It’s always enlightening to observe when corporate media organs temporarily transition from their standard posture of shrill, nonstop, apocalyptic threat-inflation about the supposed existential danger of conservative Republicans and find a different, less overtly partisan drum to beat for a while. That’s certainly what has been happening in the past several days, as the longest war in US history finally comes to a preposterously overdue close. Significantly more money, adjusted for inflation, was
I tend to agree. After having served there myself in different decades, I can tell you in absolute terms that there was NEVER ever a remotely reasonable Afghan National Army. NEVER. Not for one minute of any day since they tried to create it. This fact was obvious to everyone there. It was an “in the open secret” akin to the emperors new clothes.
There was never going to be an end that resembled a “win” for American media. Not after 20 years, or 50, or 100 years of occupation would there have been a scene of calm at Kabul Airport. In fact I dare say that after 50 years of occupation there would have been an entire generation of graft and corruption that would have forced even more of those morons to try to fly back to American while clinging to the outside of an airplane. And that Afghani that thought that was possible - he was likely in charge of a Battalion of ANA. Just saying - not the brain trust.
However. We should not be I a position where we have plane fulls of Afghanis and there’s some 5000 Americans still somewhere in the country. This is a problem. And this is where I have issues with the execution. And that is a genuine complaint - we can’t have stopped the panic an the madness that unfolded in respect to the locals. But we absolutely could have managed our civil serve to exit much better. It doesn’t make sense. But to your point, we shouldn’t be surprised by the complete incompetence of our leadership elites that failed so utterly in the conduct of the war, only to expect the to suddenly become serious people and conduct an amazing pull-out. It was therefore built in that the same Americans morons - anyone with stars on their shoulders - would be shocked by all this and totally unprepared. After all, they 300k strong ANA that they told us was ready and stalwart had also disappeared like rice paper in water.
Patraeus…*rolls eyes. That cat’s claim to fame was the amazing, Alexander the Great-like tactic of outnumbering your opponent on the battlefield. The only thing more surreal than being called a genius for understand day 1 infantry basic training tactics is that all the other Rumsfeld aligned Generals were against it! “Wait…more good guys to go against the bad guys? Nope, can’t see how that would possibly fix any of this.”
You know what’s bizarre? Keen looks exactly the same now as he I’d when I was a private I the 101 back in the early 90s. Every time I see that guy on Fox it creeps me out. That guy is. Not alive. It’s not natural.
Anyway…
Great read, and spot on. This, what we’re seeing, was ALWAYS the outcome. We should have left at the beginning of 2005. You could drive around Helmand back then and not get shot at. In fact Gen. Olson (I believe it was Gen. Olson - another dick-bag) that claimed that the Taliban had been defeated and no longer presented a threat inside Afghanistan; that everything was now a border control issue - keeping the Taliban out as they tried to cause trouble from their safe haven in Pakistan. We should have left then. Kabul would have been bewildered and curious, but doubtful we’d have seen this madness. Democratization hadn’t become a goal at that point.
99% agreement on the need to end this, as early as 2004ish. President Biden gets props for pulling out. He also deserves all the criticism he's getting for getting on TV and telling voters the Afghans will be fine. $2.4 Trillion apparently gets you an army whose tanks only have a reverse gear. There is not a single consultant, advisor or mirror fogging person in WA involved with training the Afghans that supported Joe's POV on the Afghan army.
President Biden would have been better off with a Trump truth bomb. "Look, we've wasted over $2 trillion killing people and training an army that can't refuel their own vehicles. Time to move on, let the Afghan's sort this out. We will have an orderly departure, but we aren't going to announce a date because that gives the enemy too much info. In the meantime, we will process immigration papers for those who worked with us in country" Meanwhile, no Americans "died" during that time period. Joe took over and then this? He was supposed to be the "competent" one. Had Trump supervised this debacle he would have been impeached, successfully. Both Dems and Repubs would have hoisted him with his petard.
Instead, we got b.s. served on gluten free toast with kale. The failure here isn't withdrawing, it's the sheer incompetence of the withdrawal. The so-called, "trust me, I have a degree in this" and "follow the science" crowd showed they literally are bereft of competence. They gave up an airbase that could've provided cover for the retreat. Meanwhile, the President and his staff are on vacation. After hearing weekly complaints of the previous President playing golf, what could be worse? Oh, right, a President who literally needs a nap while Afghans hang from airplanes in a a pell mell sprint for safety.
I generally agree with your assessment on the need to just get out, but this...it's about as competent as the Jan 6 "insurrection" debacle. Who was in charge of capitol protection? When did they call? Why wasn't anyone aware of the crowd? Why did the speaker refuse the Guard? Why was capitol police asleep? Why, on one side of the building, were people breaking down doors and on the other side, being guided in by the police for a stroll, then asked everyone to leave nicely...and they did! Yep...that's the current state of American govt and bureaucracy. And these are the people one is supposed to trust? Buffoonery.
Since you asked, presumably (I say presumably because Trump's orders, wishes, and desires were routinely #resisted from inside the government) civilians and equipment would have been evacuated from Afghanistan months before the troop withdrawal.
That's not what happened here and that's why Joe Biden is a total fuckup. You can pretend that it wouldn't have been different with Trump, but it would have. The Taliban wouldn't have our equipment.
Trump also wouldn't have loaded up C-130s with Afghans BEFORE evacuating ALL American civilians.
We "trained" the Afghani army for 20 years. If they refused to fight against the Taliban after we left, so be it. It didn't have to go this way, but it did because of one doddering old dementia patient.
I don't think there was ever a simple pro-war/anti-war dichotomy with respect to Afghanistan. Nearly everyone supported going in there to get the guy who plotted 9/11, but then there were tactical errors that allowed that guy to escape to Pakistan, and we were left with a seat of government to either defend or turn back over to the people who harbored him in the first place and desired to turn the clock back in the country by 13 centuries. In retrospect, the right answer was to yes, turn that government back over to the people who harbored him in the first place and who desired to run the clock back by 13 centuries, but that was never going to be an easy thing to do.
That said, I do not buy that it would've been impossible to evacuate our friends and military hardware before withdrawing. Maybe it points to the lack of civilian control over the military-industrial complex in that it would've clearly been logistically possible, but not with our own military throwing up roadblacks at every turn. That's probably the biggest outrage of the whole things, the MIC is self-evidently rogue and there's nothing any President, Democrat or Republican, can do about it.
I'm glad we are out but there must be something in-between total cluster fuck and an orderly withdrawal. The cluster fuck option involves sending 5000 more troops back in just to help with the evacuations that they didn't plan for. That seems noteworthy to me.
The same group of incompetents are now turning inward, because the maneuvers outward, all over the world, are starting to crumble. We in the school business have a saying about incompetent administrators in the bad neighborhood school like the one in which I work: "If you can't control the students, control the teachers." This is what we're seeing now. As the American Empire implodes, we're getting 'vaccine passports', 'mask mandates', and other assorted control freak decisions for something that if you're under 65 you've a 99.9 percent chance of survival. It's all so tiresome and ridiculous. I wish I were one of the sophisticated people who can sit unmasked in a group of hundreds, and have a big birthday bash. But no. NYC is gearing up to ask me personal medical information that 18 months ago would have been unthinkable, and had the prog ACLU types screaming bloody murder. I think I picked the wrong 'unsophisticated' parents.
As Greenwald has noted, the eye of Sauron is turning inward, as they've lost control of the other spots. COVID!!! is the wedge, and the pattern of incompetence so ably spoken of here by MT is the playbook now.
Wear a mask, even if you're vaxxed. Covid is a thing. Stay safe.
The mainstream media is having a meltdown that a war is ending and I hope the woke progressive nitwits are paying attention. "Orange man BAD ... but War GOOD! "
There were SO MANY parallels between America's Vietnam and Afghanistan adventures I don't understand why anyone is surprised, let alone outraged, the fall of Kabul resembled the fall of Saigon.
I appreciate your perspective on most things. But I have to say "Bullshit" on the idea that Biden is standing up to anyone. He is, and always has been, a tool used by the Oligarchy to convince the plebes that there is "someone" on their side, even though flawed.
I'm pushing Rainer Shea's interpretation of the events. It was important enough for me to sign up for a monthly subscription, so I'd appreciate it if you took the time to consider what he has to say.
I agree with almost all of this. Where I disagree is with the end game. We should not have drawn the armed forces down to almost nothing until all American civilians were evacuated. We had a moral obligation to those Afghanis who worked with American forces and the embassy to get those who wanted out evacuated, whether to a third country or the US. Once these tasks were done, then draw the forces down. Instead we reduced forces to a minimal number, and abandoned multiple bases, while there were likely 10 to 20 thousand US citizens still in country, and possibly more afghanis than that who need to be airlifted. Abandoning Bagram is particularly questionable, as it WAS a secure air base within a short flying distance from Kabul. The shortcomings of this withdrawal are amplified by a State Dept notice yesterday or the day before. While something like 10,000 US nationals were then still in Kabul, State sent notice to some to travel to the airport as flights were coming available. But the notice specifically advised that they were on their own getting to the airport from a security stand point. That's just flabergasting! No way we should have let this happen when the situation could have been relatively more secure simply by keeping more forces there for a couple more weeks. You note that no Americans have yet died. Certainly Afghanis have as the news repeatedly showed. If no Americans die it will be a minor miracle.
I completely agree we needed to end this farce of a war. But the drawdown and withdrawal has been handled with breathtaking incompetence. Just because Biden carried out the withdrawal where his two predecessors failed to, does not excuse him from responsibility to do it with the skill we should expect from the commander in chief. He failed.
Thoughts on President Biden's ability to weather the storm? Institutional support? Trump was hurt badly and ultimately brought to heel for what Biden actually did. I think a lot of people are in shock that it happened and it was Biden.
Does anyone think that there will be an inquiry into this 20 year catastrophe? I look at the January 6 insurrection....do you think anything like that, or even larger, can happen?
Or is Afghanistan too bi-partisan and involving military big-shots, etc etc for any true inquiry to take place?
So, 5,6,7 thousand troops are back in to fix things, I guess. This "leaving" has actually tripled our military presence. Let's see if we do actually leave.
The hubris of America, the indispensable nation cavorting around the world making a mess. I’m a Canadian we are much better than you because we are completely feckless and ineffectual - we do less damage that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I like America, you are a can do nation (Canada is a can’t do nation) but there is so much economic incentive for killing people. Your economy is predicated on military spending and if you don’t drop those bombs on someone you don’t need to order more. Afghan cavemen were the perfect foil: oppressing women, banishing music, brutal executions. It was such an easy sell that it lasted 20 years.
You guys will find someone else to kill, don’t fret, somebody will affront your liberal doctrines and the media will rally the nation to charge off to bring freedom (death) to some meaningless corner of the world.
Well…
I tend to agree. After having served there myself in different decades, I can tell you in absolute terms that there was NEVER ever a remotely reasonable Afghan National Army. NEVER. Not for one minute of any day since they tried to create it. This fact was obvious to everyone there. It was an “in the open secret” akin to the emperors new clothes.
There was never going to be an end that resembled a “win” for American media. Not after 20 years, or 50, or 100 years of occupation would there have been a scene of calm at Kabul Airport. In fact I dare say that after 50 years of occupation there would have been an entire generation of graft and corruption that would have forced even more of those morons to try to fly back to American while clinging to the outside of an airplane. And that Afghani that thought that was possible - he was likely in charge of a Battalion of ANA. Just saying - not the brain trust.
However. We should not be I a position where we have plane fulls of Afghanis and there’s some 5000 Americans still somewhere in the country. This is a problem. And this is where I have issues with the execution. And that is a genuine complaint - we can’t have stopped the panic an the madness that unfolded in respect to the locals. But we absolutely could have managed our civil serve to exit much better. It doesn’t make sense. But to your point, we shouldn’t be surprised by the complete incompetence of our leadership elites that failed so utterly in the conduct of the war, only to expect the to suddenly become serious people and conduct an amazing pull-out. It was therefore built in that the same Americans morons - anyone with stars on their shoulders - would be shocked by all this and totally unprepared. After all, they 300k strong ANA that they told us was ready and stalwart had also disappeared like rice paper in water.
Patraeus…*rolls eyes. That cat’s claim to fame was the amazing, Alexander the Great-like tactic of outnumbering your opponent on the battlefield. The only thing more surreal than being called a genius for understand day 1 infantry basic training tactics is that all the other Rumsfeld aligned Generals were against it! “Wait…more good guys to go against the bad guys? Nope, can’t see how that would possibly fix any of this.”
You know what’s bizarre? Keen looks exactly the same now as he I’d when I was a private I the 101 back in the early 90s. Every time I see that guy on Fox it creeps me out. That guy is. Not alive. It’s not natural.
Anyway…
Great read, and spot on. This, what we’re seeing, was ALWAYS the outcome. We should have left at the beginning of 2005. You could drive around Helmand back then and not get shot at. In fact Gen. Olson (I believe it was Gen. Olson - another dick-bag) that claimed that the Taliban had been defeated and no longer presented a threat inside Afghanistan; that everything was now a border control issue - keeping the Taliban out as they tried to cause trouble from their safe haven in Pakistan. We should have left then. Kabul would have been bewildered and curious, but doubtful we’d have seen this madness. Democratization hadn’t become a goal at that point.
99% agreement on the need to end this, as early as 2004ish. President Biden gets props for pulling out. He also deserves all the criticism he's getting for getting on TV and telling voters the Afghans will be fine. $2.4 Trillion apparently gets you an army whose tanks only have a reverse gear. There is not a single consultant, advisor or mirror fogging person in WA involved with training the Afghans that supported Joe's POV on the Afghan army.
President Biden would have been better off with a Trump truth bomb. "Look, we've wasted over $2 trillion killing people and training an army that can't refuel their own vehicles. Time to move on, let the Afghan's sort this out. We will have an orderly departure, but we aren't going to announce a date because that gives the enemy too much info. In the meantime, we will process immigration papers for those who worked with us in country" Meanwhile, no Americans "died" during that time period. Joe took over and then this? He was supposed to be the "competent" one. Had Trump supervised this debacle he would have been impeached, successfully. Both Dems and Repubs would have hoisted him with his petard.
Instead, we got b.s. served on gluten free toast with kale. The failure here isn't withdrawing, it's the sheer incompetence of the withdrawal. The so-called, "trust me, I have a degree in this" and "follow the science" crowd showed they literally are bereft of competence. They gave up an airbase that could've provided cover for the retreat. Meanwhile, the President and his staff are on vacation. After hearing weekly complaints of the previous President playing golf, what could be worse? Oh, right, a President who literally needs a nap while Afghans hang from airplanes in a a pell mell sprint for safety.
I generally agree with your assessment on the need to just get out, but this...it's about as competent as the Jan 6 "insurrection" debacle. Who was in charge of capitol protection? When did they call? Why wasn't anyone aware of the crowd? Why did the speaker refuse the Guard? Why was capitol police asleep? Why, on one side of the building, were people breaking down doors and on the other side, being guided in by the police for a stroll, then asked everyone to leave nicely...and they did! Yep...that's the current state of American govt and bureaucracy. And these are the people one is supposed to trust? Buffoonery.
Since you asked, presumably (I say presumably because Trump's orders, wishes, and desires were routinely #resisted from inside the government) civilians and equipment would have been evacuated from Afghanistan months before the troop withdrawal.
That's not what happened here and that's why Joe Biden is a total fuckup. You can pretend that it wouldn't have been different with Trump, but it would have. The Taliban wouldn't have our equipment.
Trump also wouldn't have loaded up C-130s with Afghans BEFORE evacuating ALL American civilians.
We "trained" the Afghani army for 20 years. If they refused to fight against the Taliban after we left, so be it. It didn't have to go this way, but it did because of one doddering old dementia patient.
I don't think there was ever a simple pro-war/anti-war dichotomy with respect to Afghanistan. Nearly everyone supported going in there to get the guy who plotted 9/11, but then there were tactical errors that allowed that guy to escape to Pakistan, and we were left with a seat of government to either defend or turn back over to the people who harbored him in the first place and desired to turn the clock back in the country by 13 centuries. In retrospect, the right answer was to yes, turn that government back over to the people who harbored him in the first place and who desired to run the clock back by 13 centuries, but that was never going to be an easy thing to do.
That said, I do not buy that it would've been impossible to evacuate our friends and military hardware before withdrawing. Maybe it points to the lack of civilian control over the military-industrial complex in that it would've clearly been logistically possible, but not with our own military throwing up roadblacks at every turn. That's probably the biggest outrage of the whole things, the MIC is self-evidently rogue and there's nothing any President, Democrat or Republican, can do about it.
I'm glad we are out but there must be something in-between total cluster fuck and an orderly withdrawal. The cluster fuck option involves sending 5000 more troops back in just to help with the evacuations that they didn't plan for. That seems noteworthy to me.
The same group of incompetents are now turning inward, because the maneuvers outward, all over the world, are starting to crumble. We in the school business have a saying about incompetent administrators in the bad neighborhood school like the one in which I work: "If you can't control the students, control the teachers." This is what we're seeing now. As the American Empire implodes, we're getting 'vaccine passports', 'mask mandates', and other assorted control freak decisions for something that if you're under 65 you've a 99.9 percent chance of survival. It's all so tiresome and ridiculous. I wish I were one of the sophisticated people who can sit unmasked in a group of hundreds, and have a big birthday bash. But no. NYC is gearing up to ask me personal medical information that 18 months ago would have been unthinkable, and had the prog ACLU types screaming bloody murder. I think I picked the wrong 'unsophisticated' parents.
As Greenwald has noted, the eye of Sauron is turning inward, as they've lost control of the other spots. COVID!!! is the wedge, and the pattern of incompetence so ably spoken of here by MT is the playbook now.
Wear a mask, even if you're vaxxed. Covid is a thing. Stay safe.
The mainstream media is having a meltdown that a war is ending and I hope the woke progressive nitwits are paying attention. "Orange man BAD ... but War GOOD! "
This was very, very good, Michael.
There were SO MANY parallels between America's Vietnam and Afghanistan adventures I don't understand why anyone is surprised, let alone outraged, the fall of Kabul resembled the fall of Saigon.
Michael...
I appreciate your perspective on most things. But I have to say "Bullshit" on the idea that Biden is standing up to anyone. He is, and always has been, a tool used by the Oligarchy to convince the plebes that there is "someone" on their side, even though flawed.
I'm pushing Rainer Shea's interpretation of the events. It was important enough for me to sign up for a monthly subscription, so I'd appreciate it if you took the time to consider what he has to say.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Afghanistan-s-ongoing-dest-by-Rainer-Shea-Afghanistan-War_Destabilization-210818-725.html
I agree with almost all of this. Where I disagree is with the end game. We should not have drawn the armed forces down to almost nothing until all American civilians were evacuated. We had a moral obligation to those Afghanis who worked with American forces and the embassy to get those who wanted out evacuated, whether to a third country or the US. Once these tasks were done, then draw the forces down. Instead we reduced forces to a minimal number, and abandoned multiple bases, while there were likely 10 to 20 thousand US citizens still in country, and possibly more afghanis than that who need to be airlifted. Abandoning Bagram is particularly questionable, as it WAS a secure air base within a short flying distance from Kabul. The shortcomings of this withdrawal are amplified by a State Dept notice yesterday or the day before. While something like 10,000 US nationals were then still in Kabul, State sent notice to some to travel to the airport as flights were coming available. But the notice specifically advised that they were on their own getting to the airport from a security stand point. That's just flabergasting! No way we should have let this happen when the situation could have been relatively more secure simply by keeping more forces there for a couple more weeks. You note that no Americans have yet died. Certainly Afghanis have as the news repeatedly showed. If no Americans die it will be a minor miracle.
I completely agree we needed to end this farce of a war. But the drawdown and withdrawal has been handled with breathtaking incompetence. Just because Biden carried out the withdrawal where his two predecessors failed to, does not excuse him from responsibility to do it with the skill we should expect from the commander in chief. He failed.
Thoughts on President Biden's ability to weather the storm? Institutional support? Trump was hurt badly and ultimately brought to heel for what Biden actually did. I think a lot of people are in shock that it happened and it was Biden.
Does anyone think that there will be an inquiry into this 20 year catastrophe? I look at the January 6 insurrection....do you think anything like that, or even larger, can happen?
Or is Afghanistan too bi-partisan and involving military big-shots, etc etc for any true inquiry to take place?
Excellent job on Breaking Points this morning! I hope you will be a frequent guest there in the future.
So, 5,6,7 thousand troops are back in to fix things, I guess. This "leaving" has actually tripled our military presence. Let's see if we do actually leave.
The hubris of America, the indispensable nation cavorting around the world making a mess. I’m a Canadian we are much better than you because we are completely feckless and ineffectual - we do less damage that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I like America, you are a can do nation (Canada is a can’t do nation) but there is so much economic incentive for killing people. Your economy is predicated on military spending and if you don’t drop those bombs on someone you don’t need to order more. Afghan cavemen were the perfect foil: oppressing women, banishing music, brutal executions. It was such an easy sell that it lasted 20 years.
You guys will find someone else to kill, don’t fret, somebody will affront your liberal doctrines and the media will rally the nation to charge off to bring freedom (death) to some meaningless corner of the world.
Bravo! Very well done you’re a brilliant guy.