This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary | Hacker News Reader

This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary

vice.com

254 pointsyk193 comments

I always feel like no matter how well a journalist covers Afghanistan, its only a small slice of the pie, for everything that is going on over there. And that is not to discredit the journalists, they do a great job, there is just so much going on over there, you gotta pick and choose your stories.

For me, one of the greatest tragedies in Afghanistan as a result from the US war is the drug addict problem over ther. I haven't studied the issue in a couple of years, but I remember looking at pictures and statistics of heroin addicts in Afghanistan. As the war destroyed their country citizens turned to drugs and so did leaders, but the latter did so for money. The citizens literally have nothing better to do. And thats not to say they weren't poppy farmers before the war, they were, the majority were just not heroin abusers.

In 2008 I took a seminar about the Afghanistan War, premised on the question, is Afghanistan a failed state? In a room with 12 reasonably bright American students we all were able to point out terrific errors that were causing some big issues. I remember reading that 70-80 percent of the trained Afghani police force was just signed up to get a paycheck. They never showed up for duty or anything.

I do a lot of thinking about Afghanistan, because the situation is unique, yet historically predictable. In my opinion, its hard for me and Americans maybe all westerners, to understand Afghanistan and the people there; and its just as difficult for the people in Afghanistan to understand our way of life, and how to assimilate to what we were setting up.

At present count, 3 people from my high school class have died fighting in Afghanistan, and 5 counting the year ahead of me (0 of my college mates, point for another story..). And this is what counts for me. I like to think that because the situation is complex and can get confusing, the best way to gain an understanding is to study individual stories, stuff that usually gets hidden behind the larger scene.

From the research I have done, the majority of Afghans want peace to the point where they would accept a Taliban strict rule of law over the continued war. Its confusing, but it just shows the war really needs to end.

How did anyone argue "Afghanistan is not a failed state", other than the "it was never a state, so it didn't fail, it just never won" (although in the monarchy it was OK in certain parts, for about a decade).

Afghanistan was a modern state (and do research instead of simple downvote) as recently as 1960s. They had women studying at Universities, they had modern hospitals, you name it.

War radicalized the society. Put them back in stoneage. They have had wars for the past 30-40 years.

USSR death started with Afghanistan. USA death will start with it too. The place is a graveyard of Empires.

I knew it was fine from early 1900s until around 1971-1973. I guess it was ok for 30-40'years before that, not just the 1960s (which is what I thought)

I agree with you. However, the 1960s were the peak. I don't like (ideologically) that guy: Slavoj Zizek. He did however travel to Afghanistan before all the wars started. I believe as a student. He said that at that time, Afganistan was quite often portait by the press as an example of a country in which modernization and social progress that went good. I believe he mentions this in that debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhAMgVFKokk

That seems to be a long discussion about polyamory and how it applies to religion (???)

and bunch of other things. Not worth watching 1 hour worth of video just to see one guy saying something.

Try this: http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-politics-religion/5...

https://www.google.pl/search?q=afghanistan+in+1970+for+women...

Or just google for "Afghanistan in 1970".

The wars caused regular people to support Islam Radicals as they were the ones defending country from outside agression. Also Iran was a country where girls in 1970s wore mini skirts and had equal rights in access to education. Exactly like in the West. The revolution there changed it all.

The more we try influence them the more it is recognized as a foreign occupational forces killing your compatriots. Obviously during the war/occupation people flock to their natives even when they don't agree with them.

Example: Let's say the US was attacked by China and Ku Klux Klan would be defending the country. Taking care of the weak, running hospitals. Organizing attacks on foreign military forces.

Would you be surprised if they gained more influence? And the more foreign occupation forces would try to destroy them, the more support they would have got. Extremism grows and feeds on war.

Another example (this time a historical one, not a fictional): underground Polish army officers were involved in terrorist attacks on Berlin subway system during the WW2. German could have been calling them 'terrorists' (as they did!) all day and night long. Polish citizenry supported them anyway. That's a war. For a war you want the most crazy, delusional, brutal elements to fight it for you - not a liberal democrat concerned about sexual minority rights. I'm talking about occupation here.

Iranian history is even more complex than Afghanistan (since Iran is actually worth fighting over; Afghanistan, not so much). Even though the Shah was a pretty good ally of the US, I'm not sure whether the Qajar dynasty vs. others who came after him were better/worse. The semi-communist guy who Anglo-Iranian oil hated (and the US stupidly followed the UK on) might have been one of their better leaders of the past 200 years.

I agree the people who turn into resistance are often extremists, and if they win, can become more powerful. But there are plenty of cases where resistance fighters came from other organized groups who weren't particularly psycho to begin with; Balkans, Arabs during WW2, etc. Organization and logistics probably trumps insanity in predicting whether a group will be effective, as long as the occupier is brutal enough that everyone hates the occupier. Sure, plenty of the leaders and groups were utterly insane (Arkan's Tigers...), but I don't think it was universal on any side.

(btw, this is kind of an interesting tv show that I'd never heard of before! I'm doing some mindless paperwork right now so it's entertaining listening to a somewhat-psycho marxist making more sense than the other people at the table, oh the irony)

I agree with you. I think that if a nation lacks in organization and logistics (de facto any nation under occupation does) - terrorism makes a lot of sense as tactics. Thinking of it just as of war tactics that happens to work when confronted with organized, stronger enemy. That's how you fight such an enemy. I know, I sound controversial here, I'm not a proponent of terrorism though, just noting a fact.

Where I would be a proponent of terror is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk

And I'm not Marxist. I'm a liberal-conservative. Yeah, Zizek is a dangerous guy, lol.

Why we loose with Radical Islam? Because we have no teeth behind our values. It's not like we're going to guillotine muslim radicals taking away women rights. It's not like we're going to guillotine bankers and politicians destroying capitalism in the name of crony capitalism with zombie banks ran on the back of tax payer. We need a liberal revolution, and I hope one will come in my lifetime.

Graveyard of Empires? The disasters of WWs I and II surely had more to do with the decline of the British Empire than anything that happened in Afghanistan.

I haven't mentioned anything about UK. I was saying USSR and the USA.

Have you heard of William MacNaghten? Alexander Burnes? Do you remember the massacre of the British garrison from Kabul, or the awful retribution that followed?

Yes, WWII was the direct precipitating event for the breakup of the British Empire, but the seeds of its destruction were sown long ago in that great Central Asian imperial struggle with Russia.

I thought it was the Pope or Reagan?

May not like hearing it, but the argument is usually a backhanded slap against (radical?) Islam.

Consider if you give a religious exception to "widespread violation of human rights" at least as we'd describe human rights, or consider ethnic cleansing and purifying the faith as a feature not a bug. You pretty quickly start running out of reasons to consider the country a failed state, so I guess a lack of checked checkboxes means it must not be a member of the group.

The backhanded part is assuming Islamic country = Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia aka failed state. Carefully ignoring Muslim majority, or at least lots of Muslims, such as, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, UAE, France, UK, Indonesia, none of which are paradise on earth but then again not anywhere near societal collapse, at least not right now.

Maybe one way to phrase it is the vast majority of currently failed states are Islamic, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything because the vast majority of Islamic states (and/or states with lots of Muslims) are not currently failed states. Carefully ignoring the previous line is how to get in a backhanded slap against Islam.

In the case of Afghanistan, even if you were a Muslim, it would be pretty self-evident that Afghanistan is fucked.

(I certainly don't consider Kuwait, UAE, Qatar Oman, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, etc. to be failed; I'd say SA, Malaysia and Bahrain have some serious problems but are otherwise fine, etc. Pakistan is dangerously close to failed, and Sudan has some serious issues; Syria is pretty clearly over the line, along with Somalia and Afghanistan.)

Islam didn't have a whole lot to do with why Yemen is or has been a failed state, despite being Islamic. The rise in Islamic violence there is pretty recent; it was mainly a cold war thing combined with a country where everyone is a drug addict (khat).

Congo - not so Islamic. Or Angola during the Cold War. I'd argue that the cold war was a much bigger factor than Islam; Islam and Islamism only became an issue due to the cold war (where Muslim Brotherhood was somewhat Soviet allied in Egypt, and US/Pakistan/ISI funded the Taliban/Muj/etc. in Afghanistan due to the cold war. Before that, we had "Arab Nationalism" which was also co-opted by socialists/communists (mainly because the initial guys were themselves socialists, so it was pretty natural; same thing happened in India until the 1990s)

"Bad leadership" seems like an important factor in countries where neither the Cold War nor Islam were big factors (Haiti seems pretty close to failed...)

As Foreign Policy measures it, it seems like being in Africa is a bigger predictor than being Islamic, actually, too.

I honestly don't desire to belittle or discount your anecdotes, but equating failed state = drug abusing population seems problematic when you look around in the West.

You have to think of it in terms of the nightmare that is unfolding in Mexico rather than recreational use of drugs by people who are otherwise able to support themselves with jobs.

In both Mexico and Afghanistan, it's not so much local consumption of drugs which is the problem, but production/distribution/etc. of drugs for export or transshipment.

Yemen has a drug use problem (with Khat), leading to a lack of water, etc., but that's nowhere near as serious as narco-insurgency.

There is this recurring rumour that USA helps to deliver heroin from Afghanistan (and whereever) to Europe via their military bases. Particularly in Albania.

I don't know where it is coming from, but little doubt that USA intervention in Afghanistan leads to an increase of Heroin production there which then gets smuggled out.

Taliban needs to wage war and guns don't buy themselves.

If you believe that I have a bridge to sell to you.

Good story.

I've always thought that the situation in Afghanistan can be pretty much summarised in these pictures:

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5112c4a969beddd0720...

p/s: it shows the stark differences in Aghanistan from 1967 to 2007

I thought the Kandahar green belt stuff was "help this third-world country develop with the promise of the green revolution" showplace stuff from the west, not the organic state of Afghanistan overall in the 1960s, though. It was certainly otherwise far better back then, but my perception from people from Kandahar (who admittedly weren't really experts; expats who had left in the 1980s) was that it was sort of like Epcot Center or something which had fallen into disrepair.)

And so would have the majority of Americans back in 2001, but they wouldn't give up Bin Laden, so they paid the price.

And so did we.

> From the research I have done, the majority of Afghans want peace to the point where they would accept a Taliban strict rule of law over the continued war. Its confusing, but it just shows the war really needs to end.

As I looked at US efforts at essentially 'nation building', often on the other side of the world, to try to contribute to US national security, I came up with a simple observation:

In a country with a government and economy that function at all, there has to be and is a 'culture' with social structures, education, economic activity, leadership, laws, government, usually religion, etc. While such a culture has to exist, it may be very different from that in the US.

In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world, the 'culture' is heavily just Islam: Islam controls social structures, e.g., sex, marriage, child rearing, the role of family, etc. Islam also controls most of education, much of the economic activity, essentially all the laws, the police, the justice system, the government, the foreign policy, and, of course, religion. We can toss in architecture, what people eat, and what they wear. Basically from how people dress, eat, work, etc., its all Islam. So, in an Islamic country, take away Islam, and there's no culture at all and, then, just chaos, e.g., criminals, gangs, civil war, etc. Net, in an Islamic country, for a government leader can have an Islamic king (e.g., Kuwait), Islamic strong man dictator (Saddam, Assad), or Islamic cleric (Iran). That's about it.

One can try to set up a Western, secular government in an Islamic country, but the leader will have no cultural foundation to stand on and, thus, will be trying to sell pie in the sky. Meanwhile the clerics will be working 24 x 7 to get their people up on their hind legs against the guy, and too soon he will lose, maybe his head.

For anything like US democracy, laws, police, secular government, freedom of religion, etc., just f'get about it. We need to understand: In the US, our 'culture' of democracy is much more than just our Constitution and elections. Instead, in addition, nearly all of us have 'bought into' a 'social contract' where we believe in, invest in, and trust in our democracy. So for most significant transgressions against the 'culture', the voters get indignant, outraged, incensed, infuriated, and up on their hind legs and vote! E.g., each member of the House has to stand for election each two years, which is darned short, and keeps him on a very short leash, and if he messes up then likely he's out'a there. To borrow from a Bond movie, getting caught in a motel room with a cheerleader does nicely.

Really the Islamic countries are about 500 years behind the history of Western Europe, e.g., when Western Europe was fighting wars of religion and starting to develop respect for humanism, individual freedom, secular government, and democracy. Moving ahead 500 years is not easy. The rivers of Europe ran red with blood for hundreds of years before we got to 'Western Civilization'. Europe has been the most effectively bloody place on the planet until finally it started to learn to live in peace, recently, hopefully.

Net, Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric. Sorry 'bout that. We won't like such a 'culture': Some of the men use boys for sex. They marry off their daughters at age 7 or 13 or some such. They refuse to educate females. They use Islamic laws and justice. Islam runs essentially everything.

That's just the way it is. That's the reality. We need to face the reality. We don't like it. We see it as a 500 year out of date sh!tpit, and we are correct. Right, it sucks. We know that.

Then, facing that reality, we can look for how to get what we need, e.g., US national security, that is, to keep Afghanistan from being the base of operations of another 9/11 attack on the US.

Okay, then, that's what we really need, our real 'bottom line': Keep Afghanistan from being the base of operations of another 9/11 attack on the US. We need little or nothing more than that from Afghanistan. Can we get that? Sure. How? Two steps. Step 1. Put in place a bunch of INTEL. Step 2. Leave. [It took the US 12 years to figure this out?] If our INTEL tells us that they are starting to attack the US again, then level them, appropriate places plus some for good measure, from the air. Done.

What will happen after we leave? Mostly we don't give a sh!t. But I'd put my money on a government run by an Islamic cleric, e.g., the Taliban.

Now, US military, welcome home. Well done.

Yes, we can be sure that the Muslim clerics will get their people up on their hind legs shouting "Death to America". Sounds like a declaration of war to me for which some USAF guy in a container room in Nevada should push a button on a drone control and stop that stuff. But if all they do is shout, then we don't always have to push the button.

England was long smart enough to work effectively in that part of the world, in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India, Burma, Singapore, etc., without getting all bent out of shape trying to bring English culture to those places.

The US needs to quit being so darned simplistic, wise up, learn from the English 150 years ago, update the lessons a little, use our drones, INTEL, etc., do the smart things, and quit bleeding the US white on absurd foreign adventures from just totally unrealistic, head in the sand, simplistic foreign policy nonsense. We will not get what we have wanted in Afghanistan. Instead we will wise up and get what we can and need or just go broke on nonsense.

What's it going to be US, wise up or go broke?

> For anything like US democracy, laws, police, secular government, freedom of religion, etc., just f'get about it.

Clearly you haven't read much history about Islam and can only see the world from what the US media feeds you. Somehow you've been led to think that US 'democracy' is the epitome of a civil world and if a nation is unlike it- then it is some dystopian society.

Islam had all of those things during its founding and up until the Mongols came- during its reign the most controversial land were once governed by peace and had all Christians/Jews/Muslims living side by side. To not cut too much from your time watching Fox News, here's a primer on history; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpcbfxtdoI8

> Clearly you haven't read much history about Islam and can only see the world from what the US media feeds you.

It's not about me. It's about current US foreign policy with respect to the current Afghanistan and some other Islamic countries. The movie 'Lawrence of Arabia' claimed that there was lighting on the streets in Damascus 900 years ago or some such. Fine. Terrific. But that doesn't say much about the Islamic countries today.

If you see something wrong with what is in the US media about current Islamic countries, especially Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, then be clear where they are going wrong.

> Somehow you've been led to think that US 'democracy' is the epitome of a civil world and if a nation is unlike it- then it is some dystopian society.

What I wrote clearly claims that the US has "totally unrealistic, head in the sand, simplistic foreign policy nonsense", thus, meaning that I don't claim that the US is your "epitome of a civil world". But considering Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, I'd pick the US. Maybe there's hope for Lebanon returning to be the Paris of the Mideast. And maybe Jordan and Kuwait are doing well.

I suspect that the Saudis are making a strong and sincere effort to move forward some centuries quickly, e.g., before their oil runs out. But they have a long way to go and are moving slowly, as likely they should.

Since you are interested in history, here's one from history for you: Religion running everything and religious governments don't work very well. Europe figured this out after some hundreds of years of their rivers running red from religious wars.

The lesson is still true, and the Islamic countries need to figure this out. But a big, huge problem in many Islamic countries is that Islam is the only 'culture' they have so that without Islam they are left with no culture at all and quite literally don't know what clothes to put on or what to eat for dinner. So, they can't just throw out Islamic culture; instead they have to replace it with something better, slowly.

For Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, clearly they do some things well, but they are all Asian, and I would never be able to figure out Asian culture.

Sometimes I wonder considering Canada, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Scotland and the US, maybe I wouldn't still pick the US. Maybe. But I've been in the US so long I likely wouldn't fit in at any of those other countries. I suspect that, still, net, net, the US is the best place. For France, Italy, and Austria, maybe someday I will go on a food tour and pig out in Paris, Marseilles, the Piedmont, and Vienna!

> To not cut too much from your time watching Fox News

I cut out TV. For Fox, I got tired of O'Reilly and couldn't stand Chris Wallace. O'Reilly was too often wrong, and Wallace was just so obnoxious he wasn't even wrong. Then my cable company offered me TV, phone, and Internet for less than just phone and Internet, so I accepted. The set-top box has been sitting here for several months, and I use it for a clock. So far I have yet to attach a TV to it. And I have no other source of TV. I haven't watched any TV, or Fox News, in months. On the Internet, I don't much like the Fox Web site. Your assumption that I watch Fox News is just flatly wrong.

> here's a primer on history

And I wrote on current events. I made it really simple: We can't fix the culture of Afghanistan. So, for US national security, step 1, put INTEL in place. Step 2, leave. If our INTEL tells us that they are about to attack us again, then level them. Done. History doesn't have much to do with it.

The relation between Islam and society is actually a lot more complicated than that. Go to Pakistan and ask 10 Imams about honor killings[1]. Eight will hem and haw, one will say that it's against the Koran and needs to be stopped, and one will say it might be against the Koran but it's so important it needs to continue.

I do find the rules Muhammad laid down to have a lot of problems, but they were a big improvement over the existing traditions in the area and would be a big improvement over what people actually do in Afghanistan.

>Go to Pakistan and ask 10 Imams about honor killings[1]. Eight will hem and haw, one will say that it's against the Koran and needs to be stopped, and one will say it might be against the Koran but it's so important it needs to continue.

Go to the USA and ask 10 pastors about drone strikes. Eight will hem and haw, one will say that it's against the Bible and needs to be stopped, and one will say it might be against the Bible but it's so important it needs to continue.

"Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is." Mahatma Gandhi

Oh certainly they would, though I suspect the ratios are different. Mohammad was running a theocracy within his lifetime, so all the compromises and practicalities that were needed to actually govern. There's still a large amount of tradition that has to be applied, but you can talk about the Islamic way to govern much, much more concretely than the Christian way. Which if you believe in moral progress is a bit of a problem with Islam, but not one I'm going to dwell on when talking about societies that would be better off following the Koran more closely.

And incidentally, your point is somewhat opaque but I believe you're taking that Gandhi quote to mean the opposite of what he meant. That is, it isn't that politics does influence religion but that politics ought to be influence by religion.

> Then, facing that reality, we can look for how to get what we need, e.g., US national security, that is, to keep Afghanistan from being the base of operations of another 9/11 attack on the US.

This is just vapid bullshit. 9/11 was guys with knives. They had very little specialized training and needed less. You can't spot that from the air with drones, and it didn't need fields of poppies to fund.

There's one simple reason the USA is in the middle east - oil. Making sure it keeps flowing.

> Yes, we can be sure that the Muslim clerics will get their people up on their hind legs shouting "Death to America". Sounds like a declaration of war to me for which some USAF guy in a container room in Nevada should push a button on a drone control and stop that stuff. But if all they do is shout, then we don't always have to push the button.

So does some war-hawk talking about how we should push a button and end the outrage that we created with yet another bomb.

Maybe we should trade, the militant cleric for you, as some sort of reverse prisoner-of-war deal, to help keep the peace.

> The US needs to quit being so darned simplistic, wise up, [...], use our drones, INTEL, etc., do the smart things,

Or, you know, you could try for a foreign policy that didn't involve holding a gun to everyone's head.

Especially since you got too big for anyone to fight, and started picking on smaller enemies with less resources - meaning that everything is going to turn into guerrilla strikes against civilians, on both sides.

> You can't spot that from the air with drones

The INTEL is not limited to, or even primarily from, just drones. Heavily the INTEL will have to be 'human INTEL'. Drones that hover for many hours can also be part of INTEL, but mostly the drones would be for attacks on targets identified by INTEL mostly not from drones.

No, I meant you can't spot small knives from the air so you have no way of really knowing who you're killing - unlike bombing a missile convoy or a tank, obvious weapons. Your INTEL, that from the ground, is often - maybe usually - wrong, and without a visible clear and present danger you shouldn't be killing people.

But way to go in responding to the tiniest part of the post and ignoring the rest.

> No, I meant you can't spot small knives from the air so you have no way of really knowing who you're killing

No, you still know whom you are killing, because of the human INTEL and not because they are carrying knives.

Another point, on your side, is that once the Jihaders know that the US is watching with INTEL, etc., then they will be much more secretive and not have open air training camps and, thus, be more difficult to detect, target, etc. Then the US has three fall back positions: First, we are much harder to attack now than on 9/11. Second, the attacks we are now most concerned about are not just two wacko Jihaders in Boston but a nuke in a boat in Boston harbor. Third, generally our INTEL around the world is much better now than in 9/11 -- anyone wanting to slip a nuke into a boat in Boston harbor will have a much tougher time getting from start to finish for that project than in 9/11. From banking, finance, electronic communications, satellites, HUMINT, etc., the US has a much closer eye on Jihaders now than in 9/11.

> There's one simple reason the USA is in the middle east - oil. Making sure it keeps flowing.

Likely so. Some in Israel hope not. Actually, some in the Arab oil states should like the US 'police' activities in their area.

But oil is not why the US is in Afghanistan. W wasn't much on the Afghan effort, but Obama wanted to say that the country that attacked us was Afghanistan and not Iraq so wanted to claim that W was wrong going to Iraq. Once Obama was in office, he tried a 'surge' in Afghanistan that didn't much work and now is about just to pull out. To me, Obama was just playing US politics and has had no interest in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

> So does some war-hawk talking about how we should push a button and end the outrage that we created with yet another bomb.

> Maybe we should trade, the militant cleric for you, as some sort of reverse prisoner-of-war deal, to help keep the peace.

War is hell. I know that and don't like it.

But we are in a war in Afghanistan. Then, did I mention, war is hell? So, part of how we do that war is push buttons on the controls of drones. That's part of why war is hell. But, Afghanistan was the base of the 9/11 attack on the US that killed 3000 innocent US civilians. That was war and hell. So, to defend ourselves, we went into Afghanistan and eventually got Bin Laden. Then we tried to set up a modern government there to replace the Taliban that let Ben Laden set up a base from which he attacked us. To defeat the Taliban, we use HUMINT and INTEL, heavily where the Taliban leadership is hiding in the Pakistan tribal regions, to identify Taliban leadership. Then we track them with drones. When we have a clear shot at such a bad guy, a USAF guy in a box in Nevada pushes a button. It's hell. Sometimes women and children get killed, like they do in nearly all wars. Did I mention, war is hell? I don't like it. And I didn't like 9/11 either.

> Or, you know, you could try for a foreign policy that didn't involve holding a gun to everyone's head.

That's not nearly all there is to US foreign policy. I don't much like US foreign policy, tries to do too much, is too blunt sometimes, to gentle and even naive other times, and usually too simplistic. Still, a gun to the head is not nearly all of US foreign policy. In Afghanistan, we could have just leveled the place, all from the air, in weeks, the whole place, dogs, cats, rabbits, goats, sheep, men, women, and children. Easily. Instead, we tried hard to give them a constitution, a freely elected government, a freely elected parliament, roads, schools, hospitals, trained and equipped their police and military, tried to protect their villages, etc. But it didn't much take root. Essentially no one in Afghanistan was prepared to sign on and support the government we were trying to help them have. So the Taliban was able to run a powerful shadow government, use Mafia techniques to keep the villages 'in line', extract cash to pay for their war, etc. But our efforts were far from just holding a gun to heads.

> started picking on smaller enemies with less resources

My view is that the US has been too active around the world. But the US is not nearly responsible for the rise of radical Islam, and radical Islam is not aimed nearly at only the US. In particular, radical Islam against the US is not seriously from the US "picking on" anyone.

Really, radical Islam is based on a simple, old dynamic: Some people want more power. So, in heavily Islamic countries with a lot of oil money sloshing around, people who wanted more power, e.g., Bin Laden and various Islamic clerics, saw a way to pursue power: Use Islam to get some young people up on their hind legs and use oil money to pursue projects. Boom. 9/11.

There's a lot of pushing and shoving, heavily enabled by oil money: So, Saddam wanted to push against Iran. And Iran was eager to push back. So the US helped Saddam. Then Saddam wanted to push against Kuwait and then Saudi Arabia, and the US pushed back. Now Iran wants connect with Syria, influence Lebanon, and push against Israel. In Egypt, the Islamists didn't like the secular dictator and got rid of him, and now are making an even worse mess out of Egypt. Similarly in Libya. Similarly in Syria. And Iran .... So, there's lots of pushing and shoving, again, enabled by oil money. And it helps that the culture is so heavily dominated by Islam's 500 year old traditions that there is so little more modern culture. But no way is much of that pushing and shoving due to anything the US did or did wrong.

> But, Afghanistan was the base of the 9/11 attack on the US that killed 3000 innocent US civilians.

No, it bloody was not. Many of those people hadn't even been in Afghanistan. The ones who were, and who "received training" had mostly received that in the context of fighting Russia. The myth of the 9/11 training camp in Afghanistan is entirely made up. Terrorist camps themselves are a myth. Militias train in the hills with weapons, terrorists don't execute those attacks and don't need/get that training.

Further, you've killed over 200 people, almost every one civilian, for every person killed in the 9/11 attacks. In retribution, against people who weren't involved.

> No, you still know whom you are killing, because of the human INTEL and not because they are carrying knives.

The same HUMINT you pick and choose to justify invading Iraq? The same HUMINT that says "bomb that wedding"?

Because your intel is notoriously bad, especially in that area of the world - even now, and there's such a conflict of interest at all levels.

No, it's just straight-up murder when you drone-bomb someone without on-screen visible reasons (driving a tank) because you have such a low standard of proof - it wouldn't qualify to get a warrant to search the person back home.

But even if your intel was perfect, your leaders ignore anything that doesn't let them proceed with the already-planned mobilization. Iraq wasn't a mistake, Iraq was one of the largest cases of mass murder on the planet - second only barely to monsters from our past. And it was planned before 9/11, and before the cooked-up WMD scare, etc.

> Really, radical Islam is based on a simple, old dynamic: Some people want more power.

No, really? Because that's only exactly like every other group on the planet.

> In Egypt, the Islamists didn't like the secular dictator [that we installed] and got rid of him

Funny that. And funny how you make a big deal about secular when it's the fact that he had people abducted for secrets trials and executions, and that the USA backed him, than his religious status, that bothered the Egyptians.

Oh, and that he was a dictator, and felt he had the right to rule for life.

But yeah, just radical Islamists...

> There's a lot of pushing and shoving, heavily enabled by oil money:

Yes. Texas oil money. And other.

> But no way is much of that pushing and shoving due to anything the US did or did wrong.

You're probably wrong, but it's a tellingly pathetic defense for a pathetic position regardless.

Have you ever been to an Islamic country ever? You just made up the whole history like a simplistic comic book story.

> In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world, the 'culture' is heavily just Islam: Islam controls social structures, e.g., sex, marriage, child rearing, the role of family, etc.

I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs. There is a strong case that our marriage, sex etc. are more inclined towards traditional indian culture than islamic (e.g. second marriages or marrying a divorcee is a taboo in Pakistan while in fact is encouraged in Islam). There is so much diversity in our provinces on how they deal with women (e.g. in Punjab in rural areas, it is very common for women to have jobs, unlike in the Pashtuns) that your claim of sweeping all Islamic countries under one broom is laughable.

> We can toss in architecture, what people eat, and what they wear. Basically from how people dress, eat, work, etc., its all Islam. No it's not. Sorry that's just show your lack of research. Again the 'shalwar kameez' we wear here in Pakistan has more in common with Hindu lineage than Islam with the urban areas are totally jeans/suits. We have huge interest-based banks since forever where banks are a total no-no in Islam.

>Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric

Not sure you can lump up kings with clerics and make an argument out of that. The only thing common between then is opportunist. They wanted to be on the throne and they might've used religion in some cases or maybe sheer power in other. In Pakistan, more than half of our history, we've been ruled by dictators but not once we got an Imam or a cleric.

> I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs

Apparently the main part of Pakistan relevant to Afghanistan is the 'tribal regions' mostly not governed by the rest of Pakistan. There your claims of a "mix" seem to be not correct.

Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan. For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan.

My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq. For Pakistan, sure, it used to be part of India which is wildly mixed from Muslim, Hindu, what it got from the British, and the old cultures from before the British. India is a forbiddingly complicated place, and Pakistan has been influenced by that.

But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam.

Italy is heavily a Roman Catholic country, but the church does not run everything. Turkey is an Islamic country, but the clerics don't run everything. An Islamic country can have a culture more varied than just Islam. No doubt the culture of Pakistan is more varied than that of Afghanistan.

The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam.

The US brought to Afghanistan constitutional government, free elections, roads, schools, hospitals, training and equipment for police and a military, but Afghanistan is about to throw away all of that and return to an 'Islamic state' run by the Taliban. Thus, I and much of the US are losing patience with both Afghanistan and Islam.

Turkey is a secular state. While the population is muslim, the state has historically resisted attempts at islamification. That resistance is being eroded, however.

Off-topic: You seem to be using the word "net" a lot in a way that seems odd to me. Net as in "the net effect of which is"?

"Net" is partly from accounting where we calculate, say, earnings, and have already subtracted off expenses, etc.

More generally "net" means a summary or a very simple statement of the core point.

In writing to be understood, often it is good be clear, and even too simple, about the main 'points'. Otherwise it is too easy that no 'points' at all get across.

Your comment and at least two 'siblings' are far more thoughtful than mine was so that my oversimplifying with "net" is not appropriate.

Back here in the US, after 9/11 and now 12 years in Afghanistan, we need to make some difficult decisions: We tried, hard but in total ('net'!) not hard enough, to make Afghanistan a "shining city on a hill" but apparently have failed and maybe even 'net' have done more harm than good.

Bin laden is gone. The Taliban government that let Bin Laden use their country as a base to attack the US is not gone but is out of power. There are stories that some even in the Taliban now understand that it was a big mistake to let Bin Laden use Afghanistan as a base to attack the US.

The US has tried 'nation building' in several countries of the world. We were largely successful in Germany and Japan. With US military protection, Taiwan and South Korea have done well. The US has tried hard to have peace with both Russia and China and not have them become another 'Axis' like Germany and Japan in the 1940s. Still, in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the results of US efforts been from frustrating and/or poor (Iraq) down to worse.

Viet Nam is the grand tragedy: I have a nice 600 dot per inch black and white printer from Brother, made in Viet Nam. Terrific for Viet Nam. The US couldn't be happier. The Brother printer is much better than the HP printer I bought in 1994. That Brother and Viet Nam are at least in part beating HP in the printer business is mostly fine in the US (except for HP stockholders!). As far as I can tell, what Viet Nam is now is just fine with the US. The big, huge point for the US is that Viet Nam is not part of some Axis of Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi that seemed to be a threat starting just after WWII where the US had just defeated the Axis and didn't like things that looked like an Axis. The WWII Axis also hurt Viet Nam -- Japan occupied Viet Nam.

But, the way Viet Nam is today, it is clearly no threat to its neighbors or the US, and that's really all the US wanted. The US didn't want a colony, and for the rubber or lumber, wanted to pay fair prices for it.

The tragedy is that Viet Nam and US relations as they are today could have been just the same in the early 1970s, the 1960s, ..., back to just after WWII (to heck with the French) just by both sides just deciding to and shaking hands on it.

In summary ('net'), the US has tried, sometimes at great expense in US blood and treasure, often with much more expense in blood in the other country, sometimes been successful, and sometimes not. When we have failed, we didn't really know why.

For why the US was successful in Germany and Japan, both countries had very strong, highly disciplined cultures, suffered just devastating, horrible, defeats, with homeless people wandering cold and hungry in the streets with rotting bodies under piles of rubble, and then used their discipline to say "never again", mean it, implement it, do a lot of really hard work, and rebuild themselves.

So, 'culture' played a part. So, why not success in Afghanistan? My view: Culture. The culture was different; either the US didn't understand it or it was insufficient. What was that culture? In a word, Islam; it runs nearly everything. The US tried to build a 'secular' (independent of religion) democracy, and the Taliban have Islam on their side. The US has B-52 bombers from 40,000 feet, GPS location, A-10 airplanes that reduce tanks to piles of scrap iron in seconds, supersonic F-16 airplanes that can reduce a tank to scattered scrap iron in even less time, schools, hospitals, etc. and lose, and the Taliban have sticks, stones, some RPGs, and rusty AK-47s and win. To me, the main difference is that the Taliban have the 'culture', in this case, Islam, on their side.

Whatever, likely the US will be leaving Afghanistan, fairly soon.

For the US, it's much more difficult to attack us now. In particular, it's difficult even to have nail clippers on a US commercial airplane. And I can believe that in many Islamic countries, anyone shouting "Jihad! Death to ..." will quickly get a 'corrective lesson' they won't forget, maybe even can't forget.

For Turkey, if they become more fundamentally Islamic, then they will find that the US, NATO, the EU, and maybe even Russia will become much less friendly.

> Apparently the main part of Pakistan relevant to Afghanistan is the 'tribal regions' mostly not governed by the rest of Pakistan. There your claims of a "mix" seem to be not correct.

They do. The 'tribal regions' are known 'tribal' for a reason. They are dominated by tribes, who have there own traditions & rivalry. They have affiliations with Taliban because of Pashtun traditions. This affiliation goes back even before the Pakistan came into being. Islam is a cultural part of this region but not the sole driving force. They used poppy/heroine for ages but Islam strictly prohibits using drugs. So yet another sample where your nice little narrative doesn't fit.

> Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan

erm ..US played an important role during the Afghan-Russia war. They actually pumped up the Jihadist sentiment at that time. Religion in the grand scheme has just been a tool to achieve interest.

> For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan.

Only foreign policy. Pakistan cannot afford to fight with neighbors on both sides of border. That's the sole reason Pakistan wants to friend whoever comes into power in Afghanistan (apparently the notorious double-game Pak army has been playing with US is because once US goes back they would have to deal with Taliban ..and they want to be in there good books). Pakistan has also been super-friendly with China but no religion, culture, domestic politics play any role in that. It's only foreign policy.

> My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq

You do know Iraq fought war with Saudia Arabia ..the be and end all of all things Islam ? You do know how things were in Iran before the revolution ? If you start looking things from an economics-perspective then everything fits in place. There are some nut-jobs who leave everything to go and fight for the sake of religion but the majority of the population doesn't do that. They just want good food and good living style regardless of whose in power. Iranian revolution can be traced back to that as well.

> But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam.

then how come there hasn't been any Islamic governing system in Pakistan since the creation? There are gazillion open things in this country which are against the very premise of Islam yet no one talks about that. Pakistan wasn't created by an imam or cleric. The most ironic thing (and I would suggest you should go and study that) is that creation of Pakistan was opposed by virtually every single cleric at that time. Founder of Pakistan (Jinnah) lead a very secular life & wasn't a fan-favourite of Islamic imams at that time. Pakistan was created because Muslims were living a second-class life in all of India. Again economic reasons.

> The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam.

That I agree. But that is not something which you can use as a reason to justify how things work in every Muslim country out there. US invaded Afghanistan at a time when they had right-wing extremists in power. So obviously they'll have to deal with problems in the same domain. You don't need to create grand conclusions out of it.

I can't compete with you on details of Pakistan!

But, somehow while supposedly trying to help the US bring peace to Afghanistan, Bin Laden lived in a relatively large and nice house for some years about a good golf shot from the Pakistan army college. And no one knew he was there?

And when President Clinton fired cruise missiles at the Bin Laden training camp in Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Albright (also known as Half-bright) informed the Pakistan government since the missiles would have to fly over Pakistan territory. Then somehow Half-bright's information made it to Bin Laden who was well out of the area when the missiles arrived.

Of course Islam is not all there is to it, not in Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, or even Afghanistan. And clearly economics is also important.

But my point was about 'culture'. Or just why have US efforts to create democracy in Afghanistan failed? My answer, culture: There's no real basis for democracy in Afghanistan culture. Does this mean that Afghanistan has no culture? No, they do. They have a strong culture, one that runs nearly everything, Islam. Get rid of Islam and they don't have much except maybe a few goats, some poppies, some rusty AK-47s. So, they don't get rid of Islam. Not all of Islam is against democracy, but the culture in Afghanistan is Islam with no foundation for democracy.

This thread (sorry about the times I typed 'tread' instead) has mentioned that in part the Taliban act like the Mafia in Italy and at times parts of the US. That's some of what I thought, and, yes, it's not from Islam. But the main reason for a Mafia is that there is no good alternative system of police and government. With a good system of police, when a Mafia guy comes to a store owner and asks for a monthly payment, the store owner can go to the police who will be waiting when the Mafia guy comes and accepts the money and then ... lock up the Mafia guy for a long time. But this system needs a good culture to support such good police and, thus, good police to protect the citizens. In contrast, all Afghanistan has in culture is just Islam; Islam doesn't provide good support of police that support the citizens; there's no other culture; so the Taliban get to use Mafia tactics. Neither the Taliban nor the villagers believe that a democracy should be better. So, Islam and Mafia tactics are what's there.

It's not that Islam is against good police protection; it's mostly just that Islam doesn't provide good police protection, and in Afghanistan Islam is essentially all the culture. So, no good police protection. And it's not that an Islamic country can't have good police protection; I can believe that some Islamic countries have some very strong police. But in Afghanistan, about all there is is Islam and next to nothing about good police or democracy. And the Islamic clerics? It's not in their interest to see the growth of strong, secular institutions such as good police. So, again, no good police force can grow up.

Or Islamic Sharia law: Try to implement something descended from Napoleonic law or British Common law, etc., and, in a country that has essentially only Islam, many Muslims will keep asking for Sharia law. So, get a 500 year old legal system.

Education? Try to set up a 21st century, or 20th century, education system, and, in a country that has essentially only Islam, a lot of Muslims will insist on Islamic education instead. Halt: Again out of date by 500 years.

Look, if Islam were only religion, then it would be much less of a road block to progress in Afghanistan. Instead, Islam is running nearly everything there and, thus, is able to block nearly any change or progress.

A big point about Islam for people in the US is that Islam is not just religion but is also how to dress, what to eat, how to run a marriage, education, architecture, system of laws, government, etc. So, in the less developed Islamic countries, Islam is a roadblock to change. E.g., in Iraq, there are two sides to Islam, the Shiites and the Sunnis. So, since they have little more important in their lives than just their religion, they fight. They would just rather have a civil war than get on with pumping oil and living a life of milk and honey. They did that already in Europe, been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and had the rivers running red for hundreds of years from religious wars. Finally they learned: Have politics and government separate from and largely independent of religion; have freedom of religion; and don't fight over religion. Done. When the Muslims in, say, Iraq learn that lesson, they will be ahead some hundreds of years.

> But, somehow while supposedly trying to help the US bring peace to Afghanistan, Bin Laden lived in a relatively large and nice house for some years about a good golf shot from the Pakistan army college. And no one knew he was there?

again, very trivial story. there is an argument to be made that how plausible it is for OBL to live in hiding in Pak but lets for a second we assume that Pakistan were providing a lovely cushy place for him to hide. The reasons are not Islamic, cultural, brotherhood ..it's plain old foreign policy. The war in Afghanistan brings aid and modern technology to Pak Army. And they are suckers for that. Our Army did the same when you guys funded Afghanistan in Russia war (and guess what they build a whole Atomic bomb out of it) and they did the same this time. Nothing to do with your grand illusions of how Islam runs thing here. It's all money. The generals will spend there weekend drinking & dancing (again banned in Islam!) to celebrate there achievements.

---

and as for all your other points which is basically how Islam is hindering progress in Afghanistan: so at least you started with Islamic countries and then narrowed it down to the failed ones and now we are in Afghanistan only. So I'll say that's good progress. You can't compete me on Pakistan on details but you can't do that for Iran, Afghanistan or any other Islamic country. And these are not some hidden research which I did. You only need to visit the country once & meet with common people to understand how your nice little good (democracy) vs evil (religion) doesn't fit. It'll be an eye-opener.

Yes..Islam covers every aspect of life but the number of people who follow Islam like that are less than 0.1% of the world population. And I've given you gazillion examples of that (heck! we have a bigger red district area in Lahore than Amsterdam). Afghanistan was fairly happy with their system a few decades ago. They had universities, tourism, working-women ..all sweet. But then the Russia war happened & it's been downhill since then. Have you ever talked to an Afghani all your life? I can only assume no. Your total knowledge seems to come from watching OBL/Taliban released video speeches.

And I can't even fathom how you think Iraq learned the lessons. The only thing your ill-fated war brought to Iraq is more "love for religion" and more "Death to America". Maybe you have to make these sweet conclusions to make you sleep at night or something but it's hilariously unfounded and naive.

> The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq.

No, it doesn't. I don't disagree with you on the whole (and certainly appreciate that you are even attempting to understand the issue, which is more than almost anyone does), but like neebz I think your narrative is very simplistic and out of touch with reality.

Islam is not as powerful in the "Islamic world" as you portrayed. Taliban is the exception, not the rule.

I currently live in Tehran, and TBH I personally know less than 8 people (less, because it's been a while since I've talked to a few of them) who are supportive of the government, or in general of Islamic rule. And the number of "religious" (as in, religion is more than something theoretical for them - you believe in Quran, and even though you don't follow it's instructions, the mere belief gets you a place in paradise) people I personally know is probably no more than 20 (most of them friends at college).

The reason for Islamic rule (at least in Iran), is not because they have the support of the people, but simply because they have the money and power. You don't sell hundreds of billions of dollars of crude oil every quarter and get rich and powerful, only to allow to be overthrown! You do everything you can to prevent that.

I hate typing on iPad, so, please read the rest of what I wanted to say in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4820604

> Islam is not as powerful in the "Islamic world" as you portrayed. Taliban is the exception, not the rule.

Sure. But I was talking mostly about Afghanistan. And the US got 'impatient' with the Shiite/Sunni fighting in Iraq. And the Shiite yelling and screaming, "Death to America" from Iran is difficult to respect.

For the connection between the clerics and the economy in Iran, there was an article in, maybe, 'Forbes' long ago explaining that basically the clerics get a 'cut' of nearly everything in the economy, control who gets to do what, etc.

But, why? That is, why are the Islamic clerics in Iran running the economy with a short leash and running an aggressive military and foreign policy at great cost to their domestic standard of living? Is this just religion? No. But Islam is not just religion and, instead, is often also economic, legal, military, foreign policy, etc. That's not new: The Roman Catholic church was doing that in Europe for hundreds of years. They owned a major fraction of all the farm land in France which has a major fraction of all the good farm land in Western Europe. They built little things like the cathedrals, while the people were living in, what, mud huts? They built the Bishop's Residenz in Würzburg, awash in some of the fanciest art and architecture in all of civilization -- not cheap, and built by citizens in, what, mud huts? The Roman Catholic church was running everything. E.g., to be a king, had to have the Pope tap you on the head or some such. And they were corrupt. So, they had the Protestant Reformation, religious wars, etc. Lots of blood. Finally they learned their lessons about religion. In the US, we borrowed those lessons -- the state will establish no religion; there will be separation of church and state; there will be freedom of religion. Done. Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan still have to learn these old lessons.

Sorry about the Shah; he was a pawn in the Cold War. The US had just finished WWII and, thus, took the Cold War seriously. We spent a LOT of money, and blood, winning the Cold War.

Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the other Arab oil states, should all do the same thing: Cool down. Relax. Embrace peace. Get the clerics into religion only. No more clerics measuring the lengths of women's skirts or censoring the Internet. Pump oil. Enjoy life. Then work on culture, good government, education, technology, and a strong economy for when the oil runs out. And stop shouting "Death to America". Want nuclear power for electric power, taking the salt out of water and growing vegetables? Fine. Just accept the usual international rules, safeguards, and inspections, and light up your cities and have fountains and big swimming pools of pure water.

All this fighting is over nothing, wasteful, and absurd.

(sorry that this comment is not at all coherent - I have a bad headache right now)

I agree. But the problem is that those who chant "Death to America", like the status quo; they don't want change! If things change (like you said in the second to last paragraph), they'll be out of their jobs and have to do an honest day's work. They don't want that. And do everything they can to prevent that. They "have" to portray US as the "Great Satan", that is behind all their economic, cultural and political mistakes.

It might be strange and unfathomable to you and me, but some people prefer to be King in a wasteland, than to be an ordinary citizen in a country with much greater standard of living. They'd rather be a powerful Mullah in Taliban, than to live normally in a western country. Many of these clerics have spent years studying in European countries, but after finishing college they've left the west and now are living in a shack somewhere in Ghandahar and are the local commander of Taliban. Why? I don't know.

Most of these people won't "cool down, relax or embrace peace", because they are enjoying their shitty lives. And that's the problem, because they have the power to make life miserable for others too. They'd sooner bomb their people (Saddam, Ghadafi, Assad) and ruin their own country, than to "let it go".

There are exceptions like Mubarak or Bin Ali (or Iran's Shah) that fought furiously, but in the end decided not to completely ruin their countries and fled. But not all dictators are like that; some are like Assad.

I hope you are very careful, your commentary is really interesting but I worry for you writing things like what you said about Shah and Assad from there.

The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq

If you think Salafist Afghanistan, Kohmeinist Iran and Baathist Iraq had anything in common then you know jack shit.

That's like comparing Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and the US colonies in Cotton Mather's time, sticking them all into one big pot because they are all "Christian". Idiocy.

You miss the point: It's not that all the versions of Islam and Islamic governments are alike. Instead, it's that in the more backward Islamic countries, Islam is essentially all the culture there is. And Islam is not just a religion but is also into law, government, education, etc. So, in such a country, Islam is about all the culture there is and can block, actively or just passively by default, essentially all progress.

As you point out, there are still some differences. But what is in common is that Islam, in whatever flavors, is so strong, and not just a religion, and essentially all the culture there is, is able to block progress.

Look, to be more clear, the problem is not just Islam. Instead, the Roman Catholics ran everything in Western Europe for hundreds of years, were corrupt, blocked progress, and finally Europe got out of it, after religious wars, etc.

The point is not that Islam is a bad religion, even if it is. Instead the point is that to run a good society, need a good culture, and that culture needs to come from much more than just some religious clerics. A religious state, Roman Catholic, Islamic, or anything else, just will not be a successful state. In the countries where Islam is the only culture, Islam needs to shrink back to being just a religion, hopefully one of several, and let the culture have other inputs besides just religion. Got it now?

Got it now?

Don't patronize me. You wrote a screed justifying bombing the hell out of civilians because you didn't like their speech. Somewhere in your moral bankruptcy, you wrote

So, in an Islamic country, take away Islam, and there's no culture at all and, then, just chaos

This was your characterization of Iran and Iraq, which showed that you don't know jack. It also won't work for Turkey or Malaysia.

By the way, "nation building" failed in Germany as well, largely because Americans are hypocrites who SAY "nation building" and DO war profiteering, corruption and vindictiveness. The result was Adolf Hitler.

So the US had to fight another World War with Germany, and after getting their asses kicked so badly by the Axis, and coming close to losing in several ways, the US decided in 1945 to do actual nation building in half good faith, hence the Marshall Plan. This time round, it succeeded in Germany and Japan.

Unfortunately, the US forgot this lesson by 9/11, so when it came to Iraq and Afghanistan, they went back to "nation building" by Blackwater XE and Halliburton, with predictable results.

> Step 1. Put in place a bunch of INTEL.

This sounds suspiciously like Step 2 of the South Park underpants-gnome meme; it detracts from other good points you make.

I kept it simple. A longer description is that with modern technology we don't really have to occupy, run, or have a big presence in the place to know what's going on. And when we do see something that is a threat to the US, we can stop it without 100,000 troops in the country. For the show you mentioned, never saw any such thing!

You're pretty optimistic about those two things. The history of the past 10 years, and for that matter of the past 50 years, suggests that both are decidedly non-trivial challenges, with or without "modern technology."

"Really the Islamic countries are about 500 years behind the history of Western Europe... Moving ahead 500 years is not easy.Net, Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric. Sorry 'bout that. We won't like such a 'culture': Some of the men use boys for sex."

Taliban-style regressive Islam is not 500 years old in Afghanistan, it is only a few decades old. Check out these pictures from Afghanistan in the 1960's: http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/01/28/podlich-afgh...

Yes, for a while, parts of Afghanistan started to look modern.

But the point is, to have a good country, need a good culture. But about all Afghanistan has is Islamic culture, and it is more than just a religion -- it is also about food, clothing, education, laws, government, etc. Just can't have a good culture, good enough for a good country, from just a religious culture. E.g., people in Afghanistan do not have enough information to have any good reason to believe in democracy so don't. So, the Taliban with Islam and Mafia techniques can run the place better than the elected government the US helped set up.

Right, the Taliban are not 500 years old, but Islam is. If Islam were just a religion, then the 500 years might not be so bad. But with Islamic culture, also get Islamic laws, education, and government, and those are 500 years out of date and bad.

Talk to a guy 500 years ago about US democracy in the 21st century, and he will think you've been smoking funny stuff. Well, that's about what the US faces in Afghanistan.

tl;dr The ground truth is NOTHING like what you see in the MSM. I fought in Iraq as a paratrooper mostly in Baghdad from '04 to '05. While there I was really surprised by the reporting I saw. We had CNN in our hooch (paid Hadji to hook it up). We had satellite Internet (again paid Hadji for it) and I read the NY Times. The reporting there could not have been further from reality. We used to scratch our heads at the reporting each morning on the day prior in Baghdad. It was like they were reporting from a different planet. You should not be surprised that the ground truth is wildly different from what is being reported. My first briefing when I got on the ground in 2004 was that we were past a simple insurgency and now in a small scale civil war that we were trying to stop from becoming a full scale humanitarian crisis. I recall a lot of reporting and very brainy discussion about the insurgency at that time but I don't recall the civil war entering that discussion until late 2005 when I got back to the states. Keep in mind that in Afghanistan most of reporters don't go out without ISAF patrols because that would not be very safe, it was the same in Iraq. This drastically alters the story you get. On the flip side, I'm pleasantly surprised by the courage displayed by some of the PBS Frontline reporters and the places they've gone. I love Frontline. As they say, America isn't at war America is at the shopping mall. The US Army is at war.

> My first briefing when I got on the ground in 2004 was that we were past a simple insurgency and now in a small scale civil war that we were trying to stop from becoming a full scale humanitarian crisis.

That's what I thought, and I was always in the US and getting only US news. Moreover, earlier still, I believed the remarks reported from Saddam that the US occupation would have one heck of a time keeping the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds from having a civil war.

W claimed that, of course, the Iraqis could "govern themselves". Where'd George get that really strong funny stuff he was smoking?

Net, W failed to see what large fractions of common street thugs, one step higher lone criminals, low level gang leaders, various mid level opportunists, government officials, religious leaders, tribal leaders, the Iranians, and international trouble makers saw: W's defeat of Saddam without a serious effort at occupation had left Iraq plowed fertile ground for chaos.

> its hard for me and Americans maybe all westerners, to understand Afghanistan and the people there

It's not hard at all. Country A invades country B. Wreaks havoc and assigns a puppet government. Army is in disarray, civilian life is disrupted. It doesn't take a "reasonably bright American student" to guess the conditions and sentiments of the local populace.

The taliban operates like the mafia in Afghanistan. They go from provincial village to village, effectively saying "Hey, nice village you have here...it would be a shame if something were to happen to it"

They do provide legitimate protection. If bandits or unsavory characters harass the village, the taliban will roll up with AKs and rpgs. They also adjudicate local disputes like "he stole my goat" or "he had sex with my daughter". The afghan military and police forces don't spend a lot of time in the poorest regions of the country, so it's usually the taliban that has to make someone give back the goat or marry the daughter.

In return for protection and dispute resolution, the people in poor afghan villages usually grow poppy on their lands to be sold as opium and volunteer military aged males as taliban recruits. When you think of this system at scale, running unchecked, you can see how 9/11 style acts of terrorism happen. The bigger threat is that a well resourced and uncontrolled taliban in Afghanistan could destabilize the whole region by inciting muslim conflicts.

The US response was close to being appropriate for disrupting a protection racket. In the near term, they sent marines to provide protection for poor villages and actively hunt the taliban. In the long term they tried to introduce free democracy to the country, to provide security and rule of law to the poorest people and put the taliban out of business.

The reason it's taken so long to produce results is optimism on the part of western politicians. Afghanistan is a country that's only loosely held together and there are many factions and families in Kabul competing to grab power in a newly formed government. It could still be decades before things are settled enough that they have time to worry about protecting their poorest citizens, and a strong taliban doesn't pose a direct threat to the most lucrative parts of the government.

It's a complicated situation mostly because the taliban is exploiting people who have little to offer to the government that is supposed to protect them. But many democracies start out this way, and ultimately western action may have helped the situation.

It is worse than that.

The fundamental problem with the government is that in the name of expediency we put people who hated the Taliban in charge and called it a democracy. Then when they maintained their power by openly stealing elections, we didn't call their bluff because we were trying to pretend that they are an independent country. The example that everyone sees is corruption starting at the top, and flowing all of the way down.

Now we're trying to declare victory and leave. But the existing kleptocracy can't stand. Everyone knows it. We just don't want to keep dying for no purpose. And the kleptocracy is only seeking to steal as much as they can before they lose power.

More specifically, we put the "Northern Alliance" in power. These are essentially drug lords with roots in the North of country. Thus the narco-economy has been operating in spades since they have come to power. This creates a situation where foreign aid and illicit drugs are the only real sources of money.

See the palaces they construct:

http://trueslant.com/pjtobia/2009/07/12/narcotecture-a-photo...

> When you think of this system at scale, running unchecked, you can see how 9/11 style acts of terrorism happen.

9/11 hijackers were mostly well educated, middle-class Saudi Arabians. Not Taliban, as you seem to imply.

If anything, what could be argued is that Afghanistan lacking a national police force makes it easy for terrorist groups to establish military training camps there. But that's a whole different thing.

Not even, it makes it easy for warlords to train militias, not for terrorists.

Terrorists rarely need combat skills as we think about them. Terrorist training is more about pushing the button - which is all religious, or maybe playing flight-sims and practicing with a knife. They do this in living rooms and garages.

Local warlords though, need places to train troops live ammo, firing RPGs and mortars, practicing attacking and defending against other large local foes.

Not that they shouldn't be stopped - that's a valid question - but we went in after international terrorists, shot local warlords, and claimed victory.

(In the process, killing enough people unjustly to cause much of a generation to have real reason to hate us.)

Just checking, but you do know that the Taliban and Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 or any major international terrorism? Al Qaeda on other had is a different beast, but although they were operating in Afganistan for a time, they are nothing like the loose Mafia you describe.

A decent job has been done of removing Al Qaeda, but the only way to change a country like Afghanistan is to stop sending millions over there in cash from international drug money. The war on drugs helped fund this situation. And doesn't seem to be helping to bring a resolution yet at great cost to them and us.

the only way to change a country like Afghanistan is to stop sending millions over there in cash from international drug money. The war on drugs helped fund this situation. And doesn't seem to be helping to bring a resolution yet at great cost to them and us.

The drug trade is a big problem in Afghanistan, but isn't the root cause of the problems there (Indeed, since it's pretty close to the only functioning export industry it may well be a good thing for the farmers).

No-one has ever successfully imposed any system of government on Afghanistan. That reflects deeper causes than the war on drugs.

You say that like its a bad thing - an imposed government is the problem. A representative government is required. The corrupt system that is currently in place is hardly an asset.

I didn't mean to imply an imposed government is a good thing. I agree with the rest of your statement.

That completely changes how I read your post! Thanks for clarification.

I'm not sure if Afghanistan /needs/ a government - but regardless, the war on drugs allows criminal elements to profit from the power vacuum.

You rightly state it's a functioning export industry - but the de-facto criminalisation of that industry is the issue. We either need to find ways of either buying the stock for legal uses, or helping people transition to other cash crops. But the industry is supported with 1st world drug users money - and until we address the way our citizens are part of the problem, the problem will remain, or simply move to the next lawless frontier.

Maybe it says that Afghanistan's border is a pile of western-motivated political crap and the country shouldn't be.

Hell, Quebec wants out of Canada and we generally all get along fairly well. Imagine how we'd feel if all the provinces felt the same and were actively and brutally fighting. Why are we trying to hold this mess together?

We've got this manifest destiny thing like we've got to make 1946's border permanent.

> The reason it's taken so long to produce results is optimism on the part of western politicians.

No. The reason it hasn't worked is because it's a total lie.

Afghanistan wasn't invaded to help it, or to stop terrorists, it was invaded for oil, handy bases near countries we need to remain "allies", etc.

> [The US response to the taliban was to send] marines to provide protection for poor villages and actively hunt the taliban.

Roughly, yes. And had this been done for the reasons stated, at any of the times various segments of the population and world-wide humanitarian groups had asked for it, you'd have been saviors.

But that wasn't the goal or you'd have done it that way - not in freak-out mode.

The "failed state" in Afghanistan is the one you're building. Unwanted, known criminals, ruling over a set of borders nobody feels attached to.

You seem to have confused Afghanistan with Iraq.

Afghanistan is not a major oil producer. There are large estimated reserves there, but they are not tapped. (And indeed the main contract to develop fields there was signed by the Chinese.)

However Iraq looks exactly like you said. And indeed the initial name for the invasion plan was Operation Iraqi Liberation. But there seems to have been a power struggle between the neocons in the Bush administration (open up the taps, crash the world market, see the economy take off) and the people from the oil reserves (shut the taps off, see the price skyrocket, make oil countries happy). The latter contingent included Condoleezza Rice (Chevron named an oil tanker after her), Dick Cheney (former CEO of Haliburton), and George Bush himself who had worked in the oil industry, and been bailed out by Saudi Arabian family friends.

Unsurprisingly the oil industry won that political fight.

> You seem to have confused Afghanistan with Iraq. Afghanistan is not a major oil producer.

It's about keeping oil flowing - at least being extracted if not sold. But yes in Afghanistan that is currently more pipelines than oil-wells. The TAPI pipeline for instance is proposed to move huge amount of Turkmeni oil through Afghanistan.

> indeed the main contract to develop fields there was signed by the Chinese.

Sure. Why not? The goal is to keep oil flowing now, not (rationally) hoarded. Anything other than leaving it in the ground is fine,

But anyways - the point wasn't that 100% of the reason was oil, because the ability to use their airspace, have lasting bases, etc, is also of huge value. My point was that the official reasons were specifically untrue - almost zero utility came pursing from the stated reasons for the invasions - Bin Laden and WMDs (in Iraq). Mainly, of course, because both reasons were essentially fictions.

> ... and the people from the oil reserves (shut the taps off, see the price skyrocket ...

I think ultimately they had roughly the same desires for Iraqi oil: get it the hell out of Iraqi/neighboring soil as quickly as possible before the inconvenient locals have anything to say about it. Even if they have to "share" with them

And then, yes some people want to play it smart and hoard to watch the prices rise. But none of them wanted an economic meltdown so their policy isn't going to be to stop selling oil, but to stop selling their oil and make the other guy sell his. Having the USA (and select allies) being the last ones with oil is the winning position for both factions (as you describe it) of the Bush government - they merely differed on mid-game strategy.

One of the major problems that occupying forces have had in Afghanistan is that modern military strategy fundamentally isn't designed for taking and holding ground. Outside of the bases in Afghanistan, there is not one square meter of ground that is "owned" by the coalition.

The approach seems to be that transient patrols, haphazardly driving around and visiting villages in giant bomb proof robot trucks, is a substitute for thousands of years old strategies of taking, holding and controlling territory. There's no front lines in the kind of conflict because that's how the new strategy has defined the conflict. The last time a modern military in a major conflict actually took and held ground was probably the Korean War. After that it was endless insurgencies or hit-win-withdraw like in the first Iraq war.

This is opposed to the Taliban which can comfortably move into a village and live there 24/7, becoming "the villagers" as much as anybody who was there before. A robot truck driving up and asking "where are the non-villagers, where are the bad guys?" will get no answer because everybody is a villager, and the guy making bombs in the afternoons is a village elder the rest of the day. There are no bad guys.

Afghanistan isn't a failed state, it's an anti-state, its borders are a reflection of the borders of its neighbors -- extending only so far as they cared to and stopping when the terrain became too difficult to bother. Within this zone are several city-states and otherwise large stretches of lawless territory connected, but not held together, by a network of smugglers and local warlords. The coalition controls none of it save for perhaps the city-state of Kabul.

Of course the ability to take and control territory means lots and lots of manpower, which runs contrary to modern military thinking. This forces military leadership into a state of sustained denial that this or that alternate approach will be the one that opens up the opportunity for Afghanistan to develop into a real state. They're flummoxed that it isn't happening.

But there's sadly only one proven way to accomplish this goal, take, hold and control territory. Put in place a carefully controlled puppet dictator or similar for a couple decades, one who will build up strong institutions of government and industry. Then once these things are in place, kill him or his dynastic line off (or have a quiet democratic revolution) and have the people assume ownership of these institutions and industries. Sure if the timing of these things is off it fucks up and we end up with Iran. But if the timing is good we end up with South Korea.

There is no way how you can "take and hold ground" with tens of thousands of troops in a place populated with tens of millions.

Proper occupation can be and has been done many times in history, but it takes a force at least somewhat proportional to the population; which the west doesn't really want to afford.

I agree, which is why perhaps military policy should be more like the first Iraq War. Go in, kick ass, withdraw, claim victory. Don't forget that there was incredible resistance to increasing the ground troop numbers across NATO nations.

Long protracted ground wars seem like something the West should give much more thought to going forward.

Proper occupation can be and has been done many times in history, but it takes a force at least somewhat proportional to the population; which the west doesn't really want to afford.

Controlling a territory has been done many times with a very small force. The key is set up a hierarchy and have locals do the door-to-door ground work. Flying in the imperial marines to patrol every village street in backcountry Afghanistan is completely insane.

Historically, the way to control a territory is as follows: you go to each region and you find the local strongman with the best combination of reliability and strength available. You say: "We will support your control of this region, if you provide security and support our imperial policies [those policies could be anything, depending on the desires of the imperialist. It could be providing natural resources, converting people to a certain religion or even spreading woman's rights]. If you support our policies, you will otherwise have freedom to rule according to local custom. We will provide you money and resources. If you fail to support our policies, we will violently remove you."

Under such a policy, you do not need hundreds of thousands of imperial soldiers patrolling the lands, you just need enough soldiers to remove any local warlords that get out of line.

This raises the question: why hasn't the U.S. done the above? My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule. Furthermore, such overt imperialism contradicts the U.S.'s founding myth as being born out of resistance to imperialism. Few states can overtly contradict their founding myths. So instead, the U.S. has chosen to maintain security with its own forces, so that the locals can have elections and choose local leaders, as part of a transition to democracy.

True Believers == ideologues. Even then, if they truly believed, they'd have no trouble describing the democratic paradise they think they are installing.

I can't recall ever hearing such pronouncements.

You have never heard such pronouncements? Pretty much every foreign policy speech by an American president involves talk of spreading freedom and democracy. Here for example is President Bush in 2005: 'Bush, putting Mubarak on the spot, delineated what he would consider acceptable conditions for elections in Egypt: "freedom of assembly, multiple candidates, free access by those candidates to the media and the right to form political parties."' http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16510-2005Mar...

Here are some Obama quotes from recent State of the Union speeches: "We will reward good governance, work to reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans -- men and women alike." (2010) "In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy." (2013)

This theory is fine, but isn't the Taliban the strongman in this case?

Sure, but the U.S. could not decide to install the Taliban as their preferred strongman. The proximate cause to invading in the first place was to break up the Taliban who had hosted and provided the breeding ground for Al Qaeda operations against the U.S.

Given that the idea is to stamp out terrorism against the U.S. they can hardly decide to have the terrorist-friendly strongmen back in charge.

> My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule.

Actually the U.S. has done this many times before. We know this because the U.S. has been reviled by people around the world for installing preferred puppet dictators (the "strongman") in other countries.

So I believe an additional constraint to your theory is that the U.S. leadership may have felt compelled to actually go on a path towards a democracy this time to avoid having that complaint levied against them.

The US hasn't "done the above" because they tried and failed. The Afghan Army were supposed to be the US's local stooges.

Why the US failed was because US troops were true believers in massacring innocent Afghan civilians. Their relatives sought revenge by joining the Afghan Army then turning their guns on their "team mates" - US troops - even if it meant their own deaths.

You will find that cynical Machiavellian policies of the sort you mentioned above depend to a great degree on deterrence, which doesn't work when your enemy no longer has anything to live for and decides to go kamikaze.

Most of the mid-to-high level leaders I met who were in positions to influence policy (CIA, some civilian advisors to military, some military) were true believers in both western-style democracy and, more strikingly, Christianity. There was a distressingly high level of some combination of "white man's burden" and "bring them the light of the lord" going on. Decisions and plans were presented using other language, but when you actually talked to them about their real motivations and what they thought should happen, Jesus came up more than anything else. Kind of terrifying IMO.

There are many historical examples where a smaller force has taken over large populations. You need some sort of military advantage to do that. Britain, Spain or going further back the Romans.

These involve components though that are unacceptable in modern warfare. e.g. the threat and execution of collective punishment against large populations. The smaller force doesn't need to subdue the entire population at once, just a chunk at a time.

For less extreme measures you would effectively need to put in place martial law and martial rule that governs every aspect of the populations' lives. In this case you need enough force on the ground all the time to enforce it and those forces are going to take losses in a guerilla warfare situation (e.g. the Russians in Afghanistan). Especially if someone is supporting the opposing side...

In Afghanistan it's a mix of issues:

1. The occupying force has low tolerance for casualties and is in defensive mode.

2. The population has a long history of overthrowing occupation and therefore assumes the same will happen here.

3. Everyone can see the lack of commitment for the occupying force. This is not a "win at all costs" situation.

4. The Taliban is supported by external entities fighting a proxy war.

5. The Taliban is, at least in theory, in a "win at all costs" mode.

"These involve components though that are unacceptable in modern warfare. e.g. the threat and execution of collective punishment against large populations. The smaller force doesn't need to subdue the entire population at once, just a chunk at a time."

In other words, be the Taliban.

Not by far. The Romans would kill a large portion of a rebellious city/village (or all) and the rest would be shipped away as slaves. You wouldn't want to mess with them.

The Taliban is part of the local population. They will definitely intimidate, kill, terrorize but it's not the same.

EDIT: Just to be clear... I'm not proposing the US behave like the Romans used to. If anything, given the limitations it should have been more careful in the way it applies force.

Another fine example were the Mongols. They achieved a lot with very few soldiers. They also left mountains of skulls (literally) and cities where they murdered everything (including animals) in their wake.

Suffice to say, after a while nobody wanted to fight the Mongols. The subjugated did what they were told, because anything was better than the alternative: they might keep your prettiest daughters as sex slaves (if the daughters were lucky), kill you and all other members of your family, kill your dogs, kill your cows, kill the chickens, and then burn down the entire city for kicks. Maybe they even killed the rats.

Then they'd send back a scouting party a couple days later to execute any survivors who someone escaped the first massacre.

The problem with being the good guys is that it's hard to win against guerilla warfare on foreign soil without being evil.

Here are some questions I have about it:

Why didn't the Allied occupation of Europe in WWI and WWII suffer from guerilla warfare? Were we more willing to accept casualties? Were we more ruthless about collective punishment? Is the culture of Europe such that Europeans don't do guerilla war? If that's the case, why did the colonists fight a guerilla war in the American Revolution, since they were culturally European?

I'm assuming the occupation of Japan went well because of the shock of being nuked and the surrender of the Emporer, if neither of those things had happened, the aftermath would have likely not turned out as smoothly for the occupiers...

The problem with being the good guys is that it's hard to win against guerilla warfare on foreign soil without being evil.

The Malay insurgence seemed to be beaten fairly well.

Why didn't the Allied occupation of Europe in WWI and WWII suffer from guerilla warfare?

Which Allied occupation of Europe would that have been? In WW2, everyone wanted the Nazi's out, plus there was the immediate threat of Russian invasion in most areas.

In WW1 the allies didn't deploy major forces in Axis countries for any significant period of time.

Additionally there were pretty significant numbers of fighting-age men killed prior to the end of WW1 & WW2. That left less potential guerilla fighters.

Is the culture of Europe such that Europeans don't do guerilla war?

One of the first large scale examples of semi-organised guerilla war was the Peninsular War, where Spain and Portugal (and later the British) forced Napoleon's French forces out of the Iberian Peninsula.

The name "guerilla war" comes from the Spainish use of it during that war.

Also, see guerilla resistance movements in France, Poland and the Balkans during WW2.

I'm assuming the occupation of Japan went well because of the shock of being nuked and the surrender of the Emporer

That, and the lack of potential fighters, and the fact the Allies pretty much kept the Japanese power structures as they were during the war (they were too worried about the Russians to change anything). The Japanese didn't have anything to rebel against.

The USSR occupation of Eastern Europe / Warsaw pact countries after WW2 did suffer from guerilla warfare, with some squads lasting until 1960'ies. And that was even with the full "good practice" of lots of boots on the ground, resettled bureaucrats, total control of whole economy with cushy positions for local collaborators, and no fear of using collective punishment.

For example, if some village peasants feed the guerilla troops (willingly or not), and you shoot or deport anyone suspected of that, not bothering about possible false positives while rewarding snitches/collaborators; and using mass media to make sure that everyone knows the consequences - then in a bunch of years that will reduce support for insurgents. But western troops under media coverage can't really do that effectively.

Also, using Afghan army to make peace in Afghanistan seems ineffective - there are well known benefits to classical approach used by USSR, earlier imperial Russia, Ottoman empire and Roman empire; you conscript troops from the occupied areas and send them to pacify other occupied areas with different and preferably alien/hostile culture. Conscripting Afghan soldiers to pacify Iraq, and conscripting Iraqi soldiers to pacify Afghanistan would reduce the risk of corruption, fraternizing, and defection. Again, USA probably isn't willing to do that.

I don't have an answer, but the Japanese bit at the end is fascinating. I read a book (may have been a history of the Kokoda Trail) which discussed the Japanese soldiers reaction to being captured. The expectation was to be executed or tortured. Once it became clear this wasn't going to happen, full cooperation usually occurred as the culture and loss signified the defeat by a superior leader and force, and allegiances shifted. I have likely jumbled this a bit, but the gist of it was that the Japanese soldiers reaction to loss was quite different to the European soldiers.

> The last time a modern military in a major conflict actually took and held ground was probably the Korean War.

Except for ..

Falkland Islands

Grenada

Desert Storm

OIF

I'd definitely strike OIF from that list as it suffered from the same lack of ground control that OEF has and I'm not sure I'd count the Falklands or Grenada as a major military campaigns.

I specifically addressed Desert Storm (as the First Iraq War) as specifically a case where Western forces didn't hold territory. It was a hit, win and withdraw strategy and was over in what 100 hours? There was no ground held in the long term.

> There was no ground held in the long term.

We've had forces in Kuwait ever since Desert Storm ended.

Grenada was a "major conflict"? Only if the entire US military versus a bunch of infighting leftists on a 344 square kilometer island with a population of less than 100,000 counts as a major conflict.

OP said 'take and hold ground'. Which is what Grenada was.

I will allow it was not a major conflict.

The Falklands are British. The British forces did not "take and hold ground", the repelled an invasion force.

Desert Storm: The US did not hold any ground for a long period of time. They defeated the Iraqi forces and withdrew.

Also, the population of the falklands is around 3000 total people. Even if it were an "occupation" (which I agree it is not since most people there identify as British), it would be like occupying a tiny village.

> The British forces did not "take and hold ground", the repelled an invasion force.

Incorrect. The Argentines surprised the small garrison, had the place in a few hours. The Brits then mobilized an amphibious force and had to take the Falklands back.

> did not hold any ground for a long period of time.

I don't recall there being a qualification for 'time spent on the ground'. And incorrect because we've had forces in Kuwait ever since.

You're arguing semantics. In the Falklands, the ground was British in the first place, and the Argentinians did not occupy the entire island; they repelled an invasion force, and saying that "held ground" is like saying the US has "held ground" from the British since the Revolution. Similarly, Kuwait was friendly territory; I was referring to Iraq.

> and the Argentinians did not occupy the entire island

One of us needs to review that conflict. And it's not me.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

one of the major points made in the documentary is that the guy making bombs in the afternoon is one of the bad guys, but calling him out one way or the other is a terrible idea for your average village. the reason they aren't pointing out the bad guy is because as you say, that robot truck is going to leave that evening. you don't want the bad guy's friends to find out, and you don't want the robot truck to start firing.

Furthermore, "find the bombmakers" is useless when the population of an entire village has been pressed into service in making bomb components like wooden pressure triggers. Thus the entire village are bombmakers.

That makes it sound like the villagers are unwilling. If they are willingly making bombs it is considerably harder to stop them.

That is almost 100% false. For example, read the on-the-ground account in Junger's book War (and the related documentary Resprepo).

The whole aim of the Restrepo outpost was to control entry to the Korengal Valley, and take and hold control of the ground.

It kind of worked for a short period of time, but ultimately failed.

Nevertheless, the strategy was to gain control of the ground, then hand control over to local Afghan forces. There were some fairly significant failures in implementing that strategy though - not least that the government put in place to replace the Taliban was notably worse in many respects for the local population.

"It kind of worked for a short period of time, but ultimately failed."

So it's almost 100% false, but actually correct?

They had a strategy that was designed to hold ground (the OP said the strategy wasn't deigned to hold ground).

The strategy failed. That doesn't mean it didn't exist.

I see what you're saying, but I'd argue that it wasn't a strategy for near on a decade until the top brass had to start facing the hard reality of the complete bankruptcy and failure of the original strategy. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging the other way?

2001-2002: Invasion and mostly conventional warfare against the Taliban. Successful.

2002-2005: Reduction in troop numbers. Total disaster.

2006-2010: Increase in troop numbers. "Control the ground" strategy implemented. Some initial successes, but many failures.

2011-present: Troop draw-down. This is pretty much code for "hand control back to the Taliban".

Destroying things is what armies are good at. They pretty effectively destroyed the Taliban early on. But, then, I think, it came home to roost that you can't just destroy something and then leave and expect everything to be fine if there was never anything to take the place of the thing you destroyed. We've been trying to solve that puzzle ever since.

1% false 99% of the time

Except Iran was nothing like Afghanistan; it had democratic institutions that Iranians had been fighting to build since 1906.

And nobody "took" territory, Whitey arranged a coup d'etat. Which destroyed the Iranian democratic institutions.Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

If Whitey hadn't smashed them up, Iran's institutions might have been able to stand up to the religious loonies.

First, you do not have any hard evidence that this happened. Like most people making this claim and linking to Wikipedia, I doubt you even know the name of the primary source in which it was claimed - let alone that you have any way to corroborate the claim. Second, the purported event is separated from the Iranian revolution by several decades (53 to 79). Third, the Iranian revolution actually incorporated cooperation from ideologically diverse parties who were betrayed and liquidated by the subsequent leaders of the revolution. That liquidation was not the doing of the US by any stretch of the imagination - and certainly is not a direct result of anything that happened in 1953, even on your assumptions.

You are repeating a standard, oversimplified revisionist history which makes the US singlehandedly responsible for Iran's entire fate for all time, blatantly ignoring any other historical, regional or Iranian factor.

Are you seriously implying that the 1953 coup wasn't orchestrated by Western powers? I've never heard anyone seriously argue that it wasn't.

the purported event is separated from the Iranian revolution by several decades (53 to 79)

I think the parent was implying that the '53 coup was what the Western powers wanted, but the '79 revolution destroyed that plan.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think you are misreading what people are saying here (it isn't exactly clear what they are saying, so I might be wrong too).

I think they are saying that the '79 revolution was an Iranian action, which happened in direct opposition to what the Western powers wanted.

In either case, I agree with you about the '79 revolution - that was completely Iranian doing.

you do not have any hard evidence that this happened

Apart from the fact that Madeleine Albright admitted it when she was Secretary of State. You are just being deliberately ignorant now. Oh, and a jackass.

That liquidation was not the doing of the US

There was interference by other powers as well such as the UK, and there is also a lot wrong with Iranian society, NONE of which removes at all the CIA's responsibility for the coup and the subsequent torture of Iranians by SAVAK under CIA direction during the decades you mention from 1953-1979. You think the story stopped in 53?

betrayed and liquidated by the subsequent leaders of the revolution

The people were mad at the two decades of torture and having Iranian oil stolen, and so they hated the pro-US Emperor and they hated the US. They acted on that hatred against the targets and got on the Khomeini bandwagon as a way of overthrowing the Emperor.

There wouldn't have been a revolution if there had been nothing to overthrow. Khomeini made his name opposing the Emperor. If the CIA hadn't launched the coup in 53 the democracy would still have existed instead. Mossadegh was everything. Khomeini was nothing. No one was going to follow Khomeini against the democracy.

Oh yeah, and Iranians would still love the US like they did in 1950.

"The approach seems to be that transient patrols, haphazardly driving around and visiting villages in giant bomb proof robot trucks, is a substitute for thousands of years old strategies of taking, holding and controlling territory."

I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to get the Army to take and hold territory in Afghanistan, because that's the kind of thing that armies naturally do and they're good at. We've been un-training the Army in that respect, because we don't want the territory. We've always had one foot out the door.

It must be plainly obvious if you happen to be there that Afghanistan is not a good piece of real estate to invest in. The impression I get is like of a blighted neighborhood, perhaps like something you might find in the poorest part of the US, say, somewhere in the rust belt or the deep south. The comparison only goes so deep. But my point being that there are areas here at home that we can't save from decaying and becoming havens for criminals. Even if there was some price for which Afghanistan could be saved (gentrified?), it smells to us like a bad business deal and we have no intention of getting too deeply involved, not to the point that we can't get back out.

It's been obvious for a while that the Afghanistan mission hasn't been going well and it's equally obvious that, in spite of all that we have spent and done, we haven't literally exhausted everything we could try if we really, I mean really, wanted to. I've tried to imagine this scenario, where failure is truly not an option -- what might we try, then?

The biggest problem looks to be the economy, which looks like it's based on dead-ends like subsistence farming, and on criminal enterprise, like opium cultivation and trafficking in sex slaves. The most valuable resource Afghanistan has to offer foreigners, at present, is being a lawless no-man's land where crime goes unpunished. Afghanistan seems to hold little to reward investors, or any kind of business. In the failure-is-not-an-option case, the best strategy may be to basically create a welfare state and start sending out checks. A well-run welfare state apparatus would create a lot of good will and loyalty very fast, and start to free people from the survival-level concerns that drive them to ally with the Taliban. The bureaucracy involved would get people interacting with government and start to create a favorable impression of what government is, as well as provide jobs. Welfare checks could allow some people to get away from manual labor long enough to acquire education, and start to lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining economy. A direct infusion of money would provide the incentive to individuals to take our side and abandon the Taliban, which up till now has been missing. Of course, we'd also have to convince people of our intention to stay for the long term, but I have a feeling Afghans would be less inclined to doubt it if we actually started sending out checks.

I'm not saying this would ever happen, or even that I'm advocating for it. In the hypothetical scenario where nothing was off the table, it's my best guess as to what could work.

Random theory I have (hopefully some HN-ers with actual military knowledge can weigh in): modern militaries need less technology and more manpower. It seems since I was a kid politicians have been saying that armed forces should become smaller and more high-tech. That means less bodies sent home in coffins and also more contracts for BAE Systems, so it's a popular message.

That all works well (very well) when you're invading countries. Doesn't work so well when you decide you need to build a new country out of the ruins. Maybe we'd do better if instead of spending billions on flying robot assassins to fight tribal hill-farmers, we simply enlisted more humans to take command.

The only other option I can see is to start running the American empire British-style - they ran very efficient colonies by exploiting existing tribal divisions, usually by recruiting some existing elite as their colonial administrators. Not trying to implement democracy in tribal regions that don't yet have stable institutions or the rule of law would probably also help.

> modern militaries need less technology and more manpower

An interesting thought! One of the most interesting conclusions I drew from this documentary is that the Afghan Military needs both - more technology and more manpower. But the trouble, as shown, is that you need the intelligence to handle so much manpower, the social contracts to retain that manpower and the education to handle that technology.

So what you're saying about the balance might be an interesting point for the US military might work for them, but it doesn't even start to help out with the Afghan forces.

As for going "British-style" - I think that stuff simply doesn't work in the modern, connected world. British colonialism took advantage of isolation and division. Doesn't work so well if the country you invade is reasonably well connected globally.

The US has a really bad track record of picking local partners. Mostly because during the Cold War, the "good" local people were more innately socialist, which the Communists exploited, so we got stuck with some pretty horrible people (either ineffective or outright evil) by default.

I don't believe it's feasible to occupy a medium sized country which actively resists using modern militaries. It's certainly not worth it. I'd just focus on keeping a limited presence to rain death from above (like we do in Pakistan, Yemen, etc.) or via limited JSOC strikes (Somalia, Afghanistan before 2007 or so, etc.), and then using armed but civilian organizations to interface with the populace and government.

In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population, with the cost subsidized by international donors. i.e. a local Afghan should be able to buy electricity at 0.10/KwH, sell their pomegranates at the world price, and have clean water, Internet, cellphones, etc., without any other focus on building the government (since that's probably hopeless). The organization providing that infrastructure needs self-defense capability, but you don't need much beyond what Blackwater had to do this.

> In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population[...]

That's what I thought as well - The documentary left a pretty bleak picture of the Afghans ability to build, extend or even maintain basic infrastructure, but it's desperately needed if they want to get anywhere with education. The country needs at least a good dozen generations to heal the most serious wounds so it can find its own interest in the kind of social development that makes it resistant to terrorism taking root over and over again.

Hand-holding throughout that time is what is required. But that's probably the most costly thing, I would guess. Then again, those drones and all that ammunition sure don't come cheap either. But the US has sunk far too much money into that failed path to turn around and do the other one now.

And even then - the problem is that the citizens are already tired of conflict and both sides, the international troops and the taliban, are trying to exploit that. Just giving them great infrastructure might make it easier for the international troops, but it would probably do the same for the taliban.

Whatever the solution, it sure won't be a quick one. My best bet would be to exploit the countries natural resources and push all the money made from that into infrastructure and security. But that's just the kind of "socialism" that nobody in the west wants to pick up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagons_New_Map from Thomas PM Barnett is probably the "official" version of this -- a small, lethal military designed to win wars, and a "SysAdmin force" designed to build nations after the fact.

I'm not sure how well this theory has held up (it's from 2004...), or how much support it has. I think what happened is we got lucky in Iraq in 2007-2010 using the old British strategy of allying with semi-enemies against real enemies (Sons of Iraq and the other Sunni tribes, and non-aggression with the Shia militias), eked out a borderline draw in Iraq while calling it "a victory for COIN", applied the "COIN" model rather than the "British" model to Afghanistan with the surge and all, and have proceeded to lose from 2009-now in Afghanistan.

> The US has a really bad track record of picking local partners. Mostly because during the Cold War, the "good" local people were more innately socialist, which the Communists exploited, so we got stuck with some pretty horrible people (either ineffective or outright evil) by default.

The US doesn't care that much about the "good" people. They picked the most effective people for fighting the USSR. And out of necessity they needed to use Pakistan's ISI which wanted trained Mujihadeen for their own purposes (asymetric warfare with India) to deliver arms to the "freedom fighters."

Well, that depends on what kind of operations armed forces are for. The opposite conclusion can be drawn from Operation Unified Protector, the NATO mission in Libya. Very, very few humans deployed into Libya. High-tech operations involving aircraft from carriers and airstrips in Italy supporting locals on the ground, with a set of naval vessels providing maritime support (embargo enforcement, some mine-hunting capability and no-fly-zone enforcement, as I recall). Afghanistan and Iraq were anomalous in terms of the kind of war (or rather, the kind of post-war) the most warlike nations (USA, UK and chums) expect to fight nowadays.

The appetite for that kind of nation-building has shrunk considerably following the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was in the .mil until right before 9/11, like I got my final honorable discharge papers in dec 2000. So I'm older, but not totally ancient (like, say, my grandfather who flew B-17s and B-24s in WWII). And I also have a cousin who did peace corps time in one of the South African townships in the early 80s. My cousin and I are, um, kind of different in outlook, lifestyle, equipment, training, attitude... The fundamental problem is sending the army to do the peace corps job. Even worse, the same army that did the "pacification".

A simple analogy is if you ordered a navy destroyer crew and my army ordnance company to swap jobs, it end up as a hilariously ineffective reality TV show (Hmm, this might actually lure in viewers...). Something even more extreme like assigning an infantry platoon to peace corps work is going to be even more of an epic fail.

There is another interesting issue that the peace corps is not supposed to accomplish any major long term changes. So if they had a mission there, with the same results, they'd be considered to be doing "great". The S.A. township my cousin served in, remains a morass of poverty and crime and ignorance, maybe a little better than it would otherwise be, but no one has any crazy illusions that his 2 year term or whatever it was would result in the township turning into "leave it to beaver"-ville. On the other hand its considered a military disaster to spend decades basically accomplishing nothing. So you need a perspective change. For a bunch of soldiers doing someone else's job, they're about as successful as the correct set of workers would be.

Interestingly to the best of my knowledge the peace corps still considers hand chalk to be appropriate technology. If you want to do nationbuilding you send in guys with chalkboards and excellent native language skills and maybe some special technical skills (or maybe not).

Probably, there is a old TED talk by Thomas Barnett [1], where he argues quite similarly. He argues, that one needs a force for projection of force and a force for stabilizing the country. And because of the tension between trying to be as small as possible, when defeating the opponents army, and the need for boots on the ground for defeating insurgents these two need very different organizational structures.

[1]http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_... (Hope the link works, I have somehow managed to break the TED site...)

If you liked this video you might also like:

* Armadillo[1] a documentary about a group of Danish soldiers deployed to Helmland. Armadillo is right up there with Restrepo in my opinion.

* The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan[2] if you are curious about the bacha bazi boys.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_%28film%29

[2] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/

Restrepo is also pretty amazing in its own right.

My absolute favorite work about the whole war in Afghanistan is First In (http://www.amazon.com/First-Insiders-Account-Spearheaded-Afg...) which is how the entire war should have been fought: A CIA man, a couple ODAs (~20 US Army Special Forces soldiers), an old ex-Soviet helicopter, and $30mm in $100 bills, and victory in 2 months. I sent a copy to weev in prison, will be interesting to see what he thinks :)

That's kind of you, but horribly naive.

Being validated by prison staff as an associate of a prison gang or being in possession of questionable reading material can land an inmate in the SHU for an indefinite amount of time. The UN says more than 15 days in solitary confinement is considered torture. SHU prisoners at Pelican Bay spend an average of 7.5 years there. In 2005 (last released statistics) there were over 80,000 inmates held in solitary confinement in the US. This inhumane treatment is a clear violation of the 8th amendment and must be changed.

http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2013/04/02/solitary...

Wise up a little bit, the USG doesn't play nice, and weev has already been subject to "special attention" due to not grokking the simple fact that he is totally powerless in the system now.

The More You Know.

How is this questionable reading material? The book got through the CIA's publication review board and there was no funny business like there was with Operation Dark Heart.

Today is the only day of the year that I watch sports (Go Cuse!) so I'm going to try my hardest to ignore that giant leap from >15 days in solitary is torture to everyone in solitary is being treated inhumanely.

It is questionable reading material based on the evaluation of the Prison authorities in his prison, not any other authority. If you cannot fathom how a book on CIA + Afghanistan + Black OPs could be twisted into "reading up on terrorism" you're incredibly naive, or know nothing about the types of books that have lead to solitary confinement in the US prison system. The latter is obviously the case: I'd urge you to do a little research some time into how the rule is abused. Biographies of Malcom X getting you in solitary, that sort of thing...

As for "giant leap", I'd suggest: Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement by Stuart Grassian (25 yrs Harvard Medical school) for a quick over-sight into the issues. Journal of Law & Policy PDF: http://law.wustl.edu/journal/22/p325grassian.pdf

Solitary confinement is one of the leading punishments that is currently used in the US Prison System. Weev has already made himself a "little unpopular" in his stay (less than 3 months: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/weev-soundcloud_n_3...) and is on the fast track to learning the hard way. He has ~36 months remaining, less if he behaves and doesn't "troll them". Asking publicly about their financial data is not cute and not smart and will not go unnoticed.

Enjoy your sports. Perhaps you should stick with the TeeVee, I was merely suggesting that people think before engaging with a totally foreign (to them) mindset, that of the authoritarian US penal system. Or, at the very least, do the barest minimum of Due Diligence.

Do the research; you might get shock & awed out of your bubble. Lions, Tigers and Bears.

I have some experience with cases of excessive force and I am fully aware of the level of discretion that the court affords to the professional judgement of corrections officers (admittedly restricted to NYCRR). I certainly am not under the impression that the metal bars delineate the good people from the bad people.

My "TeeVee" time is long over and I have done a little research into how how reading a book can land one in solitary. I have not been able to find anything concrete. Most of the things that I have found are consistent with my experience with the NYCRR and everything that I have found is consistent with the Furnace case[1] from California (the most notable and recent case). From everything that I have read I have not been able to find any instances of solitary confinement solely due to reading a book. And certainly no instances of solitary confinement for reading a mass market book that is currently #19 in its category on amazon that the prisoner received via mail and therefore screened (where assessment is based on the individual receiving the book).

Could you point me to some source material?

Side Note: Why so passive aggressive with me or the parent comment?

[1] In re Furnace (2010) 185 Cal.App.4th 649

Yeah, it's entirely likely the COs won't let it through (for "violence/war"), although they're more likely to let it through because it's somewhat patriotic/pro-US.

OTOH, I'm confident weev will find a way to troll with any means provided.

I also sent him a Holy Qur'an (with English translation/explanations), which I am sure will result in substantial lulz. (although if I were unjustly locked in prison, the Qur'an would probably be on my reading list anyway...)

I'd suggest your research has little to do with reality, and more to do with the Court room:

“Extreme isolation is one of the most extreme forms of punishment one human can force on another, and in New York State it is often a disciplinary tool of first resort,” said NYCLU Legal Fellow Scarlet Kim, co-author of the report. “People spend weeks, months and even years cut off from human interaction and rehabilitative services for non-violent, minor misbehavior. The process for determining who is sent to extreme isolation is arbitrary – there is virtually no guidance or limitations on who can be sent to extreme isolation, for what reasons, or for how long.”

http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/nyclu_boxedin_FINAL....

The practice is theoretically intended to separate violent and dangerous inmates from the rest of the prison population. The New York Civil Liberties Union, however, uncovered that the majority of those in solitary confinement were given the punishment for nonviolent, low-level offenses. Nearly 90 percent of the men placed in solitary confinement between 2007 and 2011 were there for breaking one of the minor prison rules, such as having unauthorized books, disobeying an order or growing their mustaches too long (“an inmate shall not grow a beard or mustache over one inch in length”). Other documented infractions that led to solitary confinement included one man who had gambling chips in his cell and another who received 45 days for tattooing himself.

Took me about 3 minutes. Given that the ACLU report was indeed about New York (NYCRR) and you were "unable to find any examples of it", I suspect you're a tainted or biased source.

Given the "down votes" (a Reddit term, I think?) on my response that contained decent sources, I'll disengage from this. I wish weev well, but I suspect if he continues he'll be broken, hard.

You mean you can send someone to "the hole" for sending them a questionable book? And Amazon will fulfill this for order for any prepaid credit card?

Am I the only one seeing a problem?

Not that a book on covert CIA tactics is really related to his sentence, but let's pretend.

Meh. Keep sending books to weev. If this gets him in trouble, not that I'm hoping it does though I wouldn't doubt it would, anonymously send books on prison breaks to tens of thousands of prisoners and overwhelm the system and give their lawyers, and his, ways to challenge the madness.

Sitting quietly and accepting the crap just because they'll make it hurt more otherwise is still the losing option.

Restrepo was already at the top of my lists with the book, photo book and movie, but after Hetherington died it has ascended to a special place all its own.

I liked First In, but I also read Jawbreaker and I have trouble separating the two in my mind. I don't remember the order that I read them in but even as I was reading the second book I was often unsure if I was rereading the first book or reading the second. The experience was not that unlike reading any of the Robert's Ridge books. There is a report from the Army War College that I have been meaning to read but I have lost the citation.

If you like reading about A-Teams the non fiction "Lions of Kandahar" was an exciting read. But my favorite book on the subject is a work of fiction: The Degüello. If you have not read it I highly recommend it.

As far as winning the war goes we could not win the AfPak war by only winning in Afghanistan. No amount of effort is going to keep my lawn weed free as long as my neighbor's lawn is a forest of dandelions.

My biggest problem with how we fought in Afghanistan was not allowing Army SF to do their doctrinal mission. I believe in the traditional SF model (mentoring indigenous forces for FID) more than the JSOC model (direct action, technical intelligence, big dollars).

Indeed, Jawbreaker and First In were pretty similar (and Jawbreaker essentially covered time before and after First In, too). I haven't read LoK yet, it's on my list. Also never even heard of The Deguello; added, thanks. The TF Dagger book sucks, though.

Restrepo nor Armadillo really stuck with me. I'll admit I've seen way too many of these kinds of documentaries, even to the point of not being able to tell them apart. The PBS ones are quite good. Two that stands out of the top of my head is Blood and Dust and Bulletproof Salesman, the later being mostly about Iraq.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/09/2... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186201/

I think the nature of PBS's regulatory environment makes it tough for them to "tell a true war story," to borrow Wolf's words. This was even apparent in their re-airing of Armadillo, the version that was broadcast on the same channel as Sesame Street was different than the bluray/dvd version.

Err, someone emailed me about the "wolf reference." The reference was to The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien and not to a work by Tobias Wolff whose name I spelled incorrectly.

No End in Sight[1] is my favorite.

A documentary about the Iraq occupation starting in 2003. It's a sad story - no room for heroes - as the iraqi people lost everything.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912593/

This thread is about afghanistan.

There is a parallel however - the invaders leaving a disintegrating country as they give up on it. Iraq and Afghanistan are very different but do have things in common.

The thing most in common is how the US treated Afghanistan in 2009-2012 the way it treated Iraq in 2007-2009 (and got pwned as a result)

This is what winning looks like:

From this... http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-pop...

to this... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/asia/afghanistan-opi...

Just so we are clear on one thing: the last war that US took a part of that was a war fought in the name of freedom was War War 2 that ended in 1945. Every single War after that date had nothing to do with Americans living on American soil being free, safe, or whatever. You had to have your brain removed to believe that invading Iraq or Afghanistan (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent, as a by-result of every military conflict) was necessary, because otherwise those nations and their people will come here and violate the US soil.

Both Iraq and Afghan war were carefully crafted by Military Industrial Complex from day one (first step: create problem, like in Iraq WMD's that were never found {glad there are some countries like Switzerland where they still prosecuted war criminals [1]}, step two: offer solution: offer piece by using force, step three: execute - by spending trillions of tax dollars), so you should understand war is nothing more than good business. Bloody but good. Stalin said one person killed that's a murder, millions is only a statistics, and that's how I believe those pulling strings can sleep at night. Oh by the way: as you remember those WMDs were never found (but sure they existed, okay?), but rest assured they moved them somewhere around, conveniently. Never mind 100,000 civilians dead (or some surveys shows 600k, or .. 1 million! [2]).

I have a respect for american soldiers, but I wish they were more educated on what they are really doing. They are NOT protecting american soil or fighting for their own country. Those are gone long time ago, as Chief in Command (President of the USA) is carefully following NATO orders, and US becomes a part of North American Union. Their action, whether successful or not, have nothing to do with us here being safe on american soil. Had they been educated they are just a tool in hands of few with access to the highest standing politicians that grab more tax money and give it into hands of Military Industrial Complex, they would have stopped participating in the war, knowing the real name of the game, like fighting for oil in Iraq.

Just some of my thoughts on this Memorial Day.

[1] http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/04/uncategorized/did-you-k...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Thank you for pointing this out! For a second there I couldn't understand how the American population is turning a blind eye to such a pointless war.

Also the new Start trek movie is oddly reminiscent to this. Although the taliban/iraq aren't nearly as powerful as the Klingons.

Well, it doesn't matter whether they are turning blind eye or not. America's politics in not in people's hands, but in politician's hands that serve bigger cause (read: serve Military Industrial Complex).

The sad part is, is that not much is gonna change. There is STILL too much money to make off of war, and in case too many civilians stand up, you can always setup another 911, plane bombing (shoe-bomber), another stage shooting, etc, and it will shut everyone up, and open their wallets to even more money being given to MIC.

Its a really sad and disappointing situation.

Vice is nothing but quality. Wish more people were aware of them, and the really wide variety of excellent documentaries they produce

They had a video team at the Bitcoin conference; talked to the producer and expressed how amazed I am at their consistently high quality.

Usually when I see news about something I know a lot about (say, the Jalalabad region weapons manufacturers, or the PI underground arms people), I'm full of wtf. But everything I've seen from Vice to date has been "oh, yes, that's exactly how it is" or "I wish I could have gone over there and seen that".

> Vice is nothing but quality.

I agree that they have lots and lots of quality stuff, but they also have a quality control problem for good parts of their portfolio. The great ones offset the bad ones by leaps and bounds, for sure. But for every documentary like this one, there seem to be a couple hipsterish driveltaries that I close after a few minutes.

Sure, I suppose you cannot break new ground without landing some misses and sure, it's not like everything has to be mindblowing and perfect or even deeply valuable. But some of these misses make me wonder how anybody ever thought they were a good idea in the first place.

I think Vice has an aversion to "self censor", trying to get as much stuff out there as they can simply for the heck of it and as a means to retain credibility - and I applaud them for that. But it's not as black and white and doesn't help when your expectation of quality gets rather deeply disappointed at times. It's a form of brand dilution that might become a problem in the future.

A lot of their ealier stuff was more 'spectacular' than insightful. It wasn't just the style either, it really was lacking in quality.

Absolutely agree. I think what bothers me with some of their recent content is that it is still produced with the same aspiration to quality, but it's simply wasted on the subject matter.

What do people think of the Ibogaine episode (S01E07)? I'm sort of familiar with the politics and some of the pharmacology, but have never been an addict, particularly to heroin, and aside from MAPS, don't know much about the ibogaine anti-addiction groups.

I found that to be kind of a mixed bag. I definitely think that to get rid of addiction, you cannot simply take addiction away from a person because you leave a hole that they filled with drugs precisely because they are unable to fill it with anything else (if only at that time in their lifes).

Whether it is a good idea to fill it with some curious mix of African rituals and some even more curious psychedelics is questionable, but I think it's reasonably straightforward why it works. Snap them out of it, bring them into an empathetic community. A lot of approaches go like that. It's probably mostly placebo, but hey, placebo works 20% of the time.

I was thinking the same thing until I watched a documentary about France's Toughest Rappers. And unfortunately I know very well the rape scene and this documentary was nothing but a big joke: Lies, bullshit, ...

So know I'm a bit suspicious.

I wonder which producer did it. They have a lot of independence, so they are probably pretty inconsistent.

I hope you're referring to the "rap scene"..

Yeah that documentary was slightly exploitative: "oh look, let's send a cute young girl into the ghetto and film a bunch of knuckleheads trying to get in her pants!" Then again, nothing too different from the usual late night TV "documentaries" about the police/the ghettos/the jet-set..

Yes I am referring to the rap scene. My bad.

Not all of them. Watch this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCYglCDgpu0

It might just change your mind.

I voiced my criticism of Vices QC in another post, but I actually enjoyed that particular documentary. I can appreciate Hamilton as pure oddball fun (despite a vocal fry that can make heads explode). What's actually problematic are things like this[0]. Not to mention the sometimes-ok, most-times-(well, the few times I checked to be sure)-god-awful "oh look at us rascal cooks being all alternative, cool and hip with our outlandish exploits" Munchies.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmk3kSvxBEQ

The material in this piece appears to have been part of a BBC panorama documentary: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21547542 - the BBC refer to Ben Anderson as a "BBC panorama reporter". On the other hand, in his AMA he refers to himself as a "filmmaker for VICE."

Regardless on who produced the documentary, Vice should still get credit for curating and hosting it like this.

> Vice is nothing but quality.

There are exceptions. This video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIMuoUcc1s ) was ridiculously bad. Like one commenter on Reddit put it;

> That was like watching ignorant children play with fire indoors.

> Vice is nothing but quality <

Like their waragi episode, where they spent a few scant minutes on the topic of the endemic drinking problem (which is very prevalent) and the entire rest filming drunk people and trying the brew themselves... oh and they sent a person that couldn't pronounce the name of the drink properly. Well done Vice. Quality

This reminds me so much of being over there. This documentary does such a great job of showing the utter confusion and screwed up nature of fighting counter-insurgencies.

Every day is like choosing between different types of cancer. There is no 'winning' only seemingly less lethal varieties of the same disease. To make it worse, you are choosing which cancer to support through an intermediary, the interpreter. After a short time there you realize how much of a gap the language barrier is and how debilitating it is to not be able to build genuine relationships with your interlocuteur because you have to wait for the interpretation.

There is no 'solution' to Afghanistan and there is no 'winning'. People accuse NATO soldiers of war crimes everyday without even realizing the legitimate war crimes we prevented every single place we went. Afghanistan is still the jungle and the strongest wins. That isn't going to change from one day to the next. At this point, warfare is all that they know. They've been at it for over 30 years.

Unfortunately, you walk away thinking that the only solution is to be the strongest.

> People accuse NATO soldiers of war crimes everyday without even realizing the legitimate war crimes we prevented every single place we went.

Had we gone into Afghanistan in the 90s when various groups of locals were asking us to we might have fought about as much, in the end, but we'd have been there at the request of the people, actually building relationships, instead of continually rebuilding a failed-by-design state for some bullshit 9/11 excuse.

Bin Laden might still have happened because he wasn't depending on Afghanistan, or he might not have, because the allies could have had a better (good) reputation in the area negating much of the terrorist fervor.

But, I (one who criticizes our soldiers for war crimes) do recognize that we often, ultimately, bring some good to the survivors - hospitals, clean water, etc, and often stop many ongoing killings and other horrible practices. But never for the reasons we say we're there and only in doing things that perpetuate the cycle of war such as setting up dictators and selling critical resources and infrastructure.

Even if in their specific case any given soldier may save more lives than they cost, our war overall and our continued ability to wage it via the complicity of our soldiers, will cost far more lives in the end.

Refusing to fight for an unjust cause, or hurt without need, is a duty of all soldiers of modern civilized militaries. Sure, it realistically means jail for those who refuse - but it means death for their victims if they don't.

Afghanistan and Iraq were clearly not justified by 9/11 or implicated by any related evidence. By fighting for the USA and allies despite these lies, without the mandate of the people, soldiers are essentially pissing on the rule of law.

We're showing - through action not words - that no matter what they do we'll just make shit up and bomb them. Why do we expect them to expect anything else?

If our governments couldn't field the army unjustly, our peacekeeping might not only be welcome but might finally work.

This is unbelievable... I mean what can be done when everyone is just high as f and just basically trippin all day. Afganistan is OK with how things are now, it seems, so I guess the only relevant take away from this, just leave the country ASAP with as few expenditures and casualties as possible.

I'd also make sure the Afghans who helped us get out (which is part of the pending comprehensive immigration bill), and that any Afghans who are actually sane are considered fairly for education/refugee status/etc. in the west. But really, Afghanistan itself is essentially doomed, and GTFO is the only way to go.

I've never been in the military, so I'm sure there is a great deal that I don't understand- or worse, think I understand when I've got it backwards.

When I watch something like this, I'm absolutely blown away by how utterly incompetent the local military is no matter how much time we put into attempting to train them. Somehow in the US we're able to take (often poor) 17/18 year olds, and in 10 weeks of BCT (Basic) and then in 3 week to 2 years of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) we're able to create pretty damn disciplined soldiers. Yet, how many years did it take for us to try to train troops in Iraq, and it sounds like they still just unloaded entire clips whenever they saw a rabbit in the desert.

When these countries turn over top leadership (Iraq, Afganistan, Egypt, etc) it feels that they completely lose all historical training/ability for the military and go back to square one. Complete anarchy. It sounds like a huge percentage of their people defect seemingly randomly.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't feel like this happens (generally) in European countries when there is a massive leadership change. A post WW1 Germany was able to keep enough military knowledge/discipline together to be a seriously powerful force by WW2- and that certainly didn't have external forces in there trying their hardest to give them all the help possible. Post Russian Revolution USSR was quite a force to be reckoned with as well.

Why is it so damn hard to set up decent military training? Seems like a process we should understand by now, since we've put millions of young people through it. We (americans) initially setup West Point in the middle of a revolution and have been running it since (although it wasn't the United States Military Academy until 1802).

I'm absolutely certain it isn't because westerners are smarter, better, etc (we aren't)... but there is something seriously weird over there at the same time (malnutrition, lack of basic formal education system, cultural differences, too many generations of instability (maybe one generation works ok, but 3 breaks things seriously))

>how utterly incompetent the local military is no matter how much time we put into attempting to train them. Somehow in the US we're able to take (often poor) 17/18 year olds, and in 10 weeks of BCT (Basic) and then in 3 week to 2 years of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) we're able to create pretty damn disciplined soldiers

A country's military is a reflection of and limited by the society that spawns it. The USA can keep disciplined and ethical soldiers because it has never suffered civil unrest, never been invaded, enjoys prosperity, freedom, public law and justice. No such thing can be said of Afghanistan or Iraq. Moreover - the "10 weeks of BCT" is not "just" "10 weeks of BCT". There is a logistics and supply train several tho-- million pages long that creates those "just" 10 weeks. Consider the fact that humans are recruited. Recruiters need to be trained, fed, paid, and have offices. That costs money. Afghanistan has no money. Consider the fact that young men need to be transported from and to BCT: this requires roads free of IEDs, requires fuel for trucks, favourable economic conditions to produce or import buses. Consider the fact that a certain percentage of all military trainees quit before completing that training. This is accounted for and expected: there are 300 million humans in the USA and this is acceptable losses. Consider the fact that abiding by the laws of a nation and strict adherence to authority is something these "17/18" year olds have done for two decades by the time their military training is over. It is ingrained into their psyche to follow the law from the earliest age, in the most gentle of methods: by the witnessing of safety and prosperity of Americans abiding by the law. Consider an Afghani youth: what is ignrained into them is an invsion by Russia and now invasion by America. How confident in justice do you think they are? How inclined are they to respect authority? How confortable are they submitting to a national government?

A country's military is fundamentally a reflection of the society it spawns. Afghanistan is a failed state in every respect, for the last several decades, and as such it cannot muster a professional military despite the efforts of the US-led coalition.

Thanks for the reply.

Toward the end of the doc, it digs a bit more into the 'why', which include many of your points.

I thought a while about the perspective of an Afghani youth vs those views of an American youth. Afghan youth probably realizes even more than the American one that they are simply pawns in the system and no one outside their families cares for them. The Afghani youth are likely illiterate by most standards, and it sounds like the soldiers keep absolutely terrible records accordingly. As much as we trash the American education system (which is flawed), we at least have a pretty decent baseline for education to create soldiers that can read/write/math.

Whereas the American youth probably thinks that they are fighting for their country and doing great good around the world, I'm not entirely sure that the Afghan youth would think of it that way. At best, they are fighting for a paycheck, a gun, and some temporary protection.

As you point out, the basic supply chain of infrastructure is lacking there. We've given them the tools such as solar panels (which they feature in the doc), but if something messes up they have no idea how to fix them. Corruption isn't a bad thing, its being smarter and probably closer to survival than anything. The motivation to stay and fight in a dangerous situation is exceedingly low; whereas an American soldier can at least hope for a memorial, benefits to their spouse, and honors if they are killed in action, there is certainly none of that for the Afghan youth.

I guess to top that off, we're all left holding the question of why we're over there at all. It didn't really make that much sense at first (didn't we learn from Vietnam?), and it makes even less sense now. Nationbuilding doesn't work. Never has, never will.

While the American army might be mostly disciplined and ethical, but there have been notable and terrible exceptions to this. The repercussions of these colossal lapses have been to further alienate a skeptical population of an occupied country. If your invading with a overriding mission statement that claims the moral high ground, scrutiny is going to be intense - the occupiers have been found wanting.

> I'm absolutely certain it isn't because westerners are smarter, better, etc (we aren't)... but there is something seriously weird over there at the same time (malnutrition, lack of basic formal education system, cultural differences, too many generations of instability (maybe one generation works ok, but 3 breaks things seriously))

I'm amused at how you can disclaim completely that Westerners might be smarter - perish the thought! - and then in the next breath suggest a major cause of that (lack of malnutrition) as the explanation.

I guess that I'm saying we aren't inherently smarter (westerners have often thought about others around the world). Education, nutrition, healthcare, better mental health of course all contribute to better effective applicable intelligence.

But for the points you brought up, it doesn't matter if westerners are 'inherently' smarter (whatever that means - genetics?). It only matters that they are smarter, for whatever reason.

The elephant in the room is that this isn't incompetence, it is motivation. These people don't fear or respect the US so what motivates them to do what the US wants? They will do just enough to collect the money being offered and then do what they want in the way they want. If they want to kill some Americans, defect or just desert then they will do it and what is really to stop them?

Germany started out with tons of world-class military men and they were not being trained or directed by a hated power, rather the opposite, they were working against hated outside powers. So no motivation problem there.

No training technique will substitute for motivation.

So, notes?

- Lots of people doing effectively nothing.

- Low morale.

- Ad-hoc training of Afghan army/police.

- Lack of national identity.

- Poor mobility.

- Lack of intelligence.

- Communication problems.

- No clear strategic objectives or clear plans to achieve desired processes

Does anyone else think it would be easier and less bloody to just get the Taliban addicted to heroine and subsidize their cost of living?

The Taliban were actually pretty hardcore counter-narcotics in the late 1990s, with western support. They only partnered with the narcotics industry after 9/11 when fighting the US.

I've heard this semi-seriously described as the "Turn Them Into Detroit" strategy, and arguably this is the long term strategy we've selected although in an unspoken manner. Follow the money. I'm talking long term as in over decades of occupation not long term as in next financial quarter.

I've also seen the same argument in reverse, if we cut back on social service payments, as seems economically inevitable in the long term, our own inner cities will rapidly look much like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. So if you want to see a realistic projection of "Detroit 2030", just look at "Somalia 2013".

First off, I didn't watch the whole thing, I got sick of it. So, my comments aren't necessarily about the documentary, but to provide some perspective. The below are notes I took while reading in no particular order, so the argument is a bit disjointed. I spent a year as an embedded advisor in Afghanistan and just returned last month. Prior to that I was in Iraq for a year as an advisor in 2009.

Despite my feelings for the documentary, I commend the crew for the work they did. They did the best they could to report what they saw. However, they let preconceived notions and a minute slice of experience significantly influence their perspective. This is inevitable to some extent, but incredibly dangerous in this case. When it happens with a small news story, not such a big deal. But 99.9% of the population has no experience or knowledge on Afghanistan so their opinions and everything they know is based on what they read (yeah right) and what they watch (the preponderance). This gives those who report on Afghanistan great power, but also great responsibility. We can only hope those who consume this swill are more than sheep.

-There are ANP units of all levels of competency. The one we were with was stellar. Sure, others we worked with left much to be desired, but it wasn’t the norm. At times units farther away from the 'flagpole' have less supervision and fewer resources. They resort to what they're used to and what they need to do to survive, which is expected. Lord of the flies anyone? People tend to act that way in such environments, even in the US.

-The documentary was disappointing because it sought to show the Afghans in a bad light. It was unbalanced and failed to explain some of the cultural reasons behind some of the examples. Their culture is fundamentally different from ours and they do the best they can to survive in that environment. Service members are there for between 7-12 months, it's a sprint for us. They’ve been there and will be there for the long haul. In their past, how many nations have come and gone? What does such turmoil do to a culture, a nation, and its people?

-There is a significant focus on drug use, which is somewhat missing the point. How prevalent is drug use in the United States? If the US had the history of Afghanistan with a fledgling government and security forces, would it be any different? Our culture sees drug use differently than theirs. Our alcohol is their weed. Should a professional force be under the effects of substances while on duty? No, but let’s talk more about why things are the way they are. As the force professionalizes, these things will improve.

-Sangin, the region in most of the filming, is one of the worst parts of Afghanistan. What if we made a documentary about the worst parts of the US? The ghettos and slums, homeless, murders, drug use, etc. and named it “This is what America looks like.” The US documentaries on these issues pale in comparison to all of the positive coverage. All we see about Afghanistan are the shitty things. Not the progress, not the new schools or education, not the hard working people. When we do, it’s drowned out by the bad stuff.

-The same goes for corruption. We can't help but see corruption through our Western lens, but it's seen differently in Afghanistan. Think about how an Afghan documentary would talk about US alcohol consumption, fashion, sex, and other aspects of our culture? It'd probably sound quite similar. It’s almost impossible to think of it differently because we’ve had the luxury of structure, strong government, order, etc. in the land of plenty.

-I'm not an expert in Afghanistan, but the perspective in this documentary is unfair. Sure, some advisor teams were embedded with subpar units lead by completely corrupt, uninvolved commanders but this is not a representation of units or the government as a whole.

-Why does this documentary point out every wrong thing the Afghans do in the course of their day? What about the good things? I'm sure if I held a camera on any of us all day it'd be easy to pick us apart. It's an easy thing to do when you haven’t been the one struggling.

-During the year our Afghans made significant progress. They wanted to get better and they did. Now they have their own sustainable training programs and they're getting better all the time. Are they perfect? No. Do they still make mistakes? Yes.

-What was this documentary actually trying to achieve? The reporter is from the UK, what about the UK's history in Afghanistan. Let's talk about their losses in Afghanistan and the general sentiment towards Afghans. After spending some time at the MOB in Lashkar Gah, it's quite disappointing to see how Afghans (even our interpreters) are treated at times by British military personnel. Let's get a crew and film that. Are the UK forces bad? Not at all, they’re great, they’re our brothers and we rely heavily on each other. But if you’re filming 24/7 it’s easy to point out every time someone stumbles, because we all do it. At the very least, acknowledge your biases as a source of news.

-This documentary is one-sided. The unfortunate thing is that most people look for things that validate their existing arguments. I can only imagine the countless people nodding their heads watching the documentary who can't even find Afghanistan on a map and who've learned everything they know about Afghanistan through the news or shit documentaries like this.

I’m not an expert on Afghanistan and I am speaking from my experiences with multiple Afghan units from all pillars. In my time there I worked with units in Helmand and Nimroz provinces and spent some time in Kabul.

Is Afghanistan doomed? I don’t know. But I do know that encouraging negative sentiment based on minimal experience doesn’t help and it’s a betrayal of the trust people put in those who deliver their news. It’s also a disservice to every service member who’s spent time or gave their lives to make it work. We all do the best we can, but our ‘best’ correlates with what’s on the line. When you’re responsible for shaping opinions on significant issues like this, you need to do a better job of being balanced. Maybe I’m off here because I never watch the news and maybe this is the norm, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

For more context on the Afghan people see this my post in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5557881 It's about interpreters in Afghanistan. Most of our interpreters were local Afghans. Some used to be (or easily could have been) Afghan police or Army. The Afghans are a great people who were just dealt a shitty hand.

I think what it shows is how complex the problem is. I really don't see it as an indictment of anyone.

> First off, I didn't watch the whole thing

> It was unbalanced and failed to ...

How do you know what it failed to do? You didn't watch the whole thing.

Search for: A new law signed by President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan requires Shiite women to ask their husband's permission before leaving the home and forces them to have sexual intercourse. ... Human rights activists say the new law grants even fewer rights to women than when the Islamist Taliban held sway.

"Try to find a police chief who doesn't fuck young boys."

Ouch.

Is there an easy way to download this video for later?

Legally? Not sure.

Illegally, a search for [panorama mission accomplished] probably returns relevant results.

It's also available on youtube, just use something like youtube-dl.

At first, as the movie started and one of the US troops was trying to teach those Afghan troops not to shit, eat, and clean themselves in the same spot, gauging by the response of the Afghan in-charge, I figured it was a pointless and insulting thing to do...

Than as I watched more of the movie, I realized that more than likely that Afghan group was doing exactly that - and there was probably some type of hazard going among them.

I'm about 30 minutes into the movie, and I really can't make sense of the buffoonery and self-destructive behavior displayed by the Afghan side. Is a product of nature, culture, situation ... what is it?

Though what I can make sense of, is why historically the only successful means of controlling and stabilizing that region of the world was -> strong-rule <- (like the Taliban's). Because it must of cut right through all that bullshit.

I'm not sure how the US troops must put up with all the crap.

Its the product of growing up in a destabalized war torn country. Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to fight a proxy war with America. Most of the Afghan population since has had to etch our some kind of post-war anarhic life.

Is it no surprise that you think their lifestyles/societies are backwards when you write your comments from a first world country that hasnt seen occupation and invasion in however many years (assuming you're from a western country that is).

I think the problem is that the enemy changed the rules and the generals unlike the foot soldiers took a lot of time to understand it (if they even have). http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-...

There are no military objectives or territory worth holding for them. Their goal is to just inflict as much pain as possible on the US troops knowing that they can outlast them. The US has army that can deal with any conventional threat (from which there are few) or properly defined objective, but seems unprepared for country occupation/building mission (and with good reason, the Army as a foreign policy tool is not wise).

Afghanistan: a graveyard of empires.

It was a stupid idea and a waste of time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com