The guns and equipment were given to the Afghan army to support their fight. Taking it all away would have been immediately conceding that the army was incapable of holding it.
In retrospect, it would have been better. But it wasn’t really an option.
I’ve seen the three options summarized as:
This is at least a better set of options than von Moltke presented the Kaiser with in 1914, where only the first two were provided.
Your question would involve the current President and not the previous one. The buck stops at his desk per his admission.
That makes sense.
I think there’s useful stuff that the Taliban will harvest from our abandoned equipment, but it’s not going to be nearly as much as people think. Any of our remotely sophisticated systems require such trained mechanical experts to work on them that even our Afghan allies frankly weren’t able to maintain them. When we still had a larger presence in the country we’d maintain the equipment for them, albeit ostensibly training them to take over. In the year after Trump pulled almost all of that out, supposedly our mechanics were doing zoom sessions with Afghan mechanics and basically having to take them through it step by step. The issue is our maintenance guys have a U.S. High School education and then a decent bit of general training on mechanical work, then specialized training on specific systems. A lot of the Afghan counterparts have minimal to no formal education, and obviously zero of the general and specialized mechanical training. They probably know how to get old car engines fixed or something and maybe that’s what they did in their private lives before joining up.
AR15s are fairly simple and should have long lifetimes, although the Taliban were never hurting for small arms anyway. Things like aircraft and even ground vehicle systems, if left behind, are unlikely to function for very long at all under Taliban control. Given Russia and China are angling for influence in the region I imagine they won’t even bother with many of them, they’ll have Russian contractors in there installing Russian alternatives in a couple years.
Given that Trump has stated part of the reason he pumped the brakes on his withdrawal is he didn’t want Afghanistan getting “all the free stuff left behind”, I question why his withdrawals didn’t transport all that stuff back to the United States. If that was a genuine concern of his.
That is because the second and third options were the same, no?
First and third, actually, but yes.
German mobilization relied on extremely precise timing of rail movements to complete. The lesson European military commanders in 1914 had learned from the last wars (Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian) was that the side that mobilizes first wins.
So on August 1, 1914, when Wilhelm wanted to go to war with and mobilize against Russia only, von Moltke simply said it could not be done - to improvise a different plan to move against Russia was impossible. After the war, the head of Germany’s military railways not only said he could have done it, but published a book to show how.
Though it may not have made too much of a difference, since Wilhelm’s desire to switch fronts was based on an incorrect interpretation of a British initiative, and Russia actually mobilized faster than Germany expected but still got creamed at Tannenberg.
Either way, the logic and technology of war has a way of forcing political leadership into a box. I think it’s a positive that Biden is sticking to the mission of getting out, despite the pain being incurred along the way. I hope we can alleviate some of the harms it will do.
I skimmed your post and forgot what was first, but of course you are right.
But any significant political decision relies on advice from professionals or the civil service, all of whom are magically adept in getting the person to pick the card that they desire.
And if things go wrong, there are the five standard excuses.
I cannot help but keep thinking about Rudyard Kipling’s immortal words:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Probably because there was 9 months to carry it out so there was a measured amount of equipment needed during the downsizing process.
Or the actual answer: because most of the equipment in question actually belonged to the Afghan National Army, so we could hardly “take it with us.”
Which is why they probably should have pulled a Mers-el-Kébir.
A useful article on the speed of the “collapse” in Afghanistan
A very good article and I don’t doubt it’s accuracy, except for this conclusion:
Afghan society has been described to me as a “permanent conversation.” Alliances shift, and people, families and tribes make rational calculations based on the risk they face. This is not to suggest that Afghans who made such decisions are to blame for doing what they felt to be in their self-interest. The point is that America’s commanders and officials either completely failed to understand these aspects of Afghan reality or failed to report them honestly to U.S. administrations, Congress and the general public.
We can draw a clear line between this lack of understanding and the horrible degree of surprise at the events of the past several days. America didn’t predict this sudden collapse, but it could have and should have — an unfortunately fitting coda to a war effort that has been undermined from the start by a failure to study Afghan realities.
It’s a plausible explanation after 2 years in Afghanistan. Maybe. But American military and intelligence knew this about Afghanistan in the years leading up to the occupation. They took advantage of this very thing in undermining the Russians during their invasion and subsequent withdrawal.
It’s reasonable to say that this dynamic is new to the average American who has no reason to be aware or interested in Afghani culture or history. But it’s complete bullshit that the military, intelligence or congress didn’t know this about Afghanistan. They absolutely fucking knew it. That’s why I’m convinced that any congressional hearing that may or may not happen as a result of these events will be a disingenuous circus regardless of who is asking the questions and who is answering them. It will be strictly performative, aimed at placating the public into thinking something is actually being done to get to the bottom of why America spent 20 years in Afghanistan.
I’ve always wondered what those women wanted to chop up wounded soldiers for. Mutilation fun?
Perhaps they sought only to alleviate the white man’s burden, by cutting him down to size?
That is to say, it’s not really all that shocking to me that people would want to mutilate the bodies of their would-be imperial overlords.
I dunno, it just seems a weird delegated husband-wife task.
Afghan man, peering down the gunsights: * shoots British soldier *
“Okay, Wife, (who is clutching knife), time for you to go over there and do your job, just like you do every time”
You presume the husband survived the battle?
British lost most of their men in that campaign. (edit 1842 one man survived, according to
Massacre of British Army in Afghanistan in 1842 )
Im just trying to learn about this history myself. I figure Kipling was referrring to this event, I could be wrong
Great thread here thanx to all who have contributed.