Grifman wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:01 am
On an opposing note there's this opinion:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/opinions ... index.html
I found this to be of note:
In 2001, there were fewer than nine hundred thousand children, almost all boys, in school. Today, there's over 9.2 million children, forty percent of which are girls, in school. Life expectancy has gone from 44 years to 60 years."
The problem though is one I noted to myself when we got involved. As long as guerillas have a safe haven, they cannot be defeated. They can control the pace of battle. If the Taliban had to hide in Afghanistan, we could slowly and surely eliminate them. But as it is now, if things got too hot, they can withdraw to Pakistan, gather more recruits and supplies and come back. This was never going to work unless Pakistan got control of their border but they pretty much leave these tribes to govern themselves as they consider the area ungovernable.
I agree with you and will add two phrases:
Mission creep and economically unsustainable
Mission creep - the original mission in Afghanistan was to get the people that were involved in 9/11. We did that. The mission expanded to "keeping the people that did 9/11 from coming back". Preventing a result does not give you many options beyond "staying there forever" and that was never part of the original mission.
Economic unsustainability - the article draws a comparison to South Korea. And then conveniently forgets to mention that the investment in South Korea of permanent US military presence has paid off in spades with economic trade between the US and South Korea. Something that will take decades for Afghanistan, if ever.
I agree with the author - It is unfortunate for the people of Afghanistan that we are pulling out. It will create a humanitarian crisis as the country devolves into civil war and it will be hard for the people who found freedom to grow and express themselves to go back under Taliban rule. If Afghanistan was a neighbor and I was the US I be there all the time helping out. But countries are not people. The cold hard truth is that national treasure is going into a black hole over there when it could be used to improve our infrastructure here. The US had to include economic viability, strategic value, and force sustainability into its decision-making process.
If Wikipedia is to be believed then apparently Pakistan is the major source of the Taliban's power. Perhaps a shift in focus from Afghanistan to put pressure on Pakistan to stop supplying the Taliban would pay better dividends than keeping troops there indefinitely.