The fall of Kabul lies at the feet of the Military leadership. They were the one's saying that the Afghani military could hold out. That applies equally to the USA, Australia and others.
"Since early 2002, the war in Afghanistan never had a chance of succeeding. After President Bush’s initial objectives of disrupting al-Qaida and punishing the Taliban were accomplished by March 2002, the mission was changed to a nation-building operation that included objectives that were outright militarily unattainable. Presidents Obama and Trump continued the nation-building focus, guaranteeing the war would never be “won” and thus never end.
The illusion of success could be maintained so long as US and Nato military remained engaged. Now that the military cover is being withdrawn, the ugly and bloody truth is emerging: 20 years’ worth of senior leaders claiming progress, success, and “on the right azimuth” were always fiction.
The ANDSF have proven utterly incapable of defeating the Taliban offensive. On paper, this shouldn’t even be possible. Consider that the personnel for both the Taliban and the ANDSF are largely drawn from the same Afghan talent pool.
The side being routed right now has an army, on paper, of 300,000 men, been given training by the most powerful military alliance on earth, received hundreds of billions in support, has at least a rudimentary air force, an armored fleet and the backing of its government.
The Taliban, in contrast, has approximately 75,000 men, no formal backing from any state, no trained army, no air force, no technology, and only what vehicles and weapons they can scrounge on the open market – yet they are dominating their more numerous, better equipped and better-funded opponents. The reasons the ANDSF has thus far failed, however, are not hard to identify.
For the better part of at least the past 15 years, senior US civilian and uniformed leaders have been publicly telling the American people that the war in Afghanistan was necessary for US security, making progress, and supporting an Afghan security force that was performing well. All of it, from the beginning, was a lie.
In 2010 I wrote an article titled War on the Brink of Failure in the Armed Forces Journal that plainly stated, that “absent a major change in the status quo that currently dominates in Afghanistan, the US-led military effort there will fail … and despite our best effort to spin it otherwise, we will lose the war in Afghanistan.”
Two years later, while still an active-duty army officer and after my second combat deployment to Afghanistan, I wrote a detailed report which revealed that things had gotten much worse. Senior ranking US military leaders, I revealed, had intentionally deceived the American public.
“Despite overwhelming physical evidence of our failure to succeed on the military front,” I wrote, “senior US and [Nato] leaders inexplicably continue a steady stream of press releases and public statements that imply the exact opposite.” Without a change in strategy, I concluded, “the likelihood of the United States Armed Forces suffering an eventual defeat in Afghanistan is very high.”
The Pentagon’s response to my argument that we were losing the war? Lt Gen Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of US troops in Afghanistan at the time, dismissed my views as “one person’s opinion,” and said he was confident in the military’s optimistic appraisal. “These [Afghan] soldiers will fight,” the general confidently said, “There is no question about that. They are going to be good enough as we build them to secure their country and to counter the insurgency.” Scaparrotti was far from the only one to deceive the American people, however."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/14/afghanistan-taliban-us-tro...Australian General's have also said similar about the Afghan National Defense Security Forces (ANDSF).
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Afghanistan ... Kabul may fall in weeks (Read 7104 times)
