Posted on 08/27/2021 5:26:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Say what you will about President Joe Biden, he has stuck to his guns on ending America's 20-year involvement in Afghanistan's forever war.
His decision not to delay our departure after Aug. 31 was fortified by hard intel that the terrorist ISIS-K was preparing attacks at Kabul airport.
Thursday evening, the two bomb attacks occurred.
It now seems inevitable that the withdrawal will be completed by Aug. 31, with all U.S. military forces following the last civilians out.
Before yesterday's attacks, the airlift had been going far better than in its chaotic first days. Some 100,000 Americans and Afghans had gotten out of the country since Aug. 14.
Biden held his ground, refusing to be stampeded by Democratic critics, NATO allies, Republican hawks or media demanding he extend the deadline for departure until all Americans were out.
His adamancy testifies to the convictions Biden came by during decades at the apex of the U.S. government during our longest war.
Those convictions:
Even if the end result of a withdrawal is that Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, the cause is not worth a continuance of the U.S. commitment or the blood and treasure that four presidents have invested.
Better to accept a U.S. defeat and humiliation than re-commit to a war that is inevitably going to be lost.
Biden's decision and the botched early days of the withdrawal have not been without political cost. Polls show the president's approval rating sliding underwater. A Suffolk poll has him down to 41%.
Yet, on his basic decision to get out now and accept the costs and consequences, his country appears to be with him. After all, former President Donald Trump was prepared to depart earlier than Aug. 31, and a majority of Americans still support the decision to write off Afghanistan and get out.
Still, we need to realize what this means and what is coming.
According to the secretary of state, 6,000 Americans were still in Afghanistan when the Afghan army collapsed and Kabul fell. Some 4,500 of these have now been evacuated.
The State Department is in touch with 500 other U.S. citizens to effect their departure. As for the remaining 1,000, we do not know where they are.
What does this mean?
Hundreds of Americans are going to be left behind, along with scores of thousands of Afghan allies who worked with our military or contributed to the cause of crushing the Taliban. And many of those Afghans are going to pay the price of having cast their lot with the Americans.
After Aug. 31, the fate of those left behind will be determined by the Taliban, and we will be made witness to the fate the Taliban imposes.
This generation is about to learn what it means to lose a war.
When the war for Algerian independence ended in 1962, and the French pulled their troops out, scores of thousands of "Harkis," Arab and Muslim Algerians who fought alongside the French, were left behind.
The atrocities against the Harkis ran into the tens of thousands. Such may be the fate of scores of thousands of Afghans who fought beside us.
Biden's diplomats may be negotiating with the Taliban to prevent the war crime of using U.S. citizens left behind as hostages. But we are not going to be able to save all of our friends and allies who cast their lot with us and fought alongside us.
Yet, while the promises of the Taliban are not credible and ought not to be believed, we are not without leverage.
As The New York Times writes, the Afghan economy is "in free fall."
"Cash is growing scarce, and food prices are rising. Fuel is becoming harder to find. Government services have stalled as civil servants avoid work, fearing retribution."
The Taliban's desperate need is for people to run the economy and for money from the international community to pay for imports of food and vital necessities of life.
What will also be needed from us, soon after the fall of Afghanistan, is a reappraisal of America's commitments across the Middle East.
We have 900 U.S. troops in Syria who control the oil reserves of that country and serve as a shield for the Syrian Kurds.
How long should we keep them there?
We retain several thousand troops in Iraq. Why?
These are questions for which new answers are going to be needed.
Indeed, there will be a temptation to counter our defeat and humiliation with defiant gestures or precipitate action to restore our lost credibility. Henry Kissinger's advice on any such action today seems wise:
"No dramatic strategic move is available in the immediate future to offset this self-inflicted setback, such as by making new formal commitments in other regions. American rashness would compound disappointment among allies, encourage adversaries, and sow confusion among observers."
As for Afghanistan and the Kabul airport, there comes a time when even a great nation needs to accept the reality that Corregidor is lost.
1. Hunt down the Islamic elements in Afghanistan that were involved in the 9/11 attacks and destroy them.
2. Impose an immediate trade embargo on that country — and then extend it to any other country that conducted business with them.
3. Withdraw U.S. recognition of Afghanistan as a nation — permanently. Establish a protocol where individual parts of the country could apply for recognition independently — under very specific conditions we establish. Each “nation” we recognize could be as large as a former Afghan province or as small as a village.
Item #3 is important because it has to include a harsh set of blunt expectations on our part. The goal would be to divide Afghanistan into a large number of independent, but highly dysfunctional, states. And our expectations have to be made clear up front: Each state has to be small enough that it can be destroyed beyond repair in a 48-hour military strike, if necessary.
If your military personnel are getting blown up at the gate of the airport while your last military aircraft are taking off with pajama-clad refugees hanging off the landing gear, you’ve lost the war — no matter how much you don’t want to admit it.
Sorry — that’s THREE, not two!
Sounds more like your describing Dien Bien Phu to me, there wasn’t any high ground around the Alamo.
Here in Kabul we have an airport surrounded by ridges and hills at least 1800 t0 2000 meters, mortars, artillery, snipers etcetera can look right down their throats.
Now our soldiers and Marines have a feel for how the French felt on May 7th 1954!
Noem;, SERIOUSLY?
The Governor who basically said “I only lied to my constituents to please my CORPORATE MASTERS”!
At least you have an alternative in mind. On the other hand, assuming the US could have overcome huge international pushback, there’d be no guarantee that we wouldn’t have been involved for twenty years under your scenario.
The smaller states you describe would have been easy for the Taliban to grab one by one. And the only way to have prevented it would’ve been through continued American military intervention.
It’s easy to criticize, and there’s a lot that deserves critique, but I’m afraid that once 9/11 happened you were either going to sit back and do nothing or get involved in some sort of invasion that might have long-term negative consequences.
Not really. One of the preconditions for recognition would be that the “state” would have to demonstrate that it had a military force capable of protecting itself with nothing more than U.S. equipment.
And that would magically be achieved how?
If none of them achieved it, then who cares?
3 small simple questions I have been asking for some time now
1. What Do You Want?
2. How Do You Get It?
(most importantly)
3. Then What Happens?
What happens when Afghanistan becomes Disneyland for Islamic Terror groups? Because as we speak 2 things are happening. 1. Sites are being scouted for training camps, using lessons learned from the last time. 2. Islamic Terror groups world wide are sending or getting ready to send people there for training.
I keep pointing this out because apparently some people think, since we’ve left the war is over.
“Our military priority needs to be to defend the US border from foreign invaders.
As long as we fail to do that, all foreign policy is a sick joke.”
Yes?
Islamic terrorism is the least of our worries.
We’re about to lose our republic.
If they want to come here and go all jihadi, I encourage them.
We’ll just shoot the few that make it.
ISIS-K is just a splinter faction of the Taliban.
Has Pat Buchanan gone over to the dark side or has he always been there?
“We’re about to lose our republic.”
We Are? Yes we are going through a (really) rough patch, one of the roughest in our history. Thing is our form of government is self-correcting. You can see it starting to happen now.
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