The Sunken Cost Theory
I scarcely have spent any time opining on Afghanistan. I certainly feel awful for the soldiers that have lost their lives in a quagmire that we all should have known was coming. What’s always peculiar is that we decry the ones most recently lost. Those are somehow more tragic. I suppose when you can see the finish line it is that much more bitter to come up short.
There is a clip from George W. Bush that has been making the rounds. It came from 2002 where he was describing past efforts in Afghanistan. He mentioned initial success followed by ultimate failure. It was hard to tell whether he was simply be ironic or if he had powers of clairvoyance.
This is a basic pattern of history that also goes along with a law of human behavior. For lack of a better term, I call it the law of sunken costs. I could be a jackass and simply say I made it up, but unlike certain ex-presidents, I’m almost certain someone before me has stumbled onto this concept. I’m certainly not taking credit for it either way.
Imagine you’ve bought a car. It’s a vintage car, but it hasn’t run in years. You think to yourself that with a little hard work and a little investment you could get the car running again. So, you pour hundreds of dollars into parts, but nothing seems to be working. Hundreds turn into thousands, but there’s no change in the prognosis.
We all know eventually we will run out of money. We all know eventually we will run out of time. We all know eventually we will run out of patience. We know all of these things and yet we continue to throw good money after bad. We do this because we are all thinking the same thing. We are thinking that we’ve invested far too much to give up now.
We do this in relationships. We do this with our time. We might do this at work with an employee that just doesn’t seem to get the job done. The psychological mechanisms at work are portable across the spectrum. It’s happened before in Vietnam and Korea. It’s happened before in Afghanistan itself with the Russians. In fact, we are a product of it here in the United States. The English fell prey to the same sunken cost syndrome.
This is a historical law. Occupying countries eventually leave. It is only a question of when and under what circumstances. I’m sure the Bush administration knew this day would come. They simply hoped for the best and hoped you wouldn’t remember that it was them that got us into this mess in the first place.
The current situation has millions of Americans blaming Joe Biden. There have been mistakes and hiccups to be sure, but I’m not sure how this thing was supposed to go. If Trump were still president it would be the same deal. Sure, we could say he shouldn’t have freed the prisoners. Sure, we can say Biden should expedite the red tape and get out more refugees. We can say a lot of things. This was always how this thing was going to go down.
Afghanistan is devolving into a world where religious extremists (that represent a minority of the people) have a stranglehold on the country at large. I have no idea what that’s like. That statement couldn’t possibly describe any other situation right under our nose. Let’s ignore that and just keep whistling past the graveyard.
We can continue to finger point at different administrations over the past 20 years. All of them deserve blame in this moment. All of them perpetuated this mess. All of them contributed to the sunken cost. No one is happy when more Americans lose their lives. There’s more than enough blame to go around.
As a retired CPA, I tend to look at many situations in dollar signs. Shrub got us into this was with no plan. The military industry took over, and after a twenty year investment high, we’ve just had a two week detox. I think in the next few months it will be interesting to see which elected officials have lost money with their military related investments/contributions.
1Now that the flush of Taliban victory has worn off, I’m feeling even more sorry for the Afghan people. Not just the ones who supported us, but all of them. Because kicking out the Americans does not end their 40 year civil war. The Taliban will do okay with the Pashtuns, but there are 11 other ethnicities to work with and plenty of foreign actors who would like to play puppet master. Maybe there is a Taliban stateman who can unify the country with a form of tribal federalism. I’m not optimistic. Leaders like that are in short supply throughout history.
2The rePUKEians were evil enough to start the st00pid war but the the Demoncrats did not have the balls to stop anything. Which is especially disgusting as we should never have been there! The 1%ers that needed their crap protected should have hired a private army … they have the money.
3Once the Republicans regain control of the country, we’ll all get to experience “a world where religious extremists (that represent a minority of the people) have a stranglehold on the country at large…”
4https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/16/there-will-never-be-enough-blood-or-money-spent-in-afghanistan-for-warmongers-like-dan-crenshaw/
5That story from The Federalist brings up the deals the Taliban started offering Afghan soldiers to sell their weapons and live. And though it says that started happening early last year, it neglects to mention that oddly enough, it started immediately after trump made the deal with the Taliban. The one where 5,000 Taliban and ISIS fighters were released from prison in exchange for 1,000 Afghan soldiers. And the Taliban agreed to stop attacking Americans in return for us ceasing offensive operations and against them. Both of those things happened.
6And even though (if I read correctly) we still supported Afghan defensive operations, Taliban casualties dropped to half, and Afghan soldiers’s doubled.
All the while trump was drawing down our troop levels, leaving Biden with 2.500 versus the 4,500 when the deal was made.
The Afghan soldiers had 11 months to watch it unfold before Biden took office.
Pres. Biden may well be the one that takes the blame for this clusterf**k. Especially if repugnantcans and apparently even some in the mainstream media have their way. Could things have been done better?
When is the answer to that question ever truthfully no?
Full disclosure, I’ve never served.
I’m just a guy with an opinion.
Speaking only for myself, Uncle Joe inherited a no-win situation politically.
But he’s the one that’s said from the start that the buck stops with him, and from where I’m sitting he’s sticking to that and politics be damned.