For what it's worth, I agree with most of the critics of the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Taliban will almost certainly overrun the country in short order. It will be a disaster for women. It will provide a safe haven for terrorists. We are abandoning everyone who fought along with us. It will be a humanitarian disaster beyond reckoning.
If anybody could provide me with even a sliver of hope that we know how to prevent this without a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, I'd jump at it. But it's been 20 years. If there were any way we could win this war, we would have figured it out by now. We haven't. And we never will.
But the consequences of our failure will be enormous. It's best to face up to that.
I don't think we have to give up hope for Afghanistan over the long run, though I agree that the short run is likely to be bad.
When I say "we" I mean "we as human beings", not necessarily the United States government. Those are different motivations.
We will have to try something else, something different. We will have to take Ghandi's words to heart:
ref: Ozymandias
Suppose we stipulate the title: "Withdrawing From Afghanistan Will Be a Disaster."
Now consider the counterfactual: "Remaining in Afghanistan Will Be a Continuing Disaster."
Then it's simply a cost/benefit decision, isn't it, with "cost" being a composite: American dollars, American lives, American influence in various important places around the world, Afghan lives, and other potential positive and negative impacts in other related areas, both in the Middle East and in other important places like Russia, China, England, etc. ... and benefits are just as multi-faceted.
Is it (the decision) complicated? Sure it is. But is it avoidable? Of course not, because "continue the course" is just as surely a decision as "change the course."
Thank you for pointing this out. The choice is not between what is possible and what is desirable; it's among actions that are possible. And if all outcomes are bad, you pick the option with the least bad outcome.
Going will be bad. Staying would be worse. So we leave. Done.
Exactly right.
its harsh, but ultimately you gotta say its not our problem, no one, even in a totalitarian state rules without some level of support, the Taliban may not have majority support but if the rest of the factions can;t get together to oust them its on them
I agree, but I don't think having us permanently semi-occupy Afghanistan is a good option.
I would be willing to stay a few more years if there was any realistic chance that it would make things better for the Afghanis, but I haven't seen anything that makes me believe it will.
Things like extremism, violence, oppression, and poverty are symptoms of much bigger problems that can't really be solved at gunpoint. If you really want to solve them, you have to do the long slow work of diplomatically building up nations and institutions. It's extremely daunting, but there just aren't any shortcuts. (As we've seen.)
Some historians believe that it was their invasion of Afghanistan that sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. Our invasion of Afghanistan is not going any better. It is long past time we got out. Al Qaeda was long ago expelled and Osama Bin Laden is dead.
Yes, bad things will follow our withdrawal, but not as bad as the consequences of remaining.
I have not been a great fan of Biden so far, but I will give him enormous credit for having the political courage to finally end this awful war if he really does go through with it.
I expect he will. He didn't pick Sept. 11 as a deadlin for its fiscal accounting convenience.
I don't like that. It should be April 14. If it can't be April 14 it should be the first possible day. Continuing to conduct an imperialistic war so politicians can do a cute talking point on the 9/11 anniversary is a disgusting misuse of the US government.
I'll ask the same question here that I regularly ask over on PowerLine ... if withdrawal is a bad idea, what is the preferred alternative? Nobody ever seems to be able to provide an answer to that question.
The alternative I've supported all along is to just hold on to key cities, or to guarantee their freedom from the Taliban. Nation-building didn't work, even the Afghans didn't care about it, so it's not worth insisting on it. But if West Berlin could be kept free for more than four decades, against a far more formidable foe, surely the same can be done for Kabul. And what a success the West Berlin story ultimately became.
The thing is that progress - and there was a lot of it, from boy schooling increasing fivefold, girl schooling going from zero to 4 million, life expectancy going from 44 years to 60, and so on - was desired by the Afghans themselves, and they did most of the work when secure from warlords and Taliban. Since progress starts in the cities and, through their links with the countryside, spreads from there in myriad ways, if slowly, the answer is to hold or guarantee those even if you want to leave the rest of the country. At the very least Kabul should not be left to the tender mercy of wahhabist extremists.
Contrasting it with West Berlin is illuminating.
Most Germans were in favor of it, and most people outside the Eastern Bloc were in favor of it, and the Soviet Union constituted a continual and sophisticated threat to everyone.
Afghanistan presents none of those things, but at best a sort of resignation that nothing good will come of anything to do with it.
It would be interesting to ask Afghans - without them fearing consequences for their answers - if they want Kabul to fall into Taliban hands. My guess is, the majority would say no. I may be wrong. But there is no evidence that "Afghanistan presents none of those things". Of course I'm not saying the two situations are equivalent. Just that it's doable, and better than just abandoning those people. The "all or nothing" mentality is what created this mess to begin with, and is not now a solution to it.
Afghanistan is not one group, and hasn't been since the 1980s. There are many tribes and ethnicities at play. The Taliban are mainly from the South and are Pashtu. The North is a mix of different ethnicities.
Ill informed nonsense. The Taleban have not fought major powers to a
There is in any case no Afghans as a unit - there are Pashtuns, Tajiks, Shia Hazars, Turkmens, Uzbeks, etc. the later three in the North in particular where the Northern Alliance held out against the old Taleban regime
The Taleban in the end represent Sunni Pashtun supremacy, and reactionary rural Pashtun reaction. As the single largest ethnicity they have dominated Afghanistan since the 19th century.
Basing your ideas on foolish simplifications on industrial European society experience in Western Europe post WWII is how the US got Iraq and Afghanistan badly wrong since 2001....
If only my town got to vote the last Republicans president would have been --er, possibly Benjamin Harrison. The surrounding county though is another matter.
That's complete ahistorical nonsense without the slightest sense of either Afghan geography or German geography... or history.
West Berlin was a state actors five way arrangement. And held in place by the threat of mutually assured destruction.
And of course West Berlin had a proper economy.
There is no such basis re Kabul, it's utter and complete nonsense. The ethnic sympathies of the Pashtun inhabitants - in the end the Taleban are very much Pashtun supremacists wrapped up in Islamic clothing - and pourousness of the city would doom any such flight of fancy.
The only place that makes sense as a redoubt is the Tajik dominant north and Mazar-i-Sharif - there at least you have a pool of a semi-sympathetic population. The only decent play the US has is supporting the old ethnic redoubts of the old Northern Alliance (who are less anti Islamist than anti-Pashtun).
Statehood!
Both will be a disaster. There are only less bad situations.
If the Taliban doesn't use military power against civilians, we shouldn't be there. This is a chance to shift to soft power, carrots and less sticks.
The disaster happened when we went in. During the last twenty years we've just been trying to delay the consequences of that disaster. It's time to stop doing that.
The disaster happened when we dipped on Khyber Pass in November 2001.
We should not leave unless we are willing to accept several hundred thousand Afghani refugees. Leaving people who supported us to die is not an option in my opinion.
The fundamentalist Muslim Taliban in Afghanistan will, in fact, kill civilians and those who supported U.S. and coalition forces. And the fundamentalist Christians in this country will oppose letting Those People in.
Which, in my opinion, is the reason we haven’t already left. The Right in this country is even more openly committed to white supremacy than ever. Fox “News” and its mouthpiece Tucker Carlson would portray it as yet another example of white replacement. Note Shooter Jr. saying he opposes even “one refugee”. Most of the Right feels just that way.
Lolz on this dialectical nonsense. They hate being white. Zionism is zionism. Stop posting and learn what they really are.
Lolz, but they love to surge central Americans in. Fundies are huge in the trafficking scene.
Nope, don't care about those people. We shouldn't take one refugee. They either adapt or die. The US should have never had the long stupid "democracy building" nonsense. That is the problem. Its a large part of the reason why Central America is a mess.
You wouldn't.
Thanks, Midgard, for confirming your awfulness as a human being.
I concur.
Doesn't that invite collapse as leaders and the educated give up and flee?
Afghan traitors will become horrible Americans.
Traitors to the Taliban authorities? Those aren't traitors we worry about.
Please confirm, when you say "Afghan traitors" you mean "opponents of the Taliban who helped Americans at great cost to themselves and their families", right? In related news, get bent.
God I wish I could upvote your comment.
Collaborators with the barbarian invaders from America.
Get lost goosestep.
Luckily, we have many years experience dropping Afghanistan from the news cycle, and if it's not in the news it's not really happening, right? 😛
Sounds like Napalm will be used if the Taliban doesn't stick to the agreement.
Too bad we can't come up with an agreement among Afghanis to negotiate a partition of the country and allow people who want no part of the Taliban dream to live away from Taliban rule, then put UN forces in to monitor the common border.
The parts of the country that want Taliban rule will be very small indeed, I suspect. And the Taliban will never agree to elections on the question.
I doubt the Taliban would go for it. They want to impose their will on everyone to make them live proper lives. It would be asmusing though if everyone headed to the Taliban-free side. The Taliban would be really pissed at the insult, being that they are so amazing and holy and all.
Still, if the Taliban had to compete to attact people, that might make them chill out a bit. ... I think SNL could make a marketing/sales plan for them.
Perhaps the Taliban could negotiate a partition of the US? Would that be acceptable to any American, excepting secessionist ethnic supremacists?
Jr. could have done the job right initially, but instead pushed for the invasion of Iraq. Bin Ladin got away, the raison d'etre for the invading Afghanistan.
That left a quagmire for future presidents, and what amounts to s sword of Damocles swinging over the Afghans.
Where are the neocons now???
Deficit hawking the Biden Infrastructure plan?
If Bin Laden had been captured/killed at Tora Bora, Bush could have “Mission Accomplished” Afghanistan and saved everyone 20 years of grief. The “conspiracy theory” was that if Bin Laden had been captured/killed our reason for being in the Middle East would have been accomplished and thus it would have been harder to justify the Iraq invasion. And therefore Bush allowed him to escape. I admit I have entertained that “theory” as a possibility.
It would be interesting to see the alternate reality in which Bin Laden had been captured/killed at Tora Bora and we left Afghanistan and didn’t invade Iraq.
Classic case. No need for conspiracy when incompetence will do.
So if we withdraw, why do we want to maintain an embassy there? What does that get us?
The war costs about 5% of the US annual defense budget now. It is very rare for a US soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan any more. We have just 2500 troops left there, and apparently that is enough to keep the Taliban from taking over.
So why are we leaving? Answer choices:
1) We are just sick of messing with it.
2) We don't want to spend the money.
3) We don't care what happens to Afghans (women, girls, Afghans who worked with us, ...)
4) If we leave perhaps the Afghans will actually sort things out on their own, and eventually the country will improve.
Option #4 seems the only good answer to me. But it's a high-risk gamble to withdraw this year. On the other hand, it might be the same risk if we stayed for another decade.
One down side might be that if Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, this could impact Biden's re-election odds. What if withdrawal from Afghanistan causes Trump to get re-elected in 2024? If I knew that, I would absolutely support staying in Afghanistan until at least 2024.
"What if withdrawal from Afghanistan causes Trump to get re-elected in 2024?"
I suppose there are any number of things that could blow up in Biden's face and open the door for a Trumpist (formerly known as Republican) candidate in 2024, but this ain't it. The only thing Trump can say about Biden's withdrawal is that it's not going *fast* enough. He wanted out by next month. If Afghanistan goes pear shape, like Kevin suggests, it'll look just as bad for Trump as for Biden. After all, a fast, unilateral withdrawal was what Trump wanted in the first place. Biden's just being slightly more measured about it while committing to essentially the same thing.
You forget that Trump is a master of telling lies. It doesn't matter what the facts are, if Afghanistan falls to the Taliban Trump will say it was the worst foreign policy mistake in modern history. Then he'll lie about how he would have prevented this from ever happening.
There are ways to keep the Taliban and other malefactors in check without actually being "in" Afghanistan. Those methods didn't work so well when Clinton tried to knock out Bin Laden, but maybe our aim has gotten better. Joe Biden does not strike me as the kind of guy that will allow a civilian slaughter in Afghanistan.
I'm sure the place will be covered by a satellite and drone surveillance system that will blot out the sun even when our boots on the ground are gone.
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
- unnamed official from the G. W. Bush administraion
Not so much, I guess
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will not be any worse for Afghans than when the Soviets withdrew. Then, the consequences were celebrated by the Americans who supported arming the Mujaheddin in order till kill Soviet solders, collaborators, and heretics. Now the Taliban can retaliate against the collaborators of the Americans for twenty years of betrayal.
"If anybody could provide me with even a sliver of hope that we know how to prevent this without a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, I'd jump at it. But it's been 20 years. If there were any way we could win this war, we would have figured it out by now. We haven't. And we never will."
Not twenty years but forty. That's how long ago one superpower thought it was trying to bring and maintain influence and modernity in Afghanistan, and of course, the other superpower had to intervene and sabotage those efforts. Times have changed. As we leave, China would probably like to try out its superpower mettle with its belt and roads initiative. The more things change ....
The solution is not that difficult
Take the amount of money that the occupation cost each year
Divide that number by the population of Afghanistan
This gives a Cost/head
Arrange to simply pay that cost per head to the citizens of Afghanistan for the next 10 years
That is all that it would take!
Paying direct to the citizens would be best
Second best would be paying to NGO's that are active and trusted in the area
I am normally all in favor of reducing the USA's global military footprint, but Mr. Drum, you are doing a great job of making me want to oppose this Afghanistan move. This thread is loaded with a lot of well-meaning people frantically looking for as many logical fallacies as they can find to justify a position of "get out at all costs, including the really horrific costs that we won't actually have to bear".
I'm not saying the "get out" position is wrong, as much as that you are doing a terrible job of promoting it.
Right, it's the promotion of the idea that makes you oppose it. That makes sense.
I'm saying I'm persuadable and the quality of Mr. Drum's effort to do so is a failure. I bet you felt like a big shot when you wrote that post, like you had really proved something and it felt pretty good to be able to blow the deaths of unknown thousands of people off forever, right?
Basically what I'm saying is that Mr. Drum's attitude seems to be "this thing that's going to happen is bad and I don't really care" which is a pretty poor way of convincing people he might be right. Even though he probably is right.
From an article by a soldier who fought in Afghanistan:
"I remember I once asked a village elder whether he knew why I was there. He responded that we’d always been there. Confused, I asked him about the attacks on America. He said, 'But you are Russians, no?' After 30 years of war, it didn’t matter to him who was fighting but only that there was still fighting."
To stay in Afghanistan is to hold one town in perpetuity by force. To what end? It does nothing but attract attention to the fact that we are doing it.
The situation of the US is like a man with his foreskin caught in the zipper. It is gonna hurt to get unstuck.
The Taliban had the same problem with Al Q. They didn't want them there but couldn't get unstuck with them.
We should have been more careful with keeping it in our pants and avoiding the zipper.
And,
Ukraine and Taiwan are bigger issues.
The Taliban fight and rule at the pleasure of Pakistan (and the Saudis and Emiratis) and what they do will depend on what Pakistan thinks India and Iran will do once the US is gone. If we can somehow convince these countries, along with China, that a stable Afghanistan without insane mullahs in charge is in their interests, and won't be leveraged against the other side, then there's some hope. As Kevin suggests, however, there's not much.
There's been a huge foreign military presence in Afghanistan since 1979?
And nothing has changed?
Time to get out and let things happen.
The Taliban may or may not overtake the country. THEN they would have to lead - in a good way or bad.
The US leaving will mean Afghanistan will return to something like it was before they arrived. A fractured landscape of local city states used by regional powers to contest the area (especially Pakistan and it's own Taliban).
The US was there to deal with Al-Qaeda, not remove the Taliban, bring democracy, elevate women's lives. Those were all added afterwards. We cared about those things before, but not enough to go there. Not reaching those is more a commentary of the region, than anything else. And shouldn't be perceived as our responsibility.
When the Taliban negotiating team returns to Afghanistan hit 'em with an overwhelming strike from B-2's and drones as they're getting off the plane. All the muckety-mucks will be there to celebrate their "victory" over the Great Satan. Give them the martyrdom they preach to others; sanitize the place for a few hundred meters around the plane. Shock and Awe; play it again, Sam.
You have to decapitate these sorts of groups. Sure, they'll come back, but it will give the government some breathing room.