Here’s a delusional Fox piece. I mean superficially it makes sense except I see no evidence that this is an actual plan the Afghans or US have prepared to execute. Again, shades of Vietnam.
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I read a really good book about the war in Afghanistan called “No Good Men Among the Living”. It’s a bit dated at this point and I don’t know that the last 7 years followed the same pattern as the first 13 or whatever, but they probably have.
Highly recommend.
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It would take a MacArthur at Inchon level of balls to try something like that at this point.
Kandahar has fallen to the Taliban. Seems like Kabul could go any day now, at this rate.
I’m reading that “girls aged 15 and older, and widows 45 and under are being forced into ‘marriages’ for Taliban fighters.”
This is going to be and will continue to be a disaster, with no good options
…As it has been since this all started 20 years ago.
Yeah it’s over in Afghanistan. The Taliban won and now they get to decide what happens next.
Look at it this way: this was inevitable and was going to happen whenever the war ended. Every year the war ground on an awful lot of people who didn’t need to get hurt got hurt. With any luck there will be some semblance of (admittedly pretty shitty) peace in Afghanistan within a year. I hope Kabul falls sooner not later.
What a terrible take lol. We lost the war and that’s all there is to it. Staying in a clearly lost war is just dumb full stop.
Maybe he can start a GoFundMe and raise his own army of concerned citizens to go battle some more.
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Apparently the ~56k Afghani special forces are the only ones who actually fight. The other troops and police are just for show and run away as soon as trouble comes, or join the Taliban. The country is way too big for the special forces to hold much of at any one time.
All the warlords we’re talking about supporting are also brutal murderers, druglords, and most of them are into bacha bazi (boys).
The country is a total shitshow.
Kind of amazing the Taliban just bided their time in the mountains for 20 years, then come back as strong as ever.
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https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1426239420781445126
I think getting China to become involved in Afghanistan is a great idea.
It is their turn.
It really does live up to its reputation as the graveyard of empires.
In our case it’s more of a symptom than a cause. It’s a cash grab for lots of people on both sides. We’ve had more private contractors than US troops there for a long time.
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The Taliban have about 75k. US ground forces will be out but the fighting seems likely to go on.
56k special forces plus us air support and logistical help really should be able to win easily. Feel like taliban has to have way more than that.
The Taliban fell apart in hours in October 2001. That tells you a lot about how easily winnable the war is and how impossible it is build a nation via invasion.
Brother in law who was deployed to Afghanistan way back when and got a Purple Heart and bronze star suffering a huge PTSD episode and now back in the hospital after seeing this play out. Not making any value judgements on what we are/should be doing, but man we screwed up a whole bunch of kids in the Gulf.
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That’s easy for you to say. You won’t have to live under Taliban rule.
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There are a larger number of men in militias under warlord control that currently support them. The warlords are not known for being reliable allies but you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing right now.
They do. They have millions of supporters mostly in rural Afghanistan. (that mostly means the old guys who are in charge, but 20 years of war hasn’t changed the way that works there)