ISIS and Afghan Taliban

[spmetla]

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.