I vehemently disagree with the excuse for our defeat in Afghanistan that America built the Afghanistan military in the image of America's military. That is not why we lost the war because America did not do that.
The blame for the complete collapse of Afghan forces rests with the U.S., said retired Army Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq and a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
"We're the ones who built a national army in our image" without taking into account the culture and traditions of the Afghans, Dempsey said.
This excuse is repeated so often that nobody is bothering to really examine the claim. Let's do that, shall we?
We'll ignore the Navy and Coast Guard because Afghanistan is landlocked. And obviously we'll leave out Space Force.
America's Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps are equipped with advanced equipment and weapons, including precision artillery, heavy armor, stealth fighters and other advanced jet aircraft; and precision rocket, rounds, missiles, and bombs to go along with them.
Let's look at a chart of what the Afghan military had and abandoned to the Taliban that made the rounds recently:
Much of the arsenal America abandoned to the Taliban doesn't worry me. The same Afghan government corruption that made it difficult to keep the big pieces of equipment in action will affect the Taliban. And it will take place more quickly without outside financial and logistics support. ... I worry more about specialist gear like night vision goggles and sniper rifles which could make terrorists more lethal. Or artillery ammunition that could be taken apart for explosives to build terrorist IEDs.
You will notice from the graphic above that the Afghanistan military had lots of Humvees, trucks, and SUVs; and just a small number of lightly armored vehicles; plus helicopters and propeller-driven aircraft.
American teenagers have more pickup trucks and SUVs!
There are no 5th generation fighters. No 4th generation. Heck, no 1st generation jets. Just helicopters and prop planes much easier to train to use and maintain.
No heavy armor or self-propelled artillery. No rocket artillery--just older tube artillery. But lots of trucks. Again, easier to use and maintain.
But lots of infantry weapons. Although I don't even see mortars in the list. Perhaps the threat of them falling into Taliban hands was too high. And with American direct air support and support to the Afghanistan air force, it was perhaps not needed.
Basically, Afghanistan had a light infantry and paramilitary force. This is not in any way a military built "in our image".
Nor did it operate like the American military.
Consider just one aspect of use. In the Iraq War when the roads were under heavy attack by Iraqi insurgents and terrorists, American forces fought through the ambushes successfully, with only a small amount of the supply line going by air in response. We did not abandon the roads.
Then we cut off their air support by abandoning the contractors who maintained the Afghanistan air force and by denying Afghanistan forces American close air support and other air capabilities.
Afghan ground forces had no ability or experience to fight through Taliban forces on the roads and no air resupply, reinforcement, medical evacuation, or fire support. No shit the Afghan military collapsed. It was willing to fight and die--7,000 per year since we turned over responsibility for fighting--but suddenly abandoned they saw no hope of winning.
I guarantee our troops wouldn't fight as well as they could if we suddenly cut them off from air and logistics support.
We didn't build a smaller scale mirror image of our military. We built a military in Afghanistan that still needed our help to fight as we designed it to fight.
I think the emphasis on blaming the outcome on 20 years of "duplicating" the American military is propaganda designed to hide the responsibility of the government and military this year for needlessly losing the war.
UPDATE: Oh, and a pro tip: never trust anything from the Center for No American Security.
