Afghanistan Papers

[Grand58742]

As everyone indicated and to paraphrase, Caesar "we came, we saw, we concurred" and then we did the classic US thing and decided we needed to stay and nation build and right the wrongs of the world, insert a US friendly gubment, ignore the fact that Pakistan is our allies and harbored OBL, privatize the war to make some a lot of $, etc.

Afghanistan should be a case study for "go in, blow shit up, kill bad guys, leave and let them pick up the pieces."

You are correct in your "we have to do SOMETHING!" mentality we had in the aftermath.

[Dr. Bullseye]

Supposedly, a bunch of internal docs that claim the war was viewed as unwinnable and lots of rosy false reports fabricated to keep the public happy and the $$ flowing. I suspect a lot of it is not going to surprise those here who have been paying attention and such. Painting a rosy picture to keep public support is as old as war itself, so that aspect does not really trigger me per se.

I have not gotten deep into the weeds on this one myself, and the paper that "broke" the story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/) requires a subscription, so I can't comment on whether this is more a yawn to those who know how the machine works and a shock to the public, or it's legit beyond the usual stuff:

No cohesive strategy, check
Trillions of $ used, check
Rosy reports to maintain support, check
Rumsfeld is a POS, check
People lost who didn't need to be lost, check
And don't even get me started on Iraq, check

Anyone read it? Am I missing anything?

One take:

https://www.theamericanconservative....nistan-papers/

This sounds like a sequel to something we know in the past. Never listing to Ex-Generals pimping a war on TV.

[26 Inf]

As everyone indicated and to paraphrase, Caesar "we came, we saw, we concurred"

Spell check got you in a humorous way.

[Adrenaline_6]

Spell check got you in a humorous way.

I concur.

[Firefly]

Threads like this make me miss Kalashnikev

[jpmuscle]

Thankfully we’re still there protecting both Saudi and Israeli interests. Small miracles and all that.





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[WillBrink]

Spell check got you in a humorous way.

I'm the typo king bro.

[Pacific5th]

By the end of December 2001 we had done what we set out to, and what was reasonable and doable. We toppled the Taliban and tracked down OBL. We did it extremely well. To many peoples reports Toro Boro would have been a success if not for ROE and requests by CIA/ Delta Commanding officer not having been met by higher ups.

Everything after that is nation building, which pretty much never works. But, endless wars are endless money.

Military. Industrial. Complex.

In Iraq we saw what modern war profiteering looks like. In that case is was unabashed and celebrated. Think Blackwater, Haliburton, KBR.

I remember being in boot camp sept-dec 2001 and we were thinking the war would be over by the time we got to the fleet. How wrong we were.

[elephantrider]

Yeah looking back there was no real objective and that detour into Iraq was pretty pointless.

You cannot win if you have no goals.

Came to post basically this. How do you win a war in which "winning" has not, and never was defined? Short answer is that you don't, you just burn through blood and treasure with no end in sight. This is like page one Sun Tzu shit. Day by day this is turning me into one of the tinfoil hat, military industrial conspiracy, hardline anti-war libertarians that I used to chuckle at.

[Pacific5th]

I keep thinking back to the end of the Iraq war. I was there for the invasion. What the US did during the invasion I am still amazed at. We steamrolled the Iraqi’s. But once we got to Baghdad even my 21 year old Lance Corporal ass could see that the leadership had no plan on what to do once the government fell. We had a real chance in early 2001 to do something with Iraq. I can’t speak for Afghanistan, I never got a trip over there.