That’s a lame argument for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. That’s the kind of weak argument a kid makes after tripping over his own feet and fumbling the football. “I bet you couldn’t do any better.” Please. I cannot accept that in a nation of 300 million people, not one of us could have organized an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I have no ill will towards Mr. Biden, but no matter what else happens during his presidency, he’s going to be remembered as the guy who ran away from the Taliban. Fair or unfair, it’s too big of an event to gloss over. I would say it’s going to cost him his presidency, but Americans have pretty short memories, and the Republicans still have two years to screw it up.
I can see that argument and still, the Afghani Conflict is a example of the sunk cost fallacy, throwing blood and treasure after a ship that’s already at the bottom of the ocean. I really do not see any way out of Afghanistan that would not be a repeat of 72’s Vietnam. We never had control of the country, the Afghani leadership was corrupt, the leadership did not have the support of the people. Unending occupation with no end game is not a good place to be in. It is why every president from Bush on kicked that can down the road. The only end game then is to leave. And that leaving will be ugly.
I think a lot of Americans wanted to leave Afghanistan. I don’t think anyone wanted a chaotic retreat, without properly coordinating with all our allies, leaving behind massive amounts of military equipment and catching babies over the airport wall. Right or wrong, this will probably haunt Mr. Biden for the rest of his presidency and into the history books.
And it lends itself easily to arm-chair quarterbacks. After all, the Taliban was largely pushed out of Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance, with just some SF and air support. Perhaps we shouldn’t have gotten invested in the large scale nation building, but would it have been worth leaving a small international coalition to keep the Taliban at bay? There’s no way to say for sure, but that’s what Mr. Biden’s opponents will ask. He needs to have a better response than just saying no one else could have done a better job.
An this is why the prior presidents kicked the can down the road. If its a factor Biden being a 1 term, fair enough. There is no argument that I can see expending blood and treasure on an occupation that had no current end and no possible end that would be in our nations favor.
It is a sign of leadership in knowing that you will take the blame, and still doing the right thing. Bush, Obama and Trump did not have that particular leadership.
It should have never been an occupation, which I think we will agree on. I think the better strategery would have been to find a way to support the government in Afghanistan without being their nanny. After all, we still have forces in Germany, Italy, and South Korea. A small support force could have made a big difference in Afghanistan without committing ourselves to an endless war with an ideology that won’t die.
But my real fear is that we won’t learn this lesson, and we’ll get involved in another round of nation building at some point during our lifetime.
Vietnam is the better analogy then our occupation of German post WW2 when looking at Afghanistan.
As for destroying our equipment, that was not done in Vietnams as well. I trust that our military does logistics really really well. I then believe that, given the chaos of the last days, they did what they had trained for prior.
There is no other word then imperialism for what we did in Afgainsitan. This is not “left-wing” hot-take. When I say imperialism, I am saying that we (as the most powerful military and economy in the world) always nation build other countries to our need. But all imperial powers have done that. For us not to nation build we would have to not be one of the most powerful nations .
I, too, have family in Europe but have come to a somewhat different conclusion than have you.
I couldn’t care less if “Europe” laughs at us or not. The day they become strong enough and confident enough to mount and maintain their own effective international defense I might give a bit more credence to their opinions. Europe is a collection of moderately weak nations who preserve in their DNA a serf/tenant mindset which colors the entirety of their society and politics.
If the European opinion of the US has changed in recent years, it has not come about through any recognition of our progress but rather a rejoicing over their belief that we are becoming more like them–less prosperous, less strong, less independent, and less free. In other wors, we are coming to be seen as a member of their little club, that of nations in decline. Make no mistake, much of Europe resents the US. They resent us for saving them from destruction when they could not save themselves.
I have hope that the current goings on in our country, which may be leading Europe to re-think their amusement at our expense, are only the symptoms of an acute fever soon to break rather than a chronic, deeper malignancy.
I think Vietnam is a good analogy as far as nation building and logistics. I don’t think there’s a 1:1 comparison when it comes to our exit. When we left Vietnam, we had a peace agreement with North Vietnam. They waited until we were gone and then betrayed that agreement. By contrast, the Taliban betrayed their agreement before we left, but we left anyway, and did a rather poor job of it.
I’m not sure if Imperialism is the best word for our experience in Afghanistan. It might be correct, depending on the definition, but we certainly poured more resources into Afghanistan than we ever took from it. If it were true imperialism, we’d have claimed their natural resources or manpower instead of giving them our resources and manpower. That seems to downplay countries that were actual victims of imperialism or colonialism. I don’t want to hijack this thread for a history nerd debate, though, so I’m just going to call it nation building. It seems like I can convince people on both the right and the left that we really suck at nation building, and yet I fear that we’ll keep trying it.