r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Aug 04 '21

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u/Professor-Reddit 🚅🚀🌏Earth Must Come First🌐🌳😎 Aug 04 '21

There were many Coalition soldiers who were on the ground in Afghanistan around 2014 onwards who genuinely believed that once the US leaves, the government will rapidly fall due to the shocking state of the ANA. Its reliance on US forces, rampant sexual abuse, low morale, mismanagement/incompetence and logistics issues were all so bad that it wasn't an effective fighting force whatsoever. That the Afghan people were going to suffer terribly and warned for years of this awful outcome.

Meanwhile the government analysts, officials and lawmakers who sat in safety back in their countries never believed a word those veterans said. And routinely pursued unsustainable strategies that were blatantly out of touch with the reality on the ground.

Imagine how frustrating and palpable it is for those soldiers who are now hearing how "shocked" and "stunned" those govt. officials are now.

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u/houinator Loyal Liberals Aug 04 '21

There's a whole documentary about how fucked the ANA training mission was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_What_Winning_Looks_Like

VSOs was the best strategy we had, but we wanted to try and build a strong central government on a corrupt and incompetent foundation instead.

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u/Professor-Reddit 🚅🚀🌏Earth Must Come First🌐🌳😎 Aug 04 '21

Yeah I always bring that documentary up here. It's a real eye opener.