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The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to han

The US record in Afghanistan is arguably even more ridiculous (and psychotic) than in Iraq. We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) - although to be honest, the argument for doing the regime change op in Saudi Arabia was far more robust, as members of the Saudi government aided the hijackers and Saudi Royal family members were a key funding source. Everything since then has been ridiculous. Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban? Not that the Taliban got over $100 million from the USA in 1999-2001 for opium poppy eradication efforts, which were quite successful, although TAPI pipeline talks didn't go as well in this period. The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah. Lots of nightime raids, which only pissed off the local population and made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban without a fight this year. Didn't 'US leaders' learn that from Vietnam? If the locals all hate you they're not going to support your remotely installed puppet government. Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government... all that cash just went into Dubai bank accounts, didn't it? Or McMansions in Kabul. Gross blatant corruption (and the 'infrastructure projects' oh god... for a million bucks you get a chain of ten subcontractors backed up by one guy digging a ditch with a worn-out shovel... get used to it, that's coming here now). American foreign policy in the 21st century - what an absolute disaster. Reminiscent of say, France and Britain in the Middle East from oh 1945-1954. Similar long-term results are to be expected.

h2odragon 5y ago
> train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members "Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 IIRC there were complaints being published at least as far back as 2009 about that problem.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  People keep crapping on the Afghan Army, but it should be noted that the Afghan security forces suffered 65,000+ casualties officially (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Afghan_security_forces_fatality_reports_in_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Afghan_security_forces...). And some estimate that the number may be as high as 100,000. ----- In contrast, the US sent ~110,000 soldiers at its peak (2011 surge), and lost ~7000. The Afghan Army took the bulk of the attacks by any reasonable analysis.
  - photochemsyn 5y ago
    But is that 'official death count' any more reliable than the total count of 350,000? Let's say I'm a grossly corrupt Afghan general, and I'm diverting pay and equipment money, say 50% of the total, to my private bank accounts. Now someone asks me to account for the smallish number of soldiers in my barracks. "Oh sir, we have suffered great casualties in our fight against the terrorists, here are the records."
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      > But is that 'official death count' any more reliable than the total count of 350,000? No. Because the Afghan security forces would be lying to try to improve their morale. If anything, the official death count is almost certainly an underestimate. No army likes to admit that their death rates are in the 25%+ level, when you admit such a thing, you won't be able to find recruits. ------ Besides, we paid the Afghans on number of soldiers on payroll. Not on number of deaths. So the number they were corrupt on was #-of-soldiers.
- bserge 5y ago
  The ghost army in LOTR was cool, but that's fiction. Doesn't work that well irl, I guess.
hh3k0 5y ago
> We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) That would _not_ be a good justification to wage a war, but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction – later found to be non-existent. 215 Republicans and 82 Democrats voted for this. They paved the way for a war of aggression… and I seem to remember that Americans have previously hanged foreign politicians for precisely that. Edit: Misread above comment and thought he was talking about Iraq. Point still stands, though.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is off by about 1.5 years.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pan69 5y ago
    > After 9/11, the Bush administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at the same time. Not only Osama bin Laden."[90] President Bush spoke with Rumsfeld on 21 November and instructed him to conduct a confidential review of OPLAN 1003, the war plan for invading Iraq.[91] Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks, the commander of US Central Command, on 27 November to go over the plans. A record of the meeting includes the question "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a US–Iraq War.[92][93] The rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11 has been refuted, as there was no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[94] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
    - bserge 5y ago
      The atrocious English makes me question this Wiki entry.
dumdumdumdum 5y ago
> Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism That's not entirely true. They wanted to negotiate his extradition. As any sovereign nation would. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
- tuyguntn 5y ago
  Exactly! US have an excuse all the time, surprisingly, people who represent educated segment don't either want to look to other side, I remember Taliban tried to have a negotiation with US, they tried to get their voice heard in western media, but failed, because everyone was blind sided, no one wanted to hear them and US anyway launched attack, 20 years later, everything is even more fucked up over there. Now we should be really worried if there are other extremist groups are training and planning another attack soon, this time everyone would know US don't have a justification and obviously will fail again. (I don't remember if US won any war recently? Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan all are in trouble, all of the wars are started wrongly)
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Given the official statements of the Taliban (ie: that Osama Bin Laden didn't cause 9/11), what exactly is your proposal? Taliban were protecting Bin Laden, period. Their official stance on the subject is clearly false, and they were willing to go to war to provide sanctuary to Bin Laden. The main worry was that any such delays at this point would give Bin Laden more room to get away (and Bin Laden did escape: all the way to Pakistan). So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying enough time for him to hide with their false diplomacy. We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located, blown up, and dismantled). Maybe these bases will return now that we've left Afghanistan, but we at least rendered them unable to train new terrorists for the last 20 years or so (and the new Taliban regime officially doesn't want to sanction any such training sites anymore. They've got an ISIS-K problem because of it too)
1cvmask 5y ago
The Taliban did offer Bin Laden and the Bush administration had rejected it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te... Bombing small non-white countries is part of the Ledeen Doctrine and this would fit that bill. "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,"
P-ala-din 5y ago
> Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism If we put in mind what we know post hoc about the torture and inhumane interrogation techniques used in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, wouldn't you agree that it's reasonable to assume that there was a high risk of torture? and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block extradition. In fact, let's take it even a step further in light of the fabrication of evidence seen in Iraq. The general atmosphere of hate at the time. not to mention that we now know that bin Laden not only was not tried but was thrown in a bag with the fish. How can we be so sure that he would have had received a fair trial? How would you even find an unbiased jury[1]? Do we deem it ok to extradite someone to a place with a high risk of torture and unfair trial? [1] - this is a rhetorical question but I'm actually curious how would one find such a jury that hasn't already made its mind?
- prepend 5y ago
  > and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block extradition. Maybe for blocking from the UK to US, but Afghanistan legally tortured/tortures so not sure why they would care about that regarding extradition.
- midasuni 5y ago
  If that were the real situation then the taliban could have taken Bin Laden into custody and hand him over for trial in a neutral country (say the Netherlands alike Lockerbie trial, or somewhere like China or India)
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    The Taliban offered to cooperate in turning Bin Laden over to another country. The US refused.
    - jay3ss 5y ago
      Do you have a source for this? Sounds like an interesting read
GoodJokes 5y ago
To your first paragraph, there is no ethically sound reason to invade another country. That is where these conversations should begin and end. It also has the added benefit now of not just being ethically correct, but economically correct when it comes to the interest of a nation state.
kodah 5y ago
> The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah. This is a pretty common misunderstanding by civilians. Special forces come in tiers and usually they're designated for certain kinds of work. It doesn't mean they're "best of the best", just special training that may or may not be useful in a place like Afghanistan. Historically they're used for training foreign fighters. From what I read in this article, this looks like work that line companies should have been doing. > Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government... I don't think that money went any conspicuous. I served in 2012, when a lot of that ANA training and colocation was going on. You're absolutely right that it was a failure. The problem was that the President was telling the American people things were going well, when in reality troops were getting shot in the back on patrol by their counterparts, people were deserting post while high on hash, and most ANA were paid over four years the equivalent of a dowery. > Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban? This was surprising to me when I was in country, but I get it. Most of these dudes are the equivalent of governors and own their own armies. They just didn't want to follow the Talibans rules, so "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Quite complicated, but I don't know how it'd be different.
justicezyx 5y ago
> made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban without a fight this year. The most ridiculous I saw from your post: A reasonable citizen, who saw from the very beginning the ridiculousness of the whole thing, in the end, seems to suggest the whole thing should not end so abruptly?
celloductor 5y ago
you can't justify going to war with a country just because they refuse to extradite an individual. that is what a bully does.

h2odragon 5y ago

> train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members "Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 IIRC there were complaints being published at least as far back as 2009 about that problem.

dragontamer 5y ago
People keep crapping on the Afghan Army, but it should be noted that the Afghan security forces suffered 65,000+ casualties officially (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Afghan_security_forces_fatality_reports_in_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Afghan_security_forces...). And some estimate that the number may be as high as 100,000. ----- In contrast, the US sent ~110,000 soldiers at its peak (2011 surge), and lost ~7000. The Afghan Army took the bulk of the attacks by any reasonable analysis.
- photochemsyn 5y ago
  But is that 'official death count' any more reliable than the total count of 350,000? Let's say I'm a grossly corrupt Afghan general, and I'm diverting pay and equipment money, say 50% of the total, to my private bank accounts. Now someone asks me to account for the smallish number of soldiers in my barracks. "Oh sir, we have suffered great casualties in our fight against the terrorists, here are the records."
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > But is that 'official death count' any more reliable than the total count of 350,000? No. Because the Afghan security forces would be lying to try to improve their morale. If anything, the official death count is almost certainly an underestimate. No army likes to admit that their death rates are in the 25%+ level, when you admit such a thing, you won't be able to find recruits. ------ Besides, we paid the Afghans on number of soldiers on payroll. Not on number of deaths. So the number they were corrupt on was #-of-soldiers.
bserge 5y ago
The ghost army in LOTR was cool, but that's fiction. Doesn't work that well irl, I guess.

hh3k0 5y ago

> We went in with a pretty good justification (Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism) That would _not_ be a good justification to wage a war, but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction – later found to be non-existent. 215 Republicans and 82 Democrats voted for this. They paved the way for a war of aggression… and I seem to remember that Americans have previously hanged foreign politicians for precisely that. Edit: Misread above comment and thought he was talking about Iraq. Point still stands, though.

dragontamer 5y ago
> but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is off by about 1.5 years.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pan69 5y ago
  > After 9/11, the Bush administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at the same time. Not only Osama bin Laden."[90] President Bush spoke with Rumsfeld on 21 November and instructed him to conduct a confidential review of OPLAN 1003, the war plan for invading Iraq.[91] Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks, the commander of US Central Command, on 27 November to go over the plans. A record of the meeting includes the question "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a US–Iraq War.[92][93] The rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11 has been refuted, as there was no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[94] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
  - bserge 5y ago
    The atrocious English makes me question this Wiki entry.

dumdumdumdum 5y ago

> Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism That's not entirely true. They wanted to negotiate his extradition. As any sovereign nation would. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

tuyguntn 5y ago
Exactly! US have an excuse all the time, surprisingly, people who represent educated segment don't either want to look to other side, I remember Taliban tried to have a negotiation with US, they tried to get their voice heard in western media, but failed, because everyone was blind sided, no one wanted to hear them and US anyway launched attack, 20 years later, everything is even more fucked up over there. Now we should be really worried if there are other extremist groups are training and planning another attack soon, this time everyone would know US don't have a justification and obviously will fail again. (I don't remember if US won any war recently? Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan all are in trouble, all of the wars are started wrongly)
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Given the official statements of the Taliban (ie: that Osama Bin Laden didn't cause 9/11), what exactly is your proposal? Taliban were protecting Bin Laden, period. Their official stance on the subject is clearly false, and they were willing to go to war to provide sanctuary to Bin Laden. The main worry was that any such delays at this point would give Bin Laden more room to get away (and Bin Laden did escape: all the way to Pakistan). So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying enough time for him to hide with their false diplomacy. We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located, blown up, and dismantled). Maybe these bases will return now that we've left Afghanistan, but we at least rendered them unable to train new terrorists for the last 20 years or so (and the new Taliban regime officially doesn't want to sanction any such training sites anymore. They've got an ISIS-K problem because of it too)

1cvmask 5y ago

The Taliban did offer Bin Laden and the Bush administration had rejected it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te... Bombing small non-white countries is part of the Ledeen Doctrine and this would fit that bill. "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,"

P-ala-din 5y ago

> Taliban refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his central role in 9/11 terrorism If we put in mind what we know post hoc about the torture and inhumane interrogation techniques used in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, wouldn't you agree that it's reasonable to assume that there was a high risk of torture? and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block extradition. In fact, let's take it even a step further in light of the fabrication of evidence seen in Iraq. The general atmosphere of hate at the time. not to mention that we now know that bin Laden not only was not tried but was thrown in a bag with the fish. How can we be so sure that he would have had received a fair trial? How would you even find an unbiased jury[1]? Do we deem it ok to extradite someone to a place with a high risk of torture and unfair trial? [1] - this is a rhetorical question but I'm actually curious how would one find such a jury that hasn't already made its mind?

prepend 5y ago
> and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block extradition. Maybe for blocking from the UK to US, but Afghanistan legally tortured/tortures so not sure why they would care about that regarding extradition.
midasuni 5y ago
If that were the real situation then the taliban could have taken Bin Laden into custody and hand him over for trial in a neutral country (say the Netherlands alike Lockerbie trial, or somewhere like China or India)
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  The Taliban offered to cooperate in turning Bin Laden over to another country. The US refused.
  - jay3ss 5y ago
    Do you have a source for this? Sounds like an interesting read

GoodJokes 5y ago

To your first paragraph, there is no ethically sound reason to invade another country. That is where these conversations should begin and end. It also has the added benefit now of not just being ethically correct, but economically correct when it comes to the interest of a nation state.

kodah 5y ago

> The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah. This is a pretty common misunderstanding by civilians. Special forces come in tiers and usually they're designated for certain kinds of work. It doesn't mean they're "best of the best", just special training that may or may not be useful in a place like Afghanistan. Historically they're used for training foreign fighters. From what I read in this article, this looks like work that line companies should have been doing. > Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government... I don't think that money went any conspicuous. I served in 2012, when a lot of that ANA training and colocation was going on. You're absolutely right that it was a failure. The problem was that the President was telling the American people things were going well, when in reality troops were getting shot in the back on patrol by their counterparts, people were deserting post while high on hash, and most ANA were paid over four years the equivalent of a dowery. > Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban? This was surprising to me when I was in country, but I get it. Most of these dudes are the equivalent of governors and own their own armies. They just didn't want to follow the Talibans rules, so "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Quite complicated, but I don't know how it'd be different.

justicezyx 5y ago

> made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban without a fight this year. The most ridiculous I saw from your post: A reasonable citizen, who saw from the very beginning the ridiculousness of the whole thing, in the end, seems to suggest the whole thing should not end so abruptly?

celloductor 5y ago

you can't justify going to war with a country just because they refuse to extradite an individual. that is what a bully does.