Menzo
1782
Annoying but predictable. Look at the completely false and debunked theories about how we could have won the Vietnam War that are still floating around.
Thrag
1783
Vietnam? That never happened. There was a question yesterday about “have we ever withdrawn our military before getting all civilians out”?
Edit: I should say to their credit the generals did explain to the idiot Senator that the military retrograde is separate from the civilian evacuation and they often happen in that order. But I really wish someone would have pointed out that we withdrew our military according to the Paris peace accords in 1973 and civilian evacuation during the fall of Saigon was in 1975.
RichVR
1784
According to one source the Taliban have about 80,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. Of course they are not concentrated in one spot, but they could get there. Do you think that 2500 American troops, as amazing as they are, could last long?
Of course that opens a new can of worms. We could just send in reinforcements and… start the war up again?
Yes. The choice was to have no war — which means leave — or have a real war — which means ratchet up the engagement. There was no keep 2500 troops there forever while the Taliban pretend they don’t mind option on the table.
ShivaX
1786
I’m pretty sure that’s the thinking.
Also people act like 2,500 has been the number for 10 years or something. 2,500 was the number after Trump drew down in preparation for leaving. Obviously the Taliban isn’t going to cause much trouble as their main adversary is withdrawing.
Aceris
1787
I think they would have been entirely capable of it. I think casualties on their side would have been very high and retribution almost certain. And given those troops were leaving anyway…
Timex
1788
First, before saying anything else, note that I’m not suggesting that this is something we should have done. I agree with the decision to pull out.
But that being said, I do believe that the US forces could have stabilized something with that sized force.
The thing to keep in mind here, is that it wouldn’t just be 2500 American troops. That core would allow you to actually have a functional afghani army. The mere existence of the Americans provided a large amount of support for the Afghanis themselves.
But this would have violated our agreement with them, and I still don’t see an end to it… indeed, I feel like things would probably errode slowly with that level of troop deployment, and eventually it’d get messy anyway. I think they’d likely have to raise that number up a few thousand more to “stabilize” things. I think the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs suggested between 2.5k and 8k? Something like that.
Again, I’m not saying this is what we should have done… we shouldn’t. But I suspect folks are overestimating what the Taliban can do when going up against the US forces in a straight up fight. They can do insurgent activities, but that’s very different than somehow leveraging those 80k troops as a conventional force against the US.
If the Taliban put 80k troops together in one place to try and assault US troops? They’d have 80k dead troops real fast. The idea that they’d swarm the US positions like bugs in Starship Troopers isn’t really something I can see happening.
Pictured: one of the mere 2500 GIs keeping the whole of Afghanistan safe for democracy.
Yeah, the 2500 figure shouldn’t be used to calculate force ratios or whatever. Think of it more as “a viable level of military power sufficient to stabilize at least a part of the Afghan military and to employ an effective level of air and other support.” That is, in that situation the Taliban would have had zero incentive to throw themselves, Verdun-like, at American troops. Of course, those troops would have been able to actually do jack all, and the Taliban would control everything except the square footage the US soldiers and their few effective allies were hunkered down on. Which would probably have actually been ok with the Taliban, as it would free them up to do whatever they wanted as 2500 isn’t enough to take much in the way of offensive actions.
A big part of the reason why these campaigns failed is the Rumsfeld doctrine, which attempted to redefine how many US/NATO troops were needed to defeat x number of “other” troops.
I don’t remember the exact number, but I think Rumsfeld believed 1 US soldier was enough for something like 5 “other” troops, which is probably true in terms of lethality (with fire support) but that one US soldier won’t be able to control the ground that those 5 “other” troops will.
It was complete bullshit. You can kill a lot of people like that, but you can’t pacify them or own anything. You lose as soon as they put on civilian clothes and stop giving you targets.
Absolutely. It’s one of the things the US has always had some difficulty grasping, possibly because we quite understandably quail at the idea of deploying massive armies of infantry. What is it Stalin used to say, “quantity has a quality of its own?”
I think Rumsfeld’s (stupid) idea was that ‘controlling ground’ was for losers. We would strike quickly and ‘surgically’ and kill the bad guys and then vanish, to do the same thing somewhere else nearby tomorrow, and the result would be peace and prosperity and democracy in the place we just vacated.
Calelari
1794
Personally, I think Rumsfeld’s stupid idea was that he was qualified for the position he was in.
Thrag
1795
Rumsfeld thought of himself as a McNamara. Which was a problem on two levels. First, he wasn’t. McNamara for all his faults was a really intelligent guy. Donny was out of his element to say the least. Second, he thought being a McNamara was a good thing.
But sometimes you go to a totally voluntary, unnecessary and potentially illegal war with the defense secretary you have not the one you wish you had.
It’s official, sources who didn’t make it out are being hunted and either turned or killed, not just by the Taliban, but by Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan.
I was initially surprised all those countries would be after our sources in Afghanistan. Then I read the article - it’s a world-wide problem, not one specific to Afghanistan.
Yeah, this sounds more like a global problem.
The CIA had this happen to them not too long ago, too. Apparently the communications system they used was compromised, and China cleaned house of all of the CIA’s sources in country. It was really bad.
So it sounds like the agency has been compromised yet again.
Is this article even about people left behind in Afghanistan?? I have read it twice, and I see no mention of Afghanistan in that context.
