Finally - an end to the Afghan war?
drummerboy said:
look at his first sentence.
The sentence that begins, “This is wishful thinking”?
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
look at his first sentence.
The sentence that begins, “This is wishful thinking”?
Yes, the sentence that seems to ignore the fact that his "wishful thinking" is actually happening.
drummerboy said:
Yes, the sentence that seems to ignore the fact that his "wishful thinking" is actually happening.
While your contention is that the evacuation is going as well as it possibly could under the circumstances, right?
I'd submit that "the circumstances" weren't merely something that just happens, but that which we had a good deal of influence over. I suppose if you narrow the focus to simply "from the moment Kabul fell to now", sure the evacuation is going as well as could be expected. My point was that this is part of the problem. When the US deployed to Kuwait and engaged the Iraqi army there, was their focus restricted to "the moment US troops arrive on the ground"? No, of course not -- there was a good deal of preparation and planning for all the time before that moment, to ensure that "the circumstances" were as much in their favor as possible. And of course there's an entire constellation of training and planning focused on these kinds of missions.
What was the military, state department, and other government institutions doing in January after Biden took office to create the best possible circumstances for our departure? What were they doing in February of 2020 under the Trump admin? What were they doing in 2001, and in the run up, as we were getting ready to go in?
So sure, if you're trying to narrowly argue that the evacuation is going great, under the circumstances, I'll grant that, but that rather misses my point.
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
Yes, the sentence that seems to ignore the fact that his "wishful thinking" is actually happening.
While your contention is that the evacuation is going as well as it possibly could under the circumstances, right?
You can't argue with the numbers.
PVW said:
I'd submit that "the circumstances" weren't merely something that just happens, but that which we had a good deal of influence over. I suppose if you narrow the focus to simply "from the moment Kabul fell to now", sure the evacuation is going as well as could be expected. My point was that this is part of the problem. When the US deployed to Kuwait and engaged the Iraqi army there, was their focus restricted to "the moment US troops arrive on the ground"? No, of course not -- there was a good deal of preparation and planning for all the time before that moment, to ensure that "the circumstances" were as much in their favor as possible. And of course there's an entire constellation of training and planning focused on these kinds of missions.
What was the military, state department, and other government institutions doing in January after Biden took office to create the best possible circumstances for our departure? What were they doing in February of 2020 under the Trump admin? What were they doing in 2001, and in the run up, as we were getting ready to go in?
So sure, if you're trying to narrowly argue that the evacuation is going great, under the circumstances, I'll grant that, but that rather misses my point.
what should they have done differently?
"Under the circumstances" is that the U.S. was committed to leaving in May, which was extended by Biden.
In the meantime, the Afghan government was supposed to maintain its military operations, but did not, and even negotiated with the Taliban to allow them to walk into Kabul.
As American and NATO troops began withdrawing in May, Afghan security forces swiftly collapsed, often surrendering without firing a shot. Many accepted Taliban offers of safe passage and cash, often relayed by village elders, and abandoned weapons and equipment confiscated by the Taliban.
Kabul’s Sudden Fall to Taliban Ends U.S. Era in Afghanistan - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The negotiated surrenders were just one element of a broader Taliban strategy that captured heavily defended provincial capitals with lightning speed, and saw the insurgents walk into the capital, Kabul, on Sunday with barely a shot fired. It was a campaign defined by both collapse and conquest, executed by patient opportunists.
How the Taliban Conquered Afghanistan - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
So no matter how we got here, over the nearly 20 years, it's what happened in the last few months which Biden has to deal with now.
Has anyone had the nerve to suggest that perhaps most Afghanis prefer the rule of Muslim Fundamentalists to corrupt secularists and foreign occupiers?.
STANV said:
Has anyone had the nerve to suggest that perhaps most Afghanis prefer the rule of Muslim Fundamentalists to corrupt secularists and foreign occupiers?.
Dexter Filkins, in the latest New Yorker: What We Left Behind in Afghanistan
Two excerpts:
“The Afghan state, venal and predatory, became the main driver of Taliban recruitment.”
“In recent weeks, the United States’ hasty, ill-planned withdrawal did the Taliban one last favor. By bringing chaos to the capital and abandoning those who had risked their lives to aid the U.S., it surely inspired many Afghans to wish for someone to restore order.”
DaveSchmidt said:
STANV said:
Has anyone had the nerve to suggest that perhaps most Afghanis prefer the rule of Muslim Fundamentalists to corrupt secularists and foreign occupiers?.
Dexter Filkins, in the latest New Yorker: What We Left Behind in Afghanistan
Two excerpts:
“The Afghan state, venal and predatory, became the main driver of Taliban recruitment.”
“In recent weeks, the United States’ hasty, ill-planned withdrawal did the Taliban one last favor. By bringing chaos to the capital and abandoning those who had risked their lives to aid the U.S., it surely inspired many Afghans to wish for someone to restore order.”
that last statement is kind of silly.
Well for example Biden ended up sending several thousand more troops to Afghanistan in the last few weeks. This seems to be a common theme -- realizing, only after events are well under way, that we need more people on the ground than expected to accomplish our objectives. This seems like a symptom of that too-narrow-focus I've been critiquing. Seems to me that a surge of troops to secure the evacuation should have been part of the plan from the beginning, no? Even under a best case scenario where the American-backed government was still around, it would have been under siege conditions. What kind of plan for evacuating a country after 20 years, with all of the equipment, documents, and of course people who would need to be evacuated (or in the case of equipment and documents, rendered unusable to the enemy) doesn't imply a need for a larger rather than smaller force to pull off? How is it that we weren't even able to fully secure the airport? Securely holding a few square kilometers of ground is well within the abilities of the US military if properly planned for. That planning should absolutely have been part of our mission in Afghanistan alongside all the offensive and defensive campaign planning that was occurring. That should have kicked into high gear when the Trump admin began negotiating withdrawal, and Biden should have pushed hard on this once he took office.
David Leonhardt had a piece in the NYT today that suggested what could have been best case scenarios for leaving Afghanistan. None of them are that great. One challenge would have been trying to evacuate large numbers of people earlier, while not attracting attention of the Taliban. Not easy to say the least.
Both Michael and Helene point out that these scenarios probably still would have been messy. A huge, quiet evacuation program is a contradiction in terms. And under almost any circumstance, more Afghans would have wanted to leave a Taliban-run country than the U.S. would have been willing to admit (especially with the current immigration skepticism in this country). “People were still going to run to Kabul airport,” Helene says.
The reality may be that if we were going to leave Afghanistan, what we are seeing now is in fact the best case scenario.
PVW said:
Well for example Biden ended up sending several thousand more troops to Afghanistan in the last few weeks. This seems to be a common theme -- realizing, only after events are well under way, that we need more people on the ground than expected to accomplish our objectives. This seems like a symptom of that too-narrow-focus I've been critiquing. Seems to me that a surge of troops to secure the evacuation should have been part of the plan from the beginning, no? Even under a best case scenario where the American-backed government was still around, it would have been under siege conditions. What kind of plan for evacuating a country after 20 years, with all of the equipment, documents, and of course people who would need to be evacuated (or in the case of equipment and documents, rendered unusable to the enemy) doesn't imply a need for a larger rather than smaller force to pull off? How is it that we weren't even able to fully secure the airport? Securely holding a few square kilometers of ground is well within the abilities of the US military if properly planned for. That planning should absolutely have been part of our mission in Afghanistan alongside all the offensive and defensive campaign planning that was occurring. That should have kicked into high gear when the Trump admin began negotiating withdrawal, and Biden should have pushed hard on this once he took office.
correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump left Biden with about 2500 troops, right? It would have been odd, don't you think, for Biden, as part of his plan to continue the withdrawal, to instead send more troops in? I'm sure that would have went over well.
It's easy to say now that more troops were needed, but clearly no one expected Kabul to fall before the 8/31 deadline for troop withdrawal. It's that event that precipitated the couple of days of chaos at the airport.
drummerboy said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump left Biden with about 2500 troops. It would have been odd, don't you think, for Biden, as part of his plan to continue the withdrawal, to instead send more troops in?
Only odd because culturally we don't seem to believe in ending things with the same level of focus and resourcing we do to starting them. Shutting something down properly vs "just leaving" is a big operation.
PVW said:
drummerboy said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump left Biden with about 2500 troops. It would have been odd, don't you think, for Biden, as part of his plan to continue the withdrawal, to instead send more troops in?
Only odd because culturally we don't seem to believe in ending things with the same level of focus and resourcing we do to starting them. Shutting something down properly vs "just leaving" is a big operation.
Yeah, but your implication is that we should have inserted a larger ground force so as to facilitate an earlier than planned evacuation. Which was likely to precipitate it's own chaos in Kabul.
There was no clean way out.
I think trumpenstein booby trapped Biden. He made the deal with the taliban. He withdrew 15,000 troops before Biden got into office. We don’t know the details of the deal trumpenstein made with the taliban, but I highly suspect Putin and China were somehow involved behind the scenes. With trillions of dollars worth of lithium, gold, oil and copper in Afghanistan, the deal was made.
I’m pretty sure more details will become available once Biden gets the people out.
This whole clusterphuck has trumpenstein poison smeared all over it.
Jaytee said:
I think trumpenstein booby trapped Biden. He made the deal with the taliban. He withdrew 15,000 troops before Biden got into office. We don’t know the details of the deal trumpenstein made with the taliban, but I highly suspect Putin and China were somehow involved behind the scenes. With trillions of dollars worth of lithium, gold, oil and copper in Afghanistan, the deal was made.
I’m pretty sure more details will become available once Biden gets the people out.
This whole clusterphuck has trumpenstein poison smeared all over it.
this pre-supposes that Trump thought he would lose, which I somehow doubt.
drummerboy said:
this pre-supposes that Trump thought he would lose, which I somehow doubt.
The art of the deal is hedging your bets on both results… trumpenstein is notorious for covering his sun starved baxide
Why anybody thinks that the revival of an extremist Islamic regime is a good thing for China and Russia with their restive internal or bordering Muslim populations is quite beyond my comprehension. Certainly they are enjoying seeing us embarrassed, but that is about it.
tjohn said:
Why anybody thinks that the revival of an extremist Islamic regime is a good thing for China and Russia with their restive internal or bordering Muslim populations is quite beyond my comprehension. Certainly they are enjoying seeing us embarrassed, but that is about it.
They probably see it as turning the challenge from a foreign policy one -- US physically present in force near their borders -- to a quasi-domestic problem -- issues in their "sphere of influence" and in their borderlands.
tjohn said:
Why anybody thinks that the revival of an extremist Islamic regime is a good thing for China and Russia with their restive internal or bordering Muslim populations is quite beyond my comprehension. Certainly they are enjoying seeing us embarrassed, but that is about it.
The Taliban has been doing business with China, for mining rights within the territory that it has controlled.
They may be "extremists", but they are also business-minded, with an extensive opium cultivation industry and dealings in mineral rights. They'll be inclined to cooperate with China.
drummerboy said:
Jaytee said:
I think trumpenstein booby trapped Biden. He made the deal with the taliban. He withdrew 15,000 troops before Biden got into office. We don’t know the details of the deal trumpenstein made with the taliban, but I highly suspect Putin and China were somehow involved behind the scenes. With trillions of dollars worth of lithium, gold, oil and copper in Afghanistan, the deal was made.
I’m pretty sure more details will become available once Biden gets the people out.
This whole clusterphuck has trumpenstein poison smeared all over it.this pre-supposes that Trump thought he would lose, which I somehow doubt.
Trump was reducing troop levels before the election, to keep Americans out of combat operations. As a result, there weren't American combat deaths in an election year. Trump then halved the remaining troop level after the election, to the 2500 there when Biden took office.
U.S. troops in Afghanistan now down to 2,500, lowest since 2001: Pentagon | Reuters
From what I've read, the areas rich in minerals are not well supported by any infrastructure (i.e. good roads) so China or anyone else have a tough road (heh) ahead to get at them.
Also, one would have thought that within the past 20 years, American or European companies would have made the effort to mine them. Apparently there's tons of lithium there.
drummerboy said:
From what I've read, the areas rich in minerals are not well supported by any infrastructure (i.e. good roads) so China or anyone else have a tough road (heh) ahead to get at them.
Also, one would have thought that within the past 20 years, American or European companies would have made the effort to mine them. Apparently there's tons of lithium there.
China Eyes $1 Trillion of Minerals With Risky Bet on Taliban - Bloomberg
drummerboy said:
Also, one would have thought that within the past 20 years, American or European companies would have made the effort to mine them. Apparently there's tons of lithium there.
I don't know if the Afghan government we supported ever really had control of the rural areas where the mining would be. They had the cities and surrounding areas, mostly.
drummerboy said:
From what I've read, the areas rich in minerals are not well supported by any infrastructure (i.e. good roads) so China or anyone else have a tough road (heh) ahead to get at them.
China is very capable in infrastructure build. Physically, building roads, bridges will not be a problem for them. The impediment will be Afghan society, its stability and political issues.
I would hazard to say that any developed country has the wherewithal to build roads. They've all had a lot of practice.
STANV said:
Has anyone had the nerve to suggest that perhaps most Afghanis prefer the rule of Muslim Fundamentalists to corrupt secularists and foreign occupiers?.
I've been brooding about this but from a feminist point of view. I wondered if a return to some of the fundamentalist restrictions were appealing to most of the male population. That the secularism and with it the freedom for the women of Afghanistan, supported by foreign occupiers may have been infuriating.
That's the lens that I have been looking through as I deal with the conflicting feelings I've had as we prepare to leave.
nohero said:
tjohn said:
Why anybody thinks that the revival of an extremist Islamic regime is a good thing for China and Russia with their restive internal or bordering Muslim populations is quite beyond my comprehension. Certainly they are enjoying seeing us embarrassed, but that is about it.
The Taliban has been doing business with China, for mining rights within the territory that it has controlled.
They may be "extremists", but they are also business-minded, with an extensive opium cultivation industry and dealings in mineral rights. They'll be inclined to cooperate with China.
Afghanistan will suffer the resource curse, then, and that does not make for stability. I predict that Muslim factions will turn on the Chinese in time.
Fair. I took the post as a whole.