July 6, 2021

"The Taliban have showed off containers full of weapons and military hardware seized from the Afghan military as American forces withdraw from the country...."

"The weaponry includes 900 guns, 30 light tactical vehicles and 20 army pickup trucks.... District after district has fallen to the Taliban. The militants have seized 120 districts since May 1.... [M]any military outposts have been surrendered without a fight, allowing the Taliban to seize weapons, according to multiple Afghan military and government sources."

NBC reports.

Posted by Ann Althouse at 11:48 AM
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6 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

lgv44 writes:

"The death knell of the Neo-con strategy of nation building. I was both skeptical and hopeful when the Bush administration began the efforts. Seeing the dyed fingers of Afghan voters was very uplifting and I thought my "defeat the Taliban and leave idea” may have been short sighted. The reality is that creating a government that the governed won’t fight for is a waste of time. Perhaps a lesson from Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan should have been heeded. A key element in these failures its that the new government ends up being so corrupt that there is little enthusiasm among the governed.

"The repercussions to the citizenry and especially those that aided us during the last 20 years is a horrible thing to contemplate, but staying there forever would only be worse."

7/6/21, 5:01 PM
Ann Althouse said...

Lucien writes:

"After 20 years of our efforts to build the Afghan army into an effective force capable of fighting off the Taliban this is what we’ve wound up with.

"So, naturally, there are those who think we should stay on until the Afghan army is an effective force capable of fighting off the Taliban.

"And that’s before they even get around to the sunk cost fallacy."

7/6/21, 5:14 PM
Ann Althouse said...

RB writes:

"Did anyone expect any other outcome? The Afghans apparently don't have the stomach to fight for their "country" -- a country in name only, but fundamentally a land area composed of tribes and tribal allegiances. Twenty years was far too long, and getting out is the right thing to do."

7/6/21, 5:23 PM
Ann Althouse said...

exhelodrvr writes:

"We gave Afghanistan a "do-over" opportunity. Unfortunately, it has been clear for at least 15 years that their culture was not up to it. We should have left at that point, as the inevitability of recent events was obvious."

7/6/21, 5:23 PM
Ann Althouse said...

JPS writes:

"As I’ve mentioned, I spent 2010 helping train the Afghan National Army. I wish I could be surprised by stories like the one you’ve blogged.

"I met soldiers, NCOs and junior officers who were motivated, idealistic, and brave. They made the effort feel worthwhile. They were also outnumbered by those there for a paycheck. There were at least a few who were there to get whatever training they could later turn against us. There were systems in place to minimize this, but no system is perfect.

"The senior Afghan officers were mostly cynics who ranged from useless to pretty good. The commanding general was a very impressive fellow. One colonel, I thought the world of. The other colonels asked him why he bothered working so hard.

"In my first week there my commander and I had a good chat with a Special Forces officer on his way out of the country. Of the 300,000-man goal for the ANA he remarked wryly, “I keep asking why we wouldn’t rather have 55,000 well-trained motherf---ers who actually want to be there, but I haven’t gotten a good answer.”

"As for me, my recurring frustration was having to stop myself from demanding of my partners, “Why do I care about this more than you?” I kept reminding myself, I’d be there for year; they were there for the rest of their lives.

"I wish them luck. I really do. Some small part of me holds out hope that as the indifferent peel off, there will be a core of fighters who will fight on after everyone else has given up on them. The Northern Alliance never did surrender to the Taliban, and the Panjshir Valley was a relatively decent place. But as our most famous counterinsurgency guru was fond of saying, Hope is not a plan."

7/6/21, 5:36 PM
Ann Althouse said...

Theodore writes:

"I read George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman" in 1969. Everything that has happened in that country since the Soviet invasion was foretold in that novel. At least the British were at risk in the first Afghan War (McNaghten and Sekundar Barnes come to mind) – here the grandees walked and the defense contractors got paid."

7/9/21, 10:15 AM

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