Vietnam part II. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/06/afghanistan-war-malkasian-book-excerpt-497843 What America Didn’t Understand About Its Longest War That the war went on so long may be tragic, but it is hardly surprising. An Afghan militiaman raises his rifle in Afghanistan's Bajur tribal region, March 2010. | AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen By CARTER MALKASIAN 07/06/2021 04:30 AM EDT Carter Malkasian is the author of The American War in Afghanistan: A History. He served as a civilian advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the senior advisor to General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from 2015 to 2019. As the United States leaves Afghanistan after 20 years of war, there can be little doubt that we lost the war — or to put it more gently, did not attain our objectives. In recent weeks, the Taliban have advanced across the north of the country. Bereft of U.S. support, the Afghan army and police have reportedly lost more than two dozen districts over the course of a month and are now fighting on the outskirts of key cities such as Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. Senior U.S. officials have warned of a civil war, while intelligence reports are said to forecast the fall of the Afghan government — which the United States has worked to strengthen for two decades — within a year. Why did we lose? I’ve been trying to answer that question for 12 years, starting in 2009 when I was a civilian officer in the far-off district of Garmser in Helmand Province. I continued to ponder the question in 2013 and 2014, when I served as political adviser to Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and later as Dunford’s senior adviser when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As I traveled the country with senior U.S. military commanders, I saw that in battle after battle, numerically superior and better-supplied soldiers and police were being defeated by poorly resourced and unexceptionally led Taliban — a dynamic certain to eventually doom the Afghan government unless the United States were to stay indefinitely. multiple surveys of Taliban opinion by Graeme Smith, Ashley Jackson, Theo Farrell, Antonio Giustozzi and others have confirmed that the Taliban fight in part because they believe it their Islamic duty to resist occupation and are convinced their cause will enable them to win. Jackson’s survey of 50 Taliban, published in 2019, discovered that they described their decision to join the movement “in terms of religious devotion and jihad—a sense of personal and public duty. In their view, jihad against foreign occupation was a religious obligation, undertaken to defend their values.” Jihad was about identity, she concluded. This thinking extends to ordinary Afghans as well, many of whom do not subscribe to the Taliban’s extremist political vision but are sympathetic to their invocation of Islamic principles against foreign occupiers. The 2012 Asia Foundation survey, the most respected survey of the Afghan people, found that of those Afghans who strongly sympathized with the Taliban, 77 percent said they did so because the Taliban were Afghans, Muslims, and waging jihad. The American War in Afghanistan by Carter Malkasian. Copyright © 2021 by Carter Malkasian and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. AFGHANISTAN, TALIBAN, AFGHANISTAN WAR
You can't get involved in a civil war unless you are willing to take over. The enemy can always wait you out if they know you will eventually leave.
The goal was never really to defeat the Taliban long term. The military and the vast majority of those involved knew there would be no long term victory because the USA was not willing to do what it did in Japan or Western Europe. The USA made no long term effort to keep out the Taliban or change the power structure in the Middle East. The USA was all about a mixture of a select group of wealthy people profiting, vengeance by removing a few particular targets..... and making the American people believe they were doing something. If the USA really wanted to defeat the Taliban or control places like Iraq and Afghanistan, there would have been long term investment in those areas, long term occupation and the building of an infrastructure. None of that was done. The US turned Iraq into a parking lot...... Iraq no longer exists..... and Afghanistan is hardly a country either.... basically the US just goes into the Middle East, removes figures that piss them off, cause a huge power vacuum, a lot of people die and then leaves.... Sometimes the USA doesn't even have to invade, they just help things escalate like in Syria and in Libya. Iraq..... Afghanistan...... Syria...... Libya all in the last 20 years ......... before that, played a huge part in why Iran is the terrible place it is..... Egypt, and others.... and that doesn't even get into the support for oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The English started the destruction of the Mid East, and when they were too weak to continue..... the US under Kissinger was more than happy to take over. It served the US well to an extent in the 60's through early 80's, but has been an epic failure since. The USA has played a huge role in destabilizing an entire major region of the world purely for political reasons.
The role of Pakistan cannot be understated. It's a safe harbor zone for many to wait out in. If you aren't going to colonize the region essentially then you are relying on the neighboring countries to be the US support when the US is no longer there, and the US just isn't going to get that ever from Pakistan. Iran and Turkey stepping in would only make matters worse too. So we are left with the only real option of letting the Afghanistan government topple over and the Taliban taking over long term. ... The Fact is though that even if under a worst case scenario where the Taliban runs the country AND regains it's ties to Al Qaeda where they declare war against the US (which is kind of doubtful beyond chest pumping, and terrorist attempts here and there), the end result is that the threat to Western Civilization is still minimal. Terrorist attacks are terrible, but I think we've learned something over the past 20 years, and can be prepared for what could come. There's no evidence that the US being in Afghanistan really had anything to do with thwarting all terrorist attacks anyways. The Taliban isn't going to sail to Florida and attack our coast with 100,000 troops. They won't be allowed to threaten nuclear war (although they could try to develop over the next 10 years or buy from another country). In the end given the threats we have in this day in age, the threats Afghanistan falling are minimal in comparison to the greater threats. Everyone should keep that into perspective, and hope that Chris Wray and co. can do a good job in defending against any terrorist attacks like 9/11 if terrorist groups are allowed to organize and get funded there in Afghanistan without any competent government. It sucks for the people of Afghanistan that want a peaceful and more democratic way of life, but it's the unfortunate reality we just cannot stop. Best thing we can do is find a way to get as many of the good people out of the country as fast as we can.
It may have also secondarily sent messages to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait (?) or other US aligned parties that our armed forces would proactively engage hostile or ascendant regional powers to the extent that they don't need to.
Further more, go back in history...no countries could take down afghanistan. They simply aren't a country as we know in the west. There is no centralized control, the culture itself is tribal and the lack of infrastucture allows it to the point that many parts of the country don't even speak a common language. They could care less what happens in Kabul adn generally in the country it is considered that its an american propped up yes man. EVen in places in Pakstan or india where we support "democracy", with the literacy rates and culture, it isn't quite an actual democracy. In the end we give money to a lot o countries in "aid" that people never see basically to give them incentive to have us in the table on policy and thats fine. No way to do that in Afghan effetively though. Yep and you nailed it, the biggest actors with thumbs on the scale in the area are Saudi and Israel who are more aligned then most people think. If any good happened with the combination of open source info, now even the 'patriotic' people agree that the wars were ill advised, costly, deadly when it happened they did the same thing they do now, scream about patriotism like its North Korea and you ain't allowed to question. Its rinsed, repeated, sadly History Rhymes
That is exactly what it did and as a result caused additional internal problems in the region. I hear a lot of people complain that the Middle East is a mess and I think to myself it is amazing it isn’t a bigger mess looking at the political interfering in the region.
The CCP is a festering boil on the ass of the world. They are thin skinned, lack basic human morality and are mocked by the rest of the world.
There are strip clubs in Iran, you just need to be very powerful. There are some amazingly beautiful prostitutes in Iran as well.
Yes, Afghanistan isn’t really a country. Actually there are a number of areas in the Middle East like that. It is a wonderful and interesting part of the world but it isn’t a place that shares a lot of values or cultural similarities to us and we tend to judge it based on our view of the world and that is a mistake.
The regression of Christianity and the legal tolerance for religion has been very beneficial for the Unitrd States. You can lead a horse to water.... The US is very moderate in beliefs and its religious base is very casual. Yes, extremist (non violent) exist and they are not shy, but they are a largely unwelcoming minority. In many parts of the middle east, western version of moderates face significant wrath. No, most Muslims are not violent. Moderates are just less welcomed than extremist. Intolerance is a common commodity. Taliban and Afgan have much more in common than Afgan and western ideas. Western ideas are the first to go the moment the US leaves.
Back in 2002 I remember reading how Afghanistan was where empires go to die. The British couldn't control it, the Soviets couldn't, even the T'ang Dynasty couldn't. Afghanistan was always going to be hard for all of the reasons noted. The only real chance is for those Afghans that don't want their country to turn back into a medieval failed state is to be willing to fight for it.
This is why we need aliens to set the record straight and mars colonization once we get the truth about the universe than we as man can move on as part of the super intellectual beings well, basically regular humans need to catch up to 99ers first and foremost, that's going to take centuries
