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>It's hilarious how you can simultaneously make 10 years of Afghan and Soviet fighting a secondary act in this supposedly American performance. Just proves my p

>It's hilarious how you can simultaneously make 10 years of Afghan and Soviet fighting a secondary act in this supposedly American performance. Just proves my point. You're making his by ignoring the fact that the Afghans were trained and armed by US to fight the Soviets. That training remains, just who they're fighting has changed.

varjag 6y ago
The vast majority of Mujahedeen never underwent US training. Most of their small arms (those that didn't originally float in the always militant tribes) were provided by Pakistan and China. Also, becoming a half competent combatant is not like getting a PhD, more a function of you surviving your first few encounters. The world does not revolve around America, people were able to fight and kill each other well before the CIA was formed.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  Is all the combat training the US military gives its own grunts and leaders not effective at making the US military more formidable? Didn’t these mujahadeen stick around to train the next generation of soldiers? Aren’t there consistent conflict in the Middle East to harden that kind of training (eg Chechnya)? Aren’t there mercenary opportunities to deploy and evolve that training? Whether they would have developed it on their own is unclear but the US didn’t develop that knowledge on their own either, instead synthesizing it from experience of Allies during WWII and likely observing other insurgencies and criminal enterprises they helped back. To me the playbook is the same “drug” but way more potent and mass produced and perhaps the first to market in this distributable form.
  - varjag 6y ago
    Mujahideen force was never near the level of the U.S. military in basic training, and they suffered heavy losses even against the conscript Soviet army. Still that gets you rather far if you are motivated and fighting a war of ambushes on home turf. If the US training was all it is hyped to be, surely the US-trained ANA could have rooted the Taliban by now, even without American help.

varjag 6y ago

The vast majority of Mujahedeen never underwent US training. Most of their small arms (those that didn't originally float in the always militant tribes) were provided by Pakistan and China. Also, becoming a half competent combatant is not like getting a PhD, more a function of you surviving your first few encounters. The world does not revolve around America, people were able to fight and kill each other well before the CIA was formed.

vlovich123 6y ago
Is all the combat training the US military gives its own grunts and leaders not effective at making the US military more formidable? Didn’t these mujahadeen stick around to train the next generation of soldiers? Aren’t there consistent conflict in the Middle East to harden that kind of training (eg Chechnya)? Aren’t there mercenary opportunities to deploy and evolve that training? Whether they would have developed it on their own is unclear but the US didn’t develop that knowledge on their own either, instead synthesizing it from experience of Allies during WWII and likely observing other insurgencies and criminal enterprises they helped back. To me the playbook is the same “drug” but way more potent and mass produced and perhaps the first to market in this distributable form.
- varjag 6y ago
  Mujahideen force was never near the level of the U.S. military in basic training, and they suffered heavy losses even against the conscript Soviet army. Still that gets you rather far if you are motivated and fighting a war of ambushes on home turf. If the US training was all it is hyped to be, surely the US-trained ANA could have rooted the Taliban by now, even without American help.