On Leaving Afghanistan: One Step Forward, Two Steps Sideways
“The Americans have the watches,” the Taliban is fond of saying, “but we have the time.” And now that time has come.
The Biden administration has announced the total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. NATO forces will also be leaving.
This supersedes the promise of the Trump administration to withdraw by May of his year, and the Obama administration’s promise to leave (except for training forces) by the end of 2014.
Various administrations have pursued policies that have left more than 2400 dead US soldiers and cost more than $2 trillion, not counting the future cost of caring for veterans.
An entire generation of young men and women have suffered the consequences of a political decision based on the notions of exceptionalist infallibility.
People from both parties who believe in military solutions to international crises have decried the idea of quitting Afghanistan, regardless of who occupies the White House.
Senator Lyndsey Graham summed up their point of view, as quoted in the Washington Post:
“It is insane to withdraw at this time given the conditions that exist on the ground in Afghanistan,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), noting that he also thought Trump’s deadline was “very bad, ill-conceived policy.”
“A full withdrawal from Afghanistan is dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous,” he added. “President Biden will have, in essence, canceled an insurance policy against another 9/11.”
Terrorists, drug lords, and Islamic fundamentalism have been used to justify the presence of NATO allied forces in the mountainous Central Asian country.
Two decades of warfare/occupation/reconstruction have never produced anything resembling a decisive victory along the lines of meeting these threats. Various alliances and tribal groups have come and gone, but various goals of control/neutralization/cooperation have never been achieved.
Whenever the topic of disengaging in the area has gained credence, the “we just need another six months” (or some other fantasy) emerges as an excuse not to act.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1382159553995870208?s=20
This failure is a lesson that could have been drawn by examining the results of the past dozen or so attempts at ruling the region, starting with the Maurya Empire more than two thousand years ago. Or we could have learned from Vietnam, where an indiginous force fought the world’s most mighty military to a standstill.
Without going into granular detail, suffice it to say none of the schemes posited for “winning” have ever been even possible. It’s all been about pipe dreams, political careers, and the need of the military-industrial complex to justify its expansion.
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1382230526925357060?s=20
The winners in an Afghanistan conflict have always been those who didn’t put troops on the ground.
Modern day Russians and Chinese see the U.S. occupation as a welcome distraction from efforts to counter their own expansionist agendas. Other countries in the region, notably Pakistan, have successfully exploited the situation to their own advantage.
There is a school of thought holding that Biden is not so much leaving Afghanistan as he is rebranding it.
https://twitter.com/bonediggy0081/status/1382287101991993344?s=20
I certainly hope this isn’t the case, but it’s also true the covert side of U.S. foreign policy has a legacy issue that they’ll be less than willing to concede.
From Jeff Stein’s SpyTalk Newsletter:
Judging by the withdrawal plan President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, the CIA won’t have anybody reliable to protect itself come September. All U.S. troops will be gone on September 11, leaving the future of a CIA presence in Afghanistan—and a check on a resurgent al-Qaeda—in grave doubt and, for ever how long the spy agency remnants try to hang on, to the mercy of the Taliban, the Islamic State and assorted outfits like the vicious Haqqani network.
Once U.S. troops leave, CIA operators hunkered down in Kabul and Bagram air base can’t count on the beleaguered, largely corrupt Afghan army or police forces to defend them. Afghan security forces "remain tied down in defensive missions and have struggled to hold recaptured territory or reestablish a presence in areas abandoned in 2020," according to a national intelligence report released Tuesday.
As Stein also points out, there will inevitably be humanitarian consequences when U.S./NATO forces are gone. An outflowing of refugees will burden systems already in trouble thanks to instability in the Middle East, Africa, and Central America.
We as a nation could, if we wanted to, mitigate some of the aftermath. And this may end up being an even bigger challenge to the Biden administration than the logistics and diplomacy involved in troop withdrawal.
Unless you’re a stone cold racist, it’s hard to argue that the influx of immigrants from our other huge foreign policy f*ckup --the Iraq war and aftermath-- have been anything but a plus for the country. The same is true of refugees from Southeast Asia.
The good things that could come out of ending military involvement are there if we want to see them: not viewing conflicts through the lenses of intervention, adding another layer to the diversity of the nation, and --especially-- putting a focus on healing our own not-so-obvious wounds from the war..
https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1382317013289336834?s=20
**h/t to SpyTalk for the lead quote.
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Lead image by Amber Clay / Pixabay