Let’s Face Facts on Afghanistan
The rightwing noise machine, along with the circular firing squad of Team Progressive, are united in criticizing Biden for withdrawing from Afghanistan and sticking to the plan as the government collapses, Afghan politicians flee the country, and the Taliban return to the violent and brutal regime they controlled when we ran them to the mountains in 2002. As I write this, insurgents are entering Kabul and closing in on the airport where diplomatic personnel and military are trying to evacuate. It’s without a doubt a total shitshow.
But, it’s not a surprise. Whether the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2003, 2013, or 2023, THE RESULT WAS GOING TO BE THE SAME. Like everything else W and Cheney fucked up, they most certainly fucked up Afghanistan. The noble chase of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda into the mountains to kill him was botched, and rather than chase him into Pakistan, Bush/Cheney thought it was a really good idea to convert a culture born before the Dark Ages to a liberal democracy. It was stupid, and anyone who can read a history book knew it. Afghanistan is a 1st century culture in a 21st century world that has repelled invasions for centuries. At the time of Bush/Cheney’s decision to occupy Afghanistan, some of us predicted exactly what is happening today. Oh, we were shushed by those who “knew better”, but it didn’t take a diplomatic genius to understand that the US was never going to succeed where the Russians, the Brits, the Greeks, the Mongols, and other empires attempted, and ultimately failed, to accomplish over that last 2,000 years.
Don’t get me wrong; I abhor every death and injury that occurred during the attempted occupation of Afghanistan over the last 20 years, but I said it then and will say it again now that the US incursion into and occupation of Afghanistan was almost as big a blunder as the invasion of Iraq which destabilized the region handing control over to Iran. As bad a guy as Saddam was, he was better than handing more Middle East power to Iran and Russia. NOW, not only is Iran dominant in the region, Afghanistan is again in chaos. Add that to chaos in Iraq and Yemen, and that is most certainly a major league shitshow.
This is not Biden’s fault. This is the fault of over 100 years of terrible Middle East policy compounded by Bush/Cheney’s empire building and Trump’s idiocy. That is where the blame lay. Biden’s trying to clean it up.
Anyone reading Kipling knew how this would end up. An initial military victory, followed by an endless insurgency. I wonder how one says “wolverine” in Afghani?
1Thank you for saying what I have been thinking more eloquently than I could. Bush/Cheney started this goatf**k and will never be held responsible for it.
2May all the good men and women who died in this debacle have an extra star in their halos for doing their duty to their country even if their leader didn’t know their backsides from a hole in the ground.
I think it revealing that no Afghan forces are putting up resistance and defending their government including the capitol Kabul; even the Afghan President slipped off to Whoswhatistan. The place has been propped up with US dollars since 2002 and now the money is gone and so are the ‘loyal’ forces.
3There’s a lot of ‘splainin’ to do and that will be in short supply and no one wants to hear it any way.
This will be similar to Truman losing China in 1949 after a 29 year civil war, but by God, the Dems were soft on Communism and we got McCartyism for a result.
This does not bode well.
Those of us who lived through the Vietnam war knew how this one was going to end up.
4What do Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar have in common?
All were freed by Donald Trump.
5And there is something missing from this “shitshow” – the coronavirus. I’ve been wondering about this particular factor for a while now since things fell apart in Kabul. We have been hearing about the virus situation in 3rd world countries for some time now but somehow Afghanistan didn’t get a mention which is kinda strange, ya gotta admit. I would have thought that the virus would have punched a hole in the Taliban takeover unless these guys are somehow totally naturally immune. The same for the rest of the inhabitants.
And as for the Taliban and Al Quida sharing power . . . well that just ain’t gonna work. They will be fighting each other in no time.
One more thing . . . we trained the Afghanistan army while defending that country from terrorists. Or at least i thought we did. And they turned out to be surrender monkeys. Our blood and fortune was wasted on them.
6I knew from the first that the adventure into Afghanistan was a mistake; anyone who reads history knew. So did the guys in DC. So easy to say “I KNEW it!!!” when you’re not the one sending the men and equipment to a foreign country.
I just wish I’d spoken up louder and more vociferously from the first.
7Years ago (1970s?) I read a book written by a former diplomat, who stated that Afghanistan was not a country, it was a geographic conglomeration of tribes and clans. That has been borne out for the past 200 years.
El Jefe: I disagree, Cheney/Bush had no intention of turning Afghanistan into a democracy, liberal or otherwise. They just needed to keep Halliburton and the military-industrial gang wallowing in profits, since it turned out that Iraq was not gonna be the oil gusher Cheney thought it would be.
Although I know this is conspiracy thinking, I suspect they stopped the hunt for bin Laden because finding and eliminating him would make it harder to keep the money flowing into their Middle Eastern wars.
8Historian Heather Cox has a good summary, dated yesterday, of this 20 year misadventure. She also documents how it was actually trump who negotiated this withdrawal and the Republicans were crowing about how great it is. Comes now, they quietly scrubbed their RNC website of that praise and are now blaming everything on Biden. Too bad WAPO had a screenshot from before the scrub.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-15-2021
9As long as we’re filling in history we might as well point out one more aspect that many seemed to have forgotten.
Long story short: Bush/Cheney had to be talked into invading Afghanistan. From they day they took office they wanted to go into Iraq. Right after 9/11 they started issuing orders to invade Iraq but enough people knew that the terrorists didn’t come from Iraq that they were forced go into Afghanistan first.
Having no interest in it there is no surprise they screwed it up. Of course if they had been interested they were too wilfully ignorant that it wouldn’t have made any difference.
10IMHO after trump’s deal with the Taliban, basically securing a dignified exit for us in return for THEIR (Taliban) restraint,
11there were only two choices. All in or all out. No more small peacekeeping presence. And no one knew that better than the Afghans wearing uniforms, or life-sized targets.
According to reporting from WaPo, the Taliban started negotiating directly with them directly, oddly enough, shortly after the deal was reached with us.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/
I’m not even blaming trump’s people for negotiating with the Taliban. If memory serves, we tried to include them in talks during the Obama years.
I do find it interesting that the deadline for withdrawal fell in this presidential term. If trump had won, he could’ve wiped his ass with the deal like he’s done with so many others.
If not, he left his successor with an impossible choice.
And our President made the right one.
Please remember Captain Mark Garner. He was one of the best of the best.
12https://www.west-point.org/users/usma2002/58793/
https://myfox8.com/news/soldiers-life-not-death-made-impression-on-hometown-of-elkin/
Hearing Liz Cheney on CBS this morning saying there’s “blame on both sides” made me wonder if she had any blame for her daddy and his boss. She also made it clear now that it’s Biden’s responsibility for the mess. Hmm
13Like everything repugnantican, it’s never their fault, and becomes something to raise campaign funds around
The GOP chorus will be, what about the women? MSNBC just had Chip Roy on to say that. I say, why didn’t we leave when Obama got Bin Laden? And thank goodness Biden had the guts to say enough.
14I’m touched by all this sudden concern for the women and children of Afghanistan, after so many years of not giving them a thought. Who tried to ban people from majority-Muslim countries from even visiting the US? Not Joe Biden.
15So many other countries have meddled in Afghanistan, thinking they will either “fix” it or control it (Russia). Nothing has been fixed and Russia failed miserably, leaving the place in shambles. I heard an interview the other day with Rangina Hamidi, Afghanistan’s acting education minister, who was asked whether the pullout after 20 years was a mistake; she answered, “I don’t think the answer to Afghanistan’s problem is the continued presence of any international troops, be it American or others. My assessment of the past 20 years is that the international community made some really major mistakes in the decisions that they made in terms of who they aligned themselves with in Afghanistan. And I remember very vividly and very loudly in my youth days, I was speaking loud and clear and screaming to the international forces, as they align themselves with warlords and drug lords, that the results of this relationship are not going to be pretty. And unfortunately, that fear has proven to be true. And 20 years on, with thousands of lives lost, both on the international end as well as the Afghan national end, and billions of dollars wasted, we’ve come back to point zero where we began in 2001.”
Western nations have been trying to “fix” the Middle East and countries like Afghanistan for decades, only to find that their “fixes” left only chaos behind. IMHO, the only people that can fix Afghanistan are the Afghanistan people. American troops had done all they could long ago, whatever that was. Now all this sudden concern about women and children from the GOP? Give me a break.
16Treehugger, very good analysis from Rangina Hamidi from inside Afghanistan. Exactly right. Too bad she couldn’t have talked sense into Bush-Cheney 20 years ago. I read where Dick Cheney also thought there would be oil to control in Afghanistan. He was so wrong on so many fronts. Remember that Liz Cheney?
17The people of Afghanistan deserve peace under the style of government(s) of their choice. Is Vietnam completely idyllic today? Perhaps not, but the people are now enjoying a level of peace and prosperity that never came with war. We can hope the same for Afghanistan.
18Anybody else notice that in all the news clips of Taliban ‘technicals’ tooling around in pickup trucks, that most of the trucks are shiny new-looking Ford F-250/350s? And other American brands, not the Toyota and Nissans of past years. Hmmm$$$…
19If I see those -bleep- goatjockeys driving some ‘King Ranch’ or ‘Lariat’ models I’m gonna die laughing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Super_Duty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_F-Series
From the “been there, done that” folder…
BBC News February 14, 2009!
**Russians warn of Afghan parallels**
“As Russia marks the 20th anniversary of its withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials in Moscow are warning that US and Nato-led forces are making exactly the same mistakes as the Soviet Union made when it invaded the country in 1979.
The BBC’s Richard Galpin has been speaking to experts and veterans, who remember the withdrawal after 10 years of occupation as a traumatic and humiliating experience.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7888566.stm
20For those of you chortling over some of our dumber politicians maybe trying an oil grab in Afghanistan, chill. Afghanistan is actually extremely rich in many other natural resources, probably much much more valuable than whatever oil there might be.
*** Which is why we will probably see the Chinese move into Afghanistan in a short time.
And unlike previous attempted occupations of Afghanistan, if they can’t make it work on a fairly peaceable commercial basis, they may impose a total control like even the Afghanis have never seen before, the Taliban will be crushed like bugs. The Chinese are longtime experts at
absolute totalitarianism.
.
Like El Jefe so well explains, I too came to the same conclusions almost two decades ago. That Afghanistan would end up a huge clusterfock. And that invading Iraq, under false pretenses, for wrong reasons, would destabilize the already FU’ed Middle East terribly.
I also figured out about ten or fifteen years ago that the best solution for Afghanistan would be a –partition–, into, perhaps, at least three different –countries– along their tribal divisions [and even commented this, here and elsewhere, long ago].
.
Nobody had better still be thinking that there is any difference whatsoever between the Afghani Taliban and our own Talibangelical fundie religious fanatics and RW-Christofascists.
If ours are ever allowed to impose their insane vision of a theocracy on the US government, y’all would be getting treated as those poor devils who aren’t Taliban in Afghanistan are being slaughtered.
BTW, Trump and his minions/handlers [Putin??..] got this clusterfuck going last year, when they released ~5000 mostly Taliban and political prisoners, including virtually all of the current Taliban leadership cadre. Absolutely no surprise that they have overrun the entire country in a few weeks.
21So don’t let the Rethuglikans blame Biden and the Democrats.
Jane & PKM @18, “their choice”: I have to disagree J&P. Most Afghanis are having very little choice about getting subjugated and slaughtered by a horde of Taliban fundie theocratic religiously driven whackjobs.
The average Afghani will never see “a level of peace and prosperity” such as the Vietnamese appear to have today.
There are simply no commonalities or parallels between the two nations nor residents thereof.
22One is now controlled by Muslim religious fanatics, the other by pragmatic realists.
Sad, but that’s the way it is.
Quite OT:
Y’all have probably seen news clips of various Texas Capitol buildings in Austin getting flooded yesterday by some kinda torrential rainstorms. Like 4-5 inches of rain in an hour [which really isn’t that much, I’ve seen much heavier rain on the coast, 12-24″/hr].
Those Capitol buildings being shown are all pretty new. So Why The F–k did they leak like crazy?! The decades older government buildings didn’t leak.
23These leakers had to have been constructed while the effing Republicans had total control of state government…
So WTF went on in the design and construction of those obviously deficient buildings?
Just how much corruption and crony capitalism was there, and how many millions of dollars in bribes were paid out to Perry, Abbutt, etc?
Afghanistan has been subjected to misguided fooling around by other countries since it was invaded by Alexander the great. The next time a few people decide in the “national interest” to send our kids to the back side of the moon to risk their lives, we should demand to know specifically in whose interest it is being done.
24Sandridge @23, we’re on parallel tracks of agreement on this, so our apologies for any lack of clarity. Fortunately for the Vietnamese their religious complications were nowhere near the level of Afghanistan. Nor was the supply of abandoned weapons what it is in the Middle East and Afghanistan. With too many ready to resupply the region, the return to tribal rock throwing before the pastoral calm … not a prediction in sight.
25Sorry I gave away my copy of ‘Charley Wilson’s War’. It’s time to read it again.
26From MSNBC’s Steve Benen today on the trumpf regime’s chief hypocrite (he was the head of the snake that negotiated with the taliban the agreement on the US withdrawal):
Why Mike Pompeo’s vacillations on Afghanistan matter
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-mike-pompeo-s-vacillations-afghanistan-matter-n1276909
His memory is selective at best and he’s as repugnant a repugnantican as there is.
27Only history will prove you correct, unfortunately
28Draft resister in ’63 says: Deja vu.
29It’s a classic sunken cost scenario except this one involved lives and cash. It’s the boat or vacation home you buy and then throw money at but it never seems ready and you never use it. We all knew the prudent thing was to pull out years ago, but then the guilt over the lost lives and lost cash would set in. Yes, Biden will take a hit but I suspect anyone hitting him was never a supporter anyway. Those progressives challenging him need to articulate what they would have done differently. What’s the objective?
30If last week was not a good time for Biden to pull out of Afghanistan, the question should be when was a good time or when would be a good time?
If the answer is not some date in the last 20 years, it’s also not going to be in the next 20 years.
You can lead a horse to water, but as El Jefe pointed out the Russians, the Brits, the Greeks, the Mongols, and now the Americans discovered, in Afghanistan the horses can’t be lead. And there is no water.
31J&P @24, Yep, I know we’re on the same page and what you meant. It’s a sad tragedy indeed. But nobody can do a damned thing about it.
I was recently ‘arguing’ with a kinfolk about it all. Their effing idea to get started, with all the usual RWNJ tropes: OMG, they’re mutilating the wimmens, boiling widdle kids [I don’t even remember it all, it was so effing absurd and hypocritical]. Shit you dumbfucks, who the hell got us into this, continually made it worse, and made a bundle of money off of it all . Then at the most critical time, totally screwed it up –last year–! Was met with constant deflections and diversions from my factual reality based info, it’s always pointless to debate with a trumpanzee MAGAot.
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Crone @25, There’s even a movie :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson_(Texas_politician)
I read it long ago, Wilson was still just a flashy ‘parttime’ asshole from East Texas, imo. A prime example of stirring up unintended consequences and blowback.
32Anyone else notice that all the Afghans trying to hitch a ride out are all men? What about their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers? Thinking less and less of the “men” there
33Morning Consult had a comparison in their afternoon emailing:
“President Joe Biden looked to have a political winner on his hands when he announced in April that the United States would withdraw all U.S. ground troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“But four months later – as the exit of American forces has preceded a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan – support for his move has fallen dramatically, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll.
“The latest survey found 49 percent of voters support Biden’s decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, down 20 percentage points since mid-April, while 37 percent oppose it, up by a similar amount.
Among those surveyed, I’d be surprised if
* 15% were able to find Afghanistan on a map of the world,
* 10% could accurately compare and contrast the Islamic beliefs of Afghanistan to those of Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia,
* 5% could name three major exports and imports, and
* 3% could describe the structure of the former US-backed government.
There may be statements about Afghanistan — but few in the electorate have ANY foreign policy position among the top three reasons for their vote in an election. “With the exception of 2004, foreign policy hasn’t been important in any presidential race since the end of the Cold War, unless you count immigration as a foreign policy issue,” says Robert Jervis, the author of several books about international relations and the presidency and a professor at Columbia University. “Foreign policy is simply too distant from the lives of most Americans.”
Another point of view: “American voters want the United States to be “strong at home” first and foremost to help it compete in the world. Voters across demographic lines express a clear desire for more investment in U.S. infrastructure, health care, and education—and less of an exclusive focus on military and defense spending—as part of a revamped foreign policy approach that gets America ready to compete with other countries…. voters in this survey express little interest in the processes and tactics of foreign policy or the workings of international alliances and institutions. They generally support cooperation and engagement with allies, but these are not top-tier objectives on their own.”
34Cheryl @30, Well, it didn’t exactly work out too great for this poor guy ‘hitching a ride’ :
https://images.dailykos.com/images/977109/story_image/People-fell-from-plane-in-Afghanistan.png
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/16/2046210/-Afghan-Falling-Man
35I’ve been conflicted about how the Afghanistan withdrawal has played out . I thank El Jefe for his article and all the conversation it stimulated. It does remind me of the Vietnam fiasco and pullout (I was draft age in the first draft while in college and lucked out with a high number- and have no regrets). But I am feeling better as I’ve read all of Joe Biden’s address today. He was saddled with a flawed agreement “negotiated” by the trumpf regime and made the right decision to finally cut our folly in Afghanistan and leave. He also made a statement that no other administration would make- that his team underestimated the speed the Taliban would overrun the Afghanistan government and armed (by the US) forces. The honesty is reassuring but the fact that his administration was preparing for the worst case is also reassuring. I’m sure the repugnanticans will continue to use this for their campaigns and fundraising, but the decision was correct.
36My first duty station in 1969 was Peshawar, Pakistan. I made a trip through the Khyber Pass to the Afghan border. It was a wild area that knew war for millennia. The tribesmen that lived in this area were very wary of outsiders.
I went to Vietnam for most of 1971. I look back on what happened in Afghanistan and Vietnam, I believe the only thing we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.
It’s heartbreaking to watch this tragedy unfold but this has been the inevitable result just as it has been for every country foolish enough to invade this area. Not one more dollar or life needs to be wasted.
37I’m glad Biden pulled out. I’m glad that we’ll no longer be wasting the blood of young soldiers. or the tears of their loved ones. I’m glad the immense amount of money we were spending will now go to something worthwhile in this country instead of corrupt Afghan public officials or our very own military industrial complex. I’m glad we finally have an exit strategy, even if it is chaotic. I’m glad we did try; perhaps we were able to plant the seeds of hope in the Afghan people.
38Sandridge – this is not prophecy, just a fact learned from experience. Why do the new buildings leak? Two words: plywood palaces. And when they catch fire they will burn just as fast and even faster. I’ve seen this with my own eyes in my part of the world.Super quick erection, super fast destruction.
39maggie @39, You’re right, cheap and quick = crap construction. One of my pet peeves. In previous generations stuff was usually well-constructed and we afforded it. There are so many examples still standing and in use today, both buildings and other structures; just look at all the CCC parks ones. Today the whole construction process is set up for everyone to make a quick buck.
Compare that fallen Floriduh condo building whose cheap concrete likely failed [probably due to seawater corrosion], with Roman/Pozzolanic concrete structures still standing, some actually in seawater for over 2000 years. The good concrete only costs a bit more, may be cheaper in some places.
40[I happened to be looking at the topic in Wiki a few days ago : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete ]
The real ‘winners’ in this whole sordid affair?
1 Lockheed Martin (USA) 47.3
2 Boeing (USA) 29.2
3 Northrop Grumman Corp (USA) 23.4
4 Raytheon (USA) 26.2
5 General Dynamics Corp (USA) 22.0
The five largest Merchants of Death in the World. They don’t care which party is in power, greed knows no party allegiance.
41Sandridge makes a valid point, one that many mainstream media haven’t covered, that we released 5000 Taliban militants, including the guy who will be the next “president” of the country.
42Why did the former guy choose to negotiate with terrorists? I thought US policy was to never negotiate with extremists! Not only did we negotiate with them, we released 5000 murderers on their country, after many years of “stewing” in their hatred.
The president was right to get us out of their civil war.
Donna @42, Exactly, the Rethugs have limitless hypocrisy and zero memory.
Some further articles :
Trump put 5,000 Taliban fighters back in battle and tied Biden’s hands in Afghanistan:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/13/2045701/-Trump-put-5-000-Taliban-fighters-back-in-battle-and-tied-Biden-s-hands-in-Afghanistan
Trump, Republicans rush to rewrite history on who negotiated ‘historic’ peace deal with the Taliban:
43https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/16/2046263/-Republicans-develop-sudden-case-of-amnesia-over-Trump-s-historic-peace-deal-with-the-Taliban
The US must stop trying to police the world. We have enough problems at home to work on.
44