What-ifs about Afghanistan…
Let’s face it: The evacuation from Afghanistan is another “Saigon moment.” But does Biden own it? Multiple presidents have committed blunders there. He’s just joined that gang. I want to go through this dark stretch of American history a bit here. It’s longer than you might remember.
Most people have forgotten the reasons why we were there, especially anyone under forty. “Wait!” you say. “9/11 occurred in 2001, only twenty years ago.” The frustration leading to the current evacuation (supposedly to be completed by August 31) didn’t begin with 9/11. That frustration began long ago and reflects four decades of failed Middle East foreign policy created by numerous US presidents. But the Biden administration’s evacuation will go down in history as the worst since Vietnam.
So I’ll answer that all-too-common reaction springing from the myopic memories of clueless Americans (that group obviously includes Biden and his aides in State and Defense, of course) with a series of what-ifs that summarize the mistakes that have been made.
What if the Russians hadn’t stood up a puppet government in Afghanistan? Sometime ago, “back in the USSR…you don’t know how [un]lucky you are, boy,” Leonid Brezhnev, the Kremlin’s capo back then, wanted to move into the Middle East to have more influence in the Third World (even Israel was in the Third World at the time). They first tried Egypt and that failed (Jimmy Carter got Egypt and Israel to sign a peace accord that has held despite all subsequent problems and recalcitrant Arab and Israeli governments). So old jowly Leonid tried his despotic magic on Afghanistan. The Russians smashed the Taliban tribes and stood up a caretaker government, a puppet of the USSR. Al Qaeda fought back, and the CIA thought they’d be clever and turn Afghanistan into the USSR’s Vietnam by arming al Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban friends. The USSR left in disgrace (it was indeed their first Vietnam moment—the Chechnyan Wars soon followed), but al Qaeda was now entrenched, the Taliban had a resurgence, and the two groups became the best of buddies, with the Taliban protecting al Qaeda and allowing them to plot 9/11. This is only a summary of a lot of bad history for the US, of course, but it all occurred before 9/11.
What if we’d gone into Afghanistan after 9/11 to hunt al Qaeda down and then left when we succeeded? Revenge is sweet, so they say, so the US wanted to taste it against bin Laden and his terrorists (mostly Saudis, by the way, and financed by Saudi Arabia, a country that probably financed the Taliban as well…all to promote radical Islam). We chased al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and eventually gave bin Laden what he deserved. Even before bin Laden’s demise, we should have ended our presence in Afghanistan. But no, we stayed. Why? In spite of Dubya’s focus on Iraq, that old nation-building dream that too many nations have tried in the Middle East, Africa, and even southern Europe (the old Yugoslavia), vocalized or not, kept us there. (The only notable success of this policy is Israel—sort of—some would say it’s also become a fascist failure in its turn to fascism.)
In the Middle East, we think we can create democracies and stable governments out of desert mirages where there are no traditions to serve as a foundation. History has shown many times over that citizens of a country have to rise up on their own. (That’s how the USSR eventually crumbled! A desire for freedom and a better life toppled the old Soviet Union, not Carter, Reagan, or any other American leader. Lamentably that desire wasn’t strong enough there, so Putin could take over and make things worse.) Nation-building can’t work if the people themselves don’t want to build a nation…or don’t give a damn, preferring autocracy. The Afghan army did not have the will to fight the Taliban at the beginning of the century; with all the billions spent on equipment and training for them, they still didn’t have it in 2021.
What if Biden had learned from Bush, Obama, and Trump’s mistakes and hadn’t wanted to out-trump Trump? For the last, I’m guessing here, but it sure looks like one of old Joe’s major motivations. He could have done a one-eighty relative to Trump’s meddling in Afghanistan (he did so for many other Trump idiocies), but chose not too, because, unlike Obama who fantasized about a new nation in Afghanistan, Biden wanted to get out of that hellhole. Most Americans agreed with that. Few agree with how the Biden administration went about doing it.
But here’s the rest of the sordid tale: The US tried nation-building in Iraq after Dubya decided to avenge Daddy Bush and correct the latter’s huge error of not marching all the way into Baghdad once and for all as a fitting end to the Gulf War. Obama then left Iraq, and the US got ISIS. ISIS was beaten down with the help of the Kurds, but Trump pulled out of Iraq again, leaving our Kurdish friends behind to be slaughtered by the fascist Erdogan. Now old Joe pulls out of Afghanistan, leaving our Afghan friends behind to suffer the same merciless fate at the hands of the Taliban, who make Erdogan look like a saint.
Okay, maybe old Joe was too senile to learn from Bush and Trump’s mistakes, but he was right there when Obama made the mistake that created ISIS. I guess you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, whether or not they’re senile. Biden was focused on just getting out; he forgot to have a reasonable plan about how to do it. Or his administration did. Not only has Biden turned Afghanistan into yet another Vietnam, continuing America’s string of foreign policy failures and America’s fall into international irrelevance, he’s leaving behind many of our Afghan friends to horribly die just like Trump did with the Kurds.
This is why I give Biden an F on his report card for Afghanistan. Yes, we should have left Afghanistan…years ago! And, especially now, it should have been a well-planned withdrawal. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination. But there’s a lot of people to spread the blame around: the CIA, several presidents, and a whole bunch of myopic fools in State and Defense who should have known better and told Biden so. They, and the American people, for that matter, forgot the debacle in Vietnam. We have abandoned trusted friends who aided us to realize our dreams about nation-building, dreams that inevitably have turned into nightmares.
The Taliban will mercilessly slaughter our Afghan friends. That blood is on Biden’s hands! I hope he can’t sleep at night thinking about it. There’s a special place in his Catholic hell for mass murderers like him. Beating the Donald to the punch—or even feeling constrained to continue Il Duce’s initiatives—hardly justifies his failures. Nothing does.
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Comments are always welcome.
Sleuthing, British-Style. My binge-reading of British-style mysteries during the Covid pandemic has influenced the later novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, in particular Death on the Danube, Palettes, Patriots, and Prats, and Leonardo and the Quantum Code. I’ve also written short fiction to honor and celebrate Dame Agatha’s seminal work in this subgenre. Some examples are found in the little collection indicated here–six short novellas–which also contains a glossary of words and phrases from the UK’s rich lexicon of dialects as well a list of British-style novels that I’ve read and enjoyed. The collection is available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Smashwords). A second volume is available as a free download (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
