The elephant in the room that everyone seems to be ignoring on Afghanistan. Especially aimed at those who think ‘we’ suck.
I hate to say this, but that 75,000 strong Taliban army the POTUS said last month were ‘no threat’ has within a few days become a 400,000+ strong army, supplied with the very best of modern military technology — including helicopters and other combat aircraft, artillery, missile tech, drone tech, night vision, tons of ammunition, CIWS even — everything they gave the ANSF to defend the democratic government. Everything left at Baghram airbase, along with operators and technicians fully trained — by us — to operate these systems. Daesh at their very peak had a quarter of that number by even the most optimistic analyses. They took 82 countries worth of us four years to suppress while they were fighting everybody around them without the backing of a state apparatus. Or three, or seven.
All personnel in the ANSF will now have to either join and fight FOR the Taliban, face a death sentence, or flee — which is now almost impossible. Every neighbor of this landlocked country seems to be co-operating fully with the new power. Nowhere to flee to.
This free armory we’ve left behind is all brand new and in good condition — and they’re flying parts to new partners, who also detest us — to reverse engineer for spares. Plus whatever other advantages they may gain through detailed examination of their adversaries high tech.
China and Iran are already aligning with the Taliban diplomatically. Russia, and many of the Central Asian republics are throwing their support in also. All the people bent on destroying our society are forming a large gang in the toughest neighborhood on the global block — there’s no other way to put it.
Right next door to nuclear armed, and weak, Pakistan. With whom the Taliban have a complicated relationship, to say the least.
Going in with force to get all, or any, of the people left inside the country, both coalition citizens and Afghans who worked with us for 20 years, is now obviously impossible without the worst battle of the entire war, if the Taliban become difficult — which they already are. They’ve broken every single promise made so far. Every one.
I mean, there’s no possible reason they might want to keep thousands of non-nationals in country as hostages, or human shields, is there?
That feeling you have is the entire known geopolitical balance of the world shifting in an instant.
Things to look out for: The Taliban do not recognize the Durand line on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their take on it would hobble and utterly destabilize Pakistan in one move if pressed.
If there is any talk of reinstating ‘Khorasan’, the origin of the Black Banners of Jihad in the first place, that spells region wide conflict to install an expanded Islamic State.
Any alliance between Sunni Afghanistan and Shia Iran, which may be cynically marketed to us as the 1400 year awaited ‘reconciliation’ between the two bitter rivals, will be turned upon all the other Islamic countries in the region and beyond. Regimes authoritarian, secular, and monarchical will all be in the sights of a new purist revolutionary system.
Can I also speak for a moment to the idea we’re cruel for introducing and facilitating freedom and person-hood for Afghanistan’s women. No. The cruel people here are the Taliban who will immediately crush those freedoms, and many besides — all because their version of the sky daddy told them to. It’s not cruel to allow humans to live as they should, and we do.
What’s cruel on our side is leaving, at all, under these circumstances.
We went in to stop Afghanistan being used as a base to launch attacks like 9/11, destroy Al Qaeda if we could, and to free the Afghans from what amounts to a puritan violent criminal gang. We’d done that.
Endless war? What? The US had lost not a single soldier in the field for 18 months. Australia nobody since 2014. We had the Taliban suppressed and contained — until we drew forces down. Why did we leave, knowing this would (at least eventually) happen?
Hell the US has had 35,000-40,000 troops stationed in Germany since 1945, and about that number in South Korea since 1953. We had the country under total security with as few as 6,000–7,000 NATO troops with a couple thousand support staff.
But, because of the bleating of certain people in politics and the media we thought we were somehow ‘bad’ to do so. It’s called security, and frankly if we did stay for a number of years, educating and giving health care and modern standards to the locals at the same time, it would have taken one generation to move them to a position where they really would reject this kind of regime forever. It’s not an equally deserving way of life that we’re snuffing out with ‘racist white colonialism’ — it’s a barbaric horror that should be stood against by all civilized people of the world in the true name of justice and peace. Like we did with actual fascism in the mid 20th century, at such awful cost. Like we faced down Soviet communism, like we faced down Imperialism, and slavery and human sacrifice. Eliminating this last supremacist ideology would of course have benefit to those of us already free — but the main beneficiaries would be the entire nation of Afghanistan and all of their neighbors, near and far.
So — could this be a ‘Sputnik moment’ for the progressive ‘activist’ generation?
This has to be your intellectual breaking point, surely… or are we going to ignore what’s just happened and why, and instead conflate the legitimacy of entire war on terror on this last disaster, and get distracted about refugee intakes and ‘racism’ again?
Creating the refugees with this avoidable disaster is the real, actual racism — and who is responsible for that? Who has overseen this since January, when the real problems with this whole withdrawal policy began?
No, really, it’s time you examined the real world and how it actually works very soberly. Drop how you think it ‘should be’ in your outrage that we’re imperfect.
There ARE truly evil people in the world, totally committed every morning when they wake and every night when they fall asleep, on destroying us. That’s me, you, everyone we love and know. And they’re awful to their own people and everyone around them. Truly, barbarically awful. As you see.
I will point out that all of the talking points you use to make your case on how we’re so wrong for being involved at all, are the very same points people like the Taliban use to recruit fighters. Almost word for word…
People just like this have been showing you who they are for decades now. Why don’t you take them at face value? Why do you instead insist on focusing on our shortfalls from totally the wrong end of every problem?
It may already be too late. This is the turning point for the entire future of the species. It’s actually up to you, really this time.
You’ve been ‘civil rights LARPing’ since the mid 90s, the last five years particularly hard — and not against people like the Taliban, but against the people fighting them. Against, well, us.
This IS what you get when those ideas get traction and drive discourse and policy.
Wake up, to return a phrase often sneeringly aimed at people who talk like me for a couple of decades now… I’m not sneering. I’m pleading. Please. Wake up.