I remember 9-11 like it happened yesterday. I remember the build up to the war. I remember the support for the invasion of Afghanistan at around 90%. I remember former President Bush’s words “You are with us or against us”. The U.S. had global support. Somebody had to pay for these terrorist attacks. It was payback time. Here are the evil guys, let’s smoke them.
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After 20 years, four Presidents, two Democrats and two Republicans, $2.26+ trillion, thousands of lives lost, this is a massive colossal foreign policy failure. It took ten days for the Taliban to take over the country. The Taliban just walked into Kabul over the weekend and took it.
An national Afghan army of 300,000+ folded like a house of cards. They didn’t even put up a fight. No resistance. They have been trained by the best. They had the best equipment. Why did it fail?
The short answer: They were rotten from the inside.
The writing was on the wall. The Taliban was going to take over the country. It was a question of time. The CIA was optimistic. They estimated that it was going to take six months for the Taliban. Where everyone was wrong, is how easy it was going to be. In contrast, it took the mujahedeen three years to push-out the Soviet backed puppet government after they left.
Americans were tired of this forever war in Afghanistan. Americans wanted to get out for a long time. Americans don’t think about Afghanistan on a daily basis. And frankly, they don’t care about Afghanistan. Everybody wanted to get out.
So why the uproar?
It’s the graphic images of failure. The visuals are engraved in your mind. People falling to their death from American planes bolting out of the country. Staff at the embassy burning sensitive documents. Officials racing to destroy military equipment and hard drives containing classified information. An Afghan President fleeing abroad, leaving the government in collapse. This not how victory smells.
This is not how the final chapter to the 9-11 attacks was supposed to go down. Americans play the hero. Bad guys don’t get to party at the end. You are supposed to hear “hooray”, not chanting “Death to America”. What now? A big victory parade to celebrate?
This is not what the Afghan deserves, the people that lost their lives, the people that fought for a better place.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said ‘that is not Saigon’. He’s right. It’s Saigon on steroids. It’s hurt to see Biden and the Democrats trying to spin this off as a success. Stop. Take the loss. Learn your lessons. Move on. Stop trying to fix unfixable countries. Fix the U.S. I’m sure it could make a better use of $2 trillion.
Graveyard
Afghanistan was destined to be a failure. It’s a graveyard of empires. The Americans followed the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the British, and the Soviet Union. Years ago the Taliban reportedly said ‘You have the watches. We have the time’. The Taliban were prepared to wait out the West. It was prophetic.
If you look at pictures of Afghanistan, and you see this mountainous broken terrain, the terrible weather, people living in tribes, you wonder how the hell does anyone control this place? You don’t.
Let’s me ask these questions:
Going in, nobody knew it was going to be a twenty war with no end in sight. Knowing that, would we have still gone in? Knowing it would have cost $2.26 trillion, thousands of lives lost, the millions of people displaced, would we have still invaded?
Blame Game
Everybody is playing the blame game. It’s Trump or Biden’s fault. On paper Biden will take blame for this because the failure falls under his watch. The truth is that he inherited a series of bad decisions and missteps made over twenty years. Obama wanted to get out. Trump wanted to get out. Biden was telling Obama to get out when he was VP. Now Biden pulled the plug. What’s the alternative? Another trillion? 5 more years? Pass it on to the next President? Americans didn’t have the stomach for fighting anymore.
No Plan
Twenty years. The U.S. never had a clear plan for the future. They didn’t have clear goals. The U.S. had twenty 1-year plan. After clearing al Qaeda out, what was the plan? What were they doing? What’s the end game? How do you measure success?
The Taliban can thank the U.S. taxpayers for the new state of the art military equipment, Humvees and their new air force. The Taliban was fighting with stuff from the 80s provided by the CIA. So I’m sure the refreshment is welcome. Seeing the pictures of Taliban fighters testing the new equipment would make the NRA proud.
Taliban 2.0?
Infamous for its brutal executions and oppression of dissenters and women, and anyone who fell afoul of its ultraconservative rules, the Taliban claims that women will have rights “within the framework of Islam”. The press will have rights. The opposition will have rights. Amnesty for government officials. Nobody will be harmed. Did the Taliban turn “woke”? Well the Taliban is on Twitter (sort of hilarious considering Trump can’t) and maybe they don’t want to be “canceled” by the social justice warriors.
The new Taliban regime has a good PR machine. They are saying the right things. They know the world is watching. They understand politics. Of course I’m skeptical. So is everyone. I’m not drinking one oz of that kool aid.
Sharia law is the law. “Within the framework of Islam” is a vague parameter given the extreme interpretation of the religion that the group is known for. So don’t expect a women’s march downtown Kabul.
Lessons
This is a classic case of hubris. Stop attempting to refashion countries into a pro-Western democracy. It’s better to stay out of other people’s business until they have a very clear and good plan.
Many are weighing in over whether America’s longest war was worth it – as well as the pace of the withdrawal or future threats – that debate will continue for some time and will be one for the history books.
Article by Brian Langis
