[wahern]

> prevented these truths from being publicly acknowledged

To be honest, I'm shocked that people are deluding themselves that anybody ever thought otherwise.

I can't ever remember reading an article in any mainstream news outlet that suggested nation building in Afghanistan was going well. The "peace deal" that Trump signed with the Taliban last year literally assumed the Taliban would quickly takeover the country once the U.S. withdrew, and I don't remember anybody seriously disputing that basic assumption. At best people just ignored thinking about the issue entirely; any American who gave it any serious consideration would have to fend off some serious cognitive dissonance to believe it was going well.

This has been the state of affairs for 5, maybe 10 years, at least. But we live in an age of outrage culture where hoards of people seem to spontaneously develop amnesia whenever there's something to get upset over.

The withdrawal seems to have been problematic, though because of rage culture and collective amnesia it's rather difficult to judge the magnitude of the logistical errs from the press. That said, the withdrawals were ongoing for years; the U.S. was down to 2500 personnel as long ago as January. Considering that so-called nation-building is an art that no polity has yet cracked, it's not surprising that the U.S. would also fail to foresee how spectacularly they fell short in their endeavor--i.e. that the Taliban would take mere days or even hours, rather than months, to control the country.

And I fail to see how careerism in the military could be blamed for any of this, at least at a strategic level. Again, who the heck believed Afghanistan wasn't a lost cause? Nobody. The occupation was interminable because nobody had the political guts to pull out completely (especially considering rage culture), even though everybody knew full well that the U.S. could never commit more to get the job done (assuming anybody even knew what or how much it would take to get the job done, which in fact nobody did and there was hardly any pretense otherwise, at least not in the past several years).

[agumonkey]

From afar what i got out of the afghan withdrawal was about the idea that intervening has failed too many times and it would be wise to leave. The local political aftermath was drowned underneath sadly. I also had a misconception that Taliban became mild and would just become the usual conservative semi dictatorship ala Syria or Turkey. Not gunning in crowds in day one.

I

[Ancapistani]

The impression I’ve gotten from folks that were “over there” recently - including one person who was a contractor serving as embassy security in Kabul and didn’t get out until the second-to-last military flight - is that there are now effectively “two Talibans”.

There’s the main contingent, which is interested in being recognized as the legitimate government of the country and participating on the global stage. They comprise the leadership of the forces that took the major cities and are mostly interested in organizing a working civil authority at the moment.

Then there’s a hardline group. They’re mostly “tribal” leaders and leaders of smaller bands of fighters specifically in rural areas. They’re more similar to the Taliban from before the US invaded; they care little for how things look to the rest of the world and are enforcing their edicts vigorously.

This aligns with what I’ve seen from the outside. Not much seems to be happening in Kabul or Kandahar, but there are videos coming from the outlying areas of door-to-door raids resulting in the executions of “collaborators”.

[DSingularity]

The fact that we are willing to even call this “nation-building” speaks volumes to how deeply we are penned. Nation-building? Is that what we were doing in Afghanistan? We were there to build a democracy of institutions? Or were we there to pillage a country?

Why don’t we “nation-build” Saudi Arabia? Oh. We are already extracting the wealth? Right.

[ethbr0]

Nation-building is UN-speak for an ethical war.

It simultaneously delegitimizes the current / former government (not "a nation") and casts the outcome in unimpeachable terms (more democracy, more freedom, more nation).

But in a lot of ways, it's a tautology. Because nation building really means "more like us."

And what country would disagree that the rest of the world would be so lucky as to be made more like it?

[rjzzleep]

This is very much what the UN charter is about. Article 2 has always irked me the wrong way. It's basically saying that any member has to support the UN in any action towards non members if it suits their view of peace and security. Which is obviously very vague.

5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.

6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

[JohnBooty]

    Is that what we were doing in Afghanistan? We 
    were there to build a democracy of institutions? 
    Or were we there to pillage a country?

I'm not a fan of the US' occupation of Afghanistan, and I don't think the US was there for some sort of higher ideal... but, pillage? It's not a country from which there is much wealth to extract.

Of course, the US military-industrial complex profited nicely. That's not quite the same as pillaging, though.

[rjzzleep]

Except of course for the Trillion worth of mineral wealth found in 2010[0], that the Afghan government has been spending $300 million per year on(probably to US contractors)[1].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.htm...

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-taliban-to-reap-1-trillion...

[chasd00]

There’s nothing to pillage in Afghanistan except heroin. If there were things would have probably gone better because at least there would have been a point.

[ProjectArcturis]

What in the world would anyone try to pillage from Afghanistan? They have nothing but rocks and guns.

[t-3]

Afghanistan is incredibly rich in resources, and they have a suitable climate for the production of opium poppy, the precursor to heroin.

"natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones, arable land" https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/afghanistan...

[ProjectArcturis]

Did the US pursue a policy of building mines in Afghanistan? Did they promote poppy cultivation?

[jessaustin]

Poppy cultivation was serially outlawed, punished, tolerated, encouraged, etc, start again. Different policies came through on a regular basis, with no more reliance on logic or local circumstances than any other USA military policy in Afghanistan. The only constant was that nobody screwed with fields owned by powerful people e.g. Ahmed Wali Karzai.

[m0zg]

> The "peace deal" that Trump signed with the Taliban last year literally assumed the Taliban would quickly takeover the country once the U.S. withdrew

Actually, no. Trump's Doha agreement implied a 14 month staged, gradual, condition based withdrawal, with no people or materiel left behind. Which, on top of that, would be aborted if Taliban tried to pull off what they pulled off over the past couple of weeks.

But Trump's Doha agreement would not allow Biden to take credit "by 9/11", so he scrapped it and withdrew haphazardly, without any conditions, leaving thousands of people and billions in materiel behind enemy lines. He owns this now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Agreement_(2020)

[bostonsre]

It was a screwed up situation with no right answers brought about by cascading events that started long before 9/11. There was no choice but to invade after 9/11, there was no opportunity for victory for the duration, and there were no easy morally right exits for the duration. Generations of honorable and well meaning Americans fought for what they believed was right.

I have my doubts but I truly hope the taliban somehow came out the other side as a more moderate organization. It would be so incredibly amazing to know that half of their massive population would not be oppressed. I will be keeping my fingers crossed but it seems unlikely to me that a battle hardened group like theirs could be anything but hardline and this seems like the perfect thing to say so that no one gets second thoughts about leaving.