But the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with stabilising these countries. Saddam and the Taliban were creations of the US and its allies. The US itself built up Saddam, and Pakistan created the Taliban to counter Soviet/Indian influence. Both were funded with Gulf money and US approval.
The whole premise of this years long thread is exploring the complex relationships between groups in the middle east and the west. The Sunni/Shia tension are like two sides of the same bad penny that keeps turning up.
The classic argument is that the US caused the ME problems. I guess we'll see if Afghanistan turns into a tea party (summer of love) now.
Neither Iraq or Afghanistan were unstable either.
The mission has generally been defined as mitigating threats against the west, and western interests. This dates back to the Tripoli pirates interfering with free trade and commerce.
The Taliban didn't attack anyone outside of the country and posed no threat to the US.
As I already noted, the Taliban's fault was providing safe haven to Al Qaeda. The original operation in Afghanistan was surgical and took out that Al Qaeda base, without a heavy military presence in Afghanistan. Since then mission creep has turned this into a 20 year boondoggle, and redefined the Taliban as the terrorists. As I said before, the Taliban are bad guys but not "the" bad guys.
Saddam was a spent force in a country with no control over its own airspace, and no army left to defend it. There was no point in attacking either country, other than a demonstration of force. "We're doing this because we can".
The no-fly zone over Iraq was to stop Saddam from attacking his own people (he used poison gas on the Kurds). His military was degraded by driving him out of Kuwait after he invaded and set the oil fields there on fire, then he refused a UN order to withdraw. His justification was linked to the earlier 8 year long Iran/Iraq war (where poison gas was also used).
There was a flawed intelligence assessment of Saddam's WMD capability, while he was openly supporting terrorist behavior in the region.
If Al-Qaeda was the problem, they could have been dealt with differently. But since the US never had any intention of cutting off Al-Qaeda's funding or going after their funders, the War on Terror was a sham from the start.
The war against terror is still ongoing and restoring Taliban rule over Afghanistan could lead to another safe haven there. If the Taliban learned anything from the last 20 years it should be to not shelter radical islamic terror groups. I don't think the top leadership is ignorant so we will see, how they behave.
The Taliban right now just want to get us out of the area so I don't expect them to do anything very stupid (like poking the bear), but there are already anecdotal reports of bad behavior by random militants.
Peshmerga, Iraqi Shia militia's, Hezbollah, and the Syriab Arab Army (majority of whom were Sunni) wiped out ISIS and Al-Nusra on the ground. They did in 3 years what the US failed to do in 20 years in Afghanistan.
not apples and oranges, but the Kurdish Peshmerga are surely fierce fighters.
The mission creep in Afghanistan was so poorly defined that nobody could ever declare success?
US and Russian bombs did flatten entire cities but you can't win a war that way. All the other side has to do is hide, wait for you to give up or run out of money, and come back out again. See the Taliban.
Yes a classic taunt... "we don't need to beat you militarily, we just need to outlast you and wait until you leave". They probably didn't expect that to take 20 years to come true.
You aren't going to convince anyone to die for your cause with money either: armies created to defend foreign installed puppet regimes are destined to fail if no-one believes in their legitimacy. Soldiers need to be ideologically aligned with their cause. That's why Kurds and Iranian backed troops always do so well – they're indigenous forces defending their homeland against foreign invaders. Same goes for the Taliban.
not asking, while our several NATO allies also providing support in Afghanistan are pretty PO'd about the abrupt pullout without coordination. The US administration claims they planned for this (seriously?).
Probably why the US also does so badly in wars. When's the last time US soldiers actually defended their homeland? How many US soldiers sign up for passports, education grants, reduced sentences? What's the cause US soldiers fight for?
The US is blessed with strong natural borders (oceans), while the current administration refuses to lock the front door.
They started an unwinnable war, then lied about winning it for 20 years. All you're seeing now is the truth.
Sun Tzu famously argued to keep politicians out of waging warfare. We are seeing the result of allowing politicians to drive the bus for 20 years.
This mismanaged pullout is a black stain on the decades of blood and treasure spent there. Sadly we still haven't seen the full unintended consequences of this collapse of order. I can't imagine this being handled any worse, but we are still learning more bad news daily.
JR
I'd rather try to find a path to manage a way out of this but this looks like 20 years of work (blood and treasure) has just been forfeit.
