15 years into the NATO occupation of Afghanistan, the Taliban controls more territory now than at any other time during the war, and the losses continue to mount for the Afghan government. The war has never been going “well,” exactly, but the losses are becoming a lot more visible.
Indeed, the NATO nations involved in the war invested heavily in capturing and holding certain key cities, and as they began to draw down their forces, many nations sold these territorial gains, however limited they were, as their chief military accomplishments. Now, they’re watching those cities fall.
British forces spent over a decade trying to secure the Helmand Province, prized by insurgents for its opium production. The Taliban now controls most of the province, and is in the process of invading and capturing the capital city. Germany put its effort into Kunduz, a major city which the Taliban already captured once, and is again threatening.
These stories exist everywhere around Afghanistan, as NATO spent billions to build up an Afghan military which is falling apart at the seams, unable to properly defend much of anything, and likewise unable to recruit enough people to make up for their losses.
Afghan officials are downplaying the losses, insisting they are temporary. Yet they are losing an estimated 10,000 police a year just to casualties, above what they’re able to recruit, and in the military, force levels have always been dubious, given the widespread corruption and existence of tens of thousands of “ghost troops” created by crooked officials just to collect salaries.
The Pentagon’s ever-upbeat projections over the past 15 years centered around best-case assumptions for the size of corruption, which were woefully optimistic, and the hope that the Taliban would eventually get worn out by open-ended conflict, something which also doesn’t seem to be panning out.
All that money wasted in Afghanistan. All those lives lost. More opium than ever. That “war” is going great, eh?
Atta boy barry.
american supported the afghan war, back when it was still in news,
and then after it had been going on for 7 years they elected someone(twice) who promised to expand it.
and neither of the current candidates has even mentioned it
Ask youself if this even has the ring of truth to it? The US Military is the miost sophisticated military machine the world has ever known. We claim to have been fighting The Taliban for the past fifteen years, The Taliban, even before 9/11, were living in the seventh century.
Fifteen years, and we cannot even defeat, …conclusively defeat, …The Talican?!? Really?? By that yardstick, what would happen if we had to fight Russia, or China?? How can we claim with a straight face to be able to take on Russia and/or China of we cannot even defeat The Taliban in fifteen years?
How badly do yo have to be lied to?
It’s not a conventional war. They blend in with civilians, use IEDS and are motivated by religious zeal. I’ve been over there and can tell you with a straight face that every time they went toe to toe with us we punched them in the mouth. An insurgency as deeply embedded as the taliban is worlds away from a conventional face off between the US and russia or China. So even if we do kill them there are more to take their place. The civilian populace must also be willing to push out the insurgency as well,
which they most definitely don’t desire to. I must respectfully say you couldn’t be more wrong with this.
Yes — what you are referring to as asymmetry.
The same thing was said in Vietnam (“every time they went toe to toe with us we punched them in the mouth”). Not ENTIRELY accurate, but close.
In a conventional face-off, a US force would have huge advantages versus a Russian or Chinese force. But that’s the thing: If you’re fighting a war, why WOULD you fight it on your enemy’s terms, in the way that gives him the advantage?
What makes anyone think that the Russians or Chinese would say “OK, let’s line up our tanks and troops and go toe-to-toe with the US forces, even though we know they have the advantage in such a situation?”
One thing that’s especially dangerous about assuming they would do so is that there’s one area in which the Russians are thought to have at least ROUGH parity with the US, and that’s the nuclear area — ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles. If they get their teats in a wringer in a conventional confrontation with the US, they could be tempted to go that route.
Ok so that is also Vietnam where there were tens possibly hundreds of thousands of troops who were well supplied with heavy weapons in a very different and difficult environment to fight in. You can’t really draw too many comparisons. The Viet cong and taliban are totally different in tactics and weapons. Also, I can outright say we mopped up the taliban in every engagement I took part in. You can’t beat an insurgency unless the civilian population is willing to push them out.
Now I’m confused as to how you mean the Russians would fight. They have a large conventional military and yes, they would do their best to fight us on their terms. But if they didn’t stand and fight we would simply take what they have. If you don’t fight, you lose. If you fight, you die. We have massive advantages in over both the Russians and Chinese and we excel at conventional warfare.
As for nukes we have them as well and there is not much you can do except for placing ICBM defense missile sites in allied countries neighboring russia or China (there are plenty of those). We can only promise that if they implement nukes we will decimate their entire country.