U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul

nytimes.com

41 pointsnanis57 comments

Can someone please explain to me how just 75 thousand warfighters are able to take over a country with a population larger than Canada? Is it a question of arms? If so, why didn't we arm them before leaving?

Because the only conclusion I have with this whole mess is that Afgans do not want to resist the Taliban. I abhor war, but if this were happening in Canada people, men and women, would fight with whatever they could their hands on.

Because the population is letting them.

These people DGAF about "Afghanistan" the nation in the western sense. The nation is not a nation. It's a series of tribes, ethnicity and clans that happen to share an area that is all shaded one color on a map. Those groups are where their allegiances lie. They don't have a multi hundred year history of nationalism like European nations do. Furthermore lots of them don't really want a national government because national governments tend to try to steal power and control by these other institutions and homogenize things which they see as a negative.

The Afghan population is on their side. The size of the "army" does not matter. The ANA (Afghan Army) has no willpower to fight, just bail when confronted.

The US overthrew the Taliban, but never "liberated" Afghanistan as most of the population was on the Talib side. The alternative was warlords and constant civil war.

...and Pakistan helped quite a bit too :)

The Afghan "Army" was a bunch of young men who just wanted to draw a steady pay check. There's nothing in it for them without an American Power Structure in the country.

ANA soldiers often didn't even receive steady pay. Their corrupt officers stole it.

>Because the only conclusion I have with this whole mess is that Afgans do not want to resist the Taliban.

This...

Less than 1000 poorly trained and armed guerrillero lead by Fidelo Castro managed to take Cuba when the Cuban army had over 35 thousands soldiers.

The disparity is even more crazy during the battle for Mosul that saw a few hundred ISIS fighters defeat 60k armed forces.

It depends on what are you fighting for. An ideal/belief or money.

Here's a very good explanation of why...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y

Basically Afghanistan is very mountainous and Taliban can just cross the border easily into Pakistan

The answers about the population not having the will to fight miss the point completely and are irrelevant and propagate racist views. Afghanistan has a pre-existing system of tribal relationships that are constantly dynamic. The Taliban are effective because they negotiated a path with the pre-existing power structures. The central government is only one player of many.

CBC wrote a brief article on this recently: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taliban-revival-aug13-1.613...

Because the Taliban are an actual liberating army, fighting a bunch of traitors and foreign financed government [1] / army. Now that the main occupying forces are gone, Afghanistan is coming back to the state they always wanted to be.

[1] from the Afghan population point of view.

A) The US built the Afghan army and state so that it would be utterly dependent on US support, and later withdrew in such a way as to maximize Taliban advantages (e.g. by demanding the release of Taliban prisoners, withdrawing from bases at night without informing the ANA etc.). On the other side, Taliban has full state support from Pakistan which never wavered and was smart enough to know how to manage them politically (something the US is really really bad at and is at the root of US failure, not just in AfPak).

B) Smart warlords knew where the wind was blowing when the US decided to withdraw, and defected to the other side. Oh, and previously, the Afghan president was encouraged to alienate the warlords. Though on this, guilt is only shared, since both Ghani and the US wanted to act so stupidly.

C) It's not 75 thousand, that estimate has no legs to stand on, but that's much less important.

This occupation has cost the US about US$52,000.00 (more than US$2T total) for each Afghan. Their GDP per capita is not even US$500.

This may be what this has cost the US taxpayer but I suspect that a lot of that sum has ended up back in the US economy because it was actually spent on US contractors, US equipment, US military personnel, etc

Spent ... digging up materials, fabricating them into bombs and shipping them over to Afghanistan. The money was wasted - none of it was spent making people better off. The resources dedicated to the failed war effort could have gone to something else.

I'm calling broken window fallacy [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

> none of it was spent making people better off

The money was given to contractors. They became better off.

People talk of government wasting money as if the money is being burnt but that money is not being destroyed; it's given to a certain set of people who become better off.

The potential of what that money could've done to help people was absolutely wasted even if individuals profited and that has marginal economic effects.

I hate war, but the broken window fallacy is too simple here. The military industrial complex builds human capital and supports domestic manufacturing. The resources might be turned into fragments of molten metal, but the people who built them have been train in skilled careers with transferable skills and a slice of manufacturing capacity has been saved from outsourcing. As the prospects and expectations of people rise, they become more confident consumers.

I think it might be more that you haven't understood the broken window fallacy, because you are making a classic didn't-quite-get-the-point broken windows argument.

The US could be enjoying $2 trillion of resources spent improving itself, plus flow on benefits from the economic activity that 2 trillion would have caused.

Instead, the US has wasted (worse than wasted, really) 2 trillion dollars but has managed to enjoy the flow on benefits. The entire 2 trillion was wasted, because it was spent to get outcomes that are useless.

The fact that there are still some flow on effects is better than a pole in the eye with a blunt stick, but still a pretty lousy consolation prize. Also, I unhappily point out that the flow on benefits are also reduced, because instead of useful skills you've got a bunch of logistics experts specialised in how to blow up goat herders instead of ... any skill that might help the US do well in the world. Or people who know exactly how to manufacture killer drones which will not help much as China rolls out 4G mobile networks and plots out a global infrastructure program.

Which is all well and fine if you could actually get the political capital to spend on infrastructure improvements. For 20 years that's been very lacking (current firehouse of spending aside) but political appetite for war has been evergreen. I doubt those skills were so useless as well, in fact, I would wager that a fair number of the medical workers and logistics experts helping us through the pandemic got their start in the military. We're talking about many millions of careers started over the past 20 years.

I would further argue that the human capital is far more important than the physical capital. If you set the continental USA back to a primordial state and provided the population with tents and food aid, I bet we would break all records for a return to a mature service economy.

Again, I agree that we are poorer a window, but if the windows never broke, there's ample evidence that we as a society would have just preferred people to starve rather than pay them to do anything useful like building high speed rail or capturing carbon.

Broken window fallacy is a nice toy economics idea, but it doesn't relate to how societies actually choose to spend or not spend capital.

"We do not negotiate with terrorists"

> has officially appointed negotiators with the Taliban

"We do not negotiate with anyone who has nothing to give in return for weapons".

> "We do not negotiate with terrorists"

If we have the high ground*

The classification of who are terrorists, is fluid anyway...

Deranged man shoots up a [whatever place]?

Does he have white supremacist leanings? Years ago/Fox News: "mentally deranged person". Category appointed by the left: "Right-wing terrorist".

Is that person Muslim/did he tweet about ISIS? "Terrorist"/"Links to terror groups are being looked at."

Remember, Nelson Mandela was once a "terrorist" too.

The classical definition of terrorism is using public violence and fear to achieve political change.

Yeah, yeah..

Hah, Donald Trump is a terrorist leader.

I would define terrorism as the organized destruction of life or property for the purpose of spreading fear rather than the achievement of any strategic military objective.

Deranged white supremacist shoots up a place? Not terrorism, unless the shooting was organized by a group (such as ISIS).

Sometimes it's debatable whether a particular attack constitutes terrorism, but the definition is not "fluid" in my opinion.

> "We do not negotiate with terrorists" > has officially appointed negotiators with the Taliban

I miss Trump already

> "If I were now president, the world would find that our withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a conditions-based withdrawal," Trump claimed in a statement. "I personally had discussions with top Taliban leaders whereby they understood what they are doing now would not have been acceptable," he said.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-blames-biden-unacceptable-talib...

The Taliban is not really a red/blue issue

This is a statement for the headlines, my brother in peak of the Afghanistan war was negotiating with Taliban everyday.

A lecturer I had in college had a military background, optimizing energy consumption in remote military setups. Turns out, the cost per gallon can be over $100 by the time you get it to the region, build and start a convoy for protection, and drive to the remote camps. 40% vs 80% efficiency on the generators really makes a difference!

They were flying into an airport in the middle east, just like a commercial flight. The conversation was along the lines of:

"What are we doing? We're gonna get shot down! Why aren't we doing {aggressive landing style that limits the window for getting hit}?"

"Nah, it's completely safe to land at this airport. They don't mess with our stuff."

"What do you mean, we're in the middle of enemy territory!"

Turns out, there was an agreement between with the local opposition military leader. They wanted/needed oil for heating and other purposes. The US military had tons of barrels of used oil from all their vehicles. The US gave all that to the opposition with an agreement that they don't shoot at our planes.

When are we going to see Tesla Model T(ank) or A(rmoured personnel carrier) and military bases covered in solar panels?

"We do not negotiate with terrorists"

- the Taliban, to the US government

The Taliban are a political faction.

Yes, they are responsible for horrific crimes, but the American Government call them terrorists in an effort to delegitimatize them. Which is why so many people are now surprised by claims that the Taliban are gaining / have gained control of Afghanistan: they can't fathom how a terrorist group can rule a country. But you change their label to be more accurate, and it clicks for people.

Words are powerful.

From FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, in his book Never Split the Difference, the US government always negotiates with terrorists.

The current White House administration has a terrible poker face.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan has become a fiasco. It's clear from media reports that not enough planning was done and the wrong assumptions were made about the Afghan Army. It didn't have to be like this.

"Poker face?" lol. The previous two presidents were willing to engage in troop surges and other steps (quite beyond "poker face") that were sold as stabilizing steps before a pull-out, but despite the "investmet" the stability never appeared. It's time to call the bluff. We've been stuck in this quagmire for 20 years, and now we're not. Evidently, it did have to be like this.

What would having a poker face have looked like? I always assumed it would be a fiasco, we did nothing to ensure stability and the stories of afghans army being completely incompetent go back to when we first got there. My brother is a vet, and his personal anecdotes about them make them seem like toddlers.

> not enough planning was done

20 years of planning was done. 40 years, if you count when the US was arming the proto-Taliban to fight the secular leftists in the PDPA who were running the country back then.

> and the wrong assumptions were made about the Afghan Army.

20 years and trillions of dollars poured in, and four months after the US and NATO announces they will keep funding but remove ground troops, pretty much the whole country outside Kabul and surrounding areas is under Taliban control. I had the right assumption about the Afhan army as I'm sure the White House had - that they are puppets of US policy and would immediately fold when foreign armies leave. One reason the taking back of Afghanistan is so slow is the Taliban is being a little cautious.

> It didn't have to be like this.

When the NLF and PAVN went on the offensive in Vietnam in 1975, Saigon was liberated by the NLF within two months. Puppet governments and armies do not survive when their puppet masters begin withdrawing support. As the US is not going to sacrifice money and enlisted men's lives forever in a country on the other side of the world with a GDP less than Zimbabwe, it was always going to be like this.

> I had the right assumption about the Afhan army

Who cares?

No, begging the Taliban to spare the embassy, and evacuating in a panic are not hallmarks of good planning. Rushing in troops at the last minute to hold the door for your civilian staff is not planning.

Agreed. I’m surprised it doesn’t get painted that way in the media more.

At least in Vietnam we left the government and military in decent enough shape to hold the country together for 3 years after we left.

This is why it's not a good idea to join the US Arm Forces. We should hang our politicians for sending our young people there for nothing. It's bullshit that we went there but we should pull the fuck out and never go back. We should also get out of Iraq and Syria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

As of July 27, 2018, there have been 2,372 U.S. military deaths and 4 Department of Defense civilian deaths in the War in Afghanistan. 1,856 of these deaths have been the result of hostile action. 20,320 American service members have also been wounded in action during the war.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/figures/2...

U.S. COSTS TO DATE FOR THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, 2001-2021ESTIMATED CONGRESSIONAL APPROPRIATIONS AND SPENDING IN CURRENT $BILLIONS TOTAL = $2.261 TRILLION

A little more than 20 years ago: https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/03/01/afg...

> World begs Taliban not to 'vandalize' history

There's no need, since there will be no great battle for Kabul. The moment the US decided to run away, the battle was decided.

Naturally, all this will bring no reckoning for the US political-military establishment whose members will continue to fail upwards, just like after all their other failures.

All the middle-eastern rulers are watching this and drawing the conclusions.

Conclusion: The U. S. A. (raelis) have bigger fish to fry seeing the (undefeated disguised as Chinese) Communist Party buildup nuke arsenal.

Another POV: the US and allies were too naïve to think you can transform a middle-age society to be a modern democracy in a matter of decades.

https://archive.md/fBbbu

Anyone else think we'll see dramatic videos of staff being evacuated in helicopters and then the building burned down?

We may see the latter.

It's a nice building. The Taliban will probably try to capture it intact rather than burning it down.

I think it's more likely that the US will burn it to the ground to prevent the Taliban accessing it. After you have shredded the files and wiped the drives, you napalm it from a helicopter. It's the only way to be sure.

Pakistan is playing the double game again, supporting the Taliban whilst pretending to support the US

Did at least a month passed since US withdrawal? What the hell were they doing there all this time?

I don't fully understand the politics of this request. The US sure knows that when the Taliban finds US people, they will be brought to death. So it is this just to show that the Taliban are not good people if and when they decide to do that? We already know what to expect from the Taliban.

How the mighty have fallen.

An expert said that the Taliban want to burn the US embassy on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 - one month from now.

Oh that's so sweet and sentimental. True romantics those taliban.

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