About that 300K Afghanistan Army

[tulipsandroses]

A Guest on Morning Joe said the #was nowhere near that. Just more rampant corruption. Most were “ghost soldiers”. Higher ups in the army added names to collect their paychecks.

[WHITT]

1. Apparently

the U.S. military was unaware or complicit. Neither very flattering.

As they were telling Biden they had trained a 300K man Afghan army with their own air force. They were supposed to setup a perimeter around Kabul so the U.S. military could perform a withdrawal and orderly evacuation.

BTW, so why is any of this Biden's fault, dear MSM?

[Dream Girl]

2. Biden should have know....everything!

Why didn’t he know? Why was hr so “defiant”? To quote a few cub reporters

[littlemissmartypants]

3. You mean this Army, the hashish Army, aka the Afghanistan National Army?

Video is twelve years ago but it still gives an eye opening look at the Afghanistan National Army.

[Klaralven]

4. The trainers don't appear to speak the trainee's language - not going to work.

And the jarhead drill instructor attitude is most likely insulting to the trainees.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. Helmets on backwards and high on hash...

Where do you rate those facts on the readiness scale?

He is speaking through a translator which is acceptable protocol and I don't blame him for being mildly curt, considering the crew he has to work with.

Or maybe troops high on hash is the best we should expect...?

[Klaralven]

6. He never explains to the Afghan soldiers why smoking hash is a bad idea.

It's all giving commands and being negative. Likely won't work for their culture.

Someone forgot to train the trainers. And then the trainers forgot to train the Afghan officers and NCOs. Who then might just be able to figure out how to train the troops.

[littlemissmartypants]

7. Are you active duty or retired military? Maybe in the Reserves?

[Klaralven]

12. Neither. But I managed employees for 25 years.

Grand nephew got back from Afghanistan a year a go. His grand father, who spent 13 months in "peacetime" Korea on the DMZ couldn't convince him that joining was a bad idea. Nor my BIL who has a purple heart from Korea several years earlier.

[Hoyt]

8. And we didn't realize that? Christ.

[Treefrog]

9. It was widely known, I read that years ago during one of our little "let's get out" spurts.

Certainly high ranking military and government leaders knew.

Same deal was said of the ARVN.

[Hoyt]

10. That's what I thought too. The Iraqi military evaporated in 1991 too.

[Kaleva]

11. This happened in Iraq.

[joetheman]

13. Can we ID them and take their money from banks? Especially the President of Afghanistan who fled

ought to be on the frozen assets list across the globe.

[andym]

14. Biggest problem was not just numbers it was apparently professionalism, loyalty and despair

With all the American training, there were not large numbers of troops fashioned in the style of professionalism seen in the US military.

A big issue was despair: after the Afghan government could not hold cities (such as Kandahar) against the Taliban, the entire endeavor must have looked like a lost cause to the Afghan soldiers. So they despaired and just dispersed.

For all the talk of Taliban revenge, Afghanistan has had a history of accepting adversaries back -- that is why they were able to create a unity government after the US invaded, but also why it was so weak, loyalty to the government was not necessarily guaranteed.