I served with the Nato mission in Afghanistan – it was a bloated mess
Anonymous
From relying on outsourced contractors to failing to tackle corruption, the west’s military presence was not fit for purpose
The military aren’t the group you rely upon to tackle corruption. Further, the military always rely upon outside contractors. There’s no point in spending years creating a trained killing machine to then use it cooking omelettes. Or, as my brother did, ordering in flavoured grits.
The images plastered across our screens in recent days of Afghan civilians at Hamid Karzai airport desperately trying to flee the country, as well as the bombing on Thursday, have been heartbreaking.
Lol, gay.
And, for me, slightly surreal. I lived in that airport while serving as a soldier in the British army.
Lol 2: Doublegay.
Many were on six figures and had been for years. Afghanistan for them was a cash cow, a way of putting their kids through college (most were American) or paying off a mortgage. In sum, there were too many poorly qualified people working without accountability, getting paid far too much.
Poorly paid mercenary’s sand-filled mangina is angry at well paid mercenaries.
If you want an answer to the question of why Afghanistan’s military crumbled in weeks, take a long hard look at their so-called mentors.
Yes, it definitely had nothing to do with the futility of trying to make semi-retarded, inbred goatfuckers love democracy and drag queen story hour at gunpoint.
There were some pretty unsavoury characters who worked with us in Kabul. One morning, an interpreter who had worked with the British for decades sidled up to me at breakfast and pointed at a young Afghan woman who also worked as an interpreter. In a voice loud enough for her to hear everything, he declared her a “filthy whore”. His reason? She was wearing a pair of jeans and a bright pink headscarf
Don’t worry, I assume Dominic Raab has arranged for planeloads of these cunts to move here.
To those who say that our presence was unwanted and fruitless, to those who claim that we could never hope to help change Afghanistan for the better, I would ask them to take a look at the videos of the young desperately clinging to the undercarriages of C-17s.
To those who say the Hindenburg was an inherently unsafe disaster in waiting, I would ask them to look at the videos of the flaming wreckage and charred corpses tumbling to the ground.
To those whom we promised a future, we must now open our arms. Lives are at stake. Cost is irrelevant. We must do what we can.
Ladies and gentlemen, the British Army! (jazz hands only plz, no bully)
’ Importantly, maintaining boots on the ground, albeit in a limited capacity, would have sent a clear message to the Taliban: these new Afghan institutions do not stand alone.’
And never will.
‘To those whom we promised a future, we must now open our arms. Lives are at stake. Cost is irrelevant. We must do what we can.’
For some of those who actually helped us I might say yes. But I see no reason to import the whole population of Afghanistan to the UK (or Oz) and place them on the dole.
The Afghans have liberated themselves from the wicked white West. They now have to put up with the consequences of their actions.
The Afghans had 20 years to sort themselves out and chose not to.
300,000 Afghan troops with (possibly) the best training and equipment available either ran away or changed sides. As they always have done.
The fiasco of the withdrawal though is solely Biden’s and his handlers fault and as with Vietnam, the military didn’t lose the war, the politicians did.
Adolff – did they balls.
The “military”, especially the comically medal-festooned fat clowns larping as war heroes at the Pentagon, are the main reason why the occupation of Bumfuckistan lasted 20 years.
They’ve spent over a decade lying through their teeth, at almost every level of the chain of command, to keep Operation: Neverending Clusterfuck a going concern. There was a massive expose about it in the Washington Post a couple of years ago, but nobody cared.
It should be pretty obvious after the last 5 years that elected officials in the United States have little to do with the real US government, other than giving the illusion of choice to slow-witted voters. And if they get any ideas to the contrary, weaponised prosecutors will skitter out of the undergrowth to accuse them of being KGB-controlled Commie-Nazis, while judges declare that laws only apply when they feel like it, and the rest of the permanent bureaucracy boasts about courageously reeee-sisting democratic elections.
The US military is stuffed full of the exact same type of useless fools who’ve turned the British armed forces into a sad, gay joke. They have absolutely nothing to do with national defence, they’re the militant wing of the civil service.
Joe Biden is palpably senile and clearly not in charge of anything including changing his adult nappies. He’s also being very obviously fucked in the arse by the same people who never wanted to leave Afghanistan in the first place. That’s very unlikely to be his political handlers, more likely the Pentagon and the completely unaccountable alphabet agencies decided to humiliate him for abandoning their favourite sandbox/money-laundering operation.
The Taliban, Mashallah, are not our enemy. Our enemies speak perfect English and bear shit-eating grins.
“Our enemies speak perfect English and bear shit-eating grins.”
Prime example, Peter Strzok.
“The military aren’t the group you rely upon to tackle corruption. ”
I don’t quite agree. They’re pretty good at tackling the Other End’s corruption, really.
It’s just that the methods they’re trained to use to do thus are not considered “politically viable” for the handwringers and pearl-clutchers aiming for re-election.
The situation in Afghanistan has been at the point that you’d pretty much needed a scorched earth approach ( in case of the poppy fields, literally ) to even have had a chance at “reform”.
The military never got that mandate, so they didn’t stand a chance.
Vietnam 2.0 from the start.
It’s hard to see how anyone could “solve” Afghanistan without being a devotee of Mr Hitler. And even Hitler would probably have buggered it up by trying to murder the Turkic ones and spare the Aryan ones.
Some interesting reads on how the US was effectively funding the Taliban, by employing contractors to transport fuel/weapons who had to pay bribes to local factions (including the Taliban) for safe passage. Plus also the corruption of different sides playing the US by claiming that the rival local warlord was “with the Taliban” and so on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11498443
https://abcnews.go.com/WN/Afghanistan/united-states-military-funding-taliban-afghanistan/story?id=10980527
I’d go along with Steve’s analysis. Pretty well everything the military does is to continue the game of playing soldiers. It’s its reason for being. That it occasionally goes out & does something worthwhile is an accidental bi-product. The cannon fodder do what they’re told because that’s the price of continuing to play. Those at the top give can-do to the politicians because that’s what keeps the funding tap running. The politicians want to do whatever’s electorally beneficial. Nobody really gives a fuck how many lives are lost or people maimed on either side as long as they can keep playing. Sure, squaddies coming back in body bags or missing bits is sad for friends & family. But it doesn’t do the military any harm at all. Quite the opposite. In a way, it’s good PR. Any attempt to criticise can be turned into disrespect of “Our Brave Boys”. It’s the same stunt the NHS pulls with its low level front line medical staff.
I’d add to the above, the problem is almost all countries’ military are the same. It’s the reason we need militaries in the first place. To defend ourselves against the other lot wanting to play soldiers. How many wars have been started like this? How many countries have started one have come out the end with a benefit they couldn’t have achieved by other means?
@ BiS
Joe Stalin came out in 1945 pretty much better off than he was before he invaded Poland, and no, he couldn’t have taken over eastern Europe without a war.
Not even the not-much-lamented Army Catering Corps could grot up an omelette too much. Although it does take a lot of training to turn the 10 man compo boxes in to something edible.
The Pakistani cooks @ Camp Bastion were certainly much better at cricket than we were!
I might have mentioned this before but my brother was out there for years running exactly those kitchens full of Pakistani cooks…..lots of Nepali as well.