The Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a briefing on Thursday in Washington. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
Julian Borger, The Guardian: US deserves big share of blame for Afghanistan military disaster
Analysis: White House accused of unfairly pointing finger at Afghan military after decades of mismanaging war effort
As one provincial capital after another has fallen to the Taliban, the message from Washington to the Afghans facing the onslaught has been that their survival is in their own hands.
“They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation,” Joe Biden said. Jen Psaki, the White House spokeswoman, added: “They have what they need. What they need to determine is whether they have the political will to fight back.”
But despite more than $80bn in US security assistance since 2002 and an annual military budget far in excess of other developing nations, Afghan military resistance to the Taliban is collapsing with greater speed than even most pessimists had predicted. There is talk among US officials of Kabul falling in months – if not weeks.
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WNU Editor: Needless to say the above post is my must read for today.
7 comments:
There is one disaster looming.
Taliban capturing an intact embassy with a large number of Americans.
Even if they don’t, there will be a celebration shown worldwide of the American embassy Benz sacked.
America being impotent.
China will use this in Arab capitals.
And 20 years later, these are the same ass clowns in charge of border security, the economy, education, foreign policy, military--basically everything. No wonder we've lost our way, with no clue as to how to find our way back.
Unranked for now, I blame
- Cheney for the Airlift of Evil
- Bush for not pressing the Pakistanis on FATA. Se 1st Battle of Swat.
- Obama for not following through on the surge, folding, and nothing for 6 years.
- The whole political establishment and the organs of government
- The media
- All the brown nosing generals with manure breath.
And never forget this too
LOL!
I agree this is a "must read" if no other reason than it provides a window into what the leadership class is thinking. Much of it could have been and likely was written by the leadership class. As for an analysis, very respectfully it is fundamentally flawed. It is WAY TO KIND to the Afghans and their government. The statements by Joe Biden and Jen Psaki at the beginning of the article, nailed it. It would have been possible to stop right there. Somewhere between 98.5-99.999% of the failure is squarely on the Afghans.
While there are a few glowing exceptions to this who deserve mention and assistance from us, for the most part this was a fundamentally flawed ally from the very beginning combined with a fundamentally flawed mission. In other words, had we executed this flawlessly which we didn't the end result still would have been the same. I figured this out in late 2002 but didn't want to admit it until mid 2005. I'm glad the leadership class FINALLY caught on here and pulled the proverbial plug.
Unfortunately they've learned the wrong lessons!! Part of the issue is their assessments are almost always to rosy overestimating our abilities and underestimating those of adversaries and potential adversaries. Such hubris is a recipe for disaster from the start. From their perspective, if only we could have executed better or done this or that differently it might have worked!! Fundamentally flawed nation building enterprises don't work anyway. Throw in incompetent, untrustworthy, and corrupt "allies" and it makes things worse.
Hopefully the leadership class will learn their lesson and not try something like this again. I'm not optimistic though. The American people are now virulently anti war which will make it more difficult for them to pull off a similar stunt in the future.
Finally, the Soviet Union failed in Afghanistan. While, in and of itself, this does not mean don't go to war there. After all this is where Al Qaeda is alleged to have planned the 911 attacks from and where Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden was based. Nevertheless the Soviet failure there should have been a giant red flag for our leadership class.
"Unranked for now, I blame"
This is certainly a good list and valid even if it leaves out the chief culprit, the Afghans themselves. Frankly, right now the leadership class appears to be a bit dazed and confused. They aren't quite sure what to do but know they need to pin the tail of blame on someone.
Even though the primary blame belongs with the Afghans, for ideologues this won't fly. After all, there's nothing wrong with the mission itself or is premise they say!! If only we could execute better they say!! Perhaps with another blow we will succeed they think!! Furthermore they may want to use this for domestic political purposes. Putting it on the Afghans doesn't help there.
In the coming days and weeks I suspect they are goin to pin the tail of blame squarely on former president Trump. While it could be justified perhaps this isn't the thinking. 1.) Both major political parties and the leadership class are pretty much unified in their hatred of him. 2.) His unfavorable ratings are quite high. Even among those who support him he isn't particularly liked nor is anyone of importance going to come to his aid. 3.) He's been banned from social media and is confined to the internet backwoods meaning it is going to be nearly impossible for him to defend himself. 4.) Trump's fund raising is limited to desperate texts and emails. He's got to be running low on funds. 5.) His legal woes from the witch hunt against him and his associates are mounting. There seems little possibility he can withstand this much longer. His cash has to be nearly exhausted. 6.) The hotel and hospitality industry were hit especially hard during the pandemic. Being a government official he's ineligible for much of the government aid. If he's not de facto bankrupt by now, he's got to close. 7.) Being Trump right now is like man in the middle of the ocean in a rubber lifeboat that has a leak in it. Sharks are circling and he has a gapping wound that is bleeding into the water. Making matters worse highly skilled fishermen are in pursuit in speed boats with spears accompanied by aerial recon.
Essentially Trump is the perfect scapegoat!! This way the leadership class doesn't need to change to change a thing. If only we could have executed this better they will say.
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