from day 1 we (I) knew this was going to be the only conclusion. If you were teary eyed back then about “bringing democracy to those poor people” you were, and likely continue to be, a fucking idiot. Those people are screwed now, particularly the women and girls. Brace yourself for horrific stories.
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Stop saying the Afghanistan War was a defeat! It was a total and unqualified success that achieved its objective in less than three years - Bush was re-elected. We are simply paying the bill for it now.
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We’re absolutely repeating the path of the Soviets in the 1970s and 80s. Show up with a big force, stay way longer than you should have to, install a moderate local government, fight an insurgency that will not die, and eventually withdraw leaving a terroristic militia to wipe out any progress made in the last two decades.
Once the human rights abuses begin going through the roof again, maybe next time the EU can take a turn at trying to rescue the Afghan people from their worst 10%. The rest of the world has already had a couple goes at it. Maybe they can do better.
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Neither us nor the Soviets were trying to “rescue” anyone. Empires, no matter how they try to spin it, never care about human rights. 
Maybe if we didn’t want violent religious assholes controlling Afghanistan in the first place, we shouldn’t have supported them.
But empire is ALWAYS about self-interests, same as it was with the British and the Soviets, same as it was here.
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the point is really that, at the time, the taliban implied they wouldn’t interfere if we sent in troops to extract him.
but, the bush administration – and many americans – wanted someone or something to fight after 9/11. an extraction and a trial wouldn’t have gotten the whole country behind the republican party the way the afghanistan war did.
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How have we all forgotten that, for centuries, Afghanistan has been referred to as “the graveyard of empires?”
The outcome was never a mystery.
And one notes with dismay that, as of Saturday evening, east coast time, the Taliban have taken Mazar-i-Sharif, about ten miles outside of Kabul.
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Kind of beside the point, though. The justification for war was that was we needed to get Bin Laden and the Afghan government was “harboring terrorists,” but if the Afghan government was willing to hand him over/let Americans get him, there simply was no justification for war at all.
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Is the Army is really that bad at training? !
Twenty years, and this the best they could do?
But it was all totally worth because of the WMDs, right?
Right?
right?
I don’t think this is something we can pin on the Army or any other branch of the U.S. Military. When you don’t have a critical mass of the populace who actually supports the legitimacy of the current government then it’s awfully hard to convince them to lay down their lives to defend it.
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Oh jeez, I hadn’t seen this particular NYT Opinion piece before today.
It should surprise no one that the Taliban hasn’t exactly been honoring their promise to protect women’s rights this time around.
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I would consider the Taliban’s actions in the late 90’s as harboring terrorism. Al-Qaeda had been kicked out of Sudan in the mid 90’s. Taliban controlled regions Afghanistan ( there is an argument to be made that they didn’t entirely control the country) were basically the only place willing to let them set up a base of operations. After the 1998 embassy bombings the US did bomb regions of Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda was thought to be operating.
What did the Taliban do in response? They paid Al-Qaeda to train Taliban forces in an attempt to have a stronger foothold on the country.
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Oh, it’s so much worse than that, though.
Apparently: the police are outright bandits (with the populace left to wonder who’s worse - the Taliban or the government); military commanders were simply lying about how many men were under their command, pocketing the money (from the US) that was supposed to be soldier salaries, to the point where the US started demanding biometric data on all soldiers - the commands then switched to skimming off (actual) soldier salaries, to the point where soldiers are only getting maybe 10% of what they should, the rest for “food” and “uniforms;” the Taliban had two decades to put together lists of everyone in government and in military command - as soon as they take an area, they know whose relatives they now have as bargaining chips; the Bush administration put a cap on how many police and soliders Afghanistan could have - which turned out to be wildly insufficient; once they hurriedly ramped up training, it was ineptly done, so the soldiers were quite badly trained (the point where they couldn’t use their weapons), as the US simply didn’t have the capacity to train that many foreigners, compounded by things like… a total absence of glasses for myopic recruits and a 20% literacy rate; Afghan soldiers have been getting absolutely slaughtered this whole time (while US command insisted things were going great), so their numbers - and morale - are absolutely terrible.
And they were (/are) hardly alone in that.
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I certainly didn’t mean to imply that the current government deserves to have a critical mass of the populace recognize its legitimacy. No good options to be had there for anyone.
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The various armies had completed the training and equipping of the Afghan forces in 2015, to the point where the Afghans assumed responsibility for security. They then launched Resolute Support Mission which continued paying, training, advising and equipping (and assisting). It was the sudden, dead-of-night, keep-the lights-on, withdrawal of RSM that, entirely predictably, ended the efficacy of the Afghan forces.
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That was Iraq.
Another great success!
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btw the headline is now 25 miles out of date
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Yup.
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I think the results will be far more devastating for the local population this time, especially the women. They have hell to look forward to.
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Hey, they´re the Taliban after all, I’m sure we can take their word for it.
