The US doesn’t really win wars any more because we don’t even really try. Barring a very small and weak opponent, massive international cooperation, and a very clear victory condition (i.e. first Gulf War), wars don’t get won without total commitment – i.e. bending the economic power of the entire country towards the war effort. If we had fought Vietnam (or the 2nd Gulf War and Afghanistan) like we fought Japan or Germany, I think we almost certainly would have won, and won decisively and overwhelmingly. Or at least we would have had a real chance of transforming those countries long term, in the same way Japan and Germany were transformed long term by the Allied occupations.
With that in mind, I think US policy should be that, aside from (perhaps) very small peacekeeping endeavors, we will not commit military force anywhere without a formal declaration of war AND use of war powers to shift economic activity and the population towards the war effort, which would include a draft. This should help dissuade the warmongers from pushing for war aside from when it’s absolutely necessary.
Well to win a war you must be willing to defeat your adversary and to defeat your adversary you might have to eliminate them. We don’t fight wars that viciously anymore and our adversaries know that asymmetric warfare, patience, and exploiting modern Western sensibilities is a winning strategy.
The thing is if our adversaries are willing to fight dirty the territory where the war takes place will be inhabited by those who fear our adversaries more than us. You can’t win that unless you are literally willing to wait generations.
There’s a reason we don’t just throw out the rule book. The whole point of war is not simply to kill and destroy, but to extend political and economic influence. It’s doubtful that laying waste to a people would achieve that. And there’s evidence that it turns people against us. Bombings in Laos and Cambodia intensified anti-American sentiment and turned much of the people who had been generally neutral against us, ultimately strengthening the communists in those countries.
Well, then recognize the limits of power and what we are willing to do to achieve an objective. Be honest about history and constraints. Because, otherwise we are pissing away thousands of US lives, trillions of dollars, and most importantly demonstrating to allies and would be allies that we are unreliable.
But in many cases, elimination is not needed. After the 1991 Gulf War, for instance, Iraqi forces had been routed on the battlefield but there was no need to eliminate the Saddam regime.
You ought to push along in the war as long and as deep as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Once you hit a point where the drawbacks begin to exceed the benefits, that’s when you call it a day.
In certain situations, that might entail elimination, yes. For instance, if North Korea invaded South Korea, it might make good sense for South Korea and the U.S. to not only beat back the invasion but also push all the way north and end the regime once and for all. That’s one case in which going all the way may make good long-term sense. But wars like 1991 Iraq weren’t that.
Right. But you do what is necessary to achieve your stated objective. Otherwise, you shouldn’t even engage. Because what happens when you wage a war half-assed other countries, allies and adversaries alike, know you are unreliable.
In a multi-polar world which is what we have now with an ascendant China being a reliable partner is very valuable.
The decision to remain or leave in Afghanistan was complicated. A lot of people forget that one of the prevailing criticisms of the day was that the Soviets left a power vacuum and that more should have been done to help stabilize the country after USSR’s exit. Everyone’s an expert in picking apart obvious failure
Had we just kicked the Taliban’s ass in the beginning (which we did pretty much did do) and then declared victory and left. Would this be a victory? Maybe tell them if any airplanes crash into any of our cities ever again, we’d kick their ass 2x worse next time? Whether they only tacitly tolerated Al Qaeda or not.
And we left because we aren’t a colonial conqueror and have no interest in Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan can have any type of culture or government they decide amongst themselves.
In other words, Afghanistan is none of our business, except a short punitive war to dissuade them from ever hosting Al Qaeda ever again.
I see the attraction to that train of thought. But i thought we were better than that. I kinda got emotional watching some the interviews with common Afghanis today.
Looking at the numbers, we only had about 10k soldiers in Afghanistan the last few years and that seems to have kept the place reasonably secure (compared to the current situation). That doesn’t seem like a huge commitment. We have three times that many troops deployed to Germany for example.
Only 100 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan total since 2015. Every death is tragic, but more people than that died in training accidents outside of combat.
It’s probably naive of me, but it seems like the hard part was over. If we were going to decide it wasn’t worth it, why not decide that in 2010 when way more people were dying, and ten times as many were deployed?
Things weren’t as peaceful as they seemed. There were terrorist attacks on Afghan soldiers and civilians constantly. There was rampant corruption. Soldiers weren’t getting paid. The Taliban didn’t inflict a lot of injury and death upon a relatively light US footprint - probably because they knew that the US forces were so light that it might not have mattered. So they went after softer targets instead. They also took advantage of growing discontent over Afghan governmental corruption. The thing that stands out in mind mind is this: the Taliban were able to buy loyalty among other Afghans. They took most capitals not by force, but by speaking to the dissatisfaction of Afghans and by reminding them that the US wouldn’t be there to save their asses forever. In 2001, the Taliban were a rag-tag band of narco thugs. They’ve gotten a lot more intelligent in terms of administration and negotiating.
Because the US has a new president. Every president fears being attacked for being “weak” and every president gets manipulated by the generals. Biden’s political decision boils down to: more than three years before the next election (the penalty for looking weak is lower), bin Laden was long dead before Biden was elected (the original reason for the invasion is literally gone), and he listened to the generals manipulate Obama so he won’t fall for the same tricks. If Biden didn’t make the decision now, it wouldn’t be made until after the next election (and the next winner, if not Biden, could have decided to keep fighting).
Politico has a piece on Biden’s team sitting on their hands rather than organize evacuations, so it’s certainly not an entirely positive decision. However, Biden’s timing was very good.
Also, the actual withdrawal had been agreed to before the last election so we might as well finish it and prevent the lather-rinse-repeat.
What the new team did mess up was the execution of the withdrawal. It was already decided and even originally set for May, so what happened? It would be no surprise for most of us that the outgoing team did not have an actual plan in place, expecting to either renegue or wing it, because that’s what they do. But the new team should have risen to it. As others have mentioned, there could have been a strong securing of Kabul/Bagram for the purpose of covering the withdrawal, and more diligence in dealing with removal of the vulnerable people on the ground, already in place on the very day that an exit date for “before September” was announced – and no counting on that you have six months to a year to do it. I do not want to think that people down the chain simply did not bother, I must rather ding the decision-makers for not making the decisions in time and not providing clear guidance, and the intel community for not catching on (or getting through) that once the panic began you would not have six months or even six weeks to deal with it.
I think they likely made a lot of assumptions that turned out to be wrong, chief among them that they’d have more warning and time to spin stuff up before the real chaos broke out. Like the Afghan army would fight the Taliban enough to slow them down and give them time to arrange stuff on the ground. I get the impression that NOBODY expected that level of spectacular failure on their part, and that’s a big part of the problem.
That said, I’m surprised that there weren’t standing plans for this sort of thing. Stuff along the lines of “If we have to pull out in 6 months”, “If we have to pull out in 1 month”, “if we have to pull out in less than a week” sort of stuff, where they’d have pre-defined deployment ideas for the military- define civilian assembly points , secure airports, secure routes between them. That sort of thing.
I for one, would have been VERY nervous had I been working in Afghanistan and nobody had communicated this sort of thing to me well in advance- I’d have wanted to know if the SHTF, what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go, etc…
In Biden’s defense, one factor that needs to be considered is the damage that Trump inflicted both in terms of gutting the career civil service (especially in the State Dept) and the post-election transition. I think the latter is particularly problematic, and unfortunately, the media will probably overlook it. I’m not backing away from my criticism of Biden’s team in coordinating the pullout - a clusterfuck is a clusterfuck. But these are factors that warrant some thought, in addition to others.
I guess the evacuation will be conducted in a slightly better fashion now.
I just hope it doesn’t become a case of mission creep. Perhaps they will stay until Afghan translators get removed as well, but that should be it (IMO).
I get what you’re saying but I think this overstates it a bit. There was a sort of cultural death when the Emperor surrendered to the allies. It broke the spirit of the old Japanese Empire in many ways. I’ve read that a lot of WWII veterans when they got into older years in the 70s and 80s felt disconnected and “lost” from their own country because they felt it no longer held any of the values they fought for, and it really didn’t.
I once read a pretty startling quote from a man on the street at the end of WWII. This was a Japanese man (civilian) quoted in a newspaper after the surrender, knowing full well his country had just been bombed by two atomic weapons.
It’s a really complicated problem and can’t really be summarized in just a few sentences, and it’s really beyond the scope of this thread.
The real difference is that both Germany and Japan were major industrial countries with functioning national governments prior to the war. It’s impossible to compare industrial counties with those in poverty.