What did they die for?

[Vee]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

 

[Justanatheist]

Good question,

Jack Cummings, a former bomb disposal specialist, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the 101 Engineer Regiment,said that “seeing the past week what’s going on in Afghanistan” he felt “he had to express [his] views”, describing the situation as “heartbreaking.”


Mr Cummings posted on Twitter on the 11th year anniversary of his accident, which he calls his “Bangaversary,” saying: “Was it worth it, probably not. Did I lose my legs for nothing, looks like it. Did my mates die in vain. Yep.”

 

[Debater Slayer]

They died for the political agenda of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the multiple other warmongers and profiteering demagogues who fanned the flames of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars under the banner of "freedom."

U.S. foreign policy is markedly corrupt and abusive. It renders the U.S. incapable of claiming much higher moral ground on the international stage than countries like China, Russia, and Iran.

 

[Vee]

Good question,

Jack Cummings, a former bomb disposal specialist, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the 101 Engineer Regiment,said that “seeing the past week what’s going on in Afghanistan” he felt “he had to express [his] views”, describing the situation as “heartbreaking.”


Mr Cummings posted on Twitter on the 11th year anniversary of his accident, which he calls his “Bangaversary,” saying: “Was it worth it, probably not. Did I lose my legs for nothing, looks like it. Did my mates die in vain. Yep.”

Heartbreaking is a good way to put it. So much suffering for nothing. Poor people

 

[Spirit of Light]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

Greedy politians
Greedy weapons industry
Hate and anger
Money

And a lot more

 

[Wandering Monk]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

Why were we there in the first place? What was our mission? Did we answer these questions before we went in there?

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

 

[Brickjectivity]

what did they die for?

They died because the public allowed congress to intervene overseas in a war that wasn't in defense of our country.

U.S. foreign policy is markedly corrupt and abusive. It renders the U.S. incapable of claiming much higher moral ground than countries like China, Russia, and Iran.

I'd say historically foreign policy has improved worldwide from a century ago, but that could be due to the bigger weapons and a general softening in the world.

I think once people began to get rid of slavery and women started to vote this improved things, too. If we value individual lives then that makes protests against war more formidable. It was protest and the will of the voters including women voters that eventually pulled USA out of Afghanistan. Our country was never happy about going in, and many people right from the beginning declared it would be a disaster. They were proven correct. It was a mistake.

 

[exchemist]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

Well it was not for nothing, in my view.

They bought us 20 years free from Al Qaeda attacks from Afghan soil and they enabled a generation of Afghans to see what freedom and a little bit of prosperity can be like, including, crucially, a generation of women. Change has to come from the Afghan people themselves. If it's just imposed artificially from outside it is hugely expensive and has no roots.

It may be that this 20 year interlude will have sowed the seeds of that change, even if it looks as if they are going backwards now. It is also a different generation of Taliban, too. I wonder if they will really manage to put the genie back in the bottle, or if they will adapt a bit.

 

[AlexanderG]

Right. I think this was always about the political capital and the war profiteering that so many politicians stood to benefit from, along with most of their friends and political donors. We should've tried to kill Bin Laden, not occupy a country indefinitely, but boy did an occupation pay out lots of contracts to US companies. It also let the GOP call Democrats "anti-American" whenever they tried to object to overspending, corruption, and pet amendments added on to emergency spending bills.

And I'm wondering if the Afghan army was always a sham, and the soldiers were more sympathetic to the Taliban than any foreign ideals of democracy and human rights. I suspect they were happy to let us build up and secure their country, but ultimately happier putting women in bags. You can't just change a nation's culture with a military occupation, and I think history bears that out pretty clearly.

I think this collapse would've happened whether we withdrew our forces 10 years ago or 50 years from now. I only wish we could've allowed time for everyone to leave first who wanted to.

 

[Altfish]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

Just think you've kept all the corporations that supply weapons/logistics/etc in business.
Wars are necessary or the likes of Halliburton go bust

 

[exchemist]

They died because the public allowed congress to intervene overseas in a war that wasn't in defense of our country.


I'd say historically foreign policy has improved worldwide from a century ago, but that could be due to the bigger weapons and a general softening in the world.

I think once people began to get rid of slavery and women started to vote this improved things, too. If we value individual lives then that makes protests against war more formidable. It was protest and the will of the voters including women voters that eventually pulled USA out of Afghanistan. Our country was never happy about going in, and many people right from the beginning declared it would be a disaster. They were proven correct. It was a mistake.

Actually, the original invasion of Afghanistan was in defence of the USA - and widely supported on that basis internationally. Al Qaeda was based there and they were quite rightly hunted down and destroyed.

What then happened was the usual mission creep, realising that if they just went home the Taliban would be back, in the absence of any alternative political force. Maybe nevertheless they should have just gone home then, with a promise that if more terrorism was exported they would be be back to dismantle it. But that's hindsight.

 

[AlexanderG]

Just think you've kept all the corporations that supply weapons/logistics/etc in business.
Wars are necessary or the likes of Halliburton go bust

I remember back right after 9/11, talking to a young guy in the military who had been trained to coordinate airstrikes. We talked about whether the US should go to war, and he said, "I really hope so, because it would be a shame if all my training went to waste." I thought this was one of the most appalling things I'd ever heard in my life, as if it's bad to never drop bombs on anybody once you have the capability to do so.

I think this mentality is what drove a lot of the mindset. "We've got all these warehouses full of missiles and tanks and guns, and the companies that make them will run out of work if we don't use this stuff up. And it'd be a shame if it went to waste."

 

[oldbadger]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

True.
More like 50 years of war, and over one hundred of you include the British failures there.
The US and UK supported the Islamic fighters with weapons and aid when Russia tried to gain control, and Russia has been aiding and supporting the Taliban this time.
We all cry out about Islamic principles, but we send weapons and funds to them when we (our countries) fancy.

 

[Aštra’el]

Many feel betrayed by the Biden Administration.

 

[Nimos]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

They unfortunately died for what most soldiers always die for, to fulfill someone in power's desire or to clean up the mess someone else made. And for the most part they get little out of it, the public pay for the war with their money and love ones, while some businesses earn billions on it, selling weapons, getting trading deals etc.

Neta Crawford, chair of the political science department at Boston University, in her Costs of War project, estimated the long term cost of the Iraq War for the United States at $1.922 trillion.

-----

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.
From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."
For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world's largest oil fields and reaping enormous profit. And while the U.S. has also maintained a fairly consistent level of Iraq oil imports since the invasion, the benefits are not finding their way through Iraq's economy or society.

-----

The identified companies were “able to zero out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income,” according to the ITEP report, which was released today. “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year.” To compile the list, ITEP analyzed the 2018 financial filings of the country’s largest 560 publicly-held companies.

And its not to point out Halliburton or Chevron, because for some reason all these companies never manage to make any money, so they apparently never have to pay taxes. Its not easy running such a big company, it makes you wonder why they don't go bankrupt

Soldiers are just a tool for these people and the idea of a better world is what they tell the public so they will pick up the bill.

 

[exchemist]

I remember back right after 9/11, talking to a young guy in the military who had been trained to coordinate airstrikes. We talked about whether the US should go to war, and he said, "I really hope so, because it would be a shame if all my training went to waste." I thought this was one of the most appalling things I'd ever heard in my life, as if it's bad to never drop bombs on anybody once you have the capability to do so.

I think this mentality is what drove a lot of the mindset. "We've got all these warehouses full of missiles and tanks and guns, and the companies that make them will run out of work if we don't use this stuff up. And it'd be a shame if it went to waste."

That might apply to the invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld actually objected that there were no good targets in Afghanistan, so they should go after somewhere where there were! Iraq: Because Rumsfeld Needed Better Targets. (I have Clarke's book from which this is quoted). But his motive seemed to be a Neocon idea of demonstrating US military power to the world, rather than a commercial one.

 

[SigurdReginson]

I mean... Was there ever going to be a different way that this would end? What we are seeing right now is the tatters of the rotting curtain of self aggrandizing propaganda finally tumbling down to reveal what the rest of the world had been witnessing all along. "Operation Enduring Freedom" imposed it's particular brand of "freedom" in the form of death and destruction onto the heads of people we never had to see or even hear from. It was a war that we never really heard about or had to think about too deeply, while they endured the freedom of their friends and family being freed of their lives on a consistent basis at our hands. "Terrorists" or no, that was their reality.

"We are fighting terrorism there so it doesn't come to our shores" was something I heard a lot of. Bull****. Our involvement made this situation into what it is now. Terrorism has been spiraling out if control and has been only getting more deeply entrenched because of us and what we are doing. Now the inevitable seems to have unfolded. Time to reap what we've sown! The chickens have come home to roost!

That's ok, though. We can just bomb them some more. War seems to be our go to response to things we don't like, so why not? Maybe they don't hate us enough, and we really need to give them a reason to truly hate our guts. ISIS isn't the worst monster we can make; we can do better!

 

[Polymath257]

The US originally went into Afghanistan because the Taliban were sponsoring Al Qaeda, who had just brought down the Twin Towers.

Things went well for a while. But, two things happened:

First, the US decided to go into Iraq before the situation in Afghanistan was stable. This took the focus off of Afghanistan.

Second, the US decided it didn't want to do 'nation building'. That meant that a puppet government was installed that had very little support in the countryside. The US also never put the time and energy into *understanding* the country in order to figure out how to make a government that *would* be supported.

Because of this, the Taliban continued to have support in the countryside and, in fact, had its popularity grow (since it was the only real opposition to the American 'invaders').

Frankly, at no point after about 2005-6 would any other outcome really have been possible upon US withdrawal: the Taliban would return; they would re-institute their ferocious policies; and a new reign of terror would ensue. It was also only a matter of time for the US to decide to get out.

The reason the US didn't get out sooner is *precisely* because it was clear this would happen. So it was always a choice: stay in and put more money and lives into a losing proposition, or leave and see the Taliban return to power.

 

[Polymath257]

Why were we there in the first place? What was our mission? Did we answer these questions before we went in there?

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Most of those were satisfied for the initial invasion. The Twin Towers had just been leveled, and the removable of Al Qaeda was a clear objective. other options had been attempted, but to no avail. There was wide support both in the US and internationally.

The problem is that the US decided it didn't want to do the hard work of 'nation building' and got distracted by the completely unnecessary invasion of Iraq. That meant that we did not have a clear exit strategy and the analysis of the situation on the ground was badly incomplete. By refusing to do the work in Afghanistan required to produce a government that was actually supported by the people there, it became inevitable that the only other option: the Taliban, would be returning to power once we left.

By the way, the refusal to do 'nation building' also made the invasion of Iraq a travesty. Instead of stepping into the power vacuum and providing basic police services, we allowed looting and destruction, turning the people there against us.

Ultimately, the US did not put the time and energy into really understanding the history and desires of the lands we invaded. That made the long-term situation much, much worse.

 

[Regiomontanus]

I just came back from holidays and one of the first news I saw was the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. I'm shocked.
So, 20 years of war, a couple of trillion dollars and thousands of lives later, this is it?
I wonder what the families and friends of the soldiers who died in that war must be feeling. Their loved ones went there believing they were going to fight for freedom. In the end, what did they die for?

Very soon into this it became all about the $. This has been a gravy train for some very influential folks.