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mobby_6kl posted:So, Afghanistan isn't doing that great, even by the standards of Afghanistan. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42843897 Don't worry, Trump's got a this! https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/957387711693905925
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Jan 28, 2018 02:43
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god, we're not even promising to defeat them at this point, just to somehow keep them from winning
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Jan 28, 2018 03:06
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Jagged Jim posted:Don't worry, Trump's got a this! Hurray forever war!
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Jan 28, 2018 03:11
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hey remember when the war was supposed to have been won 16 years ago or even 7 years ago when they finally got OBL? lol.
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Jan 28, 2018 03:30
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Al-Saqr posted:hey remember when the war was supposed to have been won 16 years ago or even 7 years ago when they finally got OBL? lol. Why would the war end when the people who fund and train the Taliban and other local terrorist groups don't feel compelled to stop?
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Jan 28, 2018 03:41
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svenkatesh posted:Why would the war end when the people who fund and train the Taliban and other local terrorist groups don't feel compelled to stop? what was the whole point of the war? what were the objectives? what are the measures of success? etc.
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Jan 28, 2018 03:44
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:god, we're not even promising to defeat them at this point, just to somehow keep them from winning Al-Saqr posted:hey remember when the war was supposed to have been won 16 years ago or even 7 years ago when they finally got OBL? lol. Afghanistan/the US can't even get to "we beat them in a military sense". Saladin Rising fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 03:46
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Al-Saqr posted:what was the whole point of the war? what were the objectives? what are the measures of success? etc. Questions best saved for GW Bush, since as far as I've read the Taliban had no desire to attack the US prior to invasion, it was just Al-Qaeda. With that said, presumably the goals were: - Get AQ, and hopefully OBL. - End Taliban rule and more explicitly support the North Alliance - Avoid losing face, by staying until AF was a stable, functioning democracy #2 and #3 will not happen until the Pakistani ISI is
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Jan 28, 2018 03:50
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Al-Saqr posted:what was the whole point of the war? what were the objectives? what are the measures of success? etc. Making middle America feel better.
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Jan 28, 2018 04:54
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There was also astonishingly little thought put into the Afghan War. The Bush administration was infinitely more interested in launching their Iraq War 2: Electric Boogaloo. They were drawing up plans for it the moment they got into power.
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Jan 28, 2018 05:00
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Darkman Fanpage posted:There was also astonishingly little thought put into the Afghan War. The Bush administration was infinitely more interested in launching their Iraq War 2: Electric Boogaloo. They were drawing up plans for it the moment they got into power. All's well that ends well, you know?
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Jan 28, 2018 06:04
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Tias posted:Having just re-read the CIA chief in Saigons final message specifically “Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson.” - I have re-discovered my morbid fascination with Afghanistan. There are no plans or projections and nobody knows what's going to happen lol. The hope of every President is that they can just stave off disaster long enough to leave office. svenkatesh posted:Questions best saved for GW Bush, since as far as I've read the Taliban had no desire to attack the US prior to invasion, it was just Al-Qaeda. With that said, presumably the goals were: New York Times recently published an article titled We Can't Win in Afghanistan Because We Don't Know Why We're There In it they summarize an Obama era effort to summarize America's core strategic interests in Afghanistan. quote:In 2009, as President Obama escalated combat troop levels in Afghanistan, his advisers identified only two vital American interests in the war, according to participants, the kinds of interests that might justify sending soldiers into battle. I think the inconsistencies and ineffectiveness of US policy in Afghanistan can largely be explained by svenkatesh's last point. The core interest of the politicians setting US policy in the region is to not lose face while spending as few dollars and lives as possible. There is no American interest in Afghanistan that could justify the effort necessary to bring the conflict to a clear victory. From a humanitarian perspective, I see the present policy as the most cruel and unjust conceivable. Some false-humanitarians, the neocons and "liberal" interventionists, would howl and rend their hair if the US pulled out of the country completely. "We've abandoned the people of Afghanistan to Taliban cruelty!" They would say, quite rightly. However how much worse is it to sustain the unsustainable, a conflict without end nor any hope? To subject a people to the vicissitudes and deprivations of war in perpetuity? War is far sterner a master than even the worst authoritarian dictator. The best possible ending is some kind of negotiated settlement. However the Taliban is so strong, and with good reason to believe they will keep becoming stronger, the only settlement possible is one that gives them lots of real and substantial power in the central government. Power that could conceivably be turned against the government itself. That's probably a necessary risk unfortunately, at least if you can get them in government the west might just be able to bribe them into the senescence.
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Jan 28, 2018 06:34
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Squalid posted:The best possible ending is some kind of negotiated settlement. However the Taliban is so strong, and with good reason to believe they will keep becoming stronger, the only settlement possible is one that gives them lots of real and substantial power in the central government. Power that could conceivably be turned against the government itself. That's probably a necessary risk unfortunately, at least if you can get them in government the west might just be able to bribe them into the senescence. A negotiated settlement probably just means "peace with honor" like the deal we made to withdraw from Vietnam, which the North accurately believed they could violate once we were gone. Maybe the government in Afghanistan is more able to survive than South Vietnam was, and the various clans and warlords would get their poo poo together and fight once the US stopped doing the heavy lifting because they'd know the alternative would be losing the country, but it's at least as likely that they'd just collapse or switch sides and that we know it, which is why we never completed the planned withdrawal. If we drag this out long enough, maybe ISIS will take over instead of the Taliban, who knows.
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Jan 28, 2018 06:51
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Sinteres posted:A negotiated settlement probably just means "peace with honor" like the deal we made to withdraw from Vietnam, which the North accurately believed they could violate once we were gone. Maybe the government in Afghanistan is more able to survive than South Vietnam was, and the various clans and warlords would get their poo poo together and fight once the US stopped doing the heavy lifting because they'd know the alternative would be losing the country, but it's at least as likely that they'd just collapse or switch sides and that we know it, which is why we never completed the planned withdrawal. If we drag this out long enough, maybe ISIS will take over instead of the Taliban, who knows. I don't think the situation is as bad as South Vietnam's in 1973, though it's probably worse than Iraq circa 2013
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Jan 28, 2018 07:07
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https://twitter.com/DefenseUnits/status/957532842866692096?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E1 Not sure if a suicide attack has been directly connected to and acknowledged by the PYD before.
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Jan 28, 2018 13:12
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Volkerball posted:https://twitter.com/DefenseUnits/status/957532842866692096?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E1 Yeah they have a statue to Arin Mirkan who martyred herself in Kobani. 
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Jan 28, 2018 13:16
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Volkerball posted:https://twitter.com/DefenseUnits/status/957532842866692096?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E1 What surprises me is the silence from the PKK offshoot TAK. They killed hundreds in Turkey throughout 2016 and have been lying low the last year or so. I'd have to think with Turkey pledging to advance through all of Kurdish-run Syria, there'd be an uptick in PKK/TAK activity within Turkey.
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Jan 28, 2018 13:25
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Squalid posted:I think the inconsistencies and ineffectiveness of US policy in Afghanistan can largely be explained by svenkatesh's last point. The core interest of the politicians setting US policy in the region is to not lose face while spending as few dollars and lives as possible. There is no American interest in Afghanistan that could justify the effort necessary to bring the conflict to a clear victory. Thanks, both of you! I am learning  So, how come we haven't had a backlash at home? Denmark still participates, and while we always have the lowest war weariness regardless of the war somehow, I think it helps that casualties remain relatively low. How does this translate to America? You got a lot of kids come home in coffins by now, after all. Vietnam was ended for several reasons, chief among them being extreme war weariness among both politicians and civilians as well as hate of the draft, and at the same time Nixon resigned and Ford was explicitly blocked from further funding the war. Trump seems like a complete joke here from Europe, but it doesn't seem to raise much of a stir that he states a desire to expand the war effort in Afghanistan. Does it not seem likely we will eventually have a 'peace with honour' settlement another 10 years down the line? Eventually coalition security concerns have to shift elsewhere, and the Taleban will have to be ignored, if not directly cooperated with. Tias fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 13:26
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Yeah they have a statue to Arin Mirkan who martyred herself in Kobani. Destroyed buildings, a tank carcass, and a recently built monument. Thats a Stalingrad circa 1945 looking city-scape right there.
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Jan 28, 2018 13:30
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Blut posted:Destroyed buildings, a tank carcass, and a recently built monument. Thats a Stalingrad circa 1945 looking city-scape right there. It's a little hard to tell, but I don't think there are any destroyed buildings in that photo. They all look more like they're under construction. (Replacing destroyed buildings, no doubt.) Lots of places in the middle east, and Greece, look like that because every single building is always under construction. Usually it is to avoid paying taxes — you don't pay home owner taxes if your house is under construction — although I doubt that's the case here.
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Jan 28, 2018 14:01
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Squalid posted:There are no plans or projections and nobody knows what's going to happen lol. The hope of every President is that they can just stave off disaster long enough to leave office. Kudos for a well-reasoned post. With the rise of IS Khorasan, wouldn't you agree that it's more dangerous than ever to step back from Afghanistan? It's not even about humanitarianism - it's inevitable that IS-trained militants in Afghanistan would spread havoc to our allies (e.g. in Pakistan and India, and in Europe due to refugee resettlement) and to our own backyard. Not to sound like a neocon but pursuing a white peace wouldn't just mean tacitly accepting defeat, it would also send a clear signal that we won't help allies when it's most needed. Pursing peace now, when the central Afghan government (supposedly) still controls 60% of the country would be backbiting a young democracy and a nominal ally since the ANA and NDS are nowhere near competent enough to hold onto that 60% alone, or to fend off non-state actors or hostile foreign nations. As a landlocked country, Afghanistan is generally boned. We shouldn't make a lovely situation shittier.
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Jan 28, 2018 14:09
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Since when is the Afghan government democratic anyway? There was no IS in Afghanistan yet the occupation has spawned them. Clearly the answer is continued occupation. This will make things better in the following way:
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Jan 28, 2018 14:11
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Afghanistan will almost certainly descend into civil war when the US leaves. This was true in 2002, in 2010, and now in 2018. Permanent occupation is the only way to maintain a western friendly government in Kabul. Have fun with that.
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Jan 28, 2018 14:26
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IS offshoots have spawned in many countries that are not occupied. Anywhere where the state isn't strong enough to prevent Islamist militias from forming, you will find people claiming to be part of Daesh or of Al Qaeda. I'm pretty sure they would have appeared in Afghanistan even if NATO hadn't intervened there after 9/11... Outside of Arabia (Iraq, Syria, Yemen), Islamic State offshoots exist in the South Caucasus area of Russia, in most of Western Africa (Algeria, Mali, Niger, Cameroon, etc.), in the Sinai area of Egypt, in a bunch of East African countries (Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya), in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan), and in South-East Asia (Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia).
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Jan 28, 2018 14:50
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Speaking of Kabul, 100 people died there in a VBIED attack with an ambulance yesterday. That's more than the number of Americans who have died in the country in the last 4 years combined. Perspective.
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Jan 28, 2018 14:56
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Volkerball posted:Speaking of Kabul, 100 people died there in a VBIED attack with an ambulance yesterday. That's more than the number of Americans who have died in the country in the last 4 years combined. Perspective. Yes, that sure is a thing that was just posted in the thread  Anyway, this interpretation just smacks of exceptionalism - More of their civilians die than ours, so we must be on the right track :p Also, 2000-ish American soldiers in 15 years may not sound like a lot, but compared to the actual gains from the conflict( are there any?) it's 2000-ish too many, even if we did not count the staggering amounts of Afghani dead.
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Jan 28, 2018 15:05
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reposting this relevant lil gem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31JNEVHZxO8&t=84s
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Jan 28, 2018 15:09
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Tias posted:Anyway, this interpretation just smacks of exceptionalism - More of their civilians die than ours, so we must be on the right track :p That's not what he said at all 
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Jan 28, 2018 15:10
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Tias posted:Yes, that sure is a thing that was just posted in the thread Holy poo poo how the hell did you guys manage to get to talking about pulling US security support for Afghanistan from that subject?
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Jan 28, 2018 15:14
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Orange Devil posted:Since when is the Afghan government democratic anyway? I was hiking the AT for 5 months, so apologies in advance if there was a coup in Kabul that I'm not aware of - in what way is Afghanistan not democratic? FWIW the war in Afghanistan is not unwinnable. The Taliban could not survive without constant infusions of cash and weapons. It's unfortunate that we are unwilling to do the needful (i.e. confront the Saudis and Pakistanis, who continued funding the Taliban after the Soviet invasion was repelled).
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Jan 28, 2018 15:28
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svenkatesh posted:FWIW the war in Afghanistan is not unwinnable. The Taliban could not survive without constant infusions of cash and weapons. It's unfortunate that we are unwilling to do the needful (i.e. confront the Saudis and Pakistanis, who continued funding the Taliban after the Soviet invasion was repelled). Trump just cut funding to Pakistan and got a shrug in response, the regional players (more than just Pakistan and the Saudis), ultimately don't want what the US is selling in Afghanistan. Also, it is more than just outside influence and let's be honest the Afghanistan government is notoriously corrupt and that our reconstruction planning was largely a joke. Afghanistan was going to remain stable as long as we kept our troop levels up and overtime it just because economic and politically unpalatable. It was a war of attrition and the Taliban won.
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Jan 28, 2018 16:46
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svenkatesh posted:The Taliban could not survive without constant infusions of cash and weapons. It's unfortunate that we are unwilling to do the needful (i.e. confront the Saudis and Pakistanis, who continued funding the Taliban after the Soviet invasion was repelled). I guess if we escalated tensions and warfare elsewhere, the Taliban would look smaller by comparison.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:15
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9/11 was solid for a short-term boost of american will to fight and stick its dick around the world some more. Still, such events don't do poo poo for long term will. For that you really do need something like the Kurdish situation, where just about every neighbor is looking to exploit you and a few also want to kill you. Or another Soviet Union but modern mass media is gonna make it harder to drum up the kind of scare the US managed in the 50s about filthy commies. It's fascinating but so long as no one attacks the US soil directly, it's fair to call its experiment of world police a failure already since it can't sustain it over the years.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:38
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We suspended a few hundred million dollars in defense aid to Pakistan -- that's peanuts to any nation state. True confrontation would be labeling them state sponsors of terrorism and encouraging international sanctions, to the point where they either capitulate to demands (specifically, stop funding extremists) or collapse. Yes, Saudi is a key member of OPEC and Pakistan has nukes. Regardless, addressing both of these issues would be cheaper than waging a forever war in Afghanistan. Regarding regional powers not liking the US presence in Afghanistan - this isn't a strong point. No sovereign country would want a hyperpower on its doorstep, regardless of how much they abhor their neighbor. It's the same reason China wouldn't want the US or SK to invade NK, and the same reason countries in the Middle East want the US to leave the region, regardless of whether they're allied with Iran or Sunni Arabs. South Asian corruption (whether it's India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, ...) is a fact. Writing off these countries because of corruption is a nonstarter - the only way to address it is to encourage legitimate democratic governments, not the rise of a literal Islamic Emirate.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:45
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svenkatesh posted:We suspended a few hundred million dollars in defense aid to Pakistan -- that's peanuts to any nation state. True confrontation would be labeling them state sponsors of terrorism and encouraging international sanctions, to the point where they either capitulate to demands (specifically, stop funding extremists) or collapse. Yes, Saudi is a key member of OPEC and Pakistan has nukes. Regardless, addressing both of these issues would be cheaper than waging a forever war in Afghanistan. This guys has all the answers, start treating Pakistan like an enemy state and sanction them and name their democratic government a sponsor of terrorism despite them having to endure pervez Musharraf and tens and thousands dead because they paid the price for geostrategic policies America enacted in the first place. Just make Pakistan capitulate and The problem will solve itself. Bing Bong simple. You’re a loving idiot.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:03
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Al-Saqr posted:This guys has all the answers, start treating Pakistan like an enemy state and sanction them and name their democratic government a sponsor of terrorism despite them having to endure pervez Musharraf and tens and thousands dead because they paid the price for geostrategic policies America enacted in the first place. Just make Pakistan capitulate and The problem will solve itself. Bing Bong simple. Nah, you're right. Let's keep funding the people who fund our enemies. That's surely a recipe for success  Also, just LOL if you don't realize that the civilian government of Pakistan is powerless to both their intelligence apparatus and their military. Why do you think that most of the US's meetings post-January 1 tweet have been with Gen. Bajwa, instead of the civilian government? Unlike in America, when people talk about "the Establishment" and "the Deep State" in the third world it means something. I will stop threadsitting now.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:08
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Pakistan doesn't need the USA anyway, since they have China. China is very glad for any US disinvestment from Asia in general and they have plans for Pakistan. See CPEC. You can denounce and sanction Pakistan all you want, they'll still have a great power propping them up regardless.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:09
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Cat Mattress posted:Pakistan doesn't need the USA anyway, since they have China. China is very glad for any US disinvestment from Asia in general and they have plans for Pakistan. See CPEC. You can denounce and sanction Pakistan all you want, they'll still have a great power propping them up regardless. That's kind of an argument for going ahead and admitting we aren't really on good terms. If Pakistan is China's ally, and India is becoming ours, introducing a level of clarity to those relationships isn't all bad. India's obviously the bigger prize anyway, and if Afghanistan is unwinnable even with Pakistan's ostensible help for nearly two decades, pissing them off isn't going to prevent us from winning either. I guess the bigger problem is that China does an even worse job of managing their clients than we do, so Pakistan could always return to being a nuclear proliferator. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 18:14
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https://twitter.com/NYTBen/status/957663481506955266?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E1 Story reminds me of Saddam's Iraq.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:18
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svenkatesh posted:We suspended a few hundred million dollars in defense aid to Pakistan -- that's peanuts to any nation state. True confrontation would be labeling them state sponsors of terrorism and encouraging international sanctions, to the point where they either capitulate to demands (specifically, stop funding extremists) or collapse. Yes, Saudi is a key member of OPEC and Pakistan has nukes. Regardless, addressing both of these issues would be cheaper than waging a forever war in Afghanistan. A lot of sovereign countries want a superpower on their doorstep. Hence the breadth of US and Western European influence (previously the USSR as well) and the disproportionately high number of requests for military aid or assistance to those parties. The catch, of course, being that their own interests in their region must align with that superpower. South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam currently want the US on their doorstep - because the US supports free trade in the region, does not seem interested in invading anybody (not even North Korea yet?), and recognizes the status quo w/r/t territorial integrity and independence. China does not welcome the US in the region because they would like to exert greater control over regional trade and politics, while pursuing territorial disputes with almost all of their neighbors along with a bunch of geographically distant places around the South China Sea. Having a more powerful actor mixed up in your own bid at regional imperialism adds a lot of risk. Pakistan has different ideas about who should be running Afghanistan so they're not going to welcome the US/EU presence in Afghanistan. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 18:19
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