Well, as much as those guys can take a good chunk of responsibility for this clusterfuck, I think at least a portion of it can go to the Taliban.
Biden says he does not regret Afghanistan withdrawal as Taliban take over more towns
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We're not talking about everyone's blame now, just the US administration.
Furthermore, Taliban, being awful as they are, didn't invite Americans to invade.
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I'd give Biden some extra blame for how much equipment was left in Afghanistan. We basically helped rearm the Taliban for the next several decades with new guns, humvees, etc.
Well, yes, the Taliban are awful. But there's just not that much else for the USA to do. With 20 years to build some sort of functioning Afghan state, it collapsed at the merest prod. If that's not a sign just how utterly hopeless this endeavour was, I don't know what is. Keeping going with it would have been a sunk cost fallacy.
The US & chums may as well have just gone in, dismantled Al-Qaida, and handed the Afghanistan straight back to the Taliban with a stern message not to pally around with international terrorists again, and saved a metric fuckton of money and lives. I don't doubt the USA will be telling the Taliban precisely that now: the country's yours, just make sure you don't let any shit spill out onto our interests.
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I don't know how true this is, but... From what I read the military knew their forces' fragility and did not think they could hold the whole country, but could effectively defend Kabul and other core areas. However, this was not popular with the politicians, who instead wanted everything defended. This may have been a contributor to the rapid defeat: lots of small garrisons strung out that could be overwhelmed one-by-one by a mobile opponent. And of course as they gradually fall in a series of defeats, morale plunges and the army becomes completely useless.
Not really. Ultimately, that stuff was given to the Afghan military over years, long before Biden. It could hardly be repossessed, especially if there were to be any hope of the Afghan army resisting the Taliban.
This is just the way it always has been in warfare: the winner gets to take all the loser's stuff and use it. It has been true for thousands of years. Win a battle in the medieval era, congratulations your army now has a ton of its opponents swords, arrows, armour, etc.: and you can guarantee they'll make good use of them. Napoleon mounted a lot of his cavalry on horses taken from the Prussians in 1806, and even soldiers: defeat an enemy, frequently you can just conscript their troops into your army or hire them as mercenaries.
AFAIK it's somehow cheaper to leave the equipment there, than to transport it home?
Atleast when it comes to non-specialistic gear? I can't imagine though how just leaving hi-tech weaponry there is more affordable, unless MIC is involved.
Better than the Taliban, yes, especially when it came to women's rights and education.
Yes, that's why people are desparate to get out of the country.
Could be true, but if anything, it seems to the Afghan Army being hopelessly incompetent.
Forget where I read it, but reportedly the US sunk $87 billion into the Afghan Army alone. By the time of the Taliban surge, the Taliban had about 60,000 fighters, while the Afghan Army had about 300,000. And yet, it's utterly collapsed.
I don't mean to make light of this, but I can imagine centuries from now, historians going over the events and pointing to it as one of the rare cases in human history where a smaller, more motivated army can take out a larger, yet ill-motivated one.
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From what some first and second hand accounts I've heard regarding Afghan army most of the people there just treat it as their 9-5 job. They go to training, do drills, etc. but are just there for a paycheck. It's not surprising that the army completely collapsed at the first sign of trouble, I doubt many of us would ride or die for our day jobs either.
I wonder how well the Taliban will even be able to hold the country, Afghanistan economy is a joke and literally one of its biggest source of revenue was the US. With that gone (most likely with plenty of sanctions and just most people not wanting to deal with Taliban) the economy is probably about to collapse. There's gona be a whole lot of angry people (like the 300K afghan soldier who just lost their job which, to be fair, they obviously didn't deserve). Most bright people (including doctor) are going to leave the country asap so covid will probably decimate the region.
If any of you are interested in a relevant humorous story, there’s this.
Occupation by an army that has a problem with sexually assaulting its own soldiers was better for women's rights.
Why would anyone have a reason to go to Afghanistan. Fucking moron. I never really got the people who go to Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea. Are you stupid or something?
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Treatment of women by the Taliban - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
You're comparing the acts of individual soldiers to enshrined Taliban policy.
The Taliban are apparently cosying up to China economically. Hell, what's a few million imprisoned Muslims on the side?
Anyway, I don't think the economy will collapse per se, but it'll have a brain drain. The Taliban bans vaccinations, among other things, so any doctors will be wise to leave the country.
Best we can do is accept refugees and refuse to do business with them I guess.
The US puppet regime decided they didn't particularly want to pay their soldiers. That's what happens.
Probably go back to selling Opium. If memory serves they were a net exporter of the stuff prior to the invasion in 2001. Didn't much like their own people using it, but fuck if it wasn't a solid economy driver.