Who's Really to Blame for Afghanistan?

Townhall.com ^ | August 27, 2021 | Neil Patel

[Kaslin]

As the world watches in horror, the leaders of history's mightiest country are begging a terrorist group not to harm defenseless Americans left in a crumbling, trillion-dollar trap of our own design. Considering we hold all the receipts, it's worth asking how we got here. The main problem, of course, is President Joe Biden's botched withdrawal. It's scary that the people running our country can be that incompetent. Pulling out American troops before the safe withdrawal of American citizens would be a hilarious concept if it weren't what actually happened. Leaving sophisticated American military technology for these terrorists is equally mind-boggling.

If America has any hope of moving beyond its current depressed state, we each need to look introspectively at the role we have had in our own decline. In Afghanistan, as with most issues, there's plenty of blame to go around. The two opposite sides of the Afghanistan debate are the nation-building crowd and the "no forever wars" crowd. Biden's blunder aside, there are questions each side should be asking themselves that they probably aren't.

First, those who pushed for nation building in Afghanistan should explain how the past 20 years were worth the money and, more importantly, the lost lives. After 9/11, America had a right, even an obligation, to target al-Qaida and remove the Taliban government that supported it. However, the failed democracy-building exercise in the wake of that justified action cost too much money and left too many American soldiers killed and injured. It was never going to work.

In his memoir, President George W. Bush said we "had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society," because "a democratic Afghanistan would be a hopeful alternative to the vision of the extremists." The problem, now proven, is America does not have the ability to create liberty-loving democracies out of whole cloth. Bush himself said this during the 2000 election, when he specifically campaigned against nation building. The idea of trying it out in a place as complicated, divided and corrupt as Afghanistan was borderline insane. For America to move forward, those who pushed the nation-building policies should be willing to engage directly on what happened and on what they have learned about America's limitations.

On the other extreme is the crowd railing against "forever wars." After the blunders in both Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans want a reduced role overseas. The risk is that the reaction to excessive American interventionism is excessive American isolationism. The post-World War II era, defined by muscular U.S. leadership and advanced U.S. troop deployment in many places around the world, has been successful by historic standards. The world is always a mess. But you can't look at the past 70 years compared with the 70 prior and argue that U.S. leadership hasn't added stability and saved lives. U.S. leadership has not been perfect, but it has been better than any other alternative.

After spending too many years, lives and dollars, the U.S. war in Afghanistan largely ended during the Trump administration. Since then, we have had a very small number of U.S. troops involved primarily in advisory and coordinating roles. This doesn't excuse the years of mistakes or make the losses worthwhile, but the gains were worth preserving. In the past year or so, the situation in Afghanistan had largely stabilized with as few as 2,500 American troops on the ground. The Afghan army that the U.S. trained, the one that folded like a tent once we withdrew, was largely able to hold its own with guidance, coordination and leadership from the U.S. They had serious issues with corruption and leadership, but their biggest problem was their complete dependence on U.S. technology. The U.S. military trained them that way. It's in America's interest to disrupt groups like al-Qaida and ISIS; having an Afghan army to do it for us (with U.S. coordination) so American troops don't die doing it is better than a lot of alternatives.

The U.S. has thousands of troops stationed all over the world. Europe is still full of U.S. troops. Parts of Asia are as well. Yet nobody is claiming World War II or the Korean War are forever wars. When did zero American troops on the ground become the standard, and is that a standard we really want? Those are questions the "no forever wars" crowd needs to answer. If we could have held a small base in Afghanistan and kept 2,000 troops as advisers to hold off the Taliban, would that have been better than what we have now? On the flip side, if we do face a renewed terrorist threat in Afghanistan after full U.S. withdrawal, are we going to be able to counter it effectively? Will cruise missiles from thousands of miles away really be enough? We can't fly our bombers over without risking conflict with a neighboring country. None of that is easy.

[cableguymn]

Bush.. but the pull out? biden.

[Safrguns]

The question we should be asking is this...

If Biden could turn back time to reverse course on his withdrawal from Afghanistan, WOULD HE?

I say no. He wouldn’t

Why? Because this is the best distraction he could have ever hoped for!... it’s working great!!!

and you know what is next???

Yes... thats right... Terrorist attacks on US soil. Those will work even better!

And... in the midst of all that, China will be able to waltz right into Taiwan with no problems, because we will be too busy closing our borders and routing out terrorists here.

Finally, once China has most of what it wants overseas, our people will be dropping like flies from the clot shots, and whatever is left of our military will be in no shape to defend the continental US from land invasion.