Afghanistan - 20 years on

I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said 'the day after we leave it will be as if we were never there.' 20 years of lives and money wasted. The West should be using its military power to insulate itself from these places, not try and police them.
 
gettothechopper said:
Ill have a go:

Stopped Afghanistan being used as a safe haven for AQ
6 Sets of democratic elections
Kabul is no longer a smoking ruin, buildings, electricity, communications lines etc. restored
Millions of children educated (including girls which were not able to before)
Big lift in GDP
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Sensible post.

That was one of the soul crushing things for me, what chance to do they have when they aren't getting any education? Once school i visited was a ruined building, a gaping hole on one of the upper floor classrooms!

We did some CIMIC work and got the building sorted, pens, pencils, carpets, books etc - but that was only one school :(

A squaddie explaining Afghan War:

"It's like going to the zoo and watching one of the shows, zookeeper does a performance with the monkeys, gets them to do tricks etc...

As soon as he leaves the enclosure what do the monkeys do? They go back to being monkeys, because it's what they are.

Afghan is no different."

True to a degree. I asked my interpreter what would they miss when we left. I was expecting Peace, safety, security etc, "Your money" was the reply. Frick you!
 
What should've happened, if the story is true, is the SBS should have told the US to **** off and pulled the trigger when they had Bin Laden in their sights back in 2001. That one action would have prevented a great waste of time, money and lives. But no, the Americans wanted to do it themselves and with them being lazy ******* they couldn't get to the AO in time.
 
Dis86 said:
I can't honestly say. However given what happened they then had to focus on security. The trouble is that you can't keep the armed forces of a country that you're occupying - it's just a ready made insurgency with access to military stockpiles. Whether they disbanded it properly and secured those stockpiles though is a different matter.
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You can keep them in the army, you keep them employed and busy helping restore utilities or training and then you can shape the officer corps over time. They ended up reforming the armed services again later anyway but had to start from scratch. Putting them all out of work and armed with enough small arms to start an insurgency was madness imo.
 
The taliban is basically the people of Afghanistan.

If the people didnt join and support them or simply outre them there would be no taliban.

They can get back to their single sex schooling and noble growth of opium crops soon and tell themselves they prefer it that way very soon.
 
The Running Man said:
The taliban is basically the people of Afghanistan.

If the people didnt join and support them or simply outre them there would be no taliban.

They can get back to their single sex schooling and noble growth of opium crops soon and tell themselves they prefer it that way very soon.
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The fact that the opium trade wasn't destroyed is a pretty big hint regarding the US's 'war on drugs'.
 
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Skunkworks said:
I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said 'the day after we leave it will be as if we were never there.' 20 years of lives and money wasted. The West should be using its military power to insulate itself from these places, not try and police them.
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Indeed, the whole thing has been utterly shameful. Sadly the people behind this will never face justice and will die wealthy old men.
 
sigma said:
Didn’t The West fund the Taliban, or what later became the Taliban, in the 80s?

Who exactly are the good or the bad guys?
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The US funded Pakistan to train / supply anyone who wanted to fight the Soviets, this was the "mujahideen"
There were several main large groups. Once the USSR pulled out the group's fought each other in a civil war, the Taliban came to power because people were sick of the fighting but brought hard-line religion, one of the other groups "the northern alliance" opposed the Taliban take over and the west supported them, right up until the invasion in 2001, (their leader Massoud was a national hero and got killed by the Taliban a few days before 9/11.) "The west" never supported the Taliban at any stage and they didn't exist when Operation Cyclone was taking place. Although certainly many would have joined the Taliban, after the civil war. Funding fighters was a means to an end for the USA and it's speculated that it helped end the cold war, the big mistake was as always "what happens afterwards".
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
You can keep them in the army, you keep them employed and busy helping restore utilities or training and then you can shape the officer corps over time. They ended up reforming the armed services again later anyway but had to start from scratch. Putting them all out of work and armed with enough small arms to start an insurgency was madness imo.
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But then you have to control 10s of thousands of hostile troops with access to weaponry. Look at how hard it is to control your own soldiers! Trying to maintain discipline and order is a huge task. Then think about how often you saw some ANA soldier shoot a barracks or guard hut full of NATO soldiers.
All that is with leadership that's on your side, nevermind hostile, defeated leadership.
 
gettothechopper said:
The US funded Pakistan to train / supply anyone who wanted to fight the Soviets, this was the "mujahideen"
There were several main large groups. Once the USSR pulled out the group's fought each other in a civil war, the Taliban came to power because people were sick of the fighting but brought hard-line religion, one of the other groups "the northern alliance" opposed the Taliban take over and the west supported them, right up until the invasion in 2001, (their leader Massoud was a national hero and got killed by the Taliban a few days before 9/11.) "The west" never supported the Taliban at any stage and they didn't exist when Operation Cyclone was taking place. Although certainly many would have joined the Taliban, after the civil war. Funding fighters was a means to an end for the USA and it's speculated that it helped end the cold war, the big mistake was as always "what happens afterwards".
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You'd have thought that the CIA would have learnt from training and arming a chap named Ho Chi Minh and his mates to help liberate French Indochina from the Japanese back in the day.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
You'd have thought that the CIA would have learnt from training and arming a chap named Ho Chi Minh and his mates to help liberate French Indochina from the Japanese back in the day.
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Virtually every single place the US has "intervened" to replace/attempt to replace the current ruler/leadership since 1945 has blown-up in their face, literally in some cases. Worst is that the tactics that failed 50+ years ago are still being used right now and are still failing, it's a joke!

I mean this is a quick list of some of the dodgy crap the CIA was upto in the first 15 years post WW2 -

1945-1949 - China - armed anti-Mao rebels, gave Mao a reason to invade North Korea later on prolonging the problems there and solidifying Mao as the supreme leader and bringing the CCP to power.

1949 - Syria - helped a military dictator overthrow the democratically elected leadership - 2 weeks later a new oil pipeline deal signed.

1950-1953 - Burma - as a way to attack China, the US staged attacks from Burma, trading weapons for drugs to keep the people smuggling supply routes open.

1952 - Egypt - helped plan the coup which overthrew the Royal family and replace them with military dictators who then attacked Israel twice.

1952 - Iran - again helped plan the coup which overthrew the Royal family and replace them with military dictators, directly leading to 1979 revolution.

1954 - Guatamala - AND AGAIN, helped plan the coup which overthrew the democratically elected leadership and replace them with military dictators.

1956 - Syria - a second coup planned and attempted to replace the people who kicked out the leadership from the 1st CIA coup back in 1949.

1957 - Indonesia - plotted and attempted a coup against the democratically elected leadership, including committing war crimes by deliberately targetting foreign civilian commercial ships.

1959 - South Vietnam - Well we've all seen where this ended up haven't we, however the start isn't anywhere near as a well known but, as usual, the US started it's own quiet war against the North and by 1963, when that quiet war wasn't going it's way, planned and aided in the coup which allowed the US to be fully dragged into a much wider war whose end we all know.
 
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