Thread by @navalhistorian

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 Okay, if I may have a go at breaking down @RoryStewartUK's account in the piece there:
1) He is absolutely correct in his assertion that the rapid departure of US air power and technical support has had a catastrophic effect. I don't think anybody sensible is questioning that.

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 2) Likewise I don't think anybody would particularly quibble with the fact that this was a comparatively small commitment with few (as @PatPorter76 correctly points out, injuries do still count) casualties, & under little domestic political pressure *at current levels* (& this...

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 bit is critical).
3) The point at which his account runs into a fatal problem is the following, & that is that the war is considerably wider than the West's current military commitment. He correctly asks "who exactly, who is President Biden asking to fight?" & then unfortunately

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 comes up with the wrong answer. It is not his female school teacher in Pul-e-Charkhi, but the soldiers of the Afghan National Army (unless, of course, said teacher volunteers to join it). This is force is, of course, the very reason why there have been so few Western casualties..

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 in recent years - the West has long been asking the people of Afghanistan to do the fighting. This is not new & has been going on for many years.
5) The ANA was (& I believe it is now fair to describe it in the past tense) far from a perfect force & post-mortems into its...

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 performance, or lack thereof, in recent days will continue to be long & loud, but the one thing that cannot be ignored - though I fear it is being ignored - is the fact that prior to its collapse there is good reason to suggest it was in fact losing. Despite the air support, the

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 technical support, the supplies, etc. the casualties were horrifying & almost certainly unsustainable (hence @TomTugendhat's & others' visceral reaction to President Biden's suggestion that the Afghans refused to fight). The ANA was, in essence, bleeding out. Again, this was well

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat known & a brief search will easily turn up reports on this from 2018, while The Economist has posted figures that suggest the matter has only deteriorated since then. The territorial picture was, I gather, not dissimilar (in other words,the guys in pickups

https://twitter.com/dlknowles/status/1428629846058577922?s=20

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat with heavy machine guns were already a reality for some, unfortunately). Absent serious evidence to the contrary, therefore, Western support *at current levels* was not preventing the catastrophic collapse we see before us now, merely staving it off, & for how much longer? At...

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat some point, & probably sooner than some would like to think (remember, the reports from 2018), the tipping point would have been reached & the west would either have been forced to accept the facts on the ground, or commit a larger number of its own forces once more & place them

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat in contact, with the consequent casualties once more, as air power cannot take & hold ground.
Shorter version? Yes, we could perhaps have got away with it for another year & we certainly could & should have handled the exit in some very difference ways,but @RoryStewartUK & others

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat need to address the wider war, as it was & where it was going, not merely its most recent status with regard to Western forces, & thereafter either present serious evidence that the above anaysis is incorrect, or start making the case for the *additional* forces, & potentially...

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat casualties, the West needed to apply in order to obtain stability, let alone roll-back (then we can also start discussing the reforms required to try to make it stick this time).

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat Oh & for the avoidance of doubt, the problem with the South Korea/German/Japan comparison again remains the wider war & domestic situation. In none of those examples have western (or indeed domestic) forces faced a multi-decade, externally backed, insurgency campaign. The closest

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat you get is the odd cross-border spat between North & South Korea, which are, in any case, external matters between two states, rather than internal insurgency in one, plus South Korean forces have hitherto been more than capable of dealing with them. Had they faced such issues...

@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 @TomTugendhat those stories might well also have ended somewhat differently.