One Afghan Air Force pilot, forced into hiding until rescued or found out by the Taliban, wants Americans to know Afghan soldiers did not just apathetically throw in the towel when it came to defending their government.
"Many Afghan soldiers died bravely," the pilot told The Bulwark. "I've been fighting for over fifteen years. We did not all just give up and quit." Yes, some did, the pilot conceded, but "the logistics, maintenance, and corruption" brought on after the U.S. withdrawal "really hurt us."
As I have stated here previously, my pure civilian life gives me no insight into fighting wars or training armies. But I have to wonder, what is the point of the US Military training a foreign army
to rely on the US Military? Clearly the US can maintain a logistics-and-maintenance-heavy approach, but if a foreign army needs to be trained to fight against an unconventional enemy that lives off the land, shouldn't that foreign army be trained to fight similarly, rather than to rely on capabilities it doesn't have but we do have?
It seems to me that reproducing miniature US Armies in other countries, armies which require the same high ratio of support headcount to combat headcount, and then withdrawing a large proportion of that support headcount because it's still American, is a recipe for continued failure.
But I'm just a chairborne ranger, there must be more to it than I comprehend.
