Anyone who claims to be shocked by the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan is not paying attention.
It was always bound to happen. It was only delayed because Uncle Sam had his trillion-dollar finger in the dyke for 20 years. Were we destined to remain forever in a country that had already proven fatally inhospitable to the British, Russians and Alexander the Great?
The signs of failure have long been obvious, but most Americans, numbed by war, have long since stopped paying attention. In 2019, news leaked that US officials charged with supporting the Afghan regime were disgusted with their protégés, stating in memos and private interviews that “after nearly two decades of aid from Washington, the Afghan army and police are still too weak to fight back.” forehead from the Taliban.”
They were faint, mainly because they were deeply corrupt. In the private words of Ryan Crocker, former US ambassador, “they are useless as a security force because they are corrupt down to the patrol level.” Nevertheless, as another U.S. official admitted in 2015 in government interviews, “The less they behaved, the more money we threw at them.”
Rightly or wrongly, President Joe Biden will have humiliating images of the retreat, but in reality, the authors of the defeat in Afghanistan were American presidents of both political parties. What we’re seeing now is a bipartisan cluster.
It was started by George W. Bush, who committed us to the impossible task of nation-building. (From his 2005 inaugural speech: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the development of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,” even though, he admitted, “our country has made commitments that are difficult to meet.”)
The signs of failure have long been obvious, but most Americans, numbed by war, have long since stopped paying attention.
It was supported by Barack Obama, who approved increasing the number of troops in 2009 and whose military spokesmen repeated that there was delicate at the end of the tunnel (Gen. James Mattis to Congress in 2010: “We are now on the right track.” ).
It landed in the capacious lap of Donald Trump, who decided it was time to withdraw, who invited the Taliban to Camp David in 2019 (“We are dealing with the Taliban very, very well”) and who set a deadline of May 1, 2021, for the withdrawal of forces. American.
Nevertheless, as one might expect, Republicans are lashing out at Biden, conveniently forgetting that anti-war sentiment has long been rampant in their ranks. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, said of Afghanistan in 2011: “We learned that our soldiers should not go out and try to fight a war of independence on behalf of another nation.”
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Back in April last year, Trump supported Biden’s announced intention to withdraw troops: “Getting out of Afghanistan is a great and positive thing. “I had planned to withdraw on May 1, and we should stick to that schedule as closely as possible.”
“Biden understood that the choice was to withdraw or stay stuck with no end in sight, and he correctly judged that the former would be better for the United States,” wrote historian and veteran conservative commentator Daniel Larison. “The fact that the Afghan government lost so much ground so quickly proves that the United States has failed to build a functioning state that can fend for itself… Far from showing the folly of Biden’s decisions, it confirms his wisdom. A state as unstable and incapable of self-defense as the present one would not be saved, delaying the withdrawal for several months or even years.”
As Biden said last Saturday: “One more year or five more years of American military presence would make no difference if the Afghan military couldn’t or wouldn’t hold its own country. And the endless presence of Americans in the middle of a civil conflict in another country was unacceptable to me.”
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This view also runs counter to the sentiment of most Americans. There will likely be a short-term blow as images of surrender reverberate around the world – although this is akin to blaming President Gerald Ford for our tumultuous final departure from Vietnam in 1975 – the fact remains that the current withdrawal is supported by 70 percent of Americans, including 56 percent Republican.
Most Americans seem to understand – even if they largely shy away from war – that leaving Afghanistan is actually the least bad option. There is no point in investing several more trillion dollars and more American bodies to continue to meet the definition of insanity, of having to do the same thing over and over again while waiting for a different result. Facing reality requires wisdom and political courage.
Opinion author Dick Polman, a veteran political columnist based in Philadelphia and writer-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes on the website: DickPolman.net. His work appears on Mondays on the Capital-Star magazine’s comments page. Readers can email him at [email protected].
