The Afghan army and police were “very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day.”
Gen. Mark Milley (2013)
For years, it was well known that the ocean of money that the American government threw at Afghanistan had resulted in rampant corruption of both Afghan politicians and “military” as well as American contractors (Ambassador Douglas Lute said we spent $1 million per soldier to get them Burger King and bottled water). It was also well known that many of the “valiant” Afghan military forces, all 300,000 of them – salaries paid by the United States – were worthless. This had been evident in the field. The Afghans pretended at being soldiers while the Americans paid them to do so. Both the Afghan “military,” the translators, clerks, and politicians were helping the Americans, not because they were dedicated to democracy, women’s rights, gay rights and transexual bathrooms, but because they wanted a steady paycheck. When the Taliban surfaced, they didn’t fire a shot.
The American generals (many of whom are really opportunist careerists) hyped up the Afghan forces for the benefit of the media and the elected politicians, who wanted desperately to believe their own delusions that the Afghans could be turned into good little Americans through nation building, complete with the gender studies crap, ignoring the yawning gap in cultural differences. The people below the generals realized early on that the colonels and generals (and President Bush) did not want to hear bad news or any facts that dispelled their delusions (“Bad news was often stifled”). All this was compounded by the idiotic American habit of believing anything that a foreigner tells them as long as it is said with an ingratiating smile. So the whole deck of cards fell down.
And the situation worsened by Pseudopresident Biden’s dementia and the mediocrities around him. His dementia has been evident for all to see, but the media has bent over backwards to ignore it and publicize it. Suffice it to say that the British Parliament has held Biden in contempt (the American media did not report it).
As for the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) said it best: “Biden has been ill advised by the clown generals who are ‘studying’ cross dressing and Marxism instead of studying the history of war in Afghanistan.”
In leaving the country, the Americans had deluded themselves that the native military would fight. Instead, Afghanistan has developed just like Vietnam. Both military forces quickly collapsed against an initial attack by a determined enemy (at least the Vietnamese fired a few shots). Both had always relied on Americans doing the fighting for them. Both presidents abandoned their countries, taking with them a pile of money to add to their Swiss bank accounts, enough for them to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives. The enemy captured a fortune in military hardware. The obsessive American idiocy of nation building was evident for all to see. And leftists will again rejoice at “another American defeat,” even though no American forces were involved in either fiasco.
A few years back I wrote that since Osama bin Laden, the person who had been responsible for the 9/11 deaths, had finally been found and killed, it was time to leave Afghanistan, which is why we had gone in there in the first place, and we should just let the cards fall where they would. Mission truly accomplished. As far as wars go, this 20-year-old war was minor, with comparatively few casualties, and we should have left long ago and in an orderly manner, once the mission was accomplished.
Since I am not one of the anointed elites, my view was not even noticed. The media, the war profiteers (aka, the contractors), the generals, the State Department bureaucracy, had other plans. One trillion dollars were flushed down the toilet in one way or the other and a number of American soldiers became amputees for their sake.
And now, compounding the idiocy, to the response of the eternal, nauseating cries of the media, “We have a moral responsibility to-” it is estimated that 30,000 Afghans – almost all young men of military age, single, and Muslim – will be brought into the United States or Europe as refugees.
What could possibly go wrong? (though I admit that a good case could be made for accepting the women and young girls as refugees.)
Already, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has advocated bringing to Europe more Muslims as “a moral duty.” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven of Sweden, however, said Sweden had learned its lesson and will not take in any Afghans. Good for him!
Now the question becomes, will the responsible buffoons in the Pentagon and the State Department ever be fired? (General Milley has been described as “quite possibly the most incompetent imbecile in the history of the U.S. armed forces”)
No.
Well, then, will the American government learn from its mistakes?
No. We will continue to stick our noses everywhere in the world whenever there is a crisis somewhere, encouraged by the media, confident that our ignorance, our delusions, and our good intentions will always carry the day.
One last point. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the people had been used to the Americans doing the fighting for them. There has been a running joke among Nato allies that, if Russia ever invades westward, Europe will defend their countries down to the last American.