Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized President Biden's decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in September of this year. Thomas Reese in an article in NCR, "Why President Biden is Right to Get Our Troops out of Afghanistan", disagrees:
"....President Joe Biden's announcement that all American troops will be out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11 this year is the right decision, one that conforms to the fundamental principle of the just war theory that you should not fight an unwinnable war."
"In Afghanistan, the United States never had enough reliable local partners committed to the good of their country. The elites were too busy fighting for power and enriching themselves. They were too tribal to work together for a common good. Nor was Pakistan a reliable partner in controlling the Taliban, who found a safe haven across Afghanistan's rugged border.
"For 20 years, U.S. generals kept telling us that they were just a couple of years away from training an Afghan army. Yet after 20 years, the government forces are still not a match for Taliban soldiers who never had the sophisticated training we claim to impart. It is not about training; it is about commitment."
"...Despite our control of the air, despite our intelligence capabilities, despite our European allies, we were always on the defensive and had to cede large parts of the country to the Taliban. At some point we have to admit we lost."
"...Those who want us to stay in Afghanistan, including the Pentagon's supporters embedded in Washington think tanks, say that they only need a few more years to turn it around. Sorry, we have heard this same argument for two decades. Fool me once, fool me twice, but fool me 20 times?"
"Those who want to continue the war also argue that Afghanistan will again become a haven for terrorists. This ignores the fact that the Taliban is focused on Afghanistan and sees al-Qaida and the Islamic State as competitors, especially after the Americans leave. These terrorists have already spread to Africa and elsewhere; stomping them out in Afghanistan will not eliminate them."
"Detractors of Biden's decision also argue that civilians, especially women, will suffer under a new Taliban regime. This is probably true, but how many civilians, both men and women, have suffered and died during the last 20 years? Should more people die only to postpone the inevitable for another couple of years?"
"...It is sad that Democrats' hatred of President Donald Trump kept them from enthusiastically supporting his desire to remove troops from Afghanistan. They should have come home four years ago."
"More than 2,300 American soldiers died in the last 20 years of fighting and even more suffered debilitating wounds. More than 110,000 Afghans on both sides have died. By some estimates, the war cost us more than $2 trillion. Was it worth it? The answer is no."
Whether or not we agree with the time table for withdrawal, I feel that we have a duty to do the following:
"As we withdraw, we have a responsibility to take with us those who directly helped us, for example, as translators. The focus should be on the thousands of little people who helped us, not the politicians who plundered their country and can buy their way into Europe. Leaving our friends behind would be a criminal betrayal."
"We should also offer aid to the Taliban in rebuilding their country, but this aid must be conditioned on their avoiding reprisals against their enemies, respecting the rights of women and suppressing the drug trade. The stick failed; let us try the carrot."
Amazing that this futile war continued over three presidencies. At least Biden is finally putting this thing to sleep. Isn't it just fiscal responsibility to bring this to an end after $2T? We can't afford these endless wars anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought the point was good that a fundamental principle of the just war theory is that you shouldn't fight an unwinnable war. Which after 20 years it pretty well is.
DeleteTHE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas P.M. Barnet, a 2004 New York Times Bestseller, is probably the only book on military strategy in my library. I was introduced to the book by his lecture on C-CPAN. He was at that time a professor at the Naval War College. My comments come from my memory of the C-PAN presentations. I never got around to reading the book.
ReplyDeleteHe argues that the US really needs two military forces: the present Leviathan force capable of going up against any other military force in the world, and a Peace Keeping Force that will work well with other nations including many small nations whose military forces can take care of domestic peace keeping in places which lack effective central government.
There are many failed and failing nations who basically have not been able to resolve their own internal conflicts. For these situations one needs a military police force that is capable of working well with a variety of groups within a country, and do a variety of things including a lot of the basic necessities of life (e.g. shelter, food, water, roads, health care etc.) The types of people one would recruit for this military police force and their training would be very different from those for our Leviathan force. Barnet argued this military police force needed to be given all the prestige and career ladders (e.g. 4 star generals and admirals) that we now have in the Leviathan force.
His thinking could also be applied in a scaled down manner to the issue of policing in this country. Much of our policing in recent decades has been Leviathan policing, recruiting people with military experience and equipping them for SWAT teams, etc. Some of that is necessary but the vast majority of police activity includes things like domestic disturbances, homeless and mentally ill people, etc. which actually need quite different skills than those learned in the military Leviathan.
Our American error has been that we can apply overwhelming force and money to every problem to solve it, whether here or abroad. Obviously that has not been working.
Isn't a peacekeeping force sort of what the UN troops are supposed to be? I would like to see a revitalization of the UN to more reflect its original goals.
DeleteI have seen suggestions that there should be a 911 number for the Leviathan type of emergencies, and another number for domestic and mental health crises. Of course those crises can morph into the Leviathan category, so easier said than done.
Hello - I haven't commented on this because I don't know what the right thing to do is. It seems to me that as long as we stay, we are enabling irresponsibility and, probably, corruption on the part of the Afghan government. If we go, we are exposing many Afghans, some of whom undertook great risks to assist us, to reprisals and suffering.
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me that there are two ways for a great power like the US to try to turn a war into peace: win the war, or leave the war. In the case of Afghanistan, as with Iraq, I guess we'll be trying first one approach and then the other.
That thought is spurred by something I read earlier today, by the conservative writer Kevin Williamson, about the Reagan presidency. Here is Williamson:
"But even the most successful presidents are compressed in memory until they are as two-dimensional as a Herblock cartoon. Ronald Reagan was one of the greatest peace-seekers of his time — he talked constantly of peace, sought to make peace, entered into controversial arms-control agreements (over the strenuous objections of the editors of this magazine [National Review]), and even dreamt of developing an effective anti-missile system and then simply giving the technology to the Soviet Union and other countries in order to render our own nuclear missiles ineffectual along with everyone else’s. But history will remember him as a warmonger, even though he was remarkable among modern presidents for his disinclination to use the war-making powers at his disposal. Our cartoon history cannot account for the reality that the great military crisis of the second half of the 20th century was resolved in no small part through the efforts of a celebrity libertarian from California who used the words peace and peaceful 14 times in a short address at Eureka College in the second year of his presidency — long before the war had been won."
I am sure many people in Latin America aren't ready to anoint Reagan as a man of peace. But Williamson is not wrong in his assessment of Reagan as it applies to the Soviet Union. He's credited with the policies which engineered the fall of that empire, and he did it, not by appeasement but by ramping up military spending (hence the reputation as a warmonger). None of us should doubt for a second that, had it come to a hot war between the US and the Soviet Union, Reagan would have pursued it with single-minded zeal. His confrontational policy was risky - but it seems to have worked out well.
The same competing calculi play out now with regard to Iran: Obama and now Biden wish to bring about peace by making a deal with the mullahs, while Trump was a pretty conventional Republican in trying to defeat the mullahs. Which way is better? I don't think there is an easy answer to the question.