Old Sayings
There’s a “wise” old expression: “If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got”. I heard the retired Generals on TV decrying what’s happening in Afghanistan. One even proposed that we should send in troops to support those few regions where Afghans are fighting the Taliban. And many are issuing a stern warning: we cannot, with ‘Honor’ leave those that helped us behind to the mercy of the Taliban.
Honor is a funny word here. Most of those generals had the opportunity to really make a difference in Afghanistan. They could have “changed” the course of America’s involvement when they were in charge. But time after time, their only answer was: we need to stay, we need more troops, we need more money, we need more, more, more, more. So now when two opposite Presidents, Biden and Trump, say it’s time to get out – all the Generals can still say is the same “more”. (What – I’m saying that Trump was right? Well, in principle yes, but don’t get carried away. His “greatest deal ever” with the Taliban wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. And there’s always another wise expression, something about “a monkey, a typewriter, and Shakespeare.”)
Different
“More” is not the answer here: “Different” is. We need to do something different. And it’s not an “unknown Different”. It’s called “over the horizon operations”.
We need to get as many folks out of Afghanistan as we can now. We have already evacuated more than one hundred thousand, with thousands more to come before the air operations end. But that ending has to come soon, whether it’s President Biden’s August 31st, or a few days later. We are leaving.
Retired Four-Star General Barry McCaffrey agrees with the President. He said it straight: “This war is over”. He opposes sending any further troops. The old Iraq War Corp commander wants to wrap up this mission, and get out.
And what of those who can’t get to the transport, who “miss the flight”? Well, for some, it may require Special Operations Forces to go in and get them. That ain’t easy, and it’s expensive. But it can be done – ask Osama bin Laden (oh, maybe not him). If we can find and kill him, we can find and rescue who we need to.
A Target
That was an “over the horizon” operation, and may be what we need to do (and probably are doing now. It’s not like Admiral Kirby will get up there and announce it to the media). And those can go on. But the target of six thousand US Troops, and near one hundred flights a day, in the middle of a hostile zone; cannot go on for much longer. A bomb went off this morning, several were killed, among them thirteen American Marines, and dozens more injured, including more US troops. But what happens when a shoulder launched anti-aircraft missile hits an Air Force C-17 with six or seven hundred passengers in it? The US is pushing its luck, every extra day.
We had twenty years to figure out Afghanistan. We broke up al Qaeda, and we removed the Taliban rulers. Then we helped set up a government and a military to hang onto what we established. It didn’t work: our fault, their fault, nobody’s fault (that’s John Wayne from Big Jake). It is time to get out and let Afghanistan do what the Afghans have done for generations: tribal struggles for power and wealth.
Defining Democracy
We can talk about what we did wrong – as many have said there will be plenty of blame to go around. And we can recognize that the American notion of “nation building” has not worked. It didn’t work in Vietnam, nor in Iraq, nor in Afghanistan.
I am not an “America Firster”. We have legitimate reasons to be involved in the world, and we should support democracy wherever it exists. But we cannot create democracy out of whole cloth. It must first have a foothold that we can encourage, not an ideology that we force on another nation. It must be inherent within, not externally imposed.
We cannot “always do what we always did”, in spite of the many “Old Generals”. We need to find new means to achieve our goals: a secure America and world, and fertile ground for the “self-evident truths” of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of those goals will be achieved by staying in Afghanistan. As President Biden stated – except for Osama bin Laden, would we never have invaded Afghanistan in the first place.
