I Was Involved in War in Afghanistan. Here's What We Must Learn | Hacker News Reader

I Was Involved in War in Afghanistan. Here's What We Must Learn

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5 pointssgpl4 comments

Discusses our part, and points out humanitarian gains during the conflict (girls/women who have been educated and can participate in the Afghan society so long as we were there).

Apart from mentioning the need to understand the history and dynamics of the society and its players, doesn’t pay enough attention to the role played by official Afghanistan. Given the levels of corruption and deceit up and down the chain, so that the size and preparedness of their forces was not only unknown but known to be wildly exaggerated: * why would we have expected it to be any different leaving today? * why would we expect anything different from leaving 10 years ago or 20 years from now? The money and human capital cost (and some environmental cost too, don’t forget) has been large, and I think the payback was going to be never. To those Afghans that gained something during our presence, I express the wish we could have had more and more lasting an effect. I hope my grandchildren, if they ever materialize, will feel similar generosity, they’ll be paying for it.

Don’t forget, we trained the mujahadeen to fight the Soviets, and the Soviets as near neighbors couldn’t win a fight there. The enemy of your enemy might be your friend, but only situationally.

Your comment is true to a point, yet it avoids American responsibility on several key points:

* Afghan government was corrupt, but its corruption paled compared to the corruption of contractors.

* What caused collapse however was less corruption, more the utter dependence of the Afghan army on US and airborne logistics + a defection spiral once the Taliban was seen as winning.

Ultimately, what happened was a choice, even given a withdrawal decision. Had the US bothered, it could have kept supporting the Afghan airforce and paid off enough to prevent defections.

The real lesson other countries should take is not to discard US credibility because it abandoned Afghans (these types of cynical actions are typical in the world as it is, and we got it the admin doesn't care about Afghans at all), instead it's that the US is too self-absorbed to be relied on.

Both the initial invasion and the withdrawal were ideological decisions related to internal US dynamics. The US had a lot of options, and a non self absorbed country would have done much better whether it stayed or left.

When you say “contractor” I assume you mean “US-based” contractor. I’d love to see a semi-credible corruption index to compare contractor and local corruption. To the degree that contractor corruption reinforced local, even worse.

The defection spiral was necessitated in part by a lack of available resources. If they required our logistics after we pulled out- at what point could they be weaned?

I agree with the self-absorption, point made over on the Taibbi post. I’m sure that would tie into competence, and in no way do I intend to mean “we did everything a competent world power could do”.

* "When you say “contractor” I assume you mean “US-based” contractor".

Yes, definitely. I don't have any corruption index, my thinking is this:

To really steal a lot you have to know the system from which the money comes from, and Afghan officials didn't know the US system. A corrupt Afghan officer could at most steal all the funds of his unit, a US contractor could siphon the US budget with all the tricks contractors learnt over the years.

* "If they required our logistics after we pulled out- at what point could they be weaned?"

That's a question that requires very detailed information to answer, and I'm not sure is the best one. IMHO, the better question is: "How much damage (by manpower and money) would the US sustain were it to try to supply them instead of what the US did?".

I don't think that keeping logistics and supplying parts to the airforce was a significant burden. At the worst case scenario, they'd have collapsed a bit later and there would have been more time for an orderly evacuation.

* Beyond self-absorption, The US never had a workable political strategy for Afghanistan. The DOD cannot come up with a political strategy (generals are just bad at this), and recent Presidential administrations are too remote and have little area expertise, they left things at DOD for too long. The US needed a structure with much more civilian input.

The reason Iraq turned out very slightly better (and we should remember just how many people ISIS killed) is that Zarqawi and his successors insisted on blowing up random Shiites, while the US stumbled into a semi-workable political strategy ('give most power to the Shiite majority regardless of what Sunnis think'). So when the insurgency turned into an ethnic civil war, the insurgents were on the minority side. Perhaps this was merely an bloody accident, but even an accidental political strategy has effects.

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