In the New York Times today, Fred Kagan has an op-ed guest essay titled "Biden Could Have Stopped the Taliban. He Chose Not To." I haven't heard Kagan's name since the heyday of the warbloggers circa 2004, so I was curious to see what he had to say:
As U.S. military planners well know, the Afghan war has a seasonal pattern. The Taliban leadership retreats to bases, largely in Pakistan, every winter and then launches the group’s fighting season campaign in the spring, moving into high gear in the summer after the poppy harvest. At the very least, the United States should have continued to support the Afghans through this period to help them blunt the Taliban’s latest offensive and buy time to plan for a future devoid of American military assistance.
American diplomats could have used this time to negotiate access to regional bases from which to continue counterterrorism operations. Simultaneously, the American military should have prepared contingencies in case those negotiations failed.
In other words, just a few more months would have done it! After 20 years of American training and assistance, after which the Afghan military literally collapsed at the mere sight of Taliban troops, waiting until next year would have made all the difference.
I don't doubt that Kagan is sincere in this belief. That's the problem.
I heard a very similar argument from a Vietnamese co-worker. Had the US only stayed a few more weeks Vietnam would never have fallen. I’m sure she believed it too.
He's not even saying "only a few more weeks/months". The second para there is saying "we could have negotiated bases from which to wage war indefinitely". The fuckers a complete warmongering tool. Also delusional.
Let's be honest: the world in late 2003 was better & more salvageable than today.
If only we hadn't been denied access to the isolated vocal on the "Dean Scream".*
*Think about it: however much fleftist doomsayers & lamestream media lushes at Sally Quinn's cocktail circuit may quaver & exalt in Karl Rove's campaign genius, his real talent is weaponizing exhalation. Had algore not sighed, or Howard Dean not screeched, Bush-43 would have seen his presidency shortcircuited. & then, either 9/11 never happens, or El Jefe Maximo never becomes president, depending on whether the fat environmentalist or W's third cousin was the one to vanquish the TX governor.
Gore won the most votes but instead of just recounting the whole state he tried to get cute and then Lieberman (D-Israel) backstabbed.
Both of these comments are spot on.
Afghanistan is the Hotel California of war zones: you can check in anytime, but you can never leave. Kagan makes a big deal about our not supplying adequate air support to the Afghan Army that we’ve been trying to “stand up” for nearly twenty years. Does the Taliban have an Air Force? Also, how can the NYT expect to hang on to a shred of credibility when it’s go-to author for this kind of piece is someone with Kagan’s record? It’s like asking John Yoo to write a piece about Constitutional limitations on presidential power . . . . Oh, wait: that actually happens!
+1
It is a sad, no, devastating, commentary on the state of our media that these ideas are taken seriously at all. People like Kagan, who have wroght devastation around the world with their worldview, ought to be ignored, left to rant on their own blogs that nobody with a 2 digit or higher IQ reads.
+1 too
Maybe op-eds should have a "reality" graphic. Win it hits "bonkers", then the piece shouldn't be published.
Agree. Why doesn't the NYT publish crazy antivaxxers? Reality matters. C'mon people.
I like the Hotel California reference. But it's "You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!"
In re: the Times credibility--They, like other good newspapers, publish alternative opinions that are not their own. "Go-to author" is a big overbid.
What is this "Times credibility" you speak of? After buying into the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, not to mention partnering with Breitbart on a phony baloney expose of the Clinton foundation while totally missing the Russian intervention in the 2016 election, the term "Times credibility " is a bit of an oxymoron.
Veronica Hamel, who starred on "Hill Street Blues", confessed her guilty pleasure was to pick up a Sunday Times, extract the Arts section and leave the rest in the recycle bin.
Smart woman.
Re Hotel California
We Used To Know that. 😉
Yeah, he confused Hotel California with Roach Motels.
“Roaches Check In, But They Don’t Check Out!”
Easy mistake.
No the Taliban doesn't have an airforce, but you can bet the Afghanistan army has been trained to rely on the NATO airforce. Sniper up ahead? Call in an airstrike and marvel at the beauty of our precision weapons!
Deprived of air support, they're just a bunch of mercenaries terrified of the dark.
Zionists should not be posted. Try harder.
I request that everyone offering their opinion on Afghanistan, lay out a matrix of our options through game theory in a 3-person (or 4-person if you want to include Pakistan) game.
I want to see how people have come to assume that this was our optimal choice.
You've offered some opinions on Afghanistan. Why don't you go first and show the rest of us how it's done?
You mean today or in 2001?
In 2001, we did need to do something for future deterrent of terrorism . And pretty dramatic.
I would say the start where the Taliban was largely defeated by local opposition with us limited special forces help and air power was very good.
Remember how the whole thing started. The Taliban was having trouble taking control of all of.Afghanistan before we were involved at all. The tough fighters of the northern alliance were holding their own against the Taliban outnumbered and outgunned and without any significant us support. The Taliban allowed al Qaeda to plan 9/11 from their sanctuary in return for al.queda assassinating a key northern alliance leader .
Back then, the Taliban was willing to risk our response because they needed al.queda help.against home grown underdog opposition. My guess is the Taliban did not think al Qaeda could not have pulled it off.
So major goal in Afghanistan should have been to make it clear that the Taliban is going to regret that decision and in spades with disproportionate consequences like being largely wiped out of power and dead. Enough so that any future govt around the world would think it a bad idea to ever harbor such a terrorist group.
We had that achieved and Taliban on the run before a huge troop commitment. Taking out Saddam in iraq helped with that too. Remember we scares quafaffi into giving up and turns out he was closer to atom bombs than Saddam was ( most important thing from Iraq war might have been Libya and screwed up that example by Obama betraying the implict promise for quadaffi surrender ).
We should have armed the northern alliance and let them take over as a milder and friendly dictatorship..
We had the tough fighters of the northern alliance and others who held out against the Taliban as outgunned underdogs on their own. And created a bunch of relative wimps in the Afghan govt so psychological dependent on us they are giving up while still outrunning the Taliban.
All in the name of instituting a democratic govt in our image that will not last.
Note we failed in Iraq too. But there nation building and trying to build a stable democracy was at least a conceivable goal given their different history, political situation, culture and geopolitical situation and the neighborhood. Difficult but we just might have pulled it off if we had done things right there. And the benefits for succeeding in Iraq would have been huge, unlike Afghanistan.
In Iraq, not saying that nation building was a good idea worth the cost and risk or that we did not make mistakes. But the concept there was possibly valid. While it was always crazy in Afghanistan..
Good analysis.
Haven't heard a mention of the "northern alliance" in years. At the moment it's a bit jolting to recall they took on the Taliban before we arrived.
This also reminds me that this is Afghanistan. And while at the moment the Taliban are ascendant, give it a year and groups there will be gunning for them.
Actually the best hope now is that some of the old northern alliance types are trying to reform and fight back now and not under the aegis of the existing govt.
And I expect some of the good remaining Afghan govt units that routinely defeat the Taliban in battle ( yes there are some ) will start to desert the ineffective govt and join the alliance guys or form their own separate organizations. Plus, once we are out and humiliated, others like Russia might start to support them because they are not too keen on the Taliban either.
Once we are gone, the major powers with an interest that might back a different group are Pakistan ( Taliban), iran ( who knows probably a Shiite group but not Taliban), india ( anyone but Taliban supported by Pakistan), Russia ( could be northern alliance - zero reason they should be loyal to usa anymore or could be remnants of existing govt), and China ( only one other than Pakistan who might back Taliban but might not).
Yes, now it looks like taliban on cusp of total control but this is not over by a long shot.
The tough guys were on our side! Sure, they were confined to a small strip in the north, while the Taliban held the bulk of the territory and the population....Any day now the Karen are going to sweep over Myanmar, And unleash Chiang Kai-shek.
Obviously, 2021. Today. The move to cut bait and leave.
Today, with where we put ourselves , cut bait and leave. But we did it in a piss poor way and at least should have had the balls to fight a little longer to try to get those who fought loyally for us out first.
But long term we really have no national interest being there and never did. Yes, an idealistic good thing to spread democracy and light all over the world. But we are not omnipotent and do not have limited resources. And do not have responsibility for every nation on earth. Especially since we gave them plenty of help to fight on their own if they really wanted to.
Yes, usa gets blame for making them dependent on us. But they get more for becoming so.
Sorry feel bad about it but we are out of there.
If Massoud had lived probably best option. Hekmatyer is still around and might be able to pull stuff together but the talibs are going to have a lot of US toys to play with.
In 2001 if we were really serious about rebuilding Afghanistan we should have dispensed with the fiction and ruled directly as colonial masters partnering with local force monopolizers and developing parts of the country ourselves. You want to ge in charge local guy? Fine. Allow us to do xyz and you can rule the rest. It would have been cheaper than what it's cost us so far.
If anyone disagreed militarily the response should have been mongol tactics.
But there wasn't the political will to do it either in the country or internationally and the military probably would have refused to do it.
So it was doomed from the start, practically speaking.
One of the major problems is that the media always have space and air time for this sort of drivel. The "liberal" media were big promoters of the Iraq invasion and of Obama's intention to fight the "good" war in Afghanistan.
The trouble with the Gray Lady is that she has indulged the Fred Kagans so often in the past that it is now hard to say no to derpitude.
Doing Afghanistan right would have required (at a minimum) an open commitment to staying there indefinitely to support the region with military forces. But of course, thinking about doing so raises the question . . . why? Do we actually need to be there for counter-terrorism? I don't think so anymore, and it probably wasn't true even back in 2001.
It's just depressing to think of how different things might have been had the 9/11 attack not gone through successfully. No invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, probably no invasion and occupation of Iraq without the former - god, who knows what our politics would have been like.
I know it's hackneyed to say, but the military industrial complex would have found some reason to go to war somewhere and play with their deadly toys.
Leaving aside that there is no such thing as "doing Afghanistan right," an open commitment to staying there indefinitely to support the region with military forces is exactly what people like Kagan want.
I do not think we have to be there now for anti terrorism but we really did have to in 2011.
Go back to 2001. The Taliban were not then and are not now the sort of extremist Islamists who want to export their their Islamic revolution around the world for ideological reasons and have a visceral hatred of the west. That is more like the Iranian govt.
The Taliban are very extreme Islamists but basically just want to rule their own country as an Islamic dictatorship ( and yes oppress the females and kill the homosexuals ). And yes they do not want western culture in their country but they do not scheme to overthrow the west. They are a poor country proud of defeating invaders but have no resources to think of trying to do more. Mostly they want to be left alone.
In 2001, many of the Taliban still had some warm feelings toward the USA from the ussr war. But they still harbored al Qaeda. Why? Perceived self interest. They are poor and were struggling to control their own country. They had not fully won the post ussr war. Al Qaeda had resources and could assist them in many ways such as assassinating the northern alliance leader ( which happened right before 9/11 and was presumably part of the deal allowing them to use them as a base). They took the risk for that gain because they thought it was worth it. They were too isolated to allow the usa to retaliate for harboring al Qaeda unless really pissed off ( true) and assumed al Qaeda were mostly inept clowns who would never pull off anything as big as 9/11 ( wrong but it really was a long shot).
They did not harbor al Qaeda because they were ideologically committed against us like Iran might be. It was calculated self interest.
But after 9/11, we had to strike back and hard. Like they would have assumed the usa would not have the guts to do. Simply as an example to any future Taliban like group who might consider something like harboring a terrorist group. Make it clear that whatever gain they might get is outewtghrd by the holy hell we will bring down on them if the terrorists manage to do something big.
And I think we accomplished that sort of deterrent fairly soon before we started committing massive forces. But we 100% had to do it..if we had not, after 9/11, it would be clear to the world that we were a nation with no pride or honor or willing to ever fight back..
Today, I really doubt the Taliban wants to even think about harboring a group like al Qaeda again..
Gore would have stopped 9/11, no doubt in my mind.
I think so as well. There were many opportunities for that plot to be foiled, and warnings that the Bush Jr Administration didn't really take that seriously or urgently.
The very fact that the T are rolling so easily is proof that our nation building mission there did not work. How much more blood and treasure? Does Kagan want his son or daughter killed there?
War is a racket
What's a better way to honor your neocon-scholar-deity dad (his dad Donald Kagan had passed away just a few days ago) than to double down on the same neoconary?
Since it seems Biden was happy for all our Afghan employees to be butchered I'm going with yes. A few more months to actually get our allies out would not have gone amiss.
Lots of folks anticipated that the Taliban would take over after we left. Hardly anybody anticipated that it would happen in a matter of days instead of months.
Why would anyone think it was any better or different than Vietnam? Same corrupt puppet governments, same grift and corruption?
It was clear for oh, 15 years that the only thing propping up the government was America. That as soon as we were done the Talibs would rush out ftom Pakistan. When America goes the government goes.
If you are in the Afghan Army, what is the point of fighting if all you do is risk your ass to prolong the inevitable for 6 months?
No. If Biden didn't know it would go down just like this he was a fool.
First, on whether biden ( or really those in the administration making these decisions as I doubt biden himself is personally that involved), were we " snookered"?
Yes, it is quite believable that those in power honestly believed that the govt could win or at least hold out. We have seen this same story in Vietnam, in iraq, etc. etc. and yet the same mistake is made conceptually. Looking rationally at the forces available re manpower, weapons, and even commitment, the Afghan govt should easily be able to beat the Taliban, and iraq govt should have had no issue destroying ISIS easy, and even s Vietnam should have held.
But they miss over and over that you have to have morale and a belief that your side can win to keep fighting. And what we continually do with " nation building " is to make the govt forces that we are supporting too emotionally dependent on the us so that when we desert them their will collapses and they all start planning for defeat personally.
If the Afghan govt forces simply believed they could win, they would. But they now do not because we made them think they had to have us help to win.
It is like a 15 year old big brother protecting his little 10 year old brother from 12 year old bullies. The 10 year old never fights much to protect himself as the big brother does. Ten years later, that 10 year old has grown up into a 20 year old 6 foot 6 hulk of a man and his bullies are 22 year old but short and skinny. But when the big brother leaves town, those shrimp bullies might beat up that little brother.
And we try to impose our system of democratic constitutional govt on a society not yet ready for it. Especially since it still has to have someone in power though enough to stand up to forces like the Taliban. And, in a place like Afghanistan, that is not going to be the type of people who end up in the top positions in our created democracy. Realistically you have to just find the most viable and not so bad potential dictator to support. One who might be strong enough to create a stable dictatorship with some freedom that might, over time , evolve into a decent constitutional republic.
If we had just instead, after initially defeating the taliban, simply given 1/10 of the support we have given to the current Afghan govt to the old " northern alliance" ( yes who would have just been a far better dictatorship) , the Taliban would have been toast.
Another thing missed about Afghanistan vs. Iraq and Vietnam. We can get to Iraq and vietnam over sea. So a nation of our power had the easy ability to win in Vietnam or Iraq as completely as we wanted to, if we really did whatever we needed. If the usa had the will to win in Iraq and Vietnam, we of course could have ( whether it would have been worth it is a different issue). And, if it was clear to the other side that our nation really had the commitment to win, they would have lost the will to keep fighting ( i.e. the north vietnamese, not being idiots , would have stopped invading s Vietnam). But the n vietnamese, quite correctly, thought they could outlast our will to fight and they did.
Afghanistan is different. It is landlocked and we depend on not so friendly nations for access. And it is bordered by big powerful unfriendly nations like china and nearby Russia. Basically just about the hardest place on the planet for the usa to project its power. We are used to being the strongest nation on earth ( and we still are) so we can always win any battle if we have the will and put our the effort needed. That was true in Iraq and Vietnam. In Afghanistan, even if we had the total will and full effort, we will lose if actively opposed by china and Russia. Us is the strongest nation still but there are limits and Afghanistan is a bridge too far..
Again, Massoud could have done it but they got him the week before. Hekmatyar and the other guy whose name I cannot remember were more risky.
Yeah, it's ALWAYS "just a few months more." Just a few hundred mil, troops, and whatever. The "deal" (I long for the days when the US made "treaties" and "agreements") that fell out of the Trump (mal)administration required the US getting out months earlier. While honoring it, Biden wanted a more orderly, planned withdrawal.
Too bad for him the Taliban read their US history, and wanted a re-staging of the panicked US withdrawal from Saigon, complete with long lines to the helicopters departing the roofs and the wails of abandoned locals who had helped the foreign infidel invaders. The Taliban wants to show the world that they have decisively defeated the great United States of America.
Of course, they would.
How many Friedman units would be needed???
Vietnam and Afghanistan are perfect examples of "learned dependency". Why fight and die when the US forces will take care of the problem.
Hell even Ibn Khaldun wrote about how the cities became soft and the hard people of the desert would take over and then become soft themselves.
I am perfectly content to see this result. The US military failed for sure, but more importantly, the Afghan people failed. In a world defined by nation states it is the responsibility of the people within those states to determine how to organize their societies and to learn to live with others within their borders. The Afghans failed miserably at this task. And so they now have another opportunity to work out a plan for governance and coexistence. Western style liberal democracy is not a suitable form of government for their society. It seems like some sort of theocracy is in the offing. The Iranians, the Saudis, and others use this form of government.
The words in our own declaration of independence now apply in spades to Afghanistan.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
They have new Guards. I wish them luck. Apparently the new despotism will be much like the old despotism. It's perfect for a backward pre-modern tribal society like Afghanistan.
And let’s look on the bright side. As they revert to the dark ages, their carbon foot print will decline. Saving the world one depot at a time.
Am I the only one who sees the fingerprints of one or more of our geo-political adversaries on this Taliban surge, that just kind of conveniently makes the U.S. look weak on the world stage? Is it impossible that deals have been made out-of-sight whereby the Taliban is a proxy army from some larger nation?
They are to some extent and have always been a proxy of the pakistan intelligence agencies ( which there is not quite the same thing as the pakistan govt). Although they did get somewhat out of control.
But certainly china and russia have been doing what they can to hurt us there.
This is about the Afghan people and their inability to coexist. It has nothing to do with the US. It’s time to stop imagining it’s about us and place responsibility for this where it belongs. We handed them a lifeline and the Afghans rejected it in favor of religious fanaticism, tribal hatred, drug dealing, and war lordism.
They were never worth the effort and I’m happy to see them suffer. They enabled 9/11 so to hell with them. Drop a covid bomb all over the country. Or just nuke the place and exterminate the vermin.
What's really wrong with hereditary monarchy, anyway?
https://i.redd.it/56blk3baczg71.jpg
[that's the king of Thailand, the subreddit this came from has a name that contains the fuck word which WordPress won't allow in a link]
Phuc is a perfectly common name.
Has anyone ever succeeded in forcing Afghanistan into submission? Alexander? Anyone since? I know the invasion always works swimmingly; the native hordes run away in the face of Western puissance. But they never stay away. George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman" was set in the First Afghan War of 1839 -1842. The British entered Kabul looking like the Queen's Birthday parade. They left like this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/The_Last_Stand%2C_by_William_Barnes_Wollen_%281898%29.jpg/1200px-The_Last_Stand%2C_by_William_Barnes_Wollen_%281898%29.jpg
Fraser himself was enraged almost beyond words when Tony Blair joined Bush's Afghan war. Almost--if words could kill . . .
The Afghans force themselves into submission… to each other. I have no interest in their petty BS.
Genghis Khan
Timur
Sure. Alexander the great. Genghis Khan timur. There are other examples.
If the usa was as brutal as genghis, we would have won and the Taliban would likely have surrendered. Glad of course we are not and would have no credibility pretending to be.
The British could have conquered and held Afghanistan is they really wanted but clearly not worth the cost.
The ussr could have held Afghanistan if they had not been internally collapsing and/or the usa was not actively supplying the opposition. Russia conquered and pacified most of central asia and not much different.
What makes Afghanistan so hard to conquer is three things. Tough terrain favoring defense and guerillas. Tough population who are hard and good fighters. But third, there just is nothing there that makes it worth the effort for a stronger power to overcome the first two problems. Conquerors wear down and give up as nothing worth conquering..
Or those liberal do-gooders the Soviet Union.
I’ve read maybe two or three “stay in Afghanistan” pieces in publications like the NYT or the WaPo: and what I find really interesting are the comments. Scroll through those comments forever and you find no one who agrees with any sentiment that we should stay in that country. Max Boot’s recent column in the WaPo is a good example of this phenomenon.
Of course the commenters might sound different for an article on a Fox “news” type of outlet; but,
I get the distinct impression that Afghanistan could, the moment we leave, turn into a fundamentalist theocracy that makes Iran look progressive by comparison and Biden still would not lose a single one of his voters.
20 years: the sane part of the country is simply done with it.
I actually am a bit more hopeful about a future taliban govt in Afghanistan.
While they are extremely hard line Islamist and no way is it going to be a good place to live, the Taliban do seem to be somewhat more pragmatic and rational.
The Iranian regime , comparatively, while nowhere on the level of North Korea, has more of an acolypitic nutty irrational side.
The Taliban is maybe even more extremely Islamist than Iran in goals but they are more pragmatic in going after them.
Plus the Taliban goal is mostly just to rule Afghanistan as an Islamic dictatorship. They do not have grandiose ideas of conquest of the region. Afghanistan knows it is a tough independent nation but they do not perceive themselves as a great world power.
Iran thinks of itself still as a great world power that can contest regional issues and aspire to at least regional dominance.
Basically, as long as the Taliban does not do anything stupid like hosting a terrorist group again, the USA and the Taliban really have no conflict of interest anywhere. Unlike Iran.
And the Iranian regime fundamentally despises the usa ( but not the people). I do not think the Taliban does. They likely understand that it was their stupid mistake that started this.
I would not be super shocked if in 20 years, we are effectively allied with the Taliban Afghanistan against China or Iran.
After all, Vietnam today is defacto one of our most dependance allies against china.
Exactly. Biden is doing the right thing. The Afghans deserve their fate. No one cares what they do to each other.
You sound like Jerry Falwell telling us we got what we deserved on 9/11 for allowing gays & lesbians to fornicate.
Okay, but the situation is turning into a humanitarian disaster, predictably, and you (KD) have to face up to that. What's happening now is your preferred outcome, for better or worse.
I've read lots of comments online - not all from right-wingers, by any means - asserting that Biden screwed things up. I've not read many remotely plausible suggestions of how he could have got a different outcome. In fact the only practicable proposals involve sending thousands of US troops back to Afghanistan with no clear mission. We can all imagine what fun Fox and Trump Republicans would have had if Biden had done that.
The pullout itself is mostly supported on the right and especially by hard line pro trump.
This issue is actually one where there is no partisan split and has not really been since early bush years. One of the few where many Democrats will say trump was right and against the establishment. The lack of a clear partisan side makes the whole discussion here and elsewhere more interesting and less predictable.
The large majority of the public support getting out and that was a winning issue for Trump or now Biden . Although Trump messed up politically as he never had the will or control to do what he clearly wanted to do and just pull out. He kept getting talked into, coerced, or tricked into just waiting a little longer. Or sometimes just having his orders ignored.
If Trump had dug his heels in and insisted on a pull out like this last year ( and pandemic was a good time to justify it) even with the same mistakes doing it biden has made, he quite likely would have won the last election.
The opposition to this is a small minority consisting almost entirely of the old line elite establishment of both parties ( bush and McCain's people for Republicans and Clinton and to a lesser extent Obama for Democrats) . Versus everyone else ( trump people, Sanders people and aoc) and pretty much almost all of the more common less politically involved..
Some old establishment Republicans have a sort of fantasy that this will hurt Biden politically because of the resulting chaos and he did screew up the execution in many ways. And established democrats thoght it would hurt trump if he had done it too.
They are wrong. No matter how badly Biden screwed this up and how much his mistakes in execution caused chaos and made it worse than it had to be. They might show that convincingly and win that argument. But it would still be offset and more by one fact.
He did it. He left Afghanistan no matter how much he messed it up, he finally did what the American people have wanted for over a decade and were thwarted by the elites.
Unless Biden or whoever is in charge gets talked into going back in to restore order " temporarily " and we get sucked back in. If that happens Biden cannot even retain the democratic nomination in 2024 and we might get AOC vs Trump in 24..dear god no.
The only way to defeat the Taliban is to destroy the country they inhabit. There is precedent for this in Iraq and Syria.
To defeat ISIS we destroyed the cities they conquered.
https://airwars.org/news-and-investigations/raqqa-a-city-destroyed-then-forgotten/
Nuke Afghanistan or leave them be.
A storm of weapons
Fired from afar and usually targeted based on intelligence from local proxy ground forces,the SDF, US bombs, missiles and artillery shells rained almost continuously into Raqqa. According to official figures provided to Airwars, the Coalition launched more than 20,000 munitions into the city during the five-month campaign. In August, that barrage had officially increased to more than one bomb, missile, rocket or artillery round fired every eight minutes—a total of 5,775 munitions during the month.
I've noticed that the so-called liberal media has been going crazy with pro-Forever War propaganda for the past week. They've been acting like nobody expected the Afghan government to fall, when the only difference is that it's falling faster than expected. We've had a lot of breathless "Think of the Afghans" commentary. So far, I've only seen a veteran trotted out to flog the sunk-cost fallacy on a tabloid TV program, but I expect to see this from more actual news sources soon.
Current events in Afghanistan seem to corroborate something that I suggesting in a previous thread on Afghanistan. The official government of that country is corrupt to the core and does not have the confidence and support of the people. For those who are complaining about the mess that's unfolding (I hate it but I'm not complaining): The Taliban is a faction that wants to control the entire country, very badly, and they are brutal fanatic extremists. The ordinary people hate them and fear them. But who is going to step up to contest with the Taliban for control of the country? The U.S. would prefer to have a more moderate faction do that. But if there is no such faction that is competent, non-corrupt, and has the support of the people we can't get that preferred outcome. We are not going to annex Afghanistan, therefore, lacking a viable partner to help, we're stuck with the mess that exists.
I was super pessimistic about war in Afghanistan in 2001. Turns out I was too optimistic back then.
If you look at the GWOT as solely an exercise in domestic conservative politics, it was fairly successful. GWB was elected again, Americans who couldn't fathom our vulnerability on 9/11 felt powerful again. It made criticisms of the military anathema for quite a while. Trump even managed to avoid being in office when his own crummy peace deal actually played out. He'll be demanding a Nobel Peace Prize and blaming Biden for the Taliban for years.
It's only a disaster if you care at all about people who actually have to live there.
"In an interview with Al Jazeera Hamid Karzai called Talibans his 'brothers'. He claimed that the Afghan government and Afghan people did not want to eliminate Talibans, but rather reintegrate Talibans into society."
So there you go. They are integrating. The Afghan people should welcome them instead of fighting them or fleeing.