[HN Gopher] U.S. Embassy in Kabul Tells Staff to Destroy Sensiti...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. Embassy in Kabul Tells Staff to Destroy Sensitive Material and
Evacuate
Author : everybodyknows
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-08-13 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (text.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (text.npr.org)
| flowerlad wrote:
| The winner here is Pakistan.
|
| "Victory will not be claimed by Pakistan, but tacitly the Taliban
| will owe it to Pakistan", says Nazir, a retired brigadier and
| defense analyst in Islamabad.
|
| Pakistan has been allowing Taliban leaders free movement into and
| out of the country and continues to serve as a safe haven where
| fighters and their families can receive medical care. With the
| U.S. intention to leave publicly declared, Pakistan did away with
| any semblance of denial that the Taliban leadership was
| sheltering there.
|
| Read more:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/world/asia/pakistan-afgha...
| sonograph wrote:
| 3,000 troops to evacuate an embassy seems excessive? How many
| diplomats are there?
|
| Nonetheless A terrible situation for Afghanistan; I wish the
| world could help them but I'm not sure what else could be done
| after trying for two decades.
| vimy wrote:
| Maybe it's to protect the capital until everyone is evacuated?
| rtkwe wrote:
| The US Embassy in Afghanistan is absolutely massive. From July
| 6 2021:
|
| > the embassy is currently down to 1,400 U.S. citizens and
| about 4,000 staff working inside the compound the size of a
| small town.
|
| It's a huge complex and those are the reduced staff numbers.
| Granted they may or may not actually be evacuating all the
| local staff (the US has been... not great about getting people
| who risked their lives to help the US in Afghanistan).
|
| https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-kabul-445f33e7bba08c382...
| praxulus wrote:
| I suspect the number of troops needed to keep a facility secure
| depends not only on the size of the facility but also on the
| scale of the threat.
| TkTech wrote:
| The 3000 troops aren't solely to hold the embassy, they're to
| hold the Kabul airport, and to handle the evacuation of
| diplomats _and_ Afghans who assisted the US, such as
| translators and non-diplomatic embassy staff.
|
| 3000 staff is tiny percentage of the staff of an international
| airport, even a small one.
|
| > The troops, consisting of two Marine battalions and one Army
| battalion, will be based at the Kabul airport. They will
| provide security for an airlift that will fly out U.S.
| diplomats, as well as Afghans who have worked with the U.S.,
| and the family members of those Afghans.
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| So what was this whole war, its death toll (particularly in
| "collateral damage" i.e. civilian deaths), its costs good for? Is
| anyone being held accountable? Will we learn anything from it? Of
| course not. We need to keep the war machine well oiled so
| something has to come up.
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| Feel free to deduct another point or two. That seems to be the
| case with my comments recently. Welcome to an open discussion
| on HN ( ...and here's anothecpoint gone for criticism).
| johng wrote:
| Don't know why anyone would downvote you. It's a valid
| question.
| gambiting wrote:
| I just don't understand why you'd make this comment literally
| 2 minutes after writing the original one.
|
| 1) you can still edit the original to add this remark if you
| really want to, although it's frowned upon
|
| 2) initial downvotes mean nothing, I've had comments go to
| -10 before jumping back up to +30 few hours later. Why would
| you complain about it within 3 minutes of posting is beyond
| me.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Because it's really annoying getting reflexively downvoted
| by idealogues or zealots who have nothing else to say.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not everyone who thinks you're flat-out wrong is an
| idealogue or a zealot.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| My first read on your comment was the tone in it is
| inflammatory and designed to provoke vs make a point or a
| validate argument. That is likely why you were downvoted. I
| can very much be accused of doing the same thing in some of
| my comments on emotional topics and in general the results
| are not as good as if I had framed things as a statement or a
| question without being emotional. YMMV.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Cynically? The executive branch got a bunch of new powers in
| the Patriot act, Halliburton shares soared for a few years, and
| the only people who were punished were a handful of traditional
| republicans associated with the Bush administration not already
| retired before isolationists like Trump took over the party.
| The main architects all did very well.
|
| I can only hope that the next generation learned not to trust
| government as quickly, but Vietnam wasn't that long ago so I
| don't know how realistic that hope is.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The public wanted it and will not hold itself accountable
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani...
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the public was brainwashed and outright fed misinformation by
| the government who wanted to invade
|
| sounds like victim blaming the public
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > victim
|
| What an interesting word for a bloodthirsty mob. I'm sure
| the real victims, the Afghans, appreciate that you have no
| agency.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the alternative would be US citizens placing no trust in
| the media or US government, because they became a "blood
| thirsty mob" under their influence.
|
| people wonder why today so many people are skeptical when
| it comes to the pandemic and anything else the government
| says, the government constantly lying to them is the
| primary cause
| [deleted]
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Maybe things were a bit better for a while. Life's essence is
| an integral of happiness.
| hollerith wrote:
| Maybe so, but as a US taxpayer, I object to any plan or
| program that buys so little happiness for so many US tax
| dollars.
| dweekly wrote:
| With a quarter of a million dead[1], I'm not sure I can agree
| with "better" for the families of those impacted. On a
| "Dollars Per Amount of Joy Conferred" metric for success
| (which I like!), I think this one gets a pretty big negative
| score.
|
| [1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-
| and-b...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >So what was this whole war, its death toll its costs good for?
|
| It's a message.
|
| For the next several hundred years every warlord and extremist
| groups that's about to consolidate power over a nation is going
| to point at the Taliban and say "we want to run this nation, we
| don't want our sons to be running it" when kicking out
| particularly odious house guests who have dreams of attacking
| the 1st world.
|
| Was it worth it? IDK, doubt it. But that's what we bought at
| the end of the day. We bought a precedent.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I agree with you in principle but in reality it was the US
| who was deterred, more than Afghanistan (which does not
| really seem to exist in any sovereign capacity). Warlords can
| operate with relative impunity knowing the US public would
| not let another Afghanistan take place.
| digdigdag wrote:
| You put forth a quasi-patriotic interpretation and a false
| premise, as the true benefactors of attacks on the 1st world
| have long been indicated (though not officially confirmed) to
| state sponsored groups in Saudi Arabia. Yet there they still
| stand, completely untouched by the quagmire that was
| Afghanistan and Iraq for the past 20 years.
|
| Secondly, we gave an entire generation of orphaned children
| (now adults at this point) all the more reason to focus their
| rage and frustration at the United States.
|
| I'm not sure what the net effect of all this is down the
| road, but I don't think it will be a case of these nations
| fearing the first world. Quite the opposite I think.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, the thing with religious extremists, who want to leave
| this world anyway - is that they do not really want to be
| running things, but they want the world they despise to burn.
|
| One suicide attack - one major war. Mission accomplished for
| the extremists/terrorists.
|
| And as for the Taliban ... well, they sort of won, didn't
| they?
| xorcist wrote:
| Make no mistake, the Taliban stands to gain from this
| conflict. Not to mention Pakistan.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Of course they do. They want their country back. They want
| to pick up where they left off in 2001. And frankly I think
| they deserve their country back. But I doubt they'll harbor
| people who attack the first world again. That venture was
| nothing but a waste of 20yr and blood to them, same as it
| was to us.
| laurent92 wrote:
| There aren't many ways to cope with this realization. The
| tipping point was Colin Powell's "definitive proof" at the UN
| Counsel that Irak had WMD. As long as such criminals are free,
| we are not.
|
| Citizen may even too aware of this, as half melt into guilt of
| what the USA has done, the other half still have hope but also
| cynicism, even despair.
|
| As for other nations, if I were Iran, Irak, the Talibans, the
| Afghans, I'd fund efforts to destabilize USA. If I were China,
| I'd even organize it to ensure it weakens them without
| weakening the commercial exchanges. If I were Russia I'd tip
| into the jar too. USA made many enemies, it may be the target
| of coordinated spy work.
|
| And I say this as a staunch partisan of the USA. We should
| spend more on looking benevolent.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| About your third paragraph: You seem to think this isn't
| already happening. I think you're several years late.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I didn't want to dive into how the Congress invasion could
| be an artifact of enemies successfully mounting us against
| each other.
| kaminar wrote:
| This is what happens when there is no leadership in the white
| house...we left without any negotiations...such stupidity
| deserves swift justice.
| cletus wrote:
| How many politicians built their careers on the blood spilt in
| this pointless and expensive exercise?
|
| Overthrowing governments is awful foreign policy. This was never
| going to work, just like it didn't in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, the
| Congo, Guatemala, Syria and elsewhere.
|
| Here's the kicker: the invasion of Iraq was based on a convenient
| lie by hawks who had been keen to overthrow Saddam Hussein ever
| since the First Gulf War. This convenient lie was easily debunked
| to. It's really simple.
|
| If Saddam Hussein had WMD, why wouldn't he give them up to save
| himself and his regime? Invasion clearly wasn't an empty threat
| and that would not end well for him. Hussein was never a
| religious ideologue. He didn't dream of martyrdom or jihad. He
| was a self-serving dictator (creates by the US I might add as a
| tool against Iran in the 1980s in a war that resulted from a
| revolution against the Shah, a government created by the US; are
| you beginning to see the pattern?). The only explanation was that
| Iraq did not in fact have WMDs.
|
| People pointed out in the early days after 9/11 so this isn't
| some kind of historical revisionism. None of this ever made
| sense.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| The lesson of Gaddafi is that if you ever have even just
| chemical WMDs, never ever EVER give them up.
|
| The United States will not attack a country that can actually
| deploy a WMD on it's forces and especially not on its homeland.
| Even back in the day it was obvious Saddam didnt have WMDs
| because he didnt use them when America invaded.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Overthrowing governments is awful foreign policy. This was
| never going to work, just like it didn't in Iraq, Iran,
| Vietnam, the Congo, Guatemala, Syria and elsewhere.
|
| IIRC, the US didn't overthrow any government Vietnam: https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam#Founding_of_Sout....
|
| There's probably some parallels that can be drawn between US
| support of South Vietnam and US support of South Korea.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's pretty naive. It seems incredulous that the US didn't
| muck around with the ARVN military junta or various coups.
|
| It was a CIA puppet state.
| eaglelamp wrote:
| The US didn't directly overthrow the government of South
| Vietnam, but the US did tell the South Vietnamese army that
| they would lose funding and support if they didn't overthrow
| Diem in 1963. Given that the army of South Vietnam was
| basically an appendage of the American military at that point
| it was a threat the South Vietnamese generals couldn't afford
| to ignore.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > creates by the US I might add as a tool against Iran in the
| 1980s
|
| No, earlier than that as a tool against Communism in Iraq.
| Later, the US rushed to support him (including in his use of
| chemical weapons) when he got bogged down in war with Iran that
| he launched expecting a quick territorial gain, but that's not
| where US involvement with him started.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| > _Overthrowing governments is awful foreign policy. This was
| never going to work, just like it didn 't in Iraq, Iran,
| Vietnam, the Congo, Guatemala, Syria and elsewhere._
|
| It worked perfectly for the people who implemented the policies
| and their patrons. The point was never to make average
| Westerners more secure. It was to hand billions to contractors
| and oil companies, practice new forms of counterinsurgency and
| drone warfare, and make token moves against the latest bogeyman
| used to distract from the empire's exploitation and subjugation
| of its own people.
|
| All the examples you cite similarly benefitted the elites
| calling the shots in one way or another.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Is all material digital at this point? It reminds me of the
| "Argo" movie(that is supposed to be quite accurate) where the
| Iranians manage to reconstruct shredded documents that expose the
| identities of the persons of interest.
|
| They also destroyed a device for encrypted communications. That
| part must be the easy part these days.
|
| In a morbid way, I enjoyed these photos of "savages" capturing
| advanced military equipment:
| https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1426101381363027969...
|
| It reminds me of Civ series where you could destroy advanced
| armies with large enough primitive ones. I used to dismiss it as
| unrealistic but apparently it wasn't that unrealistic.
| seano314 wrote:
| It could also includes sensitive military equipment (e.g. night
| vision goggles) that will need to be destroyed.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's 99.5% digital. They're mostly drilling holes in hard
| drives, not burning documents.
|
| Edit: Of course "everything" is encrypted. You still destroy
| stuff anyway because of defense in depth.
| mrtksn wrote:
| how good is a hole on a platter. I suspect, some data can
| still be recoverable. A photograph with some parts missing is
| better than no photo.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Bending is generally considered safer, as it prevents
| rotating the drive, making any recovery attempts
| prohibitively slow and expensive.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Most defense contractor infosec departments will accept
| video evidence of HDD destruction so long as they do a
| walk through showing serial numbers so they know which
| drives are accounted for.
|
| As a result there's tons of videos that the public will
| never see of the world's heaviest presses, shears and
| brakes being used to decimate lines of hard drives. When
| you run a shipyard it's cheaper to just bend hard drives
| than it is to ship them back to HQ and have infosec deal
| with them.
|
| One of my jobs as an intern was to take a list of serial
| numbers and watch the video walk-through and confirm the
| list matched the drives.
| soperj wrote:
| depending how you're doing it, it's actually quite
| difficult to properly drill a hard drive.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I was never privy to the true details but I suspect that
| they are making good use of torx screwdrivers and abrasives
| (wire brush, sandpaper, etc) right about now. It's slower
| but they have a fairly good amount of time to deal with it.
|
| If they have time they're wiping things first.
|
| You can also just burn them. It's not the Taliban they're
| worried about, it's the Russian and Chinese spies who will
| sneak in and pocket stuff, but that's mostly dealt with
| with policies that keep the kind of info those people would
| want off of hard drives in an unrelated nation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Is the substrate glass? Does it shatter when you drill the
| hole? If so, drilling might be fairly good.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It's a mix according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive_platter
| tpetry wrote:
| Destroying the encryption key for a harddrive takes less than
| a second. Are disks really not fully encrypted when they
| store sensitive information?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| First you wipe the keys, then you wipe the drive... then
| you physically destroy it just to be sure.
| politician wrote:
| I'd be surprised if they didn't have a bulk eraser on site.
| gruez wrote:
| I'd assume that all the computers/hard drives have FDE on
| them, so wiping the headers/keys would suffice to make the
| entire disk unreadable.
| FooHentai wrote:
| Not an acceptable method of sanitation above certain
| classification levels, only physical destruction of the
| medium is sufficient.
|
| There are shredders and V-shaped vice/press devices built
| for this purpose and such facilities will have them ready
| and waiting to be used.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Yup, anything sensitive should be encrypted but defense in
| depth is the name of the game.
| Alupis wrote:
| Paperwork is likely burned in these situations, instead of
| shredded.
|
| Although digital is replacing a lot of paperwork, many things
| are still printed these days.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Burning paper is surprisingly difficult to do at any
| noteworthy scale.
|
| The NSA has a recipe for that:
| https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-
| features/decla... I really hope to see a video of it in
| action one day.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Gotta love the old style of writing where they prime you by
| explaining the underlying theory. These days technical
| documents like this (both government and private industry)
| just say "do X because we said so, trust us".
|
| >if the drum is tipped over at this point, a greenish
| liquid slag flows out. This quickly hardens to a cement-
| like mass.
|
| Knocking the drum over with the forklift was probably the
| highlight of that private's month.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I particularly like the humor that seems to be
| universally woven into older NSA documents. I can see why
| people would want to work there, if you have no moral
| issues with the nature of the job, it must be (have
| been?) an interesting, challenging job in a pretty good
| environment.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Even digital material exists in the physical world. Disk
| drives, flash memory and other storage hardware could still
| exist and must be destroyed to prevent capture by adversaries.
| quotemstr wrote:
| If these devices are encrypted, physical destruction is less
| of an imperative. There's no excuse for not encrypting all
| data at rest these days.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If allegations of Russian and Chinese support of the
| Taliban is true, it's reasonable to be wary that foreign
| nation-state agents could acquire the hardware. Better to
| sabotage the hardware just in case they have the compute
| resources to break the encryption.
| radiator wrote:
| This sounds as if we don't really trust encryption, which
| makes one wonder, why then go into all this trouble and
| encrypt the data in the first place?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Destroying the media is not strictly necessary.
|
| It's a lot easier to instruct a rack of servers, or even a
| set of (centrally managed) desktop machines, to wipe itself
| than it is to physically destroy it, let alone the equivalent
| amount of information on paper.
|
| Moreover, assuming encryption is in place, destroying the
| keys without touching the actual data is generally
| sufficient.
|
| You will probably want to wipe the data then destroy the
| hardware as defense in depth, but in a dire emergency, taking
| the one thermite charge to the central key management server
| and its backup and cutting the power feed to the rest of the
| infrastructure is going to be good enough.
|
| With human readable information on paper, you simply have no
| other option than physical destruction, which is an extremely
| slow and labor-intensive and manual process. Even with
| preparation, you can't really accelerate it much, whereas
| with digital information _prepared_ for the possibility of
| needing emergency destruction, it 's a matter of pushing a
| button and the data is gone less than a second later.
|
| The flipside of that is that the worst crimes of a future
| surveillance state will likely stay hidden even after it gets
| toppled, unlike the East German Stasi that failed to destroy
| many of its documents in time.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| The news coverage has a bit of a vibe of "Things are going south,
| what are we going to do about it?"
|
| I think the "What are we going to do about it" is implied by not
| having a conclusion attached to all the "bad" news. But isn't the
| rapid Taliban takeover 100% proof that we didn't build any sort
| of sustainable alternative while we were there?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think the "What are we going to do about it" is implied by
| not having a conclusion attached to all the "bad" news. But
| isn't the rapid Taliban takeover 100% proof that we didn't
| build any sort of sustainable alternative while we were there?
|
| IIRC, the US pulled too much of the rug out from under the
| Afghani government too quickly. For instance, I've read the US
| long ago evacuated the maintenance contractors that maintained
| the Afghan Air Force, which means they can't fly even if they
| have the pilots.
| jdhn wrote:
| This is going to be Saigon all over again. The pictures coming
| out of this will be remarkable. That being said, my thoughts go
| out to the Afghanis who helped us for decades as interpreters and
| other support roles. Both parties are failing those brave men and
| women in not expediting approval for them to come to the US, as
| their lives will assuredly be in danger if they stay in
| Afghanistan.
| onepunchedman wrote:
| I really hope it won't be another Saigon, the videos coming out
| of the final days are harrowing. A lot of other countries are
| also closing their embassies for now, and seem to be more
| willing to bring home Afghans who've helped. In Norway we're
| also bringing their families.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I really hope it won't be another Saigon, the videos coming
| out of the final days are harrowing.
|
| Unless Biden changes course, it's going to be another Saigon,
| whether the pictures show it or not (e.g. they may get the
| Americans out before the Taliban is too close, and avoid
| pictures of throngs of desperate allies mobbing the embassy
| hoping to get evacuated with the last Americans, but most of
| those allies will still be stranded).
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "That being said, my thoughts go out to the Afghanis who helped
| us for decades as interpreters and other support roles. Both
| parties are failing those brave men and women in not expediting
| approval for them to come to the US, as their lives will
| assuredly be in danger if they stay in Afghanistan."
|
| The Germans are doing the same. They are leaving people that
| have helped them behind. Really shameful.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "The Germans are doing the same. They are leaving people that
| have helped them behind. Really shameful."
|
| Germany grants 2,400 visas to Afghan employees, relatives
|
| https://apnews.com/article/europe-
| germany-f6bacc58477cd0eb92...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I doubt it. The Taliban would be wise to just wait until the
| evac completes and US troops leave.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| The Saigon heli pic is of South Vietnamese crowds who were
| desperate to get out of there with the Americans, right?
|
| Sure the Taliban can wait, but the "mob" will be the people
| who were associated with the occupying forces, desperate to
| escape their deaths.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| then let it be another Saigon, what alternative did the US have
| than pull out? If you know anybody in the military they all say
| it's worse than it was years ago and only continuing to get
| worse
|
| so the only option was pull out or continue with the sunk cost
| fallacy of thinking we can somehow fix Afghanistan by doubling
| down with another troop surge. I'm glad we are finally
| admitting it was a failure
| jdhn wrote:
| Please don't take my objection to how it's being handled as
| support for a forever war. I'm glad we're getting out, but as
| I said earlier, Afghanis that worked with us aren't receiving
| as much support as they should be.
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| Another in a long line of US military failures since WW2. I
| suspect when history looks back at the fall of the US/rise of
| the East, a common theme will be how much of a lead the US
| blew as a result of multiple, unnecessary and excruciatingly
| resource-intensive wars of attrition
| spfzero wrote:
| The peak of the US "lead" would seem to be the fall of the
| Soviet Union. Vietnam etc. was long over by then.
|
| Not saying Iraq and Afghanistan weren't unnecessary and
| expensive. The U.S. and the world would have been better
| off without them, probably. Saddam and the Taliban, Isis,
| Al Qaida don't look so dangerous in retrospect. But Islamic
| "extremism" was the big perceived threat back then, and you
| could argue that it is less of a threat today, so someones'
| version of a problem solved.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| The only reason WW2 was a success because it was a real war
| aiming at total defeat and destruction of the enemy
| including civilian population. "Liberation" wars where the
| population is supposed to be saved from oppressive
| governments always fail. Failed in Vietnam, Iraq and now
| Afghanistan. Military can't distinguish between "good" and
| "bad" and a big, confusing mess gets created.
|
| WW2 would also have failed if the military had tried to
| avoid civilian deaths. You simply can't win a war that way,
| wpasc wrote:
| Potentially unpopular opinion, but here goes. Would an
| acceptable level of presence have been just to keep Bagram?
| It was a pretty key base for so many operations in the Middle
| East and could have been a huge force multiplier. Moreover,
| it could have a deterrent effect. For precedent, the US has a
| variety of bases across the world in Europe and Asia and many
| of those bases are not political nightmares. To just maintain
| Bagram could seemingly be done without really risking many
| personnel and serve as an air support base with faster
| response times to Afghan military requests for aid. Bagram
| could also be a strong piece in preventing this unrelenting
| push of the Taliban.
|
| Right now we are sending 3000 troops in for evacuations, and
| I don't think this is the last time we'll have troops in
| there. If the Taliban completes a significant enough takeover
| of Afghanistan then (in my opinion) it's just a matter of
| time before some action prompts US or some coalition of
| forces to return.
| dogman144 wrote:
| For people that have led Soldiers, "keeping Bagram" is not
| akin to keeping Germany or Japan bases. It would always
| have been a 18-24 month, family-less deployment. South
| Korea is already known to be a fairly hard deployment for
| this reason. Bagram would be similar, but worse.
|
| These risk calculations of "not many personnel" have
| American boys and girls on the receiving end, who spend
| 18-20 months to do what, maintain presence?
|
| Two notes then: - already been tried as a course of action
| in the last several years. The problem then and in this
| future hypothetical is that the mission creeps. If you
| watched American KIA in AFG the last few, youd start to
| notice deaths that come from patrolling and convoys. There
| is no scenario where Americans stay on Bagram only and
| ever. Even If Kabul is in fact surrounded, you'd have risks
| just the same but with a fighting force at Bagram
| completely unable to respond because it's undermanned and
| without a clear mission (enter in: Somali 1992).
|
| - let's say it's an accepted risk though. how that model
| works in reality is long term, sustained presence. The
| desire impact of a long term Bagram is achieved by lengthy
| relationships with locals. The army model is 18 month
| rotations. This doesn't build that relationship. There is a
| reason the last instances the US had really succeeded at
| war was "go to Berlin, come back when the Nazis are gone."
| This stuff takes a very sustained presence to achieve,
| including leadership not leaving every 18 months. So which
| unit gets to live in AFG full time, in this long term
| Bagram scenario? Bc if it's not done that way, you get the
| life disrupting/ending shadow war of 2016-2021.
| nradov wrote:
| Bagram isn't sustainable without a secure land supply route
| to bring in fuel and other bulk items. The US military
| simply doesn't have the lift capacity to sustain it by air
| while meeting their other global commitments. And without
| constant ground patrols through the surrounding area the
| base itself would be hit by daily rocket and mortar
| attacks.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It was a pretty key base for so many operations in the
| Middle East_
|
| To what end? The security threat has been mitigated. The
| energy dynamic has changed with Aramco's listing, fracking
| and _bona fide_ renewable energy.
|
| We are, first and foremost, a naval power. Afghanistan is a
| shitty buffer state. Our ports and coastal bases more than
| suffice for the foreseeable future in that region.
| wpasc wrote:
| Historically, a bunch of really important (to the
| war/counter terrorism efforts; you can say the war effort
| was not important and that's a fair argument but Bagram
| was at least helpful in the war). For starters, the raid
| to kill Bin Laden originated in Bagram [1]. If quick
| response times were needed based on intel with limited
| usefulness (the location of a specific terrorist leader)
| or the Afghani military needs air support, then Bagram
| couldve helped cut down response times in those important
| circumstances. The distances from the nearest carrier
| locations are real in terms of response time.
|
| I'm just guessing here and I'm no expert but it just
| seems like maintaining the base would cost not much when
| compared to its usefulness in even just counter terror
| operations (not in the broad sense where innocents are
| hurt but like actual raids on specific leaders, baghdadi,
| bin laden, etc [though i dont think the baghdadi raid
| originated from bagram])
|
| [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_La
| den#Ope...
| lostlogin wrote:
| > It was a pretty key base for so many operations in the
| Middle East
|
| A lot of this has been in support of some questionable
| regimes and has probably exacerbated the dysfunction.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Unpopular suggestion: Actual imperial rule for a couple of
| generations.
|
| Tax enough to pay for the effort but not for a "profit".
| Build infrastructure by bringing outside expertise to train
| and build local business. Take control of schools, make them
| safe and required for all children. Respect the local culture
| but smash hard some cultural practices.
|
| Would it be incredibly hard to do without abuse? Absolutely.
| Is it questionably moral? Absolutely. Could it even be done
| at all? Questionable.
|
| We keep acting that the outcome of every military conflict is
| going to be like the liberation of France in WWII, kill the
| "bad guys" and then champagne and croissant parades with the
| locals.
|
| The repeated failed attempts at just handing self-government
| to nations after we depose their governments shows that you
| can't just win wars and fix problems with force alone. War is
| awful, it should happen as infrequently as possible, but if
| you're going to do it, you better have a plan for winning the
| peace. Corrupt, half-assed nation building doesn't cut it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Respect the local culture but smash hard some cultural
| practices.
|
| These are not merely in tension, but actually completely
| incompatible. We can respect local culture or try to impose
| one that we like better, but you can't do the first _and
| also_ the second.
|
| > Would it be incredibly hard to do without abuse?
|
| No, it would be abuse.
|
| > Is it questionably moral?
|
| No, again, it is unquestionably immoral.
|
| > War is awful, it should happen as infrequently as
| possible, but if you're going to do it, you better have a
| plan for winning the peace.
|
| Sometimes, you just need to accept winning the _war_.
| Disrupting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and providing a
| deterrent for the Taliban letting a similar group base out
| of there in the future was a win. The fantasy of then
| forcibly-but-on-the-cheap implanting a pro-Western liberal
| democratic regime and society in Afghanistan was...insane.
| Unrealistic fantasies about "winning the peace" we could do
| with fewer of.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Unrealistic fantasies about "winning the peace" we
| could do with fewer of
|
| Japan and the Martial plan are not a million miles from
| being an example of the change being proposed. A lot of
| differences though.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I met a former Afghani interpreter working as an Uber driver in
| Minneapolis a few years ago, really nice guy. It was during the
| superbowl, we had a mutual misunderstanding of the appeal of
| American football. He was going to school and supporting
| himself driving. A few have had good outcomes but the stories
| you hear about those waiting years for immigration and many
| others who were killed for helping the US while waiting... it's
| just shameful.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's really a travesty that we don't have a fast track for
| the family and friends of anyone who's directly helped us in
| a foreign nation. More people would be willing to work with
| us if it was the ticket to a life in the US. It's not like
| 100k people here or there really matters much in a nation of
| 300mil.
| dilippkumar wrote:
| Anyone have theories/guesses on how the Taliban are able to pull
| this off?
|
| I would expect that a group that has been hunted for 2 decades to
| be only just barely managing to survive - how do they have
| weapons, transportation, logistics etc to be able to basically
| get their act together like the past 20 years never happened?
| angelzen wrote:
| The Taliban simply need to show up, and the locals are
| submitting to them. Why?
|
| * Because everybody can see which way the balance of power is
| tipping. The US is too weak to stay, and unlikely to ever come
| back. The Talibans are right there, hungry for blood.
|
| * Because many would rather have Sharia law than US backed
| corruption. Mullah Omar was publicly executing bacha bazi
| perpetrators. 'One of the original factors mobilizing the rise
| of the Taliban was their opposition to the practice.' The US
| was turning a blind eye if not actively protecting them. In an
| infamous case, they almost fired a decorated SOF for doing
| something about it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Omar#Forming_the_Tali...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/us/green-beret-who-beat-u...
| rhino369 wrote:
| Because they haven't been just barely managing to survive for
| two decades.
|
| They got their asses kicked in 2001-02, retreated to relatively
| safe territory in Pakistan. And then have been fighting for the
| past 20 years. They've occupied territory in Afghanistan for
| over a decade. It's just never included cities before now.
|
| While their land in Pakistan isn't totally safe, it's their
| refuge. They have to worry about drone strikes and hush-hush
| raids, but they are relatively safe there.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| tons of foreign support from Pakistan and most likely
| Russia/China for the sole purpose of bleeding the US dry
|
| every major war since WWII has been a proxy war between the US
| and Russia/China. Korea, Vietnam, Middle East, Latin America
| stuff, etc.
| pydry wrote:
| >how do they have weapons, transportation, logistics etc to be
| able to basically get their act together
|
| Aid from Pakistani Pashtuns. Different country, same tribe.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| The Taliban are the people of Afghanistan (obviously not all of
| them, but a substantial portion). We could have avoided this
| had we learned a lesson by watching the Soviet Union go through
| this same exercise a few decades ago. When you invade and
| occupy a hostile nation, you can either stay forever at
| tremendous cost in blood and treasure or eventually leave and
| watch the native inhabitants regain control.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Exception to that being the non-Pashtun minorities, who
| actually will fight, in numbers big enough to matter. A plan
| might have been devised to carve off a new, defensible state,
| a la Kurdistan. But that would have required bureaucracies to
| admit partial defeat - an acknowledgment of reality unnatural
| to them. So instead we have total defeat: collapse,
| massacres, oppression.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-14/afghanistan-
| taliban-s...
| rhino369 wrote:
| The Taliban are not the people of Afghanistan. Less than 20%
| of the population supports them.
|
| The rest of the population just isn't strong enough and
| coordinated enough to beat a highly motivated and organized
| minority.
|
| While I didn't support continuation of the war because I
| don't see how it benefits the USA, it wasn't an unjust war.
| Quite the opposite. We were allies of the democratically
| elected Afghan government, fighting against the tyranny of a
| small group of religious fanatics.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 1. The Western nations didn't do much in terms of actual nation
| building and giving the country perspective beyond daily drone
| strikes, poverty and opium harvesting. Yes, there were a couple
| of schools built, but that doesn't give a country any
| perspective.
|
| 2. The Taliban come in and promise a return back to old times,
| and no drone strikes any more, which means they at least don't
| get resistance any more.
|
| 3. The government is corrupt as hell, the army soldiers don't
| see anything worth fighting for, and they don't have working
| heavy arms (planes, tanks). That _drastically_ reduces how much
| resources the Taliban need to take over.
| spfzero wrote:
| >1. The Western nations didn't do much in terms of actual
| nation building and giving the country perspective beyond
| daily drone strikes, poverty and opium harvesting. Yes, there
| were a couple of schools built, but that doesn't give a
| country any perspective.
|
| That's true if you don't think adding the female half of the
| nation to the pool of available talent helps build a nation.
| spfzero wrote:
| >Anyone have theories/guesses on how the Taliban are able to
| pull this off?
|
| No one in the US agencies who planned the pull-out and advised
| the Biden administration, apparently.
| eplanit wrote:
| The Chinese Communist Party is prepared to recognize the
| Taliban if (when) they overtake the government.[1][2]
|
| This is a truly historic fuck-up. It's not about it being right
| to withdraw (it is), but how it's done. We've wasted
| unfathomable money and time, not to mention lives. Now we have
| truly nothing gained, we're embarrassed and humiliated, and our
| enemies emboldened. It's pathetic.
|
| 1. https://www.usnews.com/news/world-
| report/articles/2021-08-12...
|
| 2. https://nationworldnews.com/china-has-taken-new-steps-
| with-a...
| sxp wrote:
| If that happens and the Taliban grow in power, would the
| Taliban support or oppose the occupation and genocide in
| Xinjiang?
| laurent92 wrote:
| I think Pakistan and ultimately Russia funds them? I'm not
| well-versed, it's only my understanding.
| ggm wrote:
| Russia funding the Taliban. Ok.. run that playbook again for
| how the US funded the muj to undermine Russian investments in
| Afghanistan. Many thousands of young Russian conscripts died
| in Russia's Vietnam war. It fundamentally undermined the
| integrity of belief in the USSR and led directly to the end
| of soviet rule along with Chernobyl.
|
| I'm not really sure I can make Russia funding the Taliban
| work. Do you have any actual evidence because this would be
| like the CIA funding Al queda, in many ways..
| zsmi wrote:
| Not proof a funder per se, but there was this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/russia-
| afghan...
| fakedang wrote:
| A lot of Taliban funding comes from Pakistan's ISI, as well
| as individual elements in Arab countries (prominently Saudi
| Arabia - wealthy ultra religious folks who might even be
| distant members of the royal family, but not affiliated to
| government). Apart from that, the Taliban do have the drug
| trade to keep them afloat.
|
| There are a few enough Russians in Afghanistan, but afaik,
| the Taliban are mostly ambivalent to them now. The Taliban
| mostly targets 3 types of folks - US and NATO people, Afghan
| government people, and open allies of the Afghan government
| (countries like India). Uzbekistan and Iran maintain very
| tight borders with Afghanistan so that the fighting doesn't
| spill over.
|
| For a very interesting tidbit, even very recently, Taliban
| was fighting ISIS near Badakhshan and Nuristan.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It doesn't sound like they had to do much of anything. The
| repeated complaint from defending troops is running out of food
| and ammo. They didn't really even have the option to fight.
|
| Every soldier is also 100% certain their government is
| unbelievably corrupt, which can't help. If you read about
| Castro and his men taking over Cuba, they got people to give up
| military outposts just by firing at them few times. They had no
| real interest in fighting for their leadership.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I remember the sentiment right after 9/11 and the country was
| baying for blood.
|
| It seems like the most prudent thing to have done was to adopt a
| kind of Fabian Strategy where we don't invade a nation halfway
| around the globe and hope to change a culture that has stubbornly
| been able to avoid being conquered by the major empires in world
| history. When you _really_ look at it, no major act of terrorism
| of the same scale was going to happen anyways. I mean really,
| mass shootings end up killing more people. And it 's not like the
| hijack an airliner strategy is going to work again.
|
| But here we are, 2+ Trillion burned and nothing to show for it.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has pulled off a hijackjng again. Has
| security really improved that much? Because listening to the
| comments here you'd think it was all farcical security theater.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| The real security was locking the door to the cockpit
| alongside passengers being unwilling to let some dude with a
| knife hijack a plane anymore. The rest of the changes are
| security theater.
| soperj wrote:
| The security theater does nothing. They installed pilot doors
| that could only be opened from the inside. Can't exactly high
| jack a plane with box cutters anymore can you?
| loonster wrote:
| Prior to 911, hijackers took over planes for ransom. 911
| was a zero day exploit. The opportunity to use hijacked
| planes as weapons ended with flight 93.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Locking cockpit doors and having the awareness that hijacking
| isn't a (mostly) nonviolent stunt is sound security, not
| theater.
|
| TSA (Thousands Standing Around) is much more effective as a
| jobs program than a security program in my estimation.
| belorn wrote:
| The primary security theater was the military personal that
| popped up around airports around 9/11 that carried guns but
| no ammunition because guns with ammunition could hurt people.
|
| The TSA checkpoint is mostly a security theater. It stops
| people who don't try to hide and people who are unable to
| think of a way to get past it. It also limit the amount of
| weapons that airline personal need to see so that when they
| see it they can assume ill intent.
|
| The "random" checks and blacklists seem to have mixed
| quality. According to some they actually worked when good
| investigators identified high risk people. According to other
| it was mostly just racism and personal vendettas. Hard to
| give it a definitive grade.
|
| Locked doors and strict policy against people getting access
| to the cockpit seems to have worked.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The security is defense in depth. There are now:
|
| - Background checks cross-references with photo ID before
| flying (e.g. the do not fly list)
|
| - Enhanced security screening (there's YouTube footage of a
| totally incompetent pat down of one of the 9-11 hijackers)
|
| - Locked and strengthened cockpit doors
|
| - A chance of an Air Marshal on a flight
|
| - The knowledge that passengers will fight back
|
| - Strict no-fly zones around sensitive areas like DC
| 1-more wrote:
| Two important things came out of 9/11: cockpit doors are
| closed and locked now, and people fight back against
| hijackers. In 1968-72 there was a skyjacking every 6 days[0]
| but they were extortion attempts or plots to get a free
| flight to Cuba or some such thing. We now think that the
| endgame of a hijacking is that the hijackers will turn the
| plane into a suicide bomb, and passengers know NOT to be
| cooperative. These are real security improvements to air
| travel.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking#1958-1979
| [deleted]
| hindsightbias wrote:
| OBL completely achieved his goal into trolling the west into
| a quagmire and got the US troops out of KSA within 16 months.
| Why would he need another hijacking?
| [deleted]
| Alupis wrote:
| I'm not certain there's _nothing_ to show for it.
|
| For starters... any group thinking about attacking the US on
| it's homeland will have to contemplate a 20+ year conflict
| afterwards.
|
| We also did educate a lot of people there, many of which are
| leaving the country right now for obvious reasons - but still,
| we did help a lot of people there.
|
| Lastly, the way we're throwing money around these days, $2
| Trillion is practically nothing when spread out over a 20 year
| period anyway.
|
| Maybe I'm just searching for the silver lining...
| zardo wrote:
| > We also did educate a lot of people there
|
| We also "canoed" a lot people there.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"any group thinking about attacking the US on it's homeland
| will have to contemplate a 20+ year conflict afterwards."
|
| I don't know how true this is, but I heard that Bin Laden's
| goal was to get the US mired in an extremely expensive and
| prolonged war of attrition. It's the same strategy that
| helped bring down the Soviet Union. It makes sense, at face
| value, to get a vastly more powerful adversary bogged down in
| such a war.
|
| >"Maybe I'm just searching for the silver lining..."
|
| I feel you. It's pretty disheartening.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And as sad as it is, bin Laden _completely won_ in that
| regard. The US and practically everyone else got so side
| tracked by Afghanistan that neither noticed the growing
| threat of Russia and China, plus local right wing people
| and parties were emboldened by an Islamophobic mindset in
| general (thus, in turn, leading Muslim communities into
| isolation instead of integration).
| asah wrote:
| Over those 20 years, the total US GDP was $300T [1], so $2T =
| 0.67% to move a war off our soil.
|
| [1] source: St Louis Fed:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _For starters... any group thinking about attacking the US
| on it 's homeland will have to contemplate a 20+ year
| conflict afterwards._
|
| The US didn't invade Saudi Arabia.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| KSA hasn't attacked us. That's like saying the US attacked
| the UK because some Americans financially and materially
| supported the IRA.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I mean, the US invaded Afghanistan for harboring
| terrorists and refusing to give up Bin Laden.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Afghanistan didn't attack us either. Neither did the
| Taliban.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The Taliban's big mistake was actively refusing to turn
| over OBL.
|
| The US's big mistake was not trying to make a back room
| deal with them to the tune of "we'll make you more secure
| than any south American tin-pot dictator so long as you
| make the kind of example out of Al-Qaeda that we can't
| make"
|
| If either of those things had went through it would have
| saved both parties 20yr of money, blood and associated
| bullshit.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| The Taliban explicitly harbored Osama Bin Laden. We
| should have pulled out after we killed him.
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| UBL planned to draw the US into a multi-decade war of
| attrition because he knew that was the only way to beat a
| power that strong.
|
| For all the people we "helped", a thousand more grew up to
| the sound of US drones shelling their extended family
| members.
|
| The "War on Terror" dwarves Vietnam as the US's greatest
| military failure, and is singularly responsible for it's
| crippling presence on the world stage today.
| sharken wrote:
| It's a sad state of affairs indeed.
|
| The lesson here is that you cannot help a Middle-east Muslim
| country to democracy, it is an impossible task.
|
| Even Turkey seems to be heading in the wrong direction these
| years.
| dogman144 wrote:
| > When you really look at it, no major act of terrorism of the
| same scale was going to happen anyways
|
| Why this is the case was a full court press on AQ across the
| globe by IC, and toppling the safety net in AFG was a (the)
| critical part of that occurring. It's a fairly lengthy
| operation to succinctly cite, but starting with the CIA'a CTC
| activities between '97 and '03 will cover it.
|
| It's also important to keep in context that after the Embassy
| bombings in Tanzania/Kenya in '98 (200 dead) another attack of
| the same scale was never going to happen again. And after the
| USS Cole (17 KIA plus a decommissioned Naval Destroyer),
| another attack at that scale was deemed unlikely. 9/11
| happened, and... all sourcing to a serious inability to
| directly target or gain Intel on AQ, which operated freely in
| AFG.
|
| So, the initial invasion was critical in that narrow sense. AQ
| was toppled and never recovered globally. Should we have
| stayed, or instead given it to a United Front or heavily
| empowered/armed/funded Karzai? To your point - probably the
| latter was a good option, 20 years and a lot of dead Americans
| later.
| krastanov wrote:
| Maybe I am just from a different cultural background, but I
| do not understand half of the abbreviations here. Could you
| help clarifying what you are saying?
| blendergeek wrote:
| AQ: Al-Qaeda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
|
| IC: Intelligence Community -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_community
|
| AFG: Afghanistan -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan
|
| CIA: Central Intelligence Agency -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency
|
| CTC: Counter Terrorism Center -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterterrorism_Center
|
| KIA: Killed in Action -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killed_in_action
| [deleted]
| SECProto wrote:
| Your comment uses too many acronyms to understand, I'm sure
| others here feel the same. I know that CIA is the US Central
| Intelligence Agency, and KIA means killed in action ... by
| context I'm pretty sure AQ is Al-Qaeda and AFG is for some
| reason an acronym for Afghanistan? But I have no idea what
| IC, CTC, or the USS Cole are. Is "United Front" an
| organization that would justify the capitalization, or do you
| mean a united front in general?
|
| Aside from that, what does an embassy bombing in
| Tanzania/Kenya have to do with Afghanistan or 9/11? Was it
| done by Al-Qaeda? And could you clarify or expand on most of
| the rest of your comment?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Aside from that, what does an embassy bombing in
| Tanzania/Kenya have to do with Afghanistan or 9/11? Was it
| done by Al-Qaeda?
|
| Yes, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole
| were carried out by al-Qaeda.
| dogman144 wrote:
| > It's a fairly lengthy operation to succinctly cite
|
| But also see other user's post below.
|
| In short, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda were on the map for a
| very long time, but no one listened.
|
| By the time 9/11 occurred, AQ was a global, well
| coordinated organization with a single underfunded agency
| (CIA) tracking it. The agency was largely forbidden from
| accessing the only spot Al Qaeda really aggregated:
| Afghanistan. If you can orient to a pre-Internet time, it
| makes sense how much (realized) risk this black box caused
| - embassy and US navy ship bombings, and 9/11. The United
| Front is another term for the Northern Alliance, a ~tribal
| group in northern AFG. It was the CIA's main access and
| information flow into AFG until 9/12. The state dept and
| official policy largely forbade interacting with them
| though. The leader of the UF who the CIA linked with
| starting back in the late 90s, guy named Massood, was
| assassinated by the Taliban/AQ on like 9/10 iirc (so days
| before 9/11).
|
| This all goes to say that the invasion of AFG was
| tremendously important, but staying there once AQ was gone
| maybe was not. There are fairly tragic records of July and
| early Sept 2001 briefings from the CIA to the President on
| the imminent threat actual.
|
| One way to start reading about this history:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofer_Black
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I can't help but feel that if we didn't also go into Iraq at
| roughly the same time there may have been more resources which
| could have drastically changed the outcome.
| dotcommand wrote:
| > that has stubbornly been able to avoid being conquered by the
| major empires in world history.
|
| Was reading Moby Dick the other day and came across this
| excerpt...
|
| 'Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United
| States.
|
| WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
|
| BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.'
|
| The more things change...
|
| > But here we are, 2+ Trillion burned and nothing to show for
| it.
|
| Other than another grateful nation basking in the glow of the
| democracy we've bestowed upon them. Mission accomplished.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| There was this illusion that the US was an unstoppable
| juggernaut. That image was damaged by the failures in
| Afghanistan/Iraq in middle and high school, followed by the GFC
| in college, and finally totally destroyed in the eyes of Gen Y
| and Z after Trump's election and the bungling of COVID and the
| second GFC as the generations try to start families/get their
| footing in the job market.
|
| Your theory while very intriguing is something I can't possibly
| see ever happening just due to the hubris that occurs when you
| think you are unbeatable.
|
| That is exactly what the sentiment was going into the war.
|
| I am reminded of this scene from 2004's Slacker Uprising. This
| woman reminds me of the MAGA people of today. That same hubris
| is what got us Trump and it probably won't go away until the
| country stops being the singular world superpower.
|
| [1]:https://youtu.be/Axk_8DV2GXM?t=3030
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This pullout is so incredibly hasty and poorly thought out. For
| weeks now, this has been a fast-moving disaster and the media
| coverage had been so limited until provincial capitals started
| falling. For those not aware, the first atrocity was that the US
| failed to think about all the Afghani allies who risked life to
| work with Americans, such as translators. While the US later
| scrambled to evacuate some of them (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
| 07/21/us/politics/afghanistan-i...), others were left to fend for
| themselves and faced brutal consequences like beheadings
| (https://nypost.com/2021/07/24/translator-who-worked-for-
| us-a...). For the last two weeks, the Taliban's militias have
| been systematically taking over one provincial capital after the
| next, as the Afghani government sees desertions from their
| uncommitted and relatively untrained military forces.
|
| The US really needs to reverse the pull out and think about what
| it means to cooperate with a people and nation build. Yes, there
| have been numerous past missteps and money wasted with little
| accountability - but nation building, particularly after a war,
| was always going to be expensive and time-consuming. Leaving the
| project halfway after all these sunk costs feels like a hasty PR
| move that is now going to turn into an absolutely disastrous
| legacy for Biden and for America. I'm glad to see the decision to
| send 3000 troops into Afghanistan
| (https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-middle-east-
| evacuations...), but am concerned that the US's commitment ends
| at evacuating embassies rather than supporting a nation that
| clearly needs help if we want a future ally in the region,
| instead of a future adversary. Let's not return to square one.
| adrr wrote:
| We've been nation building in Afghanistan for 20 years. It
| didn't work and we've failed to train a military capable of
| holding the country even after dumping hundreds of billions of
| dollars into it.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Have we really been managing that well though? I feel like we
| haven't made a great effort at this in a systematic way, with
| proper accountability of funds, and so forth. I also think
| this kind of effort may take more like 50 years (more than a
| one generation thing) to have a voting population and
| leadership that is ready to carry a stable nation forward.
| project2501a wrote:
| Growing poppies, helping with the heroin trade and killing
| civilians is not "nation building".
|
| The real solution would had been "do not invade"
| [deleted]
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