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Alchenar posted:Yeah it's worth bearing in mind that the last 20 years have been a bit of a disaster for the Taliban (compared to the alternative of 'just hand over Bin Laden'). Ideology obviously pushes people towards suboptimal decision making but the goal within reach for the Taliban right now is 'do not directly antagonise the West and they'll go away forever and we get to go back to being in charge of the country'. Their success of the last few years has been to realise that if they don't kill Westerners then they'll get swiftly forgotten by the public and left to their own devices. The Taliban have actually built up their legitimacy quite a bit over the last 10 years by doing a lot of the mundane acts of governing, and unlike the 90s iteration of it they have successfully incorporated non-Pushtuns into their coalition. That's why the Tajik/Ubzek regions in the north fell so fast this time: the taliban actively try to shed their image as a Pushtun supremacist group by among other things appointing other ethnicities to their leadership councils. Not all of their messaging seem to be pure rhetoric.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:13
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Pistol_Pete posted:Well, perhaps so, which is why I was specifically talking about the Taliban attacking planes as they approach the airport. 6,000 people is a lot of mouths to feed: prevent resupply from the air and the Taliban could simply starve them into submission in very short order. That's because they can't just shoot the civilians trying to flee the way you could a Taliban infantry assault
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Aug 16, 2021 15:15
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Pistol_Pete posted:Well, perhaps so, which is why I was specifically talking about the Taliban attacking planes as they approach the airport. 6,000 people is a lot of mouths to feed: prevent resupply from the air and the Taliban could simply starve them into submission in very short order. What in the world would make you think they don't have plenty of food? Or that the Taliban could enforce a no fly zone against the US?
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Aug 16, 2021 15:15
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Thom12255 posted:We know Trump wouldn't have let the dogs come home. Flown home, coach class, like a dog
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Aug 16, 2021 15:19
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If you seriously think the Taliban could just starve out our forces at the airport, look up the Berlin airlift. The US would literally re-invade again before they'd order thousands of troops to surrender.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:22
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The Taliban knows they have a legitimate chance to create a Islamic state backed by Pakistan, China and to a lesser extent Iran and I doubt they are going to throw it away for a few dead western soldiers when the story worldwide is already of how humiliating this is.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:24
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Sinteres posted:If you seriously think the Taliban could just starve out our forces at the airport, look up the Berlin airlift. Even more than that we've been at war in that country for two decades, I'd be shocked if they're not sitting on ridiculous quantities of MREs that are going to be otherwise abandoned.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:25
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Aug 16, 2021 15:25
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the taliban's leadership has a lot of reasons not to interfere with the us during its evacuation but the people scoffing at the prospect are probably overestimating how much control anyone has over individual fighters rn
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Aug 16, 2021 15:37
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There seems to be some kind of confusion as to how precarious the US position is right now. Their last remaining forces have a tiny footprint established in the largest city of the country, and their military support is being organized in countries at least 2 borders away. Their primary mission is to continue to reduce this footprint until it reaches 0, and everybody in the world knows that. The Taliban have a large military force that is invigorated from their victory, has access to a tremendous amount of looted military equipment, and has complete freedom around the city (and around the country and it's borders). It's hard to think of a worse scenario to be in during a war, and it's the kind of scenario you often see before 1 side's unconditional surrender. I don't think there's any way the US could prevent the destruction of the remaining US personnel if the Taliban committed to that course of action. At that point, the US' ability to raze the country is pretty irrelevant because we just spent 20 years learning that Americans achieved virtually 0 return on investment by doing so. I'm confident that the US is providing Afghanistan with huge concessions/gifts to avoid that worst-case scenario, and I'm hopeful that the agreement will last long enough to complete the evacuation, but there are still so many ways the situation could become FUBAR even without the Taliban's decision to go for the killing blow.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:37
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QuoProQuid posted:the taliban's leadership has a lot of reasons not to interfere with the us during its evacuation but the people scoffing at the prospect are probably overestimating how much control anyone has over individual fighters rn That's one of my many fears. The US already had to kill at least 2 armed men who approached the security perimeter at the airport. Not sure who those people were affiliated with, but it does speak to the possibility that someone will do something stupid. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/16/world/taliban-afghanistan-news quote:The U.S. forces on site used helicopters to help clear the runway in the military section of the airport. American troops fatally shot at least two armed men who approached the Americans at the airport security perimeter and brandished their weapons, according to a U.S. military official. And US troops under this kind of stress could do something dumb too. This is so bad.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:41
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QuoProQuid posted:how much control anyone has over individual fighters rn
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Aug 16, 2021 15:42
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Discospawn posted:There seems to be some kind of confusion as to how precarious the US position is right now. Their last remaining forces have a tiny footprint established in the largest city of the country, and their military support is being organized in countries at least 2 borders away. Their primary mission is to continue to reduce this footprint until it reaches 0, and everybody in the world knows that. The Taliban have a large military force that is invigorated from their victory, has access to a tremendous amount of looted military equipment, and has complete freedom around the city (and around the country and it's borders). These are my thoughts on the situation exactly, except expressed better then I could. I'm kinda baffled by the people in this thread looking at the scenes coming out of Kabul airport and going: "It's basically fine, actually, the Taliban would never dare attack."
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Aug 16, 2021 15:46
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If the Taliban literally just ran over each other's corpses like World War Z I guess they could maybe kill the American soldiers at the airport, but short of that, remember the Wagner guys in Syria who got murked? The US is extremely good at killing fighters who make themselves visible, and the rules of engagement would be loose as gently caress if the alternative is thousands of soldiers dying or being captured. The Taliban would instantly be opening itself up to being bombed forever at a minimum too, as opposed to taking over with some degree of international recognition.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:47
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Sinteres posted:If the Taliban literally just ran over each other's corpses like World War Z I guess they could maybe kill the American soldiers at the airport, but short of that, remember the Wagner guys in Syria who got murked? The US is extremely good at killing fighters who make themselves visible, and the rules of engagement would be loose as gently caress if the alternative is thousands of soldiers dying or being captured. The Taliban would instantly be opening itself up to being bombed forever at a minimum too, as opposed to taking over with some degree of international recognition. I agree that the US could beat the Taliban in an 18th-century pitched battle. I don't think that's relevant. Afghanistan doesn't even need to start killing soldiers, they could just gently caress up the runways of the airport to make the situation suddenly super bad. Edit: There will be no West Berlin airdrops because the situation would not be a cold war. It would be a hot one. You can't have massive resupplies by aircraft without runways, and helicopters are extremely vulnerable to the Afghanistan arsenal. Airstrikes are not very effective in large population centers, are dangerous when used to target enemies even remotely close to friendlies, and thelogistics for airstrikes are much harder now than they were when there were US airbases within the country. Discospawn fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 15:53
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Discospawn posted:There seems to be some kind of confusion as to how precarious the US position is right now. Their last remaining forces have a tiny footprint established in the largest city of the country, and their military support is being organized in countries at least 2 borders away. Their primary mission is to continue to reduce this footprint until it reaches 0, and everybody in the world knows that. The Taliban have a large military force that is invigorated from their victory, has access to a tremendous amount of looted military equipment, and has complete freedom around the city (and around the country and it's borders). There's no confusion, this is just some ridiculous fan fiction with no basis in reality. The ability of the Americans to raze the country is drat near the only thing that matters in this analysis. It's why suggesting the Taliban would overrun the airport is so comically naive. The Taliban had succeeded by making strategic decisions that make the US's force over-match irrelevant. Commencing a major force on force engagement is the opposite of that and plays to the one thing the US can still do well.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:53
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Discospawn posted:There seems to be some kind of confusion as to how precarious the US position is right now. Their last remaining forces have a tiny footprint established in the largest city of the country, and their military support is being organized in countries at least 2 borders away. Their primary mission is to continue to reduce this footprint until it reaches 0, and everybody in the world knows that. The Taliban have a large military force that is invigorated from their victory, has access to a tremendous amount of looted military equipment, and has complete freedom around the city (and around the country and it's borders). To what end? Why would they do this? They are on the verge of being recognized by China and other states and their main goal, the removal of the US and control of the country, has been achieved. The US is in the process of leaving, what does the Taliban gain by surrounding and destroying 6000 troops, at a significant cost in Taliban lives? War weariness would evaporate instantly and the US would return set on vengeance, erasing all of the progress the Taliban made. Sure, we would again fail to hold the country, but now this hard won victory for the Taliban is set back another decade and the current leadership gets drone striked. Pistol_Pete posted:These are my thoughts on the situation exactly, except expressed better then I could. I'm kinda baffled by the people in this thread looking at the scenes coming out of Kabul airport and going: "It's basically fine, actually, the Taliban would never dare attack." No one thinks its good but you're postulating the Taliban acting like bad guys in a movie, not dudes who just nearly have finished a war and are planning their next moves. They won, they literally just have to give the US time and they are gone without firing another shot.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:56
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The reason the Taliban are in the position that they are in is because they agreed a peace deal with the US. They are not 'at war' with the US. It's done. I agree with QuidProQuo the main danger here is someone at the lower end of the scale starting a fight by accident, but the Taliban have moved into Kabul very deliberately and I suspect they have given very clear instructions to stay the gently caress away from the airport until the Westerners are gone.
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Aug 16, 2021 15:57
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18 months ago, the US agreed to leave Afghanistan (by May 2021) and the Taliban agreed not to attack Americans but also said they’d keep on fighting the Afghan government. This is playing out faster than expected by Westerners, but as agreed.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:01
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https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1427286526572961799
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Aug 16, 2021 16:10
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Al-Saqr posted:Interesting short thread about what the Taliban victory means for the Jihadist movements, basically the Taliban victory is teaching the Jihadists to work extremely locally, drop the caliphate business and work on having individual Islamic states that are rational actors willing to develop local and regional ties first:- Jihad in one country?
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Aug 16, 2021 16:17
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mlmp08 posted:18 months ago, the US agreed to leave Afghanistan (by May 2021) and the Taliban agreed not to attack Americans but also said they’d keep on fighting the Afghan government. the taliban were pretty openly violating the agreement that the trump adminisitration made with them
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Aug 16, 2021 16:20
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QuoProQuid posted:the taliban were pretty openly violating the agreement that the trump adminisitration made with them In what way and why do you think that matters?
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Aug 16, 2021 16:29
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Discospawn posted:There seems to be some kind of confusion as to how precarious the US position is right now. What is unusual is how visible the precarious situation is, but armed conflict creates thousands situations like this: a very precarious situation where people could absolutely assure destruction of a force. Soldiers are almost always in this situation (and really, so are civillians anywhere). How many thousands of soldiers across tens of thousands of hours could have been destroyed by a mad taliban charge at a gate or a full-scale attack? Taking these opportunities can create risk or costs that are unacceptable and or prevent further action in the future, and so despite the vulnerability of all people, most of the time action isn't taken. It's easy to see a situation like this and to become aware of the sudden vulnerability. Especially since the Taliban's objectives as a group are unknowable as are the motivations of individual actors. One cannot confidently say what will or will not happen, and that is probably more than any other one thing, what feeds the fog of war. But by considering the motivations, we can consider not only what is a likely course of action for the organization (the Taliban) and estimate whether they'd be willing to enforce discipline on subordinate or even non-subordinate actors. It seems to me that "get America out without motivating the American populace to change their mind". Taliban leadership appear quite aware of the value of a disinterested American citizenry. There are examples of people breaking the line or of hidden motivations that subvert expectations at the most unexpected moment. But I agree with those saying it seems unlikely.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:32
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Alchenar posted:In what way and why do you think that matters? following the february 2020 agreement that was meant to reduce fighting, international observers noted "unprecedented violence" by the taliban against afghan forces. this included not just assaults on military personnel but also revenge killings against civilians, targeted assassinations on people close to the government, and attempts to otherwise terrify afghans. it matters because both administrations continued to hold up this agreement and insist everything was fine for political expediency. while the us was obviously free to leave whenever it wanted, the inability to be honest about what was happening put people in harms way, led to panic as the taliban took more and more cities, and let the senior officials ignore pleas to begin evacuations early and/or simplify the bureaucratic procedures involved. everything happening at their airport is an outrageous failure of planning and coordination when this should have been foreseen months ago QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 16:53
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Terminal autist posted:So would you say its a cultural or genetical deficiency that results in the average person from the middle east yearning for authoritarianism? I had a very smart history professor go over basically thousands of years of history about the Middle East (his focus was Iraq). He ended it with this theory. “Must be the drat heat and something in the water”. It has always been rough in that region.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:54
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QuoProQuid posted:following the february 2020 agreement that was meant to reduce fighting, international observers noted "unprecedented violence" by the taliban against afghan forces. this included not just assaults on military personnel but also revenge killings against civilians, targeted assassinations on people close to the government, and attempts to otherwise terrify afghans. mlmp08 posted:18 months ago, the US agreed to leave Afghanistan (by May 2021) and the Taliban agreed not to attack Americans but also said they’d keep on fighting the Afghan government. That doesn't sound like violating the agreement you quoted.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:00
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 A very visual representation of regime change in 24 hours.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:09
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Bravely fighting fleeing civilians https://twitter.com/jseldin/status/1427301723622854658
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Aug 16, 2021 17:11
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Option 1: Watch your enemy retreat to their country 10,000 miles away while you take total control of your own country Option 2: Sacrifice 10,000+ soldiers immediately to kill some Americans and then have your force wiped out over the next couple of years TalibanHoveringOver2RedButtons.meme
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Aug 16, 2021 17:28
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Jarmak posted:That doesn't sound like violating the agreement you quoted. You can find the 4 page agreement here: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf. It always identifies the 2 parties involved as: -"the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban" -"the United States and its allies" The then-government of Afghanistan would be considered a US Ally, so Taliban continuing to attack/kill Afghan citizens would be a violation of the agreement. Pretty much all of the points in the agreement were not followed as laid out in the document (the prisoner exchange was a clusterfuck, the peace talks went nowhere, the withdrawal timeline was debated about being changed, etc.). The Taliban made a command decision not to target Americans because the immediacy of the US withdrawal seemed to guarantee they would be in a position of much greater leverage in the future. That seems to have become the case with the current situation.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:33
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Good job, they managed to prevent them from winning on 9/11, I guess.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:47
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Discospawn posted:You quoted 1 poster's unsourced claim to counter another poster's sourced claim. That doesn't seem very engaged. I quoted one poster who said the Taliban was abiding by an agreement to not attack US forces directly and instead focused on Afghan Government forces, and another posted who quoted that poster and said they were absolutely wrong and that the Taliban had been attacking Afghan Government forces. If one poster says a wall is red and the other exclaims "no you idiot it's red!" I can comment on the direct and shockingly obvious failure of that logic without having to sit down and discuss whether it would be more proper to call it fuchsia.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:50
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i apologize for any confusion. i shouldn’t phone post
QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 18:04
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Grim Up North posted:Good job, they managed to prevent them from winning on 9/11, I guess. It's poo poo like this that makes you realize why Biden went forward with this full steam, even if it is a political black eye right now. Why the gently caress would you listen to the US military? They are given so much money every year and are still woefully underprepared.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:07
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Discospawn posted:You quoted 1 poster's unsourced claim to counter another poster's sourced claim. That doesn't seem very engaged. No. Afghanistan is not an ally of the US. MNNA status is not the same as treaty alliance status. Read the agreement: quote:3. After the announcement of guarantees for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and timeline in the presence of international witnesses, and guarantees and the announcement in the presence of international witnesses that Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will start intra-Afghan negotiations with Afghan sides on March 10, 2020, which corresponds to Rajab 15, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 20, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar. It explicitly states that the Taliban will not attack US and US allies. It states that the Taliban will begin to discuss a ceasefire with the Afghan government. There is zero deadline to actually establish an intra-Afghan ceasefire.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:11
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well it looks like the Taliban arent gonna crack down on the Shiites for now and are showcasing their tolerance:- https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1427318370534309892?s=20
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Aug 16, 2021 18:43
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The anecdote was surely planted by the administration, but when this poo poo was kicking off a few days back, there was that behind-the-scenes article where Pentagon officials couldn't respond when Biden asked at what point would the Afghan military be ready for a US pullout. It was an occupation without a plan.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:48
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Al-Saqr posted:well it looks like the Taliban arent gonna crack down on the Shiites for now and are showcasing their tolerance:-
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Aug 16, 2021 18:50
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Lol the suggestion that 6k American soldiers would unconditionally surrender to the Taliban or that the USA could not resupply an airport with thousands of fully equipped soldiers inside.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:53
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