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Sunday, August 15th, 2021

The Taliban’s reascendance is regrettable, but there were no good options for concluding the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan

The Unit­ed States-backed gov­ern­ment of Afghanistan col­lapsed today, with Pres­i­dent Ashraf Ghani flee­ing the coun­try and Tal­iban fight­ers enter­ing the coun­try’s cap­i­tal city of Kab­ul after encoun­ter­ing scant resis­tance from Afghan forces.

The swift reas­cen­dance of the Tal­iban and the fall of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Afghanistan (that’s the offi­cial name of the enti­ty that gov­erned those parts of Afghanistan that were under either its con­trol, or U.S./NATO/international con­trol for near­ly two decades) has been called stun­ning, shock­ing, and unex­pect­ed, but in fact, even the swift­ness of the Tal­iban’s vic­to­ry was entire­ly predictable.

Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, U.S. mil­i­tary lead­ers, and for­eign pol­i­cy “experts” who had pre­vi­ous­ly esti­mat­ed that Ghani’s gov­ern­ment could hold out for a few more months ought to have known bet­ter. It has been evi­dent to plen­ty of peo­ple who don’t have the ben­e­fit of access to intel­li­gence brief­in­gs or a degree from one of the Unit­ed States’ pres­ti­gious mil­i­tary col­leges that the Tal­iban was on a roll and that their entry into Kab­ul could hap­pen extreme­ly quick­ly. The Tal­iban had momen­tum and good orga­ni­za­tion, while gov­ern­ment forces were in disarray.

Pri­or to today’s recap­ture of Kab­ul by the Tal­iban, news about the goings-on in Afghanistan had rarely got­ten above-the-fold billing in nation­al media out­lets. That has now changed, of course. COVID-19 relat­ed news has been tem­porar­i­ly dis­placed, with pub­li­ca­tions like the New York Times run­ning head­lines in all caps and CNN offer­ing a fre­quent­ly updat­ed live­blog of devel­op­ments.

But for those of us who were keep­ing an eye on events in Afghanistan and read­ing front­line jour­nal­ists’ report­ing, the writ­ing was on the wall.

Provin­cial cap­i­tals have been falling to the Tal­iban for weeks. Ghani seemed to have no coher­ent response and no strat­e­gy for pre­vent­ing fur­ther ter­ri­to­r­i­al loss­es. A rud­der­less gov­ern­ment peo­ple don’t trust and aren’t will­ing to fight for just isn’t going to hold out for long against an oppo­nent like the Taliban.

The notion that this could have been pre­vent­ed if we’d only stayed in Afghanistan longer — which is what a bunch of Biden crit­ics are cur­rent­ly imply­ing — is utter­ly pre­pos­ter­ous. We have been in Afghanistan for near­ly two decades and spent enor­mous sums of mon­ey engaged in repeat­ed nation-build­ing exer­cis­es, all in the ser­vice of try­ing to secure a bet­ter future for Afghanistan.

There is no rea­son to believe that after all this time and mon­ey spent that anoth­er year or two — or even twen­ty — would result in a bet­ter out­come for the Unit­ed States, for NATO, or for the world’s democracies.

As John Nichols tweet­ed today: “I have some very dis­ap­point­ing news for the ‘for­eign pol­i­cy experts’: wars nev­er end well.”

You’ll notice above that I said “we have been in Afghanistan” as opposed to “we were”. I did­n’t use the past tense because we are still there! Yes… still!

As I type this, U.S. forces are now run­ning Hamid Karzai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, and Pres­i­dent Biden has ordered addi­tion­al troops to the facil­i­ty to keep it out of the Tal­iban’s hands… for now. Those U.S. embassy staff who have not already left the coun­try are in a build­ing at the air­port, where they and peo­ple hop­ing to leave Afghanistan can enjoy the pro­tec­tion of U.S. troops.

Secur­ing Hamid Karzai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to pro­tect peo­ple try­ing to get out of the coun­try and pre­vent Amer­i­can diplo­mats from being cap­tured or mis­treat­ed is at least a mis­sion that’s actu­al­ly appro­pri­ate for us to direct our mil­i­tary to take on, as opposed to con­tin­u­ing to try to cre­ate con­di­tions that would enable a favor­able out­come for what is fun­da­men­tal­ly a polit­i­cal and sec­tar­i­an conflict.

It was evi­dent all the way back in 2001 and 2002 that the Tal­iban was a resilient foe that was­n’t going to be erad­i­cat­ed with airstrikes and troop con­voys. But instead of with­draw­ing our forces then, we stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

Even after George W. Bush left office, we stayed.

Even after U.S. spe­cial forces killed Osama bin Laden, we stayed.

Even after Don­ald Trump was put into the White House by the Elec­toral Col­lege, hav­ing run in part on a plat­form of end­ing for­eign entan­gle­ments, we stayed.

As the clock ran out on his term, how­ev­er, Trump decid­ed to make a move. The stage for today’s events was set in motion the moment that Amer­i­can offi­cials — at Don­ald Trump’s behest! — set­tled on a timetable for con­clud­ing our open-end­ed “mis­sion” in Afghanistan, which, as I allud­ed to above, had been suf­fer­ing from scope creep and a lack of a mean­ing­ful strat­e­gy or objec­tive for years.

The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Susan­nah George explained yes­ter­day how the sim­ple act of set­tling on a time­frame for with­draw­al (some­thing inter­ven­tion­ists did­n’t want to do) caused a series of metaphor­i­cal domi­noes to log­i­cal­ly begin to fall:

The Tal­iban cap­i­tal­ized on the uncer­tain­ty caused by the Feb­ru­ary 2020 agree­ment reached in Doha, Qatar, between the mil­i­tant group and the Unit­ed States call­ing for a full Amer­i­can with­draw­al from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces real­ized they would soon no longer be able to count on Amer­i­can air pow­er and oth­er cru­cial bat­tle­field sup­port and grew recep­tive to the Taliban’s approaches.

“Some just want­ed the mon­ey,” an Afghan spe­cial forces offi­cer said of those who first agreed to meet with the Taliban.

But oth­ers saw the U.S. com­mit­ment to a full with­draw­al as an “assur­ance” that the mil­i­tants would return to pow­er in Afghanistan and want­ed to secure their place on the win­ning side, he said. The offi­cer spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because he, like oth­ers in this report, was not autho­rized to dis­close infor­ma­tion to the press.

The Doha agree­ment, designed to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, instead left many Afghan forces demor­al­ized, bring­ing into stark relief the cor­rupt impuls­es of many Afghan offi­cials and their ten­u­ous loy­al­ty to the country’s cen­tral government.

Some police offi­cers com­plained that they had not been paid in six months or more.

“They saw that doc­u­ment as the end,” the offi­cer said, refer­ring to the major­i­ty of Afghans aligned with the gov­ern­ment. “The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Every­one was just look­ing out for him­self. It was like [the Unit­ed States] left us to fail.”

George’s sto­ry nice­ly doc­u­ments the extent to which Ghani’s gov­ern­ment was being propped up by our pres­ence. It was­n’t going to suc­ceed on its own.

Pres­i­dent Biden inher­it­ed Trump’s depar­ture plan (if it could even be called a plan… it cer­tain­ly was not a thought­ful exit strat­e­gy) and had to decide whether to make the with­draw­al hap­pen or remain in Afghanistan, as many inter­ven­tion­ist-hun­gry for­eign pol­i­cy “experts” demand­ed we do, seem­ing­ly in perpetuity.

Biden chose to imple­ment the withdrawal.

He is being round­ly crit­i­cized now for hav­ing over­seen a messy depar­ture from Afghanistan by both arm­chair crit­ics as well as Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress and reporters like The New York Times’ David Sanger, who wrote:

Mr. Biden will go down in his­to­ry, fair­ly or unfair­ly, as the pres­i­dent who presided over a long-brew­ing, humil­i­at­ing final act in the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment in Afghanistan.

After sev­en months in which his admin­is­tra­tion seemed to exude much-need­ed com­pe­tence — get­ting more than sev­en­ty per­cent of the country’s adults vac­ci­nat­ed, engi­neer­ing surg­ing job growth and mak­ing progress toward a bipar­ti­san infra­struc­ture bill — every­thing about America’s last days in Afghanistan shat­tered the imagery.

Even many of Mr. Biden’s allies who believe he made the right deci­sion to final­ly exit a war that the Unit­ed States could not win and that was no longer in its nation­al inter­est con­cede he made a series of major mis­takes in exe­cut­ing the withdrawal.

The only ques­tion is how polit­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing those will prove to be, or whether Amer­i­cans who cheered at 2020 cam­paign ral­lies when both Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump and Mr. Biden promised to get out of Afghanistan will shrug their shoul­ders and say that it had to end, even if it end­ed badly.

I dis­agree with pret­ty much all of the above, and I think Sanger is using a bad lens with which to view these events. Giv­en his knowl­edge and exper­tise as a nation­al secu­ri­ty cor­re­spon­dent, it would have been nice to get a dis­cus­sion focused more on the impli­ca­tions for the Afghan peo­ple as opposed to whether the Tal­iban’s reas­cen­dance could be “polit­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing” for Pres­i­dent Biden.

While we can’t know the future, I see no evi­dence that today’s events are going to mean­ing­ful­ly alter the tra­jec­to­ry of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. And Sanger does­n’t offer any. In fact, in almost the same breath, he offers an argu­ment to the contrary.

So far, there is no sign that the fall of Kab­ul is ril­ing up the Amer­i­can electorate.

“What I am feel­ing and think­ing about the sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan, I can nev­er fit on Twit­ter,” U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ruben Gal­lego, an Iraqi con­flict vet­er­an, wrote. “But one thing that is def­i­nite­ly stick­ing out is that I haven’t got­ten one con­stituent call about it and my dis­trict has a large Vet­er­an population.”

As for how Biden will be judged with respect to imple­ment­ing the with­draw­al thus far: All pres­i­dents make mis­takes because all pres­i­dents are human.

Abra­ham Lin­coln made a huge num­ber of mis­takes dur­ing the insur­rec­tion of the 1860s, in which sev­er­al states tried to unlaw­ful­ly secede from the Union in order to keep mil­lions of Black peo­ple enslaved. How­ev­er, Lin­coln is remem­bered prin­ci­pal­ly not for his mis­takes, but for what he got right, and did well.

Lin­coln is con­sid­ered by all rep­utable his­to­ri­ans to be one of the great­est — if not the great­est — pres­i­dent in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. But, as we know, he made a lot of mis­takes, includ­ing with respect to who he picked to run the Army of the Potomac (that was the main Union Army) dur­ing much of the insurrection.

In hind­sight, it’s eas­i­er to see what we got wrong. That we know.

But we don’t know how Pres­i­dent Biden will be remem­bered twen­ty, fifty, or a hun­dred years from now, espe­cial­ly not when his pres­i­den­cy is still so young, and it is pre­sump­tu­ous to sug­gest that Biden will be remem­bered in any way by future gen­er­a­tions for hav­ing “presided over a long-brew­ing, humil­i­at­ing final act in the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment in Afghanistan.”

While it is admit­ted­ly com­mon for ana­lysts and observers to guess how some event may go down in his­to­ry as it’s hap­pen­ing — it is a temp­ta­tion that can be hard to resist — it’s use­ful to include a caveat or dis­claimer that the guess could be entire­ly wrong. Such humil­i­ty is unfor­tu­nate­ly miss­ing from Sanger’s piece.

And char­ac­ter­iz­ing our inter­ven­tion as an exper­i­ment!?

That’s a bewil­der­ing­ly bad choice of word. If our pres­ence in Afghanistan was ever an “exper­i­ment,” it ceased to be one a long time ago.

The truth is, there were no good options for con­clud­ing the U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Afghanistan, and con­tin­u­ing it would have been inde­fen­si­ble, as Pres­i­dent Biden him­self not­ed in his lengthy state­ment yesterday.

When there are no good options, pick­ing the least bad option is wide­ly con­sid­ered the most sen­si­ble thing to do, and I think that is what the Pres­i­dent did.

We can all wish that our with­draw­al had been smoother, bet­ter exe­cut­ed, and not so incon­sid­er­ate of the Afghans who risked so much to help us. But again, there’s no such thing as a war that ends well, and all wars are messy.

Pres­i­dent Biden and his team can’t change the past, but they can change the future. Mis­takes can be fol­lowed by recov­er­ies. The most impor­tant thing we can do now is try to deliv­er for the peo­ple that we promised to help. Right now, we’re still let­ting our Afghan allies down. That’s inex­cus­able. The “whole of gov­ern­ment response” that Pres­i­dent Biden talked about yes­ter­day sounds promis­ing, but it needs to be fol­lowed up with action so it does­n’t become emp­ty rhetoric.

We have dis­cov­ered that it’s not with­in our pow­er to trans­form Afghanistan into a demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic based on the same lofty prin­ci­ples that have guid­ed the Unit­ed States’ evo­lu­tion towards a more per­fect union. (We tried, even though wise peo­ple said twen­ty years ago it was an unachiev­able goal.)

But we can cer­tain­ly pro­vide those Afghans who chose to help us and under­stand­ably don’t want to live in a soci­ety ruled by the Tal­iban with a new home here in the Unit­ed States. Yes, even dur­ing a pandemic!

If we are real­ly a great nation, we ought to have the will and means to make this hap­pen. So let’s get it on and sal­vage what we can from this bad situation.

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One Comment

  1. Good job putting this togeth­er. Thank you for shar­ing your perspective. 

    # by Worden Peace :: August 22nd, 2021 at 1:53 AM
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