No offense taken Fren. Great analysis and can verify most. Think about it; a huge country each area cutoff by massive mountains & nasty terrain…point being Taliban didn’t organize any group of warlords & tribes into anything coherent. Like you said, with snake’s head cutoff it’s a jumblefuqq. Side note I was there ‘06-‘08 so a lot’s happened since. All that being said those Chechens are some NASTY warriors. Our guys went after them one time a small tribal leader had hosted a few hundred of them and they’d disappeared after raid started. They were in an elaborate tunnel system under that compound and it was obvious they’d lived there for weeks. (Imagine?). Russia had quite a time with them.
Exactly. Basically as I see it Mohammed Omar WAS the Taliban and without Omar, there is no Taliban. Uniting that rabble was a once in a thousand years occurance. It solidly reverted back to warlordism.
Now, I believe under Omar, the Taliban was actually a force for moderation and righteous populism. The occurances of scumbaggery in Afghanistan would need to be attributed to the base post-soviet broken and depraved warlord culture that he was on the process of reforming -- for that analysis to be correct. Which is not at all a stretch. Omar didn't have time to raise a generation in a nation without warlords, drugs and man-love thursdays.
Taliban today? Hopefully when we leave Afghanistan the original idealism of Omar's populist Taliban will overcome the fake warlord Taliban. Best we can do now is leave and save the good ones that gave it everything because they wanted their country to be badass like America. They would be good Americans really.
They would be good Americans. Several I knew had been schooled in Pakistan and were multi-lingual, intelligent and none of them were flakes. Maybe they were the cream (SF guys)...not sure? 12 years in MidEast...you get used to most being sketchy flakes. So many of the Taliban I saw (dead) had makeup and AK’s had gay stuff on the stocks. It was strange to see frankly. But all the Terps I knew were young Patriots. We’ll see...just another mess.
Gay stuff usually means you're dealing with warlords' expendable dancing boy soldiers. The Taliban was an idea to end warlordism, Omar's idea. Without Omar it was just warlords LARPing for street cred to gain better position. The warlords were on our "side" too. They were using us to knock off competition and take our money and resources. Only people that were fighting for a unified secure Afghanistan were John Rambo's tribe and the Afghanis they personally trained and a few odd patriots who got out and came back to translate, thinking they could help. The rest of Afghanistan was just using us to position themselves and their tribes in better standing in warlord wotld. Which only we didn't get the memo on that. The US big military units were basically just slogging through it. Do the job you are there to do, then go home. Colonel gets his Star, new Colonel for the next go.
What a fascinating peek into reality you painted. I was at countless “GI funeral” processions and I would seeth in anger over the sheer waste of our young troop’s lives. Regarding those dancing-boy gaylords…I recall a few sickening videos way back showcasing that stuff. It matched what I saw there. Regarding those warlords; was at one FOB near Parrot’s Beak where we’d taken over some gaylords compound. He & his band of homeboys would sit down by the gate bemoaning the loss of his mud castle…every day. They never attacked or did much, but slyly paid-off the ANA cretins ON THE BASE with hashish who would stage halfhearted attacks at night INSIDE THE WIRE. Our guy’s Cmdr finally wised-up. The whole thing was an incredible waste of our time & human resources but hey that’s what we do best?
No offense taken Fren. Great analysis and can verify most. Think about it; a huge country each area cutoff by massive mountains & nasty terrain…point being Taliban didn’t organize any group of warlords & tribes into anything coherent. Like you said, with snake’s head cutoff it’s a jumblefuqq. Side note I was there ‘06-‘08 so a lot’s happened since. All that being said those Chechens are some NASTY warriors. Our guys went after them one time a small tribal leader had hosted a few hundred of them and they’d disappeared after raid started. They were in an elaborate tunnel system under that compound and it was obvious they’d lived there for weeks. (Imagine?). Russia had quite a time with them.
Exactly. Basically as I see it Mohammed Omar WAS the Taliban and without Omar, there is no Taliban. Uniting that rabble was a once in a thousand years occurance. It solidly reverted back to warlordism.
Now, I believe under Omar, the Taliban was actually a force for moderation and righteous populism. The occurances of scumbaggery in Afghanistan would need to be attributed to the base post-soviet broken and depraved warlord culture that he was on the process of reforming -- for that analysis to be correct. Which is not at all a stretch. Omar didn't have time to raise a generation in a nation without warlords, drugs and man-love thursdays.
Taliban today? Hopefully when we leave Afghanistan the original idealism of Omar's populist Taliban will overcome the fake warlord Taliban. Best we can do now is leave and save the good ones that gave it everything because they wanted their country to be badass like America. They would be good Americans really.
They would be good Americans. Several I knew had been schooled in Pakistan and were multi-lingual, intelligent and none of them were flakes. Maybe they were the cream (SF guys)...not sure? 12 years in MidEast...you get used to most being sketchy flakes. So many of the Taliban I saw (dead) had makeup and AK’s had gay stuff on the stocks. It was strange to see frankly. But all the Terps I knew were young Patriots. We’ll see...just another mess.
Gay stuff usually means you're dealing with warlords' expendable dancing boy soldiers. The Taliban was an idea to end warlordism, Omar's idea. Without Omar it was just warlords LARPing for street cred to gain better position. The warlords were on our "side" too. They were using us to knock off competition and take our money and resources. Only people that were fighting for a unified secure Afghanistan were John Rambo's tribe and the Afghanis they personally trained and a few odd patriots who got out and came back to translate, thinking they could help. The rest of Afghanistan was just using us to position themselves and their tribes in better standing in warlord wotld. Which only we didn't get the memo on that. The US big military units were basically just slogging through it. Do the job you are there to do, then go home. Colonel gets his Star, new Colonel for the next go.
What a fascinating peek into reality you painted. I was at countless “GI funeral” processions and I would seeth in anger over the sheer waste of our young troop’s lives. Regarding those dancing-boy gaylords…I recall a few sickening videos way back showcasing that stuff. It matched what I saw there. Regarding those warlords; was at one FOB near Parrot’s Beak where we’d taken over some gaylords compound. He & his band of homeboys would sit down by the gate bemoaning the loss of his mud castle…every day. They never attacked or did much, but slyly paid-off the ANA cretins ON THE BASE with hashish who would stage halfhearted attacks at night INSIDE THE WIRE. Our guy’s Cmdr finally wised-up. The whole thing was an incredible waste of our time & human resources but hey that’s what we do best?