In the past few days I have read more than a dozen articles about what happened in Afghanistan. None of them capture the real disgrace as well as David Hamburger's article. One can debate whether we had to leave or not but there is no debate that the way we left showed gross incompetence, disloyalty to allies and most grievously a lack of concern for human lives. One should have expected better from America!
I understand your critique is more about the media and the Biden Administration unironically declaring a disaster a success, and America earnestly fooling itself about the collapse of the Afghanistan mission, but Afghanistan was an unequivocal disaster from the very start, and could only end one way. And so it is ending.
I am less frustrated by the dissembling of politicians (we expect them to dissemble and they unfailingly rise to meet our expectation) than the willful refusal of people who are supposed to be smart (journalists and political advisors) to read and understand history. History doesn't necessarily repeat itself (except in the current case in Afghanistan, and oh boy is it repeating itself now), but history does provide lessons and guidance on how to tackle immediate problems. All these lessons were tossed out the window when the US invaded Afghanistan, to almost universal cheering from American media and American mobs (I recall vividly the announcement over the PA as I was leaving the SCTA land speed trials in El Mirage, CA, that the US bombing of Afghanistan had begun, and the resulting applause from the participants and spectators. It was nauseating).
Afghanistan isn't called the Graveyard of Empires for nothing, and I use to boggle at right-wing friends who insisted we could only "succeed" in Afghanistan once we took the gloves off and lost our squeamishness about engagement, as if the Soviet Union ever experienced a moment of squeamishness about anything during their decade of failure in Afghanistan. Our failure lasted twice as long as theirs because, honestly, we cared less. As monstrous as the USSR was, they didn't see the point in inflicting war on themselves and Afghanistan when it was clear they could not achieve their goals there. America, on the other hand, couldn't care less about the fate of far-away poor people (or the poor Americans who fight our wars) as long as CNN was looking the other way and the defense contractors who help pay for US elections were rolling in the hay.
The blueprint for how Afghanistan was going to go, for what happens when you start a war in a poor country with no idea of how you are going to extricate yourself, is in every best-selling book about the Vietnam War: Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Max Hastings, even General McMaster. Is the fall of Kabul at all similar to the fall of Saigon? It is almost exactly like the fall of Saigon (including the fate of the local people who assisted America's foolish mission), and could have been predicted that early October weekend in 2001 when the bombs first fell. The only thing we couldn't predict was how long the US would prolong the misery.
And misery it surely was, as anyone who has read Gopal Anand's No Good Men Among the Living could tell you. But does anyone actually read anymore? Did anyone in the Bush Administration or the national media read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars or even the first Flashman book before cheerfully wading into a situation they clearly did not understand, and proceeding to reproduce just about every mistake made by Johnson, McNamara and Nixon in Vietnam?
And as we express astonishment at the speed and success of the Taliban's sweep across Afghanistan in 2021, is there no one in the media old enough to remember the Taliban's equally astonishing sweep across Afghanistan in 1996? So we enforced a 20-year interregnum in the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan, at the cost of the untold additional suffering and injustice that accompanies all wars. Aren't we proud of ourselves?
I can't get very angry about the fall of Kabul. I saw it coming 20 years ago and have used up all my anger since then. And I must confess there is something about today's media outrage that is as insincere as the Biden Administration's oh so predictable bullshit and spin. Surely sophisticated commentators saw the writing on the wall as far back as 2002.
This could only have ended one way. And so it is ending.
Every president since Bush and every member of Congress since that time shares responsibility for this war. The presidents for waging an undeclared war in the pusillanimous Congress for never bringing it to a vote. Our constitution is quite clear on Congress having the responsibility to declare war. This should’ve been debated and debated and debated. Way too convenient to blame only Biden although I blame him a great deal.
Well written. I am essentially in agreement. My concern is that Russia and China now have proof of Biden's incompetance in foreign policy and will feel less restrained about conquest of prior USSR territory in Europe and disputed territory, including Taiwan, in Asia.
It's rare to see an article that is simultaneously balanced, charitable and harshly critical. Thanks.
Perhaps it is too easy to criticize dishonesty and spin, but your coverage of the specific errors as examples of a tempting error for realists to make, is very compelling.
In the days following 9/11 there was a global outpouring of shock and solidarity with America. We destroyed that when we invaded Iraq based on an agenda that had nothing to do with Al Qaida. If we were truly responding to 9/11 the world could have acted cooperatively around what to do with Al Qaida and the Taliban who hosted them. That lost opportunity is entirely on Bush. Obviously. But that was twenty years ago when the shape of things in China and Iran looked nothing like it does today. Biden was dealt this hand to work as best he could for us and for the world. Unfortunately world stage geopolitics is not his game as we all clearly knew when we elected him. This is the kind of leadership we get when we elect a figure head on the basis of what they are not.
I have been tearing my hair out for months reading about this administration's pussyfooting around when it came to evacuating our allies. Months ago we had people in Congress urging them to airlift people to Guam, and they responded by claiming to "expedite" the special visa process. It was maddening to see that there were those who understood that the important part was getting them out of reach of the Taliban - yet the WH response was to grease the wheels on a process that normally took years when we only had a handful of months.
I mean, for heaven's sake - people were being denied visas because they failed polygraphs! Polygraphs?!? Anyone who has ever taken a polygraph will tell you that they have an incredibly high false positive rate - obtaining a government clearance often requires multiple sessions, and they are often degrading, anxiety-inducing experiences. I am in disbelief that they were being required at this late stage of the game, simply to grant someone the equivalent of refugee status.
And furthermore, though I know this will find me in the minority, I have to put in a word for the argument to stay. Personally, I was gobsmacked when Biden announced we would be pulling out of Afghanistan. David is right to mention Biden's criticism of Trump pulling out of northern Syria - that's precisely the sort of foreign policy maturity I was expecting to get from a Biden administration. And maybe we would have, had Trump not giftwrapped an excuse that perhaps seemed too good to resist.
The truth is that this was very much like the situation in Syria - we had a low-footprint military operation that was sustaining minimal casualties and proving effective at maintaining an uninspiring but better-than-the-alternative status quo. I am so sick of the phrase "forever war". We weren't at war - we drew down combat operations in 2014, and have basically been providing tactical support since then. This was a military presence, one whose yearly casualties (for us) averaged less than 20 per year - even when the Afghans themselves were dying in the tens of thousands. I don't mean to dismiss any lives lost, but this was in exchange for a reasonably modern Afghan society and a U.S. military presence in a strategically advantageous location. It was worth it.
What bothers me most about this is that America no longer seems to be interested in claiming the mantle of "leaders of the free world". The U.S.-led post-WWII world order had long been sneered at by progressives, trumpeted by conservatives, and generally under-appreciated by everyone else. Now everyone seems to want to abandon it, at a time when democracy is under threat the world over.
The Afghan war took too long before ending combat operations, but even remaining another 20 years would still be a pittance compared to our military presences in other parts of the world that have changed very much for the better as a result. We've had military presences in Germany and Japan ever since we defeated them in the mid 1940's. It took us until the 1980's to return control of Okinawa to the Japanese. We are the reason that South Korean K-pop bands sing cute chart-topping songs while North Koreans live in impoverished fear - and that transition certainly didn't happen overnight.
Our modern, historically-unprecedented period of national sovereignty and relative peace among democratic nations that has existed for the last three quarters of a century would not have been possible without the United States taking seriously its role in the world. Yes, Afghanistan was a tough case, but we had already invested 20 years there and it had made a difference. Any more time that we spent there would have made it that much more likely that those gains would stick. Don't believe people who say that we'd get the same result 15 years from now. Two generations of Afghans having grown up in a reasonably modern society would have made a world of difference. We'll now have to hope that one was enough.
China. Xi Jinping. That is the story that will soon come out. Our departure like this from Afghanistan does not make sense until we see it in the context of what it will do to two countries on the Afghanistan border: China and Iran. I suspect our intelligence was perfect. There is nothing Xi Jinping would have wanted less than suddenly to have been given this military Taliban infection. He began preparing for this in June, but never expected it so quickly. And Iran will also suffer from the suddenly victorious Taliban on their border. We sacrificed our allies in Afghanistan to punish China and Iran. What happens in the next year will determine if it was the right move, militarily. Morally it was simply despicable.
The US didn't understand the history/cultureVietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. US generals consistently overestimated and underestimated American progress and enemy strength and deceived the American people about both. Billions of dollars were spent and wasted. The US ignored the French experience in Vietnam and the Soviet's in Afghanistan. US strategy in interventionist wars is out of sync with reality. These are the factors China and Russia look at in assessing their own national security strategy against the actions of the US. Unfortunately, the fall of Saigon and Kabul were expected. Adversaries are much more interested in American political and military thinking and the strategic errors that created these end disaster in the first place.
TY (thank You), Sir. I, personally, would be amazed if You received any arguments against what You have so clearly stated as the facts of the matter. Yet, unfortunately, I'd not be surprised, either. TYTY again.
In the past few days I have read more than a dozen articles about what happened in Afghanistan. None of them capture the real disgrace as well as David Hamburger's article. One can debate whether we had to leave or not but there is no debate that the way we left showed gross incompetence, disloyalty to allies and most grievously a lack of concern for human lives. One should have expected better from America!
Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg
I understand your critique is more about the media and the Biden Administration unironically declaring a disaster a success, and America earnestly fooling itself about the collapse of the Afghanistan mission, but Afghanistan was an unequivocal disaster from the very start, and could only end one way. And so it is ending.
I am less frustrated by the dissembling of politicians (we expect them to dissemble and they unfailingly rise to meet our expectation) than the willful refusal of people who are supposed to be smart (journalists and political advisors) to read and understand history. History doesn't necessarily repeat itself (except in the current case in Afghanistan, and oh boy is it repeating itself now), but history does provide lessons and guidance on how to tackle immediate problems. All these lessons were tossed out the window when the US invaded Afghanistan, to almost universal cheering from American media and American mobs (I recall vividly the announcement over the PA as I was leaving the SCTA land speed trials in El Mirage, CA, that the US bombing of Afghanistan had begun, and the resulting applause from the participants and spectators. It was nauseating).
Afghanistan isn't called the Graveyard of Empires for nothing, and I use to boggle at right-wing friends who insisted we could only "succeed" in Afghanistan once we took the gloves off and lost our squeamishness about engagement, as if the Soviet Union ever experienced a moment of squeamishness about anything during their decade of failure in Afghanistan. Our failure lasted twice as long as theirs because, honestly, we cared less. As monstrous as the USSR was, they didn't see the point in inflicting war on themselves and Afghanistan when it was clear they could not achieve their goals there. America, on the other hand, couldn't care less about the fate of far-away poor people (or the poor Americans who fight our wars) as long as CNN was looking the other way and the defense contractors who help pay for US elections were rolling in the hay.
The blueprint for how Afghanistan was going to go, for what happens when you start a war in a poor country with no idea of how you are going to extricate yourself, is in every best-selling book about the Vietnam War: Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Max Hastings, even General McMaster. Is the fall of Kabul at all similar to the fall of Saigon? It is almost exactly like the fall of Saigon (including the fate of the local people who assisted America's foolish mission), and could have been predicted that early October weekend in 2001 when the bombs first fell. The only thing we couldn't predict was how long the US would prolong the misery.
And misery it surely was, as anyone who has read Gopal Anand's No Good Men Among the Living could tell you. But does anyone actually read anymore? Did anyone in the Bush Administration or the national media read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars or even the first Flashman book before cheerfully wading into a situation they clearly did not understand, and proceeding to reproduce just about every mistake made by Johnson, McNamara and Nixon in Vietnam?
And as we express astonishment at the speed and success of the Taliban's sweep across Afghanistan in 2021, is there no one in the media old enough to remember the Taliban's equally astonishing sweep across Afghanistan in 1996? So we enforced a 20-year interregnum in the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan, at the cost of the untold additional suffering and injustice that accompanies all wars. Aren't we proud of ourselves?
I can't get very angry about the fall of Kabul. I saw it coming 20 years ago and have used up all my anger since then. And I must confess there is something about today's media outrage that is as insincere as the Biden Administration's oh so predictable bullshit and spin. Surely sophisticated commentators saw the writing on the wall as far back as 2002.
This could only have ended one way. And so it is ending.
Every president since Bush and every member of Congress since that time shares responsibility for this war. The presidents for waging an undeclared war in the pusillanimous Congress for never bringing it to a vote. Our constitution is quite clear on Congress having the responsibility to declare war. This should’ve been debated and debated and debated. Way too convenient to blame only Biden although I blame him a great deal.
Well written. I am essentially in agreement. My concern is that Russia and China now have proof of Biden's incompetance in foreign policy and will feel less restrained about conquest of prior USSR territory in Europe and disputed territory, including Taiwan, in Asia.
It's rare to see an article that is simultaneously balanced, charitable and harshly critical. Thanks.
Perhaps it is too easy to criticize dishonesty and spin, but your coverage of the specific errors as examples of a tempting error for realists to make, is very compelling.
In the days following 9/11 there was a global outpouring of shock and solidarity with America. We destroyed that when we invaded Iraq based on an agenda that had nothing to do with Al Qaida. If we were truly responding to 9/11 the world could have acted cooperatively around what to do with Al Qaida and the Taliban who hosted them. That lost opportunity is entirely on Bush. Obviously. But that was twenty years ago when the shape of things in China and Iran looked nothing like it does today. Biden was dealt this hand to work as best he could for us and for the world. Unfortunately world stage geopolitics is not his game as we all clearly knew when we elected him. This is the kind of leadership we get when we elect a figure head on the basis of what they are not.
I have been tearing my hair out for months reading about this administration's pussyfooting around when it came to evacuating our allies. Months ago we had people in Congress urging them to airlift people to Guam, and they responded by claiming to "expedite" the special visa process. It was maddening to see that there were those who understood that the important part was getting them out of reach of the Taliban - yet the WH response was to grease the wheels on a process that normally took years when we only had a handful of months.
I mean, for heaven's sake - people were being denied visas because they failed polygraphs! Polygraphs?!? Anyone who has ever taken a polygraph will tell you that they have an incredibly high false positive rate - obtaining a government clearance often requires multiple sessions, and they are often degrading, anxiety-inducing experiences. I am in disbelief that they were being required at this late stage of the game, simply to grant someone the equivalent of refugee status.
And furthermore, though I know this will find me in the minority, I have to put in a word for the argument to stay. Personally, I was gobsmacked when Biden announced we would be pulling out of Afghanistan. David is right to mention Biden's criticism of Trump pulling out of northern Syria - that's precisely the sort of foreign policy maturity I was expecting to get from a Biden administration. And maybe we would have, had Trump not giftwrapped an excuse that perhaps seemed too good to resist.
The truth is that this was very much like the situation in Syria - we had a low-footprint military operation that was sustaining minimal casualties and proving effective at maintaining an uninspiring but better-than-the-alternative status quo. I am so sick of the phrase "forever war". We weren't at war - we drew down combat operations in 2014, and have basically been providing tactical support since then. This was a military presence, one whose yearly casualties (for us) averaged less than 20 per year - even when the Afghans themselves were dying in the tens of thousands. I don't mean to dismiss any lives lost, but this was in exchange for a reasonably modern Afghan society and a U.S. military presence in a strategically advantageous location. It was worth it.
What bothers me most about this is that America no longer seems to be interested in claiming the mantle of "leaders of the free world". The U.S.-led post-WWII world order had long been sneered at by progressives, trumpeted by conservatives, and generally under-appreciated by everyone else. Now everyone seems to want to abandon it, at a time when democracy is under threat the world over.
The Afghan war took too long before ending combat operations, but even remaining another 20 years would still be a pittance compared to our military presences in other parts of the world that have changed very much for the better as a result. We've had military presences in Germany and Japan ever since we defeated them in the mid 1940's. It took us until the 1980's to return control of Okinawa to the Japanese. We are the reason that South Korean K-pop bands sing cute chart-topping songs while North Koreans live in impoverished fear - and that transition certainly didn't happen overnight.
Our modern, historically-unprecedented period of national sovereignty and relative peace among democratic nations that has existed for the last three quarters of a century would not have been possible without the United States taking seriously its role in the world. Yes, Afghanistan was a tough case, but we had already invested 20 years there and it had made a difference. Any more time that we spent there would have made it that much more likely that those gains would stick. Don't believe people who say that we'd get the same result 15 years from now. Two generations of Afghans having grown up in a reasonably modern society would have made a world of difference. We'll now have to hope that one was enough.
BTW, just about everything Pelosi says these days has the twisted air of the parodic.
China. Xi Jinping. That is the story that will soon come out. Our departure like this from Afghanistan does not make sense until we see it in the context of what it will do to two countries on the Afghanistan border: China and Iran. I suspect our intelligence was perfect. There is nothing Xi Jinping would have wanted less than suddenly to have been given this military Taliban infection. He began preparing for this in June, but never expected it so quickly. And Iran will also suffer from the suddenly victorious Taliban on their border. We sacrificed our allies in Afghanistan to punish China and Iran. What happens in the next year will determine if it was the right move, militarily. Morally it was simply despicable.
Just as we could not judge the Iraq War until several years later, I believe we won't be able to judge this until we're well down the road.
The US didn't understand the history/cultureVietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. US generals consistently overestimated and underestimated American progress and enemy strength and deceived the American people about both. Billions of dollars were spent and wasted. The US ignored the French experience in Vietnam and the Soviet's in Afghanistan. US strategy in interventionist wars is out of sync with reality. These are the factors China and Russia look at in assessing their own national security strategy against the actions of the US. Unfortunately, the fall of Saigon and Kabul were expected. Adversaries are much more interested in American political and military thinking and the strategic errors that created these end disaster in the first place.
TY (thank You), Sir. I, personally, would be amazed if You received any arguments against what You have so clearly stated as the facts of the matter. Yet, unfortunately, I'd not be surprised, either. TYTY again.