August 16, 2021
If you have read my materials on occasion then you remember that I forecasted that this outcome would occur and I also stated it was going to happen two years ago, now, two years from now, or later.
A lot of what I am hearing being broadcasted right now reflects, in my opinion, a lot of emotion and superficial thinking. Let’s see if we can tighten this up a bit.
Let’s start with war. It ain’t pretty. It does not end pretty. Remember, war is an extension of politics. When a nation cannot achieve its ends politically with another country it may choose to go to war to do so. We went to war in Afghanistan because they had been harboring Al Qaeda. The Taliban was a pre-modern government, ruling as if it lived 1000 years ago. No one cared until 9/11. We did not go to war because we had failed politically to convince the Taliban to rule differently. We went to war because the Taliban allowed Al Qaeda to stage an attack on the U.S. from Afghanistan. During this first phase, the American special operations and the CIA worked with tribal chieftains especially in the North and threw the Taliban out of political power. We won this war.
But then we got stupid. The non-Taliban tribes did not have a world view that much resembled the U.S. So, we quickly abandoned them. Hubris! Somehow, we evolved toward a policy of setting up a U.S. style government in Kabul. By this I mean: U.S. values, U.S. principles, U.S. money, and where needed, the U.S. military. I suspect that many of the early Afghan leaders of that government had spent the previous five years living more outside Afghanistan than in it. We established a new political objective – to push Afghanistan toward a Western type of government. Our political mission changed. And when this later evolved into a second war, the war was about how Afghanistan would be governed. (I first heard this directly from a Pentagon official who literally said that our policy at this time was to export democratic, liberal capitalism. I thought he was nuts. And I told him so, more politely. Where does this naivete come from?)
Now, think with me for a minute. A foreign government cannot successfully implant a foreign style government in a host country. Even the Romans had difficulty doing that and they were vicious. The U.S. is a relatively benign great power, historically speaking.
Moving quickly to the past hundred years, the British never pulled this off in Afghanistan, with varying political structures from monarchies to civilian. In fact, the British never subjugated the tribal peoples living in Northeast Afghanistan, Northwest Pakistan, and north to south through that border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, these tribal people are known as that Pathans. In Afghanistan, they are called Pashtuns. Essentially, they are the same people. And of course, the Soviets were not able to permanently set up their style government in this host nation so why in hell would anybody think the U.S. could do that?
For Afghanistan it was quite simple. Were the Afghanistan people who wanted a liberal democracy and equal rights for all as willing to die for their beliefs as the tribal people were willing to die for almost the opposite? And if so, were they able to organize such a battle? I think it has been incredibly obvious for way more than a decade that the answer was and is no!
Why is this?
You could write a book about this, so I won’t. You have heard the phrase, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think you could bend that phrase to describe what happens when the U.S. enters a country and wants to change it with the U.S. checkbook. Money corrupts and lots of money corrupts absolutely. (Indeed, stepping to the side for a sentence, this is why so many of us worry about the cash that the U.S. is dumping into our own country.)
So, this morning the same people who are assailing Biden and perhaps Trump are also stating matter of factly that the Afghanistan government was corrupt to the core. Oh, my goodness. And exactly who, or what power, caused this? Seems like the U.S. checkbook had a lot to do with this.
So, back to why the Afghans don’t want what the U.S. has tried to export more than the Taliban wants to live in the 17th century. Would you die for the government that was created and led by U.S. money?
So, back to the start. Wars are not pretty. When a nation starts or engages in a war all predictions are off the table. People will die. Property will be destroyed. People will become corrupt. Terrible, terrible things will happen. Internal allies will be created, and they will be at horrible risk if the side they allied with loses. You will not be able to fully protect them. Remember again, this is still war. War is chaos. And the consequences may last for decades after this final extension of politics is concluded.
(This is why I would vote tomorrow for mandatory military service for all young Americans. The American voter largely uses his/her checkbook to buy American wars. It was not always so. Would it be different if the average voter had to expend their blood? I think it would be amazingly different.)
If you get a chance check out Fareed Zakaria’s show yesterday because as usual it is loaded with objective common sense. The U.S. lost Afghan War II a long, long time ago. I am listening to people say, hey, the U.S., had not lost a soldier in Afghanistan in well over a year. I think Pompeo was one of those who said that yesterday. But I also heard it on Morning Joe this morning from people I generally respect. But Zakaria points out that the Afghan military has been through some of the deadliest fighting ever experienced during the past year. Do those lives not matter?
So, now allow me to make some final comments and a fresh forecast.
The transition to the Taliban will occur more smoothly and with less loss of blood than anyone might have thought. This is a good thing. They are now responsible for the Country. I forecast that the carnage associated with this takeover will be relatively small. Losing a war is not pretty. But the final stage could have been much worse – not better.
American opinion makers and other Western opinion makers will scream and shout about this. But what are they suggesting? Put American forces back into Afghanistan? Make sure that a huge amount of blood flows before the inevitable occurs? For what?
Now the Taliban have a new challenge. They must govern a few cities that must be enormously larger than they were the last time they were in power. They must get the electrical grid working. They must make sure the trash is picked up. They need to manage sewage. They need to make sure food is available and distributed. They need to get vehicles moving on the streets. They will have their hands filled and they will need most of the people who are doing this today – after they pretend like they do not need them for a month or so.
Let me address the issue of treatment of girls and women in a pre-modern society. We all know the issue. Everyone seems to be forecasting that everything will go back to 1998.
I am not so sure. We are acting as if having the U.S. in your face for twenty years will have no lasting influence. Perhaps more than 50,000 Taliban fighters were killed. Maybe three times that many civilians and government forces. Huge damage to all kinds of critical infrastructure. Life has been fundamentally disrupted for everyone. The Taliban also have families. They have sons and daughters. This is not a game. This is war.
In my opinion, the Taliban and Afghanistan will not be able to go back to 1998. I do not know how their society will change. There was no Internet twenty years ago. Many women have become empowered and at least know it is possible. Few knew this twenty years ago. Look at Vietnam today. It has many characteristics more like the U.S. than like either China or Russia. As one example, U.S. goods and services trade with Vietnam was over $80 billion last year, and about $14 billion of that were goods and services that we sold to Vietnam.
Finally, let’s address the here and now. Let’s focus on the May 1 date in the agreement reached by the U.S. and the Taliban if I heard this correctly over the weekend. Blinken said over the weekend that there was a direct relationship between that date and no U.S. causalities. Somehow, the Biden team got that date moved out several months, whether explicitly or implicitly. But Blinken points out that the U.S. was not free to keep moving the exit date without the Taliban reentering combat with the U.S. “A deal was in place.” Trump’s deal. If Biden breaks the deal, the “U.S. forces are put back into the middle of combat.” The date was agreed to by the U.S. Government. Biden has reversed many Trump policies. But surely in private he fundamentally agreed with Trump on this issue. And Biden had to know it would be ugly. Why else did other former President’s not get out? Trump was not great on execution but in this case his instincts were correct.
I was shocked to read several weeks ago that the U.S. military literally tuned off the electricity. -and everything that entails – when it departed Bagram Airfield. (WSJ article) There was no handover. There was an exit. I have had this funny thought over the weekend. Maybe the U.S. military knew that the airfield would be in Taliban hands in short order, no matter how carefully they turned control over to the government, and they did not want to make it easy on the Taliban. Who knows?
So, American opinion makers will scream and shout for several days about this, and longer if it takes the Taliban a bit longer to consolidate power. My guess is that most other Americans turned the channel a long time ago. My guess is that four months from now Biden’s popularity will be little affected at all by these events, and maybe even enhanced. And I think it should be. The more I hear this morning about how Biden has made this on his own, the more I see images of Lincoln. I put Biden on a level with George H. W. Bush. Bush stopped the first Iraqi war when he had achieved his political objective to throw Saddam out of Kuwait. I said at the time, this was pure genius. He got beat up for it. It took his son to prove how right was the father.
Soldiers fight the wars over the issues the politicians cannot resolve through politics. In this sense, we have politically failed in Afghanistan. War did not change the views of the enemy. In time, we began to wonder, why are we spending all this money and emotional energy to change how the Talban think? And then we took years to act on the obvious answer to that question.
In this case, war could not accomplish the political end. So, the horrible pain of war will not be balanced out by the achievement of a political end. But, in general, our soldiers were noble and fought courageously. That’s all you can ask of your soldiers and officers, whether they are hitting the beaches at Normandy, fighting in the La Drang Valley battle in Vietnam, or fighting in Afghanistan. We fought in Korea for a border. No one was happy with the political result when it ended. Now, look at South Korea. Perhaps in time even Vietnam may be rethought within the context of that time, rather than out time. The expansion of Communism ended with the Vietnam War. Who is to say that this would have been the result if the U.S. had not fought that war?
Finally, some pundits are worrying that ISIS will regroup in Afghanistan. Or Al Qaeda. Give me a break! Why would the Taliban threaten what they have? The last time they did that they got their asses kicked and had to wimp their way back into the northeast territories. Unlike Iran, they have no regional ambition. For now, they still live in the past. The U.S. has proven that there is a big difference between conquering a country, and then occupying it and changing what they believe. If the CIA, Special Ops, and U.S. political leaders cannot protect us from bunch of terrorists reforming in Afghanistan, then there really is no hope for us. But I am confident that we can.
