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Can we wait even a few days before pretending we know how Afghanistan will turn out?

Published on 32 Comments on Can we wait even a few days before pretending we know how Afghanistan will turn out?

Just a quick little note. Whether or not you agree with me about our withdrawal from Afghanistan being less disastrous than the media is playing it, one thing is certain: it would be a good idea to hold off on any categorical pronouncements for at least a few days. It's easy to look at some grim pictures that are on a 24/7 loop on CNN and go all to pieces, but we don't know yet how things are going to turn out. If the Taliban is smart, they'll take this time to consolidate their control and allow American forces to evacuate anyone they want to. The last thing they want is to give us a reason to stay, and a direct attack on US forces would do just that.

But we don't know. Maybe the Taliban is stupid. So far, though, no diplomats have been killed; no soldiers have been killed; Kabul is relatively peaceful; and evacuations are taking place. So how about if we wait and see how this plays out?

As an example of how quickly things change, here's the picture of Kabul airport that dominated the airwaves Monday morning:

And here is Kabul airport just a few hours later:

Quite a difference, no?

32 thoughts on “Can we wait even a few days before pretending we know how Afghanistan will turn out?”

  1. kenalovell

    The Taliban leaders are no doubt looking to the future; one where they can be international pariahs, never sure when a missile from a US plane will blow them to bits, or one where they can get at least the same grudging recognition as Iran. It's likely they'll want at least a few years of the latter, after 20 years of fighting and dying, before being tempted to provoke America again.

    At the same time there are presumably lots of semi-autonomous groups of fanatics fighting under the Taliban flag, who might be capable of anything. Let's hope Baradar can keep them from doing too much damage.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      Forty years of fighting & dying, & the last twenty with an urban generation that grew up with Hindi cinema, popular music, books, & sport.

      The twenty year old Afghan is not the bearded, penitent Muslim of 1985 standing up to the non believing Soviet Red Army but a pants & teeshirt clad footy fan who likes to watch the Manchester Derby on satellite cable & go to the pictures to see the latest movies from the Hindoostan.

      1. TheMelancholyDonkey

        The twenty year old urban Afghan is not the bearded, penitent Muslim of 1985. Then again, the twenty year old urban Afghan wasn't the bearded, penitent Muslim of 1985 in 1985.

        1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

          True. He would have been living in a Soviet satellite state. Not a lot of Levis or Duran Duran cassettes there.

    2. bafield

      I couldn't agree more. I saw TV news and wonder how the pundits already know how many Americans and Afghan workers will be moved out. The evacuation just started. I've just turned it all off. As you say, I'll wait to see how it turns out. Besides, no matter what, Biden has been quite courageous in taking on the withdrawal.

  3. Jasper_in_Boston

    Whether or not you agree with me about our withdrawal from Afghanistan being less disastrous than the media is playing it, one thing is certain: it would be a good idea to hold off on any categorical pronouncements for at least a few days

    I thought Thomas Friedman, a columnist I'm not often in agreement with, had a pretty good take (excerpt):

    Was the U.S. mission there a total failure? Here I’d invoke one of my ironclad rules about covering the Middle East: When big events happen, always distinguish between the morning after and the morning after the morning after. Everything really important happens the morning after the morning after — when the full weight of history and the merciless balances of power assert themselves. And so it will be in Afghanistan — for both the Taliban and President Biden...will the Taliban simply resume where they left off 20 years ago — harboring Al Qaeda, zealously imposing their puritanical Islam and subjugating and abusing women and girls? Will the Taliban go into the business of trying to attack U.S. and European targets on their soil? I don’t know. I do know they just inherited responsibility for all of Afghanistan. They will soon face huge pressure to deliver order and jobs for Afghans. And that will require foreign aid and investment from countries that America has a lot of influence with — Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the members of the European Union. And with the United States gone, the Taliban will also have to navigate their survival while swimming alone with some real sharks — Pakistan, India, China, Russia and Iran. ...And let’s also remember: When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, iPhones, Facebook and Twitter didn’t even exist. Flash forward to today: Afghanistan is not only much more connected to the world, but it’s connected internally as well. It will not be nearly as easy for the Taliban to hide their abuses from the world or from fellow Afghans. In 2001, virtually no one in Afghanistan owned a mobile phone. Today, more than 70 percent of Afghans do, and many of them have internet-enabled smartphones. While there is nothing inherently liberalizing about owning a phone, according to a 2017 study by Internews, Afghanistan’s social media “is already propagating change as it has become a platform for denouncing cases of corruption and injustice, bringing attention to causes that have not yet been addressed on traditional media and seemingly letting any social media user voice a public opinion.’’ Maybe the Taliban will just shut it all down. And maybe they won’t be able to. At the same time, a July 7 report in Time magazine on Afghanistan observed: “When U.S.-backed forces ousted the Taliban from power, in 2001, there were almost no girls in school across the country. Today, there are millions, and tens of thousands of women attending university, studying everything from medicine to miniature painting.’’ Maybe on the morning after the morning after, the Taliban will just order them all back under burqas and shut their schoolrooms. But maybe they will also encounter pushback from wives and daughters that they’ve never encountered before — precisely because of the social, educational and technological seeds of change planted by the United States over the last 20 years. I don’t know...the Biden team will be judged by how it handles the morning after the morning after. Biden made a claim — one that was shared by the Trump team — that America would be more secure and better able to deal with any terrorist threats if we were out of Afghanistan than if we stayed embedded there, with all the costs of people, energy and focus. He again suggested as much in his address to the nation Monday afternoon.... Biden determined that we needed to...leave Afghanistan and readjust our defense strategy. I pray that he is right. But he will be judged by what happens the morning after the morning after.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/opinion/afghanistan-biden-taliban.html

      2. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        But Fareed stopped short of declaring Biden having become president in this moment.

        That semen-breathed El Jefe knob-gobbler can fuckoff to the same landfill of history as Van Jones, the Conways, & the staff of the Sulzberger Advertiser DC desk.

  4. James Bowater

    Would the Proud Boys like to help President Biden - if they would, send them out to go against the Forces . (ooops sorry, they will run away) .

  5. Justin

    There is suffering in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Gaza, and dozens of other places all over the world. Criminal gangs and religious fanatics terrorize these populations. Corrupt governments oppress and harass billions. Natural and man made disasters kill and injure people.

    But today the media is freaking out about the suffering in one of the most useless countries in the whole world.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_developed_countries

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      But how are your homies in the Post-Soviet intelligence apparatus insinuating themselves into those Syrian, Filipino, Somali, & Afghan bands of hoodlums?

      1. Justin

        And if my "homies" did that, why do you care? You don't. You have no interest in the welfare of anyone in other places. The US government and the military are incompetent and violent. They offer nothing useful to these medieval societies. It's time for the US to stop wasting my tax money on these failed states. I eagerly await your meaningless reply.

        By all means... fund the anti-Islamic war of terror. Kill all the nasty brown people. Send your sons and daughters to civilize the savages in South Asia, the middle east, and africa. Good luck with that.

        1. ScentOfViolets

          In addition to your other mental deficiencies, you've got to be one of the most humorless commenters here. Good God, it's MontyTheClipArtMongoose. Wasn't that clue enough?

  6. bbleh

    Hahahahaha no.

    Look, you simply must understand the realities on the ground, specifically, that my agent has already booked me on a Sunday show as a Middle East Expert (Afghanistan is not the Middle East but whatever) as well as three nightly newscasts this week, and I have already drawn firm conclusions about both who is to blame and what is going to happen, distilled them into sound bites, and practiced in front of a camera. That reality is NOT going to change simply because we wish it to change, and we’re just going to have to live with it.

    And next week, we’ll do it all over again, and if my conclusions change 180 degrees, nobody watching will remember, and nobody else on the program will dare point it out because that simply is not done.

  8. ey81

    So I guess Kevin is retracting yesterday's post, in favor of everyone waiting a few days? Good idea. But the real go-getters, like Thomas Friedman, never wait a few days.

  9. rick_jones

    Kevin, those two pictures, “before” and “after” if you will, are they perhaps the result of the US troops who had to be brought back in after the bug out restoring order?

    1. nasruddin

      You've got to love a 'withdrawal' that requires some 5000 more troops (double the existing number!) be sent in to implement.

      That's some real morning-after-the-morning-after reality asserting itself right there.

      Good for them, tho, hope it all works.

    2. ey81

      These are also, evidently, different sections of the airport. It's like how when there are riots in Harlem, the Upper West Side remains calm, even they are both "Manhattan."

  10. Citizen Lehew

    Biden watched Obama get completely railroaded by the military brass and the media into surging troops into Afghanistan instead of leaving. He learned the lesson.

    This over the top propaganda convulsion we've been seeing in the mainstream press, with women on TV crying that America betrayed them (instead of, say, every able-bodied Afghan male who just abandoned their civil war and wandered off), is definitely proof that Biden did absolutely the right thing rushing this exit. Imaging the crushing media blitz if he had done this gradually over 6 months... leaving would have been politically impossible.

  11. Krowe

    Can we wait even a few days before pretending we know how Afghanistan will turn out?

    No

    Not when there are disingenuous pols and pundits who will spin this to their advantage, and a click-baity media assuming that what bleeds, leads.

    We are very far part the ability to discuss anything rationally in this country, and that greatly undermines our future - not just on foreign policy but on climate change, health and the pandemic, and the defense of democracy itself.

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