Jonah Goldberg is about the millionth person to make this case against withdrawing from Afghanistan:
Does anyone truly believe that this self-inflicted blow to our national honor will improve our standing in the world? The signal sent to Taiwan — and China — is that we can’t be counted on. That message, heard around the world, is an unforced strategic blunder. It’s also a moral one.
The whole "national honor" schtick is one of my pet peeves, but I'll spare everyone a long screed about it. Instead I'll just answer Goldberg's question:
The message it sends is Do not piss off these guys. They will spend decades continuing to fight even in an obviously hopeless cause.
For what it's worth, this was also the message of Vietnam. We spent more than a decade there, sacrificing 58,000 American lives and over a trillion dollars in a war that was pretty clearly hopeless by 1968, if not earlier. There was no other country in the world that showed that kind of dedication to the Cold War.
Everyone in the world knows that the United States is slightly barmy about its wars. We'll either win or else we'll stick around longer than anyone in their right mind thinks makes sense. Occasionally our insanity lags a bit and we admit a war is unwinnable—usually long after everyone else has figured it out and only after we've killed about 1% of your population—but insanity lurks barely below the surface at all times. Vietnam proved it. Afghanistan proved it.
Everyone knows this.
And today Vietnam is a reasonable partner with good relations, rising industrial output, robust exports, growing domestic demand and strong foreign investment.
Can Afghanistan pull off the same trick in a generation or two?
Ya, Vietnam is a big success story in the larger scheme of things.
But probably not as big a success as South Korea.
Indeed, give Vietnam another decade though.
Can Afghanistan pull it off? We should wish.
Realistically though, Viet Nam under Ho Chi Minh and his successors was a remarkably stable, well-regulated, effectively-governed country. Nationalism was a strong factor, and discipline was apparent, both personal discipline and political discipline.
The exact opposite of Afghanistan.
Maybe nuTaliban are different, but the evidence suggests the they have little interest in building or operating a "state" as that term is generally understood in most of the world.
I would also say that after the Vietnam war, outside of China, Vietnam had fewer external pressures than Afghanistan currently has. Yes I know China invaded Vietnam, but Afghanistan has Pakistan, Iran, India, and Uzbeks/Tajiks in their business these days.
Ho Chi Minh and his cadre were as communist as they needed to be to get weapons from the USSR, and China. They were very happy after the war to go back to traditional pastimes - like fighting the Chinese (in 1979). And kicking their butts - China is a lot bigger, but the NVA at that point was still very experienced. Oh, yeah - and making money...
Ghazni Province has the largest lithium reserves in the world. Confluence with (finally) our concern with global warming might provide a real boost to an economy whom otherwise depends on a world cocaine market.
Since when does cocaine come from opium poppies?
Why, only the best kind, of course.
Guess China will glom onto that lithium.
Aluminum will probably replace lithium as the primary element used in batteries. All the more reason to push hard on that technology.
Yeah, I read those blast faxes too. But the company behind this supposed breakthrough has been remarkably closed-mouthed on the actual details and from what I can tell, seem to be fishing for IPO. IOW, they want us to buy a pig in a poke. I'm not saying they're not onto something. But I'll curb my enthusiasm until I see an actual product I can lay my hands on.
Really hope they are though.
Even if that does happen--and there's no guarantee it will--new technologies take a while to scale out. There will be plenty of demand for lithium for years to come.
Rare earth minerals.
When I’m playing poker and I come across a player that doesn’t know when to fold them I lick my chops. In foreign affairs “they never quit” is over-rated and “they are highly effective in protecting their interests” is under-rated.
There is an equivalence in finance. Unlimited cheques and unlimited guarantees to a partner induce Moral Hazard and almost certain excessvie risk taking at your expense.
Of course the phrase Bad Money after Good as well comes to mind - all resolving down to mental hiccup of humans, assymetric risk aversion, that is over-weighted aversion to perceived potential loss which leads people to actually lose more by doubling down and down.
When I worked start ups, "in for a nickel, in for a dime" was always the expression we used behind the backs of the stockholders.
Poker is a zero-sum game. Foreign policy is rarely that.
Yep.
How about both? The US is usually highly effective at protecting its own interests (the Pax Americana exists for a reason -- the globalist scheme we have now is tilted in favor of the U.S.). It is also willing to have long wars despite plenty of evidence that little is accomplished, precisely because it is so wealthy and powerful that it can afford them. The player at the table with the most to wager usually controls the game.
In foreign affairs “they never quit” is over-rated
But America does know when to quit. In Vietnam that was 73-75. In Afghanistan that was 2021. Don't confuse "much greater ability than any other power to engage in pricey, lengthy armed conflict" with "doesn't know when to quit."
A much more on-target criticism of the United States would be something along the lines of "frequently doesn't accurately identify what its national interest is."
Or perhaps, "frequently misidentifies the interests of the wealthy and powerful and connected as the national interest". 'Twas always thus, and thus 'twill always be.
I totally disagree with Vietnam and to a lesser extent with Afghanistan.
What the us unfortunately tends to do is to NOT know "when to quit" if the decision is to pursue limited goals. Instead we decide to committ to a more difficult goal that, if it is possible, is going to require a great deal of cost and patience and sacrifice. And then, once that inevitable cost and sacrifice appears, we get discouraged and give up after we have already paid most of the cost anyway and when we might be close to accomplishing that difficult goal. The stupidest possible time to give up.
In Vietnam, after a long hard and costly war with a ton of mistakes, the " vietnamization" program looked to maybe be working. The south vietnamese army did stand up and fight pretty well without us ground troops ( but still with us air support ) in 1972 - and the north vietnsmese were surprised as they thought they would collapse. It really looked like it might be possible to establish an eventually stable south Vietnam that would need limited us help with aid and some air support ( although we could have also built up a native air force in time) . So we were on the verge of possibly accomplishing that difficult goal - maybe - in 1975 - and then just gave up.
Sort of like the north giving up in the Civil War in 1865.
Now really do not want to get into a big argument as to whether my perspective in 1975 is right or not. Many of you I am sure feel that the situation in 1975 was still not viable.
But say you do. My point is that, if you thought it was a good idea in 1975 to cut off aid and air support after seeing 1972, then clearly you would have wanted to pull out and give up by maybe 1967 at least. Honestly the situation that existed by 1972 in Vietnam was about as good as we could have expected in 1967. If it made any sense to stay in 1967, then you should stay in 1975.
Afghanistan is somewhat different as hard to say we made any progress at all in the last decade or so.
But I would say the only rational possible strategies would be
A) withdrawal in maybe 2003 or so after the taliban were largely beaten and leave it in the control of better warlord dictators
B) stay until we got bin laden to make sure we eventually get him ( though not a fan of making capture of one man that important)
C) stay as long as needed to accomplish the difficult goal of establishing a real stable democratic govt.
If you do not think c) is viable or is not worth the cost, you get put way before now.
"give up after we have already paid most of the cost anyway and when we might be close to accomplishing that difficult goal. The stupidest possible time to give up."
This is the sunk cost fallacy in a nutshell.
Not really. The implication of "we have already paid most of the cost" is that the future cost will be small. There could be a tenable argument there.
I don't understand the distinction you're trying to draw here.
"When to quit" implies a decision with some logical basis--not just the date we threw up our hands and left, but the date when it made *sense* for us to leave. Is that not a question of the national interest? If we can't identify our national interest, how can we possibly know when to quit?
I think the best time to quit depends on your goals ( maybe how you define national interests) , your expectations of how much it will cost ( in any aspect) and whether that cost is worth the goal.
And, whether you agree or not, a rational person who assesses the value of the goals and the expected costs could have different positions and they both might be rational.
So someone rational in 1967, valuing preventing communism in Vietnam highly and optimistic as to our ability to achieve that goal would want to stay in 1967 and also had to want to stay in 1975.
And someone rational who thought that the cost of trying to prevent communism was too high ( or it was impossible) could want to pull out in 1975. Or that person could want to stay in 1975 because we already paid most of the cost and the goal now is within reach. Both are rational.
So there I have three possible rational people. One said stay in 67 and stay in 75. One said leave in 67 and leave in 75..and one says leave in 67 and stay in 75.
But no way no how does it make any sense to stay in 67 and then leave in 75..
The whole McNamara policy was based on our ability to continually escalate the war till the North Vietnamese gave in. This ignored the fact that Vietnam meant more to the Vietnamese than it did to us. It reached the point where continued escalation would have meant violence and civilian casualties beyond what the American public was prepared to inflict or tolerate, so we finally did the right thing and left.
The goal of a sustainable South Vietnam was not within reach in 1975.
I think the US has a major problem with not knowing when something is not worth starting. Also, stunningly bad at doing our homework before deciding to pee on the electric fence. (h/t to Will Rogers)
We went into Vietnam without actually realizing that it was a left-over civil war that was deliberately created by the French in their colonial era (French Indo-China, remember that?). When they lost control of the carefully fostered schism that was a common method of controlling colonial conquests, they got savaged. "We" jumped into that religiously flavored civil war under the mistaken assumption that we were fighting "international Communism", and eventually also got savaged- because we were fighting the wrong war. Ho Chi Minh and his colleagues were as communist as they needed to be to snooker the USSR and China into supplying weapons to them.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-trump-gushed-about-handing-afghanistan-over-to-the-taliban-who-would-then-kill-terrorists/
“They will be killing terrorists. They will be killing some very bad people. They will keep that fight going,” Trump said at the Feb. 29 briefing, at which he also announced the first reported U.S. death due to COVID-19.
He then praised the U.S. military for killing terrorists throughout the region over the past 20 years, and said that “now it’s time for somebody else to do that work, and that’ll be the Taliban,” adding “and it could be surrounding countries.”
“I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show that we’re not all wasting time,” Trump said, promising that ” If bad things happen, we’ll go back.” He went on to add that “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
Thanks for this! Folks who keep whinging about how "suddenly" the United States just picked up and left ignore the fact that they had 18 months of warnings that it was going to happen. A full year and a half.
Not Biden's fault if everyone failed to listen.
Moreover, on the "honor" front -- a military term meaning "to lie and cover up" -- the US said we'd be leaving, and we have. What's the problem?
They kept imagining that the generals and FP "experts" would get Biden to kick the can down the road again. Oops.
The media always tends to get caught up in the war propaganda too. When the war proponents throw in protecting women and human rights and all that to the war justification, which is primarily propaganda and not why we're going to war, the media laps it up as a co-equal reason because of the human interest element.
So now the truth is out there, we didn't go to war to liberate Aghani women, or ensure Afghan human rights, although we do have a strong interest in those things and will continue to advocate for them, but we don't go to war to secure these things in foreign lands (and we didn't go to civil war here in America either to liberate women, or really to free slaves).
Violence is not a tool for ensuring human rights and respect, it's justifiable only in defense, and war is violence, occupation is the threat (and often reality) of violence.
Goldberg is riffing off a threat that China state media made, I guess that's where he gets his news now. What a joke. Taiwan isn't tripping because of this, we announced this withdrawal 17 months ago, has nothing to do with them.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml
Interesting. What does the Taiwanese media say? (I assume you read Chinese, if you know what the Taiwanese are thinking.) And what do your Taiwanese friends say?
Pretty sure the Taiwanese are a little more savvy than to be influenced by China state media, especially in this case where we withdrew as planned after 18 months notice.
To my mind, your take is entirely correct. The Thirty Years War only lasted . . . thirty years. There is no case at all for the proposition that our strategic interests in Afghanistan would justify a literal Forever War in that location. The national-security media blob, unfortunately, never tires of “Who Lost [Insert Country Name Here]?” narratives, so we’re in for another round of screeching recriminations that always neglect to offer any credible alternatives.
Honor based societies are failed societies.
Oh bollocks. Plenty of honor based societies are successful. See Japan.
Superficial ignorant tripe.
Yeah, WWII worked out great for them, and they're a different place now.
Honor based societies are vulgar and backward places over run by social conservatism, like the traditional American south or the Middle East where dingbats will defend their 'family honor' by murdering their sister.
WWII worked out great, they got rid of a corrupt miltiary puppet regime and established a firmer basis
They remain an honour culture, Japanese culture remains Japanese culture - the USA did not change it.
So dear superficial blithering ignoramus, you have no point other than empty mindedly repeating banal prejudices.
They're not an honor culture in any sense in which the term is used or you would be reading about the alarming Japanese murder rate and their propensity for holding generational feuds.
The only place in Japan you do read about such things is in comic books about the yakuza, which is where you've apparently acquired your entire impression of the topic.
Japan isn't even mentioned in the Wikipedia article,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
Really more the basis of what is considered honor, in some cultures it's being respectful to your neighbors and guests.
We fought a hopeless war for 20 years. Even as we diverted our attention to another war, we continue the hopeless war.
And the lesson Goldberg draws is: we're not reliable?
How many countries will fight a hopeless war for 20 years?
We're too reliable, is the problem.
Who will fight a hopeless war for 20 years?
Apparently, the Taliban, though in their case it's a lot more than 20 years. And it seems to have turned out less than hopeless.
Likewise North Vietnam after the partitioning.
But north Vietnam was not going to fight a hopeless war. They always had hope because they ( correctly) thought they could wear down our will and never thought the south vietnamese would fight on their own and they had the popular support in the south.
The tet offensive was in reality a military disaster for the north and decimated the viet Kong. And called into question how much popular support they had and whether the south was all that weak. And 1972 shocked the north and showed them the south will fight with some us support.
The false peace treaty in 73 and the 74 probe was a last chance to see if they could get the us to fully give up and have that Crack the morale of the south. And it worked.
But there is plenty of evidence that, if we had responded hard in 74 as supposed to by treaty, the north was prepared to at least temporarily back off for a decade or so. They were not going to bang their head against a brick wall.
Maybe the plan was never to win the war. Maybe the plan was simply to hang around for 2 decades, mucking up the country, making our presence felt, making money for Blackwater and Erik Prince, possibly grifting off some heroin trade, creating opportunities for profits for arms dealers, etc.
Hollywood movie and comic book supervillian tripe.
There is no need to engage in Lefty conspiracy mongering when simple short-term thinking, bureacratic risk aversion to hard decisions, a degree of ordinary bog-stadard human aversion to stepping up and owning a loss and a failure when it can be kicked down the field, and American's general cultural blindnesses more than adequately explain.
Let's not forget leaders wanting reelection, Biden is in a unique place as a president where no one would be surprised, considering his age, if he doesn't run for re-election. I'm not saying that's what motivates him, but he's got that in his back pocket at least.
And his legacy is shaping up to be substantial, guiding us through a pandemic successfully, getting us out of endless war against all odds (how often does this happen), and passing a historic bipartisan infrastructure bill the country desperately needs and is another can that has been kicked down the road by successive presidents.
I respectfully disagree. Yes, you offer some plausible explanations which may have something to do with the facts. But first, let's see a complete accounting of how much money was paid to whom. And, then of course, there's the Friedman "suck on this" rationale.
Contrary to your dis, this isn't some Oliver Stone film. This is about Cheney, Prince (meeting with Russians in the Seychelles), Blackwater, various Saudis and other Arabs Jared was kissing up to, Betsy DeVos (Prince's sister) getting to be Secy of Ed (so she could arm teachers to fight bears) Wilbur Ross with his dirty Cypriot banking connections and his refusal to divest after getting appointed, Rick Perry, Sondland and Giuliani trying to set up Ukranian gas deals, and of course Trump and his Russian oligarch investors.
In some ways Afghanistan was a distraction from all the Trump corruption. In other ways I suspect Prince and his kind were taking money for/from Afghanistan to the bank on the regular.
Just think. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/making-sense-of-the-blackwater-connection/ Where did the $2 trillion go? It certainly didn't go into valid training for the Afghan soldiers.
Gee, ya think?
" .... but insanity lurks barely below the surface at all times. Vietnam proved it. Afghanistan proved it."
Yes. And as long as the military budget constitutes about one third of the total federal budget, the insanity will periodically rear its ugly head for purely existential reasons.
Honor is highly overated as a value. The German military said they couldn't oppose Hitler or any of his actions because it would have violated their "honor" to not follow their oath of loyalty to the fuhrer.
Liberal and conservative politicians and pundits alike find it easier to whittle the world down to binary choices. The two-party system reinforces this binary world of their making.
Kevin's 100% correct. I've been having similar thoughts myself.
If I recall correctly (forget the source, but I think it came to light after downfall of USSR via archives) the Soviets in fact found America's dogged obstinacy in Vietnam troubling and disquieting: it was a three decade involvement that, at its height, saw US elites and the voters who elect them willing to shovel giant quantities of human and financial resources year after year into a bloody quagmire with seemingly no end in sight.
It gave Moscow pause.
And isn't it a wonderful irony that the USSR was bogged down in Afghanistan, but finally gave up the futile effort when they saw the US siding with the natives. Then they got the last laugh, didn't they, at least the ones who lived long enough to see the shoe on the other foot.
Those lame-ass Commie pikers only lasted a decade. America spent a full twenty years in the Afghanistan meat-grinder. Booyah!
The Taliban fighting on for 20 years.
Did they have anything else to do? Where could they go? Social conservatives define themselves by conflict, and with Pakistan cheering them it was all really just how they thought things should be.
With the war now gone, what will they do?
"The message it sends is Do not piss off these guys. They will spend decades continuing to fight even in an obviously hopeless cause."
That’s not the message. The message is you can send a couple of dozen fanatics on a dirt cheap suicide mission and sucker the US into a decades long strategic defeat.
The Taliban are coming back far stronger than the last time. We did that. Our 20 year war did that. Continuing to fight that war long past any strategic justification did that.
Hard to paint that as a good object lesson. Seems more like our enemies did pretty well and we got embarrassed. If I’m an enemy of the US maybe the message is, point some of that stupidity my way. It seems to pay pretty well.
Or, the message is you can send a couple dozen fanatics on a dirt cheap suicide mission and provoke the US into fucking you up for twenty years leaving hundreds of thousands dead or driven into refugee camps.
From the perspective of any future government that might consider harboring terrorists, hopefully the message is that, if you do, the usa will retaliate hard and the cost you will pay is not worth it.
But that point was made by 2003 when the taliban was largely defeated and our of control of most of the country. I have to think they regretted it then and the message was sent. Note killing bin laden is not a very effective deterrent as hard to deter the hard terrorist who is willing to die. You can deter a group like the taliban that has something to lose.
Did the addtl nearly 20 years add to that deterrent or subtract from it? It may have weakened it. Yes, the continued fighting killed a lot of Afghans including a lot of taliban. How much negative value does the taliban assign to that, when the final result is that, as a movement, the taliban is now back stronger than it was in 2001 before 9/11.
In 2001, the taliban was not in full control of Afghanistan and the end result of the Civil War was not yet absolutely decided. Now it looks like the taliban will be in undisputed control ( at least for a while).
Seems like what we ended up doing since 2003 was more weakening the enemies of the taliban. How is that a deterrent?
Note not correct to say the taliban sent fanatics on a suicide mission. They allowed al queda to so from their territory and were compensated for it. I doubt the taliban had any interest in attacking the us themselves. In fact, I expect one reason the taliban allowed al queda to try is that they never thought they could succeed.
I never said the Taliban sent the fanatics. OBL sent them. In so doing he unleashed a series of events that led to a triumph for the Taliban and humiliation for the US. Seems to me that's a much more powerful message than anything that pretends any of this somehow demonstrated US resolve or honor or whatever.
I was responding to cld.
Might seem a petty point but the response is different or should be re reacting to the terrorist group who sent them on a suicide mission (al queda) and a nation or group that simply were paid off to harbor them (taliban)
Twenty years ago they thought they were unassailable and impregnable, but they can't think that now, so I'm not confident you can really say they are, or feel that, they're stronger now than they were then. At the moment they're having a victory parade that will probably carry on for a year, but then the local warlords will be back to asserting themselves and it will all even out.
And the Chinese will be offering one kind or another of development projects that will have all kinds of hidden strings attached that they won't care for and they'll be stuck with that.
What I'm interested in seeing is what do they do when all kinds of enthusiastic dingbats who want to be the next bin Laden start flocking into the country.
Fucking up who, exactly? The Taliban went out into the wilderness and came back much stronger. You really think they're upset a couple of hundred thousand civilians died, or even their own soldiers? Martyrs in a good cause.
We left them tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and billions of dollars in never-used weapons, vehicles and ammunition. We left them in undisputed control of the entire country, something that hasn't often happened in Afghanistan.
So it that's us fucking them up, then I guess they can probably take it.
You should ask them if they want to do it again.
We didn't leave them billions of anything, we only spent $88 billion or so total on the army, some of which was salaries, training, etc. Plus 20+ planes were absconded by fleeing Afghan pilots over the weekend, and those are probably the biggest to let items of the $88 billion.
Absconded to Uzbekistan.
If we were concerned about our "honor," we would never have engaged in torture and other war crimes in Afghanistan (and elsewhere). If we were concerned about our "honor," Guantanamo would not have become what it is. If we were concerned about our "honor," we would not have abrogated the JCPOA that we negotiated with Iran, Russia, China, and Europe, and that they were all following. We stopped caring about our "honor" a long time ago, which is why we have no honor left to lose at this point.
We tend to worry more about reputation and stature than honor, unfortunately. The USA has almost always been pretty pragmatic.
There is so much wrong-headed commentary about this event that the entire media has become one enormous Gish Gallop.
Afghanistan isn't 'an ally'. It's a hostile country that was conquered, in which the victors installed a puppet government in the vain hope it might eventually transform itself into a reliable ally able to govern the nation. After 20 years, the puppets, whom in other circumstances might have been called 'the Quislings', threw down their weapons and ran away when the former guys came storming back. The NATO countries involved in the exercise can legitimately be called quixotic dreamers or fools, but suggesting they owed a debt of honor is ludicrous.
Similar sentiments in the Atlantic:
"Finally, critics are lobbing the usual refrain that the withdrawal has damaged U.S. credibility. “Afghanistan’s Unraveling May Strike Another Blow to U.S. Credibility,” read a headline in The New York Times; “Afghanistan’s Collapse Leaves Allies Questioning U.S. Resolve on Other Fronts,” echoed The Washington Post. The United States has spent billions of taxpayer dollars, fought for more than 20 years, and suffered thousands of casualties in this war. If that sort of commitment lacks credibility, our allies will never believe we are doing enough. Critics likewise argued that withdrawal from Vietnam would hurt our credibility."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/biden-afghanistan-taliban-reality/619776/
The irony of using britishisms when talking about america.
'Does anyone truly believe that this self-inflicted blow to our national honor will improve our standing in the world? The signal sent to Taiwan — and China — is that we can’t be counted on. That message, heard around the world, is an unforced strategic blunder. It’s also a moral one.'
Spoken by someone with no sense of honor or morality, about a war started by a party with neither, that utterly destroyed our international reputation in 4 short years.
I guess the message of "America cannot and should not decide how you govern your own nation" was too quiet to be heard over Goldberg's manufactured outrage....
Just popping in to say how much I appreciate Kevin's take on Biden & Afghanistan. I don't always agree with you, Kevin, though I often do — and this time very much so.
Yes, another six months surely would have turned the tide.