Afghanistan exit strategy

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56747158.amp

Congratulations where it's due, I guess.

Can't agree with that. The West seems abjectly incapable of understanding that not everything needs to be centralised. Afghanistan is a poster child for a place where you stick to regionalism due to geographical and historical reasons.

Sure, some of your allies may do some things we regard as uncivilised, but they've been doing that for years anyway. The warlords aren't going to go away, the farmers aren't going to stop growing heroin, so play the hand you're given rather than try and rearrange everyones cards and expect all the other players to let you do that and win.

oh yes, good point! But I wouldn't bet on it, because now it will be easier to do this "under the table" with the out of sight, out of mind idea.

Well, you also have to define what is meant by "win." From our perspective, making sure no terrorist attacks originate from the area is the win condition. Given the history of the place and what is very likely to happen once we leave, the only way to insure that is to sterilize the whole country.
Instead, what's going to happen is we will pull out, the Taliban will engage in violent conflict with all who oppose them, probably re-take control of most of the country, and once again offer sanctuary to various and sundry bronze-age extremist shitheads who will then export their backward ways in their lunatic jihad.

Imagine the trillions of dollars we burned through on these forever wars, and what that money could have funded domestically. Modernized infrastructure and telecommunications, improved primary school education and fully funded college educations, universal healthcare, a more vigorous space program, scientific research, incentives for domestic green technology production to strengthen our domestic industry so that kids straight out of high school don't have to go get themselves killed overseas for a shot at earning a living or education, and a full Netflix distribution of the Donald Trump Piss Tape.

But nope. We have a generation of kids who were born into these forever wars, who are now old enough to enlist and fight for reasons that are too abstract and before their time.

We'd rather literally blow up those trillions of dollars instead of reinvesting it in our future.

Take it back some...

Why were we in Afghanistan in the first place?

Because of 9/11.

What about 9/11?

The group behind 9/11 was based in Afghanistan.

Why?

Because they were allies with the Islamic regime that ruled the nation.

Why did an Islamic regime rule the nation?

They won the civil war.

What civil war?

The one created by the power vacuum when the Soviets hastily withdrew leaving a weak central government only in control of the cities while the mujahideen controlled the countryside.

Ah, so what are we doing now?

Hastily withdrawing leaving a weak central government only in control of the cities while the mujahideen control the countryside.

And... that won’t lead to another 9/11?

No.

Why not?

We have the TSA now.

Ah. I feel so reassured. Thank you.

It was our constant wars and international interference that led to 9/11. Continuing our forever wars isn't the correct strategy.

I'm not saying we've always done the right thing. But America basically withdrawing from the world and never getting involved would have pretty shitty consequences too.

No.

Wrong.

Wrong, as in opposite of right.

Our LACK of resolve in the region led to 9/11.

Our FLEEING the region once punched (Reagan abandoning Lebanon after the barracks attack) led to 9/11.

Like how nitty gritty do you want to go here? I’m about to go to bed and tomorrow I’ll be flying my kids across the continent (so my parents can take care of while Anne and I go through late discovery cancer treatment) . So likely I can argue like a mother fucker.

It was only my degree.

And then I went Infantry and after a turn in Iraq went Special Operations (PsyOp/Hearts and Minds) and had some fun in Afghanistan.

But yeah. To make things easier please give me some bullet points on how you think we messed up and why.

I feel like there is a better balance that can be struck. I'm not arguing isolationism by any means. I fully support globalization as a means for a lasting peace.

But occupying a country for multiple generations isn't the solution.

Unfortunately, we decide to intervene when it benefits the minority ruling our country, to the detriment of our younger generation and younger generations abroad (which invariably perpetuates the cycle).

Certainly there are righteous times where we must intervene out of a sense of morality and humanity. But when has the US ever done that during your lifetime?

How is it we blow trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives to prop up the elite over the past half century, but we can't even lift a finger in places like Rwanda, Myanmar, and China when we know genocide is occurring?

I don't disagree with you that we shouldn't intervene in compelling circumstances. But so far those compelling circumstances haven't put a dime in the wealthy's pocketbook, and they'd rather make a quicker buck over our young killing "their" young.

I'm not talking regionally, I'm talking globally. Bin Laden wasn't even from Afghanistan, and his reasons for attacking us had nothing to do with Afghani politics. It had everything to do with our constant, hamfisted, blind intervention solely benefiting the interests of capitalist elites, which detrimentally impacted cultures similar to his because "lol, oil." Sure, there may have been disruption in the region that allowed Bin Laden to hide there. Guess what? The same is true for a large portion of the world due to US and European intervention. If Bin Laden hadn't taken refuge in Afghanistan, he would have taken refuge in any one of 100+ other countries such as, ohhhhh I don't know....

*spins the globe*

Pakistan, where he was killed?

If you actually look at the expressly stated reasons why we were attacked on 9/11, it sure as shit had nothing to do with a "lack of resolve." And you realize that the first time Bin Laden attacked us, he wasn't even in Afghanistan? He was operating in Sudan when his organization first attacked the World Trade Center in the 1990s.

^TL;DR: Bin Laden won.

That reasoning extends further back though, the Taliban cannot be traced back to Russian departure from Afghanistan unless you're looking for a convenient and artificial beginning to a history which goes back millennia.

Why did the Russians leave?

Because it was unfeasible on military and economic grounds to hold Afghanistan.

Why was it unfeasible?

Because there was a significant and well organised grass roots resistance funded by the West during the Cold War.

Why was there such a fervent fundamentalism at the grass roots and a culture well prepared to fight such s guerrilla war?

Because they'd been fighting (nostly) Christian invaders for centuries and developed a deep seated sense of defiance and a warlike culture which hinged on religion as a cultural lynchpin.

At any point during those centuries can you point to a time when invading and occupying showed any sign of improving the damage done by the previous twenty times?

I think what @Ancalagon is getting it is that, after the Russians left, there was an attempt to get funding to rebuild Afghanistan which was denied, despite the fact it was significantly less than the numbers that had been used to boot the Soviets out.

US interference created the power vacuum, the lack of continued US interference is what essentially created a failed state as the fundies went in unopposed.

So from an overall view it would me an artificial starting point, from his context it's not as the US' failure to invest in peace is what started that particular historical phase.

Undoubtedly, but my response is to question whether, in the long term, we can point to any successes.

I'd submit not, that no matter the intentions that power vacuum was only ever a proximal cause.

If we could paint a more optimistic picture on the broader canvas which suggested the Russian withdrawal was an outlier, or even part of an identifiable pattern which included significant positives, then I'd cede the point.

I can't see such a situation, I don't see 1980s Cold War politics as being a regrettable failure set against a backdrop of more positive counter examples.

On the contrary I see it as being entirely consistent with historical precedent and not merely in the Middle East. How did our own adventures in India work out? We invested massively in the infrastructure and governance of the region, yet the fighting between the rivals we created continues to this day, as do Pakistan's lukewarm policies on terrorism.

Hell, we're still trying to work out the consequences of Roman occupation right here at home.

Germany is what it is today because of the Marshall Plan. Without something similar, Afghanistan was never going to be anything other than what it is today. We've had almost an entire generation to figure it out, and we haven't. So, we either make a national commitment to do it right or we need to get out, accept the failure, and move on. Hopefully, we'll learn from it, but I doubt it.

You really see Germany and Afghanistan as being functionally analogous?

Am I the only one who read this part? Or has this come up before and I missed it?

We don't need another death around here.

Good luck, Ancalagon.

It came up - it's Anc's partner who has the tumor. But best of luck anyway, Anc.

As an example of one done right, and one done wrong, why not?

Afghanistan isn't called "The Graveyard of Empires" for nothing.
Foreign nations have been bashing their heads uselessly against those mountains going back to, what, the 8th century.
The British Empire in the 1840s and Russia in the 1980s both figuratively threw their hands up and cut their losses.
When I heard we were going in, I just facepalmed.

Missed that too, best of luck to you and your partner @Ancalagon

We could have replaced our entire military effort there with "infrastructure" and "nation building" and it would have made no difference. The tribal culture of the place is what it is and absent some kind of "awakening" moment, no outsiders are going to change it.
As I hinted, the only "winning" military strategy in Afghanistan would be to glass the whole place. And no-one wants to do that.

Because the scenarios don't match in several key areas.

Notably the occupation of Germany was not an invasion by an aggressive foreign power, but rather the culmination of a losing war of aggression. The people of Germany had fought a total war of their own choosing against comparable military peers and lost. They were cowed, their leadership humbled and they had no realistic frame of reference whereby any but the most deluded could see themselves as collectively being victims of imperialism. Their treatment was not only fair and measured but it was by any measure that of an international community effecting a magnanimous posture out of enlightened self interest.

Afghanistan was and is a totally different matter. They are a nation which has been unsuccessfully annexed by empire after empire for centuries as pawns in the never ending games those empires play against each other. There's no scenario in which the US credibly adopts that magnanimous posture here, merely variations of acknowledging failure to learn from history.

Thst history is one which paints a clear picture for the life cycle of hegemony and it is almost always the case that the collapse comes from within one's own extended borders.

Remember what I said about look for warning signs of bullshit from people interested in staying in Afghanistan? Looks like the Russian Bounty thing was one of those distractions.

Emphasis mine.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-intel-walks-back-claim-russians-put-bounties-on-american-troops

Which is why we shouldnt get involved in the first place. Let em kill each other. We have our own nation building needs here at home.

oh shit that's a good point, and I just detected a great potential spin: use the money we spend in Afghanistan on infrastructure right here in the U.S. of A.

Use the money for a whole host of things. This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.

Stop basing your cultural self esteem around bombing and shooting people, that kind of thing?

Maybe build a hospital or some schools?