What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

And to answer your question, the US never really got out of South Korea or Japan, did it?

people just don't give a fuck anymore about basic competence in public life, so far as i can tell. in a rational society there would be some mechanism for dealing with this shit. we are governed by total fantasists.

Surrounding locales = pretty much all of South Asia

Nato's top commander, General James Jones, has urged member countries to provide reinforcements to the mission in southern Afghanistan.

He admitted the military alliance had been taken aback by the extent of violence in the region.

But he predicted that the coming weeks would be decisive in the fight against Islamist Taleban guerrillas.

Of course, of course...

xpost

As for their troops being there, it is a NATO thing - giving mutual aid when a NATO country is attacked and all that. The Taliban more or less officially sided with bin Laden after 9/11, making them fair game for retribution. NATO signed on for doing part of that job.

Because the Iraq war so stupidly and needlessly drained off resources from doing the job in Afghanistan, that war, too, is not even close to finished and thus the continuing presence of NATO troops. As it happens, the Afghan war is a lot more legitimate than the Iraq war ever was or could hope to be. But, of course, having a legitimate causus belli doesn't mean that a war will be fought effectively or intelligently - and this one has not been either since roughly January 2002.

Aside from stupid Iraq draining resources and Americans repeated blowing up Canadian troops - I'm not sure I have any bright ideas on what could be done better. I don't think withdrawing is the answer either; to paraphrase a good friend who served 8 months over there: "If we leave now, these people are fucked".
Pretty well sums things up imho!

The ‘Good War’ Isn’t Worth Fighting

By RORY STEWART

London

AFGHANISTAN does not matter as much as Barack Obama thinks.

Terrorism is not the key strategic threat facing the United States. America, Britain and our allies have not created a positive stable environment in the Middle East. We have no clear strategy for dealing with China. The financial crisis is a more immediate threat to United States power and to other states; environmental catastrophe is more dangerous for the world. And even from the perspective of terrorism, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are more lethal.

President-elect Obama’s emphasis on Afghanistan and his desire to send more troops and money there is misguided. Overestimating its importance distracts us from higher priorities, creates an unhealthy dynamic with the government of Afghanistan and endangers the one thing it needs — the stability that might come from a patient, limited, long-term relationship with the international community.

We invaded intending to attack Al Qaeda and provide development assistance. We succeeded. By 2004, Afghanistan had a stable currency, millions more children in school, a better health system, an elected Parliament, no Al Qaeda and almost no Taliban. All this was achieved with only 20,000 troops and a relatively small international aid budget.

When the decision was made to increase troops in 2005, there was no insurgency. But as NATO became increasingly obsessed with transforming the country and brought in more money and troops to deal with corruption and the judiciary, warlords and criminals, insecurity in rural areas and narcotics, it failed. In fact, things got worse. These new NATO troops encountered a fresh problem — local Taliban resistance — which has drawn them into a counterinsurgency campaign.

More troops have brought military victories but they have not been able to eliminate the Taliban. They have also had a negative political impact in the conservative and nationalistic communities of the Pashtun south and allowed Taliban propaganda to portray us as a foreign military occupation. In Helmand Province, troop numbers have increased to nearly 10,000 today from just 2,000 in 2004. But no inhabitant of Helmand would say things have improved in the last four years. Mr. Obama believes that sending even more troops and money will now bring “victory” in Afghanistan. Some of this may be politically driven: a pretense of future benefits appears better than admitting a loss; and because lives are involved, no one wants to write off sunk costs.

Nevertheless, these increases are not just wasteful, they are counterproductive. The more costly we make this campaign, the more likely we are to withdraw when another crisis emerges or our attention wanders. Grand investment precipitating a sudden withdrawal repeats the “Charlie Wilson’s War” effect of 1990, when Afghanistan fell in a moment from spoiled godson to orphan, leaving bankruptcy and chaos behind.

Further, the more we give, the less influence we have over the Afghan government, which believes we need it more than it needs us. What incentive do Afghan leaders have to reform if their country is allowed to produce 92 percent of the world’s heroin and still receive $20 billion of international aid? Are they wrong to think that if they became more stable and law-abiding and wiped out the Taliban we would give them less support? That this is a protection racket where the amount of money one receives is directly proportional to one’s ability to threaten trouble?

This is certainly the experience of the more stable provinces in central Afghanistan, where leaders talk about the need to set off bombs to receive the assistance given to their wealthier but more dangerous neighbors. A more detached strategic perspective and less aid would give us more leverage.

A sudden surge of foreign troops and cash will be unhelpful and unsustainable. It would take 20 successful years to match Pakistan’s economy, educational levels, government or judiciary — and Pakistan is still not stable. Nor, for that matter, are northeastern or northwestern India, despite that nation’s great economic and political successes.

We will not be able to eliminate the Taliban from the rural areas of Afghanistan’s south, so we will have to work with Afghans to contain the insurgency instead. All this is unpleasant for Western politicians who dream of solving the fundamental problems and getting out. They will soon be tempted to give up.

It is in our interests for Afghanistan to be more stable in part because it contributes to the stability of the region, and in particular Pakistan. Well-focused, long-term assistance in which we appear a genuine partner, not a frustrated colonial master, could help Afghans achieve this goal. We will be able to create, afford and sustain such a relationship only if we put it in a broader strategic context and limit its scope.

Rory Stewart, a former British Foreign Service officer, is the author of “The Places in Between” and “The Prince of the Marshes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/washington/18web-troops.html

i feel u dogg

i saw this a few weeks ago late at nite on bbc four, it's amazing -

Afghantsi (1988)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343351/

lots of up-close footage of afghanistan and the soviet soldiers there who were on the butt-end of an obviously doomed venture - the interviews are harrowing and heartfelt, these guys were just like whattt the fuuuuck are we doing

sequel potential high

1988 soviet army more open to investigative journalism than 2009 american one :/

More s.o.p. AWESOMENESS from the Administration:

February 22, 2009

U.S. Concedes Afghan Attack Mainly Killed Civilians

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NY Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — An airstrike by the United States-led military coalition killed 13 civilians and 3 militants last Tuesday in western Afghanistan, not “up to 15 militants” as was initially claimed by American forces, military officials here said Saturday.

The civilians killed included three children, six women and four men in the Gozara district of Herat Province, in addition to three people suspected of being Taliban fighters, according to an aide to the provincial governor.

American and NATO forces have come under increasing criticism from Afghans and political leaders in Kabul for the soaring number of civilians killed by airstrikes and fighting between Taliban and American-led forces.

The United Nations says civilian deaths rose nearly 40 percent last year to 2,118, the most in any year since the 2001 invasion that drove the Taliban from power. Most of the casualties last year were caused by the Taliban and other insurgents, the United Nations found, but 828 deaths were attributed to American, NATO and Afghan forces, mostly from airstrikes and village raids. Afghan officials fear the numbers will rise as more American troops deploy to the country.

Only five days before the deadly episode in Herat, Afghan and American commanders had hailed a new agreement that called for Afghan officials to have more input into the “planning and execution of counterterrorism missions” in hopes of minimizing civilian casualties.

But Naqib Arween, an aide to the Herat provincial governor, said there was no coordination with Afghan security officials in the province about the operation on Tuesday. He said the bombardment struck nomads in tents in a mountainous region of the province, which borders Iran.

Initially, American forces described the bombardment as a “precision strike” that hit an insurgent hide-out, killing as many as 15 militants. But the attack drew immediate protests from local Afghan officials who said that most of the people killed were innocent, and a military delegation was sent to investigate.

The statement issued by the military on Saturday did not explain why so many civilians had been killed. It did say that weapons and ammunition were found at the site, and that the investigation shows “how seriously we take our responsibility in conducting operations against militant targets and the occurrence of noncombatant casualties.”

In a separate episode, three “coalition service members” on patrol in Oruzgan Province in central Afghanistan were killed by a roadside bomb on Friday. Their names and nationalities were not released.

So far, 26 American service members and 13 from other countries in the coalition have been killed in Afghanistan this year, almost twice as many as the first two months of 2008, according to iCasualties.org, which tracks such fatalities.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.

Yeah, it does feel like Afghanistan is going to be a nasty slough without any real upside to the sort of meager victories that the US/NATO forces are likely to achieve. The Afghans don't want us there and they are particularly good at expelling foreign bodies from their midst. We need to accept that the best we can hope for is preventing the Taliban from taking over the entire country, however anarchic the alternatives look.

Obviously, the other shoe to drop is Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and a government so near to failure that they brush shoulders whenever they leave the room.

I sure as hell hope Mr. Holbrook can harvest some good ideas from the people he talks to who know the region well and he can get our policy back on a marginally effective track. Looks to me like the seeds of disaster that were planted long ago are getting close to maturity now.

The Afghans don't want us there

i'm not sure about this tbh. i think there's alot of Afghanis who are worried about what might happen if the taliban regained control. for alot of people there NATO is the lesser of two evils.

RECORD BOMBS DROPPED IN AFGHANISTAN IN APRIL

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/05/airforce_april_airstrike_050409w/

SO DEEPLY SORRY, AGAIN

The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that airstrikes in western Afghanistan in the past week had killed civilians.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he had received an official update putting the number of innocent casualties from the strikes in Farah province as high as 130.

If that toll is confirmed, it would be the deadliest incident affecting Afghan civilians since U.S.-led forces started battling the Taliban in 2001. In a statement with the Afghan government, U.S. forces said that noncombatants died but that the number was unknown because the victims had been buried.

-- Reuters

I watched an episode of The Daily Show where the author of How To Win a Cosmic War had some intelligible insight on how Bush's battle to establish democracy in Iraq actually distracted pro-war-anywhere-now Muslims from dwelling on such inclinations when left alone.

tbh all the recent afghanistan stuff - hillary's apology etc - makes me feel unavoidably morbsish. having an anti-war president seemed to augur having someone appalled by the idea of people getting blown to shit. i don't know how idealistic i am being and how inevitable it is but ... uhh. collateral damage classic or dud.

The notion that civilians being killed is somehow on a different moral plane than the typical conduct of war is odd to me. I guess the rational is that we should minimize the amount of cruelty and destruction needed to accomplish our goals. However, I find it perplexing that it takes the death of 100+ civilians in one incident for people to say, "wait, this war is too violent!" As if the conduct of war isn't inherently violent and destructive, even when the killing is on a smaller scale. It's like there is some kind of threshold of destruction for morality to kick in.

I wish people, especially our leaders, would be a little more intellectually honest and once in a while acknowledge that war is immoral and unjust. Maybe it's necessary at times, but it's fucking horrible and our leaders should say so.

So yeah, collateral damage is dud, and "primary" damage is dud, and distinguishing between the two is dud. It's all "damage," and that's kind of all that matters.

i think all my views on this come down to soldiers dying versus civilians dying, with the idea that as damage both are lamentable but viewed as something to avoid or strategise around, civilian death is worse. this is endlessly complicated by conscription and a million other things, but i think everything that happens in the typical conduct of wars, ie between armies, per the instruction of governments, is separate from what happens when it spills over into homes, schools, hospitals etc.

But war always "spills over into homes." Doesn't the family of a slain soldier mourn? Is the death of a 20 year old combatant not tragic?

I'm not calling you out, and my point is probably hopelessly idealistic, but I'm increasingly skeptical of moral hedging when it comes to war. The notion of acceptable and unacceptable war seems like a kind of moral relativism that misses the real point: killing human beings is wrong and killing is fundamental to war.

good piece imo

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_8938

I'd rather not be lied to about WMDs or have British war crimes covered up or see literal fascist incitement screaming from tabloid front pages every time I go shopping but that's just me I'm weird like that

i'm not in the UK but US media coverage of both wars was and remains disgraceful for the most part, from the credulous acceptance of bush's lies about iraq’s WMDs to the current consensus among pundits that leaving afghanistan was a bad idea. just dedicating the front page to something doesn't mean much.

There has been widespread criticism of both wars in mainstream media, and that criticism continues to this day. Of course the media that favours neocons views were pro-war (until it didn't suit them). To call it silence is wild, we have been forced to obsess about those conflicts over almost all others.

I don't know the US press as well but all the biggest UK newspapers are fascist and that is absolutely not an exaggeration so I am biased

these journalist pieces of shit regularly call for and are responsible for serious violence against minorities and vulnerable and anyone who questions the righteousness every horror perpetrated by british troops and cops and slavers and the absolute fucking stain on this planet that is britain

fuck their pals in serious media too they all have so much blood on their hands everyone should be fucking outraged at what these scum have been doing

I sincerely hope one day you can move out of the UK to somewhere better.

I hope one day you find the mental and spiritual wherewithal to move out of your own arsehole you fucking bullshit Canadian troll cunt

I swear ignoring me will do wonders to your wellbeing calzino. Please do so for the both of us.

that isn't really what you want though is it? your whole fucking tedious raison d'etre is about getting maximum attention by posting stuff that wouldn't be out of place in the Washington Post, but with added *nuance*. You are basically the shitest poster on here since Fred

I hope one day you find the mental and spiritual wherewithal to move out of your own arsehole you fucking bullshit Canadian troll cunt

peace and love

No I really want you to ignore me, I might be a shitty poster but I am not a middle aged man insulting someone on a messageboard on Friday night and that is a truly pathetic sight.

I believe Left, depsite our disagreements, comes from a good place and it does seems to me that living in the UK has some very negative effects on their wellbeing.

And yes maybe I have more ‘centrist’ and ‘nuanced’ views on politics and society. Big whoop, there is a world outside your bubble, I am allowed to expresses those views. It’s going to be a very long life if you can’t manage yourself face à diverse understanding of politics, and considering how you are wasting your middle age years insulting people on the web, it seems to already be the case.

can we cool it on the ageism

"but I am not a middle aged man"

ageist as well, someone tell Aimless his most vociferous supporter.

Dude who's hounding a poster, calling him 'cunt' and calling out his nationality is going to give decency lessons. Leave me alone, move on, I have been asking you for months now.

yeah but you are still a cunt

loving these vibes

xps quasi-response to VHS -

there are much worse places to live than britain from a material resources point of view (which is fucked up and inexcusable and needs to be changed urgently) but there are useable things that could be made to do things to sabotage parts of this international death machine and maybe save something i don't know

i don't come from a good place whatsoever by the way. my dead grandfathers were a british captain and possible spy in india, and a fucking nazi in fucking russia whose reappearance after stalingrad is some kind of horrific anti-miracle, instead of dying in the war along with everything they stood for they both got to live and their kids made me and always told me how great they were

so guilt and self-loathing has always been baked into whatever politics i would end up developing, and if it's productive i am using it

By saying 'coming from a good place' I meant that I believe you don't mean any ill and I respect the dedication to your values and ideology. I'm sorry your family background is causing you this amount of self-loathing and guilt.

I also lived in the UK and in France at two separate occasions in my late teens/early twenties and I came to the conclusion that Western Europe as a society is very good at sapping joy out of one's life, for reasons not too far from you generally describe.

csb

How does Western Europe differ from North America in this respect?

different cast of rich white brats?

I probably derailed the thread enough so if there is another thread about the differences between EU and NA (i’m sure there is) I’ll be glad to discuss that elsewhere.

xps I know what you meant but it's not really relevant and neither is my neurosis which I don't want to fix rn sorry I started

I have little hope for europe in general which is currently going through genocide from its border regimes (cops, militias, camps, etc) among other things seems happy to continue to help facilitate the mass murder of millions or hundreds of millions of refugees in the coming years or decades, the situation is already beyond dire and hardly anyone around me seems to give more than a rhetorical shit at best because this culture is fucking evil. stopping this from happening more than it already has is the most important thing ever right now

of course so many people are doing amazing work but they're stretched so thin & having to make awful decisions they should never have been forced to make because fuck europe

Tough night on ilx.

I really dislike how this -- otherwise generally informative piece in a trainspotter historian sorta way -- talks of Kabul as a disaster.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/04/afghanistan-britain-worst-failure-since-suez-uk-foreign-policy

The withdrawal is generally fine. It's the refugee situation that is fucked.

Tough night on ilx.

lol. it really was!

just a bit of jovial horseplay at last orders time!

fuck you, you worthless motherfucker!! I says to the barkeep

Let me take you to the place
Where membership's a smiling face
Brush shoulders with the arseholes
Where wankers take you by the hand
And welcome you to a wonderful ilx thread
And they spit in your face and call you a melt-cunt

The Taliban takeover has restored order to the conservative countryside while plunging the comparatively liberal streets of Kabul into fear and hopelessness. This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable project—the Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.”

In this week's @NewYorker I write about the Afghan women who wanted US troops to leave https://t.co/nQGzqKPFZu

— Anand Gopal (@Anand_Gopal_) September 6, 2021

pretty sure I’m taliban after reading that

Here's the Times-published op-ed from the general whose atrocities are detailed near the end
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html

This was a good light-ish critique of that piece

Some of this is a bit too novelistic in presentation to inspire complete confidence imho, but the core claim that the occupation of Afghanistan was a parade of crimes and horrors is very clearly going to be completely correct. https://t.co/ziiyZCv9Tp

— Lafargue (@Lafargue) September 7, 2021

NYT: The drone strike that the military said took out a potential ISIS car bomber right before we departed Afghanistan likely hit a a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group who was bringing people to and from work. https://t.co/eh5C18FTAg

— Sam Stein (@samstein) September 10, 2021

ah! nevertheless

BREAKING: Gen. McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, to announce no ISIS-K fighters killed in U.S. drone strike in Kabul Aug 29. 10 civilians killed, including 7 children in Toyota. No disciplinary action expected, officials say. US military stands by intel leading to strike.

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) September 17, 2021

No disciplinary action expected, officials say. US military stands by intel leading to strike.

I can only think of a few possibilities of how this went down, but none of them fit with both of these sentences. Either the intel was inaccurate. Or it was inadequate. Or it was accurate and actionable, and the operator made a grievous error and struck the wrong target. Or the operator was ordered by a superior to strike although the target was incorrect.

Asked by a reporter to explain how the "complete and utter failure" could have occurred, McKenzie said, "While I agree that this strike certainly did not come up to our standards and I profoundly regret it, I would not qualify the entire operation in those terms."

Fucking piece of shit

The Taliban takeover has restored order to the conservative countryside while plunging the comparatively liberal streets of Kabul into fear and hopelessness. This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable project—the Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.”

In this week's @NewYorker I write about the Afghan women who wanted US troops to leave https://t.co/nQGzqKPFZu
— Anand Gopal (@Anand_Gopal_) September 6, 2021
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 6 September 2021 17:25 (one week ago) link

*strokes chin thoughtfully*

I've been listening to like 6 different podcasts with Spencer Ackerman bc of his new book being out and I am finding all of them incredibly informative & sensible. His description of how the war wasn't really happening *in* Kabul and it was safe to be a drunk Westerner walking through the streets to your hotel, there was no security, etc, versus how heavily rural areas were droned, mined, and so on...was something I hadn't realized at all.

I put a hold on his book at the library, but I'm 11th in line for a shot at one of the 4 copies in the system.

No disciplinary action expected, officials say. US military stands by intel leading to strike.

I can only think of a few possibilities of how this went down, but none of them fit with both of these sentences. Either the intel was inaccurate. Or it was inadequate. Or it was accurate and actionable, and the operator made a grievous error and struck the wrong target. Or the operator was ordered by a superior to strike although the target was incorrect.

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Friday, September 17, 2021 5:31 PM (two hours ago)

I read this anand gopal essay essay earlier this week and I think it illuminates the perverted ethics of this sort of thing

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians/amp

The Ackerman book is great

incredible pic.twitter.com/8bFf5vVLH5

— rice🌐 (@412ricefarmer) October 25, 2021

otm

they tried so hard to manufacture consent

extremely grim report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/08/afghanistan-winter-crisis/

The country’s new rulers, cut off from most international aid as well as Afghan government assets held in U.S. accounts, have scant resources to protect millions of vulnerable people against another harsh winter. Aid groups estimate that nearly 23 million Afghans, out of a total population of 39 million, already do not have enough to eat. Many also lack solid shelter and money to heat their homes at night, forcing them to choose between food and fuel, and creating additional potential for a full-fledged humanitarian disaster, aid officials said.