Don’t blame Joe Biden for the Afghan debacle

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Afghanistan looks like a disaster. Ten provincial capitals were lost in one week. Afghan troops surrendered without firing a shot. Today, estimates are increasingly pessimistic about how quickly Kabul could fall.

The Biden administration is sending US troops to protect the capital’s airport for emergency rescue flights. Even more embarrassing is his plaintive demand that the Taliban not attack the embassy in any assault on Kabul. He says the Taliban will regret the damage to his reputation by a successful military conquest, the movement’s goal since its creation in 1994.

Although the news is grim, Ghani’s government has a chance to regain its footing. The Taliban are manpower short and may find it difficult to maintain their blitzkrieg. A minimum of competence of Kabul, some proof that it has the support of the troops, could stabilize the defense of the big cities. Maintaining urban areas and pushing back further Taliban advances until the fighting eases in winter could convince the Taliban that political negotiations are a better option than continuing war.

Possible, but alas, unlikely. Successful resistance looks more and more like a long shot.

Washington’s bipartisan war lobby naturally views President Joe Biden as the bad guy. A crescendo of criticism has arisen from the bipartisan war lobby, whose members never found a conflict they were unwilling to send others to fight. Former President George W. Bush has returned to the public arena to advocate the continuation of the war he started but for which he quickly lost interest, moving on to the even more disastrous invasion of Iraq. Notable for having personally avoided the fighting in Vietnam, he ruined the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Joining him as an advocate of Eternal Wars was Sen. Mitt Romney, another armchair warrior exempt from Vietnam War service, always ready to send the sons of other Americans rather than his own to fight in foreign countries.

Without a doubt, Bidens’ management of Afghanistan leaves a lot to be desired. For example, evacuation plans for U.S. citizens, Allied personnel, and Afghan loyalists should have been developed during the transition and implemented immediately after the decision to withdraw. The administration should not have wrapped up the expected outcome but provided clarification to Americans on disabused US-backed regimes, which would not improve by extending the occupation. The failure to create something capable of standing was a big reason to leave after two decades of Allied efforts, there is simply nothing there, as Gertrude Stein once said of ‘Oakland.

Indeed, the impending debacle exposes the dishonest position of the sticky mob. Acknowledging the lack of public support for endless wars, 70 percent of Americans said they wanted local troops, opponents of the withdrawal, to generally demand that a few thousand troops be kept stationed for a few months or years of more. However, the impotence of the Afghan government and the disintegration of the army demonstrate that such an extension would not change the ultimate fate of the government in Kabul. The real choice was not to leave now or in a few years. It was to go now or stay forever. Advocates of endless war continue to refuse to align with the American people, as they have refused to do for the past two decades.

Which was unfortunately to be expected. Politicians, generals, and the host of parasites for would-be consultants, journalists, analysts, lobbyists, academics, pundits, activists and many more have spent two decades lying to the American people. Successive presidents and commanders have promised unattainable results and sought to push the tragic outcome into the future, onto their successors. Why expect anything different when the geopolitical Ponzi scheme collapsed and policymakers were forced to confront the reality of their work?

If that sounds tough, then re-read TheWashington PostsAfghanistan Papers. Journalist Craig Whitlock noted that senior US officials had not told the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the eighteen-year campaign, making rosy statements they knew to be false and hiding incontrovertible evidence. that war had become impossible to win. The so-called best and brightest, determined to save their reputations and their careers, sacrificed the lives of young Americans to claim success.

Many of those who were once in charge of US forces in Afghanistan while in power took it upon themselves to try and perpetuate the mission. For example, David Petraeus is busy trying to protect his reputation and blame Bidenas as the Afghan project collapses. Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently co-chaired the congressional-mandated Afghanistan task force, which, as expected, insisted that the United States remain in the country. What other conclusion was imaginable? As the entire geopolitical enterprise crumbles, its proponents insist that US forces should stick around without a good goal or a realistic course of action.

The reality has been tragic for the Afghans. Outsiders have fueled a five-decade-old civil war, creating a state that isn’t real, a political system that doesn’t work, a bureaucracy that doesn’t work, and an army that won’t fight. And the whole structure crumbles on the Afghans, including those who desperately want to create a liberal society.

With the mission’s original purpose long ago, budding warriors in Washington now profess a touching concern for human rights and the status of women, but the United States would never have intervened for that reason and has consistently ignored the worst violations. elsewhere, including by allied states. If these new human rights champions were serious, then the campaign to right human wrongs would start with China and Russia, cross Asia to the Middle East, and end in Africa. The protection of human rights is just the latest excuse for another imperial project gone wrong.

Today in America, the last refuge of the rabble is not patriotism but terrorism. In a world filled with ungoverned and poorly governed spaces, the vital fight against terrorism is said to be through the perpetual occupation of the remote lands of Afghanistan. Yet Al Qaeda, not Afghanistan, was Washington’s initial target, and America quickly achieved its goal by degrading and dispersing the group.

Osama bin Laden’s presence there reflected his determination to fight the Soviet invaders, nothing more. The September 11 attacks took its Taliban hosts by surprise and had little to do with Afghanistan: planning was done elsewhere, participants came from elsewhere, funding came from elsewhere. After Washington targeted his Afghan hideout, he moved to Pakistan, America’s nominal ally, just down the road from his military academy in Abbottabad, where he was later killed.

It would be better to start by creating fewer enemies. Terrorism is not a mysterious disease, but is generally a response to intervention in the struggles of other peoples and to the appropriation of the conflicts of other peoples by the Americas. Bombing fewer countries, occupying less territory, and killing fewer people is the best way to reduce terrorism against Americans. There would then be fewer terrorists to fight. Leaving Afghanistan is a good start for a more sober international strategy.

Either way, perpetual war and occupation of most of the known world forever is not an effective counterterrorism strategy. Washington is much better prepared to detect and deal with terrorist threats today. Moreover, one of the main advantages of withdrawal is already evident. Afghan neighbors are beginning to plan for a world in which they, and not Washington, are responsible for the stability and peace of their own region. This is how it should have been for twenty years.

Today, the tragic climax of the Americas’ involvement in the war in Afghanistan has likely become inevitable as the mission has shifted from counterterrorism to nation building. Biden is right to end the Americas’ involvement in the war. He recognizes the essential truth that Donald Trump has wrongly but correctly expressed: Washington’s primary responsibility is to Americans, including those in uniform. It is time for the United States to leave Afghanistan.

Doug Bandow is a Principal Investigator at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: Americas New Global Empire.

Image: Reuters

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