> 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

> 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.