Most of my life, all of many Zoomers’ lives. Twenty years, surpassing even Vietnam.
All that money wasted, all those dead civilians, all those broken soldiers. All of it for absolutely nothing.
What an abhorrent clown world we live in.
All that money wasted, all those dead civilians, all those broken soldiers. All of it for absolutely nothing.
What an abhorrent clown world we live in.
With all the money and resources spent in that country promoting something most of the people there never wanted, we probably could have been carbon neutral 3 or 4 times over.
We gave up so many of our freedoms at home - went collectively insane for two decades out of some abstract fear of "terrorism". The number of Americans _alone_ who died (and probably will die in the future) as a result of this miscalculation is a huge scalar multiple of the life and property lost on 9/11.
The Pax Americana that the post-Cold-War era promised is shattered. Even the one "silver lining": That this one poor little country would be a place where women would be more free and have a little better life... And maybe something good would come out of that. Even that is gone now.
I agree, it's just hard to salvage any kind of positive outcome from this - especially considering the huge opportunity costs.
You know, it's hard for war to be a "tool of liberation" if you do literally nothing to foster the basics of a free/liberal society in the places you went to war for. WWII is not a proper comparison at all; pre-WWII Europe did of course have a robust civil society, very much unlike Afghanistan. The thing about places like Afghanistan is that politicized religion is the closest they get to something even loosely comparable to what we'd call free/civil society in the West!
To be fair, it wasn't abstract, though one could argue that particular attack was a one-off that could never be successfully repeated. But there were other concerns of dirty bombs, anthrax, etc. at the time.
That said, it's truly a shame that the US abandoned Afghanistan to invade Iraq. Afghanistan seemed to have potential for nation-building had we not diverted and diluted our efforts with Iraq.
Well we did send a strong message about choosing one's house guests wisely. But that message was delivered a decade ago.
Perhaps the US could have purchased land from Afghanistan, which isn't so much of a unified country anyway. They could have established permanent bases from which they could aid the Afghanistan government and project power against other regional adversaries (ie. China, Iran, and "ally" Pakistan). The monetary injection would have helped too.
There's no way this pull out doesn't look bad for the Biden administration. This is going to be a major election year topic and we're going to hear how Democrats "hate women" and freedom. What a quagmire.
Those "10,000 soldiers" are 18-year-old kids. With guns. In a place where they are scared, angry, bored and have no frame of reference understand the culture. What happens in that situation is about what you'd expect to happen, even when they are the "best trained in the world". The longer you keep them there, the more angry the locals are going to be.
Your Midwestern state government collapses and loses the ability to defend its territory and the Feds cannot help you for whatever reason.
Two rival factions move in
- a Canadian warlord and his men: They terrorize the locals but otherwise spend time drinking light beer, listening to Steppenwolf and driving around in Pontiac Trans Ams hooting and waving guns around. They promise guts and glory to young men kicking dust in town.
- a division of the Pakistani military: they are generally professional, minus friction with the occupied population. They think fast cars, beer and stadium rock are impediments to a moral society, so they suppress these things and try to impose their values on the local population.
Do you imagine the local population would be happy with having either faction around? Do you think that they would all gravitate towards the more professional legitimate faction vs the Canadian warband?
The Taliban are hardline, repressive and familiar. There is most definitely an overlap between the worldview of the Taliban and the local population, including how they view the role of women. They are just more extreme and militarily organized.
The US are foreign and have very little in common with (or knowledge of) how the Pashtuns live. Maybe they have a small amount in common with urban, secular Afghan society.
If the Taliban were grossly unpopular across the entire society, how are they able to make the gains they are?
Just compare the incentives. If the Taliban win, Taliban fighters get to plunder cities, forcibly take wives, and get power. If the ANA forces win, they keep a nation which they don't identify strongly with free. Now add in that the ANA is completely demoralized from loss of all US support and which do you think is more willing to fight and risk their lives? It's little surprise how things are turning out.
Is this sarcasm?
> There's no way this pull out doesn't look bad for the Biden administration. This is going to be a major election year topic and we're going to hear how Democrats "hate women" and freedom. What a quagmire.
I think it looks pretty good for him. A president that finally stopped wasting US taxpayer money for people US taxpayers do not prioritize.
That's still 20 years of attempted infrastructure and education. I knew at least one person in graduate school that would not have been there. Just because this is a tragedy doesn't mean everything is dead.