Failure in Afghanistan, over 40 years in the making: Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of...

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

Great post.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

Critical thinking at its best

son of witless

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

Shift the focus away from Joe Biden. Deflection, deflection, deflection. The end was not inevitable. The takeover by the Taliban was not inevitable. The fall of the Afghan government was not inevitable. That is what you are selling.

It was not " the right thing to do. " It is amusing how you dress up failure with pretty bows and pink ribbons. Lipstick on the pig.

Good effort though. I bet it works too.

Rose42

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

Good article however it shouldn’t obscure the fact that Biden demonstrated he is not a leader. People need to remember that

currahee506

The goal of the Washington corporation (see the activity of the Grant administration after the civil war), fueled by the "slush fund" of the treasury department is to "globalize the world."
Their "foreign policy" is not and never has been the American foreign policy of the original American Constitution. As with the ones who chose the presidents we "v**ed for", and, as we have observed in the years of our existence during their "police actions" in Korea and Viet Nam, and now Afghanistan, there is no "winning anything;" rather, it is an occupation for the purpose of establishing a central bank. The bankers in the West are in competition with the bankers in the East for "reserve dollar" dominance. Only two countries left that do not have one, Iran and Cuba. The assumption of these "power brokers" is that the corporation will bring about a "peace through trade" by making everyone trade with one currency and believe in one religion. If they have to de-populate the earth to get rid of the "bad guys" (particularly born-again Christians, because they believe in the "individual"). they will do it. For these "elitists" the "end justifies the means" and they are "the guardians" of the New World Order."

Cuda2020

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

That's the t***h

Cuda2020

son of witless wrote:

Shift the focus away from Joe Biden. Deflection, deflection, deflection. The end was not inevitable. The takeover by the Taliban was not inevitable. The fall of the Afghan government was not inevitable. That is what you are selling.

It was not " the right thing to do. " It is amusing how you dress up failure with pretty bows and pink ribbons. Lipstick on the pig.

Good effort though. I bet it works too.

Maybe you're not fully aware of the cost of this war to us. Wars have bankrupt countries, as it did with Russia, do you recall that? When we went into this war 20 years ago we didn't set up any ay to pay for it, instead we chose the path of lunacy when we gave the people who had to help pay for the war through taxes, a tax break, so they could make more profit.

This war is and evergreen, alive and thriving, it knows no end, but more to the direct point...it is not our war.

Weasel Loc: In the Great State Of Indiana!!

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

Indeed?
https://youtu.be/WdeTLhY9eIQ

tactful Loc: just North of the District of LMAO

Lest We Forget, Former Guy set a May 1st deadline,per the deal struck with Taliban, that was extended 4 months to have some kind of Planning, absent from the former admin,says a contact in the Pentagon.

son of witless

Cuda2020 wrote:

Maybe you're not fully aware of the cost of this war to us. Wars have bankrupt countries, as it did with Russia, do you recall that? When we went into this war 20 years ago we didn't set up any ay to pay for it, instead we chose the path of lunacy when we gave the people who had to help pay for the war through taxes, a tax break, so they could make more profit.

This war is and evergreen, alive and thriving, it knows no end, but more to the direct point...it is not our war.

Scuse me, you Liberals are the ones who don't know the cost of things. Just bill it to the tax payers, print a few $ Trillion more. The point is, when Joey took over, Afghanistan was quiet. There was zero urgency to do anything. We could have left a small foot print and kept Bagram air base open. Now thanks to Joe Biden and YOU, if the Taliban allow Terorists to attack America, we have no way to know about it or stop it.

Thank you Sir, may I have another ?

Cuda2020

son of witless wrote:

Scuse me, you Liberals are the ones who don't know the cost of things. Just bill it to the tax payers, print a few $ Trillion more. The point is, when Joey took over, Afghanistan was quiet. There was zero urgency to do anything. We could have left a small foot print and kept Bagram air base open. Now thanks to Joe Biden and YOU, if the Taliban allow Terorists to attack America, we have no way to know about it or stop it.

Thank you Sir, may I have another ?

That's a r**t, that's why we get in debt under right wing leadership administrations and congress, have catastrophic tanking of our economy under Republican leadership...HA

LMAO

With Democrats job to recuperate and rebuild.

While you're at it, please tell me...if our economy was so GREAT as Frump claimed, why didn't he get our debt paid down ? He sure paid his debt down.

Of course it was quiet, Trump left without urging anyone to leave. And me? Oh yeah I have a lot to do with it, another ridiculous personal comment. Joe got us out, what did your boy do in four years to get us out...4 years, not months.

I think you've had one too many already, put the bottle away.

son of witless

Cuda2020 wrote:

That's a r**t, that's why we get in debt under rig... (show quote)

Are you in another conversation on another site ? You have not addressed what I wrote.

Radiance3

slatten49 wrote:

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Years in the Making

By William Hartung, defense analyst covering the economics of Pentagon spending.

The wrenching scenes at the Kabul airport and the justified fears of what will happen to Afghans under a new round of Taliban rule have formed the backdrop of a heated national conversation about what the United States should or should not have done in Afghanistan. Much of the criticism has landed at the doorstep of the Biden administration for a poorly planned withdrawal that has left U.S. citizens and Afghan allies at risk. Some aspects of the immediate crisis might have been averted if evacuations of U.S. personnel and Afghans who worked with the U.S. had started sooner. And the administration clearly underestimated the speed at which the Afghan security forces would collapse in the face of the recent Taliban offensive. But even if the U.S. exit had been better planned, the Taliban takeover would have occurred sooner or later, with harsh consequences for the people of Afghanistan. The short-term priority must be to evacuate U.S. personnel as quickly as possible, and to provide safe havens – including visas and financial support – for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

But as for the question of what should have been done differently, keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely was not a viable answer, as President Biden noted in his speech earlier this week:

“After 20 years — a trillion dollars spent training and equipping hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, 2,448 Americans k**led, 20,722 more wounded, and untold thousands coming home with unseen trauma to their mental health — I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

Given this reality, we should resist the arguments of those who have long advocated for our failed military mission in Afghanistan that if only we had “stayed the course” militarily things could have turned out dramatically differently. As the Washington Post made abundantly clear with the release of the “Afghanistan Papers” – which are elaborated upon in a new book by Post reporter Craig Whitlock – U.S. officials have long known that U.S.-backed military and police personnel in Afghanistan were not a viable fighting force, crippled by corruption and lack of basic support from the top levels of the Afghan government. Even as the final Taliban offensive moved forward, there were Afghan troops forced to leave their posts due to lack of basic items like food and ammunition. The will to support a corrupt government in Kabul of questionable legitimacy just was not there. The repeated public claims by U.S. military and civilian leaders that the Afghan forces were improving and were combat capable belied their private pessimism – in short, they were lies designed to sustain U.S. public support for the war.

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, it’s long past time for a radical reassessment of America’s overly militarized, relentlessly interventionist foreign policy. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, America’s post-9/11 wars have incurred obligations of over $6.4 trillion; costs hundreds of thousands of lives on all sides; and left hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, or with severe physical wounds, or with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the result was a corrupt, repressive, sectarian regime that opened the door to the conquest of large parts of the country by ISIS, as Iraqi troops evaporated in the face of their 2014 onslaught – for many of the same reasons involving corruption, lack of supplies, and plummeting morale that characterized Afghan troops in the face of the Taliban’s final offensive. In Afghanistan, the result was 20 years of devastating conflict followed by the rise to power of the Taliban. Both cases should be object lessons in the limits – and dangerous consequences – of relying on military force as the primary tool of U.S. global engagement.

Any reasonable assessment of U.S. military efforts of the past two decades and beyond must also grapple with the fact that U.S. interventions often make matters worse by paving the way for the development of new, more determined, and more deadly adversaries. This was the case in the Carter and Reagan administration’s decisions to arm and train anti-Soviet mujahadeen to fight back against Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan. A significant portion of the fighters trained and armed by the U.S. – including foreign fighters like Osama Bin-Laden – went on to form the core of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS grew up out of the extremist Iraqi opposition to U.S. intervention there, and its leaders plotted the creation of their new organization in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons. This phenomenon has been referred to as “the boomerang effect” – arms sales, training, and military intervention coming back to haunt (and lead to attacks on) the nation engaging in them.

The critiques of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that getting out was the right thing to do. The failure of our multi-trillion-dollar military misadventure in Afghanistan should prompt a thorough rethinking and revision of a foreign policy that has for far too long prioritized arms and military dominance over diplomacy and global cooperation.

Aug 18, 2021 - Failure In Afghanistan, Over 40 Yea... (show quote)

=======================
Getting out from the Afghans was the right thing. Fact was it was overdue. However, it was the dumb demented means how Biden did the exit. There was no planning. The period provided was very brief without prior plans how the exit must be conducted without further damages and casualties to our troops or to any civilians. Biden made it appear that he surrendered to Taliban. Coward democrat!

On February 2020, President Trump had a well-planned exit strategy to doing that till May 2021. There were lots of time and planning. Pulling out must not be a surrender, but ensured that our mission was done. But the 2020 e******n was s****n from Trump by Biden. Trump was right that he wanted to get out of Afghanistan.

But Biden did the exit very poorly. Surrender was Biden's actions. Made it appear that US surrendered to the Taliban. It should not be that way. Worst is Biden left some of our fellow-Americans at the Taliban. What's wrong with Biden? Because of Biden, did all our men and women serve there in vain?

Fact of the matter was Biden empowered the Taliban by leaving all the military assets to them. These were repeats of the same Iraq mistakes that empowered ISIS due to the weapons left by Obama after the US security forces was pulled out in from Iraq in 2011. Democrats never learn any lesson about that. It was a dumb pull-out strategy.

Fact of the matter was US should have pulled out once UBL was
captured and k**led on May 2, 2011. We have done our mission. We must not further get involved with those tribal people, cause they will never change to a democracy system of governance. Leave them alone but ensuring that they don't expand their terror. Those are the things US must prevent.

Obama was the president in 2011. Why did US continue staying in Afghanistan? To help Muslims?

Big Kahuna

Cuda2020 wrote:

That's a r**t, that's why we get in debt under rig... (show quote)

Slo Joe got us out alright. He got us out of security on the homefront and into a situation where more islamic extremists now have access to our cities and states. Thanks Joe. You, like Bathhouse Bury, always do the right thing for Islamic countries at the peril of our country.