It’s a busy day today, though I have one piece of science to post. Right now, though, why don’t you talk about the focus of the news: Afghanistan?
If you go to Bari Weiss’s site, you’ll find seven diverse people, including ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley (a Republican), discussing “Why we failed: the American exit from Afghanistan.” You don’t have to discuss the views in that piece, which range from “getting out was great” to “we should have stayed”, but there are a number of questions to discuss. For instance?
a.) Should we have stayed, even if that might mean an indefinite commitment?
b.) If “yes,” in what capacity should we have stayed?”
c.) Or should we have left Afghanistan earlier? If so, how much earlier?
d.) Was the Afghan army primarily to blame for the defeat by the Taliban? Or was it the corruptness of the Afghan government? Or both.
e.) Was the U.S. there, as many maintain, just to keep the money flowing into the pockets of defense contractors?
f.) Why didn’t the U.S. military speak up earlier if they saw the war was unwinnable?
g.) What mistakes did the U.S. make in fostering this premature and hasty exit?
h.) Is this a serious blow to U.S. credibility, as a NYT op-ed maintained?
i.) Is this a serious blow to Joe Biden’s credibility? Did his hunkering down at Camp David present a bad look for the U.S.?
j.) How did other Presidents, starting with W., screw up and contribute to this?
k.) Here’s the human cost of our incursion from the Associated Press:
American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.
U.S. contractors: 3,846.
Afghan national military and police: 66,000.
Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.
Afghan civilians: 47,245.
Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.
Aid workers: 444.
Journalists: 72.Not to mention the $2 trillion the U.S. spent prosecuting the war. Given that, as in Vietnam, we lost this war, was this a waste of life and of effort? In retrospect, was there any value in invading Afghanistan and propping up the country and it military?
And so on. Weigh in below, and, with luck, I’ll be back escorting Milady Science.
I only heard about a third option … a formal, arranged surrender by the now-former Afghan government … yesterday. That third option sounds “less bad” than the usual “two options” that have been in the news …. stay-forever, or … what-just-happened.
I think Presidential responsibility goes back as far as Reagan who funded/armed religious extremists to fight against Russians.
aka the Mujahideen. See Charlie Wilson’s War. (The basis for the excellent final feature film by Mike Nichols.)
Actually, Carter’s administration started arming the Mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) in 1979, but under Reagan, we really ramped up the proxy war with Russia. As Ken noted.
And it should be added that originally the aim was not to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan (as they were not there yet when the US operation started), but to destabilize the Central Asian states of the Soviet Union by infiltrating them from Afghanistan. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a reaction to that plan to begin with. (The Russian had pretty well placed spies at the time, so Moscow was informed about the American plan.)
Now, Afghanistan was already in civil war (that gave the opportunity for the plan) and of course the Russians screwed up pretty bad, but still, the US has a big responsibility in creating this mess.
Yep.
😒
This is clearly a major American fuck-up. Certainly, the withdrawal could have been handled better. Indeed, it doesn’t seem it could have been much worse (and the horror is just starting). I don’t know why the Afghan army folded, and the scary thing is that it doesn’t seem that the Pentagon does either. (Joe said that we didn’t expect the Afghan army to fold so soon. How soon did they expect it?) Our allies from South Korea to the Baltics have to wonder what this means for them. I saw one piece saying that Taiwan should get the bomb asap. I think that is right. It is unclear whether we can defend anyone, and the next crisis will be too late to find out. All the administrations for the last twenty years own part of the blame for what’s happened, but Biden has been President for eight months. He was in charge, he had the authority. This is his disaster, and he is our disaster. If Trump has done this, we would have our third impeachment, and this time he would have been convicted on a bi-partisan basis. The problem now is that if Biden goes, whether through impeachment, resignation, or the 25th Amendment, then the path of succession leads from Harris to Pelosi to Leahy. Being “not Trump” was too low a bar to set for a President.
Nice try. This withdrawal was defined by the Trump administration. The Former Guy now wants us to forget.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1427231542254964737
And Biden could have changed it. Hell, he’s reflexively changed every other Trump policy, but this one was sacrosanct? It’s his. He owns it. Trump is not an excuse for Biden’s own incompetence.
I’m a Biden supporter, but I honestly don’t think that any objective observer could fail to acknowledge that the withdrawal (or attempted withdrawal) of our personnel and supporters has been an unmitigated disaster for which the Biden administration bears much of the blame.
A couple of hundred more screw ups like this and I’m going to start thinking that Biden is almost as incompetent as Trump was. Almost.
Exactly. But for some reason even the liberal press are barely mentioning that at the moment. Though there are a few articles here and there pointing it out, and pointing to articles from last year when the Trump administration first started negotiating with the Taliban.
It is much easier to just blame Biden, as DrBrydon does above. This exit has been in the works for years, based on deals made between Trump and the Taliban…. they hold off attacking us (while still attacking government forces) while we beat a retreat. If the current administration has one big responsibility here it is that they were surprised to see Afghan government forces evaporate. It should not have been a surprise. It is how Afghan government forces have performed for years.
+1
+1
Keep clutching your pearls, DrBrydon.
In your dreams.
My guess would be that inside intelligence indicated that there was no way for the US to do a graceful exit. So the Trump admin was glad to set up Biden to take the fall, by negotiating the withdrawal but not actually doing it.
Biden unfortunately fell into the trap.
Are you suggesting that Trump knew he was going to lose the election? Doubtful. It was all consistent with Trump’s so-called foreign policy. He loves to negotiate with brutal people.
By the middle of 2020 Trump knew he would lose. Polls were clear on that. That’s when he started his big lie strategy, claiming that the election would be rigged.
But I wouldn’t give him credit for thinking this through. His people did that for him, and probably advised him to claim credit for withdrawing but not actually do it.
If by chance he had won, he likely would have found an excuse to cancel the withdrawal. Or maybe just went through with it. He wouldn’t have much reason to care about public opinion anymore.
On (D) I would say neither. The government was weak I guess, but the opposition had funding and allies which we were never able to cut off. No reason to blame an ally for doing their best and failing when the opposition they faced was strong.
On (J) Let’s go back to Carter and Reagan. The big lesson I’d say is STOP FUNDING AND ARMING TYRANNICAL AUTHORITARIANS just because they happen to be fighting one of our enemies. If there’s a lesson from the cold war I wish we would get, but never seem to do, it’s that this always bites us in the a$$ over the long term. It’s practically lose-lose-lose: if we back them and they lose, it’s a waste of our resources. If we back them and they win, they act horribly, and we’ve created a vicious authoritarian nation. If we back them, they win, then get overthrown, the country hates us for putting an evil dictator or regime in charge.
On (L) (“was this a waste”), I would say no. Costly yes, and maybe we decide the cost wasn’t worth the benefit. But an entire generation of men and women were raised under a democracy rather than a hideously sexist religious dictatorship. A generation of Afghan women were afforded the education that should be the norm. Hopefully a lot of them will get out, or work towards improving conditions while they stay. That’s not nothing. Maybe not worth what we paid for it, but not a complete waste either.
I underscore the point of your second paragraph, Eric. I’m reminded of the 1987 book by Raymond Bonner titled Waltzing with a Dictator. Though this book concentrates on Ferdinand Marcos, it has been sadly relevant in the ensuing decades after its publication up to our present foreign policy fiasco. We didn’t heed Bonner’s, and your, conclusion that U.S. support of authoritarians is counterproductive, to say the least.
It’s all so very sad. I know I mentioned reggae artist Michael Franti in the Monday Hili Dialogue thread, but it really is interesting to note that his album, released in 2006, had tracks describing current events. Time to Come Home and Light Up Your Lighter, especially.
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I also mentioned my friend the communists’ perspective, that the Afghan people have been fighting a war against the US for twenty years, and they just won.
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The speed with which the western backed government abdicated power indicates that they were already planning on handing over everything to the Taliban, to me.
So I don’t know what to do. Other than to support local orgs, journalists and NGOs on the ground with donations.
We got into Afghanistan because Bin Laden’s people did the World Trade Center, Afghanistan was harboring them, and we had to save face.
We should have bombed Afghanistan, declared victory, and never put boots on the ground. As far as wiping out Al Qaeda, it was doomed to fail from the get-go because Pakistan (our ally) had deep ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and let them use Western Pakistan to hide out. Everyone knew that from the beginning, and we could have occupied every square foot of the Country, and Al Qaeda and the Taliban would just be smiling across the border under the shadows of Pakistani security forces.
From what should have been a face saving operation became an occupation and a plan to take Afghanistan from the Middle Ages into a modern liberal democracy. Further, 98 or 99 percent of the money was spent on troops and military contractors, so there was never a coherent commitment to building up the economy or creating any kind of infrastructure, not to mention that their best cash crop is opium poppies.
Set a crazy plan, then make sure you deprive the people supposed to implement it of resources.
We should have left Afghanistan in 6 months. As far as the collapse of the Afghani government and forces, who was running it? Some Washington consensus retreads? Remember, the former government (pre-Taliban) were communists, so its not likely that the US put anyone with any admin experience or knowledge in decision-making roles. Anoint incompetents, look the other way as they divert foreign aid to Swiss Bank accounts, and then wonder why it collapses.
Why did the military say nothing? You don’t get to be a general without the backing of Congress, which is to say, you don’t make general without being a politician and sucking up to civilian leadership. Also, the war was great for defense contractors and mercenaries, and where do you think the revolving door ends for high-ranking brass? [In 2014, General Mike Flynn was critical of Obama’s attempts to overthrow Assad which earned him the hatred of the national security people, and well, look what happened to him. You want to be the next Mike Flynn?]
Biden will be fine. Trump and the GOP were for exiting Afghanistan before they were against it so there is plenty of hypocrisy in the public record. The MIC will give him a pass, as there are plenty of opportunities for small wars all over the place, and we need to pivot resources to China. No one in the public wants America to “lose” but no one actually cares about Afghanistan and no one actually believes that we were about to turn a “corner”. Its mostly the National Security State spooks, the military industrial complex profiteers, and their paid chorus in the MSM crying. Nobody in the populace actually cares what they think, and the public is sick of useless wars.
America has been the victim of failed, bipartisan theory of International Relations, “democratic peace theory”, which has pushed “engagement with China” (hello Godzilla) because when China became rich they would become liberal-democrats, they pushed small wars to nation build in the ME which have been expensive disasters, they have single-handedly received a unipolar world and then set in place policies which have destroyed it, severely weakened American relative power, outsourced supply chains to our adversaries at the expense of our working class, while funding overpriced defense boondoggles like aircraft carriers which are obsolete or the F-35 fighter which the Air Force admitted in 2021 was a “failure”. Are we safer than in 1989? No. 2001? No. 2011? No.
Well said.
I have a much more sanguine view on senior military staff, and have some minor experience with DoD-civilian leadership discussions. I imagine there were a lot of conversations (extended over a long period of time) which could be summarized like this:
Congress: “How much will it take to accomplish X?”
Military: “Ten $trillion and half a million soldiers…per year. For a decade.”
Congress: “WHAT? I can’t support that! My constituents will never stand for it and I’ll lose the next election. Hmmm…okay, what can you do for a hundredth of that?”
Military: “For a hundredth of that, we can accomplish microX”
Congress: “okay, go do that.”
Later on broadcast news: “This just in: Congress declares nation’s forces will accomplish X!”
Military: [facepalm]
a.) I don’t know. I don’t think maintaining a presence as we had been doing for years would ever fix the problem. The only reasonable argument for staying is that we caused a big mess and have a moral obligation to deal with it as best we can. Balanced against that is that no matter how long we stay, when we leave people will die as a consequence, and as long as we stay people will die as a consequence. How to weigh which is worse? The only “good” scenario I can dream up is a large UN coalition with significant contributions by many other nations occupying Afghanistan to keep the peace, fight the Taliban and nurture local government and economy. That seems unlikely.
c.) I don’t think we should have been there in the first place. Killing Taliban associated with 09/11 terror attacks using our intelligence agencies and special operations assets, yes. Occupying the country, no.
d) We completely screwed their government and their military when we (the Trump administration) sat down at the negotiating table with the Taliban and agreed to exclude the Afghani government from the negotiations. And then agreed to the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, pressured the Afghani government to actually release them, and as a cherry on top gave the Taliban our time table for leaving.
About 95% of what I’ve been hearing is about how the Biden administration screwed this up. No doubt they have made some mistakes / bad decisions, but this CF was put in motion by the previous administration and watching “my side” blame the Biden administration for it with little to no mention of what was already in play when the Biden administration took over this mess is disheartening to say the least. I guess this is why the DP always ends up losing big. Its constituents, and much of the liberal press, throw it under the bus nearly as quickly as the Trumpers do.
f) Do we know they didn’t? And the military is, ultimately, supposed to take orders.
h) Probably. Though it depends on what is being measured. I doubt anyone will decide from this that the US is no longer good at destroying stuff with our military.
i) Probably. But should it be?
j) See ‘d’ above for Trump. And the Obama administration that never managed to extract us. And the Bush Jr. administration that stupidly, IMO, got us there in the first place. That administration is by far the most blame-worthy, and not just because they started it.
Trump took credit for the withdrawal of our troops last June, saying “Biden couldn’t stop it”. I hope the DP starts playing this clip ad infintium.
+1
Yes. And to get that photo op he sold out the Afghani government and military and gave the Taliban everything they wanted. The Art of the Deal indeed.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
This is Vietnam all over again. How could we be so stupid (again) as to think we could actually win a war like this?
There is oppression and cruelty in numerous places all over the world all of the time. It is beyond absurd to think that we can fix much (if any) of it, or that we have an obligation to devote our blood and treasure to do so.
Any politician who votes in favor of war should automatically be required to enlist his own eligible sons and daughters to fight in that war. War is easy when you’re sending someone else’s kids to fight it.
Of course the USA could win a war like this. They did it against the Japanese in 1945.
The problem is that the USA is not prepared to commit the resources to do it and they and the rest of the World would not be able to stomach the necessary atrocities.
Edit: and no, you cannot ask politicians to commit their children to fight in a war because the children are not responsible for the parent’s decisions. It’s morally unconscionable to punish the sons for the sins of the father.
The battle against Japan in WWII was not a civil war, and so was not “like this.”
And as to “resources” you claim we failed to commit, you’re ultimately talking about American lives. The war against Japan resulted in 111,606 dead or missing and another 253,142 wounded, and the casualties may well have been a multiple of that if Americans had been required to fight house to house on the ground in Japan rather than dropping 2 atomic bombs. It is beyond absurd to suggest that the U.S. should have been willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American lives to secure victory in Afghanistan — or alternatively, have been willing to use nuclear weapons.
And yes, I do understand that there is no legal way to compel war hawk politicians to enlist their children in the military.
Precisely. You don’t have the will to win the war. The USA easily had the resources to beat out the Taliban and it did. The problem is that it was not prepared to commit to keeping the peace.
“Any politician who votes in favor of war should automatically be required to enlist his own eligible sons and daughters to fight in that war. War is easy when you’re sending someone else’s kids to fight it.”
Concur, especially re: the “chicken hawk” Brothers Kagan and their ideological ilk.
Bari Weiss says ” . . . I asked some of the most thoughtful people I could think of . . . .”
Maybe Ms. Weiss wasn’t thinking all that well at the time, at least regarding Nikki Hailey, that apotheosis of epistemic humility and as governor-bloviator expositor of “South Carolina values” (as if South Carolina or any state for that matter has such uniquely and exquisitly high-minded values). It is the USA’s incredible misfortuned that she has not been POTUS for the last several years to show us how to successfully navigate this minefield. (As an old Guadalcanal Marine once told me, “Everybody rides the bucking horse better than the guy riding it.”)
Perhaps to give military recruiters a break and show them also how it’s done, I defy her to go into a classroom of high school seniors – who are armed with some sufficient historical knowledge of Afghanistan and Vietnam – and bring her scintillating “chicken hawk” “American Exceptionalism” rhetoric to bear and try to persuade them to join the military and go in harm’s way to possibly (probably?) be greviously maimed for life or killed on behalf of her foreign policy goals and political aspirations.
“There is oppression and cruelty in numerous places all over the world all of the time. It is beyond absurd to think that we can fix much (if any) of it, or that we have an obligation to devote our blood and treasure to do so.” So do we just write it off?
We went in ostensibly to find bin Laden. I am on record saying at the end of 2002 that having failed to find him after a year of searching we needed to recognise that he was no longer in Afghanistan and we should get out. We should have said to the Taliban and the Warlords it was not the West’s concern who ruled Afghanistan but the potential for the re-emergence of Al Qaeda was our concern so that if there was evidence of Al Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan we would hold the rulers of that country responsible and bomb not only Al Qaeda training camps but the Government’s headquarters. We also should have maintained surveillance post departure, not only by satellite but by overflight.
My sadly-late old pal Bill Robinett (MD) was fiercely anti-W just because of the incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also fiercely anti-Tr*mp. He was also strongly pro-Biden, commenting on the eve of the 2016 election, “If Joe Biden had run we wouldn’t be in this mess,” meaning that things wouldn’t have been so tight vs. Hillary.
So with that, it seems worth wondering whether Joe would’ve gotten us out of Afghanistan had he run and won in 2016. Also probably not worth spending time wondering, but I do wonder if he ever took the side of getting out ASAP in discussions with Obama.
He said he was against the 2009 surge, and wanted to rely on drone strikes and anti-terrorism missions, not troop build-up. So I’d say he probably did discuss with Obama a strategy to get the hell out.
Bringing real Sassoon vibes here:
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Also, a reminder that it is not, in fact, sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.
This was meant to be a reply to JohnE comment 9.
Got it — Thanks.
And Kipling, too:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
A little support for Biden’s decision (but not the execution of that decision) from Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/17/biden-refused-fall-two-decades-military-dissembling/
“Commend me to the cardinal,” said Milady.
“Commend me to Satan,” replied Rochefort.
— Alexandre Dumas père, The Three Musketeers
I do think it was time to leave Afghanistan but Biden has screwed up the exit big time. There seems to have been no real plan to deal with contingencies like the Taliban taking over faster than expected. Securing the exit would seem like the first priority of any exit plan. Second would be gathering up all those Afghan helpers who need to be protected and brought to the US or taken elsewhere.
Of course, the buck may stop with Biden but surely the State Dept and military are really to blame here. There was some suggestion that there was tension between the White House and the military on the exit so perhaps it is fallout from that. Not that that is any excuse.
Although Biden blames the Afghan Army for not fighting hard enough, someone pointed out that they had lost many men over the years, demonstrating a willingness to fight, so that was disingenuous to say the least. Lack of support from the Afghan and US governments would seem like a more likely cause.
Look, you can Monday morning quarterback Biden all day long, but comparing the US pull out to say De Gaulle’s pull out from Algeria, you have to say Afghanistan seems like its on a way better track than Algeria. Not much to like about the Taliban, but they have professionalized over the last 20 years, and it appears they are more sensitive to the preferences of the locals as they realize they were hated. Further, they must be hoping for diplomatic support from China, Pakistan, and maybe Iran, so they probably have to moderate their act because China is not going to want Jihad in their backyard (they need pipelines to Iran) and ditto Pakistan.
I don’t want this to sound the wrong way, but if there is a benefit from U.S. involvement, it is that 20 years in the wilderness may have made the Taliban more cohesive, better prepared to responsibly and constructively exercise power on behalf of their people, which may also have been true of the Viet Cong. That doesn’t mean that is a good reason to fight the war (so your enemy becomes a more effective state regime).
Also, the fact that the state collapsed signals that the fix was already in, and the Taliban have made the deals with whomever they made the deals with, and so the lines of command are pretty clear, which will avoid a lot of violence and make it easier for the country to transition to building a collective future, which unfortunately probably involves exporting cheap smack to the rest of the world.
What you suggest here would seem more likely if the Taliban’s morality wasn’t based on Muslim fundamentalism.
Yes, the fix was in but wasn’t it just the Taliban saying something like, “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”
It has been said that the Taliban are going to be responsible for keeping the electricity on, etc. But perhaps a better model is the Mafia. The Taliban are simply going to tell the population, it’s business as usual but we’ll take our cut and demand that you follow our moral rulebook. In other words, it will be the subjects that must keep the electricity on and they will be expected to keep doing so or they will be replaced.
Yes, telling everyone what to do, imposing morality from above, and tax farming the surplus from the proles, you call it the mafia, I would say if you have a monopoly on violence, your not a mafia, you’re a state. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to live there, but I would be surprised if there is going to be a big shift in social mores or laws when you cross the border from Western Pakistan. I’m saying it could be worse, and much more anarchic. Bad laws enforced fairly with minimal corruption are better than good laws enforced selectively and with rampant corruption which is better than anarchy (if you are a peasant, obviously it is open season for warlords).
Their smack goes only to Europe and Russia. All of ours comes from Latin America.
The reason it is such a pernicious substance is BECAUSE it is prohibited and the consequences of that: not for what it is.
They asked the Sth American drug lords in the 1980s what the very worst thing that could happen to their business would be. They said: decriminalization.
D.A.
NYC
A month ago, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley reported that “the Afghan security forces are consolidating their forces to protect population centers.” And he reckoned that “A negative outcome—a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan —is not a foregone conclusion.”
Quoted from a short, thoughtful essay in Tablet which makes two points. (1) “In fact, it’s both remarkable and telling how little bloodshed there has been so far—a sign that many Afghan officials and members of the security forces had already cut deals or made arrangements with the Taliban before the group’s campaign of the past few weeks. For now, Afghans appear to be engaging in internal political negotiations that the U.S. presence had preempted.” (2) “But the second Afghan disaster is the calamitous defeat and humiliation of the United States. We now have wall-to-wall assertions beaming through everyone’s phones showing the United States to be inept, weak, and naive, while competing powers such as China swoop in to conclude deals with the new Taliban regime that they have been preparing for years. Having spent its power in a futile exercise with nothing now to show for it, the United States may find it is not so easy to recover when a more urgent cause comes calling.”
Another question to add to the mix, since no one seems to be asking it: Who is now funding and supplying the Taliban, and why was more not done over the years to disrupt and close down that funding and those supply lines? It seems to me that is where the origin of the failure lies.
NPR talked about this at length yesterday – I don’t recall all the figures – except that drugs (opium, meth, etc) only made up 9% of their budget revenue. The rest came from taxes (taxing all good crossing the border, taxing cell phone towers), kidnapping ransoms & I can’t remember the last big one. But yes, certainly not reining this in was a mistake.
NPR’s?
Guess they had to look for other revenue streams once I stopped making annual pledges in exchange for tote bags. 🙂
Never ever should have invaded Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires, the death of hope, the asscrack of the world. Why?
I wish that people had made a tenth the noise when we got in over there as they make getting out. But everyone, including the congress was okay. If you go back and look at the reality, the history on what we actually did, it might help you, maybe not. No one cared when Vietnam got going so why should they care about this or Iraq. Remember Iraq, remember the lies and BS that got us in there. Afghanistan was originally started by the CIA and a hand full of special forces. The regular military had nothing ready and Bush could not wait. So the CIA and special forces took a few suitcases full of cash and hired the Northern Alliance to do the fighting with our air cover. They ran the Taliban out in no time and hunted for Ben Laden in the Mountains close to Pakistan. They almost got him but the army screwed it up and he got away. At that point the mission should have been over but no, they stayed and decided to go into nation building and whatever else they could think of. Once Iraq became the thing, Afghanistan was left on the hook for years. Go back and read about all of this instead of focusing on this getting out stuff. Getting out is always a mess. We made it worse. We learned no lessons from Vietnam and so we repeat all of them again. You cannot insert yourself into a civil war and expect a good outcome. You cannot go to war without a definition of how you are going to win. We had no plan or idea about how to win. We could not go after the enemy and he had safe haven. You cannot go to a third world country and turn it into something it is not. There are a thousand reasons why this does not work and there is zero how it ever would.
I agree. The US should have treated 9/11 as a crime not a war. This means go after Bin Laden and Al Qaeda only, not make it impossible for terrorists to ever be harbored in Afghanistan ever again. The latter is way too difficult and perhaps impossible.
By “the Northern Aliance” I guess you mean the mainly Uzbek army under Abdul Rashid Dostum, who indeed routed the Taliban.
I think the Afghan situation is very complex, especially after the overthrow of Daud, with 2 ‘communist’ factions Parcham and Khalq fighting each other. The USSR made the mistake to intervene, and the US made the mistake of supporting fundamentalist Muslim militias such as the Mujahedin.
The US went into Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban, who hosted Al Qaeda. but as pointed out above our ‘allies’ , such as Pakistan gave them sanctuary and support. The US never succeeded in destroying the Taliban. Should they have relied more on the likes of Dostum? I don’t know. Should the US have broken with Pakistan? (most definitely). Moreover, moving into Iraq stretched the US military efforts, even the US military has it’s limits. Don’t fight battles on 2 fronts if avoidable.
Hence the US departs now tail between legs, basically defeated. Books will be written about all what should and could have been done better.
After Russia (well, the USSR) and the US, who is next? Will China go in? Will they defeat the Taliban with other than military means? One should not forget that the Islamist part of the Taliban is rather supportive of the Uighurs , something that sits not nicely with China.
All of that is part of the story. But also, throughout the 20 years and 3 or 4 administrations you could walk around and ask any of those in charge – What would winning look like in Afghanistan. I suspect no one could give you an answer. They never knew from day one. Just like Vietnam – all they could fall back on was the domino affect. It never existed either.
America does not like to admit it was wrong. Someone will have to pay for this, and it will be the Democrats in 2024, if not sooner.
We need a to be able to quickly sponsor/‘adopt’ fleeing women and girls. All I’ve read currently is the rescue organizations want us to donate $$$; which I cannot afford to do. (But I do have the space for a few, once they get here.)
And even if/when we do rescue some, no matter how on-board the polls may be at the time, there will be the inevitable backlash against letting in “those” people in.
We already have an insurrection of our own to deal with, plus the anti-vaccine / masking insanity, and a former president who made an agreement with the terrorists, ending the “strategy” of kicking-the-can down the road.
This was never going to be one of those Independence Day movie moments where America saves the day, and it was never in the script.
The initial incursion into Afghanistan by GW Bush was appropriate in our efforts to get bin Laden. There was a clear loss of focus on this primary objective when he decided to launch an ill-advised war against Iraq based on a series of lies. That was the death knell of any short term, concerted effort to eliminate terrorism in Afghanistan. We spent billions on equipping and training the Afghan army. We spent our blood and treasure to ensure a stable and vibrant democracy as well. Sadly, we could never overcome the corruption, duplicity and downright incompetence of the Afghan government or their security forces as well as the duplicity of the Pakistani government who supported and still supports terrorism . We could not overcome hundreds of years of history that time and again demonstrated that Afghanistan really is where “Empires go to Die”. All the Presidents, from H W Bush through Trump aided and abetted this shitshow. We now have a responsibility to rescue as many of those Afghans who worked with us as we can. Unlike H W Bush and Trump, who screwed the Kurds over and over again, President Biden is making an honest effort to save as many of these people as he can. It is not the fault of President Biden that the corrupt Afghan government officials ran away. It is also not President Bidens fault that the Afghan army and the other security forces took the bribes and ran. It is President Bidens fault that this exit is such a horrific mess. He should have anticipated this debacle. We need to stay until the mission to save the thousands of Afghans and other nationals is complete. President Biden is also not responsible for the Doha Accords or letting the future Taliban President of Afghanistan out of Gitmo. I also do not think this will hurt our international credibility at all. Most governments know what a quagmire central Asia is and has been for centuries.
As I remember it, GW Bush’s initial incursion was not only to “get bin Laden” but to stop Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists. In fact, the former seemed to take a back seat to the latter until the public complained. If the goal had been to just get bin Laden, it wouldn’t have taken months of planning and logistics before much happened. Instead, they would have sent in some kind of fast strike force within days or perhaps a week or two.
One take that I don’t see mentioned here is that we can call our venture into Afghanistan a success because we’ve not had another 9/11 for 20 years. While it’s true we haven’t had a big terrorist attack, it isn’t clear that we needed to take over the country to do it. Still, it’s an interesting way to look at it.
We actually prevented another 9/11 as soon as we closed the door to the cockpit of the airlines and reenforced the door so you could not get in. That is all it took. Why we had not done this years before — the airlines did not want to spend the money. it was inconvenient. Planes had been highjacked for years yet we did nothing practical to prevent it. After 9/11 i guess it was not so expensive anymore.
Sure but the next attack would have to be something different. Al Queda may be religious and bastardly but I doubt they’re stupid.
+1
I can’t think of any substantive reason for withdrawal. We only had a few thousand GIs based there and very few casualties. We keep troupes all over the globe to maintain stability and decent living conditions. What’s one more spot?
Fareed Zakaria called this a myth. That was only the case in the last few years because the Taliban were holding back their attacks based on the US promise to leave. As soon as the US reneged on that, the Taliban would have immediately stepped up the attacks. Biden’s choice was between pulling out or escalating enormously. I don’t know if this is true but it sounds right.
You are correct. That stuff about a couple of thousand troops to hold back the enemy is crap. Trump had already sign a peace agreement with the Taliban. That was the reason only a couple thousand troop were still there..
We had two choices: withdraw or start fighting again. That’s the deal that Trump made with the Taliban- and also remember that Pompeo allowed the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. If we went against Trump’s deal, the only alternative was to engage the Taliban again. This was the right decision…really the only viable decision.
Pretty clear the military recognized the problems long ago: no clear definitiion of either victory or defeat, a useless Afghan army (60% of which didn’t exist so the commanders could pocket their pay), corruption so severe the Afghan troops were hungry while the “leaders” lived in gilded palaces Trump would have envied. But from the Pentagon’s perspective, these were all Good Things – an endless mission, lots and lots of funding, plenty of promotions. Biden knew from Obama’s attempt to get out, that the military wasn’t on board with this, and would drag their feet indefinitely. Where Biden went wrong was to accept the military claim that they had trained and equipped a functional fighting force – which refused to fight and simply sat at outposts waiting for air cover. THEY were certainly not surprised that their pet army had already made surrender deals with the Taliban.
It seems to me this whole fiasco could have never happened. As to leaving couldn’t have been more advertised. Date, day and for all I know time. Holy cow even a dimwit could have corralled his resources to make the leaving a horror story.
There are many “little” events to require our military’s “growth.” There are so many more uses for the money and personnel. Take that horror in Haiti for example.
I think whether we lost this war depends on who pocketed most of the $2 trillion. The US arms and weapons manufacturers and the US politicians they support? The US contractors hired by the military and the US politicians those contractors support? The Afghan military certainly never seemed like an army that had received a trillion or two investment.
Hamid Karzai (who, in 13 years in office. was never an effective leader nor a reliable US partner), along with his clan and cronies, appears to have sucked a shitload of graft out of the funds sent to Afghanistan.
He’s cut from the same corrupt cloth as the leaders of South Vietnam from Ngo Dinh Diem to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to “Big Minh.”
I seem to remember when the US and UN nations were signing up to go into Afghanistan that there was much discussion about once you go in, you need to stay forever and occupy it. So, I’m not at all surprised at any of the outcomes. It’s awful. It was a bad idea to go and a bad idea to leave. And let’s not forget the soldiers who were wounded but not killed. According to Wikipedia, “figures released by DND in June 2013 show that the total number of Canadian soldiers injured and wounded in more than ten years of war reached 2,071 by the end of December 2012. 1,436 of these are listed as NBI (Non battle injuries) and 635 are listed as WIA (wounded in action)”.
BBC had a very good report the other day on how the Taliban were awash with drug money from opium and heroin which they used to grease the palms of pretty well everyone who potentially stood in their way. Which metal would you chose: silver or lead?
“¿Plata o plomo?“, as they say in Colombia.
For Biden it’s probably for the best that this mess happened now instead of in an election year. He’ll get it over with and move on. I don’t think the American public really cares much about Afghanistan. Trump ran against Bush’s brother Jeb by excoriating the Iraq war and himself planned withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, which suggests even the right-wing is tired of foreign wars and endless military occupations. Will the withdrawal dent the credibility of American war machine? Good! A little more humility and a memory of defeat might dissuade this country from further misbegotten foreign adventures, for a while at least.
Julia Ioffe wrote an interesting article on the Afghanistan pullout in her newsletter, “Tomorrow Will Be Worse.”. She specializes in foreign policy, especially on Russia, and inside DC gossip. I hope the link works:
https://ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9h3dzln
Thank you – I’ll read that tonight. She’s great.
D.A.\
NYC
We should not forget that, after it became clear that 9/11 had been plotted in Afghanistan, the US told the Taliban Government to hand over Bin Laden and co or face the consequences. They refused; the US went in; and the Taliban were collateral damage in the (failed) attempt to get Bin Laden.
And then much of the world said ‘This must not happen again; we must help Afghanistan to become a non-failed state’. There was a big UN meeting in Tokyo in early 2002 to drum up support; I was a minor member of the UK delegation. Wow, so many fine words! And so many pledges of money and people!
And then most of the money and the people melted away. The only longer-term commitments were delivered by the US, its NATO allies, some other partner nations, and some UN institutions.
At least we tried.
Bush should have told the Taliban to hand over bin Laden or we’ll come in and get him ourselves. Instead they decided to tackle the Taliban, a larger mission. Based on what you say here, that mission got bumped up yet again to help Afghanistan establish a government. Mission creep all the way!
Referring to my reply to Randall at 9, I think most of Jerry’s questions have no good answers, but I’ll give it a -more or less hawkish- try. (Could have given it a dovish try too).
a) Yes, if one goes in like the US did, it is a long-term commitment. US casualties were pretty low (see k).
b) In the capacity the US have been: supporting the more or less Democratic government (and, I’d add, more aggressively pursuing the Taliban, and breaking with Pakistan, or even Saud).
c) That would have been a good option, but only if within weeks or a few months, not a few years, see under a).
d) Both, but also the dithering support of the US.
e) I’m not sure, and am not really convinced. We cannot exclude it though.
f) Because the war was not ‘unwinnable’. It would have meant a break up with Pakistan, among other things. It was only unwinnable as a purely military approach within the confines of Afghanistan itself. The political war is where it was lost.
g) That is beyond my pay-grade, what can we know what went wrong? The understanding given to the Taliban that the US would withdraw, no matter what, must rank high there. That profoundly discouraged the Afghan regular army, for one. A discouraged army is generally losing fast.
h) Yes, most definitely.
i) Yes, even objectively, but his opponents will milk this ad nauseam.
j) As pointed out above by others, US foreign policy has not always been very savy. As long as it was anti-communist anything went.
k) 122.4 service men a year, about one every 3 days. That is less than six hours of Covid now, less than 1 hour of Covid during January.
192.3 US
mercenariescontractors per year, again, only a few hours of Covid .Allied service men: 57 a year, just over 1 a week
Now we come to the more serious numbers:
3,300 Afghan troops and police a year, that is more than 9 per day.
2,362 civilians a year. 6.5 per day
2,560 Taliban a year (surprisingly low!), about 7 a day
and the Lagniappe: 26 aid workers and journalists a year, about 2 per month.
Now I think any death is one too many, but even if adding up all the casualties, we get 11000 per year, 30 day, most of them (96%) Afghans . For the non-Afghans it is a low casualty war, comparable to the murder rate in, say, Chicago.
Was it worth it? Seen that it achieved basically nothing: no, but it could have been (see a, b and f).
There is a blogger/commentator over at Free(from)ThoughtBogs called Marcus Ranum, who insists the 20-year war was just “all about the oil” and “all about the pipelines”…both talking points I last heard coming from Alex Jones and every single 9/11 truther.
If only we had over 2 trillion dollars in petroleum profits to show for this war. From the conspiracy angle, it is very hard to accept the simple explanation that the American foreign policy establishment are self-deluded idealists who have blundered into really stupid foreign policy decisions. No doubt the defense contractors and private mercenaries were more than happy to profit from this war, but they weren’t driving the bus, they were just making sure no one let off the gas. No, the conspiracy theorist demands that no one can be that stupid and powerful, there has to be a conspiracy, someone is pulling the strings. Now, conspiracy theories usually have the bad guys pulling the strings, but at least there is an attempt to salvage something coherent out of stupidity.
The secret they miss is that there is evil in the world, and evil is by its nature unintelligible. The more it moves towards intelligibility, the more it becomes a lesser good and not an evil. What is stupid, meaningless and horrible is not the product of some nefarious plot, it is simply a given in life like Planck’s Constant, it can’t be dressed up in theory.
Dear All,
Heather Cox Richardson who publishes at “Letters from an American” on Substack has an article regarding “the lightning speed takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban forces” at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-16-2021
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
So, you are real!
As real as I am sound.
Here is my 2 cents, from the perspective of an active participant in the first part of our war there.
a,b,c- We had a mission with reasonably well defined goals when we it started. We could have wiped out Al-Qaeda with wrath of God” type force, and left with the warning that if they come back, so will we.
d. Their basic values are different enough that it is foolish to try to mold their armed forces and government into a reflection of ours. What we see as corruption, they see as business. and their affiliation with Afghanistan as we see it is secondary to regional and tribal affiliations.
There is a format where Afghanistan is a stable and independent nation with an approximation of secular values. But achieving that would involve coming up with a uniquely Afghan format that addresses the stresses they face, not expecting them to adopt ours.
e,g- Lots of people got rich, and I am sure some of that was the result of lobbying here. On the other hand, once we made the (misguided) decision to try to make their military into a modern, first world one, we committed ourselves to supporting them for a long time. You can’t just run them through some training, then shower them with guns, tanks, and attack helicopters. The were years away from having the culture and infrastructure to maintain all of that gear.
One of the decisions that contributed to their quick downfall was that the contractors that kept their aircraft in the air started to be withdrawn in late June.
It is absurd to me that we withdrew that critical support without attempting to help the Afghans first obtain alternate sources. The need and likely consequences of this were part of an Inspector General’s report, widely distributed at the end of last year.
f-The war was never unwinnable, if it had been treated as a war. However, we rarely do that anymore. I am confident that plenty of warning was given to the civilian leadership by the military present in Afghanistan and the IG personnel tasked with studying the issue.
Back to g- The published agreement between the US and the Taliban called for a withdrawal over a period of 14 months in a series of steps, with verification that the Taliban was complying with their commitments before the next step is taken.
Per the original agreement, we should still be in the initial proportional troop drawdown, reaching 8,600 US troops by the end of August. Then, after verification of the Taliban’s compliance with their part, we would have 9.5 months to incrementally withdraw the remaining military forces.
This is not what happened.
h- I have no doubt that many Taiwanese can picture their family members falling from US aircraft fleeing from Taoyuan airport.
i- He is hiding in his basement again. No matter how well connected Camp David is, it is a bad look.
He has been in the trade long enough that we can compare his response to the fall of Saigon. He was not keen on that process, as the US had “no obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals”.
j- I don’t think we could have avoided the attacks on Afghanistan in late 2001. We had plenty of momentum, but we were not going to succeed without the full cooperation of Pakistan, which did not happen.
Or nation building was an expensive disaster, and every president since GW had detailed analysis of how badly it was failing.
k- The military did not lose either Afghanistan or Vietnam. They were prohibited from winning.
absolutely to all of that . . . the more I watch this Biden inspired cluster f–ck the angrier I get. i am a vietnam era veteran also (173rd airborne) , and I am in shock (Thursday) as to what is happening.
All I can say is get ready this will be coming to our shore soon.
Personally I think the Chinese have Biden in their back pocket and may be calling the shots through him.
Umm. . . .could you be a little clearer? What is coming to our shore soon.
And you’re just wrong when you say that Biden is taking orders from China.
I am very depressed about the situation. I feel to be moving thru a fog lately.
I blame the Taliban. First and foremost.
Next, I blame Pakistan since they allowed the Taliban safe sanctuary all these many years.
Afghanistan’s GDP is 20 billion. 2 trillion is 100 GDPs (a century!). Unbelievable.
The Afghan government was so corrupt that no one wanted to fight for it. South-Vietnam fought on for two years after the US withdrew. The Afghan government didn’t even last two weeks.
The Taliban do not represent positive progression for the human species, rather regression. Notions of democratic procedures and equality of rights for women will be ignored by them in the insistence of their right to run Afghanistan under Islam and sharia. Twenty years is not long enough to overcome such long held ingrained religious views. Yes, America and it’s allies could well have afforded the relatively small number of troops and personnel for another generation or two to ensure the continued peace and the advancement of women.
Over on Unherd Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a powerful perspective titled “Biden’s most heartless betrayal”.
We hear in the UK that the war in Afghanistan was the longest war conducted by the US, but taking a step back the War in Korea is still ongoing with around 30,000 US troops along with other US assets stationed there to protect the peace.
My son in law served 2 tours in Helmand Province with the British Forces he lost friends & comrades early in the conflict & yet the numbers of troops on the ground have reduced across the coalition to a few thousand with very few casualties.
20 years isn’t sufficient time to build a nation hearts & minds. Perhaps the cruellest thing is giving hope to the young & middle aged to aspire to freedom of thought, get a broad education, gaining a degree of affluence across the population all now potentially to be taken away. Women in particular contributing as the Late Christopher Hitchens long advocated educating women & ensuring they had control of their bodies & reproduction transforms a society.
From an historical perspective, when the Romans left Britain, having been an occupying force for 400 years building roads educating the population & creating a law abiding society, the eventual decline into the dark ages took over a hundred years, but if they had only set foot on our land for 20 years & then abruptly left, life would have reverted back as soon as they had gone.
their (Annoyed face)
Someone worried that the all-girls robotics team would be destroyed by the Taliban. Evidently they’ve been rescued!:
US woman becomes a superwoman for Afghan all-girl robotics team, rescues 10 | Trending News,The Indian Express
https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/mother-of-11-allyson-reneau-becomes-a-superwoman-for-afghan-womens-robotics-team-7462846/