I have found it to be the case that there are a disturbingly large number of people who have that attitude, yes.
I personally don’t find it all that hard to respect someone who helped us out when we asked them to, but YMMV.
What I think would be hard is getting others to help us out after we have shown that we disrespect those who have in the past.
nm
Maybe you read this 5000 times first, yeah?:
The mujahideen were at first poorly equipped, and they remained decentralized throughout the war. Holding most of the countryside, they used mainly animal transport against Soviet motor transport. The quality of their arms and combat organization gradually improved, however, as a result of experience and the large quantity of arms and other war matériel shipped to the rebels, via Pakistan, by the United States and other countries. The Haqqani network, coordinated by a prominent commander of the mujahideen, became a key instrument of this foreign assistance. The mujahideen also received aid from sympathetic Muslims throughout the world, and an indeterminate number of Muslim volunteers—popularly termed “Afghan-Arabs,” regardless of their ethnicity—traveled from all parts of the world to join their war effort. These foreign volunteers coordinated among themselves and with Muslims in their homelands through a network of their own, known as al-Qaeda (Arabic: al-Qāʿidah , “the Base”).
I don’t see the word “Taliban” anywhere in your quote.
Because I wasn’t talking about Taliban.
Geez, it’s hot here!
Still not the Taliban.
Oh. FFS.
Original point being, there’s a world of difference between “training” (and arming and funding) a highly decentralized group of rebels against an ongoing occupation, and what we’ve tried to do in training pro-US forces in Afghanistan in the context of a civil war. Alessan’s point is probably still valid. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we absolutely suck at training soldiers; I think the problem we have is a bit more complicated than that, and as with all things American foreign policy, tends to suck and fail bigly at the policy and strategy level. We have a fucking awful track record of identifying what it is that other countries or factions within countries want, what their motives and agendas are, and so forth. We can’t see past our own initial wants and needs. Tl/dr: America’s hegemony tends to think more like the French than the British when it comes to managing our protectorates. And shit, we don’t even leave behind quality coffee or bread.
But you were replying to someone who was, which is kind of the point.
The US made a fundamental mistake right at the beginning.
The Taliban were mostly defeated in 2001. They then approached the US to negotiate and be part of the peace process and the new government. The US refused to negotiate with them or include them. They arrogantly laughed them off and thought they could ignore a rag-tag defeated enemy.
They didn’t realize what deep roots the Taliban have in Afghan culture and society. They thought they could ignore Afghanistan’s history, culture, and social order, just dismiss it at a stroke, and remake Afghanistan according to American values. It was a case of extreme hubris.
I agree: the U.S. convinced itself that it was “freeing” Afghanistan, instead of conquering it. They refused to understand that the Taliban wasn’t a foreign invader, but the Afghanis’ own people and, like it or not, probably their preferred form of government.
Was I? Let’s recap:
I responded to Alessan, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, to his comment about America’s (in)ability to train foreign troops, saying they are not entirely bad at it. Meaning, US support and training of Mujahideen fighters during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I hope it’s clear he wasn’t talking about the Taliban, yeah? At least one person got the reference. I could have continued to torture the bit by reminding people that the US also trained some of their “best” pilots. But I thought that might be too on the nose. So I didn’t.
Someone else then came in to explain to me, in the most pedantic way possible, that the Mujahideen are not the Taliban. So I responded in kind and explained who I was specifically talking about. And then you and another person came in to explain to me that I still hadn’t addressed the Taliban question. Well, yeah. No shit.
…and now I suppose I’ll regret doing so again.
Yes. You quoted it and everything.
I can set my watch by the predictability of these exchanges.
Also, quite evidently the troops of the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, etc., and before them the Mujaheddin and before those who resisted British India and keep going backwards for centuries, have a fighting record. So it’s not a matter of “the men of Afghanistan”. It’s a matter of these members of the ANA, and to a great degree of the ANA’s nature as a creature of the US-client state and thus the very low level of cohesion and commitment it has.
It’s not pedantic. It’s a fucking fact. The Taliban came from people too young to have fought the Soviets, the hint is in the name, Taliban=Students.
The fact they were not the Mujahideen was rather a big selling point for them and it takes extreme ignorance to not know that and persist in false and snide comments.
It’s as though you haven’t read anything that @QuickSilver actually said.
They never said, or even implied, at any stage that the Mujahideen were the Taliban.
They are fully and completely aware that the Mujahideen are not the Taliban. They were talking about the Mujahideen, not the Taliban.
I don’t even know how you got this idea into your head. Can we please end this silly sniping?
Who trained the Taliban? Who taught them how to fight?
The Pakistanis.