How the Taliban Overran the Afghan Army, Built by the U.S. over 20 Years | Hacker News Reader

How the Taliban Overran the Afghan Army, Built by the U.S. over 20 Years

wsj.com

56 pointsjohntfella89 comments

https://archive.is/2021.08.15-155605/https://www.wsj.com/art...

10/2000 Presidential Campaign Debate:

“MR. BUSH -- Somalia. It started off as a humanitarian mission then changed into a nation-building mission and that's where the mission went wrong. The mission was changed. And as a result, our nation paid a price, and so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war. I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow a dictator when it's in our best interests. But in this case, it was a nation-building exercise. And same with Haiti. I wouldn't have supported either.

…

MR. BUSH -- I don't think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America. Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war. That's what it's meant to do and when it gets overextended, morale drops. Well, listen, I strongly believe we need to have a military presence in the Korean peninsula not only to keep the peace in the peninsula but to keep regional stability. And I strongly believe we need to keep a presence in NATO. But I'm going to be judicious as to how to use the military. It needs to be in our vital interest. The mission needs to be clear and the exit strategy obvious.“

"The Afghan army fighting alongside American troops was molded to match the way the Americans operate. The U.S. military, the world’s most advanced, relies heavily on combining ground operations with air power, using aircraft to resupply outposts, strike targets, ferry the wounded, and collect reconnaissance and intelligence.

In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore."

Bottom line, the U.S. trained and armed the Afghan army as a colonial auxiliary force, able to do boots-on-the-ground scutwork under the guidance and support of the U.S. military, but totally unprepared to stand on its own. Biden unthinkingly yanked that support away and the Taliban were ready.

The picture would be far less tragic if the U.S. had done a competent job of building the Afghans up to the point where they could defend themselves, and then their forces turned traitor and joined the Taliban. Then we could say the Taliban are the rulers that Afghan's really want, and quietly fortify the borders, apply sanctions, etc..

However, we (and I include allies of the U.S. such as the U.K. and Canada) really pulled the rug out from underneath Afghans. Yes, the government we propped up was corrupt and inept, but we sold Afghans on the lie that, if they wanted to, they could enjoy some semblance of a secular Western democracy. Everyone the least bit progressive who stuck their necks out to educate girls, etc. is now going to get beaten down, or worse. We lured them out for the Taliban and abandoned them. They're now in a worse position than they would have been if the U.S. led coalition had simply bombed the bejeezus out of Afghanistan and then buggered off without spending two decades trying to build something.

There is a lesson here that the victims of any future "nation building" efforts will be forced to remember.

Come on, if the Taliban can "operate", there's no reason why the Afghan military wouldn't be able to. They don't have to defend themselves "competently" to a developed nation standard, but it speaks volumes when they fail to put up even a modicum of resistance. This failure is absolutely on the Afghans.

> spending two decades trying to build something

maybe trying to build something (in a random faraway country, one of the many in the world) was never the objective in the first place.

Best summary of this tragedy

The article is clear. The US built an army on the US model, reliant on heavy logistic and air support from outside. Without that support, the army collapsed.

At the very least I would have modeled it by looking at successful neighbouring armies.

All armies run on logistics. Not building a replacement is irresponsible.

The heroin trade has excellent logistics.

I would assume they do

Now it is very clear that the US military spent 20 years wasting tax payer money for nothing! No plan, no exit strategy, only a ruse to fritter money away and kill innocents. A complete tragedy.

Some people gained tremendously from all that tax payer money though. That's why it's called the military industrial complex. Like it or not but it also employs millions (not thousands) of civilians directly or indirectly.

I can't even begin to imagine what would happen to the United States if they weren't constantly involved in some conflict somewhere around the world.

> it also employs thousands of civilians directly or indirectly

You're off by an order of magnitude, the MIC employs MILLIONS of people directly and indirectly. Each of the government agencies that make up the security state are as large as some of the largest private company. DOD has 700,000 civilian employees alone.

>I can't even begin to imagine what would happen to the United States if they weren't constantly involved in some conflict somewhere around the world.

That one old Simpsons joke comes to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2VxpTMAbas

I thought you were going to link the Bear Patrol clip where they have fighter jets looking for bears.

But seriously it would probably collapse their entire economy, unless they could find another use for the military. And really I wouldn't want them to considering what a huge polluter the Pentagon is. There is no place for it in any reasonably bright future.

20 years of contractors-heavy operations, what did we expect? The only good thing is that the party is over for now.

I'm sure the next intervention isn't very far. There's no train, like the gravy train.

Government contractors and suppliers or all sorts were / still are milking the golden cow that is Afghanistan / Syria / Iraq / wherever as much as they can. Cynically they don't care much for the mission, but rather what's in it for them. Our military is in part a war-fighting (not nation-building) enterprise and at the same time a profit-making enterprise for those who know how to work the system.

The only possible explanation for this monumental stupidity I can think of is an attempt to surround Iran. Invading Iraq is potentially very profitable because of oil, but invading Afghanistan for $1tr for 20 years "because 911 terrorists" (the official excuse) seemed completely idiotic, if not an attempt to have a foot in the door near Iran.

The Afghanistan war lasted pretty much the same as the Vietnam war. Are there any other major similarities?

After 9/11, all operations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq are complete disaster. I wonder why all of them failed.

I hate to go Michael Corleone with this question, but at heart that really is the answer. The same thing will happen in any of the nations in the MidEast or Africa in which we installed our puppets. Our puppets are fighting for money.

Our puppets are paid. The Opposition is not.

I know it's cliché, but that's the root of the issue. Wherever we are in the world, we never give the people a narrative that evokes strong belief. A narrative that will convince young men that the beliefs evoked are worth dying for. Wherever we install governments, the opposition side almost always has foundational beliefs in place.

We generally paper over the imbalance with money and military power, but that will only work for a time. Particularly in a place like Afghanistan. (As we're seeing today.)

There’s a great podcast called Blowback that goes deep into the history of both wars: https://pca.st/episode/8b3805b4-76c9-479b-89f6-efd66a71f87a

The history of US involvement in those areas starts way before 9/11.

I’d add to this, how come the fight against ISIS worked out, by contrast?

Salafi jihadists have a way of burning themselves out. But there will always be a new wave.

And the will of the non-Sunni Syrians and Kurds should not be underestimated. They didn’t roll over and walk to slaughter like the Iraqi Army.

Those who make up the Taliban aren’t crazy. They play generational war. Have for millennia.

What what the last success ?

World War 2 and the Korean War.

Modern US war doctrine is garbage. They believe a fallacy that war can be fought with precision weapons directed only at enemy combatants. Leaving most civilians and their infrastructure unharmed.

The best result this can bring is occupational victory. Territory can be occupied but its not been won. Only occupied.

War can only be won after completely submitting an opponent. With indiscriminate violence. Only then might an enemy submit. If not, they'll all be dead.

This calculus wins wars. Its horrible. Its inhumane. And its the genius of the Taliban. The population knows: Submit or die.

The Korean War??? Is there a meaning to the word "success" that i'm not aware of?

The military achieved their mission: removing the North Korean army from the country of South Korea.

Shouldn't have been to remove that army from the country of Korea?

The Korean war was a defensive war. The goal was not to annihilate an opponent. It was to defend an ally. This result was achieved, thus a successful war.

Except that Macarthur, full of hubris, wanted to go to the Yalu River and beyond. Way past the 38th parallel, where the war began.

The Chinese warned that they'd enter the war if Macarthur went too far. He didn't listen, so they did and pushed the Allies way back past Seoul again. It took another 2-3 years of stalemate before the Armistice was finally signed.

Notice that the Armistice still holds, and the Korean War is still running after 71 years. Nobody has won that war. Nobody but the US wants to keep it running. Trump, Bolton, etc, weren't willing to guarantee Security for the North Koreans by ending the war. The North Koreans were willing to give up their nukes if the war was ended with a peace treaty. As we now know, nothing has changed.

Yet, the outcome was a thriving country of South Korea and a net territorial gain for the south as well. This is a successful war by the standards of how most wars are measured.

There is no 'outcome' YET. The Korean War is still ongoing.

Think of today's situation as a non-combat stalemate. much as happened in areas of trench warfare during World War one. (Both sides maintained a quiet watch-and-wait in various parts of the Front, while fierce campaigns took place in other parts of the Front.)

A question or two for you. If the Korean War is finished, why are there still 30-40 thousand US troops still occupying South Korea? Why does the US interfere with North and South Korean diplomacy? Why is it any business of the US what North and South Korea agree in, anyway?

MacArthur lost that war.

It was a disaster by every other metric.

The Korean war was a defensive war where the North Koreans with the help of the Chinese almost pushed the South Koreans into the ocean. American intervention resulted in heavy NK losses. Although a defensive war, it also resulted in a net territorial gain for South Korea.

Samsung.

Korean War is still ongoing, after 71 years. No Peace Treaty to end that war was ever signed.

World War 2 was not an American-only success:

In the Pacific war, they were helped by the Chinese who held down lots of Japanese forces for eight years in China, and the British and Indians and Australians who fought the Japanese in South Asia.

Against the Germans, the Americans, as in Asia, entered the war long after it had started. The Soviets killed eighty percent of all German casualties, and had the Great Patriotic War practically won single-handedly long before the Western Allies got ashore on D-Day in mid 1944.

Without the Western Allies and D-Day, most estimates put the end of the war in Europe around Spring 1946 with the Soviets at the English Channel.

> They believe a fallacy that war can be fought with precision weapons directed only at enemy combatants. Leaving most civilians and their infrastructure unharmed.

That is not a fallacy, but the max they can sell to the politicians.

WW2? But, that was a team effort.

Desert Storm (first Iraq)? Even second Iraq War militarily ended up better than Afghanistan (because the politics involved was mildly less delusional).

D Day

And you can't even count it fully, really, because of the Russians. WW2 was a joint effort, yes, but the USSR turned the tide and sacrificed the most.

Battle of Britain turned the tide. And China suffered the most.

This years 20th anniversary of 11th Setp. will be something else entirely

US have failed to build up any decent military outside of US, since its founding moment.

I am actually not surprised that US had not learned much over the years. The learning at US now is almost stagnant, especially in the political arena.

South Korea? Japan? Free France? Taiwan? Israel? Australia?

* Japan - preexisting army with a long tradition.

* France - preexisting army (also, De Gaule was a good military officer and knew what he wanted).

* Taiwan - preexisting army from the 'Nationalist' side of the Chinese civil war.

* Australia - army was built by the UK long before the US was involved.

* Israel - when it was established the US placed an arms embargo. Most support came from USSR, but a strong influence was service in the UK army during WW2.

So out of all examples, only South Korea maybe fits, and I'm not sure about that, just not so familiar with the history and what role the US played (it could be that they were modeled after the Japanese army which previously occupied the country?)

> * Japan - preexisting army with a long tradition.

> * France - preexisting army (also, De Gaule was a good military officer and knew what he wanted).

One could argue that France had a preexisting army with an even longer history :-)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Franc...

Taiwan is the Republic of China and its military that relocated from the mainland to Taiwan.

Free France was a part of the French military that split.

I suppose that Australia is an offshoot of the British military.

Not really sure that’s true, given the creation of the Bundeswehr shortly after the Second World War, though it was not purely the US’s creation.

Not to embellish too much, but one could even say that the Germans had on their own plenty of experienced personnel, significant expertise and deep traditions in military matters.

This is a tactical failure, not a moral one. One's ability to win a war is entirely separate from the justification of that war. My concern is that the American public seem to conflate the two.

I don't know what the correct response was to 9/11, but something had to be done. The invasion of Afghanistan wasn't a charitable maneuver--it was America defending itself (and supported by NATO and UN declarations).

Obviously any nation cannot just sit by and let thousands of their citizens get killed.

You mean America attacked Afghanistan to protect itself after an attack by 15 Saudi Arabians and 4 others also not from Afghanistan?

Who were based out of Afghanistan? Yes.

Clearly their national origin is not relevant. I was born in Moldova, but if I committed terrorism, no one would think blame a nation I have not lived in since I was 2.

In addition to having 15 national in the plot, the Saudi government was directly involved in planning and funding 9/11.

I'm not joking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_28_pages

>I was born in Moldova, but if I committed terrorism, no one would think blame a nation I have not lived in since I was 2.

What if you've all been in Moldova until a year before the attack like the actual terrorists?

> based

I think you mean Hamburg, San Diego and Palm Beach.

Nah, the invasion of Afghanistan was an arrogant "I thought we were a superpower" not wanting to look like a beaten "pussy" and wanting to punch back at something.

"Let thousands get killed"? They already died, it's not like invading Afghanistan was going to stop killings (of Americans, it's not like USA cared about the killing of civilian Afghanis) which were in progress, sure they were probably planning something, but it's not like Al-Qaeda stopped planning even with bombs falling on their heads.

9/11 was the fuckup of the intelligence agencies, but the bloodlust meant that they had to punch back. And Bin Laden picked the right time with arrogant dishonest war hawks running the country, US' reaction to the provocation killed a few thousand more of their own young men and women and burned so much more of their money.

I wonder if it was possible for the US to have a leader that said "Let's reflect why this happened." Sure, go after the people who did it, but to threaten an entire occupying force (in the form of Taliban) to "Give us Bin Laden or we'll bomb you" wasn't that smart. A smarter administration would've done more barking to scare them to somehow give up OBL, or done more intelligence to find him and drone-strike him, and not get into a 20-year quagmire in the country. But intelligence is a long and quiet process, and all the angry citizenry would've complained that the government is being a pussy by not bombing everything that looks foreign and said "Death to America!"...

Note the NYT's total absence of criticism of Biden for this disaster. Under a Trump leadership the headlines would primarily have been of the style, "As Trump team struggles to do anything competent, Afghanistan crumbles." Whereas in this case, the headlines are kept mostly factual. "President Ghani Flees as Insurgents Enter Capital." (NYT is not the article at hand but is relevant in its coverage of such stories for its cultural influence.)

Don't mean to politicize it necessarily, but there's been some discussion here recently about editorialization, thinking for one's own when reading the news, and processing information from different perspectives to identify and compensate for biases.

This is a really good opportunity to observe how it works.

> Note the NYT's total absence of criticism of Biden for this disaster.

The disaster is of Bush’s making, Biden is just the one that stopped spending lives and treasure to kick the endgame down the road. Of the last four President, he is the least to blame (for exactly the reason that he will, in the immediate term, get the most blame, which is what the others were dodging without making positive progress toward a better result.

Certainly it was a disaster for it ever to have begun. But that doesn't mean anyone subsequently responsible for managing it doesn't have responsibilities that can be executed competently or incompetently, subject to their own blame and criticism.

> Certainly it was a disaster for it ever to have begun.

It was, arguably at least, an unfortunate necessity when it began. It had the capacity to have a positive outcome. It was an unrecoverable disaster when it was back-burnered so the US could wage a war of aggression in Iraq.

Was it ? What made it necessary and what were we trying to achieve ? And to add to that how , without abandoning our humanity would we have achieved that?

> stopped spending lives and treasure to kick the endgame down the road

Yes, there was a lot of stupidity involved, but last casualty was over a year ago, and amount of troops was 40 times less than in the peak. There was no need for Biden to cede the country to the Taliban due to an artificial timetable and sunk cost fallacy.

Bush, Obama, Trump all kept it going. Trump finally wanted a withdrawal which Biden is keeping. The implementation of the withdrawal wasn't all the great, but the problem is the US keeps thinking it can force democracy on people who either don't want it, or don't have any experience of it.

One of the critical and dumb errors was Bush refusing to reinstate the monarchy (which Afghan elders asked the US to do), because it wouldn't have been a perfect democracy.

The only democracy that people want is theirs and you cannot implant it in culture and society if they haven't wanted it and fought for it.

The downvotes on this post illustrate the partisan politics that have invaded even HN. It's nearly certainly true that this poster is correct. The point isn't Biden vs. Trump, the point is the varying tone of the press coverage.

See also: "overflow" vs. "children in cages" — I have seen this personally because I work with some of those contracts, and the terms used by the press changed when the administration changed. Nothing has changed about the conditions in those detention facilities (I would know), and more are being built/repurposed out of things like convention centers because illegal entries spiked when Biden took office. But if you were to read MSNBC you'd hear little about it, and what would be talked about would be anodyne (and Trump's fault).

Again, it's not about the partisan politics, it's about observing editorialization in action.

biden was president for how many of those 20 years?

He presided over the years responsible for the withdrawal and influenced the process, which is what matters.

This logic is utterly ridiculous.

Sunken cost fallacy: if you're making a mistake, don't keep making it because you've lost a ton already. Stop making the mistake.

The person executing the withdrawal is not to blame.

No, it's perfectly reasonable. I don't disagree with you, or more accurately, I'm not even presenting an opinion on whether the US should have stayed or left. But given that leaving was the choice, and perhaps the rational choice, the act of leaving is itself something that requires management and competence. It is possible to be done in a way that minimizes or maximizes destruction, loss of human life, any remaining moral philosophy or disposition for democracy in the area, hope generally, etc. The US president has a direct influence on how the exit happens.

The point I'm actually making though is that even if you are right, if the "other guy" were in power right now, the newsmedia would be presenting it very differently, and it's important to be aware of it and be able to see it when it happens.

The problem is, one of the most important roles of a politician is to be liked and to be influential, in short, to have friends. Ideally, to not be very divisive.

Some wounds are self inflicted and I have little pity for them.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this as a response. Are you saying the President needs to be friends with journalists for them to be objective?

I'm saying that if you make someone hate your guts, it will be very hard for them to be objective.

And Trump didn't even need to be friends with them, just somewhat neutral. He just couldn't help himself. After an entire life with a flawed personality, as we say in Romania: "only the casket straightens the hunchback".

Not even scientists are 100% objective, it's just a fact of life. At the end of day, we're all human (and also emotional).

I'm not sure if the withdrawal is the thing that matters most in a 20-year waste of time and money.

Unless the idea is to stay in Afganistan forever.

I'm not sure that it matters most either. But it certainly matters somewhat.

The point is that if the "other side" were in power at the time and executed the process exactly the same with the same results, the way it would be covered by our influential newsmedia would be very different. How and why it would be different is important to observe. Being able to see it allows you to interpret the world around you more intelligently, and make smarter decisions.

As President?

Yes, the year 2021.

Biden is a complete fool for the way he pulled out. That much is undeniable. Who else is to blame and what the alternative should have been doesn't change that fact. He saw what happened in Iraq and ISIS, the moment the US pulled out from there. He was Vice President, even! This is a disaster and entirely predictable, if unavoidable.

Was there a way to pull out of the region that didn’t result in this ?

I don't know but to just waltz out the way he did is sheer idiocy.

Why this is downvoted?

US' withdrawal from China gave CCP and Mao an easy win. That already showcased the stupidity of a 4 year term presidency that lack the basic continuance in foreign policy.

Cannot US diplomat learn something about how to build a decent government?

Chiang Kai Shek and the nationalists were failing with or without US intervention.

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