[uniacid]

$2 Trillion or so, also we have to admit the failure was the US changing its role there from hunting Bin Laden and the Taliban to "Nation building" with an obviously corrupt Govt that has always been there.

It shouldn't be a surprise since you need a society that wants to actually break from the same continued cycle, unfortunately Afghanistan isn't it due to many reasons.

[dragonwriter]

> we have to admit the failure was the US changing its role there from hunting Bin Laden and the Taliban to "Nation building"

The cause of the failure was when, in 2003, the US decided to focus on an entirely unnecessary war of choice (aggression, really) in Iraq (and a whole bunch of propaganda own-goals scored in that war that affected the US particularly in the Islamic world reinforced that.) Nation building was always an element of fighting the Taliban, not mission drift, since having something stable and broadly supported in place was the key to prevent a resurgence.

[throwaway894345]

I don’t have a strong opinion, but “nation building” always sounds like this horrible thing and I don’t quite understand why. Charitably, bringing democracy to corrupt, oppressed countries seems eminently desirable. Maybe nation building has a bad rep because it’s immensely difficult and we always fail at it (presumably it takes many decades and we always think it will take 5 years?). Genuinely trying to understand.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's just based on a flawed premise. Democracy functions based on the public's democratic beliefs about legitimacy and power, so you can't impose it on a country the way you can install a king or set up an occupational council. No matter how well you mimic the forms and functions of a democracy, if the fundamental root of power is "the Americans said this is how we're doing it", the government's gonna fall as soon as they stop saying that.

[throwaway894345]

I kind of agree, but culture is malleable and if you sustain democratic trappings for long enough the culture will adapt accordingly. I think this kind of culture change takes generations and our flaws have always been expecting the change to take place in a handful of years. Indeed, the Chinese and North Koreans have lived through the worst communism has to offer, but after a sustained period they have largely come to accept it as legitimate (although it requires a sustained investment in intense propaganda and isolationism because they are clearly stuck in a local optimum). Similarly Rome was pretty good at this sort of thing as it incorporated even backwater Britain into its empire.

If I were going to go about nation building, I would “export democratic values” some 20 years in advance of any military action by way of film, literature, etc. Cynics can think of this as propaganda, but really it’s just giving Afghans or whomever a more accurate taste of western life. When enough people had a good idea about what democracy was concretely and were ready to support it, I would then provide for military support with the expectation that the democrats would need sustained assistance for many decades.

Of course, there might be lots of reasons why this still isn’t a good idea, especially that we might be able to do more good per dollar elsewhere. But I don’t think “we tried it (poorly) for 20 years and it didn’t work out” is a good criticism—we shouldn’t expect the kind of requisite culture change to happen over a single generation.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I agree that it can in principle work over generations (and there's a solid argument that's precisely what happened in Germany and Japan after World War II). But this kind of explicit cultural imperialism is... frowned on, to say the least, in modern times. Can you imagine the controversy if the US had gotten up in 2002 and said "the goal of our occupation is to ensure that young Afghanis grow up American"?

[dragonwriter]

> agree that it can in principle work over generations (and there's a solid argument that's precisely what happened in Germany and Japan after World War

Germany and Japan were occupied (excluding the post-1955 nominal occupation of Germany because the Cold War prevented agreement on a formal end) for less time than Afghanistan when you add them together. To the extent something worked there but not in Afghanistan, it had nothing to do with it taking “generations”.

[athrowaway3z]

https://youtu.be/sehmmzbi3UI (specificly ~2min starting from from 3:15 )

[temp8964]

OMG! corrupt corrupt corrupt ! I can't believe how many times the US supported local governments have been accused of being corrupt!

Kuomintang' China, South Korea, South Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. You name it! Every single local government supported by the U.S. was and is being accused of being corrupt. You know what? They are all corrupt judged by the western standard. Corruption is the norm in the countries need U.S. support. If, for God's sake, they can build a government which is not corrupt (like a consituational republic???), what kind of society would that be? Why would they even need U.S. support in the first place?

And you know what? Corruption is not a choice of the central government. It is not like the central government can choose being corrupt or not. It is a reflection of the society it is in.

It is just shameful that because of this extremely naive accusation, the U.S. government made countless foreign police mistakes.

[dragonwriter]

> Corruption is not a choice of the central government.

Often, it is.

> It is not like the central government can choose being corrupt or not.

Sure it is. It can also choose how much energy to devote to rooting out corruption at lower levels, but in many of the cases at issue it was the very top leaders that were deeply corrupt, so corruption was, in fact, a very direct choice of the central government.

[oldway]

It's trying to install a puppet regime which ruled for the last 30 years and looted the country in Ethiopia which is hated by 90% of the country. The attitude for the US has changed in a country of more that 100 mil people.

[est31]

The price tag sounds impressive at first but note that most of it never leaves american hands. Instead it is paid to contractors in key congressional districts.

[iav]

While that might be true, that's kind of saying that if I go around breaking windows, I'm helping the economy as people are going to go out and spend money to buy new windows. Our society produces a limited amount of goods and services, and any allocation to one project means we have a little bit less for everything else. Whether the beneficiary is American or not isn't really relevant as it doesn't change the end result that everyone else has to tighten their belts to make room for the war.

[ASalazarMX]

> the US changing its role there [..] to "Nation building"

You must mean "installing puppet government". The Taliban were before, the puppet government lasted two decades, and now the Taliban are back. If it had been done with more diplomacy it might have succeded, but after the Twin Towers attack there was a push to overreact, and to profit from the sudden political capital.

[jscheel]

$2 trillion that was paid for with debt. Estimates peg it at $6.5 trillion after interest.

[petre]

So now the US weapons supplied to the Afghan army fell into the hands of the Taliban?

[ruined]

yes. there are photos going around of rooms full of weaponry seized, and they are already patrolling in humvees and mraps. there are even some videos of probably ANA defects piloting American helicopters for the Taliban.

https://instagram.com/p/CSj-3bgsxKQ

this is absolutely astonishing to me. im honestly surprised the us didn't conduct airstrikes on the vacated armories and hangars. they just got a leg up from antique firearms and fertilizer bombs into modern weaponry and air force.

i expect all of this to show up in Iraq, Syria, etc

[nradov]

On the positive side the Taliban won't be able to sustain those American helicopters for more than a few flights before they run out of spare parts. Iranian revolutionaries were able to continue operating American aircraft for a while by fabricating their own parts but the Taliban lack that capability.

[yumraj]

I'm pretty sure Pakistan will help Taliban, after all they are the parent of Taliban.

[beerandt]

We'll start bombing what we left behind as soon as the retreat/ evacuation is over. Maybe sooner.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Someone already gave them a supply of Stinger missiles.

[busymom0]

They are leaving behind several fully functioning military equipment which are now under Taliban's control. Basically a gift to them.

[petre]

So basically the exact thing that happened with Daesh in Iraq.

I don't even know what to say. My country helped by sending support troops, some of them died there.