raharris1973
Well-known member
What if the American Obama administration used the public revelation and realization of Mullah Omar's death by the Afghan government and Taliban on 29 and 30 July, 2015 to reevaluate its goals, purposes, and ongoing path in Afghanistan?
[Broad consensus seems to be Mullah Omar actually died of illness in April, 2013, but it was a closely kept secret by the Taliban leadership from even its rank-and-file and his possible death being just one of many rumors about about the former Taliban Chief of State's whereabouts in circulation for the two years 2013-2015.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah_Omar
The divergence this leads to is President Obama, VP Biden and his top couple NSC officials do a brief, but intense private review of the Afghanistan War in August 2015.
Obama decides, with the support of Biden, and acquiescence of this group, that it is time to wind the American war in Afghanistan down irreversibly before the end of Obama's Presidency, that greater, and indefinite, investments of time, lives, effort, and money to resolve Afghanistan's potentially unlimited governance and security problems will meet diminishing returns, and that with a few, quite modest, but limited, accomplishments to credit to America's time in the country, most recently outlasting Mullah Omar and denying the leader who hosted Bin Laden & Al-Qaeda the chance and bragging rights of taking power once more, and most importantly killing Bin Laden four years earlier, it is a 'good note' to disengage on, where the US and international mission does not look like it is running away with its tail between its legs. The main answer to the 'what was the point of this war?' question may not be high-minded but it's understandable, it is 'You don't [personally] do this to us and live' [for Bin Laden], and 'You don't show reckless disregard for us by helping, sheltering, aiding, allying with someone who does this to us and get to [personally] stay in power or come back to power'
Despite all of Afghanistan's other handicaps and problems in 2015 a few other items more in the 'nation-building' category can also be pointed to as smaller 'wins', but let's be honest, these don't matter nearly as much from the American perspective as killing or outlasting enemy leaders, because America getting into Afghanistan was primarily about revenge, not making a better Afghanistan.**
The Obama administration settles on a withdrawal and transition timetable to Afghan forces and zero'ing out US forces, designed to go from October 2015 to March 2017, so, at 17 months, about three months longer than the 14-month timetable President Trump set in OTL.
How do those 17 months and the months beyond go differently than they went in OTL, inside Afghanistan and outside? How many hours, days, weeks, months beyond US departure might the US-supported Afghan government last? Is the timetable an exact mirror of 2021's withdrawal, just earlier, or are there substantial longevity differences [Afghans or more like South Vietnamese than South Lebanon Army]?
**Pop quiz time - Americans in December 1941 did not know that Germany and Japan would or could reconstruct well, or would become friends, nor that they would behave themselves upon surrender, and occupation would be a comparatively bloodless process of productive political compromises, but they went to war anyway because simply absorbing Axis attacks was an unacceptable alternative. If in July 1941 you showed the American people that *if* they went to war with Japan and Germany, America would win the war by 1945 losing *only* a quarter million dead or less, and after surrender, both countries became 'good international citizens' and allies for over 70 years, but you never said they would attack America, a majority of Americans would not have supported going to war simply to 'improve the quality' of the world order and the regimes it is composed of. Same hesitation would have been in place if you asked the American people to invade Afghanistan to bring equality and education for women, stop pederasty, and stop drug flows alone in June 2001.
----------
And here is a secondary version of almost the same scenario:
The Obama Administration undertakes the same Afghanistan policy review, and comes to the same conclusion, after the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, during June 2011. And then plans out its withdrawal timetable from Afghanistan to begin in August 2011, and last until January or February 2013 - 17 or 18 months later.
The overall rationale and approach is similar. The subtle difference in messaging propaganda details is this version is all the more Bin Laden/Al Qaeda centric, and the Taliban are downplayed [Mullah O' who? haven't seen a picture of that guy in forever, or a recording] as losers who got played and had to suffer living in the hills instead of the capital for the last decade because the weren't careful, so they probably will be more careful about their friends from now on.
[Broad consensus seems to be Mullah Omar actually died of illness in April, 2013, but it was a closely kept secret by the Taliban leadership from even its rank-and-file and his possible death being just one of many rumors about about the former Taliban Chief of State's whereabouts in circulation for the two years 2013-2015.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah_Omar
The divergence this leads to is President Obama, VP Biden and his top couple NSC officials do a brief, but intense private review of the Afghanistan War in August 2015.
Obama decides, with the support of Biden, and acquiescence of this group, that it is time to wind the American war in Afghanistan down irreversibly before the end of Obama's Presidency, that greater, and indefinite, investments of time, lives, effort, and money to resolve Afghanistan's potentially unlimited governance and security problems will meet diminishing returns, and that with a few, quite modest, but limited, accomplishments to credit to America's time in the country, most recently outlasting Mullah Omar and denying the leader who hosted Bin Laden & Al-Qaeda the chance and bragging rights of taking power once more, and most importantly killing Bin Laden four years earlier, it is a 'good note' to disengage on, where the US and international mission does not look like it is running away with its tail between its legs. The main answer to the 'what was the point of this war?' question may not be high-minded but it's understandable, it is 'You don't [personally] do this to us and live' [for Bin Laden], and 'You don't show reckless disregard for us by helping, sheltering, aiding, allying with someone who does this to us and get to [personally] stay in power or come back to power'
Despite all of Afghanistan's other handicaps and problems in 2015 a few other items more in the 'nation-building' category can also be pointed to as smaller 'wins', but let's be honest, these don't matter nearly as much from the American perspective as killing or outlasting enemy leaders, because America getting into Afghanistan was primarily about revenge, not making a better Afghanistan.**
The most recent *superficially* positive nation-building development *at the time* was the peaceful transfer of power from Karzai (with his penchant for anti-American rhetoric) to Ashraf Ghani, who wasn't similarly inclined and was not expected to be as corrupt as Karzai (ultimately he was super-ineffective, but this may be more from simply being disconnected, and not credibly authoritative, rather than from personal greed and avarice). A couple other positive statistics would have been the great reduction in childhood and motherhood mortality in the years of the occupation, the increase in incomes, and the great increase in girls and women's education. As I said, these are secondary, and easily fragile, so shouldn't be a primary emphasis area.
The Obama administration settles on a withdrawal and transition timetable to Afghan forces and zero'ing out US forces, designed to go from October 2015 to March 2017, so, at 17 months, about three months longer than the 14-month timetable President Trump set in OTL.
How do those 17 months and the months beyond go differently than they went in OTL, inside Afghanistan and outside? How many hours, days, weeks, months beyond US departure might the US-supported Afghan government last? Is the timetable an exact mirror of 2021's withdrawal, just earlier, or are there substantial longevity differences [Afghans or more like South Vietnamese than South Lebanon Army]?
**Pop quiz time - Americans in December 1941 did not know that Germany and Japan would or could reconstruct well, or would become friends, nor that they would behave themselves upon surrender, and occupation would be a comparatively bloodless process of productive political compromises, but they went to war anyway because simply absorbing Axis attacks was an unacceptable alternative. If in July 1941 you showed the American people that *if* they went to war with Japan and Germany, America would win the war by 1945 losing *only* a quarter million dead or less, and after surrender, both countries became 'good international citizens' and allies for over 70 years, but you never said they would attack America, a majority of Americans would not have supported going to war simply to 'improve the quality' of the world order and the regimes it is composed of. Same hesitation would have been in place if you asked the American people to invade Afghanistan to bring equality and education for women, stop pederasty, and stop drug flows alone in June 2001.
----------
And here is a secondary version of almost the same scenario:
The Obama Administration undertakes the same Afghanistan policy review, and comes to the same conclusion, after the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, during June 2011. And then plans out its withdrawal timetable from Afghanistan to begin in August 2011, and last until January or February 2013 - 17 or 18 months later.
The overall rationale and approach is similar. The subtle difference in messaging propaganda details is this version is all the more Bin Laden/Al Qaeda centric, and the Taliban are downplayed [Mullah O' who? haven't seen a picture of that guy in forever, or a recording] as losers who got played and had to suffer living in the hills instead of the capital for the last decade because the weren't careful, so they probably will be more careful about their friends from now on.