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OctaMurk posted:These armoured vehicles are MRAPs, which are basically big armored trucks. We've seen what the Taliban can do with trucks, this is perhaps even worse than if they were tanks!
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Aug 19, 2021 17:16
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I wonder what kind of aircraft we're talking about? Iran was able to keep the Shah's F14s flying, but it ended up having to use the F14s in a much different way than anticipated and finangling ways of getting parts and support (like cutting deals with Reagan and engaging in industrial espionage). Maybe all this US stuff will end up bogging them down. Welcome to the world of weapons designed for maximum profit generation!
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Aug 19, 2021 17:17
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I'm sure the taliban can come up with creative uses for Humvees that are close to their expiration date:- https://twitter.com/HKaaman/status/1242139334473547777?s=20
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Aug 19, 2021 17:24
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Yeah not after the new Rambo gets their asses. https://twitter.com/VinceMancini/status/1428199524674072580/photo/1
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Aug 19, 2021 17:31
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Eric Cantonese posted:Maybe all this US stuff will end up bogging them down. Welcome to the world of weapons designed for maximum profit generation! Good news is now we can sell them maintenance contracts! 
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Aug 19, 2021 18:19
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Al-Saqr posted:holy poo poo america lost TWO THOUSAND armoured Vehicles to the taliban:-
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Aug 19, 2021 18:28
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US leaving behind booby-trapped aircraft to kill any Afghan pilots who try to take off in one. I don't mean they installed any booby traps, I mean the planes they left were F-35s
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Aug 19, 2021 18:33
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VitalSigns posted:Hm this might not be a net positive for the Taliban depending on which aircraft they were. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/planes-guns-night-vision-goggles-talibans-new-us-made-war-chest-2021-08-19/ The actual article is a lot more useful than the Twitter headline. The vehicles are mostly Humvees and the aircraft are mostly a mix of transport helicopters and small surveillance drones. Also given that a bunch of ANA aircraft showed up in Azerbaijan the other day when their pilots defected, I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate numbers end up not amounting to much.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:36
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https://twitter.com/EliLake/status/1428362033846620166 I know he's trying to be a clever troll but... why do we still have troops in Germany and Okinawa, anyway?
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Aug 19, 2021 18:44
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DaveWoo posted:https://twitter.com/EliLake/status/1428362033846620166 They are training bases and allow troops to experience working with foreign militaries. They also act as deployment depots and allow troops to rapidly respond around the world. For example the Marines in Kabul are based out of our similar base in Bahrain. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 18:47
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DaveWoo posted:https://twitter.com/EliLake/status/1428362033846620166 Because you are an empire, and these are your client states. The Japanese citizens of Okinawa in particular definitely don't want you there, but neither Washington nor Tokyo ultimately care much about popular opinion over (American) 'strategic considerations'. The issue does seem to come up in every local election, but no matter who is elected, the removal of American troops is one of those promises that you just know has a zero percent chance of being kept by anyone with enough clout to get into office in the first place.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:57
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Gimmick Account posted:Because you are an empire, and these are your client states. The Japanese citizens of Okinawa in particular definitely don't want you there, but neither Washington nor Tokyo ultimately care much about popular opinion over (American) 'strategic considerations'. The issue does seem to come up in every local election, but no matter who is elected, the removal of American troops is one of those promises that you just know has a zero percent chance of being kept by anyone with enough clout to get into office in the first place. Tokyo doesn't want them there because of American strategic considerations, Tokyo wants them there because they have a much bigger neighbor to their west who loving hates them. Trump obviously advanced a crude version of it, but American allies hosting our troops so they don't have to provide for their own defense is generally a pretty good deal for them.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:07
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Japan and Germany are our partners and allies, not client states. They're hosting troops because it benefits them as much as it benefits us.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:21
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DaveWoo posted:https://twitter.com/EliLake/status/1428362033846620166 They're spearhead positions to enable force projection against The 2nd World Nations, as they were all through the Cold War.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:28
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Sanguinia posted:They're spearhead positions to enable force projection against The 2nd World Nations, as they were all through the Cold War. Considering how bellicose, aggressive, and destabilizing Putin and Xi have become over the last decade, I can say I'm glad we still have them. Perhaps, a little down the line, our withdrawl from Afghanistan will truly allow us to refocus on building a strong coalition to push back on that sort of aggression (+ genocide, in the CCP's case).
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Aug 19, 2021 19:31
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i do like that its gonna cause more insane rage in the GOP and make them chase another issue in the stupidist ways possible. VICE folks embedded with the child-murdering, CIA-trained-and-led puppet government death squads who they painted in a positive light, so take whatever they say with a barrel of salt. Note their tone and use of music to tell you how you should feel. Truth is the old government never had any real interest or penetration in rural areas, whereas Taliban jurisprudence is aligned with local culture, so while you're free to criticize their approach through the lens of the ideal of a justice system in a western liberal democracy (even if Afghans largely lack the material conditions to actually implement such a thing), you have to consider that as far as the bulk of Afghanistan is concerned the Taliban isn't so much imposing as it is presenting a much less corrupt and much more culturally-accepted framework for governance, hence their widespread support. For those folk it's carrying on as they were but with better prospects, rather than being actively denied anything. It's telling enough enough that the main obstacle for women's education in Taliban-controlled areas wasn't their gender segregation requirements, but families keeping their girls home for fear of them dying to the school getting airstriked. Should also be noted that, probably due to their emphasis over the past decade in establishing themselves as a legitimate and inclusive government, current Taliban are demonstrably already much more moderate than their incarnation from the early aughts.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:33
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Kaal posted:They are training bases and allow troops to experience working with foreign militaries. They also act as deployment depots and allow troops to rapidly respond around the world. For example the Marines in Kabul are based out of our similar base in Bahrain. Yes, but the bases in Europe are not just logistic hubs. Europe's security is organized around the US and NATO. Without US capabilities, Europe would have to organize its own defense. Shitton of military build up, weapons development and political reorganization. No one in power in Europe wants to touch that poo poo with a ten miles pole. Al-Saqr posted:holy poo poo america lost TWO THOUSAND armoured Vehicles to the taliban:- Really looking forward to those war postmortems. Some really interesting stuff must have went down when a numerically superior army with a working airforce and thousands of armored vehicles got overrun by a lightly armed militia in like two week, on their own home turf.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:33
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GABA ghoul posted:Really looking forward to those war postmortems. Some really interesting stuff must have went down when a numerically superior army with a working airforce and thousands of armored vehicles got overrun by a lightly armed militia in like two week, on their own home turf. I suspect we're going to find out a lot of local officials made deals months ago and weren't just casually waiting around for us to decide to leave to see what would happen next after Trump announced that we'd be withdrawing.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:43
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How are u posted:Considering how bellicose, aggressive, and destabilizing Putin and Xi have become over the last decade, I can say I'm glad we still have them. Perhaps, a little down the line, our withdrawl from Afghanistan will truly allow us to refocus on building a strong coalition to push back on that sort of aggression (+ genocide, in the CCP's case). At the end of the day one's feelings about the US's global military infrastructure, which exists to continue to enable its superpower status and the global hegemony that comes with it, is going to come down to ones feelings about whether a multi-polar diplomatic order built around regional hegemons is a superior status quo, or worse than what we currently have. There are certainly convincing arguments for both perspectives. Multi-polar Regional Hegemony did not work out great in the 1800-1900s in either its Great Powers of Europe configuration or its First World vs Second World configuration. On the other hand Monopolar Global Hegemony has not worked out great in the late 1900s-2000s, the US's custodianship of the world has led to a lot of misery and horror and exploitation, in many cases little better than when the previous closest thing there was to a Monopolar Global Hegemon, Great Britain, had the reigns. On the third hand none of the possible new Multi-Polar futures that seem likely in the coming Late 2000s-2100s look likely to be much better, whether the great powers in question are resurgent Europeon states, Russia, India, China or even weird dark horses to the game like, I dunno, Brazil or something, especially since the US isn't going away any time soon even if its relegated to a "first among competitors," status rather than its current position as clear Top Dog. All I can say for sure is that Afganistan and our spectacular failure there is all the proof one really needs that whether we do return to a Multi-polar world or maintain a Mono-polar world in the coming century, the US can't keep conducting business like it has been since the Soviet Union fell, because its never worked great and its working worse with every passing year.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:51
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How are u posted:Japan and Germany are our partners and allies, not client states. They're hosting troops because it benefits them as much as it benefits us. Benefits our military contractors maybe
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Aug 19, 2021 20:07
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I was thinking about what could actually be done for Afghanistan to become a democratic nation and have it stick, and I came up with the theory that the biggest roadblock to that happening is because the quality of life for Afghanistan's citizens is too low. Do people think that if for some reason the US magically decided to invest billions/trillions in developing infrastructure/education/etc for Afghanistan and making that all sustainable (not that they'd do this in a million years ofc) it might help make the country more susceptible to democracy? Which is the non-democratic nation which currently has the highest average quality of life for its citizens?
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Aug 19, 2021 20:10
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Izzhov posted:Which is the non-democratic nation which currently has the highest average quality of life for its citizens? China’s gotta be up there. E: Apparently I’m wrong according to this list https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp I do think investing in Afghanistan can lead to better quality of life, as long as corruption is taken care of first. nelson fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 20:30
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Gimmick Account posted:Because you are an empire, and these are your client states. The Japanese citizens of Okinawa in particular definitely don't want you there, but neither Washington nor Tokyo ultimately care much about popular opinion over (American) 'strategic considerations'. The issue does seem to come up in every local election, but no matter who is elected, the removal of American troops is one of those promises that you just know has a zero percent chance of being kept by anyone with enough clout to get into office in the first place. its really more of a hegemony
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Aug 19, 2021 20:31
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Sinteres posted:I suspect we're going to find out a lot of local officials made deals months ago and weren't just casually waiting around for us to decide to leave to see what would happen next after Trump announced that we'd be withdrawing. It would be pretty incredible if the Afghan military is actually relatively competent and simply elected not to fight, and will now be the army of the Taliban going forward, directly trained and armed by America. I was assuming it was another situation like the rise of ISIS, where Iraqi forces had ISIS outnumbered 10:1 but couldn't mount an effective resistance.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:59
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They shouldn't need an army. Who's going to invade them, the US again?
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Aug 19, 2021 21:00
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If nothing else, they need to worry about putting down insurgencies themselves, both remnants of the last regime/warlords and also ISIS, especially if the Taliban really has moderated in meaningful ways that leave them vulnerable to being outflanked by extremists.
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Aug 19, 2021 21:05
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Izzhov posted:I was thinking about what could actually be done for Afghanistan to become a democratic nation and have it stick, and I came up with the theory that the biggest roadblock to that happening is because the quality of life for Afghanistan's citizens is too low. Do people think that if for some reason the US magically decided to invest billions/trillions in developing infrastructure/education/etc for Afghanistan and making that all sustainable (not that they'd do this in a million years ofc) it might help make the country more susceptible to democracy? What was the quality of life in America like when it became a democracy? Democracy is not about quality of life or education or human rights or any of that stuff (well it is a little, but as a second order effect of creating a Middle Class). Democracy is essentially a pact between power groups in a country that rather than play politics as a winner-takes-all game where the victors get absolute power and the losers all get executed/gulaged, they make it a game where everyone gets a bit of what they want, opposition is allowed, and governments accept that there are limits to the extent they can push against the interests of minority groups. e: or to answer your question another way: there is no amount of investment in public services that will convince someone to support you over the Taliban fighter waving a gun in their face. Nor was there any amount of investment in infrastructure development that was going to convince the Taliban to stop having a 'winner takes all' attitude towards who should be in charge of the country. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 21:09
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Alchenar posted:What was the quality of life in America like when it became a democracy? Alchenar posted:Democracy is not about quality of life or education or human rights or any of that stuff (well it is a little, but as a second order effect of creating a Middle Class). Democracy is essentially a pact between power groups in a country that rather than play politics as a winner-takes-all game where the victors get absolute power and the losers all get executed/gulaged, they make it a game where everyone gets a bit of what they want, opposition is allowed, and governments accept that there are limits to the extent they can push against the interests of minority groups.
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Aug 19, 2021 21:14
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Lassitude posted:It would be pretty incredible if the Afghan military is actually relatively competent and simply elected not to fight, and will now be the army of the Taliban going forward, directly trained and armed by America. I was assuming it was another situation like the rise of ISIS, where Iraqi forces had ISIS outnumbered 10:1 but couldn't mount an effective resistance. I know there was that one article about one of the major reasons we failed was because we just trained teams, we didn't build real, complete organizations. I feel like creating military organizations is something the U.S. military should have some knowledge of but lets assume that its a "I just shoot the guns, I don't build them" type of thing, did anyone think of bringing any kind of management and organizational consulting firms on board to help fix the problem? The Big Four, perhaps? -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Aug 20, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 22:19
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-Blackadder- posted:Why couldn't they? For an organization who's entire job is to train and field troops, the U.S. military seems to be not very good at the actual training part when they aren't on some base in a backwater flyover state. One thing to note about these numbers is that militaries that have to garrison everything often do not actually have the capability to bring numbers to bear. For example, in 1975 ARVN outnumbered the NVA, but since ARVN had to cover most of the country, in just about any given operation, the NVA would outnumber them significantly. Much like Ghani, Thieu refused to retreat into consolidated positions to try to claw back some advantage from the large force. Ghani having to spread his force out into small garrisons all over the place ended up making them quite vulnerable when the Taliban wanted to spool up an offensive.
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Aug 19, 2021 22:25
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The US did a good job training Iraqi commandos and ANA commandos to be combat effective. The fact is we actually do have units whose main job is to train foreign forces, the Special Forces, and they do a good job of it. The problem is when you send the regular Army to train their regular army -- our infantrymen don't know how to do that because its not their job. And even the ones who are good teachers, are used to fighting with unparalleled logistics and air support so they probably aren't giving the best advice. On top of all that, in Iraq and Afghanistan we allowed the worst people -- corrupt or incompetent -- to become the officers, who then propagated a corrupt promotion structure based on bribery and familial connections.
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Aug 19, 2021 22:28
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OctaMurk posted:On top of all that, in Iraq and Afghanistan we allowed the worst people -- corrupt or incompetent -- to become the officers, who then propagated a corrupt promotion structure based on bribery and familial connections. This is one of those things that you really can't fix while you're expecting the army to actually do anything. Expectations in Afghanistan were to hand off things really quickly, which means you have to use whoever's there to be an officer without much vetting, because hey, we need military units right away. 'I would simply not hire the corrupt/incompetent officers' is really easy to say when you don't have a directive to create an ANA with six figure manpower and have it ready to fight in a matter of a year.
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Aug 19, 2021 22:34
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I mean with all that equipment the Taliban will surely ask us for maintenance of said equipment Which we will happily oblige and deduct it from the stolen 10 billion afghani reserves
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Aug 19, 2021 22:43
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Panzeh posted:'I would simply not hire the corrupt/incompetent officers' is really easy to say when you don't have a directive to create an ANA with six figure manpower and have it ready to fight in a matter of a year. That's the thing. In no actual way was the US seriously attempting to do anything that was for the good of Afghanistan. It was always a checkbox for the goals of the US force with no accountability or defined end date or victory condition. The timetables weren't realistic and the resources and planning weren't serious. Those of us who work in corporate environments see this all the time. "Oh sure we believe in diversity and are doing what it takes to make sure our workforce reflects our values". Oh cool what concrete stuff have you done? "We're still analyzing and planning get back to us in a bit. But it's very important!". 1 year later. "Still working on it but we want to repeat our commitment!" But with more pedo protection and funneling billions into bottomless holes of contracts.
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Aug 19, 2021 23:00
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Teaching a country the magic of combined arms stops when you realize that we spend a trillion dollars to make it work and they cant
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Aug 19, 2021 23:11
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That's what's coming out in the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report made by the US government. They know there are eight obvious contradictions in US goals quote:1] Root out corruption, but also to jump-start the economy by injecting billions of dollars into it; https://www.npr.org/2021/08/17/1028106402/8-paradoxes-that-sum-up-americas-20-year-mission-in-afghanistan And all of them come from the same place. We want to live up to our own propaganda about helping Afghans, but no one actually wants to make the sacrifices necessary to do so. And since Generals are also politicians, no one had the guts to say that doing both A and B at the same time are impossible.
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Aug 19, 2021 23:19
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Jaxyon posted:That's the thing. In no actual way was the US seriously attempting to do anything that was for the good of Afghanistan. It was always a checkbox for the goals of the US force with no accountability or defined end date or victory condition. The timetables weren't realistic and the resources and planning weren't serious. Also, their stated goal is "to spread democracy" or whatever, but what they mean is "spread democracy, and gain an ally who is favourable to our interests." And if "democratic" and "favourable to our interests" ever conflict, democracy can gently caress straight off!
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Aug 19, 2021 23:36
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GABA ghoul posted:Really looking forward to those war postmortems. Some really interesting stuff must have went down when a numerically superior army with a working airforce and thousands of armored vehicles got overrun by a lightly armed militia in like two week, on their own home turf. Honestly, I doubt it's going to be all that interesting a story. The ANA has long had morale problems resulting in troops fighting poorly or deserting quickly, and that was with the US military backing them up. It doesn't matter how numerically superior a force is on paper if they don't have the morale or discipline to stand and fight. And now that the US isn't guaranteeing the survival of our puppet government there, probably a lot of people are very interested in currying favor with the future government of Afghanistan. Izzhov posted:I was thinking about what could actually be done for Afghanistan to become a democratic nation and have it stick, and I came up with the theory that the biggest roadblock to that happening is because the quality of life for Afghanistan's citizens is too low. Do people think that if for some reason the US magically decided to invest billions/trillions in developing infrastructure/education/etc for Afghanistan and making that all sustainable (not that they'd do this in a million years ofc) it might help make the country more susceptible to democracy? For Afghanistan to become a democratic nation, the people themselves would have to be dissatisfied with their traditional leadership structures and agitating for the wholesale reform of society. Or at the very least, the local elites would all have to be seriously committed to it even at the risk of diminishing their own power. It's not something that can be imposed from the top down by foreign invaders. As long as both the powerful elites and the population at large are largely fine with the traditional tribal structures, there's not going to be a strong will to hold to the institutions of democracy.
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Aug 19, 2021 23:55
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Sinteres posted:Yeah not after the new Rambo gets their asses. So Smart Me. Conspiratiorist posted:VICE folks embedded with the child-murdering, CIA-trained-and-led puppet government death squads who they painted in a positive light, so take whatever they say with a barrel of salt. Note their tone and use of music to tell you how you should feel. I can understand that. but i tend to not trust right wing theocrats in general whether they are american evangelical dipshits or Taliban types. Vice has their issues but i trust their stuff over the taliban. Hopefully they do moderate out even more just so they can run the cities but i will wait and see.
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Aug 20, 2021 00:21
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https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1428469075353784326 if this is indeed the case, not only is this utterly unconscionable, it's also a hilariously on-the-nose summation of everything america stands for. we've clearly got a new writer for this season 
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Aug 20, 2021 00:33
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