[leereeves]

Just over a month ago [July 8] the President was actually arguing that the Afghan army would win:

Q Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.

Q Why?

THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.

...

I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

[rvense]

It's almost as though the American leadership doesn't really understand Afghanistan.

[hulitu]

Of course they do. But is a nice playing ground for the army and the military industrial complex makes good profits. The lifes of milions do not matter for them.

[meowface]

I'm not necessarily doubting this, but I feel like this is always a convenient goto excuse to criticize any terrible, unethical military strategy the US is responsible for. Is there good evidence that certain powerful corporations/people made so much money and have so much power that they could and did successfully pressure politicians for two decades across a bunch of administrations into staying in Afghanistan? Not only successfully pressuring them to start the war but successfully pressuring them to stay there for so long?

(I of course don't at all doubt that the big military contractors have been making a ton of money from the wars, but I'm specifically referring to their corporate influence being the primary/secondary/tertiary/etc. force behind why we were still in Afghanistan after two decades.)

My own uninformed Occam's razor assumption would've been that it's primarily a matter of tangled geopolitics rather than a military-industrial complex scheme from day one to today. That is, that the State Department and top-level strategists and policy advisors are mostly the people to blame.

Maybe it's all of the above or some complex mixture. But what I want to know is the actual individuals responsible, or at least where they're contained. Not just an opaque storm cloud labeled "the military-industrial complex" or "the Deep State". For example, it could potentially be the case that this narrative might actually unintentionally help to shield the people who are truly culpable.

[drran]

If a Muslim country will invade a Christian country, say Sweden, to improve democracy, what will happen when they will leave?

[pjmlp]

Like Caliphate of Córdoba?

[AdrianB1]

They have 300,000 troops that are either poorly trained, lead by incompetent officers and/or corrupt to the bone. It is expected to lose badly. This was known, that makes the speech a big lie as many speeches of most leaders of most countries.

[hutzlibu]

And wasn't there recently something shared here, that the afghan air force cannot really fly, because the US cancelled their contracted maintainance service?

Also with the sheer size of the US embassy - it rather looks to me like there never was a sovereign afghan government in the first place, so of course they don't stand a chance on its own. It was all too artificial and US dependent.

[pomian]

Now, who's equipped? History repeats itself...

[pishpash]

He was obviously posturing to make the question go away. Everybody knew this would be the outcome, the die was cast.