AUGUST 27, 2021 – As one of many, I’m following news reports and commentaries about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Much attention is on the moment; less focus on 20 years of failed policy. The ragged retreat is the bad fruit of long-lived failure. The more I read and listen, the more I scream, as if aboard a carnival ride catapulting occupants into thunderheads in the nighttime sky.
The history of our defeat twists in, out, and around itself.
Twenty years ago, airplanes flew into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the ground somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. In claiming “credit,” Osama Bin Laden said the attacks were in retribution for America’s military presence in Saudi Arabia. According to our intel, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda found sanction in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The Taliban had gained control of Afghanistan largely due to American support of the mujahadeen against the USSR, America’s nemesis since WW II and occupier of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 in the final chapter of the generations-old Great Game.
In the aftermath of 9/11, we “had to” retaliate. No self-respecting society takes such an assault without punching back. We “hunted down and made Al Qaeda pay.” We also “made the Taliban pay” by driving them from power in Afghanistan. In the resulting vacuum, American strategists believed, Western democracy could be installed as if Afghanistan were Belgium. It wasn’t. It was 34 provinces filled with warlords and a bottomless capacity for graft and corruption once American dollars flowed by the pallet-load off giant cargo planes.
Meanwhile, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, two countries over from Afghanistan and guilty by reputation, gave rise to ISIS. The Afghanistan franchise—ISIS-K—became the sworn enemy of the Taliban, partly because the latter wasn’t nasty enough toward apostates. After 20 years in the back of the truck, the Taliban climbed back into the driver’s seat, though the vehicle is jerry-rigged and ill-equipped to transport 38 million people to better lives. The new-old guys shout “death to America” and insist that the U.S. be out by August 31, yet the Taliban “cooperates” with the U.S. by providing security around the Hamid Karzai Airport. To embarrass the Taliban and knock them off balance, ISIS-K attacked, killing 13 American soldiers/Marines and 60 Afghanis.
(Meanwhile, back home, 6,712 people (virtually all unvaccinated) died last week from Covid-19, 635,000 since the onset of the pandemic 18 months ago—compared to 2,461 American troop deaths in Afghanistan in 20 years and approximately 220,000 gun-related homicides back home during that same period.)
As we observers try to make sense of nonsense, our remnant force scrambles to meet next week’s deadline. Our influence in Afghanistan has fast narrowed to the vanishing point. Few people would call our “war” successful; fewer yet would say it was “winnable.” As chronic and acute crises acute dog us at home, maybe we’ve learn from our 20-year mistake. Or more likely, given the sad state of our democracy, we’ve lost the capacity to impose our will elsewhere.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
