Afghanistan: A War We Lost Before The War Began

By Ajax the Great

(Originally posted at the True Spirit of America Party blog in two parts.)

PART ONE (August 12-16, 2021)

The headlines these days about Afghanistan have been quite sobering to say the least.  It looks increasingly likely that this 20 year old quagmire of a war will end the same way as the Vietnam War did.  "Operation Frequent Wind" certainly comes to mind, not least due to the frequent windbag politicians who got us into this inherently unwinnable mess that had literally no practical exit strategy to speak of.

Like Vietnam on crack, this is "a war we lost before the war began", as Phil Ochs put it in his song "White Boots Marching In A Yellow Land" about that other unwinnable quagmire.  Afghanistan has been called "the graveyard of empires" for a reason, after all.  The moment President Bush decided to force regime change in Afghanistan, as opposed to simply going in to fight al-Qaeda and bring Bin Laden to (rough) justice for 9/11, that was a "mission creep" that created a dangerous power vacuum and basically dug our graves over there.  Yes, the Taliban were and still are backwards, brutal, violent, repressive, theocratic, misogynistic, and even totalitarian, but guess what?  The Taliban was never really a material threat to the USA, and the local "allies" (read: warlords) of ours that de facto replaced them in nearly all of the country outside of Kabul have thus created a chaotic anocracy, which basically translates to "pick your poison".  Eventually, Afghanistan even became fertile ground for ISIL for a time, who as we have seen is far more evil and dangerous than even the Taliban.  And if and when the weak Kabul government and military finally rolls over and plays dead for the Taliban, remember:  if they do it after 20 years, then no matter how long we stay, whether 10, 20, or even 100+ years, the end result would be the same regardless.  At best, the USA only delayed the inevitable, at a massively unacceptable cost of blood and treasure.

Yes, in both of these wars, our troops technically won every single battle.  But in the long run, as the famous quote says, "Yes, I know.  It's also irrelevant."

So yes, the TSAP still, albeit with a heavy heart, fully supports America's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.  As a wise man once said recently, if Afghanistan falls to the Taliban after 20 years, it does not mean that we left too early, but that we left 19 years too late.  It is tragic and heartbreaking indeed that it was basically all for naught, as the part about bringing al-Qaeda and Bin Laden to justice would not have required forced regime change in Afghanistan at all.  Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan for most of the time, after all, and nearly all of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals.  (That was of course memory-holed as quickly as Bin Laden's family members were surreptitiously whisked out of the country back to their home country, Saudi Arabia.)

We have said it before, and we will say it again.  There is NO (Western) military solution in Afghanistan, period.  Or Iraq, or Syria, or anywhere else in the region, basically.  The closest thing there is to a solution would be for us to give every *woman* an AK-47 or M-16 and tell them to take over their country and mow down anyone who stands in their way.  Let Allah sort it out.  Problem solved.  But the powers that be over here would of course not be too keen on that idea.  After all they wouldn't want women in THIS country getting any ideas, now would they?

If and when the Taliban returns to their old tricks of brutal and misogynistic repression, then WOE to any cowardly Afghan men that fail to protect their women and children!  And by rolling over for the forces of evil, they make a mockery of our troops as well.

The best way to support our troops is to bring them home alive, and stop abusing them in these unnecessary quagmires of choice that really only benefit the oligarchs.  The best time to do it was 20 years ago. The second best time to do it is right now.

UPDATE:  On August 15th, the capital Kabul has effectively fallen to the Taliban, and President Ghani has fled the country in fear as his own troops basically rolled over and played dead.  This highly unfortunate turn of events has happened at a much faster pace than anyone had predicted.  But the hypocrisy of those Republicans who blame President Biden for this sad state of affairs is quite rich considering that Biden not only followed the very same troop withdrawal plan set by Trump himself, but actually pushed back Trump's withdrawal deadline by nearly four months.  Yes, really.  Like Vietnam, as the saying goes, America may have won every battle, but in the end, that's also irrelevant.

I mean, you KNOW it's bad when Ron Paul (and/or his son Rand Paul) comes across as the voice of reason!  And whether you love him or hate him, it is clear that throughout all 20 years of this ill-fated war of (mostly) choice, while both Democrats and Republicans alike would mindlessly flip and flop around, Paul has basically been on the right side of history all along.

Getting out of Afghanistan is the ONE thing that Trump, Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Ron/Rand Paul could ALL agree on.  Even if Trump denies it now.

And finally, as for America's very clear moral obligation to the Afghan people that we would otherwise leave behind, we believe Emma Lazarus said it best:  "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...I lift my lamp beside the golden door."  In other words, "refugees welcome".  The Kabul airport must be secured now to allow safe passage out of the country.  Beyond that, after the current evacuations and rescue operations are complete, that is it.  It's over. 

After 20 years of this infernal quagmire, C'EST FINI!

As the late, great Major General Smedley Butler famously said, "TO HELL WITH WAR!"

PART TWO (August 22, 2021)

With America's longest war in Afghanistan coming to an inevitably disastrous end after 20 years, it is worth noting all of the things that had been memory-holed about its origins.  The 9/11 attacks that had been used as a pretext for the initial invasion had always been under a cloud of suspicion as possibly being an inside job (to one degree or another), or at least that the whole story had not been told about it.  But for argument's sake, let's just take at face value for a moment that these horrific terrorist attacks were entirely perpetrated by Osama Bin Laden and his vile al-Qaeda henchmen as per the official story and ignore their undeniable Saudi connections.

First, Senator Ron Paul had his own plan by October 10, 2001 on how to deal with these terrorists and bring them to justice that would not have even required so much as an invasion, let alone regime change in Afghanistan.  Per the US Constitution, there is a remedy for bringing such non-state rogue actors to justice, known as the "Letter of Marque and Reprisal", which Ron Paul supported.  It would have put a bounty on their heads and thus authorized not only the military but also privateers from anywhere in the world to go on a manhunt and get these perpetrators.  And it would have been far cheaper and with far fewer casualties as well.  But clearly this proposal fell on the very deafest of ears, because reasons. And as they say, the rest is history. 

Secondly, Jordan Schachtel points out that within the first week of damaging aerial bombing by the USA and NATO in mid-October 2001, the Taliban were actually willing to negotiate an offer to turn over Bin Laden to a neutral third country to be put on trial there, in return for us ending the bombing.  Had President Bush actually taken them up on that offer, the war would have ended in ONE WEEK instead of 20 years, Bin Laden would have been brought to justice, and tens of thousands of causalities on both sides and trillions of dollars could have been averted.  But Bush, clearly under the influence of Cheney and the neocons, arrogantly rebuffed their offer and continued to escalate the war, because reasons. And as they say, the rest is history.

(The Bush administration and the corporate MSM deliberately conflating the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who at best grudgingly tolerated each other as co-belligerents against the West, certainly contributed to this strategic blunder and folly of epic proportions.)

Thirdly, not long after that, during the early stages of the ground invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001, Bin Laden was once again in America's sights.  He was apparently hiding in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, heading rapidly towards the Pakistan border. But the powers that be "accidentally" lost him and thus let him and his buddies escape into Pakistan, and did not even bother to have our troops so much as cross the border until nearly a decade later when, under the leadership of President Obama, he was ultimately snuffed out by the US Navy Seals on May 1, 2011.  Why it took that long can only be explained by the Machiavellian powers that be wanting to prolong the war for their own nefarious gains, because reasons.  And as they say, the rest is history.

Fourthly, anyone who claims to have supported this war on feminist grounds (as if wars for imperialistic white-savior conquest could ever be feminist) should answer the following question:  why did our government not simply arm and fund the WOMEN over there, instead of forcibly installing and propping up a corrupt male-dominated puppet government that was left utterly dependent on a male-dominated foreign power for all of 20 years?  Nevermind, we already know the painfully obvious answer.  Because reasons.  And as they say, the rest is history. 

And finally, unlike today, at least Vietnam and Iraq both had a "decent interval", as President Nixon called it, between the completion of America's troop withdrawal and the shyt really hitting the fan over there.  In both cases, it was about two years.  Had we just pulled out much sooner while the Taliban was still weaker, that would have likely been true for Afghanistan as well to some extent.  We had numerous opportunities to make a fairly clean break and temporarily "save face" at a cost of significantly less blood and treasure, but chose not to, because reasons.  And as they say, the rest is history.

And if you still think this was all about 9/11 or "making the world safe for democracy", well, we've got a nice bridge we'd like to sell you.  As Major General Smedley Butler once famously said, "War Is A Racket".  And as he also said at the end of his book:

"TO HELL WITH WAR!"

But alas, of course his words of wisdom also fell on the very deafest of ears ever since.  The neocons on the right, the "bleeding heart interventionists" on the pseudo-left, and the oligarchs' mercenary-industrial complex that they serve and who ultimately profit very, very handsomely from it all, will see to it that this racket never ends on their watch.  Because reasons.  And as they say, well, the rest is history...

UPDATE 1:  The ever-insightful Peter van Buren wrote an excellent article about the war's history as well.  Food for thought indeed.  We know all too well what happens when we ignore the lessons of history. 

UPDATE 2:  On August 30, 2021, the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was completed, one day before the official deadline of August 31.  That is, the very last US troops have now finally left Afghanistan for good.  As tragic as the circumstances were in which we left, sooner or later it had to be done.  And now, it is finished.  This time, let us actually LEARN and REMEMBER the lessons that we should have learned after the tragic fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.