Congratulations, Mr. President:
President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, people familiar with the plans said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that first drew the United States into its longest war.
....Biden’s decision comes after an administration review of U.S. options in Afghanistan, where U.S.-midwived peace talks have failed to advance as hoped and the Taliban remains a potent force despite two decades of effort by the United States to defeat the militants and establish stable, democratic governance.
....“This is the immediate, practical reality that our policy review discovered,” the person familiar with the deliberations said. “If we break the May 1st deadline negotiated by the previous administration with no clear plan to exit, we will be back at war with the Taliban, and that was not something President Biden believed was in the national interest.”
“We’re going to zero troops by September.”
There has never been a good solution to the problem of Afghanistan. For whatever reason—and we will be studying it for years—we cannot defeat the Taliban using only the resources the American public will tolerate. It's even possible we can't defeat the Taliban, period. A stalemate is the best we can do, and a stalemate will last forever since, after 20 years, it's obvious that the establishment Afghan regime will never be able to produce either a consensus government or a standalone military capable of standing up to the Taliban.
This has been clear for a long time. Obama knew it. Trump knew it. But neither had the courage of their convictions. If the US pulls out completely, the Taliban will overrun Afghanistan in a year or so. In other words, the United States will have definitively lost a war it spent 20 years fighting. No president is willing to be the guy who approved that.
But now Biden says he's going to do it. If he follows through on this, it will be a mark of singular courage. He sure as hell has my support for it.
I believe I recall a World Championship Bracket from National Lampoon in the 1980s, not long after the then-USSR had withdrawn in what amounted to defeat from Afghanistan. On one side the semi-finals were between the USSR and Afghanistan, with Afghanistan advancing to the finals, and on the other side the semi-finals were between the USA and Vietnam, with Vietnam advancing, leaving the then-unplayed final for World Champion between Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Perhaps in lieu of the actual final match, having defeated both the USSR and the USA, Afghanistan now deserves the title of World Champion?
I remember that too. I'm pretty sure it was in the December 1989 issue of Spy magazine.
The problem with withdrawal from Afghanistan has always been “what happens to the Afghani’s who supported us?” After the war in Vietnam hundreds of thousands were accepted into the US. I personally have no problem with Afghani refugees fleeing the Taliban entering the US. But I doubt there would be much popular support for that here, particularly since the majority would be Muslim. I think that was the problem for both Obama and Trump. What Biden plans to do about it is the question that needs to be asked. I don’t think leaving them to die should be an option.
"I think that was the problem for both Obama and Trump."
I think that just made it a lot easier for Trump, since it gave him a quick answer to "what to do". We all so how easily he served the Kurds on a silver platter. For Trump the hold back was not wanting to carry the label of "loser" for being the one that pulled the very last soldier from the country without having anything to show for it.
Yes - we need to keep our promise, as I have previously stated to my senators. And the fate of any we leave behind, and for all of Afghanistan's people, especially the girls & women, will be remembered by all.
We left a ton of people in the reeducation camps of Vietnam.
Being able to save your allies is a privilege of winners. Losers don't get to say what happens to their allies. They can only beg for mercy.
One more reason we shouldn't fight wars we can't win.
Yes, but we obviously did make an effort to save many who had helped the US effort.
In Afghanistan, we know that there will be no "reeducation" camps; only immediate death for the men & women who have actively helped the US forces, with their entire families. We made commitments that should already have been honored, & might have been already in some cases, had it not been for the trump ban on Muslims & reduced immigration numbers for all categories.
The standard bet is a nickel. My $0.05 says Putin will go back in and it will destroy him. My one-mill Kansas state tax token says Biden's people share that hunch. The rest is breaking out of the pattern of "picking up some crappy little country...", etc. etc. Let us wait and watch (if only for lack of alternatives).
(Also, too, probably a signal that Iran will be dealt with pragmatically, as distinct from kabuki revenge for 1979 or dancing to Israeli-pulled strings.)
The Taliban certainly will take it over quickly enough, and then what? Will they allow dingbats from all over the world to find refuge there, or will they think these people are more trouble than they're worth?
And then the inevitable wave of people fleeing into Pakistan.
Will they, though?
Is there any chance the malleability of young minds in Afghanistan was a factor of environmental lead exposure, but with the removal of lead from gasoline there, the youth population from which Ol' One Eye would draw his henchmen just isn't impulsive enough anymore?
Extra points for the lead reference.
That probably is not an issue in Afghanistan.
After the troops are gone, how many “advisors” will remain, and will the Afghan government still be able to call on air support?
There never was a singular solution to the Afghan problem because it's such a fiercely local place. Even ethnic groups aren't real compacts. But those localities are still connected, however loosely, by the roads leading to the cities and ultimately to Kabul. I'm not happy with Biden's decision. To recognize the stalemate is one thing. To abandon Kabul is another. And to hold or guarantee just one city, as an oasis and a beacon of relative liberty in an oppressed land, is not "forever war". It was done with West Berlin for over four decades.
The heroin traffickers will have it in for Biden after this.
Nah.
Hunter Biden is the kingpin.
This decision is just El Tio Demento being burismati--... pragmatic.
"For whatever reason ... we cannot defeat the Taliban using the resources the American public will tolerate."
Well, Russia couldn't do it when they were still the USSR, which was pretty powerful with lots of resources, and they didn't give a tittle about what their public might tolerate.
I don't like to say it but Biden is abiding by a timeline set by the Trump administration, so in theory we do have to give some credit to Trump here. One of the few things I'll give Trump credit for is not engaging in a lot of military adventurism and escalation (beyond the rhetorical kind).
Obama also set a timeline but failed to deliver. There is no reason to assume that Trump would have done so. The foreign-policy/military establishment can usually come up with reasons for this.
"Give some credit to Trump"? Nah. Brand him as the loser who let the United States of America be defeated by Afghans. It's all in the message.
El Jefe would have peaced out of Afghanistan & sent MBS's Bonesaw Mafia in our stead.
He made the United States a battleground, so let's not give him credit for being an isolationist.
Right! Thanks for saying.
In the colonial era, that is prior to WW II, rebellions were often put down, but this was by using overwhelming force, and by maintaining strict colonial control afterwards. When that control was removed countries often devolved into chaos or repressive regimes of various kinds. A premise of US foreign/military policy since then has been that we can step in and install a "democratic" (pro-US) government in some country and things would be fine when we left. This just does not usually work, partly because it is recognized in the country that we are interfering for our own purposes. It's time to face this fact.
Revolts put down? Well they sent the army in and they all raided back and forth, and the army declared victory, and issued campaign medals . . .
And the Pathans came in from the hills and in all seriousness asked for theirs.
Killing God, or at least putting a leash about the holy neck, has always been difficult.
Will America abandon Afghani allies and friendlies on the ground, or will we allow them to come to the US in a mass refugee exodus?
THAT is the pressing issue we should be discussing.
They will be abandoned. Biden especially hated this war. The allies will accept Taliban rule and Like it
It'll be the opposite. Your friends will insist that these Muslims cannot be trusted, therefore, we should not take any of them in, except the Christians.
👍
"If the US pulls out completely, the Taliban will overrun Afghanistan in a year or so. In other words, the United States will have definitively lost a war it spent 20 years fighting... He sure as hell has my support for it."
You've probably written about this in greater length elsewhere, but this seems like it needs a less glib explication.
The Taliban won't need a year.
A stalemate is the best we can do, and a stalemate will last forever since, after 20 years, it's obvious that the establishment Afghan regime will never be able to produce either a consensus government or a standalone military capable of standing up to the Taliban.
I think we should stay in. Yes, it's a stalemate. But it's currently a very affordable stalemate for the US (about 5% of Pentagon spending and very light causalities). Also, Kevin's claims about "forever" and "never" are just that. We don't know what might or might not be possible in 30 years.
Yes, I know my opinion isn't widely shared, and in any event it's a moot point because Biden has decided otherwise.
Afghanistan was never really ours to abandon.
We're not abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban. We're abandoning it to become a pawn in regional power politics between Pakistan, China, India, Iran and whatever's left of ISIS. The Taliban were always proxies for the Pakistan intelligence services and whether they're allowed to run roughshod over the country again after our withdrawal has a lot to do with whether Afghanistan's neighbors see it in their interest to have stability, or chaos there going forward. We can only hope that Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blinken had a number of very long, frank discussions with their counterparts in those countries leading up to this decision.
Good points, all.
Not many people made the Afghan wars better known than George MacDonald Fraser. His first Flashman novel was about the British Afghan war of 1841 - 1842, and its ghastly ending. A ten thousand-man modern army marched in; the march out looked like this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/The_Last_Stand%2C_by_William_Barnes_Wollen_%281898%29.jpg
Fraser's reaction to the British decision to join George Bush's war in Afghanistan could be safely described as murderous rage. He wanted to kill Tony Blair.
No one wins a war against Afghanistan.
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'Afghanistan', a photography book by Simon Norfolk, has this line on an otherwise blank page before the photographs start:
"Achaemenids, Macedonians, Seleucids, Greco-Bactrians, Indo-Greeks, Mauryans, Parthians, Sacas, Yueh-Chihs, Kushanians, Sassanians, Hepthalites, Hindu-Shahis, early Muslim Arabs, Abbasids, Tahirids, Samanids, Saffarids, Ilek Khan Turks, Ghaznavids, Turkish Ghorids, Seljuk Turks, Turkish Khwarazm Shahs, Delhi Sultans, Mongols, Karts, Timurids, Shaybanis, Safavids, Moghuls, Soviets, Americans."
The book was published in 2002. The American invasion less than a year old, and it's pretty clear the author already knew how it would go.
Yes, and yet Hollywood had people who made a movie about the Texas congressman who thought our entering the fray would be a good idea.
Nixon did something similar in 1973 or so. He called it Vietnamization, IIRC, and it basically meant that the South Vietnamese had to fight the North themselves, using our weapons, but not our troops. The last US troops left the South in March 1973.
The North overran the South about two years later, in April 1975.