Afghan Conflict: Russian Political Leader Meets With Massoud

[Kowani]

US removes Haqqani Network name from blacklist, lifts sanctions, which allows international organizations to deal with the Taliban Government, as well as for the US to issue humanitarian aid licenses for Afghanistan

[Saiwania]

US removes Haqqani Network name from blacklist, lifts sanctions, which allows international organizations to deal with the Taliban Government, as well as for the US to issue humanitarian aid licenses for Afghanistan

If Biden is responsible for this decision, its treason. This is what is impeachable. Not whatever nonsense Democrats wanted to get Trump on.

[Paddy O Fernature]

US removes Haqqani Network name from blacklist, lifts sanctions, which allows international organizations to deal with the Taliban Government, as well as for the US to issue humanitarian aid licenses for Afghanistan

Going to need a more reliable source then Twitter... But if true, seriously, what the actual fuck?

[Kowani]

US removes Haqqani Network name from blacklist, lifts sanctions, which allows international organizations to deal with the Taliban Government, as well as for the US to issue humanitarian aid licenses for Afghanistan

Correction: Misleading tweet-The name removed from the blacklist was of a Haqqani network leader who died, not the entire network
However, the portion of the Tweet in which the Treasury Department issued licenses allowing the U.S. government, NGOs and international organizations to engage in transactions with the Taliban or Haqqani Network to provide humanitarian assistance despite U.S. sanctions is true

[Evil Wolf]

US removes Haqqani Network name from blacklist, lifts sanctions, which allows international organizations to deal with the Taliban Government, as well as for the US to issue humanitarian aid licenses for Afghanistan

Going to need a more reliable source then Twitter... But if true, seriously, what the actual fuck?

Someone in that twitter thread posted this article as the source, but the article says nothing about removing the Haqqani Network from the blacklist or lifting stations. What it does say is this:

According to reports, the US Treasury Department on Friday said it issued two general licences, one allowing the US government, NGOs and certain international organisations, including the United Nations, to engage in transactions with the Taliban or Haqqani Network – both under sanctions – that are necessary to provide humanitarian assistance.

Seems like someone took that pretty benign bit of information and reinterpreted it as a full lifting of sanctions and a de-blacklisting. I see nothing which suggests that, only that some groups, to include the UN, will be providing humanitarian aid.

Edit: Kowani beat me to it.

[Fahran]

The Taliban took more casualties in fighting than the ANA did (supposedly). The military strength of the Taliban was largely irrelevant, as almost all of the provinces were taken without need of force at all: they were surrendered.

That really serves to reinforce my point about the lack of morale and cohesion in the ANA. You do not win wars simply by killing as many people as possible. It's enough for an enemy force to crumble and run away. The fact that the ANA couldn't resist at all suggests it wasn't a functional military force, likely because it ignored the cultural factors and essentials necessary to ensure success. We should not interpret the failure on the ANA as an institution to tacit support for the Taliban when we have sufficient evidence to suggest that the Taliban do not actually enjoy such support among more than nine percent of the population.

The NRF has promptly vanished, all acclamation on social media aside: so much for their cohesion!

I imagine some of them are still hiding in the hills and mountains. If they receive any level of support from the Tajiks, they'll likely be able to reorganize and continue to stage a stiff resistance. They don't actually need to win outright. They just need to avoid losing. A stalemate is sufficient to achieve long-term political goals.

Afghanistan has well been capable of producing a military in the past, when conditions were even more primitive than today, such as during the Third Anglo-Afghan War: this army was capable of action in a fashion that would have completely eluded the modern army!

A significant component of the Afghan force in question was made-up of tribal militias. British military historians have pointed out that the tribal lashkars were among the best troops the Afghans had, and their equipment consisted principally of small arms with which they had a strong familiarity given these were personal weapons. In point of fact, the Afghan militias were superior to the Afgan professional military during the Third Anglo-Afghan War in almost every respect. Mind you, I didn't say that the Afghans were militarily incompetent. I said that a deracinated professional force isn't something they tend to do well, and that's seems accurate. The ANA was a deracinated professional force. The Taliban and NRF are pretty much militias in terms of structure and function. Very experienced militias, but militias all the same.

So, we cannot say the Afghan culture to be fundamentally incapable of the conditions for armies. Likewise, the Vietnamese had a literacy rate of 10% in 1945, the Chinese had 20% in 1949. Both countries either had just waged a large scale war that in an apocalyptically devastated country or were soon to. Yet they were capable of fielding professional armies which were capable of acting with sophistication. India, a nation that is hopeless divided in its regional, religious and ethnic identities was capable of fielding an army that beat Pakistan in 1965. There are enough counterexamples that disprove such an attempt at parsimony.

The NVA and PLA enjoyed their crowning successes when they engaged in unconventional warfare, but they also represented professional forces and gave good accounts of themselves in the capacity. I'm not attempting to argue that Afghans cannot produce effective military forces. I'm arguing that they do not tend to produce good deracinated professional forces. And, based on the example you gave, they really don't. That could change, of course. The Taliban do seem to want to centralize certain aspects of how the country is run and using Islam as a glue to do that is a long-standing tradition in Afghanistan. But why fix what isn't broken with respect to military matters?

All that aside, none of which I think cuts to the core: then what is the very heart of the matter?
Did the Taliban's popularity enable their military success?
Firstly, popularity itself is an unhelpful term—why is it that when a democratically elected government in the west pass below a certain threshold the people do not rebel? And why was the last large scale popular unrest in the west, the gilets juanes, largely unsuccessful?—so, instead I shall use legitimacy, as it conveys the topic better. To a western observer, it would appear obvious that the Taliban are unpopular, but the people to which they speak will chiefly be those who live in Kabul, who enjoyed the fruits of the western occupation and were engaged with the international world to the extent that they will speak with the press. From my own qualitative judgement of two decades of news on Afghanistan, much of these stories concern atrocities committed by the Taliban and so on, barely have we heard any other accounts. Of course there were many, many stories which condemn western atrocities and the western presence, but they do not represent a popular account. What must be considered is that Kabul only accounts for around 1/6^th of the population. The vast majority, ~75%, of people live in the countryside. If I were the provide a singular example of the loss of legitimacy of the Afghan government and its de facto replacement by the Taliban it would be this: there existed several court systems in a parallel in the provinces: a government westernized legal system, the traditional Pashtun and appeal to warlords, and the Taliban themselves. The government's courts wer epoorly staffed & hopeless corrupt, requiring large payments to provide aid; the traditional system was prone to violence and the worst sort of extortion; while the Taliban's was seen as simple justice, quicker, fairer and less corrupt. All this can be attested by a search for "Taliban Courts". The point of highlighting this is that when you think of a government, the rule of law is probably the most essential fact of it: as the power of the law ends so does the government's. And if large swathes of government territory is already de facto ruled by the Taliban by the popular participation in this system of law, then the Taliban must have a greater legitimacy than the government if it is able to do this in the very territory the government controls!

I actually don't disagree with this to an extreme extent. I don't think the American-backed government had legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan public after 2016 or 2017, when Ashraf Ghani's popularity plummetted and it became increasingly clear that the government couldn't defend itself or Afghans from the Taliban. The Taliban have legitimacy because they outright conquered the country, taking Kabul within a few days, and now have the means to administer it. But we should not assume popularity. Or that popularity matters in what is essentially a junta of warlords and clerics.

Case and point, how do we suppose Baradar would respond to being told his policies with regard to zina are unpopular among women? Would he consult pollsters at all? No. His response would be "G-d expects us to carry out this policy and gave sanction to it through the Quran and hadiths. Those who disagree are in the wrong." Mind you, they will likely consult local elites on certain issues when and where possible, but their system isn't one where popularity or approval really matter. Short of a rebellion.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

Off-topic, but let us take a moment to show our appreciation for Kowani, the Keeper of the News.

---

As I said before with regards the United Nations seat: we should accept reality. Whether or not we want the Taliban around doesn’t change the fact that right now, right there, they are in charge and nobody seems to have both the power and motivation to kick them out.

Humanitarian assistance is a stickier point than just diplomatic recognition, but I can see the reasoning in it.

[Lady Victory]

Off-topic, but let us take a moment to show our appreciation for Kowani, the Keeper of the News.

---

As I said before with regards the United Nations seat: we should accept reality. Whether or not we want the Taliban around doesn’t change the fact that right now, right there, they are in charge and nobody seems to have both the power and motivation to kick them out.

Humanitarian assistance is a stickier point than just diplomatic recognition, but I can see the reasoning in it.

Yeah, that's a hard "no" from me dawg.

I'm tired of this notion that we should tolerate brutal and oppressive regimes because of some arbitrary measure of diplomatic conduct or whatever the fuck other excuse is made. The Taliban deserve nothing short of annihilation. They are slavers, drug traffickers, and terrorists. They use human shields, suicide bombers, and throw acid on people. They rape, loot, and murder with reckless abandon. They are not and should not be recognized as a lawful government; they should be utterly destroyed and I'm getting tired of absolutely no one willing to actually pursue this objective being in a position to make this happen. For 20 fucking years we've been pussyfooting around the idea of actually fighting the Taliban and it's gotten us absolutely jack all. We did not give the Nazis an inch and didn't stop until they were mercilessly crushed; no entertainment of peace, no conditions, no negotiations - we outright destroyed them. We didn't stop until unconditional surrender.

May comparison we've been entertaining talks with the Taliban for two decades, we've let them hide behind Pakistan's borders and the protection of the ISI, we've let them roam the countryside unchecked, we've let them muck about on social media and recruit foreigners to their cause, and so many other fucking stupid decisions that have allowed the Taliban to continue their evil existence. This war should've been over 20 fucking years ago but the MIC had to stick it's dick in ruin everything to the point of making us repeat all the same fucking mistakes we made in Vietnam like we learned absolutely fuck-all. Christ in a hand-basket. What happened to waging wars to, y'know, actually fucking win them and attain desirable results? Good God. I feel like I'm living in clown world.

[Diahon]

yes, jenny, speak my tongue

[Washington Resistance Army]

What happened to waging wars to, y'know, actually fucking win them and attain desirable results?

Modern progressive liberal morality really. Wars are bloody endeavors and especially when the lines between civilian and combatant are blurred like in the case of the Taliban and other asymmetric groups you have to make lots of very questionable calls and decisions to win. A nation like China could do it, but we just really can't anymore, we're too stuck on the idea of warfare being an honorable thing with strict rules to be followed and the idea that we can simply nation build and make everyone be like us.

[Tarsonis]

Off-topic, but let us take a moment to show our appreciation for Kowani, the Keeper of the News.

---

As I said before with regards the United Nations seat: we should accept reality. Whether or not we want the Taliban around doesn’t change the fact that right now, right there, they are in charge and nobody seems to have both the power and motivation to kick them out.

Humanitarian assistance is a stickier point than just diplomatic recognition, but I can see the reasoning in it.

Yeah, that's a hard "no" from me dawg.

I'm tired of this notion that we should tolerate brutal and oppressive regimes because of some arbitrary measure of diplomatic conduct or whatever the fuck other excuse is made. The Taliban deserve nothing short of annihilation. They are slavers, drug traffickers, and terrorists. They use human shields, suicide bombers, and throw acid on people. They rape, loot, and murder with reckless abandon. They are not and should not be recognized as a lawful government; they should be utterly destroyed and I'm getting tired of absolutely no one willing to actually pursue this objective being in a position to make this happen. For 20 fucking years we've been pussyfooting around the idea of actually fighting the Taliban and it's gotten us absolutely jack all. We did not give the Nazis an inch and didn't stop until they were mercilessly crushed; no entertainment of peace, no conditions, no negotiations - we outright destroyed them. We didn't stop until unconditional surrender.

May comparison we've been entertaining talks with the Taliban for two decades, we've let them hide behind Pakistan's borders and the protection of the ISI, we've let them roam the countryside unchecked, we've let them muck about on social media and recruit foreigners to their cause, and so many other fucking stupid decisions that have allowed the Taliban to continue their evil existence. This war should've been over 20 fucking years ago but the MIC had to stick it's dick in ruin everything to the point of making us repeat all the same fucking mistakes we made in Vietnam like we learned absolutely fuck-all. Christ in a hand-basket. What happened to waging wars to, y'know, actually fucking win them and attain desirable results? Good God. I feel like I'm living in clown world.

What happened? the press. When the press got involved, the politicians got involved. We don't fight wars to win anymore, we don't let our generals do their jobs. We haven't since WW2, maybe Korea.

[Chess Reloaded]

What happened to waging wars to, y'know, actually fucking win them and attain desirable results?

Modern progressive liberal morality really. Wars are bloody endeavors and especially when the lines between civilian and combatant are blurred like in the case of the Taliban and other asymmetric groups you have to make lots of very questionable calls and decisions to win. A nation like China could do it, but we just really can't anymore, we're too stuck on the idea of warfare being an honorable thing with strict rules to be followed and the idea that we can simply nation build and make everyone be like us.

If you're criticizing America for not using terrorism, they absolutely did, so did their puppet. If you're saying it wasn't enough terrorism, the USSR employed much more and had more combat experience than China which doesn't have a military with wartime expertise

[Washington Resistance Army]

Modern progressive liberal morality really. Wars are bloody endeavors and especially when the lines between civilian and combatant are blurred like in the case of the Taliban and other asymmetric groups you have to make lots of very questionable calls and decisions to win. A nation like China could do it, but we just really can't anymore, we're too stuck on the idea of warfare being an honorable thing with strict rules to be followed and the idea that we can simply nation build and make everyone be like us.

If you're criticizing America for not using terrorism, they absolutely did, so did their puppet. If you're saying it wasn't enough terrorism, the USSR employed much more and had more combat experience than China which doesn't have a military with wartime expertise

And it's little surprise that the USSR was absolutley slaughtering the Mujahedeen en masse before the US, through Pakistan, started running them the equipment they needed to fight back.

[Kubra]

In what sense were the Taliban schooled in 'modern warfare'?

Milita forces do not actually need an abundance of schooling on modern warfare when their opponents lack morale and cohesion. Brett Devereaux, whose article I cited above, goes to great lengths to unpack the misconceptions many westerners have regarding comparisons between militia forces and professional forces - nerdily enough by examining the contrast presented by the fighting Uruk-hai of Saruman and the feudal militia of Rohan.

A professional military is heavily dependent upon building cohesion, group identity, and parallel hierarchies to remain effective. It also performs best when the broader culture of a society is accustomed to industry and complex equipment. There's a reason the Taliban probably aren't going to make much use of the massive air force we left them. They do not have the technical know-how or productive capacities to keep it operational, and it's effectiveness is limited enough as is in mountainous terrain.

But I digress. Going back to militia forces, they do have several advantages over professional forces. They come with pre-built social hierarchies that can be transplanted from civilian settings - which can be seen in the mullahs, qadis, and local tribal allies holding a good amount of sway, often over localized, independent forces. They have naturally high morale and cohesion since many of these men will have been drawn from similar backgrounds, possibly from the same villages or madrassas. This means that, in the absence of adequate drilling and morale by a professional force, the militia will win exceedingly often. As happened in Iraq initially, as happened in Lebanon in 2006, and as happened during the Punic War.

That's right. The army that defeated Hannibal at Zama was technically an upjumped militia fighting against a combined force of professional mercenaries and local Carthiginian and Libyan militias.

They were essentially an unmechanized militia sans artillery, air support or a sophisticated command structure: if they had any of this, the Americans would have targetted it. I doubt there was any sophisticated plan of attack at all. The actual events suggest a complete collapse of the Afghani army once the underpinning support, the Americans, was removed. If it were a military triumph, then there would have been no mass surrenders. The ANA were defeated politically to paraphrase Clausewitz, not militarily. There are innumerable reasons for this, from the poor quality of troops, corruption, tribalism, over reliance on American forces to accomplish anything &c.

A political defeat is essentially the same as a military defeat. You don't have to kill your enemy, as Devereaux points out in several of his articles, you simply have to lower their morale and cohesion enough that they fall to pieces and run away. The ANA, on the whole, did not have high levels of morale and cohesion. The portions of it that did joined the Resistance and are presently hiding in the hills and mountains.

The Iraqi army fell apart in the face of ISIL too, and I doubt most people would assert that the largely Shia military was welcoming Sunni hardliners who had a penchant for sexual violence and murder. I think this largely reveals the conceit we have about how military forces function. We pay too little attention to pecularities of culture, and, frankly, we played next to no role in ensuring adequate morale and cohesion in the ANA.

The blog of a historian of Rome and a book concerning the standing armies of Arab counties aren't particularly relevant. The latter, aside from the point that Pashtuns aren't Arab, mainly deals with conventional conflicts and has little to say regarding politics.

As I said... you have to read into them a bit and extrapolate ideals. I find it exceedingly relevant given what happened in Iraq and Lebanon seems to have happened in Afghanistan.

While it is true that "political defeat is military defeat", intimately true, that's a more clausewitzian statement than our friend here has made, it is nonetheless important to make a distinction between victory by arms and by policy, both for the sake of pedantry (no hate there yo pedantry rules) and to highlight simply how exactly a military/political state of affairs comes to be. If the taliban had committed instead to an all out attack instead of its clever working of local kin affiliations, we'd be talking of the afghan situation very differently.

As for the matter of militia vs professional forces, the real substantial difference is that the latter train to operate in unfamiliar environments, and also you know general professional skills. Militia are good when they're locals, or at least approximate locals who generally know how the turf works, and it's something a professional force can never really aspire to. It's the knowledge culmination of years of just, like, living there. Folks talk shit about the national guard, but if they had to hold the line against a Canadian onslaught in Montana you can bet they'd do pretty damn fine.
Romans don't count, their polity is a wee bit different when it comes to military affairs than our own.

[Chess Reloaded]

If you're criticizing America for not using terrorism, they absolutely did, so did their puppet. If you're saying it wasn't enough terrorism, the USSR employed much more and had more combat experience than China which doesn't have a military with wartime expertise

And it's little surprise that the USSR was absolutley slaughtering the Mujahedeen en masse before the US, through Pakistan, started running them the equipment they needed to fight back.

The USSR was slaughtering them but it was their miscalculation that that's all victory took. Their rate of slaughter didn't slow,the terrorism you admire killed millions in Afghanistan. But it was bankrupting the USSR and that's what ended it

[Washington Resistance Army]

And it's little surprise that the USSR was absolutley slaughtering the Mujahedeen en masse before the US, through Pakistan, started running them the equipment they needed to fight back.

The USSR was slaughtering them but it was their miscalculation that that's all victory took. Their rate of slaughter didn't slow,the terrorism you admire killed millions in Afghanistan. But it was bankrupting the USSR and that's what ended it

The USSR imploding from decades of economic mismanagement and a slavishly cult like dedication to heavy industry at the expense of standards of living and consumer goods is what ended it. The Soviets had more than enough men and material to continue the war ad infinitum, but it's kinda hard to do that when your constituent republics are starting to declare independence and things are generally on fire.

[Chess Reloaded]

Killing people costs money. A lot of money. While insurgent terrorism has been very good at making it cost effective, USSR and American terrorism just isn't.

[Kubra]

The USSR was slaughtering them but it was their miscalculation that that's all victory took. Their rate of slaughter didn't slow,the terrorism you admire killed millions in Afghanistan. But it was bankrupting the USSR and that's what ended it

The USSR imploding from decades of economic mismanagement and a slavishly cult like dedication to heavy industry at the expense of standards of living and consumer goods is what ended it. The Soviets had more than enough men and material to continue the war ad infinitum, but it's kinda hard to do that when your constituent republics are starting to declare independence and things are generally on fire.

Yo I was about to post this. For real, nothing about afghanistan bankrupted the soviets more than they were already doing. A drop of piss in a piss-bucket.
The effect of the afghan war was really just making a generation of straight up embittered vets, caught between their afghan opponents, their cruel superiors, and a logistics apparatus that figured if you just scrape off the rotten bits it's perfectly edible. If there's one silver lining, the US experience in afghanistan is nowhere near as depressing.

[Chess Reloaded]

The USSR imploding from decades of economic mismanagement and a slavishly cult like dedication to heavy industry at the expense of standards of living and consumer goods is what ended it. The Soviets had more than enough men and material to continue the war ad infinitum, but it's kinda hard to do that when your constituent republics are starting to declare independence and things are generally on fire.

Yo I was about to post this. For real, nothing about afghanistan bankrupted the soviets more than they were already doing. A drop of piss in a piss-bucket.
The effect of the afghan war was really just making a generation of straight up embittered vets, caught between their afghan opponents, their cruel superiors, and a logistics apparatus that figured if you just scrape off the rotten bits it's perfectly edible. If there's one silver lining, the US experience in afghanistan is nowhere near as depressing.

I don't think you realize how much it was costing for every bomb dropped to get rid of some hovels and kids. Especially when the Afghans starred building massive networks of dummy trenches to draw air strikes in order to bankrupt the USSR--the idea of Ibn Laden who calculated the amount of explosives and its cost uses by the USSR versus each combatant killed and determined the USSR could win on the ground but not financially. He ultimately gave a speech saying the same thing would happen with America, which could dominate the ground but would not be able to sustain it out if economic considerations

[Washington Resistance Army]

Yo I was about to post this. For real, nothing about afghanistan bankrupted the soviets more than they were already doing. A drop of piss in a piss-bucket.
The effect of the afghan war was really just making a generation of straight up embittered vets, caught between their afghan opponents, their cruel superiors, and a logistics apparatus that figured if you just scrape off the rotten bits it's perfectly edible. If there's one silver lining, the US experience in afghanistan is nowhere near as depressing.

I don't think you realize how much it was costing for every bomb dropped to get rid of some hovels and kids. Especially when the Afghans starred building massive networks of dummy trenches to draw air strikes in order to bankrupt the USSR--the idea of Ibn Laden who calculated the amount of explosives and its cost uses by the USSR versus each combatant killed and determined the USSR could win on the ground but not financially. He ultimately gave a speech saying the same thing would happen with America, which could dominate the ground but would not be able to sustain it out if economic considerations

I think you drastically overestimate the cost of Soviet warfare. There's a lot to be said about Soviet economics but one thing it did very well was produce war fighting equipment at almost no real cost, even advanced things like MBT's cost the Soviet government barely anything. Dumb fired bombs probably cost them no more than a few dollars each.

[Kubra]

Yo I was about to post this. For real, nothing about afghanistan bankrupted the soviets more than they were already doing. A drop of piss in a piss-bucket.
The effect of the afghan war was really just making a generation of straight up embittered vets, caught between their afghan opponents, their cruel superiors, and a logistics apparatus that figured if you just scrape off the rotten bits it's perfectly edible. If there's one silver lining, the US experience in afghanistan is nowhere near as depressing.

I don't think you realize how much it was costing for every bomb dropped to get rid of some hovels and kids. Especially when the Afghans starred building massive networks of funny trenches to draw air strikes in order to bankrupt the USSR--the idea of Ibn Laden who calculated the amount of explosives and its cost uses by the USSR versus each combatant killed and determined the USSR could win on the ground but not financially. He ultimately gave a speech saying the same thing would happen with America, which could dominate the ground but would not be able to sustain it out if economic considerations

No more than the bombs and other subsidies it offered particular clients at cut-rates elsewhere.
To restate, the point is that the USSR was losing money *everywhere* on nearly every front, to say nothing of Afghanistan. It's why it could stand a war that cost a few billion, while the US was able to sustain the war into the trillions: when a balance book is all red, you really gotta cut *something* out.

[Kubra]

I don't think you realize how much it was costing for every bomb dropped to get rid of some hovels and kids. Especially when the Afghans starred building massive networks of dummy trenches to draw air strikes in order to bankrupt the USSR--the idea of Ibn Laden who calculated the amount of explosives and its cost uses by the USSR versus each combatant killed and determined the USSR could win on the ground but not financially. He ultimately gave a speech saying the same thing would happen with America, which could dominate the ground but would not be able to sustain it out if economic considerations

I think you drastically overestimate the cost of Soviet warfare. There's a lot to be said about Soviet economics but one thing it did very well was produce war fighting equipment at almost no real cost, even advanced things like MBT's cost the Soviet government barely anything. Dumb fired bombs probably cost them no more than a few dollars each.

People (including serious marxist economists) always gripe about the cost of soviet defense spending, but really their arms industry was one of the few well run enough to actually produce products that could be exported at a profit, especially with the soviets, well, less-than-palatable sales strategies. Motherfuckers were the payday loan's of the arms industry.

[Insaanistan]

The Taliban are stretched thin enough they’ve begun arming children.
Absolutely disgusting.

[Senkaku]

What happened to waging wars to, y'know, actually fucking win them and attain desirable results?

Modern progressive liberal morality really. Wars are bloody endeavors and especially when the lines between civilian and combatant are blurred like in the case of the Taliban and other asymmetric groups you have to make lots of very questionable calls and decisions to win. A nation like China could do it, but we just really can't anymore, we're too stuck on the idea of warfare being an honorable thing with strict rules to be followed and the idea that we can simply nation build and make everyone be like us.

yes, the problem with the war in Afghanistan was that we did not make enough questionable decisions about the lines between civilian and combatant

[Kubra]

Modern progressive liberal morality really. Wars are bloody endeavors and especially when the lines between civilian and combatant are blurred like in the case of the Taliban and other asymmetric groups you have to make lots of very questionable calls and decisions to win. A nation like China could do it, but we just really can't anymore, we're too stuck on the idea of warfare being an honorable thing with strict rules to be followed and the idea that we can simply nation build and make everyone be like us.

yes, the problem with the war in Afghanistan was that we did not make enough questionable decisions about the lines between civilian and combatant

Yeah uh actually the afghans liked us more than the iraqi's did until, er, a slight preliminary bombing campaign.
Everyone is enamoured with cruel ways of war as a means of dealing with insurgency, but that's because such people are cheapskates, and misguided cheapskates at that. A bomb feeds no one, while at least a bribe buys a range rover.