Afghanistan - Yet Another US Mistake Is Now Happening!

[reader]

When I beat the horse I feel better about myself

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[daydreamer]

On 8/13/2021 at 11:29 PM, PeterRS said:

I think your facts are slightly skewed..................  anyone who expects more than a thousand or so to be evacuated by the time all the troops depart must surely be living in some sort of cloud cuckoo land.

More than 70,700 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan as of Tuesday evening (Aug 24th).  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/us/politics/afghanistan-evacuations-kabul-airport.html

So does this mean you "must surely be living in some sort of cloud cuckoo land" ?

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, daydreamer said:

More than 70,700 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan as of Tuesday evening (Aug 24th).  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/us/politics/afghanistan-evacuations-kabul-airport.html

So does this mean you "must surely be living in some sort of cloud cuckoo land" ?

I was wrong and am pleased to admit that. I had misquoted the Reuters article which I linked. But even that has proved massively wrong.

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PeterRS]

A lot of interesting comments from a variety of former generals and, importantly in my view, US and British vets, arising from the terrorist bombing at Kabul airport yesterday. Almost all is criticism of the Biden administration for not having started the evacuation, particularly of the Afghan assistants, interpreters etc. and there families much sooner. Others have asked why the US, knowing well in advance of the size of the exercise in getting many tens of thousands of Afghan helpers and their families out, did not also hold on to the heavily fortified Bagram Air base so that there were two exits from the country. Bagram could also handle the large aircraft which use Kabul and it's far more defensible!

One, though, questioned whether the issues of war can be left to a President as Commander in Chief. Of course each President has a large body of military and other experts surrounding him. But he does not have to obey them - as far as I know. This pundit pointed out that Bush was determined to go into Iraq to finish what his father had started - come what may. His immediate coterie of conservative neo-cons were with him. Many others were not, at least hoping he would wait until the UN weapons inspectors presented their final report and the UN passed a second resolution. As usual, the spin doctors were immediately at work - who can forget Condoleeza Rice's comments about mushroom clouds if Saddam was not stopped (one of many lies)? - and a spider's web of tales were fabricated in support. After 9/11 virtually all of Congress and the country was behind him.

Biden has been against the adventure in Afghanistan for well over a decade and was determined to get out. Unlike Bush, we are told he overruled many of his immediate advisors and military chiefs in his haste to announce a date. He stuck to much of Trump's agreement made with the Taliban (made with the Mullah Pakistan/the US had incarcerated for 8 years) and went ahead with his decision without consulting his NATO allies, those very allies he had pledged to consult after Trump had paid virtually no attention to them. And then during the four months leading up to the August 31 date the US administration sat on its hands for much of that time.

The vets are the most angry that many of the guys who helped them and who were promised that they and their families would be looked after are now stuck in a Taliban controlled country, many likely to die despite Mullah Baradar's sweet words.

[PeterRS]

An interesting insight into Biden's policy from a biography of the diplomat Richard Holbrooke whom Biden knew well. In the book he is quoted as saying that America has no obligation to the many Afghans who were then working alongside the Americans and placed their trust in the US to get them out once the war ended.

"Fuck that, we don't have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it."

So much for the empathetic President. Anyone who would even consider uttering such dreadful words was of course going to get out as fast as possible. "Fuck" the tens of thousands of Afghan helpers! To me that a disgrace!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/27/joe-biden-afghanistan-kabul-airport-bombs

[reader]

I know the horse is dead but I feel so macho when I keep beating it.

 

[JKane]

 

 

 

[forrestreid]

The above quote from Jeff Tiedrich is a reminder of one of the more depressing aspects of the Kabul fiasco. It has shown that public discourse in America seem so degraded after Trump that many Democrats are incapable of admitting that Biden does deserve some criticism for the disastrous way the evacuation is gone, and lash out in response with basically say nothing more than “Who cares, he is better than Trump at least”.

Now, it goes without saying, any Republican politicians who were were backing Trump’s policy last year (as they all were) to abruptly cut and run from Afghanistan have absolutely no standing to criticise Biden in any way. However, from I’ve seen of America, there is a lot of criticism coming from mainstream journalists and retired veterans regarding the way the evacuation has been handled, and a lot of Democrats seem to be responding by treating those people as if they were Mitch McConnell.

I think that ten years ago of the Democratic partisans would have been better able to handle criticism of a Democratic president. In fact I would actually blame Trump for a lot of degradation in public life that has happened and has ended up in with Democrats telling nonpartisan experts to “kindly sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up” when independent voices point out problems (now, in fairness Mr. Tiedrich may have been responding to a Republican yuck instead of a credible critic in the above, I have not followed the thread - however, the above tweet reflects a lot of the sort of thing that Democratic hacks are coming out with).

And I speak as someone who thinks America should have been out of Afghanistan a decade ago.

I must say I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be Irish rather than British over the last few weeks, witnessing how little the American defence establishment seems to care what the British or any other of their Allies think of the withdrawal. Here in Ireland we are very aware that the American establishment hardly knows the name of Micheál Martin, and we are happy with that.

 

[forrestreid]

Just for the information of the perplexed, Micheál Martin is the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister)

[PeterRS]

6 hours ago, forrestreid said:

I must say I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be Irish rather than British over the last few weeks, witnessing how little the American defence establishment seems to care what the British or any other of their Allies think of the withdrawal. 

From what I read, the British media are in general furious at the lack of consultation from their American allies (a lack of consultation also extended to NATO), at the speed in which the withdrawal had to take place and the disaster of having to leave behind Afghan allies and their families. Not a day has gone by without British vets excoriating the Americans because some of the Afghanis who helped them are now stuck in the country and liable to be killed. The media also point out that the British started pulling Afghanis out well before the Americans started on the paperwork.

With fingers being pointed in all directions, including as I pointed out in a recent post the media itself, there is another group that one British vet is blaming in part for the disaster that took place two weeks ago - the independent contractors brought in largely by the Americans to do some of their work. This was also the case in Iraq - and we know what a disaster that turned out to be. Let's not forget that in that debacle it was Vice President DIck Cheney's former company Halliburton that was first awarded a US$7 billion contract (non-biddable by others) for private sector work in the country. Later in the war, that number rose to a whopping $31 billion. Even later, Halliburton's subsidiary KBR was found guilty of over billing. By then, though, Halliburton had distanced itself from KBR by selling off KBR in 2007.

This is one UK vet's comment.

When I was in Afghanistan, private military contractors numbered almost 30,000. Some were engaged in protection tasks, but many more were responsible for training and mentoring Afghans who held positions of significant influence. They advised on intelligence, war-fighting, diplomacy, policing, you name it. Some of them were doing their best. Many more didn’t give a damn. Many were on six figures and had been for years. Afghanistan for them was a cash cow, a way of putting their kids through college (most were American) or paying off a mortgage. In sum, there were too many poorly qualified people working without accountability, getting paid far too much. If you want an answer to the question of why Afghanistan’s military crumbled in weeks, take a long hard look at their so-called mentors.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/27/afghanistan-nato-mission-corruption-military-soldier

[reader]

I keep telling the dead horse I'm doing this for my personal edification and not to take it personally. But he just lies there and takes it like a man. OMG, it's a sensual experience I can't get enough of.

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[vinapu]

I wonder what's the covid situation in Afghanistan, from the sound of it all it's problem everywhere worldwide but none there ? 

True,  not may foreign arrivals but one of hotspots, Iran is just next door ?

[PeterRS]

As the post mortems begin following the US and NATO disaster in Afghanistan, another issue is starting to hit the news. As in Iraq, it is known that corruption played a major role throughout most of the 20 years of occupation. Phantom troop levels were just a minor part. Now there is information about corruption designed to release some of that country's estimated $1 trillion wealth sitting just under the surface. The disgraced President who fled with unseeming haste with allegedly $169 million in his baggage, was part of a deal which also included a company "deeply tied to the American military and intelligence services." 20% owned by the President's brother, SOS International (SOSi) was illegally given rights to mine for chromite and had built a large factory outside Kabul. Many of its officials were recruited from former officers in the CIA and the top American commander in Afghanistan, David Petraeus. “It’s an open secret that SOSi is essentially a front for the [US Department of Defense],” one high-ranking Afghan official told us.

This is part of a longer article by Zack Kopplin, an investigator at the Government Accountability Project, from today's Guardian newspaper.

"Another stream of Taliban financing, facilitated by the Pentagon and Afghan elites, was the exploitation of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.

"In April, I co-authored an investigation for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) that implicated the Afghan president and his family in mining corruption, along with well-connected US military contractors.

"An estimated $1tn worth of minerals lies buried under the country’s surface. Before the Taliban takeover, Afghan law prohibited companies from buying minerals from small unregistered mines. One reason for this is because many of these mines were controlled by the Taliban, other terrorist groups, or local warlords. Buying from these mines meant financing the enemy. But our reporting found that there was one company that managed to get an exception to this rule, apparently with the approval of the office of President Ghani.

"His office signed off on extralegal rights for the Afghan subsidiary of a US military contractor, SOS International (SOSi), to acquire chromite, a valuable component in stainless steel, from unlicensed mines in six Afghan provinces. The company built a factory outside Kabul and planned to crush and export the chromite.

"SOSi is deeply tied to the American military and intelligence services. The company recruited heavily from the office of the former CIA director and top American commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, securing significant political heft in the process. “It’s an open secret that SOSi is essentially a front for the [US Department of Defense],” one high-ranking Afghan official told us.

"But SOSi had an even more important connection. Our OCCRP investigation revealed that the president’s brother, Hashmat Ghani, owned 20% of SOSi’s subsidiary, according to confidential documents leaked from an Emirati secrecy haven.

"Beyond any mineral money flowing to the Taliban, this deal reflects the broader reasons Afghanistan collapsed. Corruption hollowed out state institutions and left Afghan citizens unwilling to fight for a government that, just like the Taliban, abused its own people, although in this case through theft, extortion and nepotism rather than outright violence and repression.

"But the SOSi deal does not just implicate the highest levels of the country’s government, but powerful Americans and US companies too.

"The Afghan state and army was in large part a facade, held up only by the American occupation, and it’s no surprise that Afghans were unwilling to fight and die for it any longer. But its failure isn’t on them. Afghanistan fell because after looting all they could from the country, American and Afghan elites gave up and fled, leaving the Afghan people behind. Who would fight for a broken system?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/30/afghanistan-us-corruption-taliban

[PeterRS]

Cartoon by Ben Jennngs: The Guardian

[PeterRS]

Chris Riddell's cartoon in today's Observer

[caeron]

 

Biden could have handled it better, but he was delivered a shit show thanks to Trump.

But, I think most of the drama is because nobody likes to admit failure of a mission, and this mission has been a failure for a long damn time. So when that finally became really clear, everybody is mad at Biden.

I mostly blame the Neocons, but I also Blame Obama who I think was often naïve, and should have acted in his time in office. I think he was far too timid a president. 

As blame goes, Biden's is pretty damn small compared to the president who started it and those who sustained it. He just happens to around right now when the plug finally got pulled.

[PeterRS]

13 minutes ago, caeron said:

I mostly blame the Neocons, but I also Blame Obama who I think was often naïve, and should have acted in his time in office. I think he was far too timid a president. 

As blame goes, Biden's is pretty damn small compared to the president who started it and those who sustained it. He just happens to around right now when the plug finally got pulled.

I agree with your sentiments. There is another very perceptive piece by the excellent Simon Jenkins in Friday's Guardian Newspaper. Headed "Biden isn’t the first president to promise never to wage another war of intervention",  he points out that each of Biden's recent predecessors have make the same claim, even with "Condoleezza Rice, emphasising Bush's opposition to foreign adventures." Her later remarks about mushroom clouds appearing unless Saddam was dethroned only illustrates how quickly the neo-cons gained control in Washington. Tony Blair also comes in for excoriation over his hypocrisy. "The pomposity of his message was absurd."

Three paragraphs are worthy of note here. The last sentence is the one which we should all worry about.

"In the latter period of the British empire – of which events in Iraq and Afghanistan offer an uncanny echo – colonies became costly, not profitable. They duly required ever-more elaborate eulogies and justifications. To Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Milner and his Round Table, colonial wars were a sacred duty of European powers. The concept of a Christian imperium was one of ethical obligation bound up with macho adventure. The colonialist Rudyard Kipling saw empire as the “white man’s burden”; in his poem of the same name, he exhorted the US to take control of the Philippines. In many ways, the occupation of Afghanistan has been Kipling for slow learners . . . 

"Wars of intervention have become political baubles and vanity projects. They meddle in other people’s affairs, other cultures and other views on how societies should be run. They are an offence against the UN charter and the rights to self-determination. It is hard to avoid the accusations that they are racist. If we want to help other people in distress, there is a wealth of charitable causes to oblige. In almost every case, military action just makes things worse.

"We might hope that the US will now retreat into a period of introversion and sober reflection. It did so after defeat in Vietnam in 1975. To the recent generation of Anglo-American politicians, these wars have been a sick reprise of an old imperialist urge. They are a stupendous expenditure of lives and treasure at mind-boggling opportunity cost. They appear over. Yet even as Iraq and Afghanistan sink below the horizon, we can sense Taiwan and Ukraine stumbling into view. Will anything be learned?"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/03/biden-president-war-intervention-military-adventurism

[reader]

Readers are generally of two minds when it comes to just what they would prefer that the superpowers do with all that power they possess. There are those who wish them to do absolutely nothing beyond acting in self defense if attacked, presumably by another superpower. Others would have them take overt action to defend the underdog in places like Myanmar, Taiwan, Ukraine and multiple other locations across the globe.

And then there are others who want it both ways (no pun intended). 

In the wake of reaction to military adventurism noted above over the past few centuries, it seems unlikely that those nations with the most assets will be lining up to dispatch troops to another land regardless of how downtrodden its inhabitants may be.

What is likely is the employment of more non-military action such as trade sanctions and embargoes, and perhaps in select places the use of stand off (over-the-horizon) weapons.

It's one thing to engage ad infinitum in armchair analysis but another altogether to put forth a system that brings justice without the violence of imperialism. The United Nations, and the League of Nations before it, haven't been able to achieve that lofty goal. In many cases, NATO ended up being the post war default mechanism. We're free to judge for ourselves how well that's served member nations.

As I write, there are leaders within the European Union discussing the pros and cons of an EU army to face up to future geopolitical threats there. Generally it sounds like NATO Light and I doubt its supporters envision it in any way well suited for deployment beyond EU geography.

So where does that all leave those whose hue and cry demand a better Afghanistan, a humane Myanmar, a secure Taiwan, a non-threatening North Korea, and peaceful places in much of the African continent and beyond?

Perhaps it will be ad-hoc contributions like we see taking place now in Afghanistan where Qatar and Turkey have joined efforts to restart the air traffic control system. Neither are superpowers in the military sense but both possess diplomatic leverage beyond their weight class. Maybe, just maybe, we're seeing solutions emerge that were not on the radar just a few months earlier.

 

 

[PeterRS]

I wish I could be so optimistic. As I slowly learned about colonialism and its effects, some good but most bad, for a while I felt guilty to have been born British. But we cannot change the past, despite what some of our elected politicians believe. 

What worries me is that there remain policy makers and politicians in several countries who still believe that their countries are needed to wield power in the world at large. In the UK, Tobias Ellwood, the Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Defence, is a politician whose leader is the ineffective Boris Johnson. It should be remembered that only a few months ago Johnson's one-time closest aide claimed before a House of Commons Committee that Johnson is "unfit to be Prime Minster". Ellwood stated this only yesterday - 

"For more than 80 years, we were the bridge between America and Europe. Post-Brexit, we are no longer the go-to country when the White House wants a second opinion. The back channels are significantly diminished and our relationship both with our European allies and the US is at its lowest for a generation. We have lost the passion and the art of leadership . . .  

"When Britain lost America, we built the empire. When we lost the empire, we sought Europe. Now we seem to have lost both with no plan B. Our departure from Afghanistan has no doubt made the world more unstable. My fear is that, without a revival of our will to lead in the world, it will make us ever less relevant. This is not where Britain should go."

After some comparisons with Churchill and Thatcher, this man has the gall to talk about "our will to lead in the world?" Who is he kidding? Does he not realise that Britain's influence on World Affairs died in the disastrous attempt to recapture the Suez Canal in 1956? Britain is already virtually irrelevant in World Affairs.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/04/britain-must-rediscover-the-will-to-lead-on-global-issues

[caeron]

 

Britain chose its isolation with Brexit and Boris Johnson, I think.  Britain and the US are both nations of narcissists who think they're important. For the moment, the US still is. I'm not sure Britain still is, having given the finger to Europe.

If we get another republican or two like Trump, I'm pretty sure the US will be in the same boat.

Both of these are a real pity, because Russian and China remain real threats to world freedom.

[PeterRS]

Yes, Britain chose isolation by the narrowest of margins. Since I had no vote, it's perhaps wrong to comment, but it is clear that the primary reason for the 'No' vote was the recession in parts of the country that has been continuing since 2008. Clear lying on the part of the Brexiteers was a secondary factor, but perhaps the Stayers also lied.

Strange how 45 years ago, China was a total basket case, its economy, education and judicial systems, and family structure in total chaos, and a government that hardly seemed to function. 30 years ago we thought Russia would be relegated to a third world power. Our world changes fast these days.

[vinapu]

14 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

Strange how 45 years ago, China was a total basket case, its economy, education and judicial systems, and family structure in total chaos, and a government that hardly seemed to function. 30 years ago we thought Russia would be relegated to a third world power. Our world changes fast these days.

Always did. World in 1900 and in 1945 was completely different and the same when we compare one in 1990 with that in 1945