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Read the last century of history of Afghanistan and it becomes clear that the war was lost before it ever began. It was not just the Soviets before America tha

Read the last century of history of Afghanistan and it becomes clear that the war was lost before it ever began. It was not just the Soviets before America that failed to reform the ways of rural Afghanis. The Soviets came into Afghanistan in large part because the Afghani PDPA was also failing to do the same. Before the PDPA took power from Daoud in the Saur Revolution, Daoud was himself trying and failing to impose progressive reform on the same people. And preceding Daoud was Mohammed Zahir Shah, also a progressive reformer, who failed to make much of any lasting impact despite forty years of good effort. Zahir came to power after his father, Nadir Shah was assassinated; Nadir Shah had himself acquired power in the first place by putting down a rebellion of Afghani tribesmen, but obviously that had no lasting impact either. And that rebellion was itself precipitated by Amanullah Khan's failed efforts to reform Afghanistan. The arrogance of Americans to think their invasion would succeed where previous invasions and native reformers had failed is staggering. Even if America were to fight for reform for forty years, as Zahir Shah did, why should anybody believe it would make a lasting difference? 20 years made no lasting difference, and another 20 wouldn't either. You can suppress afghani tribesmen, you can send their children to universities and crush those who openly oppose you, but as soon as you leave (and you will eventually leave) they will go right back to the way they prefer to live. This has been demonstrated again and again.

anonymoushn 5y ago
This is an informative comment, but did you reply to the wrong parent comment?
- MichaelGroves 5y ago
  I guess my response was prompted mostly by this: > Leaving Afghanistan (to fail) has been a long time coming. Obama wanted to do it, Trump wanted to do it, Biden decided to pull/had to pull/tripped over the cord. I don't think blaming the failure on Obama, Trump, or Biden is fair. Even blaming the failure on the way Bush handled the invasion after it began is unfair, since I think it was doomed to fail from the very moment of conception. I don't think it ever stood a chance of working in the first place. Anyway, if you'd like to know more, there are interesting parallels between the Taliban's resurgence in the past few days, and the rise of the Saqqawists during the Afghan Civil War in the 1920s. Amanullah Khan's government and armed forces were struggling against a rebellion of tribal forces (the Shinwari) who opposed Amanullah's attempts at reform, particularly wrt the status of women. When Amanullah's forces were preoccupied with fighting the Shinwari, the Saqqawists used that opportunity to attack Kabul, which Amanullah's forces surrendered to the Saqqawists with almost no fight (sound familiar?)
  - tomp 5y ago
    My point is that I / other people / mainstream media are not blaming the failure of the invasion on anyone. That's a massive strawman. We all agree that the idea was doomed from the start, a war fought under false pretenses, which would have failed in its nominal goal even if it succeeded (terrorists would have just moved from Afghanistan to e.g. Syria, which they did anyways). The retreat itself was a massive failure, and that's to (at least partially) blame on the current leadership.
    - MichaelGroves 5y ago
      Ah fair enough, I think we agree in these regards. America's departure from Afghanistan was ungraceful to say the least. I think it was doomed to end up that way from the very beginning, but even so, America might have done more to evacuate western sympathizers before letting control of the country fall back under the Taliban.
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        My original point is similar to your response, in that the very myopia that led us to invade is also preventing us from planning the exit better. The Military wanted us to believe that "just a few more years" would prop up the regime, so they cannot come clean saying we cannot pull out without a proper evacuation because that would undermine the "just a few more years" argument.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > My point is that I / other people / mainstream media are not blaming the failure of the invasion on anyone Yes, that's the problem. > The retreat itself was a massive failure The retreat was a massive failure as a direct consequence of the occupation being so massive of a failure that the previous administration freed a Taliban leader for the express purpose of signing a surrender to the Taliban, and that the Afghan government and Army, unlike their South Vietnamese equivalents that stood and fought for years after the general US withdrawal and even as the PAVN fought into Saigon, collapsed swiftly, with the President fleeing the country and the army offering no resistance to the Taliban. The idea that you can separate them is nonsense propagated by people still in denial about the totality of the failure of the occupation.

anonymoushn 5y ago

This is an informative comment, but did you reply to the wrong parent comment?

MichaelGroves 5y ago
I guess my response was prompted mostly by this: > Leaving Afghanistan (to fail) has been a long time coming. Obama wanted to do it, Trump wanted to do it, Biden decided to pull/had to pull/tripped over the cord. I don't think blaming the failure on Obama, Trump, or Biden is fair. Even blaming the failure on the way Bush handled the invasion after it began is unfair, since I think it was doomed to fail from the very moment of conception. I don't think it ever stood a chance of working in the first place. Anyway, if you'd like to know more, there are interesting parallels between the Taliban's resurgence in the past few days, and the rise of the Saqqawists during the Afghan Civil War in the 1920s. Amanullah Khan's government and armed forces were struggling against a rebellion of tribal forces (the Shinwari) who opposed Amanullah's attempts at reform, particularly wrt the status of women. When Amanullah's forces were preoccupied with fighting the Shinwari, the Saqqawists used that opportunity to attack Kabul, which Amanullah's forces surrendered to the Saqqawists with almost no fight (sound familiar?)
- tomp 5y ago
  My point is that I / other people / mainstream media are not blaming the failure of the invasion on anyone. That's a massive strawman. We all agree that the idea was doomed from the start, a war fought under false pretenses, which would have failed in its nominal goal even if it succeeded (terrorists would have just moved from Afghanistan to e.g. Syria, which they did anyways). The retreat itself was a massive failure, and that's to (at least partially) blame on the current leadership.
  - MichaelGroves 5y ago
    Ah fair enough, I think we agree in these regards. America's departure from Afghanistan was ungraceful to say the least. I think it was doomed to end up that way from the very beginning, but even so, America might have done more to evacuate western sympathizers before letting control of the country fall back under the Taliban.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      My original point is similar to your response, in that the very myopia that led us to invade is also preventing us from planning the exit better. The Military wanted us to believe that "just a few more years" would prop up the regime, so they cannot come clean saying we cannot pull out without a proper evacuation because that would undermine the "just a few more years" argument.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > My point is that I / other people / mainstream media are not blaming the failure of the invasion on anyone Yes, that's the problem. > The retreat itself was a massive failure The retreat was a massive failure as a direct consequence of the occupation being so massive of a failure that the previous administration freed a Taliban leader for the express purpose of signing a surrender to the Taliban, and that the Afghan government and Army, unlike their South Vietnamese equivalents that stood and fought for years after the general US withdrawal and even as the PAVN fought into Saigon, collapsed swiftly, with the President fleeing the country and the army offering no resistance to the Taliban. The idea that you can separate them is nonsense propagated by people still in denial about the totality of the failure of the occupation.