Posted on 08/13/2021 4:55:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
In April, President Joe Biden told the nation he would have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on the continental United States.
Given the turn of events of the past week, that 20th anniversary may be celebrated by a triumphant Taliban, now on the cusp of victory over the Americans and their Afghan allies, with gruesome public executions of their surrendered and captured enemies.
Sept. 11, 2021, could see U.S. Marines and diplomats fleeing Kabul to escape the retribution of the Taliban whom we ousted in 2001.
Consider. From Friday, a week ago, to today, the Taliban have overrun 10 of Afghanistan's 34 provincial capitals.
Mazar-e-Sharif in the north is now surrounded. Kandahar and Herat, second and third largest cities, are under siege. The Kandahar-Kabul road has been cut. The defense minister escaped assassination in the capital. The government's media director did not. The Taliban now control half of the 400 regions of Afghanistan and two-thirds of its territory.
Some Afghan soldiers have fought bravely. Others have retreated into their bases, surrendered, or fled into neighboring countries such as Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. An entire Afghan army corps with its U.S. weapons, equipment and vehicles was surrendered in Kunduz city.
U.S. military say the fall of Kabul could come within 90 days, with some saying privately the regime could fall to the Taliban within a month.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has summarized the situation:
"The complete, utter failure of the Afghan national army, absent our hand-holding, to defend their country is a blistering indictment of a failed 20-year strategy predicated on the belief that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars could create an effective democratic central government in a nation that has never had one."
The reality of that grim assessment raises many questions.
Who is responsible for the colossal U.S. failure in Afghanistan? Who is responsible for America's impending defeat in her longest war?
Over the last 20 years, the U.S. lost 2,500 troops with 20,000 wounded and invested $1 trillion to create an Afghan army, only to see that army crumble and disintegrate as soon as we departed.
Wednesday, Biden conceded that truth:
"Look, we spent over $1 trillion over 20 years; we trained and equipped ... over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. They've got to fight for themselves."
We are facing in Afghanistan a wipeout of the investment of a generation to convert Afghanistan into a democracy with the ability to hold the allegiance of its people and to defend itself.
Why did we fail?
Did the U.S. generals, statesmen, politicians and journalists who went to Afghanistan during these last two decades, and came back to testify to our steady progress, delude themselves? Or did they deceive us?
How many U.S. generals knew what was going on but declined to risk their careers by telling Congress or the country that the Afghan army and regime we had stood up would likely collapse like a house of cards once the Americans departed and they had to face the Taliban alone?
Today, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is in Qatar threatening the Taliban that if they overrun the country and impose a victor's peace, they risk being denied diplomatic recognition by the U.S. and its Western allies and a forfeiture of future foreign aid.
But to brand the Taliban terrorists and pariahs is not new to them. What they seek is something for which they have proven they are willing to die.
What is critical for them is to restore the Taliban to their previous dominance; to create an Islamic Emirate; to make themselves the moral, social and political arbiters of a more purely Islamic Afghanistan.
And to be rid of the outsiders and their alien values.
They want to be able to stand up and say to the Muslim world: "We have shown you how to do it. We fought America, the world superpower, for 20 years until we forced the Americans, tails between their legs, to get out of our land, and then put their puppets up against a wall."
While our strategic defeat will leave Americans reluctant to attempt any such future imperial interventions, there needs to be an accounting.
The questions that need answering:
Was not the attempt to transplant Madisonian democracy into the soil of the Middle and Near East a fool's errand from the beginning?
How many other U.S. allies field paper armies, which will collapse, if they do not have the Americans there to do the heavy lifting?
Is what we have on offer – one man-one vote democracy – truly appealing in a part of the world where democracy seems to have trouble, from the Maghreb to the Middle East to Central Asia, putting down any deep roots?
The Taliban's God is Allah. The golden calf we had on offer was democracy. In the Hindu Kush, their god has proven stronger.
Bush.
We should have unleashed the spirits of Sherman, Patton and LeMay, salted the poppy fields and been out of there by Christmas 2001.
How’s that?
Bush has been out of power since 2008.
It was never supposed to be a war. It was supposed to be the toppling of the Taliban. And, that was accomplished.
Then, some politicians decided to stay and hold the country. That was stupid.
There is no other answer. Bush's heart may have been in the right place but his strategeries gave us the failure of nation building and removing a road block to Iran. Also do not forget he codified the American surveillance state with the Patriot Act.
So throwing money at a violence-prone group doesn’t work?
Sadly, in order to build the funnel for all those untold billions, many valiant Americans shed their blood and lives.
You can't do that.
Not with General Milley in charge. That would violate all them sacred CRT crap. Not politically correct you know. Chuckle.
The politicians aided and abetted the military industrial complex. Now, the military industrial complex has gone woke, and its bled into our military. Our Sam Damons are being run off, allowing the Courtney Massengales, and other perfumed princes, to put our country into harm’s way.
We should spray agent Orange on the poppy fields on they way out. Like Rome, salt the fields.
Napalm
Um, so what stopped Obama from changing any of that in his 8 years in office?
Especially since Obama had a filibuster proof majority in the US Senate in his first 2 years in office? Bush has been out of office since 2008, no?
This piece is balderdacious drivel
The longest war is with occupied Germany or Japan or Italy followed by a more real Korea.
American troop deaths in Afghanistan over the period are less than the number of black youths murdered by other black youths in the cess pools that are great American City States
“U.S. Marines and diplomats fleeing Kabul to escape the retribution of the Taliban whom we ousted in 2001”
We never actually ousted them. They just went dark and waited it out for 20 years. Now based on how quickly they have regained control of the country, I’m thinking they never actually lost control of it to begin with.
I agree.
We should not be “fixing” other countries.
The US military should be used to break things and kill people. Then we leave.
If a situation exists where “breaking and killing” would be a bad policy, then we just need to stay out. There is no reason for us to be the world policeman or a nation builder on the other side of the globe. Why is that us?
They told th higher ups not to get involved in the country.....they hated outsiders...Think Russia...
This guy sounds like Donald Trump and a whole bunch of anti-globalists here on FR since the mid-2000s -- talking about the U.S. involvement in any Third World sh!t-hole on the planet. He's 'effing retarded if it's taken him this long to figure this out.
We failed because a nation cannot be built amongst a backwards people who do not understand what it means to be a part of a nation, when just outside their door the reality of cruelty, beheading, and worse awaits them. The same is true for those threatened by the gangs in places like the south side of Chicago. Those sitting in their wood paneled rooms and offices, protected by their armed security just don't get it.
That's where Bush's dreams of nation building failed. He was blinded by his refusal to see reality by his never having been poor.
It’s the inevitable consequence of having wars managed by draft-dodging Ivy League dopes.
Mr. Bush also gave us the Homeland Security leviathan. To this day they continue to pat down wheelchair bound octogenarians. Homeland Security seems to also be pivoting towards rooting out domestic political enemies, such as Trump supporters, er, white supremists.
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