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2021-08-20 Afghanistan

What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban

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Posted by Besoeker 2021-08-20 11:09|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ] Top
File under: Taliban/IEA

#1 Just cast's a bright light on how badly we did against a not particularly motivated enemy. COVID zealots are more fanatical than the average jihadi.

Posted by M. Murcek 2021-08-20 11:27|| 2021-08-20 11:27|| Front Page Top

#2 You may win battles with sufficient resources and proper organization. But you will never dominate without sufficient hatred. Unless the west can learn this lesson, it is doomed to fall to jihad, commies, globalists what have you.

Posted by Dron66046 2021-08-20 11:36|| 2021-08-20 11:36|| Front Page Top

#3 We will have to kill all the bleeding hearts here first. It's a tall order, but doable...

Posted by M. Murcek 2021-08-20 12:02|| 2021-08-20 12:02|| Front Page Top

#4 Having been in combat i can assure you "we can hate".

Posted by crazyhorse 2021-08-20 12:32|| 2021-08-20 12:32|| Front Page Top

#5 Interesting that this guy posted his description of his job. I had an identical job when I was in Vietnam and haven't talked about it since, except the time my plane got shot up -- and that wasn't job content. I wonder if they've changed the rules or if they don't apply to him.

Posted by Fred 2021-08-20 12:39|| 2021-08-20 12:39|| Front Page Top

#6 Its The Atlantic, so I guess he is special.

Posted by swksvolFF 2021-08-20 13:01|| 2021-08-20 13:01|| Front Page Top

#7 Maybe good fodder for stories at the VFW, but it strikes me as way too much detail in terms of our listening capabilities to be published in a magazine.

Posted by SteveS 2021-08-20 13:08|| 2021-08-20 13:08|| Front Page Top

#8
#6
He may not exist, it is the Atlantic after all.

Posted by Xyz 2021-08-20 13:09|| 2021-08-20 13:09|| Front Page Top

#9 #5, Fred, me too. No talk either.

Posted by illeagle 2021-08-20 14:45|| 2021-08-20 14:45|| Front Page Top

#10 Could be like the "Three Teas" dude a while back, whose story about Afghan culture proved to be less than truthful.

Posted by badanov 2021-08-20 15:24|| 2021-08-20 15:24|| Front Page Top

#11 They told me how they planned to keep killing Americans... what weapons they would use, where they would do it, how many they hoped to murder. Often, they told me these things while doing the killing. They told me that, God willing, the world would be made in their image.

While I didn't interact with the taliban, I did with baloch and other organized groups. This is not what men discuss. Most of the time it's just desperate bursts of tactical info and sometimes short messages between those manning the comms.

You can recognize where the writer goes into gimme-a-pulitzer territory at times.

Posted by Dron66046 2021-08-20 15:30|| 2021-08-20 15:30|| Front Page Top

#12 Three cups of tea

Posted by badanov 2021-08-20 15:33|| 2021-08-20 15:33|| Front Page Top

#13 Technically, only two people had the exact training I had.

Since we are sharing secrets, the other is Brian Williams.

Posted by swksvolFF 2021-08-20 17:33|| 2021-08-20 17:33|| Front Page Top

#14 Did they train each other?

Posted by Fred 2021-08-20 19:20|| 2021-08-20 19:20|| Front Page Top

#15 There is enuf valid TTP (Tactics Techniques & Procedures) in this article to make it credible. Just my penny farthings worth.

Posted by Besoeker 2021-08-20 19:34|| 2021-08-20 19:34|| Front Page Top

#16 Technically, only two people had the exact training I had.

Others came in with slightly different knowledge bases, so their training to do this or similar jobs had to be specialized to target their particular lacks so that in the end they arrived at the same place, ability-wise. Or a slightly different place, depending on the specific needs for their particular assignments— the US military is keen to add specialized knowledge for a specific task for those capable of absorbing the information. I once met a civilian translator once who had been put through a language course for Bosnian or some such minor European language — only the latest language he’d taken on for the job.

Perhaps our Atlantic journalist was kept unaware of the others before and after him, flying in circles over different areas of operation. It’s a big country, after all, and it’s been ten years by his own report.

Ten years after my last deployment, and after 20 years of combat with the world’s richest, most advanced military, the Taliban has reclaimed Afghanistan. Whatever delusions existed about whether this would happen or how long it might take have been dispatched as efficiently as the Afghan security forces were by the Taliban over a single week. What little gains have been achieved in women’s rights, education, and poverty will be systematically eradicated. Any semblance of democracy will be lost. And while there might be "peace," it will come only after any remaining forces of opposition are overwhelmed or dead. The Taliban told us this. Or at least they told me.

As I recall, the Taliban only ruled from Kabul last time from 1996 to 2001. And it doesn’t look like they’ve learnt all that much since then. Something to ponder.

Posted by trailing wife 2021-08-20 21:35|| 2021-08-20 21:35|| Front Page Top

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