That’s been my personal pet theory for the longest time.
Afghanistan has been the perfect weapons testing and general DoD sandbox, with live ammo.
I tend to think that’s like private prison stories, exaggerates the situation because it’s an easy target of “bad capitalism.” I don’t think there’s any real evidence we persisted the war in Afghanistan to boost Northrop Grumman / Lockheed / Raytheon / General Dynamics et. al.
I’m willing to concede that the DoD etc. takes advantage of the opportunity but doesn’t get into the war just to have a proving ground. But if large corporations with ties to big politicos we’re not making money out of all this, would they be so keen to unleash the dogs of war? And make up reasons to justify it?
The typical President craves political power and popularity, it is almost never just as simple as “they want money” because most people who are President probably have lower effort and more direct paths to money making than the Presidency.
Bush was the President that sent us into Afghanistan, it was pretty clearly done in direct response to 9/11. We invoked NATO’s Article 5 to justify it, FWIW, and established the Bush Doctrine which was that any state that harbors a terrorist group is to be held responsible for the attacks of that terrorist group as if they were committed by the harboring state themselves.
It seems fairly obvious to me that after that, a few years in, it was obvious we had no coherent strategic goals there and any which way we left would be seen as a “loss.” Stuck between not being able to explain why we were there, but not wanting to get “blamed” for losing, 20 years of American Presidents basically just kicked the can down the road and periodically deferred to high ranking Generals who would ask for more troops (which is their default request for basically any situation.) The way Biden is being blamed for the loss is exactly why Bush / Obama / Trump kept us there.
I love the Flashman series. It is really a pity that George MacDonald Fraser died before it could be fully explained how Flashman came to be highly decorated by both sides in the US Civil War. Of Fraser’s personal memoirs, Quartered Safe Out Here is an excellent account of his personal experiences as an infantryman in the Burma Campaign of WWII.
I think the better argument is not that presidents pursue wars for their own profit but that empire and capitalism often make wars necessary to keep the whole thing going. Arms dealers take advantage of this, and often do very well from the whole thing. So do companies like Bechtel and Haliburton, who of course have close ties to the US government. It is not difficult to imagine that the decision-makers, corporate and government, like most of us, presume their self-interest is the universal interest. Some have little more than a “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!” attitude, others a simple technocratic algorithm, some are true believers in truth, beauty and the American way, some simply want to pile up fortunes, but while their personal motives are an admixture, they are all committed to nation and empire and profit, and war is part of that, whether for direct profit, “geo-politics,” oil, force projection, whatever. Shit flows downhill, and to stop it, we need to shift the blame pattern upwards
Are you kidding? It was far more stable a year ago and now it’s in complete free-fall. That you would even ask this is amazing.
Doing the opposite of what was done in the last month. It was apparent that the Taliban was rapidly taking over everything.
and now they own it.
What, the sandbox? They always have. Sure, we’ve left them a few extra toys. They’ll brake them in no time.
Excellent posts. People tend to forget the layers of power and different dimensions of institutional influence. The modern nation state isn’t the only source of power in the real world.
Uh huh. Nothing to see here.
Look, you’re not alone in feeling like too many assets were left behind only to fall into Taliban hands. But as was pointed out, they were left to the coalition trained Afghani army and police. The fact that they abandoned their duties and happily handed everything over to the Taliban is not exactly news that everybody is overjoyed about. But taking all our toys with us and leaving them holding their dicks would also be criticized. Loudest by those like you who think that the US and allies should never leave.
They abandon their duties because they lost air support.
This was done deliberately and is owned, entirely, by one person. He interrupted his vacation so he could tell us how surprised he was it happened.
I’ve always thought that some number of people gaming the system and taking advantage of the liberal social safety nets that I advocate for was a price that I was willing to pay. Help a lot of folks, get screwed by a few, yadda yadda.
I can imagine that many strong national defense advocates also see the enrichment of the private defense industry as something they accept as a byproduct of a greater good.
But the power and influence of the contractors infuriates me the same way the stoner living off a UBI in his mom’s basement must infuriate conservatives.
Just so we can be clear what you’re arguing, what do you see was the alternative? Do you support a permanent U.S. occupying army (and are you prepared to have your taxes raised to support that), or do think just a few more years and the Afghan army would have been ready to do it alone?
I’m not sure it was the best alternative, but one alternative was to reduce the number of our troops to a few thousand (plus 17,000 contractors) in a support role only, so that they wouldn’t be killed. Forces on that scale hardly required a tax increase. And that’s just what we did. As illustrated by the fact that (unless something changed in the last couple hours) the last U.S. military death from hostile force, in Afghanistan, was February 8, 2020, it worked.
As for whether the Afghans could have stood on their own in a few years – no. The alternative was to stay there generation after generation with low to no casualties, as in South Korea.
Morally, there is a big difference between South Korea and Afghanistan, because as long are we stayed in the latter, fighting was pretty much guaranteed to continue. A new civil war may now start up in Afghanistan, but I wouldn’t say it is guaranteed.
Afghanistan had free opinion polling, and Taliban support (including those who said they support the Taliban a little) polled at 13 percent. So it didn’t go against our values to stay indefinitely.
A question one might ask is: Given that Biden probably only will dare to totally withdraw U.S. troops from one country, did he pick the right one? That’s a tough question. Iraqis may want to get rid of us more than Afghans did.
And what percentage of Afghans have cell phones to participate in this poll?
A few years ago it was 60 percent. What they don’t often have is a land line.
The Taliban polled badly on cell phone polls, and with live interviews – the Asia Foundation did both.
It was done with face-to-face interviews, mostly on paper (a minority did it on mobile phones loaded with software that were provided). Methodology starts on page 257.
Not that that guarantees an unbiased sample either. As can be seen a lot of folks in Afghanistan are careful about which side the bread is buttered on. In a war-torn country with a hopelessly corrupt government like theirs the “right answer” for some might be perceived as more a matter of carefully calculated minute to minute self-interest than strongly held opinion.
I read the methodology summary. I would trust the face to face interviews (< 10%) over internet or mail in surveys.