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"Our failure to understand [the Taliban's] dynamic has had consequences." There was no "failure to understand". This narrative that Afghanistan was a well-inte

"Our failure to understand [the Taliban's] dynamic has had consequences." There was no "failure to understand". This narrative that Afghanistan was a well-intentioned strategic/tactical failure is utterly misleading. The dynamic reality was very clear to every one involved (who cared to know), from servicepeople to 4-star generals, but the military's culture of careerism and corruption prevented these truths from being publicly acknowledged [1]. [1] - https://youtu.be/_bo7P_podIk https://youtu.be/_bo7P_podIk

guerrilla 5y ago
Please summarize your opinion of the dynamic instead of making us watch an hour long video that we don't even know we want to watch to find out.
- pphysch 5y ago
  I strongly recommend you listen to the two veterans describe the dynamic (try 1.5x speed). It is worth more than a 1000 hours of the bloviating punditry that crowds the airwaves right now. The gist: * On the ground: "rebuilding Afghanistan" was a total farce. Major Sjursen (Ret.) describes handing out bags of money to "local contractors" with virtually no oversight. He suspects that the Taliban were among the "contractors" and were benefiting immensely from the inept American policy. * The US military/political leadership is entirely motivated by optics and self-interest. Virtually every report had to have a positive outlook; publicly recognizing the reality on the ground was forbidden, including using words like "insurgency".
  - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    Bad management knows no bounds. If you don't accurately report the reality 'on the ground' then no actions will be approved from above to improve it.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      I wouldn't call it bad management. It was just realistic management. We knew by 2002 we weren't going to turn it into a shining pillar of democracy. The next 19yr were just people covering their asses and biding their time while the American public came around to the same conclusion. It's kind of like letting your direct reports screw off and job hunt on the job because your all getting laid off but the termination date is next quarter. Not great, but doesn't really matter to the big picture.
      - pphysch 5y ago
        This doesn't explain Obama's massive troop surge.
  - kodah 5y ago
    I'm a vet, so maybe you'll listen to me. I served in 2011-2012 over the course of what amounts to two deployments with a Marine Corps unit in Helmand and Nimroz provinces. > The US military/political leadership is entirely motivated by optics and self-interest. Virtually every report had to have a positive outlook; publicly recognizing the reality on the ground was forbidden, including using words like "insurgency". I would say this half-thought out. While it is true to some degree, the military is largely beholden to the DOD, State Department, various intelligence agencies and the President. Senior Leaders self interest is staying employed and that is done by appeasing their bosses. If you're going to blame military leaders it's always a good idea to ask, "Where'd they get their orders from?" That may sound like a trope, but it's not. When I went to Afghanistan I cannot tell you how many times we ran into bad intel on the ground. This makes operations run inefficiently, it causes accidents, it affects morale, etc... This literally because the military had a very difficult time, even then, understanding multi-celled non-central organizations like terrorist cells who were smart enough to insert bad intel where it needed to be. I heard the President at the time telling the American citizens that we were training troops in Afghanistan, all the while I kept seeing report after report saying that troops are being shot in the back on patrol. Sure, we're training them but they're smoking hash on post because four years of ANA or AP pay is equivalent to a dowery. Most of those people didn't want to be there to save their country, they were there to have a better life. Very different motivations and they certainly play a distinct difference in how you'll serve. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/11/six-us-soldiers-killed-afghan https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/11/six-us-soldier... We had an entirely ineffective rules of engagement that allowed the Taliban to run amuck as long as they didn't shoot at us. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/5/increase-in-battlefield-deaths-linked-to-new-rules/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/5/increase-in-... You can bet that some of the best generals of the time operated over at CENTCOM and were fired for being very real with the President [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Obama-fire-General-Mattis https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Obama-fire-General-Mattis]. Edit: I don't have any concrete thoughts on who to blame, be it generals, Presidents, or government officials. Maybe there is no blame. There's also room in my mind that the Taliban and other terrorist organizations are just formidable, well-equipped, and well-educated foes who use ideology as a viral weapon in areas that lack the defensive resources of opportunity and education to combat them. In purpose they are no different from cartels -- their main export is heroin (https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/inl/rls/rm/72241.htm https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/inl/rls/rm/72241.htm). It's not only how they fund themselves, but it's how they get rich and garner more power to enable their ideology.
seagullz 5y ago
That is indeed an eye opening discussion, goes beyond the soundbites and much of the charade.
wahern 5y ago
> prevented these truths from being publicly acknowledged To be honest, I'm shocked that people are deluding themselves that anybody ever thought otherwise. I can't ever remember reading an article in any mainstream news outlet that suggested nation building in Afghanistan was going well. The "peace deal" that Trump signed with the Taliban last year literally assumed the Taliban would quickly takeover the country once the U.S. withdrew, and I don't remember anybody seriously disputing that basic assumption. At best people just ignored thinking about the issue entirely; any American who gave it any serious consideration would have to fend off some serious cognitive dissonance to believe it was going well. This has been the state of affairs for 5, maybe 10 years, at least. But we live in an age of outrage culture where hoards of people seem to spontaneously develop amnesia whenever there's something to get upset over. The withdrawal seems to have been problematic, though because of rage culture and collective amnesia it's rather difficult to judge the magnitude of the logistical errs from the press. That said, the withdrawals were ongoing for years; the U.S. was down to 2500 personnel as long ago as January. Considering that so-called nation-building is an art that no polity has yet cracked, it's not surprising that the U.S. would also fail to foresee how spectacularly they fell short in their endeavor--i.e. that the Taliban would take mere days or even hours, rather than months, to control the country. And I fail to see how careerism in the military could be blamed for any of this, at least at a strategic level. Again, who the heck believed Afghanistan wasn't a lost cause? Nobody. The occupation was interminable because nobody had the political guts to pull out completely (especially considering rage culture), even though everybody knew full well that the U.S. could never commit more to get the job done (assuming anybody even knew what or how much it would take to get the job done, which in fact nobody did and there was hardly any pretense otherwise, at least not in the past several years).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DSingularity 5y ago
  The fact that we are willing to even call this “nation-building” speaks volumes to how deeply we are penned. Nation-building? Is that what we were doing in Afghanistan? We were there to build a democracy of institutions? Or were we there to pillage a country? Why don’t we “nation-build” Saudi Arabia? Oh. We are already extracting the wealth? Right.
objektif 5y ago
I salute you Sir for posting a video by Aaron. He is one of the most valuable journalists at the moment in my opinion.

guerrilla 5y ago

Please summarize your opinion of the dynamic instead of making us watch an hour long video that we don't even know we want to watch to find out.

pphysch 5y ago
I strongly recommend you listen to the two veterans describe the dynamic (try 1.5x speed). It is worth more than a 1000 hours of the bloviating punditry that crowds the airwaves right now. The gist: * On the ground: "rebuilding Afghanistan" was a total farce. Major Sjursen (Ret.) describes handing out bags of money to "local contractors" with virtually no oversight. He suspects that the Taliban were among the "contractors" and were benefiting immensely from the inept American policy. * The US military/political leadership is entirely motivated by optics and self-interest. Virtually every report had to have a positive outlook; publicly recognizing the reality on the ground was forbidden, including using words like "insurgency".
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Bad management knows no bounds. If you don't accurately report the reality 'on the ground' then no actions will be approved from above to improve it.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    I wouldn't call it bad management. It was just realistic management. We knew by 2002 we weren't going to turn it into a shining pillar of democracy. The next 19yr were just people covering their asses and biding their time while the American public came around to the same conclusion. It's kind of like letting your direct reports screw off and job hunt on the job because your all getting laid off but the termination date is next quarter. Not great, but doesn't really matter to the big picture.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      This doesn't explain Obama's massive troop surge.
- kodah 5y ago
  I'm a vet, so maybe you'll listen to me. I served in 2011-2012 over the course of what amounts to two deployments with a Marine Corps unit in Helmand and Nimroz provinces. > The US military/political leadership is entirely motivated by optics and self-interest. Virtually every report had to have a positive outlook; publicly recognizing the reality on the ground was forbidden, including using words like "insurgency". I would say this half-thought out. While it is true to some degree, the military is largely beholden to the DOD, State Department, various intelligence agencies and the President. Senior Leaders self interest is staying employed and that is done by appeasing their bosses. If you're going to blame military leaders it's always a good idea to ask, "Where'd they get their orders from?" That may sound like a trope, but it's not. When I went to Afghanistan I cannot tell you how many times we ran into bad intel on the ground. This makes operations run inefficiently, it causes accidents, it affects morale, etc... This literally because the military had a very difficult time, even then, understanding multi-celled non-central organizations like terrorist cells who were smart enough to insert bad intel where it needed to be. I heard the President at the time telling the American citizens that we were training troops in Afghanistan, all the while I kept seeing report after report saying that troops are being shot in the back on patrol. Sure, we're training them but they're smoking hash on post because four years of ANA or AP pay is equivalent to a dowery. Most of those people didn't want to be there to save their country, they were there to have a better life. Very different motivations and they certainly play a distinct difference in how you'll serve. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/11/six-us-soldiers-killed-afghan https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/11/six-us-soldier... We had an entirely ineffective rules of engagement that allowed the Taliban to run amuck as long as they didn't shoot at us. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/5/increase-in-battlefield-deaths-linked-to-new-rules/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/5/increase-in-... You can bet that some of the best generals of the time operated over at CENTCOM and were fired for being very real with the President [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Obama-fire-General-Mattis https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Obama-fire-General-Mattis]. Edit: I don't have any concrete thoughts on who to blame, be it generals, Presidents, or government officials. Maybe there is no blame. There's also room in my mind that the Taliban and other terrorist organizations are just formidable, well-equipped, and well-educated foes who use ideology as a viral weapon in areas that lack the defensive resources of opportunity and education to combat them. In purpose they are no different from cartels -- their main export is heroin (https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/inl/rls/rm/72241.htm https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/inl/rls/rm/72241.htm). It's not only how they fund themselves, but it's how they get rich and garner more power to enable their ideology.

seagullz 5y ago

That is indeed an eye opening discussion, goes beyond the soundbites and much of the charade.

wahern 5y ago

> prevented these truths from being publicly acknowledged To be honest, I'm shocked that people are deluding themselves that anybody ever thought otherwise. I can't ever remember reading an article in any mainstream news outlet that suggested nation building in Afghanistan was going well. The "peace deal" that Trump signed with the Taliban last year literally assumed the Taliban would quickly takeover the country once the U.S. withdrew, and I don't remember anybody seriously disputing that basic assumption. At best people just ignored thinking about the issue entirely; any American who gave it any serious consideration would have to fend off some serious cognitive dissonance to believe it was going well. This has been the state of affairs for 5, maybe 10 years, at least. But we live in an age of outrage culture where hoards of people seem to spontaneously develop amnesia whenever there's something to get upset over. The withdrawal seems to have been problematic, though because of rage culture and collective amnesia it's rather difficult to judge the magnitude of the logistical errs from the press. That said, the withdrawals were ongoing for years; the U.S. was down to 2500 personnel as long ago as January. Considering that so-called nation-building is an art that no polity has yet cracked, it's not surprising that the U.S. would also fail to foresee how spectacularly they fell short in their endeavor--i.e. that the Taliban would take mere days or even hours, rather than months, to control the country. And I fail to see how careerism in the military could be blamed for any of this, at least at a strategic level. Again, who the heck believed Afghanistan wasn't a lost cause? Nobody. The occupation was interminable because nobody had the political guts to pull out completely (especially considering rage culture), even though everybody knew full well that the U.S. could never commit more to get the job done (assuming anybody even knew what or how much it would take to get the job done, which in fact nobody did and there was hardly any pretense otherwise, at least not in the past several years).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DSingularity 5y ago
The fact that we are willing to even call this “nation-building” speaks volumes to how deeply we are penned. Nation-building? Is that what we were doing in Afghanistan? We were there to build a democracy of institutions? Or were we there to pillage a country? Why don’t we “nation-build” Saudi Arabia? Oh. We are already extracting the wealth? Right.

objektif 5y ago

I salute you Sir for posting a video by Aaron. He is one of the most valuable journalists at the moment in my opinion.