phuketrichard wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 8:45 am just started reading, "Descent into Chaos" by Ahmed Rashid
written after 9/11 and after a few years and billions spent trying to defeat the Taliban and make Afghanistan livable>
How far will the Taliban get with NO $$

I fear the country is lost

$$$ ? That book sounds outdated allready !
They can sell some helicopters that they can’t maintain .
Sell some things the losers left behind .
They can demand more $$$ for false promises , bribes or ransoms .
Many ways
Where there is a will , there’s a way

Plus, money swarms out of every knothole during war as my Dad used to say.

Money didn't help us much.
I'll venture to propose that our big dollar, big equipment strategy has lost us nearly every war we have attempted over the past 60 or 70 years.
52's and F111's V. AK47's and Ho Chi Minh sandals is a meme but it is also true history.

We have been blinded by the brilliance of our weapons.
The Vietnamese won because they knew there was still starlight on a moonless night.

Profit is the sole motivation for corporations- many of which find it in the military sector.
Winning is not profitable.

Corporate war V. The Cause
No contest..... for 70 years.

How flockin' dumb can you get West Point, Sandhurst, HMAS Watson Naval War College?
You call yourself professional? You call yourself competent?

by relying on Lockheed Martin up against a burning heart?
ffs

Oh, I am no advocate of the MIC, nor can I pretend it does not exist.

I realise that Nemo, i reckon you are quite clued in about these things (sometimes )

I'm just tearing my hair out about this and have been for years
- but that's not unusual, i've got a long list of hair pulling issues, as you know.

Our whole approach to war just seems so obviously foolish to me.
You have to have a burning heart to win a war. imo. and that has been proved, to our cost, again and again and again.

Money cannot buy everything. Throwing $$$ at a country for the last 20 years didn't achieve much as far as winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. OTOH the corrupt officials in the puppet regime did OK. Whether the average Afghan benefitted much is another story. Certainly, if the Afghan army and the people had been suitably 'converted' and believed in the cause, they would have put up a decent fight to prevent the Taliban coming back.

After all, the Taliban had been the existing government from 1996 until 2001 when the US invaded the country. All on the premise to seek out and dismantle al-Queda the terrorists responsible for 9/11. The Taliban government were overthrown on the basis that they were harbouring al-Queda and didn't want to hand them over.

Having killed a lot of terrorists, others fled to Pakistan and even the mastermind, Osama bin Laden was later killed. So, arguably the US achieved their original goal of routing out the terrorists. However having done so, they then stayed to now fight the Taliban and support a pro western installed democratic government. The original goal and intent had changed. Just like the invasion of Iraq on the premise of weapons of mass destruction but found none. Indeed, the US were previously happy to support Saddam Hussein whilst he was waging war against Iran..

Anyway, from the Taliban's point of view the country is not lost, they have merely regained what was theirs before the invasion.

Pakistan is going hard. capitalising all their past efforts to the max.
Providing all the $$$, logistics, intell and tech that the Taliban desperately need right now to bed in their rule and start running a country.

Join the Indian Curry Club, folks. Everybody!
We've got a new allie. (on more fronts than one) so have the "Good Guy Afghans"
lol, whoever they turn out to be