Our policy makers were so willfully blind on so many fronts and for so long that it hurts to think about it. Other people have already gone into aspects of it in detail. We were fighting a religious war without admitting it or planning accordingly. We were trying to build an Afghanistan where there never has been a "nation"-loyalty. We weren't willing to tear Pakistan a new rectum for ISI's support of Taliban/AlQaida. We never looked closely at how reliable our local allies really were. And on and on, down to details about tactics that I can't comment on.
We are rich enough to trade money for blood. We use expensive technology to magnify the power of our soldiers. That's good, but it seems to have shaped our thinking into technology-based paradigms (by, as Commander Salamander likes to point out, influencing which people get promoted). Train and drill the Afghans with the best stuff and best ways of thinking about countries and their armies, and they'll be a cohesive force for stability. That just costs money and time. But it didn't address their tribalism. Very little could; that's a core human value.
A generation of planners seem to have just doubled-down on "more of the same." Whenever we had talk of leaving, we got stories about the people who worked with us and would be abandoned, and what would happen to all the schools and girls under Taliban, and "never tell the day you're going to pull out" (excellent advice, of course; pity we didn't take it).
Iraq was different--they had at least some history of nationhood, and it was at least theoretically possible to hope for a not-unfriendly government there at the end of the day. We didn't keep our eye on the ball, and in retrospect I'm not sure the hope was possible after all. But Afghanistan?
I can see why some people think in terms of conspiracies and war profiteers. 19 years of stupidity is hard to believe in. (I'm leaving out the first few months of the war--those didn't seem outrageous.) But there it is.
It wasn't just that the war took so long--long wars seem to be pretty common.
Political correctness played a major role in the disastrous assessment of the capabilities of the Afghan military. It was and is forbidden to mention that the average IQ of Afghans is 85.
ReplyDelete85 with eyes on the ball beats 125 and infatuated with theories.
ReplyDeleteIf one frames taking out bin Laden and some collection of Al Qaeda leaders - plus whatever protectors from the Taliban happened to be in the way while protecting him - as reducing an ongoing threat to the US from terrorist attacks then it isn't quite the same as revenge. Admittedly, it might actually be just revenge that is being rationalised, and will certainly be interpreted as revenge by some.
ReplyDeleteReduce the threat to us, and perhaps our allies. Don't nation build. That worked with Germany and Japan because they already had nations and competence. It only half-worked with Italy.