When we say that Afghans refused to "fight for their country"?

[kentuck]

We mean "refused to fight for their country" as America sees it. Perhaps most Afghans believe that fighting with the Taliban is "fighting for their country"? Maybe they see Americans more as imperialists than as saviors of democracy?

Just because they work with Americans and for Americans does not necessarily mean they support the same thing that Americans support. Maybe that just work for the money? Maybe it is the best money they have made in their lives.

There are different perspectives on the situation.

[Voltaire2]

1. apparently they did fight for their country for 20 years, and they won. nt.

[honest.abe]

2. I think the majority of Afghans want something more like what the US was pushing..

rather than what the Taliban wants. The majority are being controlled by an aggressive militant minority. The moderate majority Afghans should have fought back against them. That's what is meant by "fight for their country".

[sboatcar]

3. So do you think the military was heavily infiltrated by Taliban sympathizers?

And that's why they immediately folded? A 300,000 person army should be able to hold up against a few tens of thousands of militants that are poorly armed.

[honest.abe]

5. I don't know.

It's hard to understand why they didnt fight back. Seems they just didnt have will to fight for whatever reason. Maybe simply afraid.

[sboatcar]

6. I kind of feel like it was all part of Taliban strategy

Join the American supported military, take their money and equipment, and when they decide to leave, switch sides and suddenly they've got a huge army and lots of modern equipment to take their country back.

How we fell for it for so many years though, that's beyond me.

[kentuck]

11. I believe it has been reported..

..that many volunteers for the police and the military did not stay on the job very long? There may be something to your theory?

[empedocles]

9. Fear of taliban locals, and trump making deals with the taliban. taliban would win.

[2naSalit]

4. We murrikins have a habit of...

Going to other cultures and kicking their asses and taking their stuff all while telling ourselves that we are doing it for democracy or for the sake of those whose asses we just kicked. We insist that they assimilate to our culture and way of thinking and starve them if they don't give us what we want.

We need to sit the fuck down and clean up our act at home and decide whether we really are a democracy or an imperial power. I hope we decide on democracy or the end of the biosphere will come more quickly by way of continued pollution from our military operations around the planet.

[GemDigger]

8. Well said.

Hundreds of years later and still the same mentality.

[2naSalit]

13. It's one of the great...

Travesties of our species.

[empedocles]

7. A simple perspective is that the Afgan army realized the end was near and insight when they

realized traitortrump was deal-making with the taliban!

Then it was most individual Afgans making what deal-making they could - for the self.

[liberalmuse]

10. Trump's deal several months ago messed things up a bit.

The people the US put in power as our puppet government had little choice but to negotiate with the Taliban before the US pulled all troops out or else they would suffer pretty dire consequences. I blame Trump and the GOP for this fiasco. They started this endless war to get the oil and likely the opium for profit decades ago with little to no thought of how it would affect the people in Afghanistan or the US. The deal was pretty much sealed by Trump and his cohorts when they started coddling the Taliban (Bush Jr did the same before 9/11 and look where that got us). I think the people in Afghanistan knew there were more of their citizens supporting the Taliban than not. Religion really messes with people and they tend to do things that aren't in their best interest when they are consumed by certain belief systems.

[kentuck]

12. We know that if Trump was involved in any way...

..it could not keep from being screwed up.

[empedocles]

14. Can't argue with that - everything trump touches . . .

[MenloParque]

15. Different values

I spend two years in Afghanistan in 06-08 in the U.S. Army doing data analysis in Bagram and KANDAHAR. We always thought that we would need to be in Afghanistan indefinitely. We had access to American and British media outlets and would absolutely just shake our head with what you civilians would you read and hear in the media regarding operations. Nothing in Afghanistan is what it seems. Good guys one day were all smiles and waving with all the Hello Good Friend, we are happy you are here bullshit. The next week we are taking fire from the same motherfuckers and their kids. No one in my unit who made it out of Stan are surprised that when the time came to fight they would fold. They literally will shoot at anything if you gave them a bag of Doritos and a coke. If the Taliban offered them heroine the next week the motherfuckers are firing their Kalishnikovs or US provided M16s with trijicons right at us. It’s all fucked.

[thucythucy]

16. Is Afghanistan even a "country" in the sense

that we understand that word?

From what I've seen and read, the people of "Afghanistan" are more likely to see themselves as members of a particular community, what we condescendingly refer to as "tribes"--or subjects of a local power--so called warlords. The idea of Afghanistan exists pretty much only in the capitol, and even there pretty much only among the elites.

As with so much of the Middle East, Africa, and southwest Asia, the various "nations" as defined today represent lines drawn on the maps of European colonialists. These lines were drawn with western interests and politics in mind, and generally paid no attention to local realities of history, culture, language, ethnicity or religion.

I could be all wrong about this--so if anyone has a different take please feel free to share.

[MenloParque]

17. You are right

The people that we were in contact would never say they are Afghan. Instead, they would refer to one of the 500+ clans of Pashtun, or some others like Hezaras or Balochs. You may hear in the mainstream media the Afghan people, but in the Stan the refer to their own tribe which in some cases are over 2000 years old. Borders mean nothing.