August 20, 2021: Afghanistan's Military Collapse

 

8/20/21: The collapse of the Afghan government dominates headlines, with Republicans thrilled to blame Mr. Biden.

 

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“The defeat of the arrogance of the White House in the face of the white turban.” 

Taliban spokesperson reacting to deal with Team Trump

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Afghan unit before the collapse.

This blogger will have to do a great deal of reading before he can ever sort out this mess. However, h will venture this thought. He can recall a story from February 2020, which indicated that Team Trump would start negotiating with Team Taliban – and cut the regular Afghan government out. 

That seemed odd even then. 

The deal that was reached was hailed as a “huge milestone moment” by elated Team Trumpers, who agreed, as part of the negotiations that 5,000 imprisoned Taliban fighters would be set free. 

As Axios reported, by way of The New York Times, “Sher Mohammad Abas Stanekzai, the Taliban’s deputy negotiator, called the signing ceremony a ‘day of victory.’ The group’s multimedia chief celebrated ‘the defeat of the arrogance of the White House in the face of the white turban,’ per the NYT.”

 

This blogger can also remember, back in September 2020, when then-President Trump floated the idea of meeting, fact-to-face, at Camp David with representatives of the Taliban. He wanted a moment of glory, like Jimmy Carter with Israel and Palestine. He wanted to claim victory, and be done. The blogger remembers thinking that Trump was far too anxious to get all our troops out and claim a foreign policy coup, just in time to convince voters to grant him a second term. It seemed clear to the blogger, that these Taliban guys were going to realize, all they needed to do was bide their time. Trump was going to run out on his Afghan allies for sure. 

(See also: Trump abandons the Kurds.) 

It has been reported that astonished aides talked Don out of that idiocy, meeting the Taliban just days before the anniversary of 9/11.

 

As for the blogger, he supported the idea of removing troops from Afghanistan. That wasn’t the issue. In fact, he felt, back in 2003, that the invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake. He thought it distracted from our focus on fighting the Taliban. Like many a good liberal in 2003-2004, he felt we should crush the Taliban, get our troops home, and save all the money that fighting faraway wars entailed. 

(In those days, a liberal could be accused of hating America, hating the troops, hating the flag, and secretly being a pal of Muslim terrorists, if said liberal opposed the War in Iraq. Strange to say, Trump later became a darling on the right, for saying pretty much the same.) 

It’s going to take a long time to sort out what has gone wrong in Afghanistan in the last month. We do know this. We spent tens of billions of dollars to prop an Afghan army up. A few days ago, they supposedly had 300,000 troops ready to fight. How that force melted away, is hard to grasp. Then again, Italian forces melted away in 1943, when ordinary soldiers lost faith in their government. South Vietnamese units fell apart in 1975, in much the same way. 

Now, we see it again in Afghanistan.

 

Has the withdrawal been botched? Perhaps. There is chaos in every war, and the only plans that ever “work” are plans not tried. Those plans are put forward by experts on the sidelines, who never have their plans tested on the ground. Where the blame will ultimately lie, and how much blame there is, will be open to dispute. This blogger remembers, to cite one instance, a story from NPR, from November 17, 2020. It’s not “Fake News,” if you’re a Trump fan and don’t like what you read. It’s real news, quoting Robert O’Brien, Trump’s National Security Advisor, at the time: 

The White House announced Tuesday that it will pull thousands of troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Jan. 15. A force of 2,500 service members will remain in both countries, but the Trump administration aims to have all remaining troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Spring 2021.

 

“By May, it is President Trump’s hope that they will all come home safely – and in their entirety,” national security adviser Robert O’Brien said. “I want to reiterate that this policy is not new. This has been the president’s policy since he took office.”

 

In other words, Trump wanted an even hastier pull-out than Mr. Biden was prepared to implement. Trump wanted to draw down troops to even lower levels, which would likely have made any final stages of withdrawal even more complex. So, you can blame Trump for haste. Or you can blame Biden for how he implemented the withdrawal. Or you can blame both – and have plenty of blame left over to spread among countless others, including our generals and the worthless leaders of Afghanistan. 

As we always, always say at this blog, “Diplomacy is a bitch.” I don’t think either Trump or Biden were wrong for withdrawing our troops. Twenty years of effort, and the Afghan military still collapsed! 

One feels sorry for the Afghan people, now that the Taliban is returning, with a 14^th century view of the world.

 

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SPEAKING OF backward thinking, a right-wing type showed up in a black pickup truck in front of the Library of Congress last week. His plan, he said, was to blow up himself, truck, and anyone in or around the library, unless he got to talk to President Biden and tell him what scumbag he is. 

Floyd Ray Roseberry, 49, livestreamed parts of the standoff with police on Facebook, until the site took his videos down. After several hours, he surrendered without blowing himself or anyone else up, proving that while he thought like a Taliban suicide bomber, he wasn’t ready to go to heaven just yet.