War, what is it good for?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

It sounds like an escalation of hostilities on a local level, but I would point out that the "battaions of Afghan Taliban" are in their positions because of the failure of Western intervention in the past.

When I see statements like this, I always wonder what counterfactuals the author envisions and what exactly they’d change about the past if they could.

Pre-Cold War Afghanistan was a deeply tribal, religiously fundamentalist backwater. There’s little reason to believe it would have thrived in the absence of foreign intervention.

The Soviet invasion granted the Mujahedeen legitimacy as a resistance force. The West supported that force militarily, even though some of them were clearly bad guys. But should the West have just stayed out of it? Where would a Soviet take-over of Afghanistan have left the country?

The Mujahedeen went on to fight in a brutal civil war, but it was bad guys against bad guys - theocrats vs. warlords. If the Soviet invasion hadn't given the Mujahedeen legitimacy, and the West hadn't armed it, maybe the civil war would have been prevented? Sounds great, but if that's the case Afghanistan remains failed state ruled by warlords.

The West spent a ton of money and manpower deposing the Mujahadeen (which had since morphed into the Taliban) after 9/11. But it turned out that imposing a liberal democracy by force is basically impossible - something that ought to have been considered in advance. 20 years later the West leaves, rather shamefully, having achieved basically no lasting gains. Should the West have instead stayed indefinitely and hoped that, after some decades of imposing a very flawed democracy on the Afghans, their culture would change to accommodate it? Should the West have never gone back to Afghanistan in the 21st century and instead allowed the Taliban an additional ~20 years of torturous theocratic rule?

[Jamiet99uk]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

That just seems like a strange counterfactual.

Without foreign intervention, Afghanistan’s domestic reality wouldn’t have been peaceful or stable—it likely would have been perpetual warlordism or Taliban theocracy. Pre-Cold War Afghanistan was fragmented, impoverished, and prone to conflict. These weaknesses are, in part, why Afghanistan perpetually suffers from foreign invasion.

How would the West give Afghanistan massive amounts of humanitarian aid while it's a failed state ruled either by warlords or the Taliban, neither of whom had any real interest in fostering civil society? Even under better circumstances, foreign aid has a poor track record of producing happy and wealthy societies.

And in the context of the 2001 war, an awful lot of Western money was in fact poured into the "useful" things I expect you have in mind (e.g., infrastructure, education, and governance). Yet that "useful" spending also didn't make much of a lasting impact.

[flash2015]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

I agree with you mostly here...but the question is after September 11, what could the US have done instead? They had to go after Osama in Afghanistan and try to replace the government with one which wouldn't harbour people like him in the future. Unfortunately, I believe the US undermined the effort by losing focus and going after Iraq too. I wish the fracking revolution had come a decade earlier.

[Jamiet99uk]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

That just seems like a strange counterfactual.

Without foreign intervention, Afghanistan’s domestic reality wouldn’t have been peaceful or stable—it likely would have been perpetual warlordism or Taliban theocracy. Pre-Cold War Afghanistan was fragmented, impoverished, and prone to conflict. These weaknesses are, in part, why Afghanistan perpetually suffers from foreign invasion.

How would the West give Afghanistan massive amounts of humanitarian aid while it's a failed state ruled either by warlords or the Taliban, neither of whom had any real interest in fostering civil society? Even under better circumstances, foreign aid has a poor track record of producing happy and wealthy societies.

And in the context of the 2001 war, an awful lot of Western money was in fact poured into the "useful" things I expect you have in mind (e.g., infrastructure, education, and governance). Yet that "useful" spending also didn't make much of a lasting impact.

But it's still a failed state. So all the intervention and spending has made little or no difference.

You're helping confirm the validity of my point.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

That just seems like a strange counterfactual.

Without foreign intervention, Afghanistan’s domestic reality wouldn’t have been peaceful or stable—it likely would have been perpetual warlordism or Taliban theocracy. Pre-Cold War Afghanistan was fragmented, impoverished, and prone to conflict. These weaknesses are, in part, why Afghanistan perpetually suffers from foreign invasion.

How would the West give Afghanistan massive amounts of humanitarian aid while it's a failed state ruled either by warlords or the Taliban, neither of whom had any real interest in fostering civil society? Even under better circumstances, foreign aid has a poor track record of producing happy and wealthy societies.

And in the context of the 2001 war, an awful lot of Western money was in fact poured into the "useful" things I expect you have in mind (e.g., infrastructure, education, and governance). Yet that "useful" spending also didn't make much of a lasting impact.

But it's still a failed state. So all the intervention and spending has made little or no difference.

You're helping confirm the validity of my point.

Sure, I guess my point was that Afghanistan isn't plausibly just a big humanitarian cheque away from being a well functioning country. But it seems like that was maybe your point too.

[Jamiet99uk]

That just seems like a strange counterfactual.

Without foreign intervention, Afghanistan’s domestic reality wouldn’t have been peaceful or stable—it likely would have been perpetual warlordism or Taliban theocracy. Pre-Cold War Afghanistan was fragmented, impoverished, and prone to conflict. These weaknesses are, in part, why Afghanistan perpetually suffers from foreign invasion.

How would the West give Afghanistan massive amounts of humanitarian aid while it's a failed state ruled either by warlords or the Taliban, neither of whom had any real interest in fostering civil society? Even under better circumstances, foreign aid has a poor track record of producing happy and wealthy societies.

And in the context of the 2001 war, an awful lot of Western money was in fact poured into the "useful" things I expect you have in mind (e.g., infrastructure, education, and governance). Yet that "useful" spending also didn't make much of a lasting impact.

But it's still a failed state. So all the intervention and spending has made little or no difference.

You're helping confirm the validity of my point.

Sure, I guess my point was that Afghanistan isn't plausibly just a big humanitarian cheque away from being a well functioning country. But it seems like that was maybe your point too.

Indeed - I absolutely never claimed that it was. My point was that sometimes the West simply shouldn't intervene at all.

[learnedSloth]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

I agree with you mostly here...but the question is after September 11, what could the US have done instead? They had to go after Osama in Afghanistan and try to replace the government with one which wouldn't harbour people like him in the future. Unfortunately, I believe the US undermined the effort by losing focus and going after Iraq too. I wish the fracking revolution had come a decade earlier.

Just improve flight security? Occupying a country for almost 20 years seems a horribly inefficient way to avenge a terror attack.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

I agree with you mostly here...but the question is after September 11, what could the US have done instead? They had to go after Osama in Afghanistan and try to replace the government with one which wouldn't harbour people like him in the future. Unfortunately, I believe the US undermined the effort by losing focus and going after Iraq too. I wish the fracking revolution had come a decade earlier.

Just improve flight security? Occupying a country for almost 20 years seems a horribly inefficient way to avenge a terror attack.

This seems deeply ahistorical. 3,000 civilians were killed on 9/11. It totally deranged US politics. It sparked a massive expansion of the surveillance state. It led to the imposition of very costly border and customs procedures we still live with today. If America had suffered even a couple more attacks close to the magnitude of 9/11 the consequences would have dire. It's just silly to think the US should not have waged war on Al Qaeda (and any government that harboured it).

Deposing the Taliban and forcing Al Qaeda back into their hidey holes took NATO months, not decades. But its exceedingly clear in retrospect that ongoing occupation was in fact the only enduring way to prevent the Taliban from getting back into power.

After NATO withdrew in a hurry and without lasting gains, it's easy to look back at the whole thing as a mistake. But it's possible that it was merely the timing and manner of the withdrawal was mistaken. A small NATO force that occupied Afghanistan indefinitely might have continued to achieve the primary war aims of disempowering the Taliban and supporting NATO counter-terrorism operations in the region. The fig leaf that NATO was also nation building, democratizing the country, etc., was never especially believable, but the those efforts may have been a net benefit for Afghanis nonetheless. I'm personally torn on what ought to have been done.

[flash2015]

I would more simply suggest that decades of intervention from foreign powers, vast amounts of public money spent, many soldiers killed.... and the situation is, at the very best, no better than if the west had just avoided meddling in the first place. Think of all the public money that could have been spent on useful things.

I agree with you mostly here...but the question is after September 11, what could the US have done instead? They had to go after Osama in Afghanistan and try to replace the government with one which wouldn't harbour people like him in the future. Unfortunately, I believe the US undermined the effort by losing focus and going after Iraq too. I wish the fracking revolution had come a decade earlier.

Just improve flight security? Occupying a country for almost 20 years seems a horribly inefficient way to avenge a terror attack.

Are you seriously suggesting that the US just needed to improve flight security and let Osama Bin Laden get away with it? Or am I misunderstanding?

[learnedSloth]

I agree with you mostly here...but the question is after September 11, what could the US have done instead? They had to go after Osama in Afghanistan and try to replace the government with one which wouldn't harbour people like him in the future. Unfortunately, I believe the US undermined the effort by losing focus and going after Iraq too. I wish the fracking revolution had come a decade earlier.

Just improve flight security? Occupying a country for almost 20 years seems a horribly inefficient way to avenge a terror attack.

Are you seriously suggesting that the US just needed to improve flight security and let Osama Bin Laden get away with it? Or am I misunderstanding?

CIA had sent teams after him even before the 9/11 attack and he was killed in a covert operation in Pakistan in 2011. Apparently getting him didn't require the war after all.

I agree with you mostly here...but the question is after September 11, what could the US have done instead? They had to go after Osama in Afghanistan and try to replace the government with one which wouldn't harbour people like him in the future. Unfortunately, I believe the US undermined the effort by losing focus and going after Iraq too. I wish the fracking revolution had come a decade earlier.

Just improve flight security? Occupying a country for almost 20 years seems a horribly inefficient way to avenge a terror attack.

This seems deeply ahistorical. 3,000 civilians were killed on 9/11. It totally deranged US politics. It sparked a massive expansion of the surveillance state. It led to the imposition of very costly border and customs procedures we still live with today. If America had suffered even a couple more attacks close to the magnitude of 9/11 the consequences would have dire. It's just silly to think the US should not have waged war on Al Qaeda (and any government that harboured it).

It has undoubtedly effected some deterrence, but the improved security is what prevents such attacks.

Deposing the Taliban and forcing Al Qaeda back into their hidey holes took NATO months, not decades. But its exceedingly clear in retrospect that ongoing occupation was in fact the only enduring way to prevent the Taliban from getting back into power.

After NATO withdrew in a hurry and without lasting gains, it's easy to look back at the whole thing as a mistake. But it's possible that it was merely the timing and manner of the withdrawal was mistaken. A small NATO force that occupied Afghanistan indefinitely might have continued to achieve the primary war aims of disempowering the Taliban and supporting NATO counter-terrorism operations in the region. The fig leaf that NATO was also nation building, democratizing the country, etc., was never especially believable, but the those efforts may have been a net benefit for Afghanis nonetheless. I'm personally torn on what ought to have been done.

It wasn't just the poor execution of the retreat. Taliban must have recruited new fighters, so there must have been people that weren't impressed.

[flash2015]

Just improve flight security? Occupying a country for almost 20 years seems a horribly inefficient way to avenge a terror attack.

Are you seriously suggesting that the US just needed to improve flight security and let Osama Bin Laden get away with it? Or am I misunderstanding?

CIA had sent teams after him even before the 9/11 attack and he was killed in a covert operation in Pakistan in 2011. Apparently getting him didn't require the war after all.

How do you think they got the Navy SEALs there? From a base in Afghanistan. They didn't have these bases in central Asia before the war. He was in Pakistan because he couldn't stay in Afghanistan...because of the US forces there and because of the US backed government.

By 9/11, the US had been already looking for Bin Laden for years. Given they didn't have bases in central Asia, the way they tried to get him before then was to send cruise missiles from afar and hope for the best like the missile strike in 1998:

https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/3/issue/11/cruise-missile-strikes-afghanistan-and-sudan

This wasn't a very successful strategy.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

After NATO withdrew in a hurry and without lasting gains, it's easy to look back at the whole thing as a mistake. But it's possible that it was merely the timing and manner of the withdrawal was mistaken. A small NATO force that occupied Afghanistan indefinitely might have continued to achieve the primary war aims of disempowering the Taliban and supporting NATO counter-terrorism operations in the region. The fig leaf that NATO was also nation building, democratizing the country, etc., was never especially believable, but the those efforts may have been a net benefit for Afghanis nonetheless. I'm personally torn on what ought to have been done.

It wasn't just the poor execution of the retreat. Taliban must have recruited new fighters, so there must have been people that weren't impressed.

NATO was in absolutely no danger of being overrun by the Taliban. It left voluntarily.

There is some very interesting polling of Afghans from the lead up to the withdrawal: https://asiafoundation.org/publication/afghanistan-in-2021-a-survey-of-the-afghan-people/

A few key points:

• 70.9% of respondents reported a lot of fear when encountering the Taliban.

• Almost half (45.8%) of respondents believed the international military withdrawal would have mostly negative effects, while 20.2% thought it would have no effect, and only 16.3% believed the effects would be positive.

• Satisfaction with the Afghan government was falling relative to previous surveys, but 63.9% said it was doing a good job (18.6% very good, 45.3% somewhat good).

So basically no. There was no groundswell of support for the Taliban. And while it was clearly flawed, most Afghan's preferred the NATO-supported government. This wasn't Vietnam.

At the end of the day we left Afghanistan to an absolutely terrible fate that we knew could have been prevented with the continued presence of a couple thousand NATO troops. Of course there might have been renewed periods of intensified fighting if we had stayed longer, but the NATO casualties were very low in the years leading up to the withdrawal.

That's not to automatically say we (the West) should have stayed forever. We don't intervene in every situation like this globally. And I certainly wasn't volunteering to join Coalition forces. But it is hard to see this preventable tragedy take place. Plus we're not off the hook yet - Taliban rule really might make Afghanistan a staging ground for more international terrorism in the future.

[flash2015]

At the end of the day we left Afghanistan to an absolutely terrible fate that we knew could have been prevented with the continued presence of a couple thousand NATO troops. Of course there might have been renewed periods of intensified fighting if we had stayed longer, but the NATO casualties were very low in the years leading up to the withdrawal.

How are you coming up with the 2000 figure? Every year up to 2020 (when Trump decided to begin the pullout) we had way more than that in Afghanistan (it looks like there were ~12K in 2019). And it was costing us $40B a year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821

And it isn't just the troops we need to worry about. It is all the support staff, contractors and infrastructure, maintaining the airbases (like Bagram) with all the high tech military hardware.

We had spent so much time and money (20 years) trying to build a native force yet they folded like cheap suits against the Taliban.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

At the end of the day we left Afghanistan to an absolutely terrible fate that we knew could have been prevented with the continued presence of a couple thousand NATO troops. Of course there might have been renewed periods of intensified fighting if we had stayed longer, but the NATO casualties were very low in the years leading up to the withdrawal.

How are you coming up with the 2000 figure? Every year up to 2020 (when Trump decided to begin the pullout) we had way more than that in Afghanistan (it looks like there were ~12K in 2019). And it was costing us $40B a year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821

And it isn't just the troops we need to worry about. It is all the support staff, contractors and infrastructure, maintaining the airbases (like Bagram) with all the high tech military hardware.

We had spent so much time and money (20 years) trying to build a native force yet they folded like cheap suits against the Taliban.

There were only 2500 US troops in Afghanistan in the lead up to the withdrawal, out of about 13,000 total from the full Coalition. Yes, many more civilian staff and a whole heap of tax dollars were needed to support this. Since the US withdrawal is what sparked the rest of the Coalition to leave, I still feel the "couple thousand" figure is relevant.

At any given time the US has >150,000 troops stationed abroad. Most of these troops are in *much* less danger than those stationed in Afghanistan. But they are also typically achieving much less with their presence. The NATO coalition prevented 40+ million people from living under Taliban rule. It gave the US and its allies a base of operations in a strategically important part of the world. It almost certainly reduced the chance of international terrorism.

But of course you're right that even after 20 years the Afghan government and military were not ready to hold back the Taliban, who remained strong in part because they rightly suspected they could just wait out NATO. Maybe it takes more than 20 years to build a nation? Maybe it would have taken yet more aid to prop up the new Afghan state? Or maybe it was a fool's errand and Afghanistan is doomed to centuries more instability and theocracy in any plausible scenario? Obviously US citizens felt that the costs in personnel and tax dollars were no longer worth it.

I myself am deeply unsure about what should have been done. The track record of western intervention is poor and Afghanistan wasn't some resounding success story. But the costs of keeping Afghanistan where it was pre-2021 may have been worth sustaining almost indefinitely depending how you value the plight of ordinary Afghanis or the threat of international terrorism.

[Octavious]

And how much you value your nation's honour, of course. Refusing to betray every Afgan who was invested in the ideals of freedom and democracy on the basis that to do so is the action of cowards and cretins should have been reason enough by itself.

[flash2015]

There were only 2500 US troops in Afghanistan in the lead up to the withdrawal, out of about 13,000 total from the full Coalition. Yes, many more civilian staff and a whole heap of tax dollars were needed to support this. Since the US withdrawal is what sparked the rest of the Coalition to leave, I still feel the "couple thousand" figure is relevant.

Again. I am not sure where you are getting this 2500 from. The withdrawal was started by Donald Trump in 2020. As part of the withdrawal plan, Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David and released thousands of prisoners which went back into the Taliban ranks. The article I shared clearly shows that before the withdrawal there were 12K+ US troops in Iraq.

[flash2015]

At any given time the US has >150,000 troops stationed abroad. Most of these troops are in *much* less danger than those stationed in Afghanistan. But they are also typically achieving much less with their presence. The NATO coalition prevented 40+ million people from living under Taliban rule. It gave the US and its allies a base of operations in a strategically important part of the world. It almost certainly reduced the chance of international terrorism.

Staying in Afghanistan was incredibly expensive. They may have a lot more troops overseas but what they pay for everything else is far less than what they paid in Afghanistan. IFor example, if you look at the Army Overseas Operations Budget for 2024 it was 12B vs 35B in 2019. I am pretty sure you can explain most of the difference due to Afghanistan.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/239483/budget-of-the-us-army-and-the-overseas-contingency-operations/

I myself am deeply unsure about what should have been done. The track record of western intervention is poor and Afghanistan wasn't some resounding success story. But the costs of keeping Afghanistan where it was pre-2021 may have been worth sustaining almost indefinitely depending how you value the plight of ordinary Afghanis or the threat of international terrorism.

The British tried to manage Afghanistan, the Russians tried to and now the Americans tried. Everyone has failed. I am sure there are lessons to be learned here, perhaps we could have done better. I don't know.

Afghanistan is just one of many trouble spots in the world. Resources are limited. How do you decide who to help? Burma for example has been ruled by a brutal military dictatorship since the 1960s and no one really gives a shit. The country is now in the middle of a civil war and if the US could send a small fraction of the military aid it is giving to Ukraine to the rebels (many poorly equipped and not even having shoes) that government would fall.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I'm a little confused, that chart you shared also clearly shows troop counts falling below 5k by 2020. I got the 2500 number from https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210706-the-war-in-afghanistan-by-the-numbers

For sure it was expensive to stay in Afghanistan. It was a tax cost I was happy to pay that many others were clearly not.

NATO may have had a special obligation to Afghanistan after having invaded depending on your moral initiations. I feel my country did not live up to even it's most meager obligations. We made only half assed attempts to help even those Afghans who had worked with and supported our troops, for example. We took very few refugees.

And I'm not so certain the US and its allies shouldn't also be involved in Burma and several other places as well. I feel we may have a moral duty for peacekeeping and maybe even democracy promotion. That may also be a key component of our own long term security and prosperity and we may regret not doing these sorts of things as authoritarianism continues to rise globally. It betrays a lack of self confidence in democracy that has seeped into our domestic politics in the West. That's obviously a deeply unpopular stance post Cold War and especially post Iraq, given the clearly self-interested and naive manner in which the West has intervened across the globe in the past. Yet an equally naive isolationism strikes me as morally repugnant — I feel free and prosperous people owe something to those in a much worse situation than their own.

[learnedSloth]

Are you seriously suggesting that the US just needed to improve flight security and let Osama Bin Laden get away with it? Or am I misunderstanding?

CIA had sent teams after him even before the 9/11 attack and he was killed in a covert operation in Pakistan in 2011. Apparently getting him didn't require the war after all.

How do you think they got the Navy SEALs there? From a base in Afghanistan. They didn't have these bases in central Asia before the war.

I can't believe that they would have just sat on their hands for want of a nearby base.

He was in Pakistan because he couldn't stay in Afghanistan...because of the US forces there and because of the US backed government.

IOW he just left the country when they came to seek him. That's why getting him called for secrecy.

By 9/11, the US had been already looking for Bin Laden for years. Given they didn't have bases in central Asia, the way they tried to get him before then was to send cruise missiles from afar and hope for the best like the missile strike in 1998:

https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/3/issue/11/cruise-missile-strikes-afghanistan-and-sudan

This wasn't a very successful strategy.

OTOH they didn't give CIA teams in Afghanistan a try.