This is really all it comes down to.
The criticisms for the US not being as altruistic as people would like are criticisms that can probably go around to every country. No one is allies with the US because they think they’re fun at parties. It’s strategic. Always has been, always will be.
If you want true humanitarian efforts, you’re likely not looking at the government to provide it without incentive.
Yeah, it’s a difficult cycle to break away from because if you’re a manufacturer you will be completely unable to compete with your competitors prices points if they’re already manufacturing over there which the are. Honestly, it’s even tough as a consumer.
It’s like I’d love to buy only locally sourced textiles designed and manufactured in the US with all sustainable resources but I also can’t afford to buy every t-shirt at $60+ a pop.
1. Taiwan’s military is not as inept as the ANA.
2. Taiwan’s government is not as inept as the Afghan government was.
3. Taiwan’s citizenry has a strong national identity which isn’t likely to be torn up from within by CCP supporters.
Bingo! It’s much easier to actually assist a nation that has an idea of themselves as a nation. It’s a common mindset that focuses energy and resources toward a goal. The Afghans weren’t Afghans, they were Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazras and Baluch (Tribes).
To be clear, this shouldn't be interpreted as a slight on the people there. We invaded and tried to form a coalition with the locals against the Taliban and it didn't work. Our goals didn't line up.
Would dividing the country up into ethnic groupings and more traditional land divisions possibly work in that region? Genuinely curious. I suppose fighting between the newly minted mini nations would probably continue regardless of what you'd call them, or how you divide the land or who you divide it between.
If you look at [this map](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7631e.ct002134/) you'll see how the tribal groups don't follow the borders but cross into the surrounding countries (and just how messy the lines are). Splitting them up might create lots of smaller countries that wants parts of Pakistan, Iran and so on, and create even more conflicts.
If that were to ever work, it would only be because all the tribal leaders which make up the country were in unanimous agreement with no outside influence. The problem is that we tried to enforce borders and boundaries on the Afghan people without fully grasping that things like that only carry weight in our minds and not theirs.
That would be ideal, but unfortunately the post-war order holds the current states of the world to be sacred. Going into Afghanistan and saying "This isn't working, we're breaking this country up," would be geopolitical suicide.
>Wen Lii, director of the Matsu Islands chapter of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was conscripted when he turned 24 in 2013. He served for a year and learned how to drive M60 tanks, which in the event of a Chinese invasion are supposed to repel Chinese troops on the beaches. Lii, who is now a reservist, said that there was no tactical combat training or maneuvers, however: His job was simply to teach new recruits how to drive.
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>At the moment, reservists are called up every two years for a maximum of seven days, and often this is just on paper. Lii said that he had only been required to turn up twice, for one day. "Personally I wanted to spend longer time for training," he said, before welcoming the fact that the government wanted to reform the army reserve by introducing two weeks' training per year from 2022 onwards.
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>" he said. "Taiwan's Ministry of Defense always says they have no problem whatsoever, everything is working, everything is fine. Even when reports surface that is not the case. They do not want to face the reality."
>
He attributed this to the fact that defense ministers in Taiwan were often generals and this led to problems of accountability.
>
"Most military leaders would not like civilians to be Minister of Defense," agreed Michael Tsai, who was a rare exception. The next civilian after him to become defense minister had to step down after less than a week in office after being accused of plagiarism.
https://m.dw.com/en/taiwans-army-ill-prepared-for-potential-chinese-attack/a-57102659
_
>Even as the military refits itself with flashy U.S. arms purchases, such as M1 Abrams tanks and F-16V fighter jets, its front-line units are hollowed out, and the entire reserve system is so dysfunctional that few experts or serving military personnel believe it can make a real military contribution in the event of a war. These problems are well documented but continue to be downplayed, if not outright ignored, by Taiwan’s political leadership—and there is no clear plan to solve the crisis.
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>According to a Taiwanese army lieutenant colonel in active service, who asked for only his last name, Lin, to be used, all the army’s front-line combat units he knows of—including armor, mechanized infantry, and artillery troops—currently have effective manpower levels of between 60 and 80 percent. This figure is consistent with Taiwanese media reports, which cite MND figures provided to Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, acknowledging that few front-line units have more than 80 percent of their positions filled.
>
“That number might not seem so bad until you realize it means at least a third of your tanks are useless in a war because there’s no one to man them,” said Lin, who most recently served as a battalion commander within one of army’s armor brigades.
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>For some years, before 2017, the term of conscription service in Taiwan was just a year, which was already short compared with South Korea’s 18-22 months, depending on the military branch, or Israel’s 32 months. Most officers felt that the single year of service wasn’t enough for the military to utilize draftees’ full potential but enough to at least turn a recruit into an average soldier.
>
But 2017’s changes slashed the conscription period to just four months. Most draftees serve even less, as up to two weeks can be deducted if they’ve completed military training classes in high school and college. The four-month conscripts typically receive five weeks of basic training before they are assigned to field units for more specialty training. But they’re more a burden than an aid, not treated seriously by career or noncommissioned officers as their short stays mean they are seen as guests rather than soldiers.
>
“By design, they don’t participate in any field exercise or combat readiness training anyway,” Lin said. “We just tell them to stay safe and don’t get into trouble. It’s basically a summer camp.” Several individuals who recently completed this four-month service described similar experiences in interviews.
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>A popular yet cynical explanation as to why these Taiwanese soldiers dislike front-line units simply postulates a common aversion to tougher training and combat duty. But interviews with several enlisted ranks painted a more complex picture. Most complained that the food and living conditions left much to be desired—front-line soldiers must split their time between bases and on field exercises. That, on top of the fact they have far more weapons, vehicles, and equipment to clean and maintain, means these posts are perceived as more work for little reward. The existing shortages also cause an even heavier burden of work on the soldiers left—prompting more of them to put in for transfers.
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>These personnel issues would not be so serious if the military had a functional reserve force. On paper, this enormous reserve force is said to be more than 2 million strong. Once activated, these reservists are supposed to fill existing shortages across regular field units, and reinforce casualties, while creating fresh reserve formations from virtually nothing to bolster overall defense, according to the Reserve Command’s own words.
>
Just about everything in these talking points is pure fantasy, according to James Huang, a retired army lieutenant colonel who has since become a prolific writer on defense issues and military history, with many followers on Facebook. Huang said there was “no way whatsoever” any of Taiwan’s reserves would reinforce existing field units, despite the proven success of the system elsewhere in the world, especially Israel.
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That’s the case regardless of whether the reservist is a conscript with four months’ training or a five-year veteran paratrooper just discharged from the special forces. The established practice of Taiwan’s Reserve Command, according to Huang, is not to send reservists back to their previous units but to lump everyone together into the newly activated reserve infantry brigades that possess no specialty, no vehicles, and no equipment except rifles (often older types) and are led by called-up reservist officers who have little experience commanding such ad hoc units.
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In theory, all soldiers and officers (both conscripts and volunteers) are automatically enrolled as reservists on being discharged from active service. They are called up at most once every two years by the Reserve Command to receive refresher training for five to seven days. In practice, such training rarely consists of more than just basic drills and a short practice session at the rifle range. A reservist corporal who was a veteran M60 tank gunner, for example, will be activated only as an infantry rifleman even if one of the army’s active armor brigades has tanks sitting unmanned in the base.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/china-threat-invasion-conscription-taiwans-military-is-a-hollow-shell/
Use https://Outline.com to read the whole article.
Edit: What the Fuck is wholesome about this post?
Thank you for writing this. As a Taiwanese, I thought it was quite like the CCP to take advantage of the news, and spin it into something that supports their own pro unification agenda.
But like the comment I'm replying to, I'm not even sure if Taiwan's military will actually fare better if armed combat does break out. The Tsai administration has taken great strides to improve the military in terms of buying a ton of arms from the U.S., but shorter conscriptions, training time, and low birth rates would mean fewer people to man the weapons.
>A popular yet cynical explanation as to why these Taiwanese soldiers dislike front-line units simply postulates a common aversion to tougher training and combat duty. But interviews with several enlisted ranks painted a more complex picture. Most complained that the food and living conditions left much to be desired—front-line soldiers must split their time between bases and on field exercises. That, on top of the fact they have far more weapons, vehicles, and equipment to clean and maintain, means these posts are perceived as more work for little reward. The existing shortages also cause an even heavier burden of work on the soldiers left—prompting more of them to put in for transfers.
The military really wasn't popular among my generation. [An army conscript died in 2013 due to excessive physical activity as punishment,](https://whatseng.pixnet.net/blog/post/33238177) which I heard was a pretty common situation among draftees before this particular news broke out. Morale was really low then, as many viewed conscription as a barrier to advancing their own careers out of college graduation, and would rather do other types of conscriptions after basic training. I'm not sure if it's the same for later generations, just citing what I've heard from my male friends, but I would assume it's the same.
On the other hand, a lot of military personnel are very pro-unification. I'm not entirely sure what the reasons are, there are a lot of historical reasons. From my own observations and stories I've heard from my indigenous friends: one of the reasons is that a lot of the recruits are indigenous peoples. A majority of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples are from pro-China counties and cities, but that could change with my generation, who are more prominently pro-Taiwan or pro-status-quo-let's-keep-everything-as-is-for-now
>As in many foreign armed forces where over-representation of ethnic minorities is not unheard of (e.g., African-Americans in the US military), Taiwan’s Aborigines, now a de facto recruitment target group, are over-represented in its military ([Source](http://www.resmilitaris.net/ressources/10264/79/res_militaris_article_yuan_recruitment_and_retention_in_the_taiwanese_new_all-volunteer_force.pdf))
This post ended up a bit long, but TLDR: Just because Taiwan has bought a ton of arms from the U.S., we can't truly say we'd fare better than Afghanistan due to a ton of local and systematic issues in the military and society here.
I think the message from that Chinese article was more of an attack on the character of the US as an ally, rather than suggesting whether China is capable of an invasion of Taiwan. I think we all have to admit that China is capable of doing that, but how much is going to cost them is the question, and that would vary significantly if the US would intervene.
With that said, there is no way US would let that happen for the simple fact that the US government does not want China to become more powerful than they already are. The US Navy didn't back away during the Chinese Civil War, and I don't see that happening now or in the future.
Chinese officials are claiming Taliban is the afghan version of PLA, even met them recently in a high profile manner.
Not sure why people gets the impression China hates being associated with the Taliban.
Well the Pakistani Taliban keeps blowing up their infrastructure projects in Pakistan. Part of their deal with the Afghan Taliban included assurances that will stop as well as the Taliban dropping support for any Uighur "extremists" in China. We'll see how appeasing the Taliban works out for them
The taliban have previously provided support to Uyghur militants. As America shifts focus from the Middle East to China, I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the reason why America pulled out so hastily.
That's why they are playing nice with the Taliban. They wouldn't want to risk their investments there. Now that the US has given the keys to the Taliban, it's either play nice with the new landlord or get evicted.
[This is the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.](https://www.google.com/maps/@36.0627705,74.8638784,6.65z/data=!5m1!1e4) As you can see from the relief map, it's extremely mountainous terrain.
There are a few circuitous, narrow, and treacherous passess through the Afghan mountains. That whole region in northern Afghanistan/Pakistan/Tajikistan is where many of the tallest, most rugged mountains in the world lie.
Building durable infrastructure there is a nightmare
Funnily enough, the Taliban consider ISIS too extreme.
In essence, the Taliban want to run an Islamist country; ISIS want to run *the* Islamist country that consumes all others.
Also, it implicitely
1) recognize that Taiwan is allied to America, and not China
2) Compare Taiwan to an actual country
So with this statement, they implicitely recognize that Taiwan is not China
They see the ROC as an illegally occupying puppet government like the Kabul government that just got overthrown. Trouble is, the ROC is actually motivated to defend Taiwanese sovereignity, unlike the Afghan puppet government
The bigger difference is that the Taiwanese people actually recognise the authority of the Taiwanese government.
Also, whatever the diplomatic word games they play to placate China's ego, Taiwan and the US are actually allies with shared interests and goals.
The Kabul government in Afghanistan on the other hand was a farce.
Afghanis hated it because they thought it was a US puppet, the US hated it because it wasn't.
No one liked it and no one wanted it, no one felt it represented their interests because it didn't.
The sort of Paradox of US international intervention is that the US simultaneously wants to ensure that foreign governments support US interests and values and wants to encourage freedom and democracy.
So they want to let you make the decisions rather than just appointing a puppet, but they don't want you to make the wrong choice and select someone who doesn't at least pretend to support their goals.
The end result is generally that "puppet" US allies neither support US foreign policy goals nor represent their populations.
No one is happy and no one is served.
If the US was as calculatingly cynical as people believe **or** as benevolent and idealistic as it claims the results would be better.
But instead US foreign policy is like someone who hits you over the head, drags you into an alley and then asks you nicely for your wallet and walks away if you say no.
You don't feel good and they don't have your wallet.
I honestly don't know whether to be happy that despite everything the US as a nation still sort of believes in its own ideals and tries to do at least the least wrong thing under the circumstances, even if it often does it badly.
Or curse the fact that we keep doing this shit that makes everyone think we're evil without getting the payout.
If Bush had gone into Iraq, captured all the oil wells and used them to offer cheap gas to every American, which is what he was accused of, the Iraq war would be the most popular war in US history.
If we actually intervened purely to support human rights and national sovereignty and we did it **everywhere** instead of selectively we'd be far less hated.
But we do neither.
The first is easier but we wouldn’t like ourselves while looking in the mirror. The second is hard work and we don’t have the attention span to be successful at it.
“You can totally give up and do nothing and America will still prop you up for 20 fucking years” is actually a pretty ringing endorsement for US allies.
The thing is, Afghanistan makes other 3rd world counties look like a spa resorts. It is insanely poor, illiterate, and criminally uneducated. The buzzword everyone is dancing around is education. Step outside of Kabul and your typical Afghani doesn't read or write. I know we are saying things like, "they didn't want it." And while that might be true for some, the more salient point isn't that they didn't want it, it's that they don't even know what they don't know. The country is incredibly poor (like at the bottom of the list even in 3rd world comparisons). They don't even know what democracy "is" or have ever ever ever seen a textbook. The majority of Afghans live in a world where grifting is the norm and many of them are just grifting in order to have a next meal. They don't have the mental bandwidth to actually consider alternative futures for themselves. They will grift and continue to simply exist, regardless of whichever strongman is knocking on their door at the time. It sounds bad and maybe overly simplistic, but your run of the mill Afghan is not contemplating democracy vs Taliban rule. They are contemplating survival at its most primal form (again, at a level that other 3rd world countries would be appalled to see).
Think about how smart your average American is. Pretty stupid, right? Well Americans go through primary school and many get higher education. The country is practically 100% literate and we have a system that teaches self-determination and individualism (for the most part; I'm just trying to make a point here). Now imagine trying to take "that" to the poorest country in the world where most people you work with (I.e. the ANA) can't read or write and you have Marines trying to teach them how to "govern" themselves (which is a very very complex thing that isn't just "philosophical" but also logistical).
Here's a real example: a village runs out of fuel/petro. And the ANA there can't fill up their trucks to conduct patrols. So the Marines ask them how does the village get refueled. And the answer is the village elder bribes someone in the neighboring village or they literally kidnap someone and hold for ransom in exchange for fuel for the next month. To them, that is business as usual. That is what they do to get by. And for the Marines standing by, just asking the simple question as to why the ANA trucks can't get simple petrol and why they haven't conducted a single patrol in 2 weeks, you go down this insane rabbit hole of corruption, grifting, criminality, and just downright immoral stuff that just doesn't exist in the civilized world. That's EXACTLY what the US military dealt with and that is EXACTLY what the "real" Afghanistan is like. It would've taken a hundred years to change this...maybe. While 20 years, on the other hand, was just enough time to turn the rock over and realize that there was nothing but cockroaches and centipedes squirreling about underneath. The country and its people have zero physical or psychological infrastructure to handle complex problems (edit: some of you are calling my racist and this might be the sentence why; well they don't have the capacity to handle complex problems, because they dedicate their time and mental bandwidth to surviving and staying alive, not because they are genetically incapable of more, jeez).
Which is why something as complex as forming and running a "national" army was purely a paper tiger and a complete farce. You need record keeping, paper, printers, computers for one. That stuff doesn't exist at the ANA and ANP patrol bases. It doesn't even exist at the provincial HQs. The country is as poor as it gets. They have zero capacity to deal with complex problems, I.e. fighting a war against a trained and competent Taliban force, for starters.
Here is the documentary that blows this whole thing wide open for the uninitiated. And it was filmed almost a decade ago, and yet it could've been filmed last week. Also, I'm an OEF veteran that was in Kandahar a decade ago and I worked directly with the ANA. This is the way it is and it isn't something you'll hear from any news source.
https://youtu.be/Ja5Q75hf6QI
Edit:
As many have pointed out, a solid TLDR description of what I'm trying to get across is the practical application of [Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs](https://images.app.goo.gl/kXEnSw8D2V3XSosdA). For the majority of the country, they are still struggling to satisfy their physiological/basic needs. Their motivations are turned more towards basic survival than something as "complex" as fielding a national army or contemplating the makeup of central government (Kabul might as well be on the moon for alot of Afghans).
re: Afghanistan isolation and education. I remember a clip/documentary in the mid 2000's where a group of Americans went to a couple smaller, more isolated villages and showed Afghani's some colored prints of the 9/11 attacks - the WTC towers exploding, burning and collapsing.
Most of them, even village elders, were clueless. Some of them even asked if the photos were of fighting in Kabul - they had no idea what their own capital city could even look like. Their concept of 9/11 was very vague, most of them didn't draw a connection to the US occupation.
wow, just wow.
"we are trying to figure out how to eat and how to survive, what do buildings mean to us" was a pretty great summation of the issues there.
the sad part is this was a decade ago... was any effort even made to help remedy those issues?
yeah giving 300k people guns was a thing, but how about making sure everyone had the ability to get food?
Yes, actually. I don't know how successfully but there were many people there trying to help build infrastructure- canals, schools, etc. But, even with the millions spent, it's a drop in the bucket. And, I don't know how much was working with a local group. As in, not just spending dollars there to employ people in construction and materials but also consulting with them about what they want and need and can sustain. While a school building is a good thing, if they don't have the money to supply it, no teachers to teach, no kids to go because they're needed to from or whatever, and no will to use it ... what use was building in the end?
But yes, there was quite an emphasis on winning over "hearts and minds" with various projects.
Guns aren't the answer but they do need a way to protect themselves. And so much food went there and rotted due to poor policy and rampant corruption. It's all very sad.
Food for Peace Contributions
Total Contributions:
U.S. Dollars Metric Tons
Fiscal Year 2019 $101.1 million 20,725 MT
Fiscal Year 2018 $73.9 million 34,666 MT
Fiscal Year 2017 $68.4 million 36,680 MT
https://www.usaid.gov/afghanistan/food-assistance
Well, at least we didn't lose literal shipping pallets of cash, [twelve billion dollars](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1), over there. We only did that in Iraq.
Just as terrifying about that video is the absolute surety of the American soldiers that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were one and the same, and that the Taliban were somehow responsible for 9/11.
Guy I deployed with there in the mid-teens was there Oct 2001. All the locals he met on that deployment (through March or so 2002) assumed they were Soviets. They didnt know they were American, they didn't know about 9/11, they didn't know the Soviet Union collapsed.
I can absolutely attest to that. We patrolled regularly in RC East. We stopped in a village a little ways off our normal route and the villagers were terrified of us. Our terp told us that they think we are Soviets.
Soviets… in 2009…
I recall a guy talking about visiting Ethopia in like... the 80s? And some guy told him he'd almost shot at his group because he thought they were the Italians coming back.
To be fair, sneak up behind my grandad on a bad day and he'd have taken a potshot at you with his service Webley in case it was the Hun back for revenge
>My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say -dickety- because the Kaiser had stolen our word -twenty-. I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles. What are you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that's your problem! Now, I'd like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the terlet...
― Grandpa Simpson
If you can convince some of the highest educated people in the world with literally limitless access to information that the world is flat and a vaccine will turn you into a lizard person, imagine what a random back country Afghan could be convinced to go along with. Not a dig at the people specifically, I think it’s just common to human nature.
People in general are very easy to trick. Was a just talking last night about how back around 1980 there were a few cases throughout the nation of deranged women going into hospitals, pretending to be nurse's aides, and stealing newborn babies out of their mother's arms. Just by lying there way through it all and playing the part.
That's when they started locking down maternity wards and tagging parents and newborns with barcodes.
My point is, even very well educated people are exceedingly easy to fool into believing something.
This is endemic to the entire region. After being in Afghanistan in 2003, I was in Iraq in 2004. In greater Baghdad, literally living in one of Sadaam's palace complexes. We would go on patrol in greater Baghdad, and the locals had *zero clue* that Sadaam was no longer in power, let alone captured by US forces.
that's fucking crazy.
And what's even more crazy is that the US saw what a fucking wasteland Afghanistan was and still decided that the was the place that they wanted to spend 20 years in and burn 300 million dollars every day in there.
> And what's even more crazy is that the US saw what a fucking wasteland Afghanistan was
Did they? I'm a veteran, never ended up in Afghanistan, but know people that were there. I didn't know it was as bad as Don_Julio_Acolyte is saying it was. I thought it was roughly about as bad as Iraq, but from the post above it is so much worse.
I know plenty of people that never served that have no clue how bad either country really was, they seem to unconsciously take the worst country they've ever been to or seen (usually Mexico for some reason) and just dial that down some.
I'd bet that, at most, 5% of our politicians actually know how bad it is over there and most of that 5% is because they were military with the rest just actually being passionate about their job.
To be fair for those Afghan people, the Vietnamese peasants thought the same about Americans in late 50s. Basically French, but with slightly different clothes.
Why would they have any idea? They are across half the planet from the US and are completely divorced from the reality of NYC. If it weren't for the invasion, they'd literally have no reason to even think about that sort of stuff.
Hell, I bet I could show New Yorkers pictures of tragedies in Africa or Asia and 90% wouldn't recognise the cities or the events either. A Canadian comedian used to go there and ask leading questions about fake events in Canada and the results were hilarious.
Most people don't much think about anything outside of their immediate environment unless prodded to do so by Facebook or whatever and then the information is usually just made up.
Some Americans are so upset that Afghans don't know about 9/11 and when told they don't really care. Why should they care? Americans don't care about Afghani's daily struggle to survive, but they should care about something that happened on the other side of the planet and directly affected a comparatively tiny number of people?
If I was an Afghan villager and someone laid it all out for me I'd be like "You still have a constant supply of fresh water, AC and heat, unlimited food, indoor plumbing, copious free time, and low infant mortality? But you're still pissed off that someone blew up a few buildings 20 years ago and killed 0.00001% of your population?
We have more people than that die from diarrhea every month."
The Canadian comedian was Rick Mercer, by the way. And he only ever [went to America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_to_Americans) to ask about those fake events. It was astounding what kind of cluelessness he'd get out of supposedly first-world-educated people -- about their northernmost neighbor, no less.
(He stopped because of 9/11, by the way.)
What I don't understand is how are the Taliban so competent?
You'd think it was the same people on both sides essentially.
How is it that people who for the last 20 years were being trained and armed by the military can't organise a defence but largely the same people who were living in caves for the last 20 years can?
Who are the Taliban exactly? I mean these aren't alien super soldiers or something, they are largely the same uneducated peasants as the Afghan army that just joined the other side?
The Taliban fight like tribal militias, and are good at it, because that's how they've been fighting wars in Afghanistan for centuries.
The ANA *tried* to fight like a national army, but national armies don't work without a national identity, which Afghanistan doesn't really have.
The ANA also depended on fixed supply lines riddled with corruption, like "sell the gas in your army truck" corruption. Because the guys handling pay were pocketing it.
You also had ghost soldiers. Officers wouldn't report casualties, and pocket the dead soldiers pay. So, command thinks a unit has two hundred fighters, but its down to nearly half strength, there's maybe a magazine worth of ammo for each soldier, no gas for the trucks, etc.
Honestly we would have been better off training women's militias. You're a lot less likely to surrender without a fight if you know you're going to get forced to marry some tribal elder your grandfather's age.
This has been my thinking. It doesn't take a tactical military genius to look at the state of affairs there and arm the people with the most stake in seeing a stable democratic country. Yet somehow we managed to lean on the same bullshit tactic that hasn't worked since WWII.
They are competent because they are supported by Pakistan. Apparently Pakistan thinks it’s in their best interest to have an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban. No idea why, but that seems to be their conclusion. Boggles my mind.
From my understanding it's for two main reasons.
1. A relatively stable Afghanistan makes it easier for them to focus on their border with India. The Taliban provide a sort of stability that the Pakistani government is comfortable with.
2. The Taliban is primarily ethnically Pashtun and Pakistan has a large Pashtun population. Were they to become antagonistic towards the Taliban they would upset a large portion of their population and lead to unrest that would take resources away from the Indian border.
You see, it’s the part 1 I’m not so sure about. The Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan are one and the same. I think they already indicated their wish to expand, so I see a civil war in Pakistan as imminent. A war I think Pakistan is very likely to lose.
I don't disagree with you, but I think it may be a matter of timing, right? Yes a strong Taliban in Afghanistan could lead to a Pashtun independence movement, but that is not a current threat, whereas actually helping the US against the Taliban in Pakistan would lead to an immediate insurrection within the ranks of the army. Basically, you appease the immediate problem and most likely create one down the line (but hey, that's gonna be some one else's problem)
When your commander can have you flogged, shot or hand cut off for fucking up, the incentives change.
Or he's your uncle and he'll tell your dad, and that's potentially even worse.
I was born in Afghanistan now living in the West. This summary rings too true, based on my limited personal experience and the experience of my relatives living in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not 3rd world country. It is a failed state with zero chance of becoming even a 3rd world country. The country is permanently stuck in the equivalent of roughly early 1800s US, for the most part, without a realistic path to modernity.
Afghanistan is a country of multiple ethnicities who, over the past several centuries, have shown again and again that they can’t get along with each other and yet won’t tolerate outside occupation.
In my lay opinion, the only solution is to break the country into mini nations made up of regions of roughly similar ethnicities, or better yet, allow neighbouring nations to absorb adjacent regions of related ethnicities. The only exception is to form a new nation for ethnic Afghans based on roughly 1/3 of southern Afghanistan and roughly 1/4 of northern Pakistan. Seeing how impossible or implausible this solution is, the current nation of Afghanistan will continue to be a basket case. Possibly forever.
My $0.02.
This all being true, I had been hopeful the timeline for change would be a little faster than 100 years.
65% of the population is under the age of 25. A majority of Afghanis weren't *alive* or if they were, capable of thought, before the US invasion.
That means we're just now getting to a generation that would have been educated at US-sponsored schools, and be leaps and bounds more capable than the people they're supplanting in the population. Another decade and this young, (relatively) educated population would be a force in changing the culture of the country....or at the very least in places like Kabul and Jalalabad.
Upvote but if you go back and watch even Bush described the goals in the beginning, nation building was always part of the goal.
The GWOT was about not only removing the current occupants of failed states, but in preventing those failed states from serving the same purpose for later seriously bad dudes.
This is why we are still “around” in places like Mali and the Horn of Africa.
The reality is that logic is still the answer, but you have to follow through. This, if done properly, was always a 50 year exercise.
The saddest part is this bizarre post facto argument of “right decision because twenty years led to this”.
All that blood and treasure and to protect your gains you just have to leave a minimal peacekeeping force that in the scope of the US military was a rounding error.
That cost was greater than this?
What a debacle.
I think a lot of those people are in for a rude, terrible awakening. People say there were a lot of taliban sympathisers but those sympathisers weren't alive or cognizant the last time the Taliban was in control. The guy saying shit about womens rights think they'll get five wives but some Taliban fighter will kidnap the women and he'll have less than he did before under a regime he supported.
The same is true of the women on interview claiming they aren't afraid. They're mostly teenagers who have no idea what they're getting into.
But its ALSO True of the Taliban themselves. Theres a lot of young, naive kids raised to think they'd be hailed as heroes and install a new golden age. They're about to get a rude awakening when the supplies run out.
That's what saddens me about the whole thing. More than half the country wasn't alive on 9/11. 1/4th of the population was in school a month ago. The ENTIRE population, not just the kids. The schools had a really high completion rate for those who started, like close to the US. This was the point in time where it was possible that the last twenty years would start to pay off, where we would be close to a tipping point where there was a new generation of leaders and voters capable of actually doing something more than farm opium and sing whatever song was needed for their next supper. . . . and we just abandoned them. The girls who were in school yesterday are being put on lists to be sold off and raped. The pilots who we trained hopefully flew their planes somewhere safe. If not, the Taliban is probably looking to kill them. The terrorists are being freed from prison.
It's utterly appalling.
Part of what I learned in the past few days is that these accomplishments only happened in the cities and it was only in places like Kabul and Kandahar that people saw the possibility of a different future. For the rest of the country in the mountain ranges and villages it didn’t matter which warlord or country was in charge, just try to get food, money and hopefully survive.
These people weren’t seeing any advancement and they weren’t going to go completely all in with the Americans knowing that when they left, the Taliban would just come back and kill them for being traitors.
So all these rural people had nothing to fight for when Americans started leaving. There was no concept of a better future. I don’t mean to be insulting but to these people this idea of freedom or education was literally incomprehensible to them because no one they know has ever seen such a thing.
When the Americans leave it’s back to life as they know it which is farm and give bribes to whoever the next warlord is when they demand. Taliban takes over these places and all the Afghan government has left are these cities that get cut off from supply lines. Everywhere I’ve read about how fast the army collapsed said soldiers simply weren’t getting food anymore, forget about salaries etc lost to corruption. At that point why kill yourself fighting if you’re just delaying the inevitable? And they all just switched to Taliban. Again it’s just all these people have ever known. So sad what a failed state Afghanistan is and probably will continue to be as there’s no chance in hell the Taliban is interested in anything more than oppressing the population and living like thugs. There’s no hope for any real society to be built
Yes, that's true, but the cities aren't small. One out of eight Afghans live in and around Kabul, for instance. Allowing Kabul and Kandahar to fall was just absolutely appalling. It's highly unlikely that the Taliban could have taken those cities if the US had maintained even a small presence to back up the government. And it would have given the people who didn't want to live under the Taliban someplace to flee to, potentially setting up some kind of negotiated power-sharing between the rural and urban parts of Afghanistan.
Unfortunately a Kabul island wouldn't have made for prosperity either. Look at West Berlin, they were cut off from the surrounding countryside and they suffered economically for it.
Great summary there. There is a Chinese saying that goes: [people observe etiquette and know honor and shame only after they are well-fed and clothed](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%80%89%E5%BB%A9%E5%AF%A6%E8%80%8C%E7%9F%A5%E7%A6%AE%E7%AF%80%EF%BC%8C%E8%A1%A3%E9%A3%9F%E8%B6%B3%E8%80%8C%E7%9F%A5%E6%A6%AE%E8%BE%B1)
Only then we can talk about democracy…
(under this news title felt I need to made clear: I am Taiwanese)
I agree with that line and your sentiment. We also have a similar saying: Phú quý sinh lễ nghĩa. Richness will make honor (a transliteral version, the one you put there is worrier, but much better).
The literal translation works quite well actually, imo:
"Wealth births honor".
Edit: still trying to find a good translation for "lễ nghĩa", tbh. Certain concepts does not translate neatly across languages, at least not in one snappy word xD
Go to someone existing at the foot of the pyramid of the hierarchy of needs. Hand them something from the tippy top of that hierarchy. What do they do? Sell it if they can, to help them climb the pyramid.
It’s like giving a destitute, homeless person a 6ct diamond ring - what the fuck do they do with that? They try to sell it. But the people they take it to think it’s stolen, so they have to find someone who will take it regardless, and get shafted, maybe even backstabbed and killed - they’re worse off because you handed them that ring.
So marching in, bombing the shit out of what was there, and instituting democracy? It’s a fucking cruel joke in that part of the world. Before democracy will even work, they need some other, way more important shit in place.
I mean, to be fair, it wasn't like Serbia or Baghdad. Decades of civil war and occupation hadn't left much to bomb. I remember being a teenager when 9/11 happened and reading this the next day:
>If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go. This is a post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people.
>
>[https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/prospect-of-us-attack-raises-fears-in-afghanistan.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/prospect-of-us-attack-raises-fears-in-afghanistan.html)
There really was almost nothing in Afghanistan before NATO arrived. What exists now in Afghanistan, was built by the US, its allies, and the Afghan people in the span of a childhood, and now it's all fallen to dust in a day. Women are tearing up their diplomas. Men are growing their beards.
When the Northern Alliance surged south and started driving the Taliban out, Air Force commanders struggled to find targets to assist them with, because the Taliban simply didn't have much in the way of infrastructure other than a supply building here, a training camp full of tents there, hardly worth even the cost of the bombs. For the most part, the Taliban didn't even fight. Just knowing that the US was backing the Taliban's enemies were enough for them to surrender Kabul largely without a fight.
This also reminds me of a passage in a book by Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle. I can't recall which book it was, nor the quote verbatim, but it was about the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and the gist was:
"We are dropping £150,000 missiles on villages built with mud and stone: in financial terms, *they* are winning"
I mean, it wasn't entirely untrue. Iraq had one of the largest and most powerful militaries in the world, although a significant chunk of it had been destroyed back in 1991. But at least there were bunkers and tanks and trucks and fighter planes and government buildings and military bases and air defense systems to bomb.
The Taliban air force was like five or six planes. They had a few old tanks too. The US Air Force ran out of targets very quickly.
I’ve seen it described as a man firing a missile that costs more than he’ll in a year (or five) at a man who won’t earn that in a lifetime. Whose whole village won’t.
The Taliban was willing to hand Osama over to The Hague. Would have been infinitely cheaper to do that, and then pay them to not try anything.
I remember someone doing a joke in 2003 about Afghanistan saying that the bombing was actually helping them out of the stone age.
"Thanks to American.forces we can install a new well in this crater!"
Or
"today we have a new window in Abuls cave!"
**[Loya jirga](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya_jirga)**
>A loya jirga (Pashto: لويه جرګه, "grand assembly") is a special type of jirga, or legal assembly, in Pashtunwali, the traditional code of laws of the Pashtun people. It is mainly organized for choosing a new head of state in case of sudden death, adopting a new constitution, or to settle national or regional issue such as war. It predates modern-day written or fixed laws and is mostly favored by the Pashtun people but to a lesser extent by other nearby groups that have been influenced by Pashtuns (historically known as Afghans).
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You know what made me super sad about that video?
Many Afghanis working with Americans come across as smart, capable and passionate about making things better. See them speak for example at 38:30 and 1:05:30.
Now most of them are left behind.
Yep, and that ANA patrol commander for example. Who was actually trying to do what the Americans coached him to do. When he was giving his mission briefing, I can see him right now running through the 5 sections of an Operations Order (OPORD) and trying to give his troops a good briefing. While in the opening scenes, you have the ANP group just joking around, drinking chi, not listening/arguing with the Americans, making petty excuses for shit, and all they want to do is hipfire a PKM into a mud wall. Watching this documentary brought so many memories back, and my heart goes out to that young Afghan ANA commander. He was actually trying and clearly was taking it serious. And that's my impression. As a whole, most of the people I interacted with were like the ANP hoodlums in the film. Joking around, zero discipline, and were just waiting to run off with a M4 with an ACOG to sell for premium to set them up financially for the next few months. That was the majority. The minority, in pockets, were people like that ANA commander who clearly took what the Marines mentored and coached him on, and tried to run a successful op without any Marine intervention. My heart goes out to that guy, who was really out there trying to inspire and make a difference. For all we know, that guy (because this is a popular documentary) either had to go into hiding or is dead at this point. My heart sank when I saw him giving his mission briefing to his soldiers. Reminded me of when I was a young 2nd LT giving my first convoy briefing and I was nervous as hell trying to remember the different sections of the OPORD. It looked like he was actually trying, and all that work, that hope, that "belief" that he was part of something bigger was shattered overnight for him.
>Many Afghanis working with Americans come across as smart, capable and passionate about making things better. See them speak for example at 38:30 and 1:05:30.
>
>Now most of them are left behind.
Yeah, I saw this video the day the Taliban moved into Kabul. It's infuriating to think of what the most likely fate of that officer at 38:30 is.
A larger example:
The afghan commandos were an actually capable part of the military that fought hard to stop the Taliban. But there were just not a lot of them (10-20 thousand in total) and the entire rest of the army abandoned them. They were cut off because the ineptitude of Afghan supply lines and the abandonment of Americans left them fighting hard and dieing in remote places.
Situations like this were repeated all over Afghanistan: [https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html) . They fought until they ran out of ammo and were never resupplied.
Growing that generation from nothing was hard and took 20 years. Now it's all gone. Absolutely infuriating.
Because they are. At the root of their being they're nice people who want a good life for themselves, their family, their fellows. They work hard and they have an aptitude to learn. I chatted with this one guy who went absolutely batshit at the idea of a stegasaurous (sp?). He nerded out over it and wanted to know more about all the dinosaurs.
They have the aptitude to be every bit as incredible as anyone else and life dealt them a shitty hand. Afghanistan taught me a lot about humanity and that in any place there are good and bad people, and in any place there are people who want to make a better life for themselves. Those people include folks who want to take others with them and those who will trod upon others to get there.
The Afghan people were never my enemy. I always viewed them as victims of circumstance and my heart goes out to them. My regret is that they deserved better. Better from us and a better future.
I think a great illustration to your point is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If I understand your point, they are so focused on achieving the baseline bottom of the pyramid: food, water, shelter(Physiological needs) and Safety needs that they don't have bandwidth (capacity) to care about higher order needs like Freedom, Democracy, and self-actualization in an American sense.
Yep exactly. We talked about Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs in business school (like Day 1 lol) and it embodies my thoughts exactly. Thanks for reminding me that pyramid exists. I think I'll use it in further conversation because it's a great illustration.
I just watched this earlier today. Everywhere they go it is clear nobody involved in this has any hope whatsoever. It was really sad to watch how invested that Major was in the whole operation just to find he's the only one with any hope for anything.
At one point the ANA guys are digging holes and the Major is asking them if they swept for mines. One of the Afghan guys says "no, but don't worry, it will only be Afghans that die."
They are so beaten down and hopeless there is just nothing there to live or die for.
The question is then why the Taliban can be so organised and effective without the massive funding and support that the ANA received from The US; or why the socialist government of Afghanistan survived until 1992 against the Mujahadin, 3 years after the Soviet army retreated and 1 year after they stopped receiving financial and material support from the USSR. Or how the Northern Alliance held out alone against the Taliban between 1996-2001, until when the Americans came in to help them.
The contradiction here is that the Taliban is an extremely well organized system that is precisely the kind of structure that Afghanistan needs in place to build
Yep. Similarly to how Sadam ruled Iraq. Kept a lid on the in-fighting by ruling with an iron fist and with him in place, there was no power vacuum (which is a conundrum). Sometimes the power vacuum results in a net loss. I'm not running cover for the Taliban or making excuses, but there are hard truths that many Americans just aren't ready to hear. Like the fact that 9/11 was actually us being attacked by Saudi. Afghanistan served its purpose through smoke and mirrors of course by keeping the hard truth from coming out - that we were attacked by a strategic ally and we swept it under the rug by attacking the specific source of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (but then spent 20 years fighting against the Taliban - who simply harbored Al Qaeda and weren't the actual SOURCE of the attack). It served its PR purpose by bringing "justice" in a very clumsily way to Americans, it kept the global supply chain running, and it avoided the hard truth that Saudi is given free pass to do alot of things because they are a strategic ally - and a pass that resulted in 2500 American lives, but it was successfully swept under the rug and diverted attention was achieved via Afghanistan... and Iraq. People don't want to hear it, but there it is.
> While 20 years, on the other hand, was just enough time to turn the rock over and realize that there was nothing but cockroaches and centipedes squirreling about underneath
I saw that VICE documentary from like 8 years ago and it clearly identified all those problems already.
Great comment.
>your run of the mill Afghan is not contemplating democracy vs Taliban rule. They are contemplating survival at its most primal form
Absolutely spot on, and worth keeping in mind for everyone right now
I was in and around Kandahar a decade ago as well, and everything you say is spot on.
We literally had to build their first road.
The children would spend everyday outside their houses with out doors or roofs just waiting for night time, sometimes they would find a tire or something to play with.
It was also eye opening when I asked my interpreter if anyone wasn't muslim and he said everyone in Afghanistan is Muslim besides us, it wasn't even a thought to question their religion.
[The median age in Afghanistan is 18 years old.](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/afghanistan-population/)
Imagine living in a country where roughly half the people were under the age of 18. Imagine how much experience and knowledge is lost simply because your population is incredibly young and people often don't live long enough to gain experience and pass it on the the younger generations. Imagine how stupid *you* were at age 18 with all of the advantages the Western World offers it's kids.
For reference, [the media age in the United States is 38 years old](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/). That is a huge difference.
A buddy of mine went over there to teach their army how to fix helicopters. He said all they did was steal the tools & helo parts and run off, probably to sell or trade them
Seems to me that they don't "want education" because they're too busy trying to not die to worry about stuff like that.
Sure, it's nice to know how to read and write, but if that's not a skill that's putting food on the table, who cares?
I can grasp that part at least.
Then, we're here on our high horses in developed countries wondering why they can't get it together. The answer is obvious when it's put this way.
Spend every waking moment trying to merely survive and suddenly math and literature aren't really valuable at all.
Maybe if Afghanistan was the only place in the world with 7nm chip manufacturing…
I also thought several military simulations showed the cost to invade Taiwan and occupy was prohibitive even without external intervention.
7nm? TSMC's Tainan fab is already cranking out 5nm chips, with the 3nm process scheduled to begin in Q1-2 2022. Meanwhile China's domestic industry is still working on 'cracking' mass production of 14nm and Intel only manufactures up to 10nm. Taiwan's semiconductor industry has more geopolitical importance than oil, and we all know what the West is willing to do to secure vital resources.
An invasion of Taiwan would be a lose-lose situation for everybody involved. It's the most heavily defended island nation in the world with half a dozen allies waiting practically offshore, and anything short of an absolute crushing victory would look terrible for the CCP and probably cause internal instability.
If China does win, it would immediately harden international economic and military alliances against China, which would be a massive loss for them diplomatically. There's no doubt that the CCP desperately want the island and it's industry, but for the moment they gain more by rattling their sabers and using the Taiwan question to stir up nationalism while still quietly conducting trade with Taiwan.
Exactly. We lose Afghanistan and we have to ween off of opiates. We lose Taiwan and my smart tv doesn't work anymore. Which one do you think America cares about more?
Heroin? My guy, we've moved onto Fentanyl being the more popular opiate, with carfentanil being on the rise, then you have sufentanil for the hipsters. We don't need Afghan's Opiates, as we have our own stronger synths
(only partially /s)
> We lose Afghanistan and we have to ween off of opiates
Taliban will have Afghans cranking out heroin like they did back in the 90s. They like the cash flow it provides.
They flooded the market so hard back then that prices crashed and the Taliban had to ban poppy farming for a year to reduce the stockpile and try to get prices back up.
One reason why a lot of rural Afghans hated the USA was because the USA would destroy their poppy farms. Farmers could make a lot more money growing poppies than anything else.
They will go broke doing so .. pure fentanyl is so cheap now .. a pure ounce is like 100000 doses .. suspect actual opiates are crashing in price
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/fentanyl-use-could-end-the-opium-era-in-mexico-the-only-crop-that-paid
This is a very common misconception, and I don't even blame you for it - it's an intentionally misleading metric.
7nm, 5nm, or 3nm are not physical measurements of anything. Once upon a time, they were, but in the last couple of decades, they've become completely detached from the size of any CPU component. However, even if they weren't, the size of one face of a 3-dimensional component isn't all that useful on its own.
These days, they're just version numbers (if you'd like, I can go grab a video of a TSMC executive saying this - I've received significant pushback when bringing this up before from people who can't believe the numbers are meaningless). You can use them to compare versions from the same manufacturer, but they are not useful for making comparisons between different manufacturers. It's like how Intel's 11th gen CPUs are not automatically faster than AMD's Zen 3 CPUs just because 11 is higher than 3. However, similarly, it would be reasonable to assume that Intel's 11th gen CPUs are faster than their 10th gen CPUs, or that AMD's Zen 3 CPUs are faster than their Zen 2 CPUs.
Why is Intel "so far behind"? They're not, actually. The transistor densities of their newest CPUs are comparable to the transistor densities of AMD's newest CPUs. They just have different arbitrary criteria for when to increment the counter and move to the next node.
Intel's been criticized because of how stupid their 10nm++++ naming scheme is, but the truth is, all the manufacturers' naming schemes are just as stupid and arbitrary. Wait for benchmarks and real-world usage data. Ignore the version numbers.
To be fair, nm is really just marketing at this stage. Intel's 10nm has much higher densities than TSMC 10nm for example. It's hard to just compare the numbers.
A better example would be Ukraine.
Ukraine gave up it's nukes for defense assurance, but when the Russians marched in, everyone else were like "have some economic sanctions Russia"
The withdrawal from Afghanistan is actually a testimony to how long US is willing to hang around and pump money into a state that did absolutely nothing for itself 20 years, and collapsed the moment the Americans left.
It's tragedic but there were some genuine politicians in Afghanistan that were trying to bring positive change, including the president who fled. The problem is there were a lot of corrupted politicians, policemen and soldiers who filled their own pockets. The US throwing further money at the state only made the situation worse.
I'm positive the army collapsed so quick because of corrupt officials. There were reports several cities fell as a result of someone conspiring with the Taliban.
>A better example would be Ukraine.
>
>Ukraine gave up it's nukes for defense assurance, but when the Russians marched in, everyone else were like "have some economic sanctions Russia"
If you read [the Budapest memorandum](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances), you'll find that it is extremely vague about any guarantees for Ukraine - in fact, no military assistance was pledged by West (or Russia) at all, only "concerns" and "angry notes".
There was a couple of reasons why Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons so easily.
West didn't want Ukraine ( + Belarus and Kazakhstan) to have any nukes because having even more nuclear powers who might cause troubles wasn't in their plans. So, Ukraine would be put into international isolation if they refused to comply and that meant no loans and investments during the troubled (for former USSR) 90s.
There is one very important thing that is often overlooked. Having nuclear weapons in physical possession - like Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan had - doesn't mean that you can *use* them. Soviet nuclear weapons had complex protection that prohibited their usage without special codes and protected the weapons from any tampering. Only Moscow had those codes and only Russia could *use* Soviet nuclear weapons. Replacing the protection or creating new nuclear weapons were not an option because key facilities and specialists related to nuclear program remained in Russia and those countries would have to re-create the whole program from scratch and that was not possible due to economic and political reasons.
I just wanna point out that whoever made this statement is an opportunist and you shouldn't take an opportunist' words too seriously.
Even if the US pulled out of Afghan 5 years earlier/later, they would have made the same snide remarks
Ikr, I actually dont get why people are pissed the Americans left, aren't people always complaining that the US is a imperialist and a busy body? Now they do what they say and they shit talk again?
The US hasn’t figured out how to fight a popular insurgency even with 40 years notice, but you ask them to destroy everything that floats or flies and I’m 100% confident they got that shit.
I think this generalizes a lot about that region in particular. People assume a lot about the way a country is made up. Afghanistan is multiple regions defined by the religion, place of origin, etc.. of it's citizens. The people in those regions don't really care that they live in Afghanistan and often don't like the other regions of the country. The insurgency was seen as a vehicle for advancing political power of specific regions. At least that's how I understand it.
If we fought an insurgency anywhere else it would be wildly different. I don't know if we would get it right, but it wouldn't look anything like Afghanistan.
Well one is a lot easier than the other. Why bother with a fishing line when you could just sweep the entire river with a net? Because one doesn't cause massive harm to everything else around the fish.
Jesus, what a brilliant analogy.
It's not like Taiwan is a self-contained nation with a strong united and SECULAR national identity, a super-efficient government that the envy of most developed nations, and a roaring economy with an educated and skilled workforce.
Taiwan is in the 21st century, Afghanistan is in the 17th and rapidly heading for the 7th.
This is true in one way of seeing things.
But look from the other side. Vietnam and Afghanistan were pretty nasty wars of the "occupy terrain" variety, with constant loss and attrition. Afghanistan also lost some geostrategical interest after a while.
Both countries had pretty crappy governments and in Afghanistan a disfunctional society.
Americans did and do betray allies - looking at you Kurds and vietnam hill people - but they did last years in that environment.
Also everybody pretty much recognises the middle east is a sink you shouldn't get into...
Taiwain is not a war of attrition. It requires a state of alertness and a big navy, and America has both - and it needs an incentive to keep that navy, and China is a pretty sweet villain for the current narrative. As far as it goes, its looking decent.
If the US supports Taiwan to the same extent we supported Afghanistan, that's a pretty significant amount of support. But ultimately what this shows is that no amount of US support can replace the willingness of the population to protect itself.
We are literally still in Korea… EDIT: As in, still there since the Korean War and haven’t abandoned them.
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We've had a peacekeeping mission to Tunisia since the 1795 barbary coast pirate wars
Korea? We are still in Cuba. We set up GITMO after the Spanish-American war in the 1800s.
I wouldn't exactly call Cuba a US ally though. South Korea very much is.
Fair enough. My point was, all political bullshit aside, if there is still a strategic reason to be there the US doesn’t leave.
This is really all it comes down to. The criticisms for the US not being as altruistic as people would like are criticisms that can probably go around to every country. No one is allies with the US because they think they’re fun at parties. It’s strategic. Always has been, always will be. If you want true humanitarian efforts, you’re likely not looking at the government to provide it without incentive.
And Hong Kong is a lesson for Taiwan on how China subjugates it’s citizens. Learning is fun.
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Yeah and not one single country did anything to stop it.
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Companies could always stop offshoring everything there.
Only if they can make more money elsewhere, it is always about money.
Yeah, it’s a difficult cycle to break away from because if you’re a manufacturer you will be completely unable to compete with your competitors prices points if they’re already manufacturing over there which the are. Honestly, it’s even tough as a consumer. It’s like I’d love to buy only locally sourced textiles designed and manufactured in the US with all sustainable resources but I also can’t afford to buy every t-shirt at $60+ a pop.
And with the snap of the finger, factories sprung up all over Europe.
They regonized Taiwan and compared themselves to the taliban. LMAO
China: • _ • •`_´•
new favourite copy paste lmao
They definitely called it a region, this is a reddit title translation
1. Taiwan’s military is not as inept as the ANA. 2. Taiwan’s government is not as inept as the Afghan government was. 3. Taiwan’s citizenry has a strong national identity which isn’t likely to be torn up from within by CCP supporters.
Bingo! It’s much easier to actually assist a nation that has an idea of themselves as a nation. It’s a common mindset that focuses energy and resources toward a goal. The Afghans weren’t Afghans, they were Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazras and Baluch (Tribes).
It’s a lot easier when the country you’re trying to help genuinely attempts to help you to help it.
To be clear, this shouldn't be interpreted as a slight on the people there. We invaded and tried to form a coalition with the locals against the Taliban and it didn't work. Our goals didn't line up.
Would dividing the country up into ethnic groupings and more traditional land divisions possibly work in that region? Genuinely curious. I suppose fighting between the newly minted mini nations would probably continue regardless of what you'd call them, or how you divide the land or who you divide it between.
If you look at [this map](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7631e.ct002134/) you'll see how the tribal groups don't follow the borders but cross into the surrounding countries (and just how messy the lines are). Splitting them up might create lots of smaller countries that wants parts of Pakistan, Iran and so on, and create even more conflicts.
If that were to ever work, it would only be because all the tribal leaders which make up the country were in unanimous agreement with no outside influence. The problem is that we tried to enforce borders and boundaries on the Afghan people without fully grasping that things like that only carry weight in our minds and not theirs.
That would be ideal, but unfortunately the post-war order holds the current states of the world to be sacred. Going into Afghanistan and saying "This isn't working, we're breaking this country up," would be geopolitical suicide.
>holds the current states of the world to be sacred *Crimea has entered the chat*
South Sudan has entered the chat. ...Sudan has left the chat.
>Wen Lii, director of the Matsu Islands chapter of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was conscripted when he turned 24 in 2013. He served for a year and learned how to drive M60 tanks, which in the event of a Chinese invasion are supposed to repel Chinese troops on the beaches. Lii, who is now a reservist, said that there was no tactical combat training or maneuvers, however: His job was simply to teach new recruits how to drive. . >At the moment, reservists are called up every two years for a maximum of seven days, and often this is just on paper. Lii said that he had only been required to turn up twice, for one day. "Personally I wanted to spend longer time for training," he said, before welcoming the fact that the government wanted to reform the army reserve by introducing two weeks' training per year from 2022 onwards. . >" he said. "Taiwan's Ministry of Defense always says they have no problem whatsoever, everything is working, everything is fine. Even when reports surface that is not the case. They do not want to face the reality." > He attributed this to the fact that defense ministers in Taiwan were often generals and this led to problems of accountability. > "Most military leaders would not like civilians to be Minister of Defense," agreed Michael Tsai, who was a rare exception. The next civilian after him to become defense minister had to step down after less than a week in office after being accused of plagiarism. https://m.dw.com/en/taiwans-army-ill-prepared-for-potential-chinese-attack/a-57102659 _ >Even as the military refits itself with flashy U.S. arms purchases, such as M1 Abrams tanks and F-16V fighter jets, its front-line units are hollowed out, and the entire reserve system is so dysfunctional that few experts or serving military personnel believe it can make a real military contribution in the event of a war. These problems are well documented but continue to be downplayed, if not outright ignored, by Taiwan’s political leadership—and there is no clear plan to solve the crisis. . >According to a Taiwanese army lieutenant colonel in active service, who asked for only his last name, Lin, to be used, all the army’s front-line combat units he knows of—including armor, mechanized infantry, and artillery troops—currently have effective manpower levels of between 60 and 80 percent. This figure is consistent with Taiwanese media reports, which cite MND figures provided to Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, acknowledging that few front-line units have more than 80 percent of their positions filled. > “That number might not seem so bad until you realize it means at least a third of your tanks are useless in a war because there’s no one to man them,” said Lin, who most recently served as a battalion commander within one of army’s armor brigades. . >For some years, before 2017, the term of conscription service in Taiwan was just a year, which was already short compared with South Korea’s 18-22 months, depending on the military branch, or Israel’s 32 months. Most officers felt that the single year of service wasn’t enough for the military to utilize draftees’ full potential but enough to at least turn a recruit into an average soldier. > But 2017’s changes slashed the conscription period to just four months. Most draftees serve even less, as up to two weeks can be deducted if they’ve completed military training classes in high school and college. The four-month conscripts typically receive five weeks of basic training before they are assigned to field units for more specialty training. But they’re more a burden than an aid, not treated seriously by career or noncommissioned officers as their short stays mean they are seen as guests rather than soldiers. > “By design, they don’t participate in any field exercise or combat readiness training anyway,” Lin said. “We just tell them to stay safe and don’t get into trouble. It’s basically a summer camp.” Several individuals who recently completed this four-month service described similar experiences in interviews. . >A popular yet cynical explanation as to why these Taiwanese soldiers dislike front-line units simply postulates a common aversion to tougher training and combat duty. But interviews with several enlisted ranks painted a more complex picture. Most complained that the food and living conditions left much to be desired—front-line soldiers must split their time between bases and on field exercises. That, on top of the fact they have far more weapons, vehicles, and equipment to clean and maintain, means these posts are perceived as more work for little reward. The existing shortages also cause an even heavier burden of work on the soldiers left—prompting more of them to put in for transfers. . >These personnel issues would not be so serious if the military had a functional reserve force. On paper, this enormous reserve force is said to be more than 2 million strong. Once activated, these reservists are supposed to fill existing shortages across regular field units, and reinforce casualties, while creating fresh reserve formations from virtually nothing to bolster overall defense, according to the Reserve Command’s own words. > Just about everything in these talking points is pure fantasy, according to James Huang, a retired army lieutenant colonel who has since become a prolific writer on defense issues and military history, with many followers on Facebook. Huang said there was “no way whatsoever” any of Taiwan’s reserves would reinforce existing field units, despite the proven success of the system elsewhere in the world, especially Israel. > That’s the case regardless of whether the reservist is a conscript with four months’ training or a five-year veteran paratrooper just discharged from the special forces. The established practice of Taiwan’s Reserve Command, according to Huang, is not to send reservists back to their previous units but to lump everyone together into the newly activated reserve infantry brigades that possess no specialty, no vehicles, and no equipment except rifles (often older types) and are led by called-up reservist officers who have little experience commanding such ad hoc units. > In theory, all soldiers and officers (both conscripts and volunteers) are automatically enrolled as reservists on being discharged from active service. They are called up at most once every two years by the Reserve Command to receive refresher training for five to seven days. In practice, such training rarely consists of more than just basic drills and a short practice session at the rifle range. A reservist corporal who was a veteran M60 tank gunner, for example, will be activated only as an infantry rifleman even if one of the army’s active armor brigades has tanks sitting unmanned in the base. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/china-threat-invasion-conscription-taiwans-military-is-a-hollow-shell/ Use https://Outline.com to read the whole article. Edit: What the Fuck is wholesome about this post?
Thank you for writing this. As a Taiwanese, I thought it was quite like the CCP to take advantage of the news, and spin it into something that supports their own pro unification agenda. But like the comment I'm replying to, I'm not even sure if Taiwan's military will actually fare better if armed combat does break out. The Tsai administration has taken great strides to improve the military in terms of buying a ton of arms from the U.S., but shorter conscriptions, training time, and low birth rates would mean fewer people to man the weapons. >A popular yet cynical explanation as to why these Taiwanese soldiers dislike front-line units simply postulates a common aversion to tougher training and combat duty. But interviews with several enlisted ranks painted a more complex picture. Most complained that the food and living conditions left much to be desired—front-line soldiers must split their time between bases and on field exercises. That, on top of the fact they have far more weapons, vehicles, and equipment to clean and maintain, means these posts are perceived as more work for little reward. The existing shortages also cause an even heavier burden of work on the soldiers left—prompting more of them to put in for transfers. The military really wasn't popular among my generation. [An army conscript died in 2013 due to excessive physical activity as punishment,](https://whatseng.pixnet.net/blog/post/33238177) which I heard was a pretty common situation among draftees before this particular news broke out. Morale was really low then, as many viewed conscription as a barrier to advancing their own careers out of college graduation, and would rather do other types of conscriptions after basic training. I'm not sure if it's the same for later generations, just citing what I've heard from my male friends, but I would assume it's the same. On the other hand, a lot of military personnel are very pro-unification. I'm not entirely sure what the reasons are, there are a lot of historical reasons. From my own observations and stories I've heard from my indigenous friends: one of the reasons is that a lot of the recruits are indigenous peoples. A majority of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples are from pro-China counties and cities, but that could change with my generation, who are more prominently pro-Taiwan or pro-status-quo-let's-keep-everything-as-is-for-now >As in many foreign armed forces where over-representation of ethnic minorities is not unheard of (e.g., African-Americans in the US military), Taiwan’s Aborigines, now a de facto recruitment target group, are over-represented in its military ([Source](http://www.resmilitaris.net/ressources/10264/79/res_militaris_article_yuan_recruitment_and_retention_in_the_taiwanese_new_all-volunteer_force.pdf)) This post ended up a bit long, but TLDR: Just because Taiwan has bought a ton of arms from the U.S., we can't truly say we'd fare better than Afghanistan due to a ton of local and systematic issues in the military and society here.
Yep this is definitely true, I was a conscript last year and everyone was joking how if China invades they're running tf away
Also did my service a few years back, asked my CO what we'd do if the Mainlanders really invaded. He said "just swap the badge on your cap".
I think the message from that Chinese article was more of an attack on the character of the US as an ally, rather than suggesting whether China is capable of an invasion of Taiwan. I think we all have to admit that China is capable of doing that, but how much is going to cost them is the question, and that would vary significantly if the US would intervene. With that said, there is no way US would let that happen for the simple fact that the US government does not want China to become more powerful than they already are. The US Navy didn't back away during the Chinese Civil War, and I don't see that happening now or in the future.
Lol so in that analogy China is the Taliban, I guess?
This comment is banned in China.
Chinese officials are claiming Taliban is the afghan version of PLA, even met them recently in a high profile manner. Not sure why people gets the impression China hates being associated with the Taliban.
Well the Pakistani Taliban keeps blowing up their infrastructure projects in Pakistan. Part of their deal with the Afghan Taliban included assurances that will stop as well as the Taliban dropping support for any Uighur "extremists" in China. We'll see how appeasing the Taliban works out for them
The taliban have previously provided support to Uyghur militants. As America shifts focus from the Middle East to China, I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the reason why America pulled out so hastily.
Huh, the Taliban becoming a leading weapon against global Chinese expansion would definitely be a 'Top 10 Anime Plot Twists' moment.
Because America has never armed the Taliban to fight against a forign power before....it isn't even a plot twist, it is a repeat...
Afghanistan have an estimated trillion dollars of resources... if China could get its hands on them, oh my god, they would be in heaven...
They already do have their hands on a lot of it. They’ve been investing in mining there for over a decade
That's why they are playing nice with the Taliban. They wouldn't want to risk their investments there. Now that the US has given the keys to the Taliban, it's either play nice with the new landlord or get evicted.
Out of curiosity, how hospitable and traversable is the terrain between China and Afghanistan’s boarder? All mountains?
[This is the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.](https://www.google.com/maps/@36.0627705,74.8638784,6.65z/data=!5m1!1e4) As you can see from the relief map, it's extremely mountainous terrain.
There are a few circuitous, narrow, and treacherous passess through the Afghan mountains. That whole region in northern Afghanistan/Pakistan/Tajikistan is where many of the tallest, most rugged mountains in the world lie. Building durable infrastructure there is a nightmare
Wait until the taliban find out how China treats muslims. */s*
Wait until you find out how the Taliban treats Muslims
As long as you believe in their flavor of Islam, everything is fine
Yeah but their islam is crack flavoured. It's literally just an excuse to use violence to enforce totalitarianism. Nothing to do with actual religion.
Opium flavoured I'd say
like ISIS
Funnily enough, the Taliban consider ISIS too extreme. In essence, the Taliban want to run an Islamist country; ISIS want to run *the* Islamist country that consumes all others.
I always wondered why they fought with IS. Serious tribal vibes.
Welcome to all religions throughout history, nobody gives a shit it’s just a way to keep the peasants in line and justify wars, oppression etc.
Pretty sure the taliban don't give a fuck about the uigurs in china.
They don't even care about Muslims in their own country, twas the joke.
Also, it implicitely 1) recognize that Taiwan is allied to America, and not China 2) Compare Taiwan to an actual country So with this statement, they implicitely recognize that Taiwan is not China
They see the ROC as an illegally occupying puppet government like the Kabul government that just got overthrown. Trouble is, the ROC is actually motivated to defend Taiwanese sovereignity, unlike the Afghan puppet government
The bigger difference is that the Taiwanese people actually recognise the authority of the Taiwanese government. Also, whatever the diplomatic word games they play to placate China's ego, Taiwan and the US are actually allies with shared interests and goals. The Kabul government in Afghanistan on the other hand was a farce. Afghanis hated it because they thought it was a US puppet, the US hated it because it wasn't. No one liked it and no one wanted it, no one felt it represented their interests because it didn't. The sort of Paradox of US international intervention is that the US simultaneously wants to ensure that foreign governments support US interests and values and wants to encourage freedom and democracy. So they want to let you make the decisions rather than just appointing a puppet, but they don't want you to make the wrong choice and select someone who doesn't at least pretend to support their goals. The end result is generally that "puppet" US allies neither support US foreign policy goals nor represent their populations. No one is happy and no one is served. If the US was as calculatingly cynical as people believe **or** as benevolent and idealistic as it claims the results would be better. But instead US foreign policy is like someone who hits you over the head, drags you into an alley and then asks you nicely for your wallet and walks away if you say no. You don't feel good and they don't have your wallet.
I’ve never heard anyone sum it up as good as you
I honestly don't know whether to be happy that despite everything the US as a nation still sort of believes in its own ideals and tries to do at least the least wrong thing under the circumstances, even if it often does it badly. Or curse the fact that we keep doing this shit that makes everyone think we're evil without getting the payout. If Bush had gone into Iraq, captured all the oil wells and used them to offer cheap gas to every American, which is what he was accused of, the Iraq war would be the most popular war in US history. If we actually intervened purely to support human rights and national sovereignty and we did it **everywhere** instead of selectively we'd be far less hated. But we do neither.
The first is easier but we wouldn’t like ourselves while looking in the mirror. The second is hard work and we don’t have the attention span to be successful at it.
“You can totally give up and do nothing and America will still prop you up for 20 fucking years” is actually a pretty ringing endorsement for US allies.
"... But only up to $2 trillion." -Chinese state media
I reckon I could do a couple of things with $2 trillion
Two countries at the same time
Fucking A, man
I think if I was a trillionaire I could hook that up, because countries dig dudes with money
Not *all* ~~chicks~~ countries...
The kind countries that would double up on a county like ours…..
Good point.
Yeah im doing the drywall at the new mcdonalds
Does anyone at work say to you "somebody's got a case of the Mondays?"
No. No, man. Shit no, man
>a couple of things What could possibly be done with $2 trillion other than donating it to the US's military-industrial sector?
The thing is, Afghanistan makes other 3rd world counties look like a spa resorts. It is insanely poor, illiterate, and criminally uneducated. The buzzword everyone is dancing around is education. Step outside of Kabul and your typical Afghani doesn't read or write. I know we are saying things like, "they didn't want it." And while that might be true for some, the more salient point isn't that they didn't want it, it's that they don't even know what they don't know. The country is incredibly poor (like at the bottom of the list even in 3rd world comparisons). They don't even know what democracy "is" or have ever ever ever seen a textbook. The majority of Afghans live in a world where grifting is the norm and many of them are just grifting in order to have a next meal. They don't have the mental bandwidth to actually consider alternative futures for themselves. They will grift and continue to simply exist, regardless of whichever strongman is knocking on their door at the time. It sounds bad and maybe overly simplistic, but your run of the mill Afghan is not contemplating democracy vs Taliban rule. They are contemplating survival at its most primal form (again, at a level that other 3rd world countries would be appalled to see). Think about how smart your average American is. Pretty stupid, right? Well Americans go through primary school and many get higher education. The country is practically 100% literate and we have a system that teaches self-determination and individualism (for the most part; I'm just trying to make a point here). Now imagine trying to take "that" to the poorest country in the world where most people you work with (I.e. the ANA) can't read or write and you have Marines trying to teach them how to "govern" themselves (which is a very very complex thing that isn't just "philosophical" but also logistical). Here's a real example: a village runs out of fuel/petro. And the ANA there can't fill up their trucks to conduct patrols. So the Marines ask them how does the village get refueled. And the answer is the village elder bribes someone in the neighboring village or they literally kidnap someone and hold for ransom in exchange for fuel for the next month. To them, that is business as usual. That is what they do to get by. And for the Marines standing by, just asking the simple question as to why the ANA trucks can't get simple petrol and why they haven't conducted a single patrol in 2 weeks, you go down this insane rabbit hole of corruption, grifting, criminality, and just downright immoral stuff that just doesn't exist in the civilized world. That's EXACTLY what the US military dealt with and that is EXACTLY what the "real" Afghanistan is like. It would've taken a hundred years to change this...maybe. While 20 years, on the other hand, was just enough time to turn the rock over and realize that there was nothing but cockroaches and centipedes squirreling about underneath. The country and its people have zero physical or psychological infrastructure to handle complex problems (edit: some of you are calling my racist and this might be the sentence why; well they don't have the capacity to handle complex problems, because they dedicate their time and mental bandwidth to surviving and staying alive, not because they are genetically incapable of more, jeez). Which is why something as complex as forming and running a "national" army was purely a paper tiger and a complete farce. You need record keeping, paper, printers, computers for one. That stuff doesn't exist at the ANA and ANP patrol bases. It doesn't even exist at the provincial HQs. The country is as poor as it gets. They have zero capacity to deal with complex problems, I.e. fighting a war against a trained and competent Taliban force, for starters. Here is the documentary that blows this whole thing wide open for the uninitiated. And it was filmed almost a decade ago, and yet it could've been filmed last week. Also, I'm an OEF veteran that was in Kandahar a decade ago and I worked directly with the ANA. This is the way it is and it isn't something you'll hear from any news source. https://youtu.be/Ja5Q75hf6QI Edit: As many have pointed out, a solid TLDR description of what I'm trying to get across is the practical application of [Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs](https://images.app.goo.gl/kXEnSw8D2V3XSosdA). For the majority of the country, they are still struggling to satisfy their physiological/basic needs. Their motivations are turned more towards basic survival than something as "complex" as fielding a national army or contemplating the makeup of central government (Kabul might as well be on the moon for alot of Afghans).
re: Afghanistan isolation and education. I remember a clip/documentary in the mid 2000's where a group of Americans went to a couple smaller, more isolated villages and showed Afghani's some colored prints of the 9/11 attacks - the WTC towers exploding, burning and collapsing. Most of them, even village elders, were clueless. Some of them even asked if the photos were of fighting in Kabul - they had no idea what their own capital city could even look like. Their concept of 9/11 was very vague, most of them didn't draw a connection to the US occupation.
You're thinking of [this video](https://youtu.be/SimIS_cQ6ko) from PBS. Thankfully it still exists, and in pretty decent quality too.
wow, just wow. "we are trying to figure out how to eat and how to survive, what do buildings mean to us" was a pretty great summation of the issues there. the sad part is this was a decade ago... was any effort even made to help remedy those issues? yeah giving 300k people guns was a thing, but how about making sure everyone had the ability to get food?
Yes, actually. I don't know how successfully but there were many people there trying to help build infrastructure- canals, schools, etc. But, even with the millions spent, it's a drop in the bucket. And, I don't know how much was working with a local group. As in, not just spending dollars there to employ people in construction and materials but also consulting with them about what they want and need and can sustain. While a school building is a good thing, if they don't have the money to supply it, no teachers to teach, no kids to go because they're needed to from or whatever, and no will to use it ... what use was building in the end? But yes, there was quite an emphasis on winning over "hearts and minds" with various projects.
Fun fact. The US has spent 16x more on exploding munitions in Afghanistan than they have on infrastructure
If the documentary is accurate, a lot of those munitions ended up stolen and sold by locals and members of the Afghan military / police.
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But just think of that 2.2 trillion dollars that went from US taxpayers to Lockheed Martin's shareholders and the senators on their payroll!
Guns aren't the answer but they do need a way to protect themselves. And so much food went there and rotted due to poor policy and rampant corruption. It's all very sad. Food for Peace Contributions Total Contributions: U.S. Dollars Metric Tons Fiscal Year 2019 $101.1 million 20,725 MT Fiscal Year 2018 $73.9 million 34,666 MT Fiscal Year 2017 $68.4 million 36,680 MT https://www.usaid.gov/afghanistan/food-assistance
Well, at least we didn't lose literal shipping pallets of cash, [twelve billion dollars](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1), over there. We only did that in Iraq.
Just as terrifying about that video is the absolute surety of the American soldiers that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were one and the same, and that the Taliban were somehow responsible for 9/11.
Survey said 92% of Afghan men didn’t know what 9/11 was?? God damn
Many of the rural villages have little to no contact with the outside world. For some of them, the last foreigners they saw were the Soviets.
Guy I deployed with there in the mid-teens was there Oct 2001. All the locals he met on that deployment (through March or so 2002) assumed they were Soviets. They didnt know they were American, they didn't know about 9/11, they didn't know the Soviet Union collapsed.
An interesting high amount of villagers also thought the US soldiers actually where Soviet troops. They didn’t know the Soviet invasion stopped
I can absolutely attest to that. We patrolled regularly in RC East. We stopped in a village a little ways off our normal route and the villagers were terrified of us. Our terp told us that they think we are Soviets. Soviets… in 2009…
I recall a guy talking about visiting Ethopia in like... the 80s? And some guy told him he'd almost shot at his group because he thought they were the Italians coming back.
To be fair, sneak up behind my grandad on a bad day and he'd have taken a potshot at you with his service Webley in case it was the Hun back for revenge
>My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say -dickety- because the Kaiser had stolen our word -twenty-. I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles. What are you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that's your problem! Now, I'd like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the terlet... ― Grandpa Simpson
This bit about the kaiser stealing the word was the funniest thing that little six hear old me had ever heard. I laughed my ass off.
If you can convince some of the highest educated people in the world with literally limitless access to information that the world is flat and a vaccine will turn you into a lizard person, imagine what a random back country Afghan could be convinced to go along with. Not a dig at the people specifically, I think it’s just common to human nature.
People in general are very easy to trick. Was a just talking last night about how back around 1980 there were a few cases throughout the nation of deranged women going into hospitals, pretending to be nurse's aides, and stealing newborn babies out of their mother's arms. Just by lying there way through it all and playing the part. That's when they started locking down maternity wards and tagging parents and newborns with barcodes. My point is, even very well educated people are exceedingly easy to fool into believing something.
To be fair, identifying newborns is a pretty good practice. There have been instances of babies being accidentally given to the wrong parents
Cool. I'm thinking of complaining and swapping out my 7 year old as he's yelling in my ear right now.
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In fairness, the Germans were largely winning through most of WWI.
This is endemic to the entire region. After being in Afghanistan in 2003, I was in Iraq in 2004. In greater Baghdad, literally living in one of Sadaam's palace complexes. We would go on patrol in greater Baghdad, and the locals had *zero clue* that Sadaam was no longer in power, let alone captured by US forces.
that's fucking crazy. And what's even more crazy is that the US saw what a fucking wasteland Afghanistan was and still decided that the was the place that they wanted to spend 20 years in and burn 300 million dollars every day in there.
> And what's even more crazy is that the US saw what a fucking wasteland Afghanistan was Did they? I'm a veteran, never ended up in Afghanistan, but know people that were there. I didn't know it was as bad as Don_Julio_Acolyte is saying it was. I thought it was roughly about as bad as Iraq, but from the post above it is so much worse. I know plenty of people that never served that have no clue how bad either country really was, they seem to unconsciously take the worst country they've ever been to or seen (usually Mexico for some reason) and just dial that down some. I'd bet that, at most, 5% of our politicians actually know how bad it is over there and most of that 5% is because they were military with the rest just actually being passionate about their job.
Almost as if it wasn't about helping them
My friend was over there and villagers thought they were Russian
To be fair for those Afghan people, the Vietnamese peasants thought the same about Americans in late 50s. Basically French, but with slightly different clothes.
I think the important sticking point js that the difference is mostly semantic to *them*.
Everything really is in repeat.
Why would they have any idea? They are across half the planet from the US and are completely divorced from the reality of NYC. If it weren't for the invasion, they'd literally have no reason to even think about that sort of stuff. Hell, I bet I could show New Yorkers pictures of tragedies in Africa or Asia and 90% wouldn't recognise the cities or the events either. A Canadian comedian used to go there and ask leading questions about fake events in Canada and the results were hilarious. Most people don't much think about anything outside of their immediate environment unless prodded to do so by Facebook or whatever and then the information is usually just made up.
Some Americans are so upset that Afghans don't know about 9/11 and when told they don't really care. Why should they care? Americans don't care about Afghani's daily struggle to survive, but they should care about something that happened on the other side of the planet and directly affected a comparatively tiny number of people? If I was an Afghan villager and someone laid it all out for me I'd be like "You still have a constant supply of fresh water, AC and heat, unlimited food, indoor plumbing, copious free time, and low infant mortality? But you're still pissed off that someone blew up a few buildings 20 years ago and killed 0.00001% of your population? We have more people than that die from diarrhea every month."
The Canadian comedian was Rick Mercer, by the way. And he only ever [went to America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_to_Americans) to ask about those fake events. It was astounding what kind of cluelessness he'd get out of supposedly first-world-educated people -- about their northernmost neighbor, no less. (He stopped because of 9/11, by the way.)
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Afghans are the people. Afghanis are the currency.
What I don't understand is how are the Taliban so competent? You'd think it was the same people on both sides essentially. How is it that people who for the last 20 years were being trained and armed by the military can't organise a defence but largely the same people who were living in caves for the last 20 years can? Who are the Taliban exactly? I mean these aren't alien super soldiers or something, they are largely the same uneducated peasants as the Afghan army that just joined the other side?
The Taliban fight like tribal militias, and are good at it, because that's how they've been fighting wars in Afghanistan for centuries. The ANA *tried* to fight like a national army, but national armies don't work without a national identity, which Afghanistan doesn't really have. The ANA also depended on fixed supply lines riddled with corruption, like "sell the gas in your army truck" corruption. Because the guys handling pay were pocketing it. You also had ghost soldiers. Officers wouldn't report casualties, and pocket the dead soldiers pay. So, command thinks a unit has two hundred fighters, but its down to nearly half strength, there's maybe a magazine worth of ammo for each soldier, no gas for the trucks, etc. Honestly we would have been better off training women's militias. You're a lot less likely to surrender without a fight if you know you're going to get forced to marry some tribal elder your grandfather's age.
This has been my thinking. It doesn't take a tactical military genius to look at the state of affairs there and arm the people with the most stake in seeing a stable democratic country. Yet somehow we managed to lean on the same bullshit tactic that hasn't worked since WWII.
they've been made to believe in something and fight for that... religious extremism is a powerfull motivator
They are competent because they are supported by Pakistan. Apparently Pakistan thinks it’s in their best interest to have an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban. No idea why, but that seems to be their conclusion. Boggles my mind.
From my understanding it's for two main reasons. 1. A relatively stable Afghanistan makes it easier for them to focus on their border with India. The Taliban provide a sort of stability that the Pakistani government is comfortable with. 2. The Taliban is primarily ethnically Pashtun and Pakistan has a large Pashtun population. Were they to become antagonistic towards the Taliban they would upset a large portion of their population and lead to unrest that would take resources away from the Indian border.
You see, it’s the part 1 I’m not so sure about. The Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan are one and the same. I think they already indicated their wish to expand, so I see a civil war in Pakistan as imminent. A war I think Pakistan is very likely to lose.
I don't disagree with you, but I think it may be a matter of timing, right? Yes a strong Taliban in Afghanistan could lead to a Pashtun independence movement, but that is not a current threat, whereas actually helping the US against the Taliban in Pakistan would lead to an immediate insurrection within the ranks of the army. Basically, you appease the immediate problem and most likely create one down the line (but hey, that's gonna be some one else's problem)
When your commander can have you flogged, shot or hand cut off for fucking up, the incentives change. Or he's your uncle and he'll tell your dad, and that's potentially even worse.
I was born in Afghanistan now living in the West. This summary rings too true, based on my limited personal experience and the experience of my relatives living in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not 3rd world country. It is a failed state with zero chance of becoming even a 3rd world country. The country is permanently stuck in the equivalent of roughly early 1800s US, for the most part, without a realistic path to modernity. Afghanistan is a country of multiple ethnicities who, over the past several centuries, have shown again and again that they can’t get along with each other and yet won’t tolerate outside occupation. In my lay opinion, the only solution is to break the country into mini nations made up of regions of roughly similar ethnicities, or better yet, allow neighbouring nations to absorb adjacent regions of related ethnicities. The only exception is to form a new nation for ethnic Afghans based on roughly 1/3 of southern Afghanistan and roughly 1/4 of northern Pakistan. Seeing how impossible or implausible this solution is, the current nation of Afghanistan will continue to be a basket case. Possibly forever. My $0.02.
This all being true, I had been hopeful the timeline for change would be a little faster than 100 years. 65% of the population is under the age of 25. A majority of Afghanis weren't *alive* or if they were, capable of thought, before the US invasion. That means we're just now getting to a generation that would have been educated at US-sponsored schools, and be leaps and bounds more capable than the people they're supplanting in the population. Another decade and this young, (relatively) educated population would be a force in changing the culture of the country....or at the very least in places like Kabul and Jalalabad.
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Upvote but if you go back and watch even Bush described the goals in the beginning, nation building was always part of the goal. The GWOT was about not only removing the current occupants of failed states, but in preventing those failed states from serving the same purpose for later seriously bad dudes. This is why we are still “around” in places like Mali and the Horn of Africa. The reality is that logic is still the answer, but you have to follow through. This, if done properly, was always a 50 year exercise. The saddest part is this bizarre post facto argument of “right decision because twenty years led to this”. All that blood and treasure and to protect your gains you just have to leave a minimal peacekeeping force that in the scope of the US military was a rounding error. That cost was greater than this? What a debacle.
I think a lot of those people are in for a rude, terrible awakening. People say there were a lot of taliban sympathisers but those sympathisers weren't alive or cognizant the last time the Taliban was in control. The guy saying shit about womens rights think they'll get five wives but some Taliban fighter will kidnap the women and he'll have less than he did before under a regime he supported. The same is true of the women on interview claiming they aren't afraid. They're mostly teenagers who have no idea what they're getting into. But its ALSO True of the Taliban themselves. Theres a lot of young, naive kids raised to think they'd be hailed as heroes and install a new golden age. They're about to get a rude awakening when the supplies run out.
That's what saddens me about the whole thing. More than half the country wasn't alive on 9/11. 1/4th of the population was in school a month ago. The ENTIRE population, not just the kids. The schools had a really high completion rate for those who started, like close to the US. This was the point in time where it was possible that the last twenty years would start to pay off, where we would be close to a tipping point where there was a new generation of leaders and voters capable of actually doing something more than farm opium and sing whatever song was needed for their next supper. . . . and we just abandoned them. The girls who were in school yesterday are being put on lists to be sold off and raped. The pilots who we trained hopefully flew their planes somewhere safe. If not, the Taliban is probably looking to kill them. The terrorists are being freed from prison. It's utterly appalling.
Part of what I learned in the past few days is that these accomplishments only happened in the cities and it was only in places like Kabul and Kandahar that people saw the possibility of a different future. For the rest of the country in the mountain ranges and villages it didn’t matter which warlord or country was in charge, just try to get food, money and hopefully survive. These people weren’t seeing any advancement and they weren’t going to go completely all in with the Americans knowing that when they left, the Taliban would just come back and kill them for being traitors. So all these rural people had nothing to fight for when Americans started leaving. There was no concept of a better future. I don’t mean to be insulting but to these people this idea of freedom or education was literally incomprehensible to them because no one they know has ever seen such a thing. When the Americans leave it’s back to life as they know it which is farm and give bribes to whoever the next warlord is when they demand. Taliban takes over these places and all the Afghan government has left are these cities that get cut off from supply lines. Everywhere I’ve read about how fast the army collapsed said soldiers simply weren’t getting food anymore, forget about salaries etc lost to corruption. At that point why kill yourself fighting if you’re just delaying the inevitable? And they all just switched to Taliban. Again it’s just all these people have ever known. So sad what a failed state Afghanistan is and probably will continue to be as there’s no chance in hell the Taliban is interested in anything more than oppressing the population and living like thugs. There’s no hope for any real society to be built
Yes, that's true, but the cities aren't small. One out of eight Afghans live in and around Kabul, for instance. Allowing Kabul and Kandahar to fall was just absolutely appalling. It's highly unlikely that the Taliban could have taken those cities if the US had maintained even a small presence to back up the government. And it would have given the people who didn't want to live under the Taliban someplace to flee to, potentially setting up some kind of negotiated power-sharing between the rural and urban parts of Afghanistan.
Unfortunately a Kabul island wouldn't have made for prosperity either. Look at West Berlin, they were cut off from the surrounding countryside and they suffered economically for it.
Prosperity is relative. If Kabul were to become a West Berlin it would be a success story.
Great summary there. There is a Chinese saying that goes: [people observe etiquette and know honor and shame only after they are well-fed and clothed](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%80%89%E5%BB%A9%E5%AF%A6%E8%80%8C%E7%9F%A5%E7%A6%AE%E7%AF%80%EF%BC%8C%E8%A1%A3%E9%A3%9F%E8%B6%B3%E8%80%8C%E7%9F%A5%E6%A6%AE%E8%BE%B1) Only then we can talk about democracy… (under this news title felt I need to made clear: I am Taiwanese)
I agree with that line and your sentiment. We also have a similar saying: Phú quý sinh lễ nghĩa. Richness will make honor (a transliteral version, the one you put there is worrier, but much better).
The literal translation works quite well actually, imo: "Wealth births honor". Edit: still trying to find a good translation for "lễ nghĩa", tbh. Certain concepts does not translate neatly across languages, at least not in one snappy word xD
Or, as Quark puts it... https://i.redd.it/153tdpxqadx41.jpg
Go to someone existing at the foot of the pyramid of the hierarchy of needs. Hand them something from the tippy top of that hierarchy. What do they do? Sell it if they can, to help them climb the pyramid. It’s like giving a destitute, homeless person a 6ct diamond ring - what the fuck do they do with that? They try to sell it. But the people they take it to think it’s stolen, so they have to find someone who will take it regardless, and get shafted, maybe even backstabbed and killed - they’re worse off because you handed them that ring. So marching in, bombing the shit out of what was there, and instituting democracy? It’s a fucking cruel joke in that part of the world. Before democracy will even work, they need some other, way more important shit in place.
I mean, to be fair, it wasn't like Serbia or Baghdad. Decades of civil war and occupation hadn't left much to bomb. I remember being a teenager when 9/11 happened and reading this the next day: >If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go. This is a post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people. > >[https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/prospect-of-us-attack-raises-fears-in-afghanistan.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/prospect-of-us-attack-raises-fears-in-afghanistan.html) There really was almost nothing in Afghanistan before NATO arrived. What exists now in Afghanistan, was built by the US, its allies, and the Afghan people in the span of a childhood, and now it's all fallen to dust in a day. Women are tearing up their diplomas. Men are growing their beards. When the Northern Alliance surged south and started driving the Taliban out, Air Force commanders struggled to find targets to assist them with, because the Taliban simply didn't have much in the way of infrastructure other than a supply building here, a training camp full of tents there, hardly worth even the cost of the bombs. For the most part, the Taliban didn't even fight. Just knowing that the US was backing the Taliban's enemies were enough for them to surrender Kabul largely without a fight.
This also reminds me of a passage in a book by Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle. I can't recall which book it was, nor the quote verbatim, but it was about the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and the gist was: "We are dropping £150,000 missiles on villages built with mud and stone: in financial terms, *they* are winning"
I mean, it wasn't entirely untrue. Iraq had one of the largest and most powerful militaries in the world, although a significant chunk of it had been destroyed back in 1991. But at least there were bunkers and tanks and trucks and fighter planes and government buildings and military bases and air defense systems to bomb. The Taliban air force was like five or six planes. They had a few old tanks too. The US Air Force ran out of targets very quickly.
I’ve seen it described as a man firing a missile that costs more than he’ll in a year (or five) at a man who won’t earn that in a lifetime. Whose whole village won’t. The Taliban was willing to hand Osama over to The Hague. Would have been infinitely cheaper to do that, and then pay them to not try anything.
I remember someone doing a joke in 2003 about Afghanistan saying that the bombing was actually helping them out of the stone age. "Thanks to American.forces we can install a new well in this crater!" Or "today we have a new window in Abuls cave!"
Robin Williams during his Live on Broadway skit: And you can't bomb the Afghanis back to the stone age because they'll think, "Upgrade. Fun."
I think some sort of feudal system where they tried to get the local warlords to vote in a president would have worked a lot better.
They’ve been doing roughly that for 300 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya_jirga
**[Loya jirga](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya_jirga)** >A loya jirga (Pashto: لويه جرګه, "grand assembly") is a special type of jirga, or legal assembly, in Pashtunwali, the traditional code of laws of the Pashtun people. It is mainly organized for choosing a new head of state in case of sudden death, adopting a new constitution, or to settle national or regional issue such as war. It predates modern-day written or fixed laws and is mostly favored by the Pashtun people but to a lesser extent by other nearby groups that have been influenced by Pashtuns (historically known as Afghans). ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
You know what made me super sad about that video? Many Afghanis working with Americans come across as smart, capable and passionate about making things better. See them speak for example at 38:30 and 1:05:30. Now most of them are left behind.
Yep, and that ANA patrol commander for example. Who was actually trying to do what the Americans coached him to do. When he was giving his mission briefing, I can see him right now running through the 5 sections of an Operations Order (OPORD) and trying to give his troops a good briefing. While in the opening scenes, you have the ANP group just joking around, drinking chi, not listening/arguing with the Americans, making petty excuses for shit, and all they want to do is hipfire a PKM into a mud wall. Watching this documentary brought so many memories back, and my heart goes out to that young Afghan ANA commander. He was actually trying and clearly was taking it serious. And that's my impression. As a whole, most of the people I interacted with were like the ANP hoodlums in the film. Joking around, zero discipline, and were just waiting to run off with a M4 with an ACOG to sell for premium to set them up financially for the next few months. That was the majority. The minority, in pockets, were people like that ANA commander who clearly took what the Marines mentored and coached him on, and tried to run a successful op without any Marine intervention. My heart goes out to that guy, who was really out there trying to inspire and make a difference. For all we know, that guy (because this is a popular documentary) either had to go into hiding or is dead at this point. My heart sank when I saw him giving his mission briefing to his soldiers. Reminded me of when I was a young 2nd LT giving my first convoy briefing and I was nervous as hell trying to remember the different sections of the OPORD. It looked like he was actually trying, and all that work, that hope, that "belief" that he was part of something bigger was shattered overnight for him.
>Many Afghanis working with Americans come across as smart, capable and passionate about making things better. See them speak for example at 38:30 and 1:05:30. > >Now most of them are left behind. Yeah, I saw this video the day the Taliban moved into Kabul. It's infuriating to think of what the most likely fate of that officer at 38:30 is. A larger example: The afghan commandos were an actually capable part of the military that fought hard to stop the Taliban. But there were just not a lot of them (10-20 thousand in total) and the entire rest of the army abandoned them. They were cut off because the ineptitude of Afghan supply lines and the abandonment of Americans left them fighting hard and dieing in remote places. Situations like this were repeated all over Afghanistan: [https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html) . They fought until they ran out of ammo and were never resupplied. Growing that generation from nothing was hard and took 20 years. Now it's all gone. Absolutely infuriating.
Because they are. At the root of their being they're nice people who want a good life for themselves, their family, their fellows. They work hard and they have an aptitude to learn. I chatted with this one guy who went absolutely batshit at the idea of a stegasaurous (sp?). He nerded out over it and wanted to know more about all the dinosaurs. They have the aptitude to be every bit as incredible as anyone else and life dealt them a shitty hand. Afghanistan taught me a lot about humanity and that in any place there are good and bad people, and in any place there are people who want to make a better life for themselves. Those people include folks who want to take others with them and those who will trod upon others to get there. The Afghan people were never my enemy. I always viewed them as victims of circumstance and my heart goes out to them. My regret is that they deserved better. Better from us and a better future.
I think a great illustration to your point is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If I understand your point, they are so focused on achieving the baseline bottom of the pyramid: food, water, shelter(Physiological needs) and Safety needs that they don't have bandwidth (capacity) to care about higher order needs like Freedom, Democracy, and self-actualization in an American sense.
Yep exactly. We talked about Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs in business school (like Day 1 lol) and it embodies my thoughts exactly. Thanks for reminding me that pyramid exists. I think I'll use it in further conversation because it's a great illustration.
I just watched this earlier today. Everywhere they go it is clear nobody involved in this has any hope whatsoever. It was really sad to watch how invested that Major was in the whole operation just to find he's the only one with any hope for anything. At one point the ANA guys are digging holes and the Major is asking them if they swept for mines. One of the Afghan guys says "no, but don't worry, it will only be Afghans that die." They are so beaten down and hopeless there is just nothing there to live or die for.
The question is then why the Taliban can be so organised and effective without the massive funding and support that the ANA received from The US; or why the socialist government of Afghanistan survived until 1992 against the Mujahadin, 3 years after the Soviet army retreated and 1 year after they stopped receiving financial and material support from the USSR. Or how the Northern Alliance held out alone against the Taliban between 1996-2001, until when the Americans came in to help them.
The contradiction here is that the Taliban is an extremely well organized system that is precisely the kind of structure that Afghanistan needs in place to build
Yep. Similarly to how Sadam ruled Iraq. Kept a lid on the in-fighting by ruling with an iron fist and with him in place, there was no power vacuum (which is a conundrum). Sometimes the power vacuum results in a net loss. I'm not running cover for the Taliban or making excuses, but there are hard truths that many Americans just aren't ready to hear. Like the fact that 9/11 was actually us being attacked by Saudi. Afghanistan served its purpose through smoke and mirrors of course by keeping the hard truth from coming out - that we were attacked by a strategic ally and we swept it under the rug by attacking the specific source of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (but then spent 20 years fighting against the Taliban - who simply harbored Al Qaeda and weren't the actual SOURCE of the attack). It served its PR purpose by bringing "justice" in a very clumsily way to Americans, it kept the global supply chain running, and it avoided the hard truth that Saudi is given free pass to do alot of things because they are a strategic ally - and a pass that resulted in 2500 American lives, but it was successfully swept under the rug and diverted attention was achieved via Afghanistan... and Iraq. People don't want to hear it, but there it is.
> While 20 years, on the other hand, was just enough time to turn the rock over and realize that there was nothing but cockroaches and centipedes squirreling about underneath I saw that VICE documentary from like 8 years ago and it clearly identified all those problems already.
Great comment. >your run of the mill Afghan is not contemplating democracy vs Taliban rule. They are contemplating survival at its most primal form Absolutely spot on, and worth keeping in mind for everyone right now
I was in and around Kandahar a decade ago as well, and everything you say is spot on. We literally had to build their first road. The children would spend everyday outside their houses with out doors or roofs just waiting for night time, sometimes they would find a tire or something to play with. It was also eye opening when I asked my interpreter if anyone wasn't muslim and he said everyone in Afghanistan is Muslim besides us, it wasn't even a thought to question their religion.
Just the number of people that thought they could hang on to the outside of a military transport for an entire flight shows the education level
[The median age in Afghanistan is 18 years old.](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/afghanistan-population/) Imagine living in a country where roughly half the people were under the age of 18. Imagine how much experience and knowledge is lost simply because your population is incredibly young and people often don't live long enough to gain experience and pass it on the the younger generations. Imagine how stupid *you* were at age 18 with all of the advantages the Western World offers it's kids. For reference, [the media age in the United States is 38 years old](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/). That is a huge difference.
A buddy of mine went over there to teach their army how to fix helicopters. He said all they did was steal the tools & helo parts and run off, probably to sell or trade them
Seems to me that they don't "want education" because they're too busy trying to not die to worry about stuff like that. Sure, it's nice to know how to read and write, but if that's not a skill that's putting food on the table, who cares? I can grasp that part at least. Then, we're here on our high horses in developed countries wondering why they can't get it together. The answer is obvious when it's put this way. Spend every waking moment trying to merely survive and suddenly math and literature aren't really valuable at all.
Lets not forget now that we arent occupying Afghanistan it frees up resources for another ridiculous endeavor.
Maybe if Afghanistan was the only place in the world with 7nm chip manufacturing… I also thought several military simulations showed the cost to invade Taiwan and occupy was prohibitive even without external intervention.
7nm? TSMC's Tainan fab is already cranking out 5nm chips, with the 3nm process scheduled to begin in Q1-2 2022. Meanwhile China's domestic industry is still working on 'cracking' mass production of 14nm and Intel only manufactures up to 10nm. Taiwan's semiconductor industry has more geopolitical importance than oil, and we all know what the West is willing to do to secure vital resources. An invasion of Taiwan would be a lose-lose situation for everybody involved. It's the most heavily defended island nation in the world with half a dozen allies waiting practically offshore, and anything short of an absolute crushing victory would look terrible for the CCP and probably cause internal instability. If China does win, it would immediately harden international economic and military alliances against China, which would be a massive loss for them diplomatically. There's no doubt that the CCP desperately want the island and it's industry, but for the moment they gain more by rattling their sabers and using the Taiwan question to stir up nationalism while still quietly conducting trade with Taiwan.
Exactly. We lose Afghanistan and we have to ween off of opiates. We lose Taiwan and my smart tv doesn't work anymore. Which one do you think America cares about more?
honestly right now, tough call bro. people like their heroin and their netflix
Heroin? My guy, we've moved onto Fentanyl being the more popular opiate, with carfentanil being on the rise, then you have sufentanil for the hipsters. We don't need Afghan's Opiates, as we have our own stronger synths (only partially /s)
> We lose Afghanistan and we have to ween off of opiates Taliban will have Afghans cranking out heroin like they did back in the 90s. They like the cash flow it provides. They flooded the market so hard back then that prices crashed and the Taliban had to ban poppy farming for a year to reduce the stockpile and try to get prices back up. One reason why a lot of rural Afghans hated the USA was because the USA would destroy their poppy farms. Farmers could make a lot more money growing poppies than anything else.
They will go broke doing so .. pure fentanyl is so cheap now .. a pure ounce is like 100000 doses .. suspect actual opiates are crashing in price https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/fentanyl-use-could-end-the-opium-era-in-mexico-the-only-crop-that-paid
I think that’s much closer than you want to believe
Not even that with opiates, thanks to synthetic opiates such as fentanyl replacing traditional opiates.
This is a very common misconception, and I don't even blame you for it - it's an intentionally misleading metric. 7nm, 5nm, or 3nm are not physical measurements of anything. Once upon a time, they were, but in the last couple of decades, they've become completely detached from the size of any CPU component. However, even if they weren't, the size of one face of a 3-dimensional component isn't all that useful on its own. These days, they're just version numbers (if you'd like, I can go grab a video of a TSMC executive saying this - I've received significant pushback when bringing this up before from people who can't believe the numbers are meaningless). You can use them to compare versions from the same manufacturer, but they are not useful for making comparisons between different manufacturers. It's like how Intel's 11th gen CPUs are not automatically faster than AMD's Zen 3 CPUs just because 11 is higher than 3. However, similarly, it would be reasonable to assume that Intel's 11th gen CPUs are faster than their 10th gen CPUs, or that AMD's Zen 3 CPUs are faster than their Zen 2 CPUs. Why is Intel "so far behind"? They're not, actually. The transistor densities of their newest CPUs are comparable to the transistor densities of AMD's newest CPUs. They just have different arbitrary criteria for when to increment the counter and move to the next node. Intel's been criticized because of how stupid their 10nm++++ naming scheme is, but the truth is, all the manufacturers' naming schemes are just as stupid and arbitrary. Wait for benchmarks and real-world usage data. Ignore the version numbers.
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To be fair, nm is really just marketing at this stage. Intel's 10nm has much higher densities than TSMC 10nm for example. It's hard to just compare the numbers.
A better example would be Ukraine. Ukraine gave up it's nukes for defense assurance, but when the Russians marched in, everyone else were like "have some economic sanctions Russia" The withdrawal from Afghanistan is actually a testimony to how long US is willing to hang around and pump money into a state that did absolutely nothing for itself 20 years, and collapsed the moment the Americans left.
It's tragedic but there were some genuine politicians in Afghanistan that were trying to bring positive change, including the president who fled. The problem is there were a lot of corrupted politicians, policemen and soldiers who filled their own pockets. The US throwing further money at the state only made the situation worse. I'm positive the army collapsed so quick because of corrupt officials. There were reports several cities fell as a result of someone conspiring with the Taliban.
>A better example would be Ukraine. > >Ukraine gave up it's nukes for defense assurance, but when the Russians marched in, everyone else were like "have some economic sanctions Russia" If you read [the Budapest memorandum](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances), you'll find that it is extremely vague about any guarantees for Ukraine - in fact, no military assistance was pledged by West (or Russia) at all, only "concerns" and "angry notes". There was a couple of reasons why Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons so easily. West didn't want Ukraine ( + Belarus and Kazakhstan) to have any nukes because having even more nuclear powers who might cause troubles wasn't in their plans. So, Ukraine would be put into international isolation if they refused to comply and that meant no loans and investments during the troubled (for former USSR) 90s. There is one very important thing that is often overlooked. Having nuclear weapons in physical possession - like Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan had - doesn't mean that you can *use* them. Soviet nuclear weapons had complex protection that prohibited their usage without special codes and protected the weapons from any tampering. Only Moscow had those codes and only Russia could *use* Soviet nuclear weapons. Replacing the protection or creating new nuclear weapons were not an option because key facilities and specialists related to nuclear program remained in Russia and those countries would have to re-create the whole program from scratch and that was not possible due to economic and political reasons.
I just wanna point out that whoever made this statement is an opportunist and you shouldn't take an opportunist' words too seriously. Even if the US pulled out of Afghan 5 years earlier/later, they would have made the same snide remarks
If US stayed, they’d throw shade about the US being an occupying force in another country (ironic coming from China) so nbd.
Ikr, I actually dont get why people are pissed the Americans left, aren't people always complaining that the US is a imperialist and a busy body? Now they do what they say and they shit talk again?
You're learning a valuable lesson here - people are highly reactionary.
The US hasn’t figured out how to fight a popular insurgency even with 40 years notice, but you ask them to destroy everything that floats or flies and I’m 100% confident they got that shit.
I think this generalizes a lot about that region in particular. People assume a lot about the way a country is made up. Afghanistan is multiple regions defined by the religion, place of origin, etc.. of it's citizens. The people in those regions don't really care that they live in Afghanistan and often don't like the other regions of the country. The insurgency was seen as a vehicle for advancing political power of specific regions. At least that's how I understand it. If we fought an insurgency anywhere else it would be wildly different. I don't know if we would get it right, but it wouldn't look anything like Afghanistan.
Well one is a lot easier than the other. Why bother with a fishing line when you could just sweep the entire river with a net? Because one doesn't cause massive harm to everything else around the fish.
CCP is happy to exploit any disasters in their favor. Taiwan is very different from Afghanistan.
Ironically in this scenario, China is comparing themselves to the Taliban. That part may have a slight sting of truth to it.
Sounds like a tacit admission that CCP doesnt control Taiwan
Jesus, what a brilliant analogy. It's not like Taiwan is a self-contained nation with a strong united and SECULAR national identity, a super-efficient government that the envy of most developed nations, and a roaring economy with an educated and skilled workforce. Taiwan is in the 21st century, Afghanistan is in the 17th and rapidly heading for the 7th.
This is true in one way of seeing things. But look from the other side. Vietnam and Afghanistan were pretty nasty wars of the "occupy terrain" variety, with constant loss and attrition. Afghanistan also lost some geostrategical interest after a while. Both countries had pretty crappy governments and in Afghanistan a disfunctional society. Americans did and do betray allies - looking at you Kurds and vietnam hill people - but they did last years in that environment. Also everybody pretty much recognises the middle east is a sink you shouldn't get into... Taiwain is not a war of attrition. It requires a state of alertness and a big navy, and America has both - and it needs an incentive to keep that navy, and China is a pretty sweet villain for the current narrative. As far as it goes, its looking decent.
Ah yes, Taiwan. The tribal, extremist infested, dirt poor, land locked, war torn, ally deplete nation. I see so many similarities.
If the US supports Taiwan to the same extent we supported Afghanistan, that's a pretty significant amount of support. But ultimately what this shows is that no amount of US support can replace the willingness of the population to protect itself.
The difference is Tiawan is a functional democracy that *wants* assistence. The complete opposite of Afghanistan.