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2021-08-29 Afghanistan
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US 'experts' who created Afghanistan mess should be fired for malpractice
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[NYPOST] Imagine a surgeon who repeatedly operates on the wrong organ, or a pilot who misses a landing time and time again, maiming and killing scores of passengers. We would revoke their professional licenses, without delay.
 Why then do we tolerate the so-called national security "experts" at the helm of the US government, who pursue, for decades, ruinous policies that cost trillions in hard-earned taxpayer money and countless American lives?
The Afghanistan collapse has proven that the US government’s ignorance of foreign cultures and mindsets can no longer be tolerated. After 20 years of immense effort by American war fighters, intelligence personnel, diplomats and aid workers to turn Afghanistan into what Westerners consider a normally functioning society, it has reverted to the same chaotic and brutal place that it has been for centuries.
It is reasonable for Americans to ask: Will anyone in the US government be held accountable for sinking $2 trillion and sacrificing more than 6,000 of our fellow citizens’ lives to achieve what was unachievable in the first place?
The reason America had to spend 20 years in Afghanistan involves a profound lack of foreign cultural expertise in the intelligence and national security communities, in which I proudly served as an intelligence officer and specialist in Russian doctrine and strategy. Failure to understand the adversary, as Sun Tzu taught us — whether it’s Afghan snuffies or Russia conducting unrestricted cyber warfare and sabotaging our elections — results in unrealistic policy goals and deficient war fighting strategies, and ultimately leads to defeat.
US planners failed to anticipate how the snuffies in Afghanistan might adapt, fight and stymie the world’s most sophisticated and technologically advanced military. The Death Eaters’ employment of essentially homemade improvised bombs (IEDs) enabled them, the weaker side, to prevail over US forces. IEDs were responsible for 60 percent of all American fatalities and half of the total US casualties in Afghanistan, and they mitigated US advantages in resources, technology and ground combat.
The US government "experts" ignored four fundamental issues while engaging in a protracted conflict in Afghanistan: how corrupt the Afghan government bureaucracy is; how hard the Taliban
 ...mindless ferocity in a turban...
-inspired snuffies — whose Afghan identity is wrapped up in resisting foreign invaders — would fight; how resourceful a weaker power can be when faced with a more powerful opponent; and how alien the Western concepts of democracy, women’s rights and the like, are for a tribal, patriarchal Afghan culture. These are not complicated issues to wrap your brain around.
You can add in having a safe haven and support from an outside source. The Talibs are controlled by the Quetta Shura. Quetta isn't inside Afghanistan. Senior Talibs travel around freely with Pak ID cards and passports.
With proper expertise and by taking stock of the Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan in the previous century, America could have avoided the exorbitant losses incurred by the longest war in US history. Instead, after the American military quickly achieved its initial objective of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, the establishment continued to press on with the usual, and doomed, mission of nation-building, security assistance, and training and equipping the incapable Afghan army.
Rather than recognizing the legitimate Rabbani government of Afghanistan and supporting it, they invented the "Southern Alliance" and put Pashtuns in power. Karzai -- a Pashtun -- promptly turned on us. The Biden administration seems to be determined to repeat that mistake by refusing to treat with the Pandjir Valley alliance under Masood, Jr.
What’s worse is that the government bureaucracy went to great lengths to conceal its incompetence behind the rubric of classified information, an approach which I experienced first-hand. My former agency, the DIA, censored significant portions of my book, which reveals the deficiencies of the intelligence community in its understanding of Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
and the Russian threat to America.
Once-confidential government documents about Afghanistan contain impressions from 400 direct participants in the Afghan war, ranging from generals to diplomats. They lay bare the stark contrast between the actual situation on the ground and the mischaracterizations and outright lies presented by government officials to Americans for almost two decades.
Sounds an awful lot like Vietnam, doesn't it? In 1969 we had McNamara. Today we have swarms of MBAs.
Washington think tanks and "Beltway bandit" consulting firms are bursting at the seams with "experts" who mucked things up for America by conjuring up "pie-in-the-sky" policy ambitions and wrongheaded warfighting strategies. These unelected babus bureaucrats rotate in and out of the government, dragging our country into endless and unwinnable wars that spill blood and waste our treasure. Few, if any, of these "professionals," as they like to call themselves, are held accountable for creating crisis after crisis across the globe.
At this point, no matter how well-meaning the establishment’s desire to remake the world in America’s image by removing every tyrant, every terrorist, and every sign of injustice and poverty, the relentless pursuit of unachievable outcomes is no longer an innocent mistake.
It is reckless. And it’s professional malpractice.
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Posted by Fred 2021-08-29 00:00||
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File under: Taliban/IEA
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Posted by Dron66046 2021-08-29 01:34||
2021-08-29 01:34||
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Posted by M. Murcek 2021-08-29 08:10||
2021-08-29 08:10||
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Posted by Besoeker 2021-08-29 10:01||
2021-08-29 10:01||
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Posted by Lord Garth 2021-08-29 11:45||
2021-08-29 11:45||
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