Submission Statement

Between 2001 and 2021, under four U.S. presidents, the United States spent approximately $2.3 trillion, with 2,459 American military fatalities and up to 360,000 estimated Afghan civilian deaths.

After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, approximately $7.12 billion worth of military equipment was left behind, according to a 2022 Department of Defense report. This equipment, transferred to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from 2005 to 2021, included:

Weapons: Over 300,000 of 427,300 weapons, including rifles like M4s and M16s.  
Vehicles: More than 40,000 of 96,000 military vehicles, including 12,000 Humvees and 1,000 armored vehicles.  
Aircraft: 78 aircraft, valued at $923.3 million, left at Hamid Karzai International Airport, all demilitarized and rendered inoperable.  
Munitions: 9,524 air-to-ground munitions worth $6.54 million, mostly non-precision.  
Communications and Specialized Equipment: Nearly all communications gear (e.g., radios, encryption devices) and 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric, and positioning equipment.

The total equipment provided to the ANDSF was valued at $18.6 billion, with the $7.12 billion figure representing what remained after the withdrawal. Much of this equipment is now under Taliban control, though its operational capability is limited due to the need for specialized maintenance and technical expertise.

The United States has provided at least $93.41 billion in total aid to Afghanistan since 2001. This includes:

Military Aid (2001–2020): Approximately $72.7 billion (in current dollars), primarily through the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund ($71.7 billion) and other programs like International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and Peacekeeping Operations ($1 billion combined).  

Humanitarian and Reconstruction Aid (2001–2025): Around $20.71 billion, including $3 billion in humanitarian and development aid post-2021 and $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan assets transferred to the Afghan Fund in 2022. Pre-2021 reconstruction and humanitarian aid (e.g., $174 million in 2001 and $300 million pledged in 2002) adds to this, though exact figures for the full period are less clear.
  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    1111·
    9 months ago

    I mean yeah, all that, but did you even stop to consider how absolutely insanely wealthy we made like 7 people!?

    God you people are so selfish with your wah wah thousands upon thousands have died! Think of the rich people for once!

    :P

    • ZeffSyde@lemmy.world
      7·
      9 months ago

      My goddamn brother in law, gung-ho air Force dude, is trying to get his Gen Z kids to enlist because it worked out so well for him. He enlisted during the magical late 90s so he wasn’t shipped anywhere. Hardest thing he had to do was pushups and whatever hazing the other soldiers put him through.

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      672·
      9 months ago

      Yes but actually no. Mujahideen (did I spell that correctly?) were CIA funded as they opposed the Russian invasion.

      A lot of former Mujahideen fighters did end up in both Taliban and Al-Quebec (autocorrect tells me that’s the right spelling) after the soviet-Afghan war, including Osama himself. While allied, they are separate entities.

      They are allies and with common roots, but saying Taliban was trained by CIA is an oversimplification. Some of its members were, yes, but that was long before Taliban was a thing.

      Also, the paragon of Aged Like Milk:

    • Diplomjodler@feddit.org
      221·
      9 months ago

      No. The Taliban only got started after the Soviets left. But the US funded and trained the Mujahedeen which later created Al-Quaeda.

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldBanned
        33·
        9 months ago

        Riiight, tell me, what does the word ‘mujahedeen’ mean?
        And why are they trying to hide it then if it’s so on the level?

        You americans sure love those name tricks.
        Like this POS ISIS headchopper:

        Nooo, he’s Ahmed al-Sharaa now and no longer from Al Quaida but totally harmless HTS.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldBanned
        13·
        9 months ago

        No, US funded what became Al-Qaeda, but the word Mohajed is usually used for a certain mix of Marxist and Islamist which is not common in our world anymore. The, eh, Islamic Republic of Iran in its ideology bears a significant trace of that though.

        • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldBanned
          12·
          9 months ago

          Couldn’t be more wrong, Mujahedeen:“one who struggles on behalf of Islam”, they are religious fundamentalists and the US knew it then and now.
          As they still support ISIS or whatever scumbag proxy doing their killing for them.
          It has certainly nothing to do with Marxism.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldBanned
            11·
            9 months ago

            I’ve literally told you where to look for an example. You are wrong. That this syncretism seems impossible to you means nothing.

            In the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan local leftist-Islamist groups (with just a few al-Qaeda like ones) were against the USSR, while the secular-leftist government remnants were its ally (after they created the whole situation by assassinating the friendly dictator, it’s complex).

            Mojahed has, yes, a rather wide meaning, but politically it’s associated with left-Islamist groups.

            Shia fundamentalism is pretty socialist. Actually Islamic (including right and Sunni) fundamentalism in general has a lot about support nets, helping poor and such. They also have their own “not dirty” financial organization methods, like “Islamic banking”.

            What had to be done to make political Islam the jihadi-Christian\Yazidi-beheading-ISIS-like-Caliphate-willing movement again, since the Ottoman empire, was a lot of work by western nations and a few small Arab monarchies. In Soviet times it was basically the western MO, to support-create-guide right-wing and fundamentalist organizations as opposed to the kind of movements USSR’s appearances attracted.

            Of course, now they are trying to wash their hands.

    • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      “That’s why the Taliban is so deadly and effective — hapkido training. Where’d they learn that? From Steven Seagal’s fat ass. Why do you think Kelly Lebrock left him? 'Cause he’s Taliban.”

    • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldBanned
      32·
      9 months ago

      They trained them, gave them weapons and assistance as much as they could.
      Don’t believe the revisionist trolls bcs the name is different.
      They were the same people with the same beliefs.
      Just ask the trolls what Mujahideen stands for?
      Or where they got the stinger missiles?

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
      111·
      9 months ago

      “Invade Afghanistan, you will regret it,” is one of history’s NCDish lessons. Like:

      • Don’t invade Russia in winter.
      • Don’t let Germany get too economically depressed.
      • Don’t let the Chinese people get too unhappy with their govt.

      Iran feels geographically close enough to inherit the curse for sure.

      • Manmoth@lemmy.ml
        71·
        9 months ago

        It’s Israeli hegemony. The entire point of American conquest in the Middle East is Zionism.

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
            23·
            9 months ago

            It’s kind of a package deal; Israeli domination of the middle east also means domination of the oil and shipping.

            Another facet is just good old fashion military industrial profeteering

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
          45·
          9 months ago

          Nah. Whenever I see Zionism used as a giant umbrella, I know that person is stirring up shit and/or is antisemitic.

          • Manmoth@lemmy.ml
            53·
            9 months ago

            Whenever I hear an inconvenient theory I turn off critical thinking and assassinate the person’s character in my mind

            Genetic fallacy

  • Bigfoot@lemm.ee
    233·
    9 months ago

    Is this text AI generated? The civilian death toll in the “submission statement” is about 6x higher than accepted numbers and about 100K higher than all total deaths in the entire conflict.

    IMO (AI or not) slop like this just “floods the zone with shit” while doing noting to help the progressive cause.

    • brukernavn@lemm.ee
      74·
      9 months ago

      This is in the first paragraph of what you linked:

      The Cost of War project estimated in 2015 that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts.

      • Bigfoot@lemm.ee
        105·
        9 months ago

        I shouldn’t need to tell you that that is a completely different statistic. You don’t need to muddy the waters of truth to make the point.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
    225·
    9 months ago

    TBF, withdrawing was a Trump era decision that Joe Biden simply didn’t stop. Trump also released 5,000+ Taliban Fighters just before. I feel like if we didn’t elect people like Donald fucking Trump then the outcome might have been different, it really seems like he was intentionally causing these problems.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        72·
        9 months ago

        At every stage, the US lost more and more territory. By Biden, they’d been hedged into Kabul like the US was backed into Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.

        The idea that we could have just camped out and refused to leave was politically impractical and logistically incredibly difficult. And why would we have been there, except to periodically fling bombs into neighboring territory?

        We’d lost the war a decade earlier and simply refused to admit it. By Biden, it was a farce. We didn’t control the country in any meaningful way.

        • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldBanned
          42·
          9 months ago

          They never had control, they outsourced a lot of the fighting to the warlords they paid, without them they would have been thrown out a lot earlier

        • smayonak@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          Their plan was to reduce us casualties to generate an illusion that the us was winning the war. So they cut a deal with the Taliban: the us would no longer support Afgani government soldiers with air support and in exchange the taliban would not attack us bases. This led to Afghanistan government soldiers quitting and the government collapsing.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      231·
      9 months ago

      Absolutely. The plan was to do in Afghanistan what we’d done in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Argentina and the Philippines.

      We wanted a local aristocracy beholden to the US business interests with a police force willing to brutalize dissidents. Taliban wasn’t that thing, so they needed to be supplanted.

      Problem was, the Afghan aristocracy that the US aligned with were more vile than the Taliban and rejected by the public at large. So the US spent 23 years killing everyone who refused to submit to them.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          9 months ago

          Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

          I might take this with a large grain of salt. My man is a neocon’s neocon.

          If you dig into Afghanistan’s history, particularly with regard to the Soviet Union, there were a lot of parallels between the quasi-socialism of the Soviet occupation and the quasi-liberalism of the American occupation.

          In both cases, the occupying army tried to subvert self-determination of the Afghan people. Trying to claim The Taliban as a product of US policy against the Communists or a product of Islamist policy against the Christian Nationalists really misses this as an ongoing effort by Afghanis to secure their own brand of domestic nationalism.

          Get down to “Who is responsible?” Rubin doggedly insists that (a) US support for the Taliban in the '70s was worth the price, entirely to keep Communism out of Pakistan. And (b) we are the victims of imperfect policy rather than our own hubris.

          Both beliefs are ultimately misguided, even if his history is a fun read.

          • smayonak@lemmy.world
            21·
            9 months ago

            It’s strange how Rubin glosses over the CIA’s training and arming of the very extremist groups which conducted 911. I don’t see how anyone can try to argue that arming and training such groups was worth it.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              9 months ago

              Simple. 3000 dead Americans was a small price to pay to bring down the Evil Empire of the USSR and liberate billions of people from Communism.

              • smayonak@lemmy.world
                3·
                9 months ago

                These people argue that all sacrifices are worth the goal of spreading global freedom even when they turn democracies into dictatorships. These people can never admit they were wrong about anything. Even now when the communist nations are beginning to overtake the west, these fools argue that China is a capitalist nation. They live in a fantasy world.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  21·
                  9 months ago

                  China is a capitalist nation

                  Capitalism is when people get rich, and the richer you are, the more capitalist you have become.

                  But also, Communism is when everyone hates their government. This proves that Americans are the Communists and China are the Capitalists.

          • ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ@lemm.ee
            1·
            9 months ago

            but can we agree OPs title is useless? the reminder does neither help nor explain anything. no one won anything. there is no likeable party.

  • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    9 months ago

    I learned 2 important lesson from this.

    1. You can’t bomb people into liking you.

    2. Most people don’t give a shit about number 1.

    Edit: AutoIncorrect got me.

  • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
    14·
    9 months ago

    before that it was the mujahadeen trained by SEALs/special operations, turned taliban.

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Man, am I glad that never backfired.

      Still, we got Charlie Wilson’s War out of it.

  • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
    177·
    9 months ago

    Throw another 20 years at it

    Hell, throw another 100 years at it, it wouldn’t make a difference

    Doesn’t even matter which country invades, it won’t hold it for long.

    Even Alexander the Great only briefly held it for 25 years after defeating Darius III

    The people didn’t want us there and we weren’t interested in forcing ourselves on them like some kind of brutal Soviet satellite state

    The rampant unchecked corruption was way worse than we thought and it was a major consideration for pulling out

    Can’t help people who are unwilling to help themselves

      • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
        51·
        9 months ago

        Initially, no. I’m still baffled that we bothered staying at all. Later on it transitioned from it being primarily a combat mission to a combat mission plus a side humanitarian effort

        When it was beyond clear that the people weren’t interested in our way of life at all, then they waited 10+ years and pulled the plug

        Had to make sure the contractor companies got theirs first

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
          92·
          9 months ago

          People weren’t interested in gifts brought by colonizers. It’s not our way of life, it’s the fact that we forced on them at the end a gun.

          • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
            39·
            9 months ago

            Not really. We presented opportunities and they rejected them.

            The US led coalition established a system of voting, Afghans risked their lives to vote

            Other Afghans threatened to kill them if they voted, and many followed through with their threats

            The US led coalition built schools, some risked their lives to attend

            Other Afghans threatened to kill them if they attended, and many followed through with their threats

            The US led coalition provided food and healthcare, many happily accepted

            Others Afghans stole food and healthcare supplies and kept them from being distributed to other Afghans

            The US led coalition provided new critical public infrastructure, many Afghans were overjoyed by the increase in their quality of life

            Other Afghans destroyed that infrastructure with explosives and killed many Afghans in the process

            No one was forced to accept it, the end of a gun came from other Afghans

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
              75·
              9 months ago

              Voting in rigged elections forced on them by the occupation for candidates forced on them by the occupation. Colonial schools that were meant to preach occupation propaganda to train up the next generation of compradores. Aid that is conditional on not being a resistance fighter against the colonial occupation and laying down their arms for their occupiers. And all of that infrastructure comes with strings attached and with debts that are expected to be repaid.

              They’re not backward mud people, they were resisting colonial occupation.

              Every gift from the Great Satan is poison.

        • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
          41·
          9 months ago

          How so?

          It happened with every other war in recent years, and you’ll recall that Hamid Karzai got the Zelensky treatment, even making speeches in Congress, before it was found out he was personally benefitting from war funds.

          • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
            11·
            9 months ago

            One major reason is that even before the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine has been hot on the goal of trying to join the European Union which has strict metrics against corruption which Ukraine has been striving to eliminate with EU watchdogs constantly visiting Ukraine to independently assess their effort.

            By the end of which Ukraine will likely have far less corruption than the US

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    111·
    9 months ago

    This shit haunts me sometimes. I remember hearing somewhere that the Taliban actually offered to deliver OBL to the US if they would promise not to invade and we were like “get fucked, idiot”. How many people’s lives did we needlessly destroy, regardless of nationality, both in Iraq and Afghanistan? What else could have been bought besides misery with the nearly four trillion between those two wars?

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      9 months ago

      I didnt know about any of this. The article I read mentioned they offered to put him on trial prior to 9/11 too for his other crimes in the 90s. America is literally the idiot bully who yells over anything you say and then eventually punches you in the face while you are confused.

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldBanned
        25·
        9 months ago

        He also died of natural causes.
        Been invisible for a decade and wouldn’t you know it, a few months before the presidential elections “we got him”.
        Somehow they showed no footage of him being heroically killed by the brave GI Joe’s.
        They go trough all the trouble of taking his body during a dangerous raid in a hostile country, but somehow they decide all on their own to throw his body from the ship.
        LOL