To put things in context: at the time, the US wanted al-Qaeda and the Talibans to face justice, so this amnesty deal was not inline with that goal. It would have led to Taliban leaders walking without punishment aside from losing power.
I'm not taking any position here, but I think the nuance is helpful.
On the positive side the Taliban generally lack the technical skills and spare parts supply to maintain any of that equipment more sophisticated than trucks and small arms.
Maintenance for modern military gear can be quite expensive and challenging. My armchair analysis thinks that it’s more likely this gear would be sold to other interested countries if it was captured.
I suspect the kit will get bombed to smithereens by US et al too.
Modern armies do it to their own hardware if it’s at risk of being captured by the enemy. I guess there are few secretive things the Afghans got, but even that isn’t for wider consumption.
That demonstrably did not happen. Did you see the picture on the cover of all of the major news sites of the Taliban sitting in the presidential palace? At least according to Reddit (I'm not an expert on military weaponry) those rifles are American made M4s and M16s.
Real dearth in American leaders. Getting real hard to think of a someone in the past few decades who will go into the history books for having produced an actual outcome.
That's not what Biden said. Just over a month ago, on July 8th, he actually argued that the Afghan army could 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.
What answer is he supposed to give to that question, even if he is relatively confident of an eventual Taliban victory? I don't mean to ask what the honest answer is. I mean to say, what is the sayable answer?
An honest answer, perhaps? Why is an honest answer not sayable?
And why tell a lie that will soon be disproven so spectacularly?
(To be clear, I'm not arguing whether he lied or really believed what he said. I'm responding to "even if he is relatively confident of an eventual Taliban victory")
It's a sad reality that there are some answers that the people are not ready to hear, even if they are true. If people rewarded politicians for being truthful, they would be more truthful. They are just responding to incentives, like everyone else. I wish it were different, but that doesn't mean I think it ever will be.
Or the account of this former Army colonel who mentions how poorly managed Afghanistan was all this time, with basically no real attempt at establishing institutions over the last twenty years: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/how-americ...
There are plenty of ways this could have been handled better. It all comes down to having better leadership. The US hasn't had good leadership for a long time. Four different presidents came into office based on populist sentiments more than competence, and the result is they completely mismanaged all of this while we still incurred the immense expenses that a more successful plan would have required. Worst, they lied to the public and assured the public of how things were going well - this too came from multiple presidents.
Indeed. We should have been out of there long ago once it became clear that we did not understand the conditions for victory anymore / when we realized that we did not want to allocate the resources required to win. Staying this long was pure sunk cost fallacy combined with weak leadership. Kudos to Biden for having the balls to rip the bandaid off, as painful as it is.
Of course there was a "winning strategy." China is about to embark on it. There must have been clear signs that the Taliban was capable of doing what they just did. Even if the goal is to exit Afghanistan (which we should have done a long time ago) you still need to build a bridge out and not simply let the cardboard government collapse on itself spontaneously. We should have been making concessions to the Taliban, acknowledging it is a legitimate political force in Afghanistan. At the very least we should have negotiated a permanent military base in Afghanistan while accepting Taliban control of the rest of the nation. We spent too long trying to do too much and ended up getting nothing and looking stupid.
A single isolated military base would be untenable without reasonably secure land supply routes for fuel and other bulk supplies. The US military lacks the airlift capacity to fly in everything needed on a permanent basis.
It was absolutely a humiliating defeat for Biden. There was no reason for him to declare a rapid pull out timeline and do it all so quick. Trump's Afghanistan deal last year would have incrementally pulled out as commitments were met by the Ghani government and the Taliban. Instead, the rug was pulled out from under the Afghan people with little planning. It was so poorly planned that there are numerous articles about the Taliban fighters raiding US weapon stores that were left behind and acquiring thousands of weapons, including military vehicles and helicopters. The whole thing was incredibly poorly managed.
> “I’m left with some grave questions in my mind about his ability to lead our nation as commander-in-chief,” [the former ambassador] said. “To have read this so wrong – or, even worse, to have understood what was likely to happen and not care.”
Pres. Biden had to pull US troops out eventually. His real failure was in failing to protect Afghani translators and other local staff. They're now at extreme danger of being tortured and killed by the Taliban. That's 100% on Biden. He could have evacuated them and chose not to.
No US president wants this media attention but frankly Biden is the president who should take the least flak for taliban controlled afghanistan. 3 presidents before him failed to either remove US troops or find an achievable goal in Afghanistan
There are two options that anyone has been able to figure out over the last twenty years: indefinite occupation, and eventual retaking of the country by the Taliban. There may have been some third way, but if so, nobody who had the power to influence the outcome was able to think of it.
It's certainly a bad "look" for Biden, but the real error was going there in the first place. That was when this outcome was decided. Whoever finally pulled the plug was going to have a PR issue on their hands, but this is hardly Biden's defeat.
I believe there should be criticism on the current withdrawal. It is definitely a catastrophe in many ways.
However, I remember the chorus of opposition when the Bush administration decided to send half a million troops to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. Rumsfeld wanted to try invading Afghanistan on the cheap so the US could afford two wars, and because Iraq had a legitimate military and “all the good targets.” They were so delusional they thought both would be over in months. Here we are twenty years later, with the same problems and 10 trillion dollars missing from the treasury. We tortured people and imprisoned them without trial or due process. We debased ourselves on so many levels and we have nothing to show for it.
Dig into the origins of the Taliban, and you’ll find US and Saudi Arabian meddling in the 70s and the 80s exploiting that extremism to counter Russia and communism. Saudi Arabia needed a way to rid themselves of radical theocrats, and the US was looking for soldiers to counter Russian influence. So we helped them fund and train militants by building madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. With haunting irony, Russia was trying to impose similar reforms by invading: gender equality, secularism, and their version of political freedom.
Do you want to know why the second Bush Administration never investigated Saudi Arabia after 9/11? They were all the same people from the first Bush and Reagan administrations, and they knew the paper trail would lead right back to themselves.
Meddling in the affairs of foreign nations always has unintended consequences. Democracy spreads through attraction, not enforcement. I sincerely hope the lesson we learn is not to blame the people who finally accept it, but the people who always think that this time will be different.
What is stunning about the wars in Afghanistan is that they are all exactly the same. British in 19th century, Russians in 1970s, NATO now.
Each war is initially “won” very quickly, then the occupant struggles to find allies, reliable new political elites, and frankly purpose. It all turns sour, things go from awkward to deadly, and there is a disastrous and embarrassing retreat and that’s that.
I'm not taking any position here, but I think the nuance is helpful.