost over 90 percent of its value since 2019; 78 percent of the population is estimated to be living in poverty; there are severe shortages of fuel and diesel; society is on the verge of total implosion. But what does all this mean? It means days entirely occupied with the scramble for basic necessities. A life reduced to the logistics of survival and a population that is physically, mentally and emotionally depleted.
[...]
It is nearly impossible to sit down to work. My laptop battery lasts only so long anyway. In my neighborhood, government-provided power comes on for just an hour a day. The UPS battery that keeps the internet router working runs out of juice by noon. I’m behind on every deadline; I’ve written countless shamefaced emails of apology. What am I even supposed to say? “My country is falling apart and there’s not a single moment of my day that isn’t beholden to its collapse”? Nights are sleepless in the choking summer heat. Building generators operate for only four hours before going off around midnight to save diesel — if they are turned on at all.
Every few days there’s a new low to get used to. One recent morning I needed to exchange some dollars to buy groceries, chiefly bread. At the exchange shop there was a long line of people because the dollar rate was slightly down. There had been rumors that the new prime minister was close to forming a government. At this point such news is like a joke — we’ve been without a government since the cataclysmic port blast on Aug. 4, 2020, and the three prime ministers delegated by Parliament to form a government since then have failed to do so because of infighting between political parties, the same ones who’ve brought this country to ruin. Still, all markets are susceptible to rumor, and whenever the dollar rate goes down, people flock to convert their useless Lebanese lira into dollars.
Once I had my money, I headed to the supermarket, and on my way I encountered a tiny old woman sitting on the pavement. I wanted to give her some money and a bottle of cold water. I went to four shops before I found one. This was how I first learned that we are now also facing a shortage of bottled water. The week before, I’d discovered that there was a shortage of cooking gas after our canister ran out and I had to make a dozen calls — and pay five times what it once cost — to replace it. While cooking gas is vital, the shortage of bottled water is an even bigger disaster in a country where most Lebanese believe the tap water isn’t even safe enough to cook with. (Tap water, too, is at risk of being shut down.) I read about it later: There isn’t enough fuel to power the machines forming the plastic bottles or the pumps that fill them. No fuel for the trucks making deliveries.
[...]
At every turn I must remind you: I am one of the lucky few. For every hardship I’m living through, there are those who have it worse. I have four hours of generator power a day; many have none. I am able-bodied enough to climb up and down the stairs every time I need to leave my apartment; the elderly and disabled are imprisoned indoors. I work from home; I don’t have to forgo work altogether to spend entire days lining up for fuel. The monthly minimum wage is now worth less than $50, while the price of food alone has risen by more than 500 percent over the past year.
[...]
There’s no break from this kind of economic warfare. Because that’s exactly what this is. Fuel and medicine, though scarce, are not entirely unavailable. They are unattainable, hoarded by politically connected individuals and organizations, likely to be exported or sold on the black market. In a world where the maximalist pursuit of profit is supreme, such behavior is simply the way the system was built to work. Lebanon is not an exception. It is a preview of what happens when people run out of resources they believe are infinite. This is how fast a society can collapse. This is what it looks like when the world as we know it ends.
Even with hypothetical capability through more western will the myth of the Western World has faded with a lot of other countries. The 2008 Banking Crisis/Euro-zone austerity problems destroyed the West's credibility as the best way to have wealth and stability. This combined with the ability in capitalism to straight up buy your opponents companies and infrastructure instead of developing it themselves makes the West look like on the decline. The lack of quick and effective action (military or otherwise) in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria have eroded confidence in Western resolve for any buffer states. The ongoing hyper-individualism together pro-LGBT as priorities for human rights seem to threaten tribal/conservative societies which then support reactionaries that might 'save them' from genderless futures without a religion or traditional culture. When from the outside we look like a sex addicted culture but can't even sustain our population growth and need immigration for sustainable growth then it makes people question whether what we do is good for them.
Most of the world wants a western standard of living and perhaps some of our liberties. Our social values, cultural attitudes, and the balance of community versus individual are much harder sells.
I've said, no one has any reason to trust our promises, promises from actively failing societies whom not even their own citizens should respect, yet what I would promise is - as of NOW - too good to be true for anyone but aspirational leftist intellectuals. Since no country has the capacity to go it alone, on what terms can rich countries be brought to organize collectively and build their own capacity to act domestically? As previously mentioned, halting efforts to negotiate a minimum corporate tax (https://www.dw.com/en/oecd-agrees-global-minimum-corporate-tax/av-58136589) for the OECD are a generation too little, too late, but it's some of the little hope we do have for collective action.
One thing the US and other rich countries could do unilaterally and immediately, however, is to apply existing regulatory powers. The Biden admin, for example, has banned imports of solar panels or supply chain components sourced from Xinjiang (use of slave labor); many environmental abuses around the world could be attacked without new legislation just by manipulating our market power as large consumers.
Another thing is to allow aggressive use by foreign nationals of the Alien Tort Claims Act. You know how Texas is banning abortion by outsourcing enforcement to private informants? We have the more constitutional and moral option of outsourcing policing of multinational companies to those affected by their operations abroad.
Like I've said, the west seems to lack a vision of itself in the future. We're good at imagining dystopian futures, what's the future the west wants for itself that's worth fighting for (figuratively and perhaps literally).
As always, the great paradox of history in the 21st century. In all honesty it probably rides on who can arrogate power to themselves at the height of the crisis in the next generation - which is more likely to be a coterie of turbo-Hitlers than Omega FDRs.
Nevertheless, we must keep our eyes on the prize: Standing up a wealthy, cooperative, and more equal international society that can offer mutual support against the trials of the age. Intervention not to center some securitized construction of US or EU economic or foreign policy interests, but to center the civic interest* of the people at the destination, which in the long-term is in our best interest as well.
*Despite the ongoing cultural wars, most people alive today can commit to a consensus of not wanting to live in shit
ReluctantSamurai
09-07-2021, 15:29
Thought this was an interesting discussion on what the money spent on anti-terrorism since 2001 would have purchased here at home. I don't have the time to dig into the correctness of the numbers, but if even half of this is accurate.....:embarassed:
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/03/war-on-terror-911-cost-climate-health-care/
According to a latest version (https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_U.S.%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Post-9%2011%20Wars_9.1.21.pdf) of a long-running study from Brown University, the U.S. federal government has to date spent $5.84 trillion (https://theintercept.com/2021/09/01/war-on-terror-deaths-cost/) in current dollars on the so-called war on terror. This is over $16,000 for every single American, or $64,000 for a family of four. Brown’s estimate is the most conservative way possible of measuring the costs of our wars. It does not include the most important price: the death, dismemberment, and emotional devastation of 20 years of ultraviolence. It does not include the additional $2.2 trillion that the study concludes the U.S. is committed to spending on care for veterans of the wars in the future. It does not include spending by U.S. allies, nor the costs incurred by American state and local governments.
It’s excruciating to look at these facts and face the reality that we chose death over life 20 years ago, and have been choosing it ever since. The good news is that U.S. is so rich that even the stupendous cost of the war on terror did not force many changes to daily life for most Americans. That means that while it will be significantly harder now to change course, it is still possible and perhaps easier than we imagine. As inspirational wall posters say, the best time to plant a tree, literally and figuratively, is 20 years ago, and the second-best time is now.
After all the lives expended, both here and abroad, after all the billions that lined the pockets of defense contractors, after taking a pass on protecting the lives of our children (here and abroad via climate change), here's what lawmakers here in the US have decided to do:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/us/politics/congress-pentagon-budget-biden.html
“The bipartisan adoption of my amendment sends a clear signal: The president’s budget submission was wholly inadequate to keep pace with a rising China and a re-emerging Russia,” Mr. Rogers said. “I hope this bipartisan, and now bicameral, move is understood by the Biden-Harris administration.”
So there you have it. America vs China & Russia. Not entirely inaccurate, but wholly mis-guided. More Navy ships, aircraft, and military equipment will not be of use (except to defense contractors) in the coming struggle with both of those countries, because a conventional war of any kind is suicide for the planet. The war is going to be in the cyber-sphere and in the economic sectors.
I keep saying it...but jeezus we are so screwed here stateside.....:shrug:
Thought this was an interesting discussion on what the money spent on anti-terrorism since 2001 would have purchased here at home. I don't have the time to dig into the correctness of the numbers, but if even half of this is accurate.....
The big blank check of the last twenty years has been hugely wasteful. It's a shame we went from a budget surplus at the end of Clinton's term to the present day rash of spending. Fiscal responsibility is only something the opposition party cares about whenever their opponents are in power. The Republicans spend frivolously on defense and the border, the Democrats on tertiary social programs.
So there you have it. America vs China & Russia. Not entirely inaccurate, but wholly mis-guided. More Navy ships, aircraft, and military equipment will not be of use (except to defense contractors) in the coming struggle with both of those countries, because a conventional war of any kind is suicide for the planet. The war is going to be in the cyber-sphere and in the economic sectors.
Actually, with China and Russia both certain that the US won't use nuclear force in response to conventional attacks on the peripheries of their spheres it's very necessary to maintain the conventional deterrent. Would the US and rest of the Quad go to war over Taiwan, most likely. Would the US use nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan, very unlikely. Just as China would likely not use its nuclear arsenal unless the US began doing strikes in mainland China beyond the areas of influence around Taiwan. The fact that the US Army just released and made public the manual ATP 7-100.3 Chinese Tactics is definitely an indicator that war with China is expected in the near future. The Chinese hope to have a Tsushima Straits type victory over the US that kicks us out of the region and forces our current allies to either make a deal with China or at least break with the US.
Russia is banking on the same in the Ukraine and Baltics. Would the US go nuclear to defend Finland, the Baltics, or Ukraine, probably not. The cyber-sphere and economic sectors are ongoing parts of the same war that also need to be used.
Your base gripe of the defense budget going up though, I whole heartedly agree with. The US defense budget is huge already and being inefficiently spent. We need to get more bang out of the many many bucks we're spending, not spend even more.
ReluctantSamurai
09-08-2021, 03:02
I do not disagree with having to have a "big stick" to swing when necessary. Otherwise, just hand the keys to the government over to our rivals.
Having said that, what's most galling is all the bullshit talk about fiscal responsibility when considering spending money on the American people (ie. the $3.5 trillion Reconciliation Bill), but no hesitation what-so-ever in handing $24 billion in increased spending to defense contractors. Both sides of the isle are complicit, and yes, I know this sort of rubbish has been going on here in the US for decades. The American people like to bluster about their rights and freedoms, but don't realize they'd be far better off if they voted these corrupt legislators out of office. We get what we deserve, I suppose....:shrug:
I saw the remarks earlier about a 10/20/30/50 year planning reach. Well, all this political BS, and pretty much all social issues are going to become subservient to what climate changes are going to inflict on all societies. What are you going to do when millions upon millions get displaced inland due to rising sea levels? What are you going to do when there is widespread crop failures (already happening) due to drought? Are there very many US planners thinking on what to about this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/lake-powell-water-level-dips-historic-low-rcna1620
Let the Water Wars begin...:jarswim:
Nah....we're like the hapless earthlings in The Day the Earth Stood Still...we won't do a damn thing until we push things to the absolute brink.
But god forbid the Defense Department doesn't get its' new toys.....:hmg:
Pannonian
09-08-2021, 03:27
The big blank check of the last twenty years has been hugely wasteful. It's a shame we went from a budget surplus at the end of Clinton's term to the present day rash of spending. Fiscal responsibility is only something the opposition party cares about whenever their opponents are in power. The Republicans spend frivolously on defense and the border, the Democrats on tertiary social programs.
Actually, with China and Russia both certain that the US won't use nuclear force in response to conventional attacks on the peripheries of their spheres it's very necessary to maintain the conventional deterrent. Would the US and rest of the Quad go to war over Taiwan, most likely. Would the US use nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan, very unlikely. Just as China would likely not use its nuclear arsenal unless the US began doing strikes in mainland China beyond the areas of influence around Taiwan. The fact that the US Army just released and made public the manual ATP 7-100.3 Chinese Tactics is definitely an indicator that war with China is expected in the near future. The Chinese hope to have a Tsushima Straits type victory over the US that kicks us out of the region and forces our current allies to either make a deal with China or at least break with the US.
Russia is banking on the same in the Ukraine and Baltics. Would the US go nuclear to defend Finland, the Baltics, or Ukraine, probably not. The cyber-sphere and economic sectors are ongoing parts of the same war that also need to be used.
Your base gripe of the defense budget going up though, I whole heartedly agree with. The US defense budget is huge already and being inefficiently spent. We need to get more bang out of the many many bucks we're spending, not spend even more.
Building a nation from scratch in a region where most of the people hate you is probably the most inefficient use of funds possible.
Having said that, what's most galling is all the bullshit talk about fiscal responsibility when considering spending money on the American people (ie. the $3.5 trillion Reconciliation Bill), but no hesitation what-so-ever in handing $24 billion in increased spending to defense contractors. Both sides of the isle are complicit,
The lack of hesitation and the absence of talk about a peace dividend or even sequestration makes me suspect that the threat from China is so clear cut it goes beyond party divide. As a national guardsman I don't have access to intel unless deployed but looking at the language the Chinese have used against the US in the last two years together with the diplomatic actions by Blinken in the region seem to me signs that there is a major historical point coming up in the near future.
It isn't just new 'toys' though and money to line the pocket of defense contractors. Being geared for counter-insurgency and low-intensity area security doesn't set us up for peer-peer fights. The programs that Rumsfeld cut like the Crusader SPA and Comanche helicopter are certainly things we'd be better off with now. The GWOT besides being hugely expensive has not been good for military readiness against Russia or China. The Navy's boondoggle waste on the littoral combat ship instead of a proper frigate is one example.
I do absolutely HATE the talk about fiscal responsibility for the same reasons you mentioned, either the budget matters or it doesn't. I think it matters but think the way forward is through better stewardship of our resources, not throwing more money at problems. I'm sure the DoD has places it can cut to buy new ships and hardware. The problem though with an electorate that no longer serves in the military is that people have zero clue what's important or not and this is reflected in our elected leaders. Very few have the knowledge to actually question our flag officers when they're before the armed services committees outside of a few well rehearsed subjects.
Building a nation from scratch in a region where most of the people hate you is probably the most inefficient use of funds possible.
Especially when we've got no track record for successful nation building. Though, looking at the protests in Kabul is heartening, we seem to at least have gotten through to some Afghans, they might not love us but they don't all hate us either. Depending on how Taliban rule goes or if there's warlord infighting and civil war in the future, the US military effort might be looked back on fondly as nostalgia erases our many efforts.
Though considering the cost, no not an efficient use of funds at all.
rory_20_uk
09-08-2021, 10:16
If the West wants to have a go at nation building there are some obvious choices. For the USA I would recommend starting with the USA. Terrorism, erosion of democracy, voter disenfranchisement, abuse of minorities and women. Oh, and a crumbling infrastructure.
For Europe, I would recommend Hungry, Poland for starters (since they're even in the EU), then perhaps Italy and Greece (in the EU, not as bad but pretty bad). The Balklands and the Ukraine would be next. The British Isles would have their work cut out sorting out the British isles.
If the West can't even do these what possible chance does it stand elsewhere? Equally, lessons might be learned - I live in hope - that masked people in uniform randomly shooting "less lethal" weaponry at the locals doesn't work and that other methods are better. Yes the USA has repeatedly tried the shooting and arresting approach to its own but they might learn if they move to trying to improve things as to put down an uprising by uppity slaves. Europe would have to develop more of a backbone and stand for something beyond existence - and platinum plated pensions and salaries for all bureaucrats.
~:smoking:
Montmorency
09-10-2021, 23:00
Article (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women) on the Afghan women (and other villagers) pushed into the Taliban's arms by constant Coalition killing of civilians (especially children), and the general atmosphere of terror this sometimes instilled. I'm not even going to quote from the first half of the article, there's a lot. One of the women interviewed, appearing throughout the story, became a local hero after she snapped in rage and fired a Coalition armored car with diesel. Coalition forces had left it idling by her house to stir up a shootout with Taliban a couple miles away.
But she had difficulty mustering any pride, only relief. “I was thinking that they would not come here anymore,” she said. “And we would have peace.”
Both sides of the war did make efforts to avoid civilian deaths. In addition to issuing warnings to evacuate, the Taliban kept villagers informed about which areas were seeded with improvised explosive devices, and closed roads to civilian traffic when targeting convoys. The coalition deployed laser-guided bombs, used loudspeakers to warn villagers of fighting, and dispatched helicopters ahead of battle. “They would drop leaflets saying, ‘Stay in your homes! Save yourselves!’ ” Shakira recalled. In a war waged in mud-walled warrens teeming with life, however, nowhere was truly safe, and an extraordinary number of civilians died. Sometimes, such casualties sparked widespread condemnation, as when a nato rocket struck a crowd of villagers in Sangin in 2010, killing fifty-two. But the vast majority of incidents involved one or two deaths—anonymous lives that were never reported on, never recorded by official organizations, and therefore never counted as part of the war’s civilian toll.
Entire branches of Shakira’s family tree, from the uncles who used to tell her stories to the cousins who played with her in the caves, vanished. In all, she lost sixteen family members. I wondered if it was the same for other families in Pan Killay. I sampled a dozen households at random in the village, and made similar inquiries in other villages, to insure that Pan Killay was no outlier. For each family, I documented the names of the dead, cross-checking cases with death certificates and eyewitness testimony. On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War. This scale of suffering was unknown in a bustling metropolis like Kabul, where citizens enjoyed relative security. But in countryside enclaves like Sangin the ceaseless killings of civilians led many Afghans to gravitate toward the Taliban. By 2010, many households in Ishaqzai villages had sons in the Taliban, most of whom had joined simply to protect themselves or to take revenge; the movement was more thoroughly integrated into Sangin life than it had been in the nineties. Now, when Shakira and her friends discussed the Taliban, they were discussing their own friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
With the hearts-and-minds approach floundering, some nato officials tried to persuade Taliban commanders to flip. In 2010, a group of Sangin Taliban commanders, liaising with the British, promised to switch sides in return for assistance to local communities. But, when the Taliban leaders met to hammer out their end of the deal, U.S. Special Operations Forces—acting independently—bombed the gathering, killing the top Taliban figure behind the peace overture.
On the strength of a seemingly endless supply of recruits, the Taliban had no difficulty outlasting the coalition. But, though the insurgency has finally brought peace to the Afghan countryside, it is a peace of desolation: many villages are in ruins. Reconstruction will be a challenge, but a bigger trial will be to exorcise memories of the past two decades. “My daughter wakes up screaming that the Americans are coming,” Pazaro said. “We have to keep talking to her softly, and tell her, ‘No, no, they won’t come back.’ ”
The most striking difference between Taliban country and the world we’d left behind was the dearth of gunmen. In Afghanistan, I’d grown accustomed to kohl-eyed policemen in baggy trousers, militiamen in balaclavas, intelligence agents inspecting cars. Yet we rarely crossed a Taliban checkpoint, and when we did the fighters desultorily examined the car. “Everyone is afraid of the Taliban,” my driver said, laughing. “The checkpoints are in our hearts.” If people feared their new rulers, they also fraternized with them.
It was clear that the Taliban are divided about what happens next. During my visit, dozens of members from different parts of Afghanistan offered strikingly contrasting visions for their Emirate. Politically minded Talibs who have lived abroad and maintain homes in Doha or Pakistan told me—perhaps with calculation—that they had a more cosmopolitan outlook than before. A scholar who’d spent much of the past two decades shuttling between Helmand and Pakistan said, “There were many mistakes we made in the nineties. Back then, we didn’t know about human rights, education, politics—we just took everything by power. But now we understand.” In the scholar’s rosy scenario, the Taliban will share ministries with former enemies, girls will attend school, and women will work “shoulder to shoulder” with men.
Yet in Helmand it was hard to find this kind of Talib. More typical was Hamdullah, a narrow-faced commander who lost a dozen family members in the American War, and has measured his life by weddings, funerals, and battles. He said that his community had suffered too grievously to ever share power, and that the maelstrom of the previous twenty years offered only one solution: the status quo ante. He told me, with pride, that he planned to join the Taliban’s march to Kabul, a city he’d never seen. He guessed that he’d arrive there in mid-August.
[...]
I asked a leading Helmandi Taliban scholar where in Islam was it stipulated that women cannot go to the market or attend school. He admitted, somewhat chagrined, that this was not an actual Islamic injunction. “It’s the culture in the village, not Islam,” he said. “The people there have these beliefs about women, and we follow them.”
[...]
Shakira has a knack for finding humor in pathos, and in the sheer absurdity of the men in her life: in the nineties, the Taliban had offered to supply electricity to the village, and the local graybeards had initially refused, fearing black magic. “Of course, we women knew electricity was fine,” she said, chuckling.
Abdul Rahman, a farmer, was rooting through the refuse with his young son when an Afghan Army gunship appeared on the horizon. It was flying so low, he recalled, that “even Kalashnikovs could fire on it.” But there were no Taliban around, only civilians. The gunship fired, and villagers began falling right and left. It then looped back, continuing to attack. “There were many bodies on the ground, bleeding and moaning,” another witness said. “Many small children.” According to villagers, at least fifty civilians were killed.
Later, I spoke on the phone with an Afghan Army helicopter pilot who had just relieved the one who attacked the outpost. He told me, “I asked the crew why they did this, and they said, ‘We knew they were civilians, but Camp Bastion’ ”—a former British base that had been handed over to the Afghans—“ ‘gave orders to kill them all.’ ” As we spoke, Afghan Army helicopters were firing upon the crowded central market in Gereshk, killing scores of civilians. An official with an international organization based in Helmand said, “When the government forces lose an area, they are taking revenge on the civilians.” The helicopter pilot acknowledged this, adding, “We are doing it on the order of Sami Sadat.”
I showed the interview to Mohammed Wali, a pushcart vender in a village near Lashkar Gah. A few days after the Yakh Chal massacre, government militias in his area surrendered to the Taliban. General Sadat’s Blackhawks began attacking houses, seemingly at random. They fired on Wali’s house, and his daughter was struck in the head by shrapnel and died. His brother rushed into the yard, holding the girl’s limp body up at the helicopters, shouting, “We’re civilians!” The choppers killed him and Wali’s son. His wife lost her leg, and another daughter is in a coma. As Wali watched the CNN clip, he sobbed. “Why are they doing this?” he asked. “Are they mocking us?”
In the course of a few hours in 2006, the Taliban killed thirty-two friends and relatives of Amir Dado, including his son. Three years later, they killed the warlord himself—who by then had joined parliament—in a roadside blast. The orchestrator of the assassination hailed from Pan Killay. In one light, the attack is the mark of a fundamentalist insurgency battling an internationally recognized government; in another, a campaign of revenge by impoverished villagers against their former tormentor; or a salvo in a long-simmering tribal war; or a hit by a drug cartel against a rival enterprise. All these readings are probably true, simultaneously. What’s clear is that the U.S. did not attempt to settle such divides and build durable, inclusive institutions; instead, it intervened in a civil war, supporting one side against the other. As a result, like the Soviets, the Americans effectively created two Afghanistans: one mired in endless conflict, the other prosperous and hopeful.
The Taliban takeover has restored order to the conservative countryside while plunging the comparatively liberal streets of Kabul into fear and hopelessness. This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable project—the Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.”... All the women I met in Sangin, though, seemed to agree that their rights, whatever they might entail, cannot flow from the barrel of a gun—and that Afghan communities themselves must improve the conditions of women.
It was as if the movement had won only by default, through the abject failures of its opponents. To locals, life under the coalition forces and their Afghan allies was pure hazard; even drinking tea in a sunlit field, or driving to your sister’s wedding, was a potentially deadly gamble. What the Taliban offered over their rivals was a simple bargain: Obey us, and we will not kill you.
As much as some Western bro-dudes have vehemently scapegoated Islam for whatever they've pleased, let's recall that Afghanistan in 2001 arguably comprised the most primitive agricultural societies on the planet (and the cities had been disinvested from since the 80s).
Montmorency
09-10-2021, 23:52
Fake balance (https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1434261510268854275) in the news media [VIDEO]:
Quite gross from @BBCNews: our "impartiality" doctrine was used to basically shut down @CChristineFair when she explained #Pakistan's jihad policy in #Afghanistan that has brought us all to this catastrophe — an issue on which there is no "balance" or "other side", factually.
The big blank check of the last twenty years has been hugely wasteful. It's a shame we went from a budget surplus at the end of Clinton's term to the present day rash of spending. Fiscal responsibility is only something the opposition party cares about whenever their opponents are in power. The Republicans spend frivolously on defense and the border, the Democrats on tertiary social programs.
Teasing the implication that America has a third-tier social welfare system, or that Democrats' offerings have been historically inadequate for too long? But without getting into the wastefulness of failure to invest in one's own success - cutting the defense budget in half and holding it there for 10 years would, alone, pay for the entirety of Biden's infrastructure/labor rights agenda! - there's another fact that springs worthy of notice. Namely that the Democratic Party has never, to my knowledge, enacted a permanent expansion of the welfare state with deficit spending.
That many people seemingly credit narratives of Democratic profligacy by default is testament to the success of conservative manipulation of lazy and biased media institutions.
Never mind, diving in - this is no longer a question of haggling priorities. A massive and rapid expansion of state outlays, interventions, and economic planning is the inexorable and necessary artifact of unallayed modern economic and ecological pressure (which, fittingly, could have been averted with some modest, timely investment). Who wants to be reduced to crying budget discipline in the matter of the level of citizens' daily carbohydrate rations, having discounted the lifestyle of 2075 for the sake of 2020's balance sheets (for that matter 2075's too)? The ultimate relevant consideration in this century is what level of resources, raw materials, goods, and persons the total economy is capable of circulating sustainably (https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/RI_FullEmployment_Brief_202107.pdf), and how much attrition is going to be inflicted by climate and geopolitical disruption.
Actually, with China and Russia both certain that the US won't use nuclear force in response to conventional attacks on the peripheries of their spheres it's very necessary to maintain the conventional deterrent. Would the US and rest of the Quad go to war over Taiwan, most likely. Would the US use nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan, very unlikely. Just as China would likely not use its nuclear arsenal unless the US began doing strikes in mainland China beyond the areas of influence around Taiwan. The fact that the US Army just released and made public the manual ATP 7-100.3 Chinese Tactics is definitely an indicator that war with China is expected in the near future. The Chinese hope to have a Tsushima Straits type victory over the US that kicks us out of the region and forces our current allies to either make a deal with China or at least break with the US.
Russia is banking on the same in the Ukraine and Baltics. Would the US go nuclear to defend Finland, the Baltics, or Ukraine, probably not. The cyber-sphere and economic sectors are ongoing parts of the same war that also need to be used.
Your base gripe of the defense budget going up though, I whole heartedly agree with. The US defense budget is huge already and being inefficiently spent. We need to get more bang out of the many many bucks we're spending, not spend even more.
Russia and China, since 9/11, and not just in proportion with economic growth, have exponentially increased their defense spending and military research investment - keeping up with the Joneses (i.e. US). It's a vicious cycle, a prisoner's dilemma that has kind of locked the great powers into an arms race. We ought to be thinking about how we can deescalate with the two countries, and one way would be to tone down our runaway military spending! At the same time, by prisoner's dilemma logic the cycle is so far gone that unilateral action on our part might just be viewed as a defection opportunity to further narrow the gap. The defense budget should then be made an explicit factor in transactional diplomacy to ensure the desired leverage ratio.
But we really should game out and pursue ways to avert the headlong rush into the exact kind of paranoid militarization that beset the Belle Epoque, prior to prioritizing feverish scenarios of forward deployment to far-off lands. Despite our longstanding geostrategic "1-4-2-1" doctrine, I suspect the US will never be strong enough (or is no longer strong enough) to repel, by conventional means, simultaneous attacks on Taiwan and the Baltics, anyway. By way of those strategic constraints, exposing the operational limits of any American commitment to Taiwan. Lobbying an upgrade of the Filipino navy is not the force multiplier you're looking for. The old alliance systems aren't what they used to be; war on behalf of Taiwan will be a harder sell to states more interested in finding accommodations for business than in obeying the dictates of "honor" in decisively resolving a superpowers' power struggle.
I naturally reject the typical staff officer recommendation in the face of these concerns of a massive new expansion of the military.
(All that said, the CCP by all appearances prioritizes its irredentism higher than Putin does his. I'm glad I'm out of Selective Service age.)
I saw the remarks earlier about a 10/20/30/50 year planning reach. Well, all this political BS, and pretty much all social issues are going to become subservient to what climate changes are going to inflict on all societies. What are you going to do when millions upon millions get displaced inland due to rising sea levels? What are you going to do when there is widespread crop failures (already happening) due to drought? Are there very many US planners thinking on what to about this:
Sometimes the DoD puts out white papers (https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/29/2002084200/-1/-1/1/CLIMATE-CHANGE-REPORT-2019.PDF) discussing climate change as national security concern, but I can't say if any go beyond discussing operational hazards and mitigation.
Especially when we've got no track record for successful nation building. Though, looking at the protests in Kabul is heartening, we seem to at least have gotten through to some Afghans, they might not love us but they don't all hate us either. Depending on how Taliban rule goes or if there's warlord infighting and civil war in the future, the US military effort might be looked back on fondly as nostalgia erases our many efforts.
See previous post. New Orleans is not Wallace, Louisiana, so to speak.
If the Taliban leadership are very smart, and their organization disciplined, they will tailor their policies city-by-city and village-by-village along populist lines. Put women in the cities back in schools and technical fields, leave the common clay of the valleys to their traditions.
Montmorency
09-12-2021, 01:41
What an era. spmetla, do you have any insight on the drone strike aimed at eliminating an 'imminent ISIK-K threat" shortly before the final exfiltration? News reports indicate this attack, whose target seems to have been engineer Zemarai Ahmadi, also killed 8 children and a former ANA/interpreter from the same family. If the target was appropriate, a suicide bomber as claimed, that's still an, um, incredible ratio.
Yes - its "self defence" to fire a missile from a drone in someone else's country inside their capital city if you think they might be approaching the airport you've currently occupying. And you can even then say you take civilian deaths seriously after killing loads of civilians.
The mess due to the abrupt withdrawal is a mess and although was never going to be clean this was worse than it could have been; this was - if not done by the USA - state sponsored killing.
~:smoking:
Seems pretty conclusive: We killed an innocent man, an actual model citizen who was trying to flee to the United States, along with a bunch of bystanders, despite minimal cited intelligence. Hip hooray for America, the terrorists won when we came and they won as we left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtecNyXxb9A
Oh, and by the way, remember this?
The more reserved frustrations of an Afghan general (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html).
I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.
Aug. 25, 2021
By Sami Sadat
General Sadat is a commander in the Afghan National Army.
Well...
Later, I spoke on the phone with an Afghan Army helicopter pilot who had just relieved the one who attacked the outpost. He told me, “I asked the crew why they did this, and they said, ‘We knew they were civilians, but Camp Bastion’ ”—a former British base that had been handed over to the Afghans—“ ‘gave orders to kill them all.’ ” As we spoke, Afghan Army helicopters were firing upon the crowded central market in Gereshk, killing scores of civilians. An official with an international organization based in Helmand said, “When the government forces lose an area, they are taking revenge on the civilians.” The helicopter pilot acknowledged this, adding, “We are doing it on the order of Sami Sadat.”
I showed the interview to Mohammed Wali, a pushcart vender in a village near Lashkar Gah. A few days after the Yakh Chal massacre, government militias in his area surrendered to the Taliban. General Sadat’s Blackhawks began attacking houses, seemingly at random. They fired on Wali’s house, and his daughter was struck in the head by shrapnel and died. His brother rushed into the yard, holding the girl’s limp body up at the helicopters, shouting, “We’re civilians!” The choppers killed him and Wali’s son. His wife lost her leg, and another daughter is in a coma. As Wali watched the CNN clip, he sobbed. “Why are they doing this?” he asked. “Are they mocking us?”
This was all up to days before the fall of the government.
General Sami Sadat headed one of the seven corps of the Afghan Army. Unlike the Amir Dado generation of strongmen, who were provincial and illiterate, Sadat obtained a master’s degree in strategic management and leadership from a school in the U.K. and studied at the NATO Military Academy, in Munich. He held his military position while also being the C.E.O. of Blue Sea Logistics, a Kabul-based corporation that supplied anti-Taliban forces with everything from helicopter parts to armored tactical vehicles. During my visit to Helmand, Blackhawks under his command were committing massacres almost daily: twelve Afghans were killed while scavenging scrap metal at a former base outside Sangin; forty were killed in an almost identical incident at the Army’s abandoned Camp Walid; twenty people, most of them women and children, were killed by air strikes on the Gereshk bazaar; Afghan soldiers who were being held prisoner by the Taliban at a power station were targeted and killed by their own comrades in an air strike.
Thanks for all the war crimes. At least we can examine them in glorious HD these days.
Pannonian
09-12-2021, 09:13
Seems pretty conclusive: We killed an innocent man, an actual model citizen who was trying to flee to the United States, along with a bunch of bystanders, despite minimal cited intelligence. Hip hooray for America, the terrorists won when we came and they won as we left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtecNyXxb9A
Oh, and by the way, remember this?
Well...
This was all up to days before the fall of the government.
Thanks for all the war crimes. At least we can examine them in glorious HD these days.
Mistakes are going to happen when you have to make decisions. You don't get to both accuse the US of leaving and betraying the Afghans, and blame them for making mistaken decisions. You don't want the US to commit what you call war crimes? Fine, you can have the Afghans commit them instead. Far, far more of them.
ReluctantSamurai
09-12-2021, 16:24
Mistakes are going to happen when you have to make decisions. You don't get to both accuse the US of leaving and betraying the Afghans, and blame them for making mistaken decisions.
How many times do you get to repeat the highlighted portion, before you say enough? A dozen? 20? 50? Where's the line you cross where you have to cease & desist, and take a long, hard look at your policy? You know why it's so GD easy to use that flawed justification to kill people? Because the killing is more often than not done by someone pushing buttons on a console thousands of miles away. The on-the-ground devastation to human life is never seen in terms of body parts strewn around the target site, the shattered lives of innocent people, and the ensuing hateful look in the eyes of survivors.
Again, is it any wonder why the US is so hated in many places around the world?
How about the mistake this weasel is suggesting:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-58456953
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has told the BBC that he believes American troops "will be going back into Afghanistan" in the future. Speaking on HARDtalk, he said: "We'll have to because the [terror] threat will be so large."
The money given to Graham by defense contractors miiiiight have a wee bit to do with that BS take:
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/senator-lindsey-grahams-pro-war-super-pac-bankrolled-defense-contractors/
Calling Sen Graham a weasel is doing a gross dis-service to weasels everywhere...~:pimp:
Teasing the implication that America has a third-tier social welfare system, or that Democrats' offerings have been historically inadequate for too long? But without getting into the wastefulness of failure to invest in one's own success - cutting the defense budget in half and holding it there for 10 years would, alone, pay for the entirety of Biden's infrastructure/labor rights agenda! - there's another fact that springs worthy of notice. Namely that the Democratic Party has never, to my knowledge, enacted a permanent expansion of the welfare state with deficit spending.
That many people seemingly credit narratives of Democratic profligacy by default is testament to the success of conservative manipulation of lazy and biased media institutions.
This isn't really the thread for this but what I was implying was that our social spending is wholly ineffective and inefficient as is defense spending. We spend far more per-capita with the result of a much shittier system than our European counterparts. This is healthcare and other things like unemployment. Both need huge overhauls before throwing more money at them too (just like defense spending). I'm an advocate for socialized health care, I prefer a federalized system and think your coverage and access to healthcare should not change depending on the state or district apart from purely geographic considerations for concentration of resources. Each state should not have completely separate laws regarding individual rights for healthcare as it's made the legal considerations too troublesome for efficiency.
Same with unemployment, it's a great idea and helps a lot of people. That people choose to remain on it because they make more money doing that than working shows it also needs to be reworked (and you can't really fault people for choosing the fiscal sound option for themselves). There should be a decrease in benefits over many weeks/months so that there is incentive for people to economize their personal expenses or decide to take a lower paying job if necessary. If they do take a lower paying job sooner than later I think unemployment should make up the income difference for a short period as they'd likely have to adjust their living situation and many other things.
Education is one of the most valuable investments we can make and before simply spending more on it or teasing the idea of paying off student loans there needs to be reform of the higher educations systems. School loans, changing textbooks every year, and so on need to be tackled too so these companies preying on naïve youth's desire for an education and wanting to get a good job doesn't land them in serious debt in the first place. Hell, technical schools for the shortage of skilled industrial labor is a better option for many Americans that's too often ignored or poo-pooed because it doesn't give a degree.
This isn't me ragging on 'the Dems' because of conservative bias, the above systems are in dire need of reform before simply pumping in more money. The Dems just like the Reps love going to their electorate and demonstrating how much money they've essentially given them. The DoD needs serious reform in how it spends, defense contractors getting cozy deals from flag officers that pick their products while in uniform and then giving them jobs once out of uniform needs serious regulation too.
I want government spending as a whole to be more efficient. Cutting the DoD budget in half without first seeing why so much money isn't getting more bang for the buck first will just mean fewer servicemembers and platforms. The contractor leaches and overspending on items will probably continue on if that's not investigated and regulated first. Same goes for the healthcare industry in which the pharmaceuticals rob us blind in the name of research while actually giving themselves pay rises and spending far more on advertising and lobbyists than research.
As for the current infrastructure bill, I'm all for it actually, reinvestment by the government is absolutely essentially during economic downturns like right now.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has told the BBC that he believes American troops "will be going back into Afghanistan" in the future. Speaking on HARDtalk, he said: "We'll have to because the [terror] threat will be so large."
I can't realistically see how US troops would operate again in Afghanistan in a major way. I could see CIA and SOF operations on occasion, no doubt air and drone strikes from carriers task groups but after twenty years culminating in defeat I doubt any US president would re-invade the country short of them pulling off another 9/11 event.
Pannonian
09-12-2021, 20:53
How many times do you get to repeat the highlighted portion, before you say enough? A dozen? 20? 50? Where's the line you cross where you have to cease & desist, and take a long, hard look at your policy? You know why it's so GD easy to use that flawed justification to kill people? Because the killing is more often than not done by someone pushing buttons on a console thousands of miles away. The on-the-ground devastation to human life is never seen in terms of body parts strewn around the target site, the shattered lives of innocent people, and the ensuing hateful look in the eyes of survivors.
Again, is it any wonder why the US is so hated in many places around the world?
How about the mistake this weasel is suggesting:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-58456953
The money given to Graham by defense contractors miiiiight have a wee bit to do with that BS take:
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/senator-lindsey-grahams-pro-war-super-pac-bankrolled-defense-contractors/
Calling Sen Graham a weasel is doing a gross dis-service to weasels everywhere...~:pimp:
Not long before, terrorists had killed 100+ at Kabul airport.
And policy has changed. The US government decided there were no good courses, and that it was thus leaving the Afghans to themselves. Is this not a radical enough policy change for you? And at the bottom of Monty's post, he posts an accusation at the US government that it was betraying the Afghans by leaving them. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
That's why I'm against all foreign intervention, unless the hosts are in favour of your being there. You'll still be damned, but at least it'll be cheaper.
Montmorency
09-12-2021, 22:17
Mistakes are going to happen when you have to make decisions. You don't get to both accuse the US of leaving and betraying the Afghans, and blame them for making mistaken decisions. You don't want the US to commit what you call war crimes? Fine, you can have the Afghans commit them instead. Far, far more of them.
None of that holds water.
The fatal premise is of course that I have never in this thread characterized the fact of departure from Afghanistan as a betrayal of the Afghans - more the opposite.
The tendentious premise is that mistaken decisions cannot be criticized if one supports the framework of action in which they manifest (which, to repeat, I did not). This premise is usually wrong in any domain of human affairs one could think of. After all, how many hundreds of posts have you made probing Brexit supporters? By your premise this would have been an incoherent strategy as they, being Brexit supporters, would have no recourse but to object to any fault-finding in the process of Brexit.
You are right, however, that Afghans commit more war crimes than Americans. Our Afghan allies at least. AFAIK most violent civilian deaths over the 20 years of conflict were caused by Republican forces. This is in contrast to the 1980s war, when the Soviet patron of the DRA (itself at least as criminal as the RoA) also targeted civilian populations for reprisal and intimidation as a matter of real doctrine. This made the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan much deadlier than the American one. It is little comfort to be less inhumane than the Soviet Union however. (We can criticize the Soviet Union, right?)
Not long before, terrorists had killed 100+ at Kabul airport.
And policy has changed. The US government decided there were no good courses, and that it was thus leaving the Afghans to themselves. Is this not a radical enough policy change for you?
Is it very radical to refrain from killing people in the absence of a strong security justification? The evidence we have now renders the action as essentially vengeful ass-covering by the command.
And at the bottom of Monty's post, he posts an accusation at the US government that it was betraying the Afghans by leaving them.
Again, I did not say that. Maybe you're confusing it with the places in which I said the US has an obligation to take refugees?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
There is such a thing as "less damned." Otherwise, no one would ever have to make any decisions at all surely - the status quo could last forever to universal satisfaction. The saying is "don't let 'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'", not "screw lesser evil, full evil is where it's at baby!"
Cutting the DoD budget in half without first seeing why so much money isn't getting more bang for the buck first will just mean fewer servicemembers and platforms.
It's not a concrete pay-for proposal, just a common illustration of how even modest government investments or programs are challenged in mainstream discourse in a way that runaway defense and security spending of comparable scale never is.
A couple remarks, with receipts if you like. The evidence so far is that unemployment insurance expansion did not affect job-seeking behaviors in the sense of keeping recipients out of the labor force. Of the lines of evidence, the strongest is the fact that UI repeal in Republican states in late spring and early summer evinced no difference with Democratic states that did not repeal (the federally-expanded benefits expired legally this Labor Day). UI should definitely be federalized regardless though, as the hallmark of its inefficiency is the reduplication of complex bureaucracy. It was never federalized in its New Deal inception as one of the many compromises made at the time. I do think the baseline of UI should be generous however, and if need be we can sweeten the deal somewhat for employers by detaching UI tax from the number of employees claiming benefits (also a factor in the nefarious trend of wrongly classifying employees as contractors, who broadly speaking now make up 1/3 of the workforce!!!).
It's been long known that there is effectively no longer any "wage premium" for graduating college. That doesn't make college education itself a scam, more the entire structure and incentives of the American higher educational system (ballooning administrative and hedge fund salaries alongside shrinking salaries and job security for instructors); the bachelors degree offers no surplus of mere financial advantage in an age when a degree is the bare minimum for all but the most menial service and production jobs and so should never be advertised to children as offering any such advantage. Indeed, if it's the contemporary bare minimum (and I would estimate a majority of American Gen X and Millennials have at least some college education) it should probably not be sold at an accelerating premium to American families.
However, there is no prospect for comprehensive reform of American higher education in the short term. Holding tens of millions of debt holders hostage right now to ephemera of structural reform is a moral hazard in my opinion. At any rate, when the federal government holds so much non-performing debt it actually loses money in the long run! In other words, for graduates to hold debt that they will realistically never repay to the federal government is not only a drain on federal finances, it is a drain on the economy, micro and macro, as those debt-bound young people cannot participate fully in socially-desirable consumption and investment. Some measure of debt relief is necessary; it doesn't have to be 100% immediately.
The shortage of skilled (more precisely "specialized") labor in certain industries has long been overblown by stingy employers who want their depressed wages to be subsidized by the government, either through special visa programs or through picking up the tab for training more directly. Companies don't want to invest their own resources on training and retaining talent anymore, and I think it's time they put more skin in the game again.
Montmorency
09-14-2021, 02:04
Relevant cartoon from 2015:
https://i.imgur.com/IYZWawm.jpg
Speaking of cartoons, here's a collection of post-9/11 political cartoons (https://twitter.com/KikiRosecrans/status/1436126923541913602). It's honestly hard to believe they're from the same century.
Spmetla, the US could legitimately be a little too obsessed (https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2021/09/09/china-russia-loom-over-routine-air-operations-across-the-globe/) with unlimited thalassocracy.
Military leaders have grown increasingly vocal with an “America vs. China” narrative that is now a blueprint for the Air Force’s spending choices, its strategic planning and its training curriculum.
“We’re the dominant military power until you get within about 1,000 miles of China, and then it starts to change,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Air Force Times Aug. 13. “China has been very careful and strategic about fielding capabilities designed to keep us out of their part of the world.”
“The question that keeps me up at night is, what happens when our diplomats no longer have the might of the U.S. military or our economy as their backstop?” Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown said Aug. 6. “This is the world that none of us want to live in.”
A relentless drive to insert our martial will in every corner of the planet, or have the potential to do so, has historically (as of now) not served our country very well. We need to rethink our meta before we scramble to do something (else) quite stupid and reckless. If it must involve weapons, at least take a page from China's book and help its neighbors box its navy in with area denial platforms. The impulse to aggressively secure direct control is counterproductive here, unless someone can argue for the alternative of more missiles, more carrier fleets and subs, and more patrols into Chinese-claimed waters is supportive of national and global interests or defusing of Chinese imperatives.
That competition is increasingly on display in U.S. Southern Command, said Maj. Gen. Barry Cornish, head of 12th Air Force, which supplies air assets to U.S. operations in SOUTHCOM.
Income, food and health insecurity in the region, coupled with further instability from social unrest, crime, frequent natural disasters and COVID-19, make the area an attractive target for predatory countries looking to drive a wedge between locals and the United States.
“Our big priority here is focusing on transnational crime and how to counter that, but also the nexus of that with malign state activity by China,” Cornish told Air Force Times Aug. 10. They most often rely on air mobility assets and reconnaissance planes, plus aircraft that fly humanitarian aid missions after events like hurricanes and earthquakes.
We spent like a page talking about this stuff here, and the military doesn't have much role to play. It's up to American industrial policy and civil society to crowd out Chinese offers with our own. The Air Force has nothing to offer to the countries of SOUTHCOM. I mean, note that the article has pivoted from even the West Pacific: SOUTHCOM refers to Latin America. A Monroe Doctrine mindset won't help us, and indeed has already allowed China to make dramatic openings (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/china-trade-latin-america-caribbean) into Latin America.
China’s trade with Latin America and the Caribbean grew 26-fold between 2000 and 2020. LAC-China trade is expected to more than double by 2035, to more than $700 billion.
He argues the military hasn’t spent enough time analyzing how China’s presence could affect the Southern Hemisphere.
Foreign offers of professional military education, infrastructure support and more are chipping away at U.S. partnerships, he said.
“We need more [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] to continue to characterize what Chinese malign influence looks like,” Cornish said. “It’s very expansive, between the Belt and Road Initiative, a lot of activities in illegal mining and logging and fishing, extracting resources from our partner nations when they can least afford it.”
Pathetic out-of-touch hypocrisy, really. This is why our country is going to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKP9g-1zLVA
Alongside them (https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/national-interests), I find myself wondering: What are America’s “vital national interests” — at least as Washington defines them?
International terrorism, it seems, still. U.S. officials still seem to think that a splashy attack is of a greater threat to the American people than systemic corruption abroad or at home.
Is that analysis correct? Is a shadowy “ISIS-K” more dangerous to U.S. citizens than, for example, private equity partners or real estate speculators, who nearly brought down the world economy in 2008, then presided over an eviction frenzy that continues today? Or who take over struggling corporations and pay themselves generous “management” fees out of the pension fund, bankrupting it? Is ISIS truly more dangerous to humans and the irreplaceable air and forests and the creatures in them than the fossil fuel companies that, not content to tear down mountains, are now shattering the very bedrock under our feet, to extract ever more natural gas?
What about drug trafficking? Is that a vital U.S. interest? It has not been explicitly mentioned in statements on Afghanistan, but judging from Washington’s approach to Latin America, the Afghan opium industry seems a likely candidate.
In May — just when our Kandahar-based cooperative needed to hire extra people to harvest wild herbs so we could distill their essential oils — I would watch men boarding busses headed west, to fields dense with lovely, tulip-like poppies. There the workers would labor for a few well-paid weeks scratching the stalks with needle-tipped tools, then scraping away the sap that oozed out. That sap is what is turned into opium.
I get it: Afghanistan — no matter who its rulers are — is a major source of dangerous drugs.
And yet, what organizations manufactured and distributed the opium derivatives that have killed more than 750,000 Americans since 1999? Narcotics trafficking networks? Surely. And what about U.S. pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue and Cardinal Health and McKesson — some of which received preferential contracts during the COVID pandemic?
As my Afghan friends have been considering statements like Blinken’s about “vital national interests,” here are some comments I’ve heard:
“The Taliban will be better puppets for the Americans. They’ll put a few faces in their government, in unimportant positions, to make it look ‘inclusive.’ They’ll fight against ISIS-K. They’ll control poppy, like they did before — for a year so the prices would go up. And the U.S. will ‘engage.’ And then the heads of the Taliban can profiteer from this and torture their own citizens…” “I won’t be surprised if the U.S. is the first country to recognize them.”
I remember how often, over the years, friends and neighbors would insist: “The U.S. must be supporting the Taliban.” In the early days, I would scoff. But as time went on, such remarks got harder to rebut. It got harder to convince people that the U.S. government could actually be so stupid. Finally it became impossible, and I stopped trying. How do you explain — to Afghans and to Americans — that U.S. officials are sending servicemen and women to fight and die at the hands of an “enemy” that we are simultaneously financing to the tune of $1 billion per year, via its sponsor, the Pakistani military? How do you explain such contempt for those our civilian leaders called heroes?
As strange as my Afghan friends’ comments might sound to Americans, it is impossible for me now to make the case that the U.S. wasn’t in fact supporting the Taliban from the start.
“The U.S. isn’t interested in democracy for Afghans.” Another comment slams into my ears. “It never was. Just look Mubarak in Egypt, and how you helped him all those years.” That one got me. I traveled to Egypt during the 2011 revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. I remember the intoxicating breath of possibility that impregnated the air those early days. Then I watched Washington swivel to “engage” with the Islamist regime of Muhammad Morsi, which had capitalized on the explosion of indignation at a corrupt and vicious Mubarak regime. Just as quickly, Washington pivoted again to engage with the dictatorship of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, after he sent the police to mow down Morsi’s supporters in the streets of downtown Cairo, killing more than a thousand. I was back in town in time to see the blood congealing on the pavement. The Sisi regime today is more repressive than Mubarak’s ever was.
What are U.S. “vital national interests” anyway? Can anyone spell them out? Does allying with repressive autocracies and investing in corrupt political economies around the world further them? Is lurching back and forth between proclaiming the virtues of democracy and bending to the whims of strongmen an effective strategy for defending them?
How do we decide how we behave, as a nation, towards whom? What kind of countries and peoples should we treat with respect and consideration? From which governments and individuals should we protect ourselves? Towards which ones should we be crafty, unpredictable, even cynical? Real statecraft — our very future, perhaps — depends on getting these choices right.
A relentless drive to insert our martial will in every corner of the planet, or have the potential to do so, has historically (as of now) not served our country very well.
A relentless drive to insert our martial will everywhere? Really? If you look at the history of the US doing so it's only been since WW2 and primarily to counter communism and when that collapsed to counter global islamic terrorism and that's really only post 9/11, beforehand it was Great Britain and France that preserved the 'western world' while the US got to reap the economic benefits of relatively stable global trade and access to markets.
The US wasn't too concerned about China until it started conducting border skirmishes in some or another with all it's neighbors except NK and Russia (at least in the last 30 years).
The US wasn't too concerned about post-soviet Russia (apart from the danger of collapse) until Ukraine invasion. Even the Georgia-Russian war wasn't taken as too much of a concern outside arresting too rapid an expansion of NATO.
The US doesn't militarily interfere in most of South Asia, Africa, or South America. There's no shortage of small wars that the US more or less ignores outside of sanctions against the actors.
We need to rethink our meta before we scramble to do something (else) quite stupid and reckless.
Like what? Defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion together with our regional allies (Japan, Australia, and perhaps in limited role South Korea). You really think the US would start a war with China or Russia? The current actions by both those nations is because they push the envelope to see what the US considers worth fighting for.
Taiwan isn't a part of the PRC and never has been, the current generation have seen what's happened in Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and the mainland and don't want a part of it.
Should we only defend allies that are major power? Should we have let Saddam keep Kuwait? Should we just let Russia do what it wants in Ukraine? Should we tell the Baltic States that they just aren't worth our effort?
Unfortunately our allies don't spend near enough on defense that would enable the US to ease off a global role. That US disagreements with the other NATO allies about pulling out of Afghanistan didn't lead to any other countries taking up the mantle to support GiROA is just a sign of how weak and limited the reach of our best NATO allies is. Even for things like Libya or Mali both those efforts required substantial US logistical and intelligence support to France as even they can't go it alone anymore even a stone's throw over the water if the action requires more than a battalion of legionnaires.
If it must involve weapons, at least take a page from China's book and help its neighbors box its navy in with area denial platforms. The impulse to aggressively secure direct control is counterproductive here, unless someone can argue for the alternative of more missiles, more carrier fleets and subs, and more patrols into Chinese-claimed waters is supportive of national and global interests or defusing of Chinese imperatives.
Secure direct control? Boxing in China with Anti-Ship missiles would require lots of troops on the ground in the whole South China Seas, if those countries were willing, giving away radars and advanced missiles, and the advanced aircraft though would essentially be giving away any US tech advantage that'd be far more of 'direct control' than flexible global assets like Carrier Strike Groups. That'd also be on the assumption that any of those smaller countries would be willing to confront China without explicit US support which usually comes in the flexible form of Carriers or the USAF, both of which have worldwide commitments, repair time, training time etc...
Also, can you "box in china"? Their navy isn't just patrol boats, they're (three advanced ships) currently sailing along the Aleutians in US waters and being shadowed by our Coast Guard. They've got a naval and marine corps base in Dijbouti and lots of paramilitary assets in the various ports and harbors they've bought and built up and 'staffed' with their nationals. Area denial weapons and systems can also be targeted, if a first strike by China against US 'gifted' area denial weapons in Taiwan knocks them out then what do we do? Give up on Taiwan? Or back our allies and challenge them even it it means breaking a naval blockade of Taiwan with our Navy.
Conducting freedom of navigation in waters that haven't been Chinese since the Ming dynasty in support of our own trade as well as that of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, and Korea is worth while. I'd rather we don't shrink away from challenging authoritarian regimes that seek to replace us on the world stage and rule it through client/tributary states. The UK and France aren't superpowers any more, the EU is too divided and weak to military challenge any regional power outside of Europe and the Med. It'd be great if it wasn't only the US needing to be the 'arsenal of democracy' or at least of liberal governence but sadly that's the way it is.
We spent like a page talking about this stuff here, and the military doesn't have much role to play. It's up to American industrial policy and civil society to crowd out Chinese offers with our own. The Air Force has nothing to offer to the countries of SOUTHCOM. I mean, note that the article has pivoted from even the West Pacific: SOUTHCOM refers to Latin America. A Monroe Doctrine mindset won't help us, and indeed has already allowed China to make dramatic openings into Latin America.
Chinese openings are essentially predatory lending to whoever will take their loans. US industrial policy may help but SOUTHCOM countries have always been wary of US industry since the outright mercantilistism of the 1930s with the US Marines sent in to prop up banana republics.
US industry and loans usually come with human rights issues and other pesky things that those countries would rather ignore. Better to take cash from China without having to make reforms than US money that might get frozen if it comes to light the mine workers handle raw mercury in slave like conditions.
The Air Force might not have anything to offer them but the USCG and USN could assist in preserving their EEZs. Chinese fishing fleets crowding out the locals happens throughout the whole Southern Hemisphere where no local nations dare challenge them.
Pathetic out-of-touch hypocrisy, really. This is why our country is going to fail.
What are U.S. “vital national interests” anyway?
Generally it seems to consist of not upsetting the status quo in the international market place, disrupting trade routes, threatening/invading allied/partner nations as well as not supporting terrorism that targets Americans specifically. Saddam fighting Iran wasn't a threat to our interest, invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia was. Osama bin Laden blowing up embassies in East Africa was a regional threat but not one that required hunting him down via invading other countries until he brought the war to the US. Russia has been free to do what it wants in Caucaus region, annexing Crimea while the US has a treaty that pledged to support Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for nuclear disarmament was a threat to our national interest. China deciding that the entire south china sea is theirs is a threat to our interests.
Can anyone spell them out? Does allying with repressive autocracies and investing in corrupt political economies around the world further them? Is lurching back and forth between proclaiming the virtues of democracy and bending to the whims of strongmen an effective strategy for defending them?
How do we decide how we behave, as a nation, towards whom? What kind of countries and peoples should we treat with respect and consideration? From which governments and individuals should we protect ourselves? Towards which ones should we be crafty, unpredictable, even cynical? Real statecraft — our very future, perhaps — depends on getting these choices right.
Should we only ally with countries that are models of democracy? Now that the Taliban rule should we just recognize them as the legitimate government and open up all finances and so on? Should we stand by trying to have some assurances for woman's rights, free press? Lurching back and forth though is the major problem I've complained about many times here, our foreign policy is not consistent. You seem to lurch back and forth too, you seem to want us to invest everywhere while keeping our hands clean somehow. Should we keep engaged in Afghanistan's future in the now purely diplomatic role we now have? Should we pretend that massive economic aid there is really a matter of just changing who's skimming the money flowing in with now Taliban pockets getting lined.
Besides, our lurching back and forth policies are because we are a democracy and subject to the very whims of the electorate. That electorate tends to want the US to remain the premier superpower but not be the global police anymore, the public opinion seems to be that we should defend our allies and preserve our 'honor' but expect those we defend to take their own defense seriously too. The public opinion also doesn't seem too concerned about drone strikes killing people somewhere far way so long as it doesn't happen to them.
Our future absolutely depends on getting these choices right. Making the wrong decisions is costly in smaller countries like Iraq or Afghanistan where the effects aren't world changing. Screwing up decisions that affect our major alliances, global economics etc.. are problematic. The US screwed up in a major way the last twenty years. Iraq was a pointless war though thankfully that has sort of wrapped itself up now with only limited US engagement now. Afghanistan is a debacle of tremendous importance to the region. It's still to be seen what this Taliban Emirate will do with its new power, I'm still on the pessimistic side and think that it's inevitable that Taliban will become hosts to more Al Queda type groups though far less blatantly.
Nation building is definitely something the US needs to stop doing though if it does find itself occupying another country in the future I'd prefer we at least attempt to try some liberalism injects instead of just installing a dictator like we did too often and to bad results in the Cold War. GiROA was a failure and as it stands right now does not look like worth the effort of having to try. Like I said pages ago, perhaps a 'great raid' into Afghanistan and Pakistan to hunt down Bin Laden should have been the extend of the our GWOT. Seeking regime change for no real reason like in Iraq though was pointless though the Shia majority is probably glad he's gone though probably not at the cost of our invasion.
If the major decision of the future need to be sacrificing Taiwan or the Ukraine for "peace in our time" lets hope that the peace and length of time last longer than the last time that was tried with authoritarian states seeking regional hegemony or seeking to restore 'historic borders.'
Pannonian
09-14-2021, 15:05
Relevant cartoon from 2015:
https://i.imgur.com/IYZWawm.jpg
Speaking of cartoons, here's a collection of post-9/11 political cartoons (https://twitter.com/KikiRosecrans/status/1436126923541913602). It's honestly hard to believe they're from the same century.
Spmetla, the US could legitimately be a little too obsessed (https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2021/09/09/china-russia-loom-over-routine-air-operations-across-the-globe/) with unlimited thalassocracy.
A relentless drive to insert our martial will in every corner of the planet, or have the potential to do so, has historically (as of now) not served our country very well. We need to rethink our meta before we scramble to do something (else) quite stupid and reckless. If it must involve weapons, at least take a page from China's book and help its neighbors box its navy in with area denial platforms. The impulse to aggressively secure direct control is counterproductive here, unless someone can argue for the alternative of more missiles, more carrier fleets and subs, and more patrols into Chinese-claimed waters is supportive of national and global interests or defusing of Chinese imperatives.
We spent like a page talking about this stuff here, and the military doesn't have much role to play. It's up to American industrial policy and civil society to crowd out Chinese offers with our own. The Air Force has nothing to offer to the countries of SOUTHCOM. I mean, note that the article has pivoted from even the West Pacific: SOUTHCOM refers to Latin America. A Monroe Doctrine mindset won't help us, and indeed has already allowed China to make dramatic openings (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/china-trade-latin-america-caribbean) into Latin America.
Pathetic out-of-touch hypocrisy, really. This is why our country is going to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKP9g-1zLVA
Before accusing the US of allsorts, note that these neighbours of China who have historically had dealings with imperial China are not at all fans of China. Even Vietnam would much rather have friendly links with the US than with China. China are very, very pushy. I've said that I'd rather not indulge in foreign interventions unless the hosts want us (if I were American instead of an insignificant Briton). These areas that the US continues to have a presence in do very much want an American presence. The alternative is a Chinese presence, and that's something they do not want.
Well Vietnam and China fought a rather bloody war even more recently than the American intervention, so I don't think they are a very suitable example. Cambodia, on the other hand, who has been bullied by Vietnam, welcomes Chinese protection. Overall, as neither China nor the US interfere in the domestic affairs of their satellites, alliances depend on immediate geopolitical concerns or economic opportunities. The US used to have a clear advantage on the latter regard, but that will be no longer the case, as Chinese economy expands. The situation has already begun to reverse in south-east Asia.
Montmorency
09-16-2021, 04:45
Some more musings (https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/failing-states) on Afghanistan:
Though U.S. officials have been calling the conflict in Afghanistan an “insurgency” for years, they have not been fighting the war that way. This is the principle criticism I reserve for the officers I’ve worked for. They are supposed to know something about warfare.
Afghans are competent fighters — they drove out the Soviets, after all. So why was it so important that we spend so much effort teaching them to fight? Why do we keep hearing about the air support we were supplying, supposedly so critical to the Afghan war effort? Has any reporter asked why the Afghan military needed air cover when the Taliban didn’t?
Our own military, descended from the Minutemen of the American Revolution, has come to resemble the Redcoats those 18th century insurgents fought. What an irony. As special advisor to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, I found myself — a rank civilian — begging him not to send a Stryker brigade into the densely cultivated orchards of Arghandab District, north of Kandahar. The lanes between those walled orchards are just too narrow for oversized, high-tech Stryker vehicles. That’s OK, McChrystal assured me, the troops could always be dismounted.
What an absurd proposition: You’d strip a brigade of the very asset it was built and trained and conditioned to use? How physically fit are soldiers accustomed to sitting in vehicles all day? Are they even in shape to patrol difficult terrain on foot?
The result was catastrophic. More than a dozen frustrated and out-of-control officers were court-martialed or otherwise disciplined for their behavior in the field, including the notorious homicide of several villagers, "for sport." The brigade's casualty rate was disturbingly high. After an investigation, the commander was barred from future combat deployments.
Or they put a half dozen guys up in an unfinished building in downtown Kabul with a couple of rusty mortar-launchers. This is 2011. The guys shoot at the U.S. embassy and ISAF headquarters across the street. They shut down the whole strategic complex for more than nineteen hours.
If those fighters had wanted to kill people, they would have. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to demonstrate to the whole of Afghanistan that they could. It was to demonstrate U.S. vulnerability — to Afghans and to Americans.
When you haven’t lost -- when calamity somehow hasn’t yet struck -- it’s easy to assume you’ll “muddle through.” That’s how many officials put it at the time: The Afghan government will muddle through. We'll muddle through.
Now, Afghanistan is waving a mirror in our faces. Calamity hasn’t struck -- not real calamity. Not yet. But let’s not assume our democracy will “muddle through.”
What I would have done differently. That is a long-answer question. A taste is available in the “Afghanistan Action Plan” I distributed to top U.S. civilian and military officials in January 2009. I continued to provide equally detailed, though sometimes more tailored, planning documents to my superiors through 2011. A truly inclusive peace process would have involved bringing together people whom ordinary Afghans recognized as representing them, not just the officials of the two entities most held in equal contempt: their own government and the Taliban.
And were we really trying to bring democracy to Afghanistan, anyway? Were we nation-building? That’s what some of you have been poignantly wondering.
If we were, why were there so few mentors for Afghan government officials, and so many for Afghan army officers? Is it easier to run a city than to command an infantry company? [Shots fired, spmetla!]
[...]
And if it was democracy we were peddling, what kind of democracy? What is the condition of our democracy? That is the question this fiasco poses.
A relentless drive to insert our martial will everywhere? Really? If you look at the history of the US doing so it's only been since WW2 and primarily to counter communism and when that collapsed to counter global islamic terrorism and that's really only post 9/11, beforehand it was Great Britain and France that preserved the 'western world' while the US got to reap the economic benefits of relatively stable global trade and access to markets.
The post-(world)war history is what's relevant.
The US wasn't too concerned about China until it started conducting border skirmishes in some or another with all it's neighbors except NK and Russia (at least in the last 30 years).
The US wasn't too concerned about post-soviet Russia (apart from the danger of collapse) until Ukraine invasion. Even the Georgia-Russian war wasn't taken as too much of a concern outside arresting too rapid an expansion of NATO.
The US doesn't militarily interfere in most of South Asia, Africa, or South America. There's no shortage of small wars that the US more or less ignores outside of sanctions against the actors.
It is US doctrine to have the capability to subdue any competitor, or pursue any designated group/actor in existence, and we have applied this capability ceaselessly since WW2, as you know. In most cases we have overstepped, though Vietnam and the War on Terror are just the biggest items in that respect.
Like what? Defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion together with our regional allies (Japan, Australia, and perhaps in limited role South Korea). You really think the US would start a war with China or Russia? The current actions by both those nations is because they push the envelope to see what the US considers worth fighting for.
For clarity, a reminder of what (from the linked article) I was responding to.
Military leaders have grown increasingly vocal with an “America vs. China” narrative that is now a blueprint for the Air Force’s spending choices, its strategic planning and its training curriculum. “We’re the dominant military power until you get within about 1,000 miles of China, and then it starts to change,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Air Force Times Aug. 13. “China has been very careful and strategic about fielding capabilities designed to keep us out of their part of the world.”
[...]
“The question that keeps me up at night is, what happens when our diplomats no longer have the might of the U.S. military or our economy as their backstop?” Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown said Aug. 6. “This is the world that none of us want to live in.”
The premise stated by a representative of our active services' brain trust - the general staff - is that the US military not being hegemonic along an asymptote to the Chinese mainland is a frightening prospect that shatters the diplomatic capacity of the US government. If this premise were taken at face value, it would naturally entail rapid armament and militarization into Chinese-adjacent or Chinese-claimed territory. If it is not taken at face value, it is just a general whining that the US doesn't have unlimited power. But it should be taken at face value, because as I said, it has for generations been formal doctrine that the US military be able to project decisive power against anyone, anywhere.
The obvious problem, besides being very costly, is that it is rarely considered whether the implied escalation would actually deter China, or would rather further aggravate an arms race that China is increasingly prepared to pursue. It's a very risky strategy that assumes the inevitability of military conflict without involving a reorganization of American society along what that actually requires. Worst case, we foment a self-fulfilling prophecy that we find ourselves unprepared to play a strong role in.
Like the scientists in Jurassic Park, the US milsec establishment's greatest or second-greatest defect is that 'Our leaders are so preoccupied with whether or not they can, they don’t stop to think if they should.'
Should we only defend allies that are major power? Should we have let Saddam keep Kuwait? Should we just let Russia do what it wants in Ukraine? Should we tell the Baltic States that they just aren't worth our effort?
The flaw here is that the wars with Hussein's Iraq, regardless of moral valence, were no more than a reprisal of Wehrmacht & friends vs. Kingdom of Yugoslavia (in more ways than one). Obviously all military and foreign policy calculations should incorporate the scale and difficulty and plausible ramifications of the scenario. But I'm not opposed to a full-spectrum cordon around Taiwan. Let us remember that one of the major factors in Hussein's decision to invade was Ambassador Glaspie's constructive ambiguity on the American position on the matter.
Unfortunately our allies don't spend near enough on defense that would enable the US to ease off a global role.
What do you think our allies should be accomplishing with inefficient, economically-unproductive, military spending?
Secure direct control? Boxing in China with Anti-Ship missiles would require lots of troops on the ground in the whole South China Seas, if those countries were willing, giving away radars and advanced missiles, and the advanced aircraft though would essentially be giving away any US tech advantage that'd be far more of 'direct control' than flexible global assets like Carrier Strike Groups. That'd also be on the assumption that any of those smaller countries would be willing to confront China without explicit US support which usually comes in the flexible form of Carriers or the USAF, both of which have worldwide commitments, repair time, training time etc...
For example. If it were the case that merely parking a couple carrier fleets by Taiwan on permanent rotation would be enough to credibly prevent any Chinese amphibious campaign, that would be one thing. That would hardly entail any extra costs or risks above what we currently maintain. But it's not enough, is it? Whereas the US is limited by its long logistics train, its maintenance schedules, and its need to maintain a significant 'out of theater' reserve against Russia, China could bring virtually its entire navy, air force, and marine and airborne elements, to bear against Taiwan. It could launch hundreds of cruise missiles and devastate Taiwan's infrastructure with strike packages of hundreds of craft. Listen, even a gradual, year-long encroachment onto Taiwan's shore, in the absence of US resistance, would cost China tens of thousands killed. If the CCP wants to invade, by definition they will be pricing in losses of personnel and materiel that no great power has sustained since perhaps the 1970s, or earlier. They will be pricing in public support or acquiescence in the adventure. If that is all the case, they're going to want to move as fast as possible to secure a beachhead on the main island, whether that means breaking through local American assets or preempting American entry; American entry would make invasion of the main island impossible and would mark a pointless and embarrassing setback for China. Fait accompli regardless of casualties will be the strategy, I guess to secure a stable beachhead on the west coast of Formosa within 3 months. Nothing in the past 75 years could compare to the blow to American clout for Taiwan to fall despite and alongside American fleets. But also note, by the same token if the PLA can't achieve these conditions on paper or doesn't believe it can, there won't be any annexation campaign.
It's not going to be like, "lololol we shell Kinmen Islands, next week we ferry Y-class aircraft to Fujian airfields, what say you America? Oh no, sanctions and cruise missiles on Woody Island 500 miles from Taiwan, we hereby forswear all territorial ambitions." If China is roused to the offense, and we meet to contest, it's going to be the Real Shit.
What are we to do with that prospect? In military terms, the limited option is, to whatever extent possible, to invest in hardened antiship capabilities for Taiwan that could cripple any fleet of Chinese landing craft fleet even if Taiwan were reduced to a pit of smoking rubble (a depleted sealift intrinsically forecloses offensive operations, even with largely-intact air transport fleet). The maximalist option is to go all in for the arms race, cordon Taiwan with half our (growing) navy, impress whatever regional allies are willing into the fight (hope we don't need Australia's help (https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/should-nuclear-powered-submarines-be-part-of-australias-future/) anytime in the next 20 years), be prepared to match casualties with the Taiwanese defenders themselves, and hope to hell this all doesn't trigger World War Three among nuclear powers as China reciprocates our priorities. Then again, maybe a simultaneous Russian invasion of Eastern Europe, Turkish invasion of Syria and Iraq, nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, North Korean kamikaze invasion of South Korea, and brinksmanship over a Strait of Taiwan littered with hundreds of seacraft and over a thousand aircraft is too good a way out for our benighted species.
Or, in diplomatic terms, it means finding any and all means to keep the CCP's interests exclusive of bloody anschluss. (Our best case should be Taiwan as a counterpart to North Korea, but geopolitically Taiwan is not and has not been North Korea. Note that gifting Taiwan nuclear first strike capability would make 1962 look like...)
I'm just recommending a more levelheaded analysis of our own capabilities, as well as opposition capabilities and intentions. Stop treating the situation as though one scenario is inevitable rather than encompassing a set of prospects that may grow or diminish in attractiveness. Now do you see why I fear our time-tested reckless arrogance?
I'd rather we don't shrink away from challenging authoritarian regimes that seek to replace us on the world stage and rule it through client/tributary states... It'd be great if it wasn't only the US needing to be the 'arsenal of democracy' or at least of liberal governence but sadly that's the way it is.
Throughout the thread it's been established that it has indeed been available to us to rise to the challenge of authoritarian regimes - we just tend to to choose to empower them (and that includes our "adversaries"). We and the liberal international community would genuinely be in a much stronger position if America showed leadership as a maternity to democracy. What will really make us safer? If conventional capabilities were the means to deterrence that allowed the American-nurtured project to advance unperturbed, rather than an aimless, pecuni-addled end unto itself, think how much less vulnerable we and our partners would be.
Chinese openings are essentially predatory lending to whoever will take their loans. US industrial policy may help but SOUTHCOM countries have always been wary of US industry since the outright mercantilistism of the 1930s with the US Marines sent in to prop up banana republics.
US industry and loans usually come with human rights issues and other pesky things that those countries would rather ignore. Better to take cash from China without having to make reforms than US money that might get frozen if it comes to light the mine workers handle raw mercury in slave like conditions.
You're forgetting the straightforward massive exports that Latin America delivers to China - but hey're happy to take our equipment, training, and security financial aid. It's worked out very poorly (https://nacla.org/news/2021/04/18/aid-paradox) for all of us. We have the unilateral option, to start, of forcing our own companies to abide by appropriate labor standards. Believe me, Latin American citizens can figure this one out if we prove there's a choice - they've launched revolutions against the exploitative option before. Two-for-one in mitigating the displacement and refugee crises in the region. (It will also, sadly, entail strained relations with any conservative governments that resist.)
Should we only ally with countries that are models of democracy?
Negotiating with the terrorists is not the same as allying with them! We can have relations with the likes of Russia and Saudi Arabia without excessive violence, as we pursue a principled policy set that aims to maximize human welfare. But exporting corruption and chaos throughout the world is clearly contradictory with the aim of maintaining American primacy, or even security and prosperity.
You seem to lurch back and forth too, you seem to want us to invest everywhere while keeping our hands clean somehow. Should we keep engaged in Afghanistan's future in the now purely diplomatic role we now have? Should we pretend that massive economic aid there is really a matter of just changing who's skimming the money flowing in with now Taliban pockets getting lined.
We don't have to be an instant paragon in the history of countries to do better.
With the Taliban specifically, for example - and I pointed out that Afghanistan is one of the most advanced possible sites for my proposals - the priority is to determine how we can contribute to the best interests of the Afghan people.
That involves participating in international efforts to deliver short-term relief and contribute to a less unstable and chaotic environment. Since regardless of however far the Taliban go in moderating, the number one harm to women, children, and men in Afghanistan is ongoing violence and economic devastation. If United Nations observers will help, negotiate for international observers. If (as they often do) sanctions against the regime do more to damage the economic viability of the citizenry, relax sanctions. If sanctions have little influence over the Taliban rulers in the context of Russian, Iranian, Pakistani, Saudi, and Chinese state and business support, there's no use in hanging them over their heads indefinitely. There are a number of concrete steps our government can take to perform its duties to Afghanistan within the international system. And have I mentioned sharing the refugees?
whims of the electorate.
The incoherent and unconsidered whims of even the more decent half of the electorate, in all honesty, would condemn our country alone, even without the other half driving to inflict apocalypse. In all practical terms all high-minded ideals or granularly-calibrated schemes must either dash upon or flow from the fate of American society. Not that the world will offer anyone opportunities for sequential troubleshooting. But it's important to have an understanding of what we're missing out on.
Making the wrong decisions is costly in smaller countries like Iraq or Afghanistan where the effects aren't world changing.
Heh, if the War on Terror can't be called world-changing then only a proper World War could be.
If the major decision of the future need to be sacrificing Taiwan or the Ukraine for "peace in our time" lets hope that the peace and length of time last longer than the last time that was tried with authoritarian states seeking regional hegemony or seeking to restore 'historic borders.'
I can own that in a setting where China can absorb Taiwan with relatively-little cost, its appetite for projection would increase considerably; more importantly, any lingering taboo against revanchist wars that yet constrains state actors would vanish completely, with... interesting butterfly effects throughout the World Continent. Let's play to competencies here. Game it out starting with publicly-revealed intelligence (at some indeterminate future date) of the large-scale mobilization of men and ships needed for China to begin any campaign. What are the US government's options, and what is the Chinese reaction in turn?
Our future absolutely depends on getting these choices right.
Above all, I still believe that the primary threats to the US, to its hegemony, to its interests, to world civilization, whatever, are (in both national and global manifestations):
1. Grassroots fascism and its elite patrons
2. Non-state actors such as corporations and transnational plutocrats (not "globalists") and criminal networks (but I repeat myself) that have gained the capacity to overwhelm and subvert state actors
3. Climate change and the hindering of mitigation and adaptation following from (1) and (2)
If we can't meet those three challenges, then not only will widespread conventional conflict between great powers be inevitable, but we won't even give a shit by the time we lurch into it, so degraded will our existence be.
"Now, Afghanistan is waving a mirror in our faces. Calamity hasn’t struck -- not real calamity. Not yet. But let’s not assume our democracy will “muddle through.”"
Eyes on the prize.
Before accusing the US of allsorts, note that these neighbours of China who have historically had dealings with imperial China are not at all fans of China. Even Vietnam would much rather have friendly links with the US than with China. China are very, very pushy. I've said that I'd rather not indulge in foreign interventions unless the hosts want us (if I were American instead of an insignificant Briton). These areas that the US continues to have a presence in do very much want an American presence. The alternative is a Chinese presence, and that's something they do not want.
This is a dangerous mischaracterization.
Approximately every country in the Pacific Rim - including the rich ones - would prefer to have close relations with both China and the US. To the extent this is not, or is no longer, possible, the US had best be prepared to offer much more value than it currently does.
The premise stated by a representative of our active services' brain trust - the general staff - is that the US military not being hegemonic along an asymptote to the Chinese mainland is a frightening prospect that shatters the diplomatic capacity of the US government. If this premise were taken at face value, it would naturally entail rapid armament and militarization into Chinese-adjacent or Chinese-claimed territory. If it is not taken at face value, it is just a general whining that the US doesn't have unlimited power. But it should be taken at face value, because as I said, it has for generations been formal doctrine that the US military be able to project decisive power against anyone, anywhere.
The obvious problem, besides being very costly, is that it is rarely considered whether the implied escalation would actually deter China, or would rather further aggravate an arms race that China is increasingly prepared to pursue. It's a very risky strategy that assumes the inevitability of military conflict without involving a reorganization of American society along what that actually requires. Worst case, we foment a self-fulfilling prophecy that we find ourselves unprepared to play a strong role in.
I don't think it assumes the inevitability of a military conflict, it's about ensuring that our conventional forces are enough of a deterrence to outright military conflict. Think the Berlin blockade or the Cuban-missile crisis, both could have led to WW3 but due to the presence of will and capability both led to de-escalation.
What do you think our allies should be accomplishing with inefficient, economically-unproductive, military spending?
Well quite clearly allowing us to not be the sole lynch pin of our Allies' deterrence. Shouldn't the rest of NATO the EU be capable of deterring Russia? Obama pulled out the last armored units from Europe in 2014, that same year Russia took back the Crimea and the US has now had the more expensive task of rotating armored brigades to Europe to reassure our Baltic allies. It's not that the rest of NATO don't contribute, they certainly do but not enough to deter Russia.
Just like we were able to economically ride the coat-tails of the pax britannia our allies do that now with our sorta pax americana. You point out all the reasons why they don't, it is unproductive, expensive and inefficent. If they care to defend their own sealanes, borders, and airspace and not just be coerced by their regional rivals then perhaps they should be capable of defending themselves. A credible deterrence does work to keep your country your own, Iran has done just that since the end of the Iran-Iraq war and have been the largest exporters of terrorism in the region and never been invaded because the costs are too high.
WWI Germany assumed Britain wouldn't fight over Belgium. WWII Germany assumed France and the UK wouldn't fight over Danzig. In both cases they underestimated the will of their enemy to fight and it led to two world wars. Russia guessed correctly that Obama and Merkel wouldn't be able to stop his taking Crimea. WW3 has been avoided by the US capability and will to fight. Let's not have us left with the will but not the capability in this era of great-power rivalry and conflict again.
The flaw here is that the wars with Hussein's Iraq, regardless of moral valence, were no more than a reprisal of Wehrmacht & friends vs. Kingdom of Yugoslavia (in more ways than one). Obviously all military and foreign policy calculations should incorporate the scale and difficulty and plausible ramifications of the scenario. But I'm not opposed to a full-spectrum cordon around Taiwan. Let us remember that one of the major factors in Hussein's decision to invade was Ambassador Glaspie's constructive ambiguity on the American position on the matter.
That's why I'd prefer outright recognition of Taiwan sooner than later, the ambiguity is part of what leads to the tensions.
It is US doctrine to have the capability to subdue any competitor, or pursue any designated group/actor in existence, and we have applied this capability ceaselessly since WW2, as you know. In most cases we have overstepped, though Vietnam and the War on Terror are just the biggest items in that respect.
The US doctrine has never been to subdue any competitor in existence. At no point in the Cold War did the US have a conventional edge over the Soviets except perhaps in the late '80s when we finally had such a qualitative advantage that made up for their quantitative advantage. Same in regards to China, at no point in WW2 or since did the US (except that idiot General MacArthur) try to have superiority over China. The US barely held on to South Korea and when we pushed to the Yalu River were defeated all the way to the South again and locked in years of meat-grinding pointless warfare.
US Doctrine has been to deter major war by having the CAPABILITY to fight a multifront war and so far it's worked. We've fought Soviet and Chi-Com forces in other theaters but never has either side dared to push farther.
The danger now is that since mutually assured destruction in nuclear holocaust is no longer a keeper of peace that the PRC will seek to risk defeating us in a limited war or stacking the cards in such a way that's it's a fait accompli and we essentially become irrelevant in the region.
It's not going to be like, "lololol we shell Kinmen Islands, next week we ferry Y-class aircraft to Fujian airfields, what say you America? Oh no, sanctions and cruise missiles on Woody Island 500 miles from Taiwan, we hereby forswear all territorial ambitions." If China is roused to the offense, and we meet to contest, it's going to be the Real Shit.
What are we to do with that prospect? In military terms, the limited option is, to whatever extent possible, to invest in hardened antiship capabilities for Taiwan that could cripple any fleet of Chinese landing craft fleet even if Taiwan were reduced to a pit of smoking rubble (a depleted sealift intrinsically forecloses offensive operations, even with largely-intact air transport fleet). The maximalist option is to go all in for the arms race, cordon Taiwan with half our (growing) navy, impress whatever regional allies are willing into the fight (hope we don't need Australia's help anytime in the next 20 years), be prepared to match casualties with the Taiwanese defenders themselves, and hope to hell this all doesn't trigger World War Three among nuclear powers as China reciprocates our priorities. Then again, maybe a simultaneous Russian invasion of Eastern Europe, Turkish invasion of Syria and Iraq, nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, North Korean kamikaze invasion of South Korea, and brinksmanship over a Strait of Taiwan littered with hundreds of seacraft and over a thousand aircraft is too good a way out for our benighted species.
Or, in diplomatic terms, it means finding any and all means to keep the CCP's interests exclusive of bloody anschluss. (Our best case should be Taiwan as a counterpart to North Korea, but geopolitically Taiwan is not and has not been North Korea. Note that gifting Taiwan nuclear first strike capability would make 1962 look like...)
I actually agree with you here for the most part but the major thing is we need to be able to maintain that conventional deterrent. I highly doubt that China would do anything blatant and stupid like Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, that'd be too easy to call out and unit against. It will be a gradual approach, perhaps take the Kinmen islands to test our resolve, begin boarding or seizing Taiwan bound ships for inspections, and something similar for civil aviation. All the while they'll likely try and convince the Taiwan people that they'll be left all alone by the US and friends so better to stop silly ideas of independence and join now in peace or suffer from being conquered.
I'm all for arming Taiwan but it's not just a matter of one weapon systems. Modern anti-ship missiles are over the horizon weapons, that requires radars, intel, target sharing, safe launch sites, alternate launch sites and so on. That's assuming that China would even do a blatant invasion. I could see much more easily a Crimea type scenario once the above long term approaches have shaped the strategic environment.
The US needs the capability and strength to break a blockade and intervene on behalf of Taiwan in order to deter it.
Heh, if the War on Terror can't be called world-changing then only a proper World War could be.
No major balances of power changed, just a lot of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think Arab-spring is caused by GWOT. Didn't result in any unified muslim opposition to the US or NATO, just a more open war that had previously been primarily against Israel.
The Suez Crisis and collapse of the Soviet Union both had world wide effects in every continent and massively changed the attitudes and balances of power throughout the world. The GWOT was just a hugely expensive and in the long run pointless waste time and resources as terrorism is just as prolific as it was beforehand.
And were we really trying to bring democracy to Afghanistan, anyway? Were we nation-building? That’s what some of you have been poignantly wondering.
If we were, why were there so few mentors for Afghan government officials, and so many for Afghan army officers? Is it easier to run a city than to command an infantry company? [Shots fired, spmetla!]
[...]
And if it was democracy we were peddling, what kind of democracy? What is the condition of our democracy? That is the question this fiasco poses.
This I think is the crux of the problem, there really was no plan. Step one invade and kick out Al Queda and the Taliban, Step two........ Step three.... we leave and it's a bastion of ...... something not Taliban.
We certainly didn't invade to bring democracy but ended up trying to do so. I think the overall intent by Bush '43 admin was to not just destroy Al Queda but bring Afghanistan out of the cycle of war through security and investment. None of that unfortunately happened.
As for why so few mentors for Afghan officials? I'd say probably because governance of Afghans was probably not something we could effectively advise on outside of purely technical things like planning and engineering. All the more reason why I think in hindsight we shouldn't have been shoveling so much money in, it flooded it with cash with bred rampant corruption with no corrective action on our part.
There's also the part that if we had mentors telling them how to govern it would look exactly like a puppet state. Perhaps that'd have been more effective though, quasi-colonialism to restore order and good governance and then transition to full Afghan independence. The soviet puppet government at least didn't just give up a few weeks after soviet troops left.
We (US and NATO) do know how to fight and could mentor Afghans to do so. Their special forces were fairly competent, their aviation was generally aggressive though too few in quantity to be effective, and they had access to mortars and artillery though these were primarily situated in FOBs, not really for conventional warfare but for supporting checkpoints and firing flares to light up the roads when needed. At the end of the day though despite any competencies and advantages they had over the Taliban in a conventional fight in which they'd likely beat the Taliban they just had zero moral and surrendered the country without losing a major battle anywhere. Technical competency and equipment advantage just can't compensate for piss-poor leadership, rampant corruption, and evidently zero morale. Sorta like the well equipped Nationalist Armies being defeated by Mao's PLA in '48.
Montmorency
09-18-2021, 07:00
The US government (https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2780404/statement-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-on-the-results-of-central/) formally renounced the Kabul strike as a mistake that was made.
We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.
We apologize, and we will endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.
I don't think it assumes the inevitability of a military conflict, it's about ensuring that our conventional forces are enough of a deterrence to outright military conflict. Think the Berlin blockade or the Cuban-missile crisis, both could have led to WW3 but due to the presence of will and capability both led to de-escalation.
Important to note that there was no ethnic or territorial conflict at stake in those incidents, which implies different pathways to resolution. There were no circumstances in which the USSR could come to perceive an existential imperative to secure all of Berlin for East Germany, or to maintain a nuclear presence on Cuba. Bottom line: Is it very easy or very difficult to deter China on Taiwan, and if it's very difficult would adopting the most aggressive posture not ironically encourage China to be both more willing and more able to impose its will (this is known as "tragic drama")
If it's very easy, just make the commitment, station a fleet or two, and call it a day - no discussion needed.
Shouldn't the rest of NATO the EU be capable of deterring Russia?
Deterring from what and in what capacity needs to be delineated. We already have a NATO commitment to mutual defense, which is the most important step.
It's not that the rest of NATO don't contribute, they certainly do but not enough to deter Russia.
I don't see why the UK and France and Germany need to be militarizing for offensive operations into Eastern Europe. Today we know that Russia's strategic position in its near-abroad is weak, and not getting any stronger, as the (to some surprising) failure to check Ukrainian post-Russian ambitions demonstrated. Putin has a hard time trudging through his priorities for even Belarus. A massive armament campaign for NATO to achieve the capability to credibly strike against a hypothetical Russian occupation of Ukraine or Estonia would be socially corrosive and horrendously costly both before and during (any) deployment, in the latter case in terms of lives and materiel. It would also, naturally, incentivize further hostility from the Russian regime (if you think Europe can recommit to an arms race, Putin certainly can too - to hell with the domestic economy - in order to negate European augmentation).
No, that doesn't constitute a viable strategy. Vis-a-vis Russia the European priority will remain a sanitary cordon along the frontline countries, particularly Poland. Russia's government will always fail to survive a general offensive into Europe, and while it has the Baltics hostage to some extent - no one can prevent their occupation outright - so does the EU, on the other hand, in the form of Kaliningrad. So European deterrence doesn't look like adding striking power to the Narva River, it entails modernizing their existing assets and ensuring there's a coherent plan to assemble them for common defense. But let's reiterate that Russian geopolitics are not the same as Chinese geopolitics.
If they care to defend their own sealanes, borders, and airspace and not just be coerced by their regional rivals then perhaps they should be capable of defending themselves.
Core European sealanes, borders, and airspace are secure from foreign powers as far as I know (not that there's a contender other than Russia here). If you mean that the EU needs more ships to shoot at Ivory Coast pirates or Mediterranean migrants, I don't see why. It might be more helpful to get a handle on what role Turkey is going to play in the region.
Iran has done just that since the end of the Iran-Iraq war and have been the largest exporters of terrorism in the region and never been invaded because the costs are too high.
Iran, as far as I can tell, doesn't spend much more on its defense relative to its economy than many EU countries. It would spend less if it could (hint hint). It's ultimate deterrence is not a massive army or sophisticated equipment but its geography and its large, loyal population. Investments into transnational criminal and militant groups are a political card that any reasonably-powerful country can/does cultivate, but otherwise its deterrence is purely defensive and contained within its borders. North Korea is the better example here, and of course that's an impoverished pariah state with no (or subterranean) integration into the international system and market economy. Opportunity costs, huh?
Let's not have us left with the will but not the capability in this era of great-power rivalry and conflict again.
Frankly, the reverse has been and continues to be the more plausible condition. Unless you mean the '2' in the 1-4-2-1 doctrine, that's irretrievable in my opinion and a source of ongoing problems.
US Doctrine has been to deter major war by having the CAPABILITY to fight a multifront war and so far it's worked. We've fought Soviet and Chi-Com forces in other theaters but never has either side dared to push farther.
That's a fair summation of Cold War doctrine wrt the Soviet Union itself, but when I say subdue I don't mean militarily conquer and occupy. The US had a very broad conception of its key interests and pursued that conception with military or other coercive means everywhere. Since the Cold War ended we got even more invested, too invested, in that raw capability, at the cost of overreach (to put it mildly). For any other country, existing or fictional, it would be an eyebrow-raising statement that the degradation of ability to have dominance up to the border of any other country constitutes a grave threat to national interests. It's important to restrain these impulses. If we can delineate a concrete grand strategy, fine, but entitlement to and pursuit of unlimited power and impunity (note the phrasing "entitlement" and "pursuit," unlimited power is never practically achieved or achievable) is always going to produce harmful cases, self-harming too. This mindset is what I'm criticizing in our generals above. It will only promote reckless belligerence on its own terms, and America has plenty of precedent of reckless belligerence to concern us going forward. As you say, Hitler overestimated Nazi Germany and underestimated its opposition...
That's why I'd prefer outright recognition of Taiwan sooner than later, the ambiguity is part of what leads to the tensions.
To take this step one would better have coordinated military readiness among partners of course, because a formal Taiwanese claim to independence would be the single likeliest trigger to war. If we believe China's military readiness only improves with time, then I can see the case for biting this bullet without delay.
m all for arming Taiwan but it's not just a matter of one weapon systems. Modern anti-ship missiles are over the horizon weapons, that requires radars, intel, target sharing, safe launch sites, alternate launch sites and so on.
Do you mean cruise missiles? My knowledge of the relevant systems is limited, but I recall that a modern navy will have strong countermeasures against any such systems, as best demonstrated by the Coalition naval forces during the Gulf War. Wouldn't the best practicable option be quantity rather than superior technical sophistication? Dozens to hundreds of missiles against landing craft close to shore (with the caveat that the entire Chinese sealift would never all be exposed at a single moment) seems like the only option.
I could see much more easily a Crimea type scenario once the above long term approaches have shaped the strategic environment.
The US needs the capability and strength to break a blockade and intervene on behalf of Taiwan in order to deter it.
It's also possible - I don't know enough to say - that the CCP is laughing all the way to the bank as it pursues a long-term policy of diplomatic isolation of Taiwan, alongside fifth-column disruption of native political resistance, while the rest of us cry about missiles and carriers. But if it comes down to it, China can't play political games at this level that it isn't sure it will win; either the hypothetical blockade is successful at dissuading Taiwan's allies and there is no need for an invasion, or it fails due to US resistance and any prospect of actually assembling an invasion force is lost for years at least (since any mobilization can now easily be countered and hindered in its incipience, short of total war). That latter outcome is too high a risk for the CCP, as it would lose enormous quantities of domestic legitimacy, international standing, economic stability, military readiness, and so on, all for the sake of empty posturing; Taiwan would be further out of reach than ever. Since the CCP has demonstrated its rationality many times, assuming it retains that rationality we keep returning to the principle that any overt measure to reduce Taiwan's independence has to be projected to be rapid and decisive from the Chinese point of view.
No major balances of power changed, just a lot of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The degradation of the state system in the Middle East has set up some social and humanitarian consequences that will reach throughout the century, which go without elaboration, and has in fact altered strategic relationships: see the drift of Turkey and Pakistan, the comparative loss of Influence of Saudi Arabia, Arab-Israeli rapprochement, the permanentish alienation of Iran from the West, Russian reentry to the region, indeed the continuing (I would say accelerated) spread and escalation of terrorism to full-blown internal conflict around the Islamic world...
Back to the issue of deterrence, the War on Terror made China and Russia intrinsically much less friendly to the American order ("And when the band plays "Hail to the chief", Ooh, they point the cannon at you"). This is almost as profound as it gets in the contemporary period. Whaddaya want for to call it world change, the collapse of the EU and a return to armed territorial conflict between Continental states, the reemergence of a true Caliphate, the final disappearance of American primacy - uh?
There's also the part that if we had mentors telling them how to govern it would look exactly like a puppet state.
I think the source was in advisers referring more to the basic technical aspects of how civil bureaucracy and government officials exercise and manage modern states, infrastructure and systems, not so much granular policy sets.
At the end of the day though despite any competencies and advantages they had over the Taliban in a conventional fight in which they'd likely beat the Taliban they just had zero moral and surrendered the country without losing a major battle anywhere.
The deciding factor is that our decisions on the basic form of the Afghan government we would recognize - a unitary, centralized republic - restricted plausible forms for the Afghan milsec establishment to what we would recognize as a conventional, centralized, milsec establishment. But the point that the Taliban had no need for air support is a suggestive one; could different governmental and social forms for our endorsement have produced more resilient native anti-Taliban operations under a less complex and costly organization? And I don't mean fomenting a permanent war of all militias and ethnicities against all. But that requires creativity, cultural sensitivity and responsiveness to local conditions, and a willingness to supercede path dependence that the US - more fairly states in general - has shown little aptitude for.
/////////////FIRST PART PROBABLY BELONGS IN GREAT POWER CONTENTION THREAD/////////////////////
Bottom line: Is it very easy or very difficult to deter China on Taiwan, and if it's very difficult would adopting the most aggressive posture not ironically encourage China to be both more willing and more able to impose its will (this is known as "tragic drama")
If it's very easy, just make the commitment, station a fleet or two, and call it a day - no discussion needed.
I'd say it's difficult to deter China on Taiwan. As for making a commitment, that's part of the tragedy of the current situation with Taiwan and the flaw in the one-China policy. One-China policy was banked on the idea that opening up China would liberalize them and then allow for a peaceful rise and reunification, that was sorta working up until the early 2000s.
China has now reversed their path of liberalization and gone back toward the path of repression, this has pushed Taiwan's youth from wanting reunification, especially in light of the crack downs in Hongkong, social credit scores, etc...
With this, the US has now become coupled with China economically, it could break this relationship but that would be difficult and costly to the US and all the other major economies that have moved their industrial base and supply chains to China.
The logic of an aggressive posture is that by being willing to risk war and the economic fallout in the near future, that risk is actually higher for China as they depend on sealanes for most of their trade, part of why they're investing in the new belt/road initative. A war would be economically costly to the whole world but would absolutely ruin China if it happened in present day.
This is also tied with the fact that Xi Jinping has been the most powerful Chinese leader in 30 years and seems determined to be cemented in its memory on the same level as Mao Zedong. That type of meglamania can be unpredictable like we saw in the last four years of Trump. Granted Xi is actually smart man and calculating unlike Trump but that doesn't exclude him from wanting to accomplish the goal of reunification by force if needed.
Just remember that the US position and that of its allies in the region is reactionary to China's new aggressive posture. They seek to change the status quo, forcibly if needed and are actively contending with the US at all levels short of conflict at the moment. Combine this with the ultra-nationalism and you get an opponent that won't negotiate on this issue leaving them with only one recourse if they want to force the issue.
Deterring from what and in what capacity needs to be delineated. We already have a NATO commitment to mutual defense, which is the most important step.
Mutual defense is only valuable if the members are capable and willing to defend each other. If some 'little green men' tried to overthrow Latvia's government in a Crimea type scenario are the NATO allies in the region capable of assisting? are they even willing? Trump question whether we should go to war to help Estonia was a huge hit to the idea of mutal defense.
I personally think the major litmus test for NATO will be some crazy thing cooked up by Turkey over some Greek islands, Cyprus, Syria, or Armenia. Do we mutually defend one NATO ally against another. If one NATO ally starts a war that then draws in Russia in a limited way does that trigger article five? The Armenia-Azerbaijan war last year is fortunate in it's not expanding beyond those two countries.
I don't see why the UK and France and Germany need to be militarizing for offensive operations into Eastern Europe. Today we know that Russia's strategic position in its near-abroad is weak, and not getting any stronger, as the (to some surprising) failure to check Ukrainian post-Russian ambitions demonstrated. Putin has a hard time trudging through his priorities for even Belarus. A massive armament campaign for NATO to achieve the capability to credibly strike against a hypothetical Russian occupation of Ukraine or Estonia would be socially corrosive and horrendously costly both before and during (any) deployment, in the latter case in terms of lives and materiel. It would also, naturally, incentivize further hostility from the Russian regime (if you think Europe can recommit to an arms race, Putin certainly can too - to hell with the domestic economy - in order to negate European augmentation).
Who's talking about offensive operations? No sane person wants to start shit with Russia much less go on an offensive against them. It doesn't need to be a massive armament campaign, no one is advocating for a quarter million US troops back in Germany and its allies having dozens of armored divisions standing by.
As for Putin being able to afford an arms race, I don't think he can. There's a reason why India has more modern T-90 tanks than Russia, Russia can't afford them. Russia is so cash strapped they still sell the Chinese jet-engines and air defense systems fully knowing that they will eventually be reverse engineered and that the Chinese will overtake Russia in most of its overseas arms sales.
Russia is currently a threat that needs to be contained, it may not be a long term threat as who knows what it will be once Putin leaves. He certainly doesn't share the lime light, that tends to leave the successors to popular dictators vulnerable to infighting and domestic power plays.
Europe needs to be capable to play the long game against Putin and deter more action on his part in the bordering states. The long-term should be to try and do what failed in the 90s and finally bring Russia home into Europe (not the EU or NATO). China is not a good partner for Russia and never has been, it's been a good source of cash at the expense of Russia losing it's military edge and secrets but China's ambitions in the far east and central asia will lead to their becoming enemies again at some point.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-04/right-way-split-china-and-russia
Getting NATO allies to at least get their readiness levels up so they could commit the few forces they have to a crisis if needed would be the most useful. No point in an air force if lack of spare parts means they can't be used when needed.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-military-short-on-tanks-for-nato-mission/a-42603112
Core European sealanes, borders, and airspace are secure from foreign powers as far as I know (not that there's a contender other than Russia here). If you mean that the EU needs more ships to shoot at Ivory Coast pirates or Mediterranean migrants, I don't see why. It might be more helpful to get a handle on what role Turkey is going to play in the region.
As most of European/EU issues center around trade then Naval power is actually one of the best investments they can make. You may scoff at piracy but it is a problem that naval patrols have helped to mitigate. The core causes of piracy exist but short of nation building Somalia, Yemen and plenty of other countries the easier and more cost effective solution is sealane protection. Warships are expensive but if you're going to build ships then ideally they're capable of more than just deterring pirates, probably best to have the capability to lauch and support SOF too, or perhaps fly the flag where free navigation is threatened (South China Seas). Strategic lift capability and reach is extremely useful by air and sea and has uses for humanitarian aid as well moving troops ,there's a lot more to defense spending than tanks and troops though those are necessary too. Building NATO logistical and cyber-warfare capabilities that were independent of the US would be hugely useful and have uses beyond conventional warfare too.
As you mention migrants though the EU seriously needs a lot more investment in FRONTEX. Belarus, Russia, Turkey, and Morocco all use migrants as a weapon, opening and closing the flow over the border as needed to punish the border nations of Europe and create European domestic infighting. It's like a modern day reverse Barbary-pirates scenario, give these concessions or we let thousands more over the border to become your problem. Just look at Lithuania bearing the brunt from Belarus in response to their raising diplomatic status of Taiwan's office.
European sealanes and interests go a bit farther than just Europe's periphery though, the blockage of the Suez was hugely costly to European trade. The arctic is melting and Canada, Norway and Denmark/Greenland aren't exactly poised to stop Russian resource exploration when that eventually happens. Ice breakers and artic capable coast guard and aerial patrols will be a necessity as the Northwest passage becomes more common for Europe-East Asian trade (shorter and therefore cheaper for Northern/Western Europe).
Do you mean cruise missiles? My knowledge of the relevant systems is limited, but I recall that a modern navy will have strong countermeasures against any such systems, as best demonstrated by the Coalition naval forces during the Gulf War. Wouldn't the best practicable option be quantity rather than superior technical sophistication? Dozens to hundreds of missiles against landing craft close to shore (with the caveat that the entire Chinese sealift would never all be exposed at a single moment) seems like the only option.
It's a fair bit more complicated than that, the weapons and defenses have moved a long way from the Gulf War. If we're relying on line of sight weapons against landing craft then the invasion is already a success. In short though, Taiwan needs what you've mentioned before, good area-denial capability and we should help build it. Taiwan doesn't have much strategic depth so relying on defense to fend off the PLA in the face of drone swarms, ballistic missiles, electronic and cyber warfare can only do so much. Given the geographic, qualitative, and numerical advantage of China that's only a method to buy time. The deterrence is in the capability to come to the aid of Taiwan if needed, this deterrence must not be vulnerable to a Chinese first strike either (a modern day Pearl Harbor in another form) which is why the US has been moving Marines out of Okinawa and to Guam and hopefully now to Australia too. With the Philippines not being available the US has lost a lot of strategic depth too and is relying on only a few major bases to cover and project power into a very large area.
That latter outcome is too high a risk for the CCP, as it would lose enormous quantities of domestic legitimacy, international standing, economic stability, military readiness, and so on, all for the sake of empty posturing; Taiwan would be further out of reach than ever. Since the CCP has demonstrated its rationality many times, assuming it retains that rationality we keep returning to the principle that any overt measure to reduce Taiwan's independence has to be projected to be rapid and decisive from the Chinese point of view.
China's record for rationality has been slipping a lot as of late, they take much more risk for much less gain than the previous three generations have. When you keep telling your population that 'our time is now and the US must step back and allow us to take our rightful place' they eventually expect their leaders to act on it. A generation raised on propaganda eventually results in people ruling that believe that same propaganda.
//////////////////HERE STARTS ISIS/TALIBAN GWOT TALK////////////////////////////
The degradation of the state system in the Middle East has set up some social and humanitarian consequences that will reach throughout the century, which go without elaboration, and has in fact altered strategic relationships: see the drift of Turkey and Pakistan, the comparative loss of Influence of Saudi Arabia, Arab-Israeli rapprochement, the permanentish alienation of Iran from the West, Russian reentry to the region, indeed the continuing (I would say accelerated) spread and escalation of terrorism to full-blown internal conflict around the Islamic world...
Back to the issue of deterrence, the War on Terror made China and Russia intrinsically much less friendly to the American order ("And when the band plays "Hail to the chief", Ooh, they point the cannon at you"). This is almost as profound as it gets in the contemporary period. Whaddaya want for to call it world change, the collapse of the EU and a return to armed territorial conflict between Continental states, the reemergence of a true Caliphate, the final disappearance of American primacy - uh?
GWOT didn't degrade the state system in the middle east, it's always been teetering. The only stable governments in the region over the last 50 years has been Israel and Saudi Arabia, each with significant issues too.
Turkey has been adrift for a long time, it's issues with Greece, Cyprus, Armenia, the Kurds have ensured that it would never be a real European nation. Erdogan's actions and spur toward dictatorship haven't been because of GWOT.
Pakistan is in the same boat as Turkey, were they ever really a US ally? Only when it looked like India would go from non-allied to Soviet bloc and as a base to funnel weapons to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan but that didn't happen and India opened up so no need for Pakistan and it's perpetually causing problems for every one of its neighbors.
True on the effect of making China and Russia less friendly. I'd say that NATO actions against Serbia and the dangling of NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia together with our cozying up with Azerbaijan are what really turned Russia against the US. GWOT just provided opportunity while the US was tied down in quagmires.
Of course China would oppose US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan is right next door and if the history of the US establishing permanent bases succeeded there then there'd be a threat to China's strategic depth. The Bush 'axis of evil' and policy of regime change in Iraq is what really pushed China into firm opposition.
World changing events tend to affect the whole world. GWOT was significant for the middle east and parts of Africa. It's affects on most of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and most of Europe (apart from the troop contributing nations) weren't all that significant. The collapse of the Warsaw pact and then Soviet Union had an immediate far reaching effects. The Suez Crisis essentially ending France/UK great power status and leading to France's divorce from NATO and the expedited policies of France and the UK to decolonize changed the makeup of the world leading to huge social, economic, and political upheavals in all former colonies over the next 30 years. So yeah, your later examples are far closer to the mark though you took them to a another extreme degree.
The deciding factor is that our decisions on the basic form of the Afghan government we would recognize - a unitary, centralized republic - restricted plausible forms for the Afghan milsec establishment to what we would recognize as a conventional, centralized, milsec establishment. But the point that the Taliban had no need for air support is a suggestive one; could different governmental and social forms for our endorsement have produced more resilient native anti-Taliban operations under a less complex and costly organization? And I don't mean fomenting a permanent war of all militias and ethnicities against all. But that requires creativity, cultural sensitivity and responsiveness to local conditions, and a willingness to supercede path dependence that the US - more fairly states in general - has shown little aptitude for.
Well, yes, different government, military, and social forms could have worked. The idea that we could ever impose the needed ideal state even given the creativity and sensitivity we lack is just not gonna happen and never was. There's no such thing as a perfect government, all governance is a compromise of some sort. The GIROA experimient was apprantly too centralized, perhaps more power in the districts and provinces would have been more successful.
I get what you're saying about about air support not being necessary but that's always been an issue in all counter-insurgencies. The insurgent can hide in the population, doesn't wear a uniform so is able to only strike when he's got the advantage and so on. Separation the insurgent from the populace is the way to win; we evidently failed to do that from some combination of fear or at the minimum neutrality toward the insurgent or support for the insurgent. The areas that support the Taliban support what the Taliban stand for, a modern representative liberal for the region nation state of any form was not going to get their short term support. Giving them a status like the northwest frontier tribal region (Pakistan) might have been a solution but that's too large an area of Afghanistan to break up, it'd be essentially balkanizing the country. The failure of GIROA to win over the population doesn't necessarily mean the population supports the Taliban either, they just don't care enough to oppose the Taliban or risk their life for GIROA.
Air support is only useful if it's supporting troops on the ground, seeing as the ANA didn't even bother fighting the Taliban once we left it makes no difference if they had one plane or a million. If the ANA had fought the Taliban then air support would have given an edge in firepower and mobility as it has for the past seven years in which the ANA did most of the fighting and dying and NATO mostly just advised from the sidelines.
The GIROA was a flawed beast but it had far more of the elements you advocate for than the Taliban government did in the past and looks to have in the future. The Taliban are primarily Sunni zealots and Pashto tribesman, they don't have a history have much cultural sensitivity towards the Hazarras (they're Shia too), Tajiks, Iranians, or Uzbeks.
There's currently a moment of opportunity for the Taliban to be the government that you advocate but I'm positive that they will not do that. They are a hardline extremist organization. Twenty years of fighting and a 'god given victory' will not temper that too much. The formal world organizations will likely keep the bank accounts closed as the Taliban won't make the concessions to human rights needed to allow 'the west' to morally deal with them as an equal nation. The Taliban will then just like you allude to go the path of pariah state like Iran. Those organizations could just open up and deal with the Taliban but then they'd be possibly bankrolling Taliban oppression too. Is legitimizing and funding their oppressors helping Afghans? Is it to be another permanent UN aid mission?
You've said enough that we should try and act on behalf of what's best for the Afghan people. I still think in the long run that would have been supporting the flawed state that was GIROA. Hindsight being what it is we clearly needed to somehow fight corruption as our primary effort. What will Taliban governance bring Afghanistan though? Half of the Afghan people (the women) have just lost most of their access to human rights. All Afghans have just lost access to a modern legal system, corrupt and slow yes, but at least not resulting in public stoning to death. Yes, there's no fighting as the war is done, only time will tell if the peace ends up more repressive and deadly than the war (now that the Taliban can focus on ruling rather than just killing other Afghans) or if the Afghans prefer today's Taliban security or yesterday's liberties.
Afghanistan: Executions will return, says senior Taliban official
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58675153
The Taliban's notorious former head of religious police has said extreme punishments such as executions and amputations will resume in Afghanistan.
Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, now in charge of prisons, told AP News amputations were "necessary for security".
He said these punishments may not be meted out in public, as they were under previous Taliban rule in the 1990s.
But he dismissed outrage over their past public executions: "No-one will tell us what our laws should be."
Since taking power in Afghanistan on 15 August the Taliban have been promising a milder form of rule than in their previous tenure.
But there have already been several reports of human rights abuses carried out across the country.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch warned that the Taliban in Herat were "searching out high-profile women, denying women freedom of movement outside their homes [and] imposing compulsory dress codes".
And in August, Amnesty International said that Taliban fighters were behind the massacre of nine members of the persecuted Hazara minority.
Amnesty's Secretary-General Agnès Callamard said at the time that the "cold-blooded brutality" of the killings was "a reminder of the Taliban's past record, and a horrifying indicator of what Taliban rule may bring".
Days before the Taliban took control of Kabul, a Taliban judge in Balkh, Haji Badruddin, told the BBC's Secunder Kermani that he supported the group's harsh and literal interpretation of Islamic religious law.
"In our Sharia it's clear, for those who have sex and are unmarried, whether it's a girl or a boy, the punishment is 100 lashes in public," Badruddin said. "But for anyone who's married, they have to be stoned to death... For those who steal: if it's proved, then his hand should be cut off."
These hardline views are in tune with some ultra-conservative Afghans.
However, the group are now balancing this desire to appeal to their conservative base with a need to form connections with the international community - and since coming into power, the Taliban have tried to present a more restrained image of themselves.
Turabi, notorious for his harsh punishments for people caught listening to non-religious music or trimming their beards in the 1990s, told AP that although harsh forms of punishment would continue, the group would now allow televisions, mobile phones, photos and videos.
Turabi - who is on a UN sanctions list for his past actions - said the Taliban's cabinet ministers were now discussing whether or not punishments should be public, and that they would "develop a policy".
Back in the 1990s, executions were held in public in Kabul's sports stadium, or on the vast grounds of the Eid Gah mosque.
At the time Turabi was justice minister and head of the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - the Taliban's religious police.
"Everyone criticised us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and punishments," he said in the latest interview.
Earlier this week, the Taliban also requested to speak at the UN General Assembly, which is being held in New York City.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that while it was important to communicate with the Taliban, "the UN General Assembly is not the appropriate venue for that".
The US, which sits on the credentialing committee, also said it would not make a decision before the end of the summit next week.
Not surprised though still sad to see and predictable with the Taliban in charge. Made even worse that your 'trial' is essentially a religious hearing.
To protect Afghan girls, UN panel urges conditions on aid
https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-general-assembly-afghanistan-dubai-middle-east-united-nations-c83b511006e4014cc4ae7aa6e62deb08
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Aid to Afghanistan should be made conditional to ensure the protection of women’s rights and access to education under the rule of the Taliban government, a panel of high-level speakers said at the United Nations on Friday.
Since taking control of the country last month when the U.S.-backed government collapsed, the Taliban have allowed younger girls and boys back to school. But in grades six to 12, they have allowed only boys back to school along with their male teachers.
The United Nations says 4.2 million children are not enrolled in school in Afghanistan, and 60% of them girls.
The Taliban have also said female university students will face restrictions, such as a compulsory dress code, and will not be allowed in the same classrooms as their male counterparts. Additionally, the subjects being taught will be reviewed, the new government said.
U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said that “by and large, we’re very concerned” about measures restricting girls’ access to education since the Taliban took control of the country following the U.S. withdrawal and collapse of the Afghan government in August.
“I think the international community here, first and foremost, has to draw on the expertise, on the leadership of Afghan women... to stop the reversal, to remain in school,” she said in the U.N. panel that focused on ways to support girls’ education in Afghanistan. The virtual discussion took place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where the Taliban have requested to speak as representatives of Afghanistan.
Mohammed said aid to Afghanistan can “absolutely” be made conditional on education for girls and women. She said the United Nations and the international community can help ensure Afghanistan’s economy does not collapse and that educators and health care workers continue to be paid.
..............
I'm glad they're setting conditions though given the recent Taliban statements they seem to have little to no inclination to moderate their behavior. Essentially an attitude of 'help us we need the aid but don't criticize our internal matters.'
Montmorency
09-25-2021, 01:22
Since taking control of the country last month when the U.S.-backed government collapsed, the Taliban have allowed younger girls and boys back to school. But in grades six to 12, they have allowed only boys back to school along with their male teachers.
The Taliban have also said female university students will face restrictions, such as a compulsory dress code, and will not be allowed in the same classrooms as their male counterparts. Additionally, the subjects being taught will be reviewed, the new government said.
There's some work required to make these statements consistent with one another. At face value, women will be barred from secondary education but permitted in tertiary education, which implies that women will de facto be barred from tertiary education as the supply of currently-enrolled or eligible secondary-educated girls dwindles. Obviously there's little meaning to nominally permitting women to attend college if all the women in traditional college age at some time are barely literate or numerate.
So if the quoted statements are valid, either the Taliban are phasing out women in university, or they're actually phasing in girls in high school (after a pause).
Unless I'm missing something, such as geographic variation in policy or conflicts or differences in authority in the sources of each of the statements.
We'll need to wait and see what the Taliban actually do versus what they promise and see if it applies to just Kabul or the whole country too. Their current spokesman has said that they haven't let girls back into school yet in some ages because they need to figure out how to make it safe for girls. This is of course a bit bizarro land as the reason it was so unsafe in the past twenty years has been because of Taliban supporters attacking and kidnapping girls going to schools or destroying the schools outright.
As for the problem above that you mentioned, well for the girls currently allowed in school it's of course the pre-pubescent girls. Even in Taliban areas little girls and boys were able to play together. Once they get near puberty though the Sharia law comes down and they separate girls from boys in everything. Most of Afghan schools having been mixed genders the last twenty years means that trying to have separate education for girls and boys means they'll need to build all new schools, something I doubt the Taliban will spend a lot of time or resources on.
As for the universities that are currently allowing some limited women's education, that may be for international consumption, may be because there's more classrooms and teachers that can make it work. Who knows for sure, their spokesmen have said a great deal but only time will tell what they actually intend.
There's also the issue of teachers, a lot of Afghan teachers were women so if they end not not being allowed to work and so on it creates the problem of who's to teach the adolescent girls.
At the very least if there's access to internet throughout most of the country then there's an ability to access DL education if the girls family wants to. We'll see if the Taliban ends up implementing some sort of islamic firewall in the future
Will the Taliban restrict internet access in Afghanistan?
The Taliban have continued to insist that certain rights to free expression and women's rights will be respected.
But local media has reported that in the southern city of Kandahar over the weekend, the Taliban banned music and women's voices from being played over the radio.
Taneja believes that the internet will also soon be subject to similar bans that will start in the provinces before moving to Kabul.
"Let's not forget," said Taneja. "This is the Taliban."
https://www.dw.com/en/will-the-taliban-restrict-internet-access-in-afghanistan/a-59029364
Pannonian
09-25-2021, 19:45
We'll need to wait and see what the Taliban actually do versus what they promise and see if it applies to just Kabul or the whole country too. Their current spokesman has said that they haven't let girls back into school yet in some ages because they need to figure out how to make it safe for girls. This is of course a bit bizarro land as the reason it was so unsafe in the past twenty years has been because of Taliban supporters attacking and kidnapping girls going to schools or destroying the schools outright.
As for the problem above that you mentioned, well for the girls currently allowed in school it's of course the pre-pubescent girls. Even in Taliban areas little girls and boys were able to play together. Once they get near puberty though the Sharia law comes down and they separate girls from boys in everything. Most of Afghan schools having been mixed genders the last twenty years means that trying to have separate education for girls and boys means they'll need to build all new schools, something I doubt the Taliban will spend a lot of time or resources on.
As for the universities that are currently allowing some limited women's education, that may be for international consumption, may be because there's more classrooms and teachers that can make it work. Who knows for sure, their spokesmen have said a great deal but only time will tell what they actually intend.
There's also the issue of teachers, a lot of Afghan teachers were women so if they end not not being allowed to work and so on it creates the problem of who's to teach the adolescent girls.
At the very least if there's access to internet throughout most of the country then there's an ability to access DL education if the girls family wants to. We'll see if the Taliban ends up implementing some sort of islamic firewall in the future
Will the Taliban restrict internet access in Afghanistan?
https://www.dw.com/en/will-the-taliban-restrict-internet-access-in-afghanistan/a-59029364
They promised last time to allow women back in public institutions like education when security allowed, postponing such a decision indefinitely. It's the same thing again.
rory_20_uk
09-27-2021, 10:26
They promised last time to allow women back in public institutions like education when security allowed, postponing such a decision indefinitely. It's the same thing again.
Yup, so it is. And it was wishful thinking that the Victor would change depending on the demands of the looser.
And are they the worst in the world? Saudi Arabia? I don't hear many complaints about their approach.
I hope that the countries surrounding it manage a better job than NATO et al did.
~:smoking:
Seamus Fermanagh
09-30-2021, 19:58
"The victors do what they will, the conquered suffer what they must."
We, especially in the West, like to pretend that this hasn't always been the case.
Iran and Taliban forces clash in border area
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/1/iran-and-taliban-forces-clash-in-border-areas
Tehran, Iran – Clashes erupted between Iranian soldiers and Taliban forces near the Afghanistan-Iran border, but appear to have led to no casualties and was later described as a “misunderstanding”.
Multiple videos on Wednesday showed Taliban troops mobilising. Gunfire can be heard while one shows Iranian forces firing artillery shells in response to Taliban fire.
The semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim confirmed the battle in the village of Shaghalak in Hirmand county.
Tasnim, which has links with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said there are walled areas on Iranian soil near the border with Afghanistan in order to combat smuggling.
Some Iranian farmers passed the walls but were still inside Iran’s border when Taliban forces opened fire, thinking its side had been violated, the report said.
The fighting was over and Iranian authorities were discussing the situation with the Taliban, it added.
Later on Wednesday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement a “misunderstanding between border residents” had caused the fighting, without naming the Taliban.
‘Complete control’
A video purportedly showed Taliban forces inside an Iranian garrison, with reports claiming several outposts were seized.
Tasnim denied the seizure of any facilities, but said “some of the published footage was for the early moments of fighting, and border forces now have complete control over the country’s borders”.
But a report by the semi-official Fars news website, which also has ties with the IRGC, made no mention of the Taliban, saying smugglers may be at fault. It said there were no casualties and the area is now calm.
Mohammad Marashi, security deputy for Sistan and Baluchestan’s governor, told Iranian state television the clashes were not serious, incurred no harm on personnel or property, and had ended. He named Taliban forces as the instigators.
Iran has not officially recognised the Taliban since the group quickly took control of neighbouring Afghanistan following the withdrawal of United States forces in August.
Iranian officials have repeatedly said the recognition would hinge on the formation of an “inclusive” government in Afghanistan, but have called on the US to lift its sanctions on the Taliban to quell humanitarian concerns.
In mid-November, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Iran’s special representative on Afghanistan, led an Iranian delegation for an official visit to the country to hold talks. He met several Taliban officials to discuss the country’s economy, geopolitics of the region, and security concerns.
In late October, Iran hosted a meeting of neighbours plus Russia in Tehran, however, Taliban officials were not invited.
Not a good sign at all. The Taliban oppression of the Shia Hazarra minority is certainly a sticky issue as they've got close ties with Iran. I'm sure that this is just a misunderstanding of course as the article says as I can't see either party in position for open hostilities at least.
Montmorency
12-09-2021, 03:29
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan (https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/brutally-ineffective-how-the-taliban-are-failing-in-their-new-role-as-counter-insurgents/)...
In recent months, the Taliban’s efforts to crush the Islamic State in Afghanistan have grown increasingly brutal. Suspected members of the Islamic State have been hung in public or beheaded. The Taliban have increased the tempo of deadly night raids and deployed over 1,000 additional foot soldiers to carry out the fight in Nangahar province. These tactics are ruthless and — unfortunately for the Taliban — they’re not working. Following their capture of Kabul on Aug. 15 — after waging a nearly two-decade conflict with the Afghan government and its Western supporters — few could dispute the effectiveness of the Taliban’s approach to insurgency. But now, with foreign troops withdrawn, the group seems overwhelmed with the Herculean challenge of maintaining its own cohesion, forming a new government and framework of governing policies, stabilizing the country, and dealing with a collapsing economy and dwindling social services. Additionally, the Taliban are struggling to combat a growing insurgency from the Islamic State in Afghanistan (also known as Islamic State-Khorasan), as illustrated by at least 54 attacks conducted by the Islamic State between mid-September and late October. After enjoying success as insurgents, the Taliban are failing miserably as counter-insurgents, unable to fend off Islamic State attacks against population centers and their own personnel.
As Barnett Rubin recently commented, “the alternative to the Taliban is not Karzai, Abdullah, Saleh, or Massoud. It is the Islamic State in Afghanistan.”
[...]
In every country or region where al-Qaeda and Islamic State branches are co-located, they are in conflict, and Afghanistan is no different. Even the youngest generation of Taliban fighters, many born after 9/11, revere Osama bin Laden and view al-Qaeda as having near-mythical status.
Switching from insurgency to counter-insurgency is no easy task. There is an old adage that “insurgents win simply by not losing.” The inverse of this saying implies that counter-insurgents can only win by resolutely defeating an insurgency. But history suggests that brutal suppression is typically insufficient to do so, and a draconian approach defined by wanton and indiscriminate violence often backfires. Effective counter-insurgents need to carefully blend the use of targeted violence with efforts to promote political legitimacy, protect the population from harm, and provide tangible reasons for citizens to support the government. To date, the Taliban have failed at each of these aspects and, due to its inherent tendencies of violence, paranoia, and self-preservation, the group seems unlikely to be more successful at them for the foreseeable future.
With regards to the use of violence, the Taliban have thus far mostly attempted to use brutality to destroy the Islamic State. Their actions have included night raids — an unpopular tactic that alienated Afghans when it was used by the United States — and extra-judicial killings of suspected Islamic State members. The Taliban have also engaged in indiscriminate targeting and harassment of Salafist communities, which Taliban fighters tend to equate with the Islamic State. While these actions have undoubtedly resulted in the deaths of many Islamic State members, they have thus far been insufficient to stop the Islamic State from continuing to conduct attacks against Taliban fighters and various “soft targets” such as Shiite mosques. The Taliban have, in recent weeks, shown some proclivity to engage in talks with Salafi clerics and local leaders in areas that they have assessed to be Islamic State strongholds. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Taliban will elevate such attempts at local diplomacy above what has thus far mostly been a focus on the use of ruthless suppression. Interviews with Taliban fighters in which they express a persistent desire to pursue martyrdom opportunities against the likes of the Islamic State suggest that violence will remain a central feature of the Taliban’s approach.
[...]
The Taliban cannot merely overrun by force or lay siege to Islamic State strongholds to defeat the group as it did with the National Resistance Front in Panjshir. After all, the United Nations assesses that the Islamic State is now active in every province in Afghanistan.
The Taliban are also staring down fast-approaching humanitarian and economic crises in Afghanistan. Roughly 23 million people — approximately half of Afghanistan’s population — are at severe risk of starvation over the coming winter months, according to the U.N. World Food Programme. The country is also teetering on the brink of outright economic collapse. Without vast sums of international aid, the Taliban have no means of preventing these outcomes or of relieving what is likely to be the mass suffering of Afghanistan’s people — offering little to nothing to Afghans in the way of enticements to support their new government. The international community is aware of these conditions but is wary of providing aid that would inevitably help the Taliban consolidate political legitimacy without having to change their behavior in return.
From a long assessment (https://ctc.usma.edu/an-assessment-of-taliban-rule-at-three-months/) linked in the above, my takeaway is Stalinist Taliban leadership wagged by Freikorps rank and file. A complex and incoherent situation:
The Taliban have, to date, claimed that certain policies or social restrictions are temporary, and are being enforced simply due to security concerns (or other exigent circumstances of the takeover). This claim has been met with serious skepticism in terms of restrictions on women. Afghan women recall that the Taliban of the 1990s introduced their emirate as an “interim” or “caretaker” government, which never evolved. Many have observed that the Taliban attempted to justify their earlier restrictions on women due to the security environment at the time, which—though the group claimed improved under its rule—were never eased or lifted.72 In the Taliban’s first three months back in power, the numerous restrictions on women’s place in the public sphere have been perhaps the most contentious reflection of the movement’s catering to the most socially conservative flank of its membership. In one instance, the ministry of education instituted a de facto ban on girls’ school attendance in grades 6-12. Spokesmen claimed this was only until courts and officials could determine a properly ‘Islamic’ modality of implementing girls’ education, but the Taliban’s prioritization of other issues could leave the ban in place indefinitely.73
The issue was muddled when Taliban officials in four different provinces that have (as a generalization) a relatively more progressive history of girls’ education announced, in early October 2021, that girls had resumed their attendance, that the appropriately ‘Islamic’ measures were fully in place (some of which, such as requiring women teachers for every segregated girls’ classroom, are not only impractical given gender imbalances in the education sector, like most sectors in Afghanistan, but would ironically require years of a concerted push to encourage and recruit more women to attend school and graduate university in order for a new generation to fill the ranks of public school faculty).74 These announcements gave some hope that the Taliban might either allow gradual progress or at least permit regional variation in the enforcement of social codes, but they also raise the specter every Afghan government has historically struggled with: permitting greater degrees of regional autonomy can potentially weaken the center. The Taliban’s ideological affinity for centralized rule suggests that a series of variations in policy, which could grow into an assertion of authority from peripheral commanders (or the communities they represent), likely will not continue without being contested eventually.u
At the same time, some of the Taliban’s recent social restrictions have revealed the same cynical sort of pragmatism as they displayed in years of shadow governance as an insurgency. For instance, women in public health have been consistently encouraged to continue working across the country, one of the few sectors in which the Taliban have done so.75 Functional health facilities in friendly territory were also a military imperative in order to treat wounded fighters; once established in Taliban-controlled communities, the movement insisted that female staff be present in order for any women of the community to receive treatment.
This illustrates an obvious but potentially useful point for those international organizations and donors deliberating on how to best leverage the Taliban’s treatment of the Afghan population: the Taliban grow most pragmatic when the actor they are engaging with has something they badly need—and does not publicly pressure the group with any potential conditions.76 When they are unable to identify a critical benefit, or when the compromise necessary to obtain that benefit might offend and inflame the sensibilities of a large enough segment of their membership, threatening cohesion, they are prone to adopt a smokescreen narrative about themselves, posturing as defenders of all things truly ‘Islamic’ and Afghan. With domestic audiences, Taliban messaging often plays on the ambiguity of these dual pillars of values; when challenged about the ‘Islamic’-ness of a given policy or behavior they may claim that it is innately and traditionally Afghan, and when questioned about the Afghan-ness of it, they often default to uniquely exclusive interpretations of Islam.
What's impressive is that even as resistance in the traditionally-fierce Panjshir Valley almost instantly collapsed after the fall of the government (yeah, all that noise in the media was mere hot air by a handful of grifters and zealots), the Islamic State just seems to get stronger (and not only in Afghanistan).
Hey, pragmatic considerations cooled the fervor of the ayatollahs' revolution during the war with Iraq. The sticking point is the Taliban's own cohesion (the ayatollahs had a civilizational buff in that). No country has yet recognized the Emirate, right? What a struggle.
Posting this in here as the civilian deaths investigated are mostly Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria and don't think this merits its own thread.
U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures
An Independent Assessment
The Report:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA400/RRA418-1/RAND_RRA418-1.pdf
The base site:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA418-1.html?utm_source=AdaptiveMailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7014N000001SnimQAC&utm_term=00v4N00000aZwMHQA0&org=1674&lvl=100&ite=4166&lea=847742&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0w4N000009Je6eQAC
Key Findings
Assessments reveal what happened
The military's data and records that support assessments of civilian harm can be incomplete.
Intelligence efforts focus on the enemy, limiting the resources available to understand the broader civilian picture.
The military's standard for finding a civilian casualty report to be credible is higher than advertised.
Combatant commands planning for high-intensity conflict against near-peer adversaries are unprepared to address civilian-harm issues.
More-extensive investigations can reveal why
Investigations are the most comprehensive tool for documenting and fully understanding civilian-harm incidents.
Neither investigations nor credibility assessment reports enable learning within the force.
Investigations can carry the stigma of a disciplinary process.
Responses to civilian-harm incidents can include the provision of ex gratia payments to the affected community and individuals
Such responses provide assistance to those affected by the tragedy of war, advance the U.S. mission on the ground, build rapport with local communities, and reinforce the U.S. relationship with the host-nation government.
DoD's responses to civilian harm have historically been inconsistent and confusing.
DoD's interim regulations are just part of what should be a more comprehensive response policy that addresses all civilian-harm response options.
DoD is not adequately organized, structured, or resourced to sufficiently mitigate and respond to civilian-harm issues
There are not enough personnel dedicated to civilian-harm issues full-time, and those who are responsible for civilian-harm matters often receive minimal training on the duties that they are expected to perform.
DoD is not organized to monitor and analyze civilian casualty trends and patterns over time.
Recommendations
Expand the kinds of information available for assessments to make them more robust.
Develop and deploy a tool or data environment to improve collection of, access to, and storage of operational data related to civilian harm.
Incorporate civilian harm into pre-operation intelligence estimates and post-operation assessments of the cumulative effect of targeting decisions.
Use a range of estimates of civilian casualties to improve the accuracy of assessments.
Establish guidance on the responsibilities of U.S. military forces in monitoring partners' conduct and offer assistance to partners in building their own assessment capabilities if needed.
Expand guidance on civilian-harm assessments across the full spectrum of armed conflict.
Implement a standardized civilian-harm operational reporting process intended to support learning.
In DoD guidance, avoid placing overly restrictive limits on why, where, and to whom the U.S. military distributes condolence payments.
In DoD's final policy on ex gratia payments, include additional transparency around how payment amounts are determined and how the payments are disbursed.
Provide guidance and training on all options available to commanders to respond to civilian harm.
Create dedicated, permanent positions for protection of civilians in each geographic combatant command and across DoD, and establish working groups of rotating personnel for additional support.
Create a center of excellence for civilian protection.
Maintain the capability to conduct periodic reviews to monitor civilian-harm trends over time and address emerging issues.
When civilian casualty cells are established at joint task forces, define processes for reverting responsibilities and data back to the command's headquarters.
I've only skimmed through this so far as it was only published today, interesting and not surprising findings. Touches on the many things such as the DoD not really trying too hard to investigate, not disseminating results throughout the force to learn and change from investigations and so on.
There're apparently CIVCAS cells in some Geographic Commands but staffed by junior or untrained people which is a clear demonstration that it's not given the importance should have. A lot of good recommendations but seeing as RAND is an independent research agency only time will tell what the DoD does to change.
rory_20_uk
01-28-2022, 10:14
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan (https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/brutally-ineffective-how-the-taliban-are-failing-in-their-new-role-as-counter-insurgents/)...
From a long assessment (https://ctc.usma.edu/an-assessment-of-taliban-rule-at-three-months/) linked in the above, my takeaway is Stalinist Taliban leadership wagged by Freikorps rank and file. A complex and incoherent situation:
What's impressive is that even as resistance in the traditionally-fierce Panjshir Valley almost instantly collapsed after the fall of the government (yeah, all that noise in the media was mere hot air by a handful of grifters and zealots), the Islamic State just seems to get stronger (and not only in Afghanistan).
Hey, pragmatic considerations cooled the fervor of the ayatollahs' revolution during the war with Iraq. The sticking point is the Taliban's own cohesion (the ayatollahs had a civilizational buff in that). No country has yet recognized the Emirate, right? What a struggle.
If the West doesn't get involved this could be a place where the radicalised go to kill each other.
Posting this in here as the civilian deaths investigated are mostly Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria and don't think this merits its own thread.
U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures
An Independent Assessment
The Report:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA400/RRA418-1/RAND_RRA418-1.pdf
The base site:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA418-1.html?utm_source=AdaptiveMailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7014N000001SnimQAC&utm_term=00v4N00000aZwMHQA0&org=1674&lvl=100&ite=4166&lea=847742&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0w4N000009Je6eQAC
I've only skimmed through this so far as it was only published today, interesting and not surprising findings. Touches on the many things such as the DoD not really trying too hard to investigate, not disseminating results throughout the force to learn and change from investigations and so on.
There're apparently CIVCAS cells in some Geographic Commands but staffed by junior or untrained people which is a clear demonstration that it's not given the importance should have. A lot of good recommendations but seeing as RAND is an independent research agency only time will tell what the DoD does to change.
This could have been written after the Vietnam war.
~:smoking:
Montmorency
01-28-2022, 23:28
If the West doesn't get involved this could be a place where the radicalised go to kill each other.
We're still good with the refugees though, right?
This could have been written after the Vietnam war.
During Vietnam it was our formal policy to target civilians and civilian infrastructure; hence the half-million or more civilian dead at our hands alone. We've gotten somewhat better.
rory_20_uk
01-28-2022, 23:33
We're still good with the refugees though, right?
During Vietnam it was our formal policy to target civilians and civilian infrastructure; hence the half-million or more civilian dead at our hands alone. We've gotten somewhat better.
Fair point - the USA has stopped making war crimes policy. Progress!
If you want the refugees fine - you've paid for them over the last 20 years after all...
~:smoking:
Montmorency
01-29-2022, 00:04
Fair point - the USA has stopped making war crimes policy. Progress!
If you want the refugees fine - you've paid for them over the last 20 years after all...
~:smoking:
https://twitter.com/scotfoodjames/status/1428747865933889543
Pannonian
01-29-2022, 10:02
https://twitter.com/scotfoodjames/status/1428747865933889543
Have you seen his quote that I posted in the other thread? About a different subject, but amusing.
TALIBAN STRUGGLES TO CONTAIN AFGHAN NATIONAL RESISTANCE FRONT
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/taliban-struggles-contain-afghan-national-resistance-front
By Peter Mills
Co-produced by the Institute for the Study of War and the Critical Threats Project
Key Takeaway: The Taliban government is struggling to defeat the National Resistance Front (NRF), a growing anti-Taliban insurgency in northeastern Afghanistan. Taliban leaders appointed a new slate of military commanders to lead anti-NRF operations, indicating dissatisfaction with the previous commanders? performance. Political and ethnic divisions are also likely undermining Taliban forces. Continued Taliban failures against the NRF could lead to the strengthening of the Haqqani Network within the Taliban?s military leadership.
The Taliban government appointed several successive commanders who have struggled to defeat the NRF in Panjshir and Baghlan provinces. Senior Taliban military leaders have launched repeated operations against the NRF but have achieved only intermittent short-term success and failed to decisively quash NRF activity. Taliban Minister of Defense Mohammad Yaqoub, his Chief of Army Staff Qari Fasihuddin, and his Deputy Defense Minister and senior Taliban military leader Fazl Mazloom have all previously led operations against the NRF. Fasihuddin originally led the operation to conquer the Panjshir Valley in September 2021. Although Fasihuddin?s initial operation saw rapid short-term success, the continued deployment of large numbers of Taliban forces was an early indicator of long-term problems. By February 2022, more than 10,000 Taliban troops were reportedly involved in the operation to suppress NRF insurgent activity in northeastern Afghanistan.[1] Fasihuddin and Mazloom jointly conducted counter-NRF operations in the Andarab Valley, Baghlan Province in April.[2] Mazloom later led a separate offensive against the NRF in northern Panjshir in mid-May.[3] Yaqoub also repeatedly visited the Panjshir Valley and commanded offensive operations against the NRF in February, May, and July 2022.[4] Local Taliban units retreated without orders in early July, allowing the NRF to capture territory in the east of neighboring Baghlan Province. Yaqoub took direct command of the counteroffensive to retake that territory later that month to prevent further disobedience among Taliban forces.[5]
The Taliban government appointed another military commander to the counter-NRF fight in August 2022, indicating ongoing concern with the state of the campaign. Senior Taliban military commander and Deputy Minister of Defense Abdul Qayum Zakir took command of Taliban forces fighting the NRF in the Andarab and Panjshir Valleys on August 21.[6] Zakir previously served as head of the Taliban military commission from 2010-2014 and became Yaqoub?s deputy in 2020.[7] Zakir is likely bringing in hundreds of Taliban reinforcements from Helmand Province to fight the NRF. Zakir?s counteroffensive against the NRF in Panjshir has not seen notable success so far, though major flooding in the Panjshir Valley in August may be hindering his ability to move forces within the valley and conduct offensive operations against the NRF. Reports from mid-August indicate that the NRF is capturing outlying villages within Panjshir Province.[8]
Local Taliban forces in Panjshir and Baghlan provinces are likely struggling to unite their efforts due to ethnic divisions within their forces. Taliban forces in Panjshir Province come from a variety of different backgrounds and include local Tajik Taliban units from Panjshir Province and neighboring Badakhshan Province as well as many Pashtun Taliban fighters from southern and eastern Afghanistan.[9] Local Tajik Taliban forces appear to be increasingly unwilling to fight the NRF, which would likely force the Taliban to draw increasing numbers of Pashtun Taliban forces from southern Afghanistan. A local Tajik Taliban commander defected from the Taliban and joined the NRF in May while Tajik Taliban units from Badakhshan reportedly refused to continue fighting the NRF in the Panjshir in July.[10] These events likely fed into pre-existing mistrust between Pashtun and Tajik Taliban units.[11] Taliban fighters have previously committed war crimes, including torture and extrajudicial killings, against the local, predominantly Tajik, population in the Panjshir Valley.[12] An influx of Pashtun Taliban fighters will likely exacerbate the pre-existing inter-ethnic tensions and worsen cooperation between Pashtun and Tajik Taliban fighters.
Factional infighting within the Taliban is also likely affecting its campaign against the NRF and continued failure could empower Taliban commanders from the Haqqani Network. The Haqqani Network is a branch of the Taliban movement that has existed for decades as a sophisticated extremist organization that maintains ties to Al-Qaeda.[13] The leader of the Haqqani Network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, hosted former Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri at a house in Kabul until Zawahiri?s death in a US drone strike.[14] The Haqqani Network is known to exert extensive influence over southeastern Afghanistan, including Khost and Paktia, and often competes for influence and power with the Kandahar-based Taliban leadership. Taliban forces based in Panjshir are drawn from Kandahar, Helmand, and Haqqani-dominated provinces in southeastern Afghanistan.[15] Leader of the Haqqani Network Sirajuddin Haqqani and Minister of Defense Mohammad Yaqoub?who draws his support base from Kandahar?compete for influence within the Taliban movement.[16] The Taliban security chief for Panjshir declared his allegiance to Sirajuddin Haqqani in an online video and criticized Taliban forces under Yaqoub?s command.[17] Soon after, the Yaquob-aligned Taliban governor for Panjshir removed this security chief from command.[18] Taliban forces later arrested troops affiliated with the former security chief, indicating continuing tensions between the rival commanders.[19] If Taliban commanders affiliated with Yaqoub continue to fail to quash the NRF rebellion, the Taliban leadership could decide to shift responsibility to other factions within the Taliban, increasing their influence at the expense of Yaqoub.
Taliban forces are increasingly using air assets to support their operations in the Andarab and Panjshir but this is unlikely to have a decisive strategic effect. The Taliban Air Force has been using Mi-17 transport helicopters to ferry troops and supplies around mountainous terrain within the Panjshir and Andarab Valleys.[20] The Taliban have also used Mi-24 attack helicopters on at least one occasion to carry out airstrikes on NRF positions in Eastern Baghlan Province.[21] The NRF shot down a Taliban-operated Mi-17 in mid-June 2022, despite lacking any man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS).[22] The Taliban Air Force continued to use American-made helicopters, including at least four MD-500 light attack helicopters, during Zakir?s Augustoffensive into Khenj District, Panjshir Province.[23] Taliban Chief of Army Staff Fasihuddin stated recently that the Taliban Air Force has 60 working aircraft in service, an increase from the 40 claimed in January.[24] The Taliban government is clearly prioritizing the air force and will likely continue to keep some aircraft operational for the foreseeable future. Despite these additional aircraft, the Taliban Air Force is still less than half the size of the former Afghan Air Force.[25] The addition of a few more helicopters will help Taliban operations against the NRF on a tactical level but is unlikely to result in significant strategic effects due to the limited number of airframes and constraints surrounding securing additional spare parts to keep aircraft operable.
NRF activity is expanding beyond the Andarab-Panjshir Valleys despite Taliban pressure. NRF attacks in Takhar Province have recently surged with increased attacks in Taloqan, Namakab, Rustaq, Kalafgan, and Fakhar districts.[26] NRF forces also reportedly clashed with Taliban forces in Kishm and Ragh districts in Badakhshan Province.[27] Several local Tajik Taliban commanders in Badakhshan have reportedly defected to the NRF over the past few months.[28] The loss of local commanders who are intimately familiar with the rough, mountainous terrain in northeastern Afghanistan will hinder the Taliban?s ability to govern and control these areas. The defection of Tajik Taliban commanders will also likely increase mistrust between Tajik and Pashtun Taliban forces, further hindering the Taliban?s ability to carry out operations against the NRF.
It remains to be seen whether the NRF threat will unite Taliban factions or further divide them. A credible internal threat to the Taliban?s rule may help the movement overcome its internal divisions and remain cohesive. Alternatively, worsening Taliban divisions in response to the growing NRF insurgency would indicate that those divisions run deep. The longer the NRF is able to grow its insurgency, the greater the chance that it could eventually acquire support from another state. External support could enable the NRF to eventually become powerful enough to threaten Taliban control over parts of Afghanistan. If local Tajik Taliban fighters lose their willingness to fight the NRF, or defect outright to the NRF, then NRF capabilities will continue to grow at the expense of the Taliban?s ability to govern and control northeastern Afghanistan. In this scenario, the Taliban leadership may increasingly deploy southern Pashtun Taliban fighters to the Panjshir and Andarab, likely further exacerbating pre-existing ethnic tensions and possibly driving increased support for the NRF. Finally, the Taliban?s counter-NRF fight may have implications for national inter-Taliban power struggles. If Yaqoub?s commanders continue to fail to defeat the NRF, then Sirajuddin Haqqani may be able to argue for appointing his own commanders, increasing the Haqqani Network?s influence in northeastern Afghanistan.
Guess the old struggle of the Northern Alliance days continues....
rory_20_uk
09-08-2022, 10:33
It's true now as it was probably true 500 years ago - the only thing that unites the locals is outsiders coming in.
Britain went in and failed. Russia went in to support the Communist government and left. The USA and its motley crew of helpers also left.
I think it's only fair that China gets a go.
~:smoking:
Montmorency
09-09-2022, 03:43
It took some effort, but Britain more or less succeeded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Gandamak). A bit like the Russian Federation in Chechnya. The Greeks succeeded, the Arabs succeeded, the Mongols and their cousins succeeded, the Iranians succeeded most of all... If the Taliban were in full control like in 2001, the Chinese might promptly attempt to buy their way in.
The trouble today is that holding a multi-ethnic empire by violence alone is rather hard. Think of it as an unrest modifier.
Perhaps Balkanizing Afghanistan should have been done post 9/11. Pashtuns get their own area, Tajiks their own or maybe join Tajikstan, same with the Uzebks. Hazaris get their own nation too. Make it all a very loose confederation to safeguard some rules for trade, taxes, and borders with military/police forces mostly so they don't threaten each other too much.
Really is such a shame for the country, had some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen and some of the Afghans I worked with were really great people.
Multi-ethnic is part of the problem but it being truly tribal is the other part, looking out for you tribal group first before nation, religion, etc... makes ruling really hard. That's why that book "the strongest tribe" though it was about Iraq also applies to an extent to Afghanistan. The Europeans understood this in the colonial area and would reward the friendly tribes and punish or split up the troublesome ones, something an occupying 'modern' power can't really understand or deal with.
CrossLOPER
09-09-2022, 19:19
Perhaps Balkanizing Afghanistan should have been done post 9/11. Pashtuns get their own area, Tajiks their own or maybe join Tajikstan, same with the Uzebks. Hazaris get their own nation too. Make it all a very loose confederation to safeguard some rules for trade, taxes, and borders with military/police forces mostly so they don't threaten each other too much.
For whatever reason, the US has this bizarre habit of attempting to remake any society they enter into their own EXACT image, and then act confused when it doesn't work.
Montmorency
09-11-2022, 06:11
Multi-ethnic was a problem with respect to imperial methods of control. This -
"The Europeans understood this in the colonial area and would reward the friendly tribes and punish or split up the troublesome ones, something an occupying 'modern' power can't really understand or deal with."
don't work anymore. One can blame what they please - increased mobility and communications, increasing complexity even in agrarian economies, the general intellectual development of societies during modernity - but divide and conquer no longer works, it just encourages chaos. In decentralized societies like Afghanistan there are more limited opportunities for foreign powers to even manipulate local politics, but for a more or less indigenous central government to be strong it must have effective policies and processes that actively contribute to the gestalt cohesion of the country in an era of fragmentation and immense dissociative forces. Inevitably this means broadening stakeholders and offering everyday value. GIROA and the Taliban are too inefficient and sectarian to meet those criteria. In other words I'm referring to what it takes to build a national state in an area that has been under some form of fully royalist or imperial governance for 98% of its history. The Taliban's form of domination could possibly achieve stable rule during a certain period of Afghanistan's history, but after 20 years of contact with the international community that era is clearly over. The US didn't have what it takes, and far from it is the case that the US just wasn't sufficiently brutal or Machiavellian.
Hussein, Qaddafi, Assad - all these would have passed on or been overthrown without our assistance, over time, because of the underlying structural implications of the countries over which they ruled. To some extent they contributed to this fragmentation by concentrating authority in their own hands while playing that same game of demographic divide and conquer. Well... now everyone gets to live in violent, unstable societies where most are getting poorer and long-term prospects for prosperity are dim. Due to the fluidity of ethnic geography, the continuity of physical geography, and the reality of resource competition in regions that have struggled to generate necessities of food, water, and household energy, I do also doubt a sophisticated federated structure for Afghanistan or Iraq (or Syria, or Libya) could have been viable. Or it would have had to be so sophisticated as to eventually constitute, again, that pernicious attempt to control from afar.
Here's what "we" should have done: not fuck around.
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