The radio came on as I was starting my car up to go to work one day last week. A news reporter was droning on about some Republicans in congress stating that President Biden should resign or be impeached over his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. No surprise there, it's surprising that we haven't heard calls for impeachment long before now, except that Biden has frustrated the Republicans to no end with a successful Presidency that makes Trump look like he deserved to be impeached twice. But for half of the three-minute newscast, listeners were subjected to what amounted to a very biased diatribe about the mountain of issues that made the Afghanistan withdrawal the biggest political failure in United States history.
I got a good laugh when they went to a commercial, identified as the USA Radio Network, and I changed the station. Of course, that's the kind of biased, extremist right-wing propaganda that comes from a third-rate, budget-on-a-dime news "network" like USA which scratches by mostly on small-market AM radio and religious stations. They did get the story about the call for impeachment right, though that's not really news and they had to exaggerate for effect. Republicans are going to call for Biden's impeachment if he runs a stop sign. Almost everything else about Afghanistan was either misleading or distorted beyond recognition from the facts. I guess the execs at USA Radio News don't think much of the intelligence of their mindless listeners.
But the bigger networks ought to know better. Americans aren't good at history, especially not those who have made a career out of news broadcasting, and most particularly, this generation. Getting a scoop outweighs what was once pride in a quality product, especially if it couldn't be factually disputed. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. It's repetitive sensationalizing that gets attention now, and if one network gets on a theme, the others outdo themselves trying to imitate it.
President Joe Biden will go down in history as having made one of the most courageous military decisions in recent American history. There are no "American interests" in Afghanistan. It was obvious, fairly early on, that the "democratically elected government" would not be able to survive on its own, without American financing and military support. There was nothing beneficial to be gained, either by America or by Afghanistan, from a prolonged occupation and an attempt to establish a democratic government in a place that has no sense of national unity. It was not a cause worth the loss of one more American life.
Far from being a "disaster" or a "botch," the withdrawal and evacuation was a remarkable achievement, in the face of the rapid collapse of the Afghan army. Let's think in realistic terms here. The Biden administration had no access to any of the pertinent military information about Afghanistan until literally just a few days before he took office because the Trump administration wouldn't cooperate in a transition. The deadline for withdrawal had already been set in negotiations that Trump had conducted with the Taliban, deliberately kicked into 2021 in what would have either been his second term, or into someone else's administration, to keep him from facing the political consequences. That contributed to the further undermining of the Afghan government and the increasing unwillingness of its army to fight on its behalf.
A Little Bit of History Goes a Long Way
The only legitimate interest the United States had in Afghanistan was eliminating the threat of Al Qaida and going after Osama Bin Laden who was hiding out there after the attack on the World Trade Center. Once it was confirmed that Bin Laden was gone and Al Qaida was on the run, there was absolutely no reason for the US to remain. The continuous military and political presence of a foreign power, in a country divided among religious and tribal loyalties like Afghanistan, would only incite another insurgency by one of the provincial powers or militant Islamic factions. And that is exactly what it has done and why things are the way they are there now.
How do we know this? It's happened all through the modern history of Afghanistan. The British were the first to learn this lesson, when they attempted, on three different occasions, to take advantage of the country's political instability to control it, in order to protect their colonial interest in Pakistan and India against Czarist Russia. The Russians also learned this lesson when the Soviet Union took advantage of a civil war to put a puppet Communist regime in power. They were a large, destructive presence but the political foundation of support within the country for the Communist Afghan government could not sustain the weight of the Soviet occupation and it collapsed. The Soviets withdrew.
Afghanistan is a landlocked piece of desert in central Asia, inhabited by mostly tribal groups, mainly Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. IThe strategic location between Pakistan and Iran means that trade routes between Europe and the Middle East to the west, and India and China to the east run through parts of the country which is mostly rugged and mountainous. The relative isolation created by the geography has led to the development of strong provincial, tribal rule in sheikhdoms and emirates who fought against each other for control of the surrounding territory, resources, and domination of the trade routes which are the main source of economic prosperity. The different sects of Islam run along the ethnic boundaries of the tribal groups, preventing the people from developing a sense of national unity.
The instability caused by the various provincial powers made Afghanistan the ideal place for Bin Laden and Al Qaida to seek refuge when pursued by the United States after 9-11. There were enough provincial leaders supportive of Bin Laden to conceal him and protect him and eventually get him across the border into Pakistan, away from the probing Americans. The national government was too weak to intervene. The fact that a major military operation did not succeed in capturing Bin Laden while he was still in Afghanistan, partly due to rugged terrain and primitive conditions, partly because he had a local network of support that prevented detection, should have been a wake-up call when it came to trying to change the country's government and politics.
Who Is Responsible For the Decision to Stay in Afghanistan?
George W. Bush was the commander in chief and the buck stops on his desk when it comes to the terrible decision to try and turn the Afghan government into an American-style democracy. There was no strategic reason to support such a decision, no real benefit to the United States, and plenty of warning about the consequences from our own military advisors and state department. The record shows that it was Vice President Dick Cheney who pushed and argued for the continuing military presence and to make the attempt to get a democratically elected government friendly to the United States in place.
There were some real shenanigans that went on in getting all of this accomplished. At the time, they had a Republican majority in Congress, so they really didn't need to do much in the way of arm twisting. The 9-11 attacks gave them a blank check. So this "conservative" Republican administration, with Cheney standing to benefit from his position as an investor in Haliburton, a company that would get billions of dollars in war contracts, committed to eventually spending 6 trillion dollars providing resources and propping up a government they knew would collapse immediately without US support. That's $800 million dollars a day.
Bush and Cheney got a lot of mileage out of the attack on the World Trade Center. They knew Al Qaida and Bin Laden were in Afghanistan, but they used the shock and fear of Americans following 9-11 to invade Iraq as well, on the false claims that they, too, were harboring Al Qaida and they had "weapons of mass destruction." They had neither, but that was a well-kept secret until they were out of office.
No Exit Strategy
With the United States militarily committed to protecting fledgling republics in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration ended without an exit strategy in place. The decisions about what would happen were left up to their successor. Getting in wasn't much of a problem, especially with all of the emotion generated by the World Trade Center attacks. But getting out would be a long and difficult process with plenty of negative political consequences and both Bush and Cheney knew that.
President Obama, who succeeded in getting the US out of Iraq as promised, had a much more difficult time with Afghanistan. Instead of a withdrawal, the unstable nature of the situation forced a surge in the US military presence in order to stabilize the country before getting out could even be considered. Though they did have an exit strategy with intentions of getting out when conditions were met, they were dealing with a corrupt government that did not have popular support, including the military.
The Right Choice Took Courage
Vice President Biden was one of the consistent voices in the Obama administration who favored the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan. Biden was opposed to our staying in the country in the first place. By the time Obama took office, our military command was voicing doubts about the ability of the Afghan government to exist and rule without American support. The instability was already manifesting itself in insurrections and attacks that required a surge in the number of American forces, to drive out insurrectionists. They decided to give the Afghan army more time to train, but even at that point, there weren't many members of the administration who thought this would succeed, Biden among them. The necessity of the surge was an indicator of what was to come.
When he became President, the circumstances had changed considerably and a hopeless situation had become worse. It was only a matter of time before the Taliban, empowered in part by the recognition that they had picked up from Trump and his misguided negotiations with them which further undermined the country's democratically elected government, would be back in power. The only thing that could prevent this would be another military surge from the United States to beat back the Taliban and push back the insurgency.
History just keeps repeating itself. The Afghan government and military had multiple opportunities to develop into what was necessary to keep hold of the country. It was not succeeding even after twenty years of American support. Someone had to be responsible, accept the political cost of being the one who finally picks up the kicked can, and make the decision to leave. Joe Biden was that man. The buck, as it were, stopped with him.
It was a courageous decision, knowing that there would be political consequences. What Biden couldn't know was how fast the Afghan army would dissolve in the face of opposition, allowing the Taliban to sweep into Kabul in a matter of weeks. But he made, and stuck with, the decision. When it came down to what he had to do to get as many people out safely before the withdrawal deadline of August 31 he did it. There were 13 unfortunate American casualties, and dozens of Afghan civilian lives lost, because of the ISIS attack at the airport, which was far fewer than something that was a "disaster" or a "botch" would have yielded. But if there had been another surge, and a longer exit, the cost in loss of life for both Afghans and Americans would have been much higher.
The last American soldier walked up the ramp and into the last plane leaving the airport without looking back, a posture that demonstrated the fact that he was confident in his ability to safely board a plane and leave the country. Had Biden not been able to negotiate their safe exit and security, the last plane out might have had much more of a struggle to take off. Not a single plane was shot down. The Biden administration got more than 120,000 people out of a primitive country within a very limited number of days to get it done.
Biden has stood firm in the face of criticism that includes a campaign of lies and misinformation. This was a remarkable accomplishment that will go down in history as one of the most courageous military decisions since World War 2. Contrary to what his critics in the media are saying, this was an act that demonstrates his overwhelming qualification to serve in the office of President. He managed to get the resources in place, as the Taliban advanced rapidly accross the country, to evacuate 120,000 people who wanted to go. Far from being the disaster that the media wants to label it, this was the work of a President who cares about the country and the people and who knows what he is doing.
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