Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagor
What was the plan for Afghanistan?
I mean, what else did they think was going to happen?
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Well, here is what
I think but may not necessarily be true.
The initial intent was to rout Al-Qaeada and remove the Taliban from power. After that, the whole mission turned into some wishy-washy nation-building exercise full of nice words like democracy and equality and women's rights, etc. Ironically, it was the Soviets who were doing their best to provide women's rights to Afghan women when Uncle Sam decided to arm and support religious fanatics in order to overthrow the communist government. Anyway, that's a bit off track.
Back to my first point. USA/NATO routed the Afghan state but the Taliban slithered off into the mountains and villages and USA/NATO allowed Al-Qaeada to escape into Pakistan. Whether that was by design or a mistake is anyone's guess. Cynically, I will suggest that had USA/NATO defeated Taliban and Al-Qaeda in detail, there wouldn't have been any requirement for them to remain in Afghanistan. And then there was the Pakistan problem. Despite knowing they harboured the terrorists, we couldn't (or wouldn't) pressure Pakistan because Pakistan was vital in order to logistically support our forces via a land corridor. Not to mention, USA/NATO required Pakistan's air space to conduct operations. Anyway, the USA needed a reason to remain in Afghanistan (Iran! China! Russia! blah, blah), so bring on the idea of...
Nation-building/Democracy. Unfortunately, many 'Afghans' have no concept of the state and are not loyal to it, which is why I put Afghans in quotes. So, you can build all of this infrastructure for them, and you can promote flowery ideas like democracy and other western liberal values, but it doesn't address the fundamental issue that this part of the world is a tribal society with many ethnicities living in their own anarchies. They simply don't trust each other and the past 20 years proves why they don't trust each other. A Pashtun's (pick any ethnicity, it doesn't matter), idea of the state is to mediate disputes that could not be resolved at the local level. Thus, the tribes went to the state. For the past 20 years, the state came to them, usually in three ways: 1) the Army/Police would visit the village to conscript people; 2) Soldiers and cops would show up to the village and extort people; and 3) the tax collectors would show up to tax people.
Routing Al-Qaeda after 9-11 seemed like the logical course of action. We could have just gone there and chased down every Al-Qaeada crank in the Hindu Kush and then called it a day and gone home. But no, so here we are, back to where we started and probably worse than what the situation was in 2001.
Every officer above the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel who served in Afghanistan should apologize and resign. At the very least, they shouldn't be allowed to provide their "expertise" on cable news channels.