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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31609 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Well that's all well and good, but you could say exactly the same things about Ghani's Afghanistan vs. the Taliban. Indeed, the Taliban had zero state resources compared to Russia's nonzero. But despite receiving infinity NATO materiél, Ghani's Afghanistan fell the instant there weren't Coalition troops on the ground. Ukraine doesn't have Coalition troops on the ground, therefore...

I find it pretty hard to cast the Russians in the role of the Taliban considering that the Taliban was the group resisting a foreign invasion and not the other way around. The Americans lost to the Taliban despite not even resorting to drafting soldiers, why do you think the Russians are ahead of the curve on this?

I feel like I'm being gish-gallopped here, because now you're moving the goalposts into the conscript/professionalism of the army and home ground advantage and whatever. The only point I'm making is that receiving a jillion dollars' worth of NATO aid didn't help the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan much, so there's hardly a guarantee it'll help Ukraine. Indeed, iirc pre-war Ukraine was about as corrupt as Afghanistan, so we might expect most of the materiél is getting pawned rather than used on the front, which is why the NATO dollars weren't much use in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan fell apart because the government wasn't full of rabid nationalists but full of tribals profiteering off the war.

It's a completely different situation in Ukraine.

No, I'm pretty sure that the NATO dollars weren't any use in Afghanistan was because Islamic republic of Afghanistan troops saw Islamic emirate of Afghanistan forces and promptly surrendered or ran away. This does not appear to be a major problem for the Ukrainian Army. Despite a lot of the aid getting embezzled, IRA forces generally held an equipment advantage over taliban troops, they just refused to fight(and thus lost).

The only point I'm making is that receiving a jillion dollars' worth of NATO aid didn't help the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan much, so there's hardly a guarantee it'll help Ukraine.

What does helping Ukraine mean to you? The last big movement of the war, the Kherson retreat, was enabled by Western long range artillery making the supply situation of the Russians on the western side of the Dnepr untenable. There are hours of video material showing how Western weapons are being used effectively by the Ukrainian forces.

The Afghan army, aside from never receiving gear as advanced as Ukraine, had a fundamental issue with morale. This is not the case in the current war AFAICT. The comparison with Afghanistan seems like a stretch to me.

iirc pre-war Ukraine was about as corrupt as Afghanistan

Not according to the Corruption Perceptions Index:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

Naturally an imperfect measure, but do you have a better one?

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