[kelvin0]

Freedom fighters in the 80's, Terrorists now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban%27s_rise_to_power

"Although no documentation has officially surfaced that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets.[11] Osama bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Arab volunteers"

[gunfighthacksaw]

Most of my life, all of many Zoomers’ lives. Twenty years, surpassing even Vietnam.

All that money wasted, all those dead civilians, all those broken soldiers. All of it for absolutely nothing.

What an abhorrent clown world we live in.

[fellellor]

It’s hard to imagine any politician being able to sell their voters on “we’ll stay there as long as we feasibly can”, because that’s what the US signed up for after 9/11. The scope of the project crept almost immediately from kill AQ, punish Taliban to Nation Building because there was no standing state to punish and most of the leaders involved just melted away. Now, the way the US is pulling out, makes it very likely that Afghanistan will once again become a hub for Islamic terrorists from all over the world.

[dccoolgai]

The root of it is this idea that war could be a "tool of liberation", looking backwards with rose-colored glasses at WWII. It was a brilliant compromise between neo-liberals (to whom the idea was very comforting) and the U.S. Military Industrial Complex (who has made trillions of dollars off of this flawed notion).

With all the money and resources spent in that country promoting something most of the people there never wanted, we probably could have been carbon neutral 3 or 4 times over.

We gave up so many of our freedoms at home - went collectively insane for two decades out of some abstract fear of "terrorism". The number of Americans _alone_ who died (and probably will die in the future) as a result of this miscalculation is a huge scalar multiple of the life and property lost on 9/11.

The Pax Americana that the post-Cold-War era promised is shattered. Even the one "silver lining": That this one poor little country would be a place where women would be more free and have a little better life... And maybe something good would come out of that. Even that is gone now.

I agree, it's just hard to salvage any kind of positive outcome from this - especially considering the huge opportunity costs.

[zozbot234]

> The root of it is this idea that war could be a "tool of liberation", looking backwards with rose-colored glasses at WWII.

You know, it's hard for war to be a "tool of liberation" if you do literally nothing to foster the basics of a free/liberal society in the places you went to war for. WWII is not a proper comparison at all; pre-WWII Europe did of course have a robust civil society, very much unlike Afghanistan. The thing about places like Afghanistan is that politicized religion is the closest they get to something even loosely comparable to what we'd call free/civil society in the West!

[SkyMarshal]

>out of some abstract fear of "terrorism".

To be fair, it wasn't abstract, though one could argue that particular attack was a one-off that could never be successfully repeated. But there were other concerns of dirty bombs, anthrax, etc. at the time.

That said, it's truly a shame that the US abandoned Afghanistan to invade Iraq. Afghanistan seemed to have potential for nation-building had we not diverted and diluted our efforts with Iraq.

[throwaway0a5e]

>All of it for absolutely nothing.

Well we did send a strong message about choosing one's house guests wisely. But that message was delivered a decade ago.

[rascul]

It's potentially possible that Bin Laden might have been extradited, if the US had provided evidence instead of bombs. Not sure how likely an extradition would have been though, even if strong evidence was provided.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1539468.stm

[Justsignedup]

Then titans fight, it is those who live under their feet who suffer most.

[echelon]

Should we have kept 10,000 US soldiers on the ground permanently to prevent this? Seems like a very small cost.

Perhaps the US could have purchased land from Afghanistan, which isn't so much of a unified country anyway. They could have established permanent bases from which they could aid the Afghanistan government and project power against other regional adversaries (ie. China, Iran, and "ally" Pakistan). The monetary injection would have helped too.

There's no way this pull out doesn't look bad for the Biden administration. This is going to be a major election year topic and we're going to hear how Democrats "hate women" and freedom. What a quagmire.

[dccoolgai]

No, that is the worst idea and the root of the problem.

Those "10,000 soldiers" are 18-year-old kids. With guns. In a place where they are scared, angry, bored and have no frame of reference understand the culture. What happens in that situation is about what you'd expect to happen, even when they are the "best trained in the world". The longer you keep them there, the more angry the locals are going to be.

[onepointsixC]

Taliban aren't the locals. Nor do the locals like the Taliban. More so this argument makes no sense when the Taliban had been suicide bombing Afghan civilians for decades and causing many times more civilian casualties.

[gunfighthacksaw]

Lets assume you are American and please humour me.

Your Midwestern state government collapses and loses the ability to defend its territory and the Feds cannot help you for whatever reason.

Two rival factions move in

- a Canadian warlord and his men: They terrorize the locals but otherwise spend time drinking light beer, listening to Steppenwolf and driving around in Pontiac Trans Ams hooting and waving guns around. They promise guts and glory to young men kicking dust in town.

- a division of the Pakistani military: they are generally professional, minus friction with the occupied population. They think fast cars, beer and stadium rock are impediments to a moral society, so they suppress these things and try to impose their values on the local population.

Do you imagine the local population would be happy with having either faction around? Do you think that they would all gravitate towards the more professional legitimate faction vs the Canadian warband?

[onepointsixC]

You're missing the part where you have a 50/50 chance of being considered cattle without rights and a sex prize for one of the faction's soldier.

[lotsofpulp]

> Should we have kept 10,000 US soldiers on the ground permanently to prevent this? Seems like a very small cost.

Is this sarcasm?

> There's no way this pull out doesn't look bad for the Biden administration. This is going to be a major election year topic and we're going to hear how Democrats "hate women" and freedom. What a quagmire.

I think it looks pretty good for him. A president that finally stopped wasting US taxpayer money for people US taxpayers do not prioritize.

[onepointsixC]

We've had much more troops in Japan, Korea, Germany for many more decades. The Taliban wasn't able to push into any major populated area with just 2,500 US troops.

[rtkwe]

Those troops are under essentially no threat with the exception of Korea and that is tiny. Having troops do more than occupy space is massively expensive and dangerous for them.

[lotsofpulp]

Keeping troops in developed, desirable countries is probably far cheaper than Afghanistan. Regardless, the point is what is the long term goal of keeping 2,500 troops, or even 1 troop in Afghanistan? There are lots of places in the world mired in conflict and poverty.

[crazy_horse]

What's with the hyperbole?

That's still 20 years of attempted infrastructure and education. I knew at least one person in graduate school that would not have been there. Just because this is a tragedy doesn't mean everything is dead.

[confuser]

Which bit comes across as hyperbole?

[grey-area]

That's not hyperbole.

[yyyk]

The Taliban didn't even exist in the 1980s, and was founded partially as a response to the 1980s people fighting amongst themselves.

[baybal2]

Nominally, around 1993-1995, but Omar and co. group was around since 1985-1987 for sure.

[teachrdan]

The original ending of the movie Rambo 3 ended with the following:

"This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan."

https://youtu.be/Cx4ey-EmLm4?t=553

[pgalvin]

For those who don’t watch the video, this was actually an internet hoax. The end credits never said this.

[fellellor]

No. I clearly remember seeing that in the end credits, when I first watched Rambo 3 on TV, in the late 90s. Rambo 3 was a great movie and I liked it more than the first one, because I was a kid back then.

I remember it clearly because that was the first movie I saw exploding arrows. I don’t know if the explosive arrows were made famous in Rambo 3 or in Predator. In any case I watched quite a few reruns of Rambo 3 on TV, and they clearly had that dedicated to mujahideen fighters message in the end credits.

[teachrdan]

My apologies! Thank you for pointing this out.

[truetraveller]

Not a hoax. This was on the VHS release of Rambo. "The dedication on the VHS release of the film said "to the brave Mujahideen fighters". It was later changed to "to the gallant people of Afghanistan"." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambo_III

[hnaccy]

The video you linked claims it's a hoax.

[ch4s3]

You might be interested to do a deep dive on the on again off again relationship between Uighur militias and the Taliban. The WSJ and antiwar.com both have some coverage. Really complicated but fascinating stuff.

Apparently the Bush era neo-cons we funneling money to Uighur militias with plans to activate them against the CCP at a later date. However they later joined up with the Taliban against NATO, and briefly with DAESH in Syria. While at the same time elements of the Taliban were fighting alongside US forces in Syria agains DAESH, Asad, and those same Uighurs.

The US war machine will truly do business with ANYBODY.

[EDIT] I'd be interested to hear why anyone takes exception to this. The remarks about US support of Uighur militants should be noted as a pre 9/11 policy. Post 9/11 the Bush administration designated them terrorists to gain Chinese support against the Taliban. And the funneling money claim is I think indirectly supported, but I'm open to counter claims.

[EDIT 2] It's a bit odd that people keep downvoting this but have nothing to say about it. It's unambiguously true that we (meaning our government in the US) fund militias for proxy wars then often fight against them and realign with them across time and geography. We aren't very discerning and we're more focused on the broader geopolitics of the proxy wars. It's dumb and bad.

[EarthIsHome]

A US company wanted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan in the 90s. Since the Taliban was in control of the area, the US tried to work with them to build the pipeline, but the Taliban didn't didn't agree with having a pipeline through their territory.

So, the US went to war for the pipeline, and now, in the past couple of years, the pipeline is being built under the Taliban.

[buildamedschool]

Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Pipeline #History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmenistan%E2%80%93Afghanist...

Afghanistan Oil Pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_Oil_Pipeline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_Over_Me

Keystone XL Pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline#Issues #Issues, #Protest and opposition, Total Carbon, Aquifer valuation, Total Long Term Costs and Benefits

[launchaway]

> So, the US went to war for the pipeline

While a tempting thought, no single pipeline is economically viable with $800B in expenses

[bluejekyll]

Forgive my ignorance, but this is the first I heard of this. Do you have any sources that back up this assertion?

[stephen_g]

I think they mean the TAPI pipeline [1]. I do recall reading something about Taliban representatives being flown to Washington about it before the negotiations broke down due to the embassy bombings.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakis...

[randomopining]

He probably doesn't. It's just a mumbo jumbo of something he read on a message board, convoluted after a few years of posting the same thing on multiple boards.