Afghanistan: Street fighting rages as Taliban attack key city

[loomer]

It also bears considering that those who weren't in line with the Taliban have cousins, brothers, sisters, and kids who they don't want to see come to harm, and that the identity of commanders and officers wasn't exactly secret.

[loomer]

American forces are firing into the air to try and prevent civilians from fleeing via the airport. Gotta make sure they continue to uphold the imperial line at the last minute, I guess.

[Elfdart]

As Edward Woodward said in Breaker Morant, as Morant and a comrade are about to face the firing squad:

This is what comes from empire-building.

It also bears considering that those who weren't in line with the Taliban have cousins, brothers, sisters, and kids who they don't want to see come to harm, and that the identity of commanders and officers wasn't exactly secret.

Which might explain why they folded without putting up a fight. It reminds me of Claud Cockburn's account of the finale to the Spanish Civil War. The Republic had been defeated yet again by the fascists and were in full, chaotic retreat. If only a leader could enter the scene, take charge and restore the morale of the defeated... Then right on cue, a general sped to the front in his staff car, getting out and looking every bit the part, complete with polished brass and boots, and a cape. Finally, he was going to rally the Republic's bedraggled army and turn defeat into victory! Hope turned to fury and despair when it became clear that this general was headed to the front in order to switch sides and give away a trunk full of loyalist maps as a goodwill gesture to Franco's forces.

In a way, I hope that is the reason they folded, and maybe the Taliban won't turn Afghanistan in 1994 Rwanda. Either way, I think all decent people should make it a point to piss on the grave of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

[loomer]

Three fatalities at the airfield now, either shot or killed in the panicked crush created by the firing.

[Vendetta]

The way the Afghan Army folded so quickly can't possibly be the result of just cowardice or ineptitude. I'll bet the rent that they did an Olé! because a good number of them were Taliban all along or jumped on the bandwagon.

There were a lot of reasons. Some of the Afghan army didn't even exist. Like they existed on paper, but they were pretend soldiers whose COs were lining their pockets with their wages.

Their equipment was frequently terrible, like they had things that looked a bit like army boots but fell apart in a week because the contractors were lining their pockets with the money that was supposed to make boots.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of their non-pretend equipment went missing and the pockets of the quartermasters' at some level, probably quite high, were suddenly comfortably fatter.

This extended to medical care and pensions for wounded, which would regularly be the cheapest possible and pensions would just not be paid sometimes for months on end.

And this despite all the money the US was feeding into the system. And every one of them knew it and was affected by it.

So their morale was in the shitter and for both afghan military personnel and people outside of the few urban areas that got somewhat modernised could see the Taliban as the answer to this massive corruption that was happening at their expense. So when it came to "do I fight and die for the people shitting on my head?" it's quite understandable that the answer was "bugger this for a game of soldiers".

[ray245]

I'm interested to see how the Taliban is actually going to rile Afghanistan now, especially in the major cities. How would they be able to rein in control of the population with good access to internet and social media?

Simple -
#1 - Destroy that infrastructure.
Blow up all the cell phone towers, and other digital communication relays. The Taliban use satelite coms or radio anyway.
No digital communications, no internet and social media.

#2 - Have a cleric pass a religious edict against social media and the internet, and then kill anyone caught using the internet and social media

From their point of view all the Taliban have to do is go 'our way, or the grave', and enforce it, and people will fall into line.

The Taliban do make use of modern telecoms I believe. And even the most hardline Islamic groups made full use of social media and etc to communicate. So I don't think there will be that much popular will within the Taliban to blow up the infrastructure.

And for enforcing it... It requires a great deal of resources to do it. Can the Taliban maintain full military presence over the whole of the country? Even in the North where their support has always been a lot weaker?

I think you might be missing two important factors, ray245.

First - there are people in Afghanistan who like the Taliban. People who think the type of government/religion/society they promote are a good and desirable thing. (Needless to say I personally don't agree, but then, I'm not those people) This is, no doubt, one reason why the Taliban took over so easily - lots of people who aren't just tolerating them but actively wanting to join their collective.

Second - Afghanistan has been churned by over 25 years of civil war. I suspect a lot of people just want peace, quiet, and some sort of stability even if the government they live under is far from ideal. Many people would choose being alive in a theocracy, even a repressive one, over being dead in the middle of an armed conflict.

I suspect the Taliban are going to party for awhile, then get down to governing.

And I wish for god's sake the US would learn the fucking lesson that we can't "change hearts and minds" or barge in killing and destroying then attempt to impose a foreign system of governance and social contract on another country. It fucking doesn't work. The only time we pulled it off was after years of war with Japan followed by nuking them twice over, and even there the transformation was far from complete or happy for either side. Since no one wants THAT level of conflict to ever happen again (at least no one sane) let's stop this fucking shit once and for all. I want no more blood and treasure spent on these fuck-ups. No more Vietnams. No more Afghanistans.

Yes there are many who would support the Taliban or just want peace. But I'm talking about how people would feel about the Taliban in the long run.

Right now the Taliban might look a good alternative with the Afghan government being useless and corrupt. The question is how well can the Taliban govern? Will they be able to manage the food production well? What's going to happen if there's a major withdrawal of foreign aid to the place?

[Vendetta]

Right now the Taliban might look a good alternative with the Afghan government being useless and corrupt. The question is how well can the Taliban govern? Will they be able to manage the food production well? What's going to happen if there's a major withdrawal of foreign aid to the place?

I suspect the functional end in armed conflict over most of the country, at least for a while, will go a long way to stabilising that.

Remember that that armed conflict has largely been going on for the last 20 years as well, we just didn't hear a lot about it past the early 2010s because the Taliban stopped targeting westerners in favour of the afghan forces because they realised the west were going to go away eventually.

[loomer]

Women journalists are trying to hide their identities for their own protection for fear of persecution. But hey, Ralin, they don't need a lifeline, right?

[Broomstick]

Reuters is saying the Taliban is now rejecting the prospect of a transitional government outright.

Well, sure - seeing as they have largely been weakly opposed (in some places not at all resisted) and took over everything why ever would they acquiesce to that?

Now we have a Taliban back in charge, possible with more people then that had prior to the invasion, but with captured US military hardware and a claim to having driven the United States and it's allies out of the country.

Yep. It’s like 20 years of blood and treasure never happened. The very definition of futile.

I suspect that the US, and the west in general, has indeed learnt its lesson.

Funny. I heard that in 1975. Didn’t happen.

Saigon 1975:


Kabul, 2021:

As for the Taliban ruling Afghanistan, that depends almost entirely on what kind of government they offer the country. The fact is ,the Taliban are actually quite weak; they only won because most of Afghanistan barely resisted them.….[snip]…. And the Taliban face a hard choice in turn; spread themselves paper-thin to maintain a presence everywhere? Or actually trust their local allies?

Because trust is the big issue; the main factor as to whether Afghans will wearily accept Taliban rule or take up arms against it. ….[snip]…. Is mutual trust really possible?

And they might not have to. Because the Taliban rolled merrily along, keeping up their momentum, they left much of what they rolled-over intact.The local power-brokers, and their social networks, and their followers, and whatever weapons they've managed to squirrel away. Unless they do somehow trust the Taliban not to turn on them, they'll be at least covertly trying to organise, plotting with each-other, recreating the Northern Alliance. If the Taliban prove treacherous, it will be their only chance.

All good points, especially that one where not resisting now allows preservation of infrastructure and equipment.

It's not verifiable at the moment, but apparently they're doing door to door searches in Mazar again.

Searching for… what?

It’s going to be hard to verify anything for awhile.

The Taliban – and others – are perfectly capable of manipulating the media just like anyone else. And other media will have their own agenda.

The way the Afghan Army folded so quickly can't possibly be the result of just cowardice or ineptitude. I'll bet the rent that they did an Olé! because a good number of them were Taliban all along or jumped on the bandwagon. That said, it was always going to end this way.

Sure.

And some of it may have been a strategic going-to-ground of local groups who knew the Taliban would have a blitzkrieg and thought it was better to let it roll by and bide their time. We’re not in the shoes of the people actually over there, it’s foolish to assume we can divine all their motivations and thoughts.

American forces are firing into the air to try and prevent civilians from fleeing via the airport. Gotta make sure they continue to uphold the imperial line at the last minute, I guess.

I suspect it’s more a matter of “Americans get to leave first” rather than attempting to hold “the imperial line”. Unless that’s what you meant by “hold the imperial line”. Selfish? Yes. But American soldiers were sent there to safeguard Americans, not non-Americans. It’s what governments and militaries do, it’s nothing uniquely American.

I heard something about the Taliban saying they wouldn’t attack people leaving via the airport. Maybe they’ll hold to that, maybe they won’t. Maybe there are some who are taking it upon themselves to advance on those fleeing the country and the Americans are shooting in response to being shot at. I don’t know, everything is very confused now. Or maybe the Americans are being dickheads.

In a way, I hope that is the reason they folded, and maybe the Taliban won't turn Afghanistan in 1994 Rwanda. Either way, I think all decent people should make it a point to piss on the grave of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Wow, I had to look that one up – I’d forgotten that Brzezinski was the one to start US involvement in Afghanistan by arming the muhajadeen.

I expect at least some vindictive killing, but being a cock-eyed optimist I’m hoping it’s minimal.

Three fatalities at the airfield now, either shot or killed in the panicked crush created by the firing.

That was inevitable. I expect the situation will get worse before it improves. That airport is filled with very desperate people.

Yes there are many who would support the Taliban or just want peace. But I'm talking about how people would feel about the Taliban in the long run.

Right now the Taliban might look a good alternative with the Afghan government being useless and corrupt. The question is how well can the Taliban govern? Will they be able to manage the food production well? What's going to happen if there's a major withdrawal of foreign aid to the place?

The Taliban, like all conquerors, will find it’s easier to capture than to hold.

The very ideology that held them together may wind up working against them in the long run if they pay more attention to enforcing it than dealing pragmatically with the actual nuts and bolts of running a country.

Remember that that armed conflict has largely been going on for the last 20 years as well, we just didn't hear a lot about it past the early 2010s because the Taliban stopped targeting westerners in favour of the afghan forces because they realised the west were going to go away eventually.

Longer than 20 years. Afghanistan has been in either a civil war, invasion, or both since 1992. That’s 29 years. Or, depending on how you look at it, at war wince 1973 when the monarchy was overthrown with only brief interludes in the fighting.

[ray245]

The Taliban, like all conquerors, will find it’s easier to capture than to hold.

The very ideology that held them together may wind up working against them in the long run if they pay more attention to enforcing it than dealing pragmatically with the actual nuts and bolts of running a country.

Exactly. As a conquering force, all they need for now is empty promise that things will be better than the Afghan government. It's the same in elections when the opposition party can win simply by not being the unpopular goverment in charge.

In the short term the Taliban can hold onto power. But can they hold onto power for 20 years? That's a very different question all together.

Now, the Americans have been pumping money into Afghanistan that help fund the Afghan government. A lot.of that money is being pocketed away due to corruption, but some of them is still being used to pay for salaries of police, civil servants and etc.

Now the Taliban needs to find a way to pay for the cost of employing people that allows the country to function. They need to pay those people onto of what they are paying their frontline fighters.

Even with opium money, that is going to be a stretch. And it's going to be harder to pay or entice the people with technical expertise to work for them if they have no abundance of cash, when you're probably not going to have too many of such people due to a lack of proper education centres which requires funding, and those with the means to do so might have fled the country.

It's kinda the same story with the CCP in China. Win a war agsinst a corrupt and unpopular KMT, but ran into all sorts of problem when they actually try and govern the country.

And China had the benefit of having stronger sense of national identity, more developed infrastructure than Afghanistan today.

[Elfdart]

The way the Afghan Army folded so quickly can't possibly be the result of just cowardice or ineptitude. I'll bet the rent that they did an Olé! because a good number of them were Taliban all along or jumped on the bandwagon.

There were a lot of reasons. Some of the Afghan army didn't even exist. Like they existed on paper, but they were pretend soldiers whose COs were lining their pockets with their wages.

Their equipment was frequently terrible, like they had things that looked a bit like army boots but fell apart in a week because the contractors were lining their pockets with the money that was supposed to make boots.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of their non-pretend equipment went missing and the pockets of the quartermasters' at some level, probably quite high, were suddenly comfortably fatter.

This extended to medical care and pensions for wounded, which would regularly be the cheapest possible and pensions would just not be paid sometimes for months on end.

And this despite all the money the US was feeding into the system. And every one of them knew it and was affected by it.

So their morale was in the shitter and for both afghan military personnel and people outside of the few urban areas that got somewhat modernised could see the Taliban as the answer to this massive corruption that was happening at their expense. So when it came to "do I fight and die for the people shitting on my head?" it's quite understandable that the answer was "bugger this for a game of soldiers".

Point taken.

[Solauren]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there were officers in the Afghan army, that were actually Taliban supporters, and were diverting money and resources to them. Including entire fake platoons worth of stuff.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there were officers in the Afghan army, that were actually Taliban supporters, and were diverting money and resources to them. Including entire fake platoons worth of stuff.

You're probably right. I would also not be at all surprised if a fair bit of that weaponry, and the men who carried them, have ended up with the militias in turn.

It does raise the question of motive. Did these officers and other officials actually like the Taliban's vision? Or are they just Pashtun nationalists? Quite a few Pashtun nationalists backed the Taliban in the past, despite expressing distaste at their methods, for the sake of Pashtun supremacy. At least some of those expressing this opinion did not actually live in Afghanistan at the time.

In that respect, the Taliban really are in a bind. As I see it, their ideological support (as opposed to strategic support from abroad) has two bases. One is religious reactionism - people who like the way they do things - and Pashtun nationalism - people who want a Pashtun-dominated Afghanistan at any cost - with some crossover in the middle. If the Taliban make concessions on their ideology, they risk annoying the religious reactionaries; though they might not be all that numerous. If they make concessions on political control - a major issue for the northern minorities, and maybe some Pashtuns - then they risk enraging the Pashtun nationalists.

This could get interesting. And quite quickly too.

[Rogue 9]

Source

Afghanistan Falls To Taliban Couple Hours Earlier Than Expected

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—In a development that sent shock waves through the international community and negated two decades of effort by American-led coalition forces, reports confirmed Monday that Afghanistan fell to the Taliban a couple hours earlier than anyone expected. “We of course knew the well-armed, well-organized, and highly motivated Taliban fighters would seize power eventually—it just happened 90 to 120 minutes sooner than we were anticipating,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, explaining that American and Afghan officials were caught flat-footed Sunday evening when they discovered Taliban leaders were already giving media interviews in Kabul’s presidential palace. “That was a development we did not foresee happening until sometime later, maybe around bedtime, or at least after supper. But we were working from our best estimate. It’s easy, in hindsight, to say that you would have done this or that thing differently during 20 years of attempting to install a brand-new democratic government, military, and civil society.” At press time, critics of the withdrawal claimed that if the U.S. military had spent another decade in Afghanistan, they could have prevented a Taliban takeover for as long as three full hours.

[Solauren]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there were officers in the Afghan army, that were actually Taliban supporters, and were diverting money and resources to them. Including entire fake platoons worth of stuff.

You're probably right. I would also not be at all surprised if a fair bit of that weaponry, and the men who carried them, have ended up with the militias in turn.

I suspect that's what the house to house searches that have been reported are for - looking for military hardware.

[Zaune]

Point taken.

The Americans have spent twice as much time and I dare not even ask how much more money on this war, and somehow they manage to fuck it up even more spectacularly than Vietnam. Did everyone who learned how not to do this COIN stuff the hard way lose the post-war battle of DoD office politics and get fired or something?

[loomer]

It's only a fuckup if you believe the actual goal was to build Afghanistan as a sustainable state, not to provide a regional military presence to complicate resource interests for Russia and China while enabling the extraction of its resources and the internal transfer of funds through paper army supply and capacity building contracts.

Bluntly, if there had ever been real interest in building a sustainable state, it never seriously manifested. The mass importation of western modes of law and governance without regard to effective local custom and resentments killed that possibility, and the deliberate cultivation of corruption (again - feature, not bug) in every dimension of the bureaucracy salted the earth. If the goal had been to actually build a state, then the fuckups began from day 1 and literally never stopped.

If, however, the goal was simply to complicate affairs for Russia and China's potential interests while wringing out some resources? Well, a corrupt and ineffectual bureaucracy that shatters shortly after you leave (leaving a big ol' mess for whoever tries to move in after you for those same resources) is ideal for that.

[Coop D'etat]

It's only a fuckup if you believe the actual goal was to build Afghanistan as a sustainable state, not to provide a regional military presence to complicate resource interests for Russia and China while enabling the extraction of its resources and the internal transfer of funds through paper army supply and capacity building contracts.

Bluntly, if there had ever been real interest in building a sustainable state, it never seriously manifested. The mass importation of western modes of law and governance without regard to effective local custom and resentments killed that possibility, and the deliberate cultivation of corruption (again - feature, not bug) in every dimension of the bureaucracy salted the earth. If the goal had been to actually build a state, then the fuckups began from day 1 and literally never stopped.

If, however, the goal was simply to complicate affairs for Russia and China's potential interests while wringing out some resources? Well, a corrupt and ineffectual bureaucracy that shatters shortly after you leave (leaving a big ol' mess for whoever tries to move in after you for those same resources) is ideal for that.

This is the kind of cynicism that loops around into its own kind of naivety. Afghanistan's natural resources aren't worth much to begin with and approach net worthlessness when factoring in both cost of transportation and the massive security investment needed to secure them.

Neither the Chinese nor the Russians had much by the way of penetration into the Afghan market at the time of invasion and the entire country is a net negative to any state power that attempts to take control of it, as the Americans learned during their two decades there. During the America time in Afghanistan, one of the largest local industries was grafting as much of the money Washington was pumping into the country as possible given the absence of much of an economy of any kind.

If you're a cold blooded Washington power player, you'd you'd be happy if Beijing or Moscow tried to take control of Afghanistan because it will put a millstone on their back rather than give them any geostrategic advantage. The way you can tell that America isn't there as part of a scheme to loot the place is that the only assets worth looting are what they brought with them.

[loomer]

It's only a fuckup if you believe the actual goal was to build Afghanistan as a sustainable state, not to provide a regional military presence to complicate resource interests for Russia and China while enabling the extraction of its resources and the internal transfer of funds through paper army supply and capacity building contracts.

Bluntly, if there had ever been real interest in building a sustainable state, it never seriously manifested. The mass importation of western modes of law and governance without regard to effective local custom and resentments killed that possibility, and the deliberate cultivation of corruption (again - feature, not bug) in every dimension of the bureaucracy salted the earth. If the goal had been to actually build a state, then the fuckups began from day 1 and literally never stopped.

If, however, the goal was simply to complicate affairs for Russia and China's potential interests while wringing out some resources? Well, a corrupt and ineffectual bureaucracy that shatters shortly after you leave (leaving a big ol' mess for whoever tries to move in after you for those same resources) is ideal for that.

This is the kind of cynicism that loops around into its own kind of naivety. Afghanistan's natural resources aren't worth much to begin with and approach net worthlessness when factoring in both cost of transportation and the massive security investment needed to secure them.

Neither the Chinese nor the Russians had much by the way of penetration into the Afghan market at the time of invasion and the entire country is a net negative to any state power that attempts to take control of it, as the Americans learned during their two decades there. During the America time in Afghanistan, one of the largest local industries was grafting as much of the money Washington was pumping into the country as possible given the absence of much of an economy of any kind.

If you're a cold blooded Washington power player, you'd you'd be happy if Beijing or Moscow tried to take control of Afghanistan because it will put a millstone on their back rather than give them any geostrategic advantage. The way you can tell that America isn't there as part of a scheme to loot the place is that the only assets worth looting are what they brought with them.

Bluntly - no. While you are correct that the infrastructural difficulties made effective exploitation of the natural resources difficult, you didn't consider that the same need to build infrastructure and security is part of how Afghanistan was used to transfer wealth. Every fixed contract to American-backed investments permitted the flow of American capital into private entities, with the actual exploitation of mineral resources as icing on the cake of the graft involved. The looting is not just of Afghanistan's resources, but those of the occupying states, and it isn't by those states but by emerging oligarchs.

Call it naivete, if you like, but the massive transfers of wealth involved during the occupation are a matter of public record. So is the fact that American interests invested heavily in pursuing the extraction of lithium, and that Chinese and Russian interests are sniffing around the same resource.

[Coop D'etat]

It's only a fuckup if you believe the actual goal was to build Afghanistan as a sustainable state, not to provide a regional military presence to complicate resource interests for Russia and China while enabling the extraction of its resources and the internal transfer of funds through paper army supply and capacity building contracts.

Bluntly, if there had ever been real interest in building a sustainable state, it never seriously manifested. The mass importation of western modes of law and governance without regard to effective local custom and resentments killed that possibility, and the deliberate cultivation of corruption (again - feature, not bug) in every dimension of the bureaucracy salted the earth. If the goal had been to actually build a state, then the fuckups began from day 1 and literally never stopped.

If, however, the goal was simply to complicate affairs for Russia and China's potential interests while wringing out some resources? Well, a corrupt and ineffectual bureaucracy that shatters shortly after you leave (leaving a big ol' mess for whoever tries to move in after you for those same resources) is ideal for that.

This is the kind of cynicism that loops around into its own kind of naivety. Afghanistan's natural resources aren't worth much to begin with and approach net worthlessness when factoring in both cost of transportation and the massive security investment needed to secure them.

Neither the Chinese nor the Russians had much by the way of penetration into the Afghan market at the time of invasion and the entire country is a net negative to any state power that attempts to take control of it, as the Americans learned during their two decades there. During the America time in Afghanistan, one of the largest local industries was grafting as much of the money Washington was pumping into the country as possible given the absence of much of an economy of any kind.

If you're a cold blooded Washington power player, you'd you'd be happy if Beijing or Moscow tried to take control of Afghanistan because it will put a millstone on their back rather than give them any geostrategic advantage. The way you can tell that America isn't there as part of a scheme to loot the place is that the only assets worth looting are what they brought with them.

Bluntly - no. While you are correct that the infrastructural difficulties made effective exploitation of the natural resources difficult, you didn't consider that the same need to build infrastructure and security is part of how Afghanistan was used to transfer wealth. Every fixed contract to American-backed investments permitted the flow of American capital into private entities, with the actual exploitation of mineral resources as icing on the cake of the graft involved. The looting is not just of Afghanistan's resources, but those of the occupying states, and it isn't by those states but by emerging oligarchs.

Call it naivete, if you like, but the massive transfers of wealth involved during the occupation are a matter of public record. So is the fact that American interests invested heavily in pursuing the extraction of lithium, and that Chinese and Russian interests are sniffing around the same resource.

America has been there for 2 decades for a supposed boom of mining to materialize under global capital. Guess what, it hasn't because pretty much nothing there is worth the cost of doing business. Its been open to Chinese and Russian capital if they wanted it too, they've largely not been interested either. Even if they cut deals with the Taliban to do some business there, these aren't major geostrategic assets worth a decade long military commitment to keep them off the chess board. The problem with your thinking is it doesn't make any sense even in cold-bloodedly sociopathic self-interested terms. Afghanistan's aspires to the level of stability and development that there even would be something worth exploiting them over.

[loomer]

Remind me, how much money did the US pour into various private contracts for 'state building'?

[Coop D'etat]

Remind me, how much money did the US pour into various private contracts for 'state building'?

Billions upon billions, but that's hardly proof that corporate profiteering was the motivation. Military-industrial profiteering is naturally going to accompany any American military effort due to being a capitalist society and can be done in far more congenial places than central Asia.

They were there because they took control of the place in the process of responding to 9/11 and then spent two decades finding out they didn't know what to do with it once they had it. It also makes zero sense to intentionally cripple the allied government they were trying to create because that would just make the process of keeping it in the fold more expensive and difficult. This isn't a situation where it makes any sense to attribute extraordinary malice where ordinary incompetence suffices.

[loomer]

Remind me, how much money did the US pour into various private contracts for 'state building'?

Billions upon billions, but that's hardly proof that corporate profiteering was the motivation. Military-industrial profiteering is naturally going to accompany any American military effort due to being a capitalist society and can be done in far more congenial places than central Asia.

They were there because they took control of the place in the process of responding to 9/11 and then spent two decades finding out they didn't know what to do with it once they had it. It also makes zero sense to intentionally cripple the allied government they were trying to create because that would just make the process of keeping it in the fold more expensive and difficult. This isn't a situation where it makes any sense to attribute extraordinary malice where ordinary incompetence suffices.

So, billions upon billions of dollars went to build a state that was never properly built, with large amounts of what was spent that didn't just go to blatantly corrupt contract fixing going on infrastructure developments to predominantly American firms to support extractive industry... And there's no reason to think that maybe, just maybe, the systematic distribution of wealth from the Coalition and Afghan state treasuries to these corporate partners for services that never materialized or where blatantly unfit for purpose might have been deliberate, everyone involved for two decades was just so massively incompetent they can't tell their ass from their elbow.

I think you're perhaps the naive one.

[Broomstick]

loomer, I think you're mistaking incompetence, stupidity, and greed for malice and planning. I expect you'll disagree with my opinion, but honestly, the American political landscape sucks at planning of any sort.

[loomer]

loomer, I think you're mistaking incompetence, stupidity, and greed for malice and planning. I expect you'll disagree with my opinion, but honestly, the American political landscape sucks at planning of any sort.

I do, because between the choices of 'the entire US military-industrial complex is so utterly incompetent they can't do literally anything' and 'the US government's war served as a vessel of massive wealth transfer from various state treasuries to private entities with vested interests' (which, incidentally, is both short-sighted and greedy - those are perfectly compatible with the idea that the 'state building' exercise was meant to fail), I'm going with the latter. The former both lets our political and oligarch classes off the hook because they were merely cartoonishly incompetent and fails to account for the reality that huge amounts of money were handed out on no-bid contracts for services that either never materialized or were delivered totally unfit for purpose for nearly two decades, to the same companies, the same investors, and the same people.