Friday, August 20, 2021
A pretty good point...
IPLawGuy had a great comment on Thursday-- it was better reasoned than my post, actually. I have included it below along with a video of his favorite song.
IPLawGuy:
"To Biden's credit, he has been bold on many fronts. The initiatives contained in the fine print of the rescue package that was passed and signed into law, and those in the soon to be passed infrastructure bill, are sweeping changes in the way the Federal Government does business. Not sure whether they are all good ideas, but there's plenty of "bold" there. And if he can get this budget passed, the changes to be instituted will shift government spending in many ways.
But, as we have seen over and over again, Presidential Administrations can't seem to do more than a few things at the same time. Afghanistan was not a priority for the Biden people. I don't think it should have been. George Kennan was right about focusing on our strategic interests, and other than the fact that its a hotbed for mayhem and that we had a lot of troops there., Afghanistan is low on our list of geo-global concerns. But we DO have troops there. So, yes, they should have done a better job of preparing for the inevitable Taliban takeover. That was going to happen no matter what we did.
I suspect that we could have come up with a dozen plans, but in the end, we would have ended up where we are now. American Troops defending the last piece of ground until we got everyone out that we could.
The bottom line is that the U.S. Military, nor any military, is not designed to "keep the peace." After the initial invasion in the wake of 9/11, there was never a "military objective" in Afghanistan. AS you said, we were attempting to stop murder, mayhem and terrorism in a region where no one has ever been able to do such a thing. The British failed in the 1800's (The book “Flashman,” is a fictionalized account of THAT disaster) and the Russians failed in the 80's (The book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War" cover that). Perhaps, if we had truly committed ourselves to ripping out terrorism by the root, as Colin Powell suggested in 2001, implemented a draft and sent a quarter of a million soldiers to Afghanistan, sustained 10's of thousands of casualties, and not gotten distracted by Iraq, we could have wiped out most of the 14-30 year old Taliban fighters in that country. But thousands would have escaped into Cambodia and Laos. Ooops, I meant Pakistan and other Islamic neighbors. And the resentment would have been even more of a spur to vengeance than what we did do. Sure, the events of the past week or so are tragic. But totally pre-ordained. We were in hole. We stopped digging.
Trump’s idiotic “peace plan” forged in Doha in 2020 made this haphazard evacuation inevitable. The Taliban knew they just had to be patient for a few months and as soon as we started closing air bases, they could act. This was pre-ordained."
"To Biden's credit, he has been bold on many fronts. The initiatives contained in the fine print of the rescue package that was passed and signed into law, and those in the soon to be passed infrastructure bill, are sweeping changes in the way the Federal Government does business. Not sure whether they are all good ideas, but there's plenty of "bold" there. And if he can get this budget passed, the changes to be instituted will shift government spending in many ways.
But, as we have seen over and over again, Presidential Administrations can't seem to do more than a few things at the same time. Afghanistan was not a priority for the Biden people. I don't think it should have been. George Kennan was right about focusing on our strategic interests, and other than the fact that its a hotbed for mayhem and that we had a lot of troops there., Afghanistan is low on our list of geo-global concerns. But we DO have troops there. So, yes, they should have done a better job of preparing for the inevitable Taliban takeover. That was going to happen no matter what we did.
I suspect that we could have come up with a dozen plans, but in the end, we would have ended up where we are now. American Troops defending the last piece of ground until we got everyone out that we could.
The bottom line is that the U.S. Military, nor any military, is not designed to "keep the peace." After the initial invasion in the wake of 9/11, there was never a "military objective" in Afghanistan. AS you said, we were attempting to stop murder, mayhem and terrorism in a region where no one has ever been able to do such a thing. The British failed in the 1800's (The book “Flashman,” is a fictionalized account of THAT disaster) and the Russians failed in the 80's (The book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War" cover that). Perhaps, if we had truly committed ourselves to ripping out terrorism by the root, as Colin Powell suggested in 2001, implemented a draft and sent a quarter of a million soldiers to Afghanistan, sustained 10's of thousands of casualties, and not gotten distracted by Iraq, we could have wiped out most of the 14-30 year old Taliban fighters in that country. But thousands would have escaped into Cambodia and Laos. Ooops, I meant Pakistan and other Islamic neighbors. And the resentment would have been even more of a spur to vengeance than what we did do. Sure, the events of the past week or so are tragic. But totally pre-ordained. We were in hole. We stopped digging.
Trump’s idiotic “peace plan” forged in Doha in 2020 made this haphazard evacuation inevitable. The Taliban knew they just had to be patient for a few months and as soon as we started closing air bases, they could act. This was pre-ordained."
