Fall of Afghanistan - What does shipping cost if I'm a Blackwater Prime subscriber?

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Staluigi: Jun 22, 2021

while i think it's mostly pointless to recognize that afghanistan could have been "nation built" successfully (because i don't want to encourage subsequent attempts that inevitably revolve around capital flow and force projection) i will agree it could have been accomplished

but the invasion was run by people like rumsfeld. the foundations were hosed from the beginning and the human cost was going to be insane anyway

# ? Aug 18, 2021 00:19

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 08:15

BRAKE FOR MOOSE: Jun 6, 2001

Mooseontheloose posted:

So here is my mostly unpopular opinion. I think you could of had a better outcome in Afghanistan IF the United States hadn't done the whole go it alone shtick. For as much grief as we should give HW Bush, he did understand international relations better than anyone since I think. Get Russia involved, get the UN involved, have it be some joint peace keeping mission. Don't let it be YEE HAW COWBOY AMERICANS and a smattering of Europe to come in and do the work.

But sadly, it was W and his cold warriors still living in the cold war and we get the coalition of the willing, trying to bypass the international system. The system they also sought withdrawal from and saw it as their opportunity to tell the world to screw off. John Bolton is the poster child of this type of diplomacy and we see its disastrous results to this day. They outcome wouldn't of been some LIBERAL WESTERN DEMOCRACY but at least some stable no-haven for AQ.

Afghanistan was never going to be a joint peacekeeping mission because we were not there for humanitarian reasons, we were there to create a favorable geopolitical outcome for the United States, which is not something Russia and China would be signing on to. This is how it worked for every post-Cold War conflict the US has sent troops into except for Bosnia. Like, yeah, we could have had a better outcome if our strategic objectives and approach towards swinging our dicks around in the world were completely different from what they are.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 00:20

MonsterEnvy: Feb 4, 2012; Shocked I tell you

On reasons the Taliban may be trying to be nicer now. Thinking from their perspective I doubt they enjoyed the 20 years of war very much, they were probably hit harder overall then the US. A lot of the bigger bastards in the group were also wiped out early on. So the group currently may just want to take it easy and not worry about a war which could restart more easily if they start abusing the population.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 00:29

Proud Christian Mom: Dec 20, 2006; READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

Its worth noting that Iran was discretely helping with intel and rounding up AQ dudes fleeing westward until the 'axis of evil' speech which basically poisoned the well with them. Again.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 00:29

Dr Kool-AIDS: Mar 26, 2004

MonsterEnvy posted:

On reasons the Taliban may be trying to be nicer now. Thinking from their perspective I doubt they enjoyed the 20 years of war very much, they were probably hit harder overall then the US. A lot of the bigger bastards in the group were also wiped out early on. So the group currently may just want to take it easy and not worry about a war which could restart more easily if they start abusing the population.

No probably about it, the war was obviously brutal for the Taliban, and the fastest way for them to ensure that the US can't just start bombing again at will is to gain international recognition by at least initially playing nice with the world. They don't have the deterrence capabilities or Chinese protection that North Korea does, so being hermits just makes them vulnerable.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 00:33

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

Staluigi posted:

while i think it's mostly pointless to recognize that afghanistan could have been "nation built" successfully (because i don't want to encourage subsequent attempts that inevitably revolve around capital flow and force projection) i will agree it could have been accomplished

but the invasion was run by people like rumsfeld. the foundations were hosed from the beginning and the human cost was going to be insane anyway

yeah and not that I would say that the us hugely learned from the blunders of the 2000s, but when you go back and read about how us development efforts were undertaken by the constantly rotating series of local american military commanders it's staggering just how much waste there was and, even moreso, how utterly the system as it existed then had literally zero chance of succeeding at even minor undertakings.

the tldr of the 2000s is a given unit would get assigned to an area, they would start from scratch at talking/working with the locals and building relations from the ground up. They'd identify some of the local issues, find out they couldn't do much about most of it, but maybe find one or two civic projects to dump resources into as an ~investment into the future~. Sounds alright, right?

Well the projects would never finish and 12-18 months later the american unit would rotate out to be replaced by a new unit who would start from the beginning once again. What about the projects the first unit had started? They'd get abandoned because the next unit commander wanted to be have on their service record that they had started and finished xyz project during their tour. Ironically, incredibly few of these projects were ever actually completed. In the off chance that something was actually accomplished and people did feel more favorably towards US or regime forces, it was just a matter of time before ana/anp/ussof or an american drone or some other armed group would come through and brutalize some civilians and undo any tentative progress. And this poo poo went on continuously unabated for over a decade. Even once that cycle was formally identified, it still persisted. The same thing was happening in Iraq.

One of the major case studies for this was a single water purification plant in Iraq that american forces spent over a decade promising to build at a cost of millions of dollars a year yet only a few afternoons of work were ever done on it over an entire decade.

It's stunning just how wildly ineffectual these efforts were. I'm sure in some hypothetical world nation building could've been done and been maybe successful, but the way the US was doing things was not going to be it.

Proud Christian Mom posted:

Its worth noting that Iran was discretely helping with intel and rounding up AQ dudes fleeing westward until the 'axis of evil' speech which basically poisoned the well with them. Again.

The Iranians were basically the big bridge between american total ignorance of the languages and region so of course we just had to alienate them despite iran being genuinely quite genuinely sympathetic to the US at the time.

Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Aug 18, 2021

# ? Aug 18, 2021 00:53

Zotix: Aug 14, 2011

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1427735360633716741

# ? Aug 18, 2021 02:42

MH Knights: Aug 4, 2007

-Blackadder- posted:

One topic it would be interesting to hear more about is not just the specific strategic reasons for why we failed, which have been covered to some degree (too focused on Iraq and failed to deliver the killing blow when we had them on the ropes, failed to cut off their resupply from Pakistan, failed to build real organizations within the Afghan government, etc) but also why those things blindsided a Post-Vietnam U.S. Military and Department of Defense, and the implications of that for future conflict?

Vietnam was it. It was supposed to be the war that we learned all of this from. The U.S. military was supposed to have come out of Vietnam completely changed in how they were going to do things going forward. No more not understanding the enemy, no more not understanding the kind of war we were fighting, no more not understanding insurgencies. The U.S. War Machine; every organization that we employ for foreign conflict was supposed have basically emerged from Vietnam like it was going from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. Military science became refined to a razors edge. Was that all just talk? I was under the impression we did get major shifts in those organizations?

Clearly that didn't happen to the degree anyone expected it to. And now the question becomes why? What do the people we have running our military and DOD have to say? Are these guys sitting in the hotseat somewhere explaining why the entirety of the U.S. military industrial complex, that we dump money into like it's a galactic slot machine, couldn't beat a mountain militia that was so basically equipped it didn't even have air support? Even though they had 20 years to do it?? I know that there were some Generals and voices from Defense who were saying we should stay, but I can't possibly imagine what non-laughable argument they could have made, if you couldn't do it in 20 years, how the heck do you expect to do it? How do you even justify your existence as an entity of war, especially one that receives the amount of money it does, with these kinds of results? What happens when we have to fight a war that we can't just get bored with and walk away from? Think of all the time and money we've spent on refining our military science. Are they doing any kind of post-mortem on this conflict; lessons that can be applied to the future, or is it literally just, "welp, guess the U.S. military just can't beat insurgencies, oh well!"

So what's the actual U.S. Military and DOD's post-mortem on this conflict? What are their excuses for their lack of success given a 20 year time span and a basically equipped enemy? What, if any, teachable moments are they taking away from this that they apparently didn't learn from Vietnam after all? And what are the implications for the future of American military conflict?

Here is the latest report from SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) that lays out a lot of the problems.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 02:46

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Dapper_Swindler posted:

I am curious what the military says about the vietnam fuckup? what did the lessons say?

George C. Herring was the historian who literally wrote the book West Point (and a bunch of other colleges) used, and I think still use, and he was the visiting professor when I was there. You can get a sample of his take on things here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlh3b2xX_A8

The lecture proper starts around the 8:00 mark but the stuff before that is still interesting. I'd mostly sum it up as the "uncontroversial take on the war if you're not a dickhead."

This is in 2009 and while he doesn't make the lecture *about* the Global War on Terror, he pretty clearly looks at it with a big :thunk:

A big emphasis of his is that if you just look at it from an American point of view of "why did we lose?" you'll never figure it out, because that myopia is itself part of why we lost.

His biggest thing is probably the primacy of local circumstances, and how they can render vast power essentially pointless in the long run. Of course he harps on how ignorant we were of said circumstances, the experience of the French trying to do the same basic thing and eating poo poo over and over, and so on all being contributors.

"The circumstances of the war, then, posed a dilemma I think we never really understood, much less resolved"

sean10mm fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Aug 18, 2021

# ? Aug 18, 2021 02:49

BRAKE FOR MOOSE: Jun 6, 2001

So effectively, every officer has some basic understanding of how stupid and ill-advised our adventures are before we ever dive in, but the system encourages everyone to just ignore that knowledge and just go l m a o gently caress it YOLO

neat

# ? Aug 18, 2021 02:57

AVeryLargeRadish: Aug 19, 2011; I LITERALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO NOT BE A WEIRD SEXUAL CREEP ABOUT PREPUBESCENT ANIME GIRLS, READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE!!!

trucutru posted:

The only thing I remember about Tora Bora was the Taliban's secret underground base

Oh, hey, I think I had that micromachine playset as a kid! :haw:

# ? Aug 18, 2021 02:57

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:

So effectively, every officer has some basic understanding of how stupid and ill-advised our adventures are before we ever dive in, but the system encourages everyone to just ignore that knowledge and just go l m a o gently caress it YOLO

neat

Basically the higher the rank the more the system favors backstabbing political shitfucks over professional competence.

Selling out your troops for a promotion is a longstanding tradition in the higher ranks.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 03:02

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

Zotix posted:

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1427735360633716741

10,000 soldiers huh? I doubt it.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 03:10

Dapper_Swindler: Feb 14, 2012; Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1427743755453542409 Seems like Biden kinda called it though he messed up how fast it would be.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 03:15

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

SourKraut posted:

Personally, I get the point that he is making and I don't disagree with the underlying issues most of the time, but I also think he needs to tone down the inhumane comparative language being used at times to describe individuals who may or may not have happily involved themselves in the occupation, especially when I constantly see and hear the term "collaborator" being used to describe pretty much anyone who ever had any involvement with non-Afghan forces (that janitor cleaning up American piss and poo poo in the bathroom? Collaborator!), as well as terms like "masters", etc., it's seemingly making a not-so-subtle reference to slavery, etc.

There are millions of Afghans who remember life under the 1996-2001 Taliban well enough, and I would assume a not-insignificant amount do not wish to experience any life under the Taliban again, regardless of what they're currently saying or doing. So to simply assume that everyone rushing the airport and trying to get on flights out, is a collaborator/traitor, etc., seems wrong, and to then use disparaging language on said individuals, just seems to serve no purpose than to also act as a slight troll on other posters in order to foster anger/resentment and push the argument further

I'm not exactly sure if you're referring to me or if you were trying to draw a distinction for other people who are working with a 1-bit color palette but I didn't say "anyone who ever had any involvement", I said the opposite:

VitalSigns posted:

depending on what you did for the Americans