Eat it Too

Winning

The United States is a nation used to “winning”.  We won the American Revolution.  You can argue about the War of 1812, but the former colonies took on the most powerful nation in the world and survived.  And the list goes on:  the Mexican American War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II.  We know how to do parades down Fifth Avenue in New York, and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

What we don’t know how to do is “withdraw”.  We went into the Korean War in 1949:  we’re still there.  The Vietnam War was the “longest” in American history, but we all knew what was going to happen when American troops left after a decade of combat.  Less than two years later, we saw the disastrous final days of the collapse of Saigon.  Sure we “won” the Persian Gulf War, freeing Kuwait, but it left a segment of our leadership unsatisfied.  They wanted to “finish” the job.

Shock and Awe

So back we went in 2003, the US using the “Shock and Awe” of a massive air campaign to denigrate the remaining Iraqi defenses.  Then our tanks and troops attacked, quickly marching into the capital of Baghdad, gaining control, and tearing down the huge statue of Saddam Hussein, symbolic of the end of his reign of terror.  We later found Hussein himself, hidden in a sewer hole.  He was tried and executed.

It was easy to win, but hard to hold.  And when we tried to leave, the power vacuum created the space for ISIS to sweep over the government we helped set up.  It took our Kurdish allies, the ones we abandoned a decade later in Syria, to overcome the ISIS Caliphate.

And now there is our “new” longest war, the near two decades in Afghanistan.  We went into the nation to remove al Qaeda and punish the governing Taliban for protecting them.  We achieved both of those goals early, but like Vietnam and Iraq, there was no easy way out.  Al Qaeda was driven away, and eventually Osama bin Laden was killed.  But the Taliban, while defeated, were not vanquished.  As long as the United States remained, they were held at bay, but it was always apparent that when we left, the Taliban would rise up again.

Inshallah

President Biden knew that whenever we left Afghanistan it was going to be ugly.  But the United States wasn’t prepared for the Afghan government to collapse like a popped balloon, giving little resistance to the Taliban.  What the Biden Administration thought would be a months’ long process of withdrawal, became days.  It’s a failure of intelligence, and, of imagination.

It’s hard to blame the Afghan Army.  If you know that your defeat by the Taliban is inevitable, why resist?  Better to take care of your family and property, if you can.  The future is “written”, why risk death and destruction to delay it?  The Islamic term is “inshallah”, as Allah wills it.

So what’s happening today in Kabul is ugly, just as ugly as 1975 in Saigon. And while the President is “technically” right – no helicopters lifting Americans from the embassy roof as the Viet Cong came in the front door – the US is still being chased out of the country. And we did send helicopters to bring Americans from Kabul hotels, and 5800 US Troops hold the airport, so there’s that.

Both Sides Now

The President’s political opponents are jumping on the crisis.  From the left, while fully in favor of leaving Afghanistan, there is an outcry of “what will happen to the women and girls”?  And from the right, “what will happen to all those who helped American forces”?  And they are both correct.  

Leaving Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban means that the advances women have enjoyed in the past two decades will be lost.  The Taliban believe in Shariah Law, where women have no place outside of the home.  And those Afghans who aided the American Forces are at extreme risk, there is no doubt.

But both sides want to “have their cake and eat it too”.  Neither left nor right wants to remain in Afghanistan.  It is a war that has no “victory” for America.  What we hoped in 2001, was that we could “create” a democratic state there, one where the ideals of American government, balances of power and popular representation, could be demonstrated.  But the long tribal traditions of Afghan life are far too strong to be changed by American blood or treasure.  As the Russians, the British, and even Alexander the Great discovered:  Afghans will chart their own course.

No Solution

So when the left decries what will happen to Afghan women, they are correct.  But there is no good solution to that problem, no way to force Afghanistan into a modern mold of gender interaction.  Well, no way without remaining indefinitely in-country to hold the Shariah Law at bay.  And even the most vocal on the left aren’t calling for that.

And when the right demand that we protect those who aided US Forces, they aren’t wrong either. But they are contradictory. Protect our Afghan allies, but don’t dare bring them to the United States. They are brown, and Muslim, and all the things banned from entry into the US by their leader, the former President, in the first days of his administration. Protect those “friends”, but not in my neighborhood. They are hypocrites.

One Way Out

The United States is evacuating from the Kabul Airport.  We are taking thousands out of Afghanistan:  American citizens, allied Afghans, and others who can find a way onto the C-17 transports.  For those who remember history, it is a “Berlin Airlift” in reverse, coming in empty and leaving with record numbers of passengers.  Our Armed Forces are doing their best to make-up for the failures of our withdrawal.  But we are one catastrophic air failure from disaster.  And inevitably there will be those left behind, and for the women of Afghanistan, there is no good solution.

Blame President Biden, or President Trump, or President Obama, or President Bush.  Blame US intelligence for not imagining the collapse, or the US State Department for not recognizing the urgency of those left behind, or the US Armed Forces for not protecting our Allies.  There’s plenty of blame to go around.  But recognize this:  as ugly as the US withdrawal is, it was always going to be a disaster. 

Because disaster was the only way out.