Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
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Could it be they live in an imaginary world?
The USA locked the Afghan government in a death spiral since 2018. Many thousands of Afghans were killed or wounded fighting the jihadis as Washington pursued a delusional peace process. The Taliban’s offensive that started on 1 May this year and the ANDSF was already hollowed out. Furthermore, the USA ensured the ANDSF’s failure by forcing Kabul to fight for a draw while the Taliban fought for victory. As I previously pointed out, the Afghans took huge casualties over time, and especially since the USA signed the phony “peace” deal with the Taliban in February 2020.
ANDSF and other Afghan officials were demoralized by the American "peace" deal with the Taliban in Feb 2020. Between this time and 1 May 21, the Taliban spent that time buying off and wooing disaffected commanders and officials.
The Trump administration granted a lot of legitimacy to the Taliban, even pretending that it was America’s counterterrorism partner. Both Trump &
Pompeo made the absurd claim that the Taliban was now on America’s side in what was formerly known as the war on terror. If you are an ANA commander, and you see a Secretary of State endorse the Taliban as his counterterrorism partner in Doha, while the President of the United States wants to invite the Taliban to Camp David, what are you going to think?
The Trump administration
locked Kabul out of the talks, while granting concessions to the Taliban, including an uneven prisoner swap that freed 5,000 jihadis from Afghan prisons. Some of them quickly returned to the fight. If you're an Afghan soldier or a cop, you're probably looking at your friend and asking, "what the feck?"
Certainly, there is much to criticize with respect to the ANDSF in general and, in particular, the US military's attempt to stand up the ANDSF. See all of the reporting by SIGARHQ
https://www.sigar.mil/
But the ANDSF’s failures didn’t occur in an Afghan-only vacuum. The end game was also a direct result of American incompetence. So, yes, the ANDSF had its problems, but we should be clear about how this end game really played out and America’s own culpability.
In his deal with the Taliban, Trump demanded the safe exit of Americans, which really wasn't necessary at all. After all, Obama drew down from 100,000 to less than 10,000 without a deal. Moreover, the Taliban was always willing to grant America’s withdrawal/surrender. Thus, the USA could’ve left without endorsing the Taliban.
What I find problematic is the idea that Biden and his team were just asking the Afghans to “fight for themselves.” My point is that the Afghans
were fighting for themselves and did so until there wasn't any point anymore. And to state the ANA only lasted one day is fundamentally wrong. And for others to suggest that US airpower would have been the difference, well, there was a peace deal between the USA and Taliban, part of which required that the USA withdraw by 1 May 21 and that neither party would attack each other. So, on that one day when the Americans attacked the Taliban with B-52s, they were in violation of the peace deal while also being in violation because they hadn't withdrawn yet.