You would think they would have taken steps to avoid this outcome, but maybe this was the outcome they wanted?
Idk, the US isn't a completely invincible, "all according to plan" type empire, and it's really starting to show as it crumbles. I'm honestly thinking this is a legitimate defeat from a power that's starting to decline. Although, as the Taliban get close to Kabul, probably expect a evacuation of Saigon type event.
this is just one in a long series of Ls of late. can't starve out Cuba, Venezuela keeps chugging, they lost Peru and Bolivia to socialists, Brazil is going pink too, Chile has a huge anti neo lib movement. the American empire is already collapsing before our eyes
The Taliban made faster progress than even the most pessimistic predictions. The Afghan National Army is essentially a phantom apparatus where the officer corps (appointed through their connections to government officials via patronage networks) make fraudulent reports on the size of their formations in order to embezzle money that's supposed to be paid to the enlisted troops. What troops actually make it onto the books use the army as little more than a meal ticket, or worse, desert very shortly into their term to sell their weapons and equipment to local warlords or the Taliban itself. The Afghan government itself is disgustingly corrupt and completely fails to provide basic services or any semblance of a justice system (the Afghan police are infamously useless and widely hated) because the leaders are too busy embezzling Western aid money and getting rich off connections to the heroin and opium trades. As a result no one who isn't an outright American comprador has any stake in the Afghan "state" as it exists, the Taliban have much more going for them in terms of grassroots appeal - resistance to foreign occupation, increasingly nationalistic appeals beyond their original ethnic Pashtun base (that they've taken the entire northeast so quickly, the original stronghold of the Northern Alliance that originally served as the most entrenched resistance to the Taliban back in the 90s, is a damning testament as to how broad their appeal has become and how little legitimacy the Kabul government has), and an actually functioning justice system based on Sharia law (yeah, it's brutal and uncompromising, but it follows through on things, unlike what the Afghan government provides).
It was widely expected that the Kabul government would be able to hold out in the urban centers for some time fighting either a stalemate or gradually losing war against the Taliban, a la the communist Najibullah regime that, hilariously, outlived the USSR by a good 2-3 years. But this expectation has completely collapsed in the course of the last couple of day, as every other major city outside Kabul, including Herat and Kandahar, has fallen as of yesterday. The government essentially has weeks to live. How did the Taliban accomplish this? They are essentially going up and making announcements that they will spare any ANA deserters and even throw in concessions like lowering taxes for local business owners if the soldiers lay down arms and go home. If you resist, you will be slaughtered, no prisoners. And the soldiers are just going home, because the Taliban have actually built up a reputation of honoring their word, amazingly enough. At this point the last remaining holdouts are Kabul itself and the central regions inhabited by the Shiite Hazara people, who fucking hate the Pashtun Taliban.
This was always inevitable. That the Kabul regime was ever a functioning "democracy" at all that respected "human rights and rule of law" was always a fantasy constructed by American propaganda, for the domestic audience, in order to justify this forever war. Now the house of cards is coming down, and revealing the apparatus was even more rotten than the cynics assumed.
"the war on terror" is often framed in the sense of the US fighting Islamic fundamentalists, but its really the other way around, the US was the "terror" here all along
At least the taliban won't be filling the skies with drones and randomly bombing weddings and farmers.
It is the belief that any gathering where males are present must be a terrorist operation getting ready to go. There are no weddings in Afghanistan.
I wonder why the army we set up are melting away instead of fighting for
our corrupt puppets resource extraction schemes and galaxy brained geopolitical goalstheir freedom?
Once they establish their rule and do whatever horrible shit they are going to do following that, the violence will taper off. Or maybe we'll just make up more reasons to keep drone bombing them.
Once they establish their rule and do whatever horrible shit they are going to do following that, the violence will taper off.
That is the violence though.
I'm not sure drawing out the conflict indefinitely is a better option.
The Taliban isn't really "terror" is it? Just an extremely reactionary group.
They sheltered Osama bin Laden, so they got the tag.
Of course it was Pakistan where they found him hiding.
I love how Bin Laden's compound was a few miles away from what the US media called Pakistan's West Point.
Yet the fever dreams about where he was hiding were so different. In this example - he's like a James Bond villain hiding in a super-duper entirely impossible bunker
The more I look back to the Dubya era - the more I am sort of amazed that in 2008 a super-militaristic GOP ghoul (or an equivalent dem ghoul) didn't become president. Drone strikes? Why bother? Just kill 'em all.
If Obama had never existed and Trump announced his campaign for president (either as a republican or dem) in 2007 could he have won?
In retrospect - Obama was a black swan who appeared and forced reality to go in a different direction from where the US was likely headed.
They ran out of space. Saddam Hussein stuff is in the lowest level in the 9/11 Commemoration Area — Sponsored by Saddam Hussein™ featuring a food court, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, billiards, big screen tvs, and cleric approved video games.
Didn't they offer to turn over bin Laden or something? But the US and Europe basically get to define words to mean whatever they want anyways :shrug-outta-hecks:
Yes, multiple times both before and after 9/11. Bush didn't give a fuck and only wanted a war.
The US military didn't tip off the Pakistan government about the mission to kill bin Laden on Pakistan soil because several Pakistan officials are friendly with the Taliban, and knowledgeably let bin Laden live in peace in his compound.
seems plausible that Taliban took over waaaay faster than they thought and they sent in some troops to keep Kabul long enough to get some people/things out
the Taliban have moved WAY faster than anybody expected, but it's always been known the army and police are absolutely shit and were going to lose to the much better Taliban forces
oh yeah it's been wild. I doubt even the Taliban commanders expected this. the army has just melted away entirely, barely even fought at all, with city after city falling within the same day some times. it makes the fall of south vietnam look like ww1 trench warfare
Yeah, there was actual fighting to defend South Vietnam, this is just the Taliban taking over provinces for some bribery or promise of future political clout....
there has been some small scale fighting, but yeah most of it has been bribes and the Afghan forces just running the fuck away. you think they would fight harder considering what is obviously coming to the collaborators, at least maybe get some motivation to save their skin. but eh, can't say I'd be a hero and stand and fight in that situation myself with those odds
Also from what I've heard America's strategy in Afghanistan was to train a small collection of highly skilled psychopathic "operators". The Hell of a Way to Die guy said this had been the case for a while, that they were using mostly these operator dudes, and it made building any sort of local relationships impossible as they are essentially terror squads. I imagine that these sort of compact units are great if you want to assassinate a few people, but awful at stopping an advancing army.
like you say, you lose the heart and minds war with this kind of shit, and then the civilian population all go over to the opposition who are fighting the invaders backing these mass murdering death squads. what's hilarious and pathetic is ofc.... this same shit happened in Vietnam 50 years ago. they lost the same war the same way, twice
HOAWTD is a really good podcast too
I don't think it was an error so much as a what are you gonna do? they knew Afghanistan couldn't hold, the same way South Vietnam couldn't, too much army corruption with a popular movement against the army and state, totally ineffective fighting force against a stronger opponent ect. but 20 years of war is more than America could fight, the Taliban already won against them which is why coalition forces agreed to a withdrawal, this is just the more obvious effects of that victory.
even if America goes back in what do you think will happen? the Taliban will get more support as they fight the foreign invaders, the quagmire will continue, and more and more money and men will go down the drain for nothing. as much as CNN might be in the whole manufacturing consent business, the generals already know they lost and are pulling out for a reason
As with most things, they aren't capable of seeing just how crumbling the empire is. Most likely they had a report from some generals who thought that the ANA and ANP could hold out against the Taliban and preserve some sort of shared power/stalemate. I am pretty sure they were shocked with how fast it all fell down.
We can't even build and maintain our own nation and have no business trying to engineer another society across the world that doesn't want outsiders to rule over them. This was largely just a scam to funnel money to defense contractors.
Hanlon's corollary: Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Yeah I signed up for Dollar Corollary Club. You won't believe how naturally it follows.
I think they just fucked up the timing. They wanting the drawdown to be complete on the anniversary of 9/11, not for the Taliban to completely retake the country on 9/11. Now they have to delay things a few months to save face.
I imagine military brass never believed that the civilian command would order the full withdrawal, and the plans were made relatively last minute and haphazardly.
I think Biden really wanted to leave. Why? I dunno. Maybe it was a honor thing for him.
And like many old people - he refused to listen to anybody who disagreed with him and he listened to what he wanted to hear and disregarded the rest. I think it was the same thing for the covid is over symbolism on July 4th. If I'm right - he had to have that day for his mission accomplished "America is back" bullshit.
For Afghanistan during during the rest of Biden's term - I have idea what Biden and the Pentagon will do. They're fucked. Honor is impossible. The Taliban will rape and kill plus force young girls into child marriage. Plus they'll be a horrorshow. They'll hang people in public. And if they want to - they'll put their victim's heads on pikes.
The only thing Biden, his spokespeople and Pentagon spokespeople will do is repeat the following phrase as if it's a loop on a very shitty hip-hop track "The Taliban will not be recognized by the international community..." - whoop-de-do - the Taliban doesn't give a fuck.
Trump had already committed to leaving when Biden took office. the whole establishment pretty much wants to leave, they know they lost. defo not an 'honour' thing
I honestly think that they thought that Kabul wouldn't fall before the official pull-out date, but they overestimated their puppet state's efficacy.
You would think they would have taken steps to avoid this outcome, but maybe this was the outcome they wanted?
This is what was always going to happen, I'm pretty sure of it. The only goals were political and contractor grift. As soon as those goals were achieved or the cost was higher than the payout, US forces would pullout.
Afghanistan military and police are filled with people, as has been mentioned by other commenters, who are just trying to get a paycheck for as long as they can. They're not going to die fighting the Taliban unless the Taliban forces them to.
