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Regalingualius posted:Why were we there, again?
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Aug 16, 2021 03:17
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The Afghan Army is seriously f tier.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:19
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Regalingualius posted:Why were we there, again? To keep the Taliban's declaration of surrender and offers of assistance in capturing Osama quiet, thereby saving the Iraq War, then mineral rights, then sunk cost fallacy. Oh, and there was Tora Bora, where Junior got the photo op he wanted after 9/11 and then was able to tie it into his broader political goals. forgot embezzlement and make work for mercenaries Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 03:24
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Also, to have a staging ground for a potential war against Iran, like the horrible neocons in the Bush admin really wanted.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:26
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Presto posted:Well first it was to get bin Laden, then it was to remove the Taliban, THEN it was to spread democracy. Because real life works like Civiization, where you just click the 'democracy' button, and Bob's your uncle. we were hoping to get to a higher tech levels to unlock the Boeing all terrain armored transports and the scout walkers. but then W blew all the credits on the Iraq expansion map and that was that. then obama tried investing in like probe droids and poo poo.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:27
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Dapper_Swindler posted:we were hoping to get to a higher tech levels to unlock the Boeing all terrain armored transports and the scout walkers. but then W blew all the credits on the Iraq expansion map and that was that. then obama tried investing in like probe droids and poo poo.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:31
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Discospawn posted:It turns out Afghanistan wasn't a rival Civilization to be conquered, but rather a collection of those weird, neutral NPC minor-Civilizations that they added in CIV V that turned me off of the series. idk. i get more of total war/age of empires/empire at war vibe because thats all i played. if we had just typed in Simonsays in enough times. we would have won with an army of laser ewoks.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:46
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It really does goes to show that 20 years after we have invaded and got roundly humiliated, there’s still not a very good understanding of afghanistan and why we were there in general. The military really is just one giant big dumb DMV that had the vaguest notion of whatever it’s mission over there was and we just kept things going out of sheer inertia and apathy. That apathy was also extended to the public - there were really no mass protests or outrage over it like Iraq A high school friend of mine sadly committed suicide over his tour there, and the last conversation I had with him was about cynicalness and general nihlism - happy dude, but came back something else. The victims of Afghanistan from the afghans to the people that were dragged there don’t even get the luxury of being respected - for this to end in such a farcical way is just a cosmic joke
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Aug 16, 2021 03:49
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Big Hubris posted:To keep the Taliban's declaration of surrender and offers of assistance in capturing Osama quiet, thereby saving the Iraq War, then mineral rights, then sunk cost fallacy. I had heard in The Power of Nightmares series that the Taliban offered to hand OBL over in exchange for not getting bombed but the US rejected that offer. Not sure how accurate the series is though.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:05
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Discospawn posted:It turns out Afghanistan wasn't a rival Civilization to be conquered, but rather a collection of those weird, neutral NPC minor-Civilizations that they added in CIV V that turned me off of the series. wowie zowie
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Aug 16, 2021 04:06
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MH Knights posted:I had heard in The Power of Nightmares series that the Taliban offered to hand OBL over in exchange for not getting bombed but the US rejected that offer. Not sure how accurate the series is though. Sure, and I remember how in 2001 they said that they had taken away his radio equipment so he couldn't broadcast anymore.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:20
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MH Knights posted:I had heard in The Power of Nightmares series that the Taliban offered to hand OBL over in exchange for not getting bombed but the US rejected that offer. Not sure how accurate the series is though. They also demanded proof of his guilt
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Aug 16, 2021 04:23
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From the other thread, have This Is What Winning Looks Like. I personally liked the part about how the Afghan soldiers stole and sold the walls to their own base.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:24
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Dapper_Swindler posted:we were hoping to get to a higher tech levels to unlock the Boeing all terrain armored transports and the scout walkers. but then W blew all the credits on the Iraq expansion map and that was that. then obama tried investing in like probe droids and poo poo. The problem is that every time we went to quit, we'd get sucked back in for a few more years. Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:27
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Wow. Built to last, huh? Might even evacuate guys in the next hasty retreat. Go, brave helicoppy, go. 
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Aug 16, 2021 04:28
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i suspect it will reduce big super military adventure invasions for a couple decades, possibly 50 years or so, unless some big war breaks out somewhere else(modi vs xi or russia implodes post putin). neither the dems/libs or the GOP are looking for big foreign invasion fun time adventures, outside the weird neocon remnant and the weird ghouls who write dissertations about how if America made an Afghan raj, then fruit production in Idaho would be bigger. 50??? I wouldn't expect it to last more than 5.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:30
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Big Hubris posted:To keep the Taliban's declaration of surrender and offers of assistance in capturing Osama quiet, thereby saving the Iraq War, then mineral rights, then sunk cost fallacy. After all of Bush's mistakes, it appears Obama's motivation was to have it show up in American news as little as possible. Actually pulling out of Afghanistan would have caused Americans to pay attention to Afghanistan, whereas drone strikes against brown people are just background noise to Americans. Trump's motivation was to one-up Obama, with zero thought about what that actually is or means. Biden's goal appears to be to make this all end with the minimum number of American deaths. But even though this obviously affects Afghans way more, at no point did any powerful American care about this impacts any non-American.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:30
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Discospawn posted:It turns out Afghanistan wasn't a rival Civilization to be conquered, but rather a collection of those weird, neutral NPC minor-Civilizations that they added in CIV V that turned me off of the series. I heavily disagree, but I do think the trick with those NPC civs (keep them happy and they'll give you the resources to go after your rivals) probably applies to Afghanistan as well. The Mongols and Persians just left them alone and asked only for tribute, worked out pretty well for them. Maybe the trick to Afghanistan is let it be Afghanistan.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:31
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Did a tour in Afghanistan in one of the hottest parts near the Pakistan border. I won a couple medals for this and that, but I can't tell you one thing that we did that was going to bring an end to it. Afghan's aren't Afghan's, they are what ever regional tribe they belong to. They had no concept of country like most of the rest of the world does. The strategy of nation building, and winning hearts and minds was laughable at best. It was always going to end this way.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:33
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LGD posted:the Taliban has the airport (which is packed with panicked civilians the U.S. clearly had no plan for dealing with beyond being abandoned to their fates) completely surrounded and it's got plenty of places with lines of sight to/from it, so it really would not be difficult to blow up transport aircraft or gently caress the runway Forgive me, my mind has retreated to how clueless I was back when this all started. None of this poo poo makes any sense.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:35
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Probably Magic posted:I heavily disagree, but I do think the trick with those NPC civs (keep them happy and they'll give you the resources to go after your rivals) probably applies to Afghanistan as well. The Mongols and Persians just left them alone and asked only for tribute, worked out pretty well for them. Maybe the trick to Afghanistan is let it be Afghanistan. This doesn't really sound like "left them alone and asked only for tribute"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan#Mongol_Empire Genghis Khan invaded the region from the northeast in one of his many conquests to create the huge Mongol Empire. His armies slaughtered thousands in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad etc. After Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia, there was a rebellion in the region of Helmand which was brutally put down by his son and successor, Ogedei Khan, who put all male residents of Ghazni and Helmand to the sword in 1222; the women were enslaved and sold. Thereafter most parts of Afghanistan other than the extreme south-eastern remained under Mongol rule as part of the Ilkhanate and Chagatai Khanate.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:36
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Magugu posted:Did a tour in Afghanistan in one of the hottest parts near the Pakistan border. I won a couple medals for this and that, but I can't tell you one thing that we did that was going to bring an end to it. I feel like we should just quote this again and again.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:37
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Magugu posted:Did a tour in Afghanistan in one of the hottest parts near the Pakistan border. I won a couple medals for this and that, but I can't tell you one thing that we did that was going to bring an end to it. how many people you worked with felt the same way? Was there ever a growing realization about this or were the people who "got it" already retiring as new people were filling in? (I know nothing about how deployments and this sort of stuff works, forgive me)
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Aug 16, 2021 04:45
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Smeef posted:This doesn't really sound like "left them alone and asked only for tribute"... Fair enough, though that still seems mostly like remote rule as opposed to actual nation-building.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:52
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buglord posted:how many people you worked with felt the same way? Best way I can describe it: It was a job. You woke up, put your pants on, got some coffee and went to work. It's as cold as it gets, but that was the reality. We saw the suffering, and really wanted to help the people. However, there was literally nothing you could do. It was an absolute quagmire. There were the gung-ho people, but they mostly got ignored (at least in my limited experience). Everyone's main goal was to get yourself and your people home in one piece. You knew that you were going to be there for a year, go home for a year, and be right back. It was called the Deployment Cycle. The attitude was never about "winning the war and going home", it was surviving this deployment and going home hoping your wife hasn't left you because your gone all the time. It was a job. When I was there the war was already 8 years old, and we had people on their third deployment. Some of the people I was there with on our first deployment, have now had their fifth deployment. We all knew that this poo poo was never going to end in a "winning" condition. The ANA (Afghan National Army) was never going to be a fighting force capable of holding the country without the training wheels that the US offered. They were mediocre at best, because their loyalty was not to country, it was to tribe.
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Aug 16, 2021 05:14
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Comstar posted:50??? I wouldn't expect it to last more than 5. Maybe but that would require gen x and mileneials and zoomers to suddenly be uber gung ho for it. Do I think we will smaller/“smaller” “police” actions. Probably but I don’t see the US deciding to stick there dicks in the open big invasion and occupation horror show for awhile. Afghanistan and Iraq happened because 9/11 broke America’s brain hard and that was that. It was only until Iraq started to go bad(obviously beforehand too) that people started to realize we hosed up.
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Aug 16, 2021 05:38
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CommieGIR posted:Some idiot British dude decided to fly to Afghanistan shortly before the fall....and now he's stuck there. This dude is going to become gleeful recruit or a corpse in a month.
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Aug 16, 2021 05:42
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Sedisp posted:This dude is going to become gleeful recruit or a corpse in a month. He's GOING TO become the talibans investment manager.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:30
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Sedisp posted:This dude is going to become gleeful recruit or a corpse in a month. He's already trying to find a flight out of Afghanistan and hiding out because he realized that someone would prolly kidnap him and squeeze his family for a ransom. edit: tbqh he might be better off surrendering to the Taliban and counting on Afghan hospitality to see him through. 'course that kinda hinges on them believing that he's just a tremendous dumbass and not a spy.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:32
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Zeroisanumber posted:He's already trying to find a flight out of Afghanistan and hiding out because he realized that someone would prolly kidnap him and squeeze his family for a ransom. Usually british spies are named Abdul. not Lord M E Miles.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:35
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the way America is treating their collaborators with such open contempt and refusing to let go of their stupid Visa beuracracy bin the face of the situation is a really good lesson for anyone else in the world who was thinking of helping out the US in any future endeavor lol.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:38
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Al-Saqr posted:the way America is treating their collaborators with such open contempt and refusing to let go of their stupid Visa beuracracy bin the face of the situation is a really good lesson for anyone else in the world who was thinking of helping out the US in any future endeavor lol. I thought the Kurds predated that. This whole thing reminds me of high school when I was in resource room this big dumb fella kept refusing to do his homework and the teacher told him he won't graduate with these grades and with this resigned tone he insisted he was too dumb to do it and he would make a living by going in to the military. We had a recruiter at our school every gently caress day after 2001 so I knew he planned on talking with him. I just remember thinking you stupid bastard you won't live to see your twenty first birthday. This was just before we invaded Iraq as well so the fighting was really ramping up. The fact he preferred a hail of bullets to doing his math homework always just baffled the gently caress out of me. Despite all the bullshit patriotic glitter the entire affair was never looked at as a desirable job, least where I lived. Flopsy fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 06:54
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Al-Saqr posted:the way America is treating their collaborators with such open contempt and refusing to let go of their stupid Visa beuracracy bin the face of the situation is a really good lesson for anyone else in the world who was thinking of helping out the US in any future endeavor lol. I'd agree but anyone who looks at the history of American disengagement should know that we leave local collaborators to hang as a matter of course.
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Aug 16, 2021 07:30
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LOLLLL https://twitter.com/javedhassan/status/1427160135894503427?s=21 The Chinese are A+ trolls
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Aug 16, 2021 08:01
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Magugu posted:Best way I can describe it: It was a job. You woke up, put your pants on, got some coffee and went to work. It's as cold as it gets, but that was the reality. We saw the suffering, and really wanted to help the people. However, there was literally nothing you could do. It was an absolute quagmire. Thanks for the input man. I've read a few books on it (The Outpost, Outlaw Platoon) and the authors there had a more ideological/patriotic(?) take on it, but id imagine for a variety of reasons you have to cater to the audience and publisher. Those two books and other I (partially) read through, Afghanistan by Thomas Barfield, all agree that the people of Afghanistan see themselves as members of a local tribe and not at all some sort of united group with a shared cause and clearly defined borders. Everything ive read seems to point towards that being the case outside of the cities. I dont really know how you overcome that as an outsider with no ethnic/family/tribal/linguistic ties. Al-Saqr posted:the way America is treating their collaborators with such open contempt and refusing to let go of their stupid Visa beuracracy bin the face of the situation is a really good lesson for anyone else in the world who was thinking of helping out the US in any future endeavor lol. I think this is what pisses me off the most about the entire thing. Its clear they were an afterthought and now they and their families are gonna be in serious trouble as a reward for their help.
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Aug 16, 2021 08:02
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https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1427135572947214339 here's your fall of saigon video/picture. expect to see this plastered all over the place in the coming weeks (there's also a video of a man falling off a plane as he tries to hold onto it as it takes off but that's obviously  )
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Aug 16, 2021 10:33
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pasaluki posted:The Afghan Army is seriously f tier. Tnega posted:From the other thread, have This Is What Winning Looks Like. I personally liked the part about how the Afghan soldiers stole and sold the walls to their own base.    this whole segment where this guy was just 100% holding a drink through the whole thing, Julian-From-Trailer-Park-Boys style
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Aug 16, 2021 10:45
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pasaluki posted:The Afghan Army is seriously f tier. Guess who trained 'em!
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Aug 16, 2021 11:14
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The funniest poo poo in retrospect is the way pretty much every political delegation would go to Kabul, and then to say they visited the countryside, hit up the Panjshir valley and say everything's going great. There's probably something to be said for how the government was structured and how a highly centralized presidential system was poorly suited to the tasks at hand. While in most cases highly federal systems tend to be ineffective(see the USA), in Afghanistan it was probably a necessity to provide any kind of decent governance. I'm not too sure how the Taliban will keep a lid on things- they might stir rebellion once the honeymoon ends, especially if they crack down on poppy cultivation, but we'll see.
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Aug 16, 2021 11:19
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Regalingualius posted:Same here. I was just eight when all of this started, and it’s still loving with me just how quickly they reasserted themselves once they had the opportunity. Millions killed either as a direct result or as a knock-on effect of all of the conflicts this one war started. Once more, I ask: to take over and protect northern poppy fields for CIA narco network.
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Aug 16, 2021 11:20
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