Everything, all efforts, sacrifices, and losses are for absolutely nothing. The depth of this historic failure is mind-boggling.
It shouldn't be a surprise since you need a society that wants to actually break from the same continued cycle, unfortunately Afghanistan isn't it due to many reasons.
The cause of the failure was when, in 2003, the US decided to focus on an entirely unnecessary war of choice (aggression, really) in Iraq (and a whole bunch of propaganda own-goals scored in that war that affected the US particularly in the Islamic world reinforced that.) Nation building was always an element of fighting the Taliban, not mission drift, since having something stable and broadly supported in place was the key to prevent a resurgence.
If I were going to go about nation building, I would “export democratic values” some 20 years in advance of any military action by way of film, literature, etc. Cynics can think of this as propaganda, but really it’s just giving Afghans or whomever a more accurate taste of western life. When enough people had a good idea about what democracy was concretely and were ready to support it, I would then provide for military support with the expectation that the democrats would need sustained assistance for many decades.
Of course, there might be lots of reasons why this still isn’t a good idea, especially that we might be able to do more good per dollar elsewhere. But I don’t think “we tried it (poorly) for 20 years and it didn’t work out” is a good criticism—we shouldn’t expect the kind of requisite culture change to happen over a single generation.
Germany and Japan were occupied (excluding the post-1955 nominal occupation of Germany because the Cold War prevented agreement on a formal end) for less time than Afghanistan when you add them together. To the extent something worked there but not in Afghanistan, it had nothing to do with it taking “generations”.
Germany and Japan were also quite a bit more successful at actually ending the organizations occupying troops found unacceptable.
I don't even know what to say. My country helped by sending support troops, some of them died there.
https://instagram.com/p/CSj-3bgsxKQ
this is absolutely astonishing to me. im honestly surprised the us didn't conduct airstrikes on the vacated armories and hangars. they just got a leg up from antique firearms and fertilizer bombs into modern weaponry and air force.
i expect all of this to show up in Iraq, Syria, etc
Kuomintang' China, South Korea, South Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. You name it! Every single local government supported by the U.S. was and is being accused of being corrupt. You know what? They are all corrupt judged by the western standard. Corruption is the norm in the countries need U.S. support. If, for God's sake, they can build a government which is not corrupt (like a consituational republic???), what kind of society would that be? Why would they even need U.S. support in the first place?
And you know what? Corruption is not a choice of the central government. It is not like the central government can choose being corrupt or not. It is a reflection of the society it is in.
It is just shameful that because of this extremely naive accusation, the U.S. government made countless foreign police mistakes.
Often, it is.
> It is not like the central government can choose being corrupt or not.
Sure it is. It can also choose how much energy to devote to rooting out corruption at lower levels, but in many of the cases at issue it was the very top leaders that were deeply corrupt, so corruption was, in fact, a very direct choice of the central government.
You must mean "installing puppet government". The Taliban were before, the puppet government lasted two decades, and now the Taliban are back. If it had been done with more diplomacy it might have succeded, but after the Twin Towers attack there was a push to overreact, and to profit from the sudden political capital.
Why is it so hard for you and people to see?
All was there to make profit from the war for certain people? It was never about the peace and it can't be.
War profiteering is really really old proffession, isn't it? older than so many nations?
I can still remember Jon Stewart saying "hey, afghanistan was good. we should have another one of those." A year or two later. That was the peacenik end of the political spectrum.
If somebody want give some advice that can prevent the next 2-trillion dollar mistake here in HN what will happen? The advice will be down voted heavily and maybe it will been seen as a bot from repressive regime. So most of people know the ground truth but also understand this collective bias choose keep silent.
In machine learning the trainer want to select the data from different sources to avoid over fitting. In real world there's no role acting as a god to feed different types of data. The human brain train their own neural networks. The consequence is people select the data that reinforce their existing belief because of impact from million of years evolution, even ignore the facts that can not add up. (Does any body suspect something wrong with all our perception due Taliban take control of power so quickly, I ask HNers think about it for intellectual challenge, not about or beyond politics )
Don't start wars half around the world for made up / weak reasons with a country that is not anyhow threatening you, the amount of evil that is 'inserted' into mankind doesn't dissipate but all of us have to deal with it for generations to come. On top of all the destruction and death/murders/rape/torture/etc.
This is valid for any country, I may be bashing chinese in 10 years (and would be bashing colonizing west european states 100+ years ago), but for now its clear on whom this is aimed.
I can't imagine how all the patriotic US veterans must feel now - all the things they went through and lost friends, physical and mental health meant much less than nothing. Nothing would mean there wasn't 20 years of war and death, that would be a damn fine thing compared to current situation.
Oh and one final one, that one is also easy - don't start war in Afghanistan. Graveyard of empires they called it.
Afghanistan did harbor Al-Qaeda, which executed an attack on US soil.
I have no evidence of this, so just speculating on the actual motives.
Why didn't the US State Department see the failure of the fledgling and corrupt democratic Afghanistan government? The US should have pulled out 10 years ago, or if it was actually interested in the strategic nature of Afghanistan, it could have arranged to purchase permanent bases independent of the Afghan government, fortify them, install missiles, occupy the Khyber Pass, block China/Russia, shore up rare earths, etc.
So why didn't we take these actions sooner if we knew the government couldn't handle it? Incompetence? Too many cooks?
My guess is that we were still interested in Afghanistan, but that this is a new shift in geopolitics. It's a chess move, and not one originated by the Trump or the Biden administration directly. My guess is that this is being done to appease Putin.
The US is softening up on its approach to Russia as a regional counter against China. This is more important than having forces on the ground in Afghanistan (which have to fly in over Pakistan anyway). And of course it's more important than building and propping up democracies. If it weren't, we'd still be there.
The story to look at now is China. This is a chess move in that story.
Just my thoughts. I could be wrong.
They almost certainly did, but they serve the foreign policy directives of the executive-at-the-time.
> The US should have pulled out 10 years ago,
Of course, but there's nearly no upside to breaking this status quo. It's all downside. Biden will take this hit because it looks embarrassing to withdraw and leave people worse off than when we found them. I agree with you: his predecessors should have done it.
> vanished literally overnight.
This is not a very intellectually honest comment. What about Saudi Arabia? What about women and girls there? Why raise issue about women rights in Afghanistan but be silent about Saudi Arabia, Emirates, etc. For god sake they are going to host World Cup.
The Taliban don't allow women to get any sort of education or work, which is worse than the situation in SA, UAE and Qatar ( the ones who are going to host a World Cup)