20 Years After 9/11 - Effects, Lessons Learned, Roads Not Taken

[JWB]

22 hours ago, RETAC21 said:

Afghanistan is no country, see the lecture I posted above. It's a bunch of tribes under a common banner.

It is the same sort of cowardice because those men chose to desert rather than try to defend their own.

[RETAC21]

13 minutes ago, JWB said:

It is the same sort of cowardice because those men chose to desert rather than try to defend their own.

Whatever.

[Nobu]

20 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Joo's in Afghanistan I think would not have gone down well. But yes, we could do with some Mossad creativity.

Point taken about in-country operations. Reports of former wanted Guantanamo inmates enjoying their best post-9/11 lives re-engaging in terrorism are frustration personified, though.

The Mossad doesn't do frustration. It does things like Operation Bayonet 2.

[EchoFiveMike]

OK, so basically the Stuart et al response is "America does great HUMINT in spite of all actual facts to the contrary."  Protip:  Getting all your sources and agents rolled up because of traitors is bad...

America does tactical and theater level HUMINT pretty well, I've been involved with that.  It's because the people doing the work, with the skin in the game are making the decisions.  And the subversive politicians/bureaucrats with their non-American and anti-American interests have little/no influence and/or awareness.    

I don't care what used to work before telegraph or radio, or what could work in some neo-Luddite world where instant comms don't exist back to the REMF's.  None of that fantasy shit is relevant.

The fundamental problem is that the political and MIC doesn't want these wars to end, they're too profitable.  This works hand in glove with all the handwringing American and American resident pussies who are scared kill wogs to win.  Any of these wars "could" have been won, at almost any point, with sufficient violence.  But that's not possible.  I get that.  If you fuckers can fantasize about impossible HUMINT/IC possibilities, I can envision far more possible strategy options.  S/F....Ken M

     

 

[sunday]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a person with a will to win sounds like.

[Angrybk]

I think E5M and I are coming to the same place from different directions — I’m more like that’s probably the only way to win so we shouldn’t get involved in that stuff unless it’s a national survival issue, vs kill em all. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

On 9/21/2021 at 8:11 PM, EchoFiveMike said:

OK, so basically the Stuart et al response is "America does great HUMINT in spite of all actual facts to the contrary."  Protip:  Getting all your sources and agents rolled up because of traitors is bad...

America does tactical and theater level HUMINT pretty well, I've been involved with that.  It's because the people doing the work, with the skin in the game are making the decisions.  And the subversive politicians/bureaucrats with their non-American and anti-American interests have little/no influence and/or awareness.    

I don't care what used to work before telegraph or radio, or what could work in some neo-Luddite world where instant comms don't exist back to the REMF's.  None of that fantasy shit is relevant.

The fundamental problem is that the political and MIC doesn't want these wars to end, they're too profitable.  This works hand in glove with all the handwringing American and American resident pussies who are scared kill wogs to win.  Any of these wars "could" have been won, at almost any point, with sufficient violence.  But that's not possible.  I get that.  If you fuckers can fantasize about impossible HUMINT/IC possibilities, I can envision far more possible strategy options.  S/F....Ken M

     

 

No, I said it's great at it when it chooses to, because it can throw money at the problem. It usually doesn't want to because tech is sexy and politically inconsequential. But it was sources that fought the war on terror, because Al Qaeda didn't like mobile phones.

There is a great podcast by the international spy museum called Spycast. More American spies out there than you think. CIA wants the world to think it's crap, it makes its job easier.

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[Doug]

On 9/5/2021 at 9:44 PM, Angrybk said:

I know I keep banging on about this, but Dubya's foreign policy team was basically the best team (on paper) in history, and they ended up making horribly bad decisions, and that dynamic should be closely studied by historians moving forward. Their obvious mistake was to launch two major wars practically at once but trying to do it the "nice guy" way. 

Re Banshee's original post, I think he's maybe (understandably) confusing public-facing newspaper editorials etc. with the actual opinions of the American people. Most USAians gave up on both of those wars a while ago; they either got bored of hearing about it or decided it was all a waste.

My personal opinion is that Iraq and Afghanistan were both incredibly stupid and wasteful, and that most of the think-tank folks who argue otherwise are either in the pockets of the military-industrial complex or are people who were so invested in Afghanistan working out (often for totally moral reasons) that they refuse to believe that the whole thing was pretty much bullshit (This would include a lot of people I know.) My favorite line of argument is the "but it's our fault for training them along Western standards, without air support they couldn't function, blah blah" -- not true at all, they gave up immediately because the paper government didn't have any legitimacy.

Moving forward, honestly I don't think our failures are going to affect the US for jack-shit overall. There wasn't a draft and we didn't suffer 58K dead like we did in Vietnam, so there's not going to be some big anti-war movement. I don't think a lot of furriners really understand how powerful the US really is -- in Afghanistan we basically poured $2 trillion dollars into a hole and lit in on fire and then pissed on it, and it didn't affect our economy in the slightest.

Europeans who are going on about "how can we trust the US anymore after this??" are crying crocodile tears, anybody with a brain and a Wikipedia account would realize that the US is a fair-weather friend and that most of our foreign-policy decisions are based around domestic policies (i.e. getting re-elected).

Would also add that the USAian national character is to basically ignore bad stuff and then to go into full righteous panic mode once something hits. Sometimes it works out great, like us building a navy that was like 10 times larger than the IJN's in a couple years. More often it works out very badly -- the War on Terror (seriously I'm still taking my shoes off at the airport), the whole Defund the Police movement in 2020, etc. We are a clumsy and stupid giant. 

Edit to add: just dividing Afghanistan war costs by US population I got about $6k per capita.  counter balancing that is how much of that cash made it back to the US economy, probably a lot!

 

Very good post

[Doug]

On 9/7/2021 at 1:24 AM, Angrybk said:

Yeah, the Ricks book was great. My major takeaway was that back in WW2 we did a pretty good job of demoting the generals who sucked, recognizing when we'd messed up, adapting tactics, learning from our mistakes, etc. All of that in an age when we didn't have the massive comms advantage that 21st century military has. 

 

 

[Angrybk]

2 hours ago, Doug said:

 

 

Lol I was just watching that last night!

[JWB]

US airstrikes on Taliban surged in war’s final month amid failed bid to prevent Afghan army’s collapse.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2021-12-18/us-airstrikes-taliban-afghan-armys-collapse-4012197.html

[Rick]

On 9/25/2021 at 8:03 AM, Doug said:

Very good post

Agree.

[Rick]

On 9/21/2021 at 3:11 PM, EchoFiveMike said:

OK, so basically the Stuart et al response is "America does great HUMINT in spite of all actual facts to the contrary."  Protip:  Getting all your sources and agents rolled up because of traitors is bad...

America does tactical and theater level HUMINT pretty well, I've been involved with that.  It's because the people doing the work, with the skin in the game are making the decisions.  And the subversive politicians/bureaucrats with their non-American and anti-American interests have little/no influence and/or awareness.    

I don't care what used to work before telegraph or radio, or what could work in some neo-Luddite world where instant comms don't exist back to the REMF's.  None of that fantasy shit is relevant.

The fundamental problem is that the political and MIC doesn't want these wars to end, they're too profitable.  This works hand in glove with all the handwringing American and American resident pussies who are scared kill wogs to win.  Any of these wars "could" have been won, at almost any point, with sufficient violence.  But that's not possible.  I get that.  If you fuckers can fantasize about impossible HUMINT/IC possibilities, I can envision far more possible strategy options.  S/F....Ken M

     

 

What is "MIC?"

[sunday]

Military-Industrial Complex

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by sunday

[Rick]

40 minutes ago, sunday said:

Military-Industrial Complex

 

Thank you.

[NickM]

On 12/20/2021 at 2:12 AM, sunday said:

Military-Industrial Complex

 

Ike also included some concerns about 'science' being subservient to political considerations in this very same speech

[JWB]

Support: Afghan Air Support At The End.

Support: Afghan Air Support At The End (strategypage.com)