when parties negotiate they expect the others to come through. the timeline took forever to negotiate and was already formed on a very hopeful outlook.

would it be folly to assume the Taliban is going to honor a deal? imo, yes it is folly. but we then doubled down on giving them every incentive not to honor it.

if the Taliban fucked up the deal then at least we could say hey look we did our part they fucked everyone else over its drone time while we pull out and the rest of the world and even our citizens may have been like well okay fine. now we have no bargaining chip and Kabul’s airport looks like a frat party from hell.

intelligence agencies lol come on. they’re too busy with dossiers and somehow figured out jan 6th was gonna happen months in advance yet failed to alert all of our security apparatuses to oh i dunno increase security presence.

Itd be a real shame if someone accidentally firebombed it all wink wink 🔥 🔥 😎

Has there actually ever been successful nation building by the US aside from Germany, Italy and Japan post-ww2? And keep in mind that all 3 of these were modern, prosperous countries with an educated population, solid state structures and a strong industrial base.


Regarding the original timeline: does anyone know how the withdrawal from Afghanistan was supposed to go down according to the Trump admin planning? Would they also have pulled out the military while leaving civilians and Afghan allies behind, trusting on the Afghan military to hold the cities?
Yup, and that's the big question when it comes to the blame game: did the Trump plans also hinge on this obvious miscalculation? If yes, than harping on about how Biden botched things is unfounded. If the Biden admin really changed the operative planning for the worse, than he deserves the blame.

I'm not convinced that Americans would support intervention if the Taliban reneged given that the majority want us out. We're pretty fickle though so maybe that would have happened. As for the rest of the world, I don't think they care at all at this point. There is a looming humanitarian crisis and the best they'll do is say that they are sad. Maybe they'll condemn it but not after condemning Israel 10 times. Countries like France virtue signal harder than a Gen Z'er on tik tok.

Personally, I think if you're going to pull out, using military force to slow the attack is unwise because that could really escalate things.

A swift but efficient drone campaign isnt intervention. Just say fine you blew the deal heres some shells okay bye we’re out.

The Afghani army was going to surrender anyway that much is clear.

agreed with your point on the rest of the world. but i like to cover the bases because i travel so much. and despite their virtue signaling, they love that it isn’t them pissing everyone else off anymore. somehow everyone loves france and germany and england etc. they can focus on harassment of the locals

This post was edited by excellence on Aug 15 2021 08:27pm

When I was talking bout "material circumstances", I was thinking standard of living, not geography. But sure, if we include geographic conditions in this category, than it's more of a mix of both.


What you said about Ancient Egypt is a good point btw. A similar example is the North China Plain: the vast, flat terrain meant that communication by horse was very efficient and quick. This lead to a relatively uniform language, contributed to the unification of the region under centralized rule and facilitated the formation of an advanced administrative state.

I think South Korea is an example of success in that regard. Also, I'd argue that nation building in Kosovo/Bosnia have been decently successful. Now, for the Muslim world, I'm not sure we have much success there. In Iran, our government was toppled. Iraq MIGHT be considered a success story at this point? I think it really depends on your point of view of "success." I'm of the opinion that it's ethical to engage in nation building even if it comes at great cost. Sure, in hindsight it would have been easier to just leave Afghanistan as a crater but that's very very risky.

Given that Trump abandoned the Kurds, I can't imagine that he wouldn't abandon the people who helped us in Afghanistan too. I have to imagine that the military planned all their operations around bad intel. These things take time and I'm not sure if the President is deeply involved in such planning. Now, maybe Trump would have used military force given that he killed Solemani but that has risks as well.

South Korea spent decades after the war as a brutal military/police dictatorship, it took until the late 80s/early 90s until democratization really set in. This is also the timeframe when they started taking off economically, so I'm not sure if this should be considered a case of nation building or how much praise the U.S. deserve for their development. To me it seems as if the South Koreans figured it out on their own eventually.

Kosovo and Bosnia would again devolve into ethnic wars within five-ish years if international troops left. The wounds from the 90s never really healed, the different people within these states coexist, but there is very little interaction, growing together or just forgiveness. And I'm not just talking out of my ass here - one of my best friends spent two years as a KFOR soldier in Pristina and experienced it first-hand.



You're probably right that the botched execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan is on the Pentagon and the intelligence community more so than it is on Biden (or Trump for that matter).

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 15 2021 08:45pm

I guess it depends on your success criteria then. In the South Korea case, we've had tens of thousands of troops since the war. Just because it wasn't a democracy for decades doesn't mean it's not successful in its objectives.

No, wait - I don't dispute that SK has eventually turned into a huge success story. I just don't think that it's an example of nation building.
Sure, there has been constant troop presence, but there were very little efforts at democratization (otherwise SK would not have been a repressive police state for decades) or building up institutions.