Thank you for the courage to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. Thank you for putting an end to 20 years of wishful thinking, lies, corruption, billions of dollars wasted, and blood and sacrifice that ultimately served no purpose of ours.
The American people had grown so numb to America’s longest war, we could have kept doing the same things over and over for another 20 years to no better result. Once more we’ve found we can’t bomb democracy into a country. We can’t shoot our way into building up a nation. We can’t install a working government with drone strikes or by pouring money down a rathole.
And we can’t trust the military to admit it can’t be done, to confess that what we were doing was not working. Telling the truth when it is bad news has always been career suicide at the Pentagon. The fault is not entirely theirs either. We’ve put so much effort into claiming they are the best in the world at what they do – we don’t want to hear it when what they have been tasked with is something without a military solution. They’re always supposed to win.
Generals came and went. Always a just few more billions would make the difference. Always just a few more troops would turn the balance. Always just more training for the locals would give them the skills they needed to defend their country – but not the motivation or the leadership they needed to make it happen. The speed of the collapse has demonstrated how hollow all of those hopes were, how little connection they had to the actual situation.
Year after year.
And all those diplomatic efforts? Those negotiations? All those “leaders” we counted on to come together for the good of the country? As though we were going to somehow cancel centuries of tribal conflict, ethnic tensions, and a culture still rooted in the 7th Century? Somehow the endemic theft and corruption was not going to undermine everything we were paying for?
But as long as there are going to be painful reassessments, let’s admit we cannot solely condemn the military and the diplomats for failing to tell us the truths we did not want to hear. The political leaders they serve in our name do not like to hear bad news either, much less having to deliver it to us.
There is a huge mass of people in this country who would still rather believe the lies of the previous four years rather than give up the toxic fantasies they want so desperately to believe. And no one wants to hear “I’ve got bad news.”
There is much wailing and rending of garments over the terrible things that will now happen to the Afghan people because of Biden’s decision. All the second guessers and hind-sighters, the chicken hawks and the sunshine patriots will ‘explain’ why anyone could have seen this coming, that Biden’s decision to pull the troops out will inevitably lead to atrocities and repression, that it was a mistake. They’re also warning about the dire consequences for us in the world.
None of these people have any better suggestions other than more of the same that wasn’t working. Kicking the can down the road for the past 20 years has only gotten us to the end of the road, not where we wanted to go. The answer is still the same – if you’re in a hole, stop digging. Not that they ever seem to learn. Exhibit A, exhibit B, lather, rinse, repeat.
For all the concern about what will happen, we should also remember what was happening. Corrupt officials who undermined so many programs meant to make things better, who failed to deliver for the people they were supposed to serve but preyed on instead. The collateral damage – bystanders caught in crossfires; the bombs that fell off target or by mistake; the raids in the night. The crops and buildings destroyed; the homes shattered; the towns overrun and taken back multiple times. Life under constant threat.
Taliban rule is expected to be harsh and unyielding – but it will also comes with a brutal kind of peace and order that has been lacking. It is a measure of failure that we could not arrive at better choices than between constant random violence and thievery versus the order of a prison – but here we are. Or rather, the Afghan people are. It may not be a happy one, but their fate is now in their hands.
The critics are loud and all-knowing. However President Biden knows something few Americans do – what it is like to have a family member in harm’s way in military service. An all-volunteer military has kept the sacrifice from being shared across our nation; we’ve lost too many of those who were willing to put country before self. The loudest voices calling the withdrawal a mistake are people with no skin in the game – but plenty of political self-interest ahead of the national interest.
Give Biden credit for the will to make the tough decision and accept the consequences. It’s what adults do. That the man can still remain optimistic after suffering terrible tragedies in his personal life is a miracle. That he is being forced to preside over one more tragedy on this scale is beyond irony. As he has found the strength to go on in the past, let us pray he can lead us through this darkness as well.
In the chaos ahead, it may not be possible to give haven to all those who deserve it: the interpreters who aided our troops; the people who worked honestly with us on aid programs; the people who trusted us to do the right thing. One of the legacies of Vietnam was the boat people who often ended up in horrific conditions because no nation wanted to welcome them. The Iraq Invasion left many at risk when we pulled out of there; many are still waiting for promises to be kept. The immediate fall of the Afghan government will likely see people fleeing the country well into the future. If we truly believe in the ideals we claimed we were fighting for, that is a challenge we must find a way to meet.
We had every reason to invade Afghanistan after the attack on 911. George W. Bush, the President who ignored the clear warnings ahead of the attacks, was able to mobilize the world to help us go after those responsible. He squandered the moral advantage we had when he chose to let Bin Laden escape and pivoted to invade Iraq. The embrace of torture, forced rendition, and so many other crimes by the NeoCons behind that invasion is something we still have not dealt with adequately.
President Obama inherited multiple messes: not just wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but an economic melt-down. Obama was able to rebuild the economy. Obama got Osama. But he couldn’t find a way out of Afghanistan, neither with drone strikes or troop surges. (And let’s not talk about Syria or Yemen.)
Do we even need to discuss Donald John Trump? Fanboy of dictators? Russian asset? The man whose “leadership” was marked by corruption that would make Russian, Afghan, and Saudi leaders envious? Who mocked the military as weak and disrespected Gold Star families and veterans? Who called NeoNazis “very fine people? Who cut the terrible deal with the Taliban he then handed off to President Biden? Who was impeached twice? Who did his best to start an insurrection and overthrow democracy in this country? (He’s still at it and so is his cult of a party.)
The people who embraced Trump are going to give Biden hell for ‘losing’ Afghanistan – when it was never ours to begin with. The people who allowed 911 to happen and launched an invasion of a country that hadn’t attacked us are going to try to claim the moral high ground. The press is going all “He should have done this; he should have done that; he should have known” while amplifying GOP messaging.
God bless you and keep you President Biden, for having the courage to do the right thing even if it proves to be costlier than anyone expected. The cost of not doing it would have been even higher – but no one will think of that. Only what they see in front of them. There will be more bad news in the days, weeks, and months ahead, before America can once again go back to ignoring Afghanistan, the collective amnesia which is how we ‘deal’ with so many things. (Fingers crossed against how bad it might get. This is nerve-wracking on so many levels.)
May you, President Biden, continue to do what you can to keep faith with those who depended on us - and with us as well. And may you prevail over the enemies both foreign and domestic who threaten our very existence. You will need all the courage you can muster on our behalf to deal with the Climate Emergency, an economy that is responsible for record inequality, a Congress that is institutionally dysfunctional, and a political party that has become an authoritarian cult.
Thank you.
One more thing: What Digby sez...
Also, What Josh Marshall said. (h/t to mjbos)
...It is crystal clear that the Afghan national army and really the Afghan state was an illusion. It could not survive first contact with a post-US military reality. As is so often the case in life – with bad investments, bad relationships – what we were doing there was staying to delay our reckoning with the consequences of the reality of the situation….
Monday, Aug 16, 2021 · 2:30:48 PM +00:00 · xaxnar
Update: Eric Boehlert details the way many in the media are piling on President Biden, echoing GOP messaging, but not providing any real context.
Via The NY Times:
...President Biden will return to the White House from Camp David and deliver remarks on Monday afternoon about the situation in Afghanistan as pressure mounted on him to publicly address the chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport following the collapse of the Afghanistan government to the Taliban.
Mr. Biden’s decision to fully withdraw American troops from in Afghanistan after a 20-year conflict led over the weekend to frantic scenes in the capital city as the Taliban seized control and the administration scrambled to evacuate embassy officials, their families and Afghans who feared the new regime.
Administration officials said the president will speak about Afghanistan at 3:45 p.m. on Monday after returning to the White House after 1 p.m...
Monday, Aug 16, 2021 · 8:21:42 PM +00:00 · xaxnar
UPDATE: This comment from Jim Lieb touches on a key point.
...But as you state, Biden is the only one who had family that had someone in “The Boots on the Ground”. Beau know how deep the corruption and double-dealing was/is first-hand. I know that the conversations between father and son around their dinner table were very different than the ones over at the Bush or Cheney household. Biden has done the right thing right down to quickly leaving Bagram in the middle of the night before the Taliban zealots had a chance to grab their shoulder fire rockets and hump it down to the departure end of the runway. If you have to leave, do it quickly and quietly. Otherwise someone will leak the plan, change sides (again) and you will be attacked on the way out (as in Saigon). BTW, we were lucky in VN. They were never crazy and only wanted what they wanted in 1945 — that all of the colonizers leave...
Read the whole thing.
Monday, Aug 16, 2021 · 8:29:41 PM +00:00 · xaxnar
UPDATE:
President Biden in 15 minutes gave a powerful (IMHO) speech defending his decision to end America’s longest war. I strongly recommend finding a transcript or the video, because the case he made for his actions and his statement about the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan is the kind of leadership and accountability we have been lacking for a long time. He also laid out what will become the de facto Biden doctrine for U.S. Military engagement around the world going forward. We will continue to pursue counter-terrorism efforts, but not become involved in counter insurgency efforts. He emphasized that we cannot try to use a military approach to solve every problem, that we have other and better tools.
He repeatedly stated he was not going to hand Afghanistan off to another American President, or ask our troops to fight in a civil war when the Afghan army won’t.
UPDATE:
Here is a link to the White House transcript of the President’s remarks. Two excerpts:
When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 — just a little over three months after I took office.
U.S. forces had already drawn down during the Trump administration from roughly 15,500 American forces to 2,500 troops in country, and the Taliban was at its strongest militarily since 2001.
The withdrawal was already well underway when Biden took office. We'd already stayed past the Trump May 1st deadline.
The choice I had to make, as your President, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season.
There would have been no ceasefire after May 1. There was no agreement protecting our forces after May 1. There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1.
There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict.
I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.
That’s why we were still there. We were clear-eyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency.
But I always promised the American people that I will be straight with you. The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.
So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.
If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.
Read the whole thing. It is a powerful statement of coherent arguments Biden lays out to make his case.
The news will give you a few soundbites at best, and focus on all the shocking visuals in Kabul for the most part. NBC brought in General Petraeus who claimed we still could have stabilized Afghanistan. There are reasons to question the good sense and integrity of Petraeus, not to mention what’s left of his legacy in Afghanistan…
The media narrative is that this is a humiliating failure on the part of Biden — echoing the GOP. It remains to be seen if it will stick with the American people who by a clear majority are in favor of ending the Afghan war.
UPDATE:
Charles P. Pierce at Esquire weighs in. I am going to quote the whole thing because much of it is from Biden’s speech and Pierce supplies much needed context to which the mainstream media seems oblivious.
Joe Biden Asked How Much Truth the American People Are Prepared to Hear
The president gave them an adult portion in a speech on Afghanistan Monday afternoon.
I guess we’re going to learn how much truth the American people can handle, because the president gave them an adult portion on Monday afternoon. It was time for the adventure in Afghanistan to end. It was time for the Afghan government and the Afghan military to defend their country without the United States holding their hands, and neither one was up to the job, nor did it appear as though they ever would be. And that was the basis of his decision, and he stands by it.
I’m now the fourth American president to preside over war in Afghanistan. Two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president. I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference. Nor will I shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here. I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.
I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces. That's why we're still there, we were clear-eyed about the risks, we planned for every contingency. But I always promised the American people I would be straight with you. The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.
For decades, I’ve heard barroom sages wax nostalgic about Harry Truman, and how plainspoken he was, and how we needed that kind of man back in the White House. (It got so thick for a while that Chicago made a record about it, displacing Paul Simon’s Joe DiMaggio as the archetypal American hero.) Well, there it was, in the face of the terrible video from the airport in Kabul, and the carping of superannuated neocon geniuses who got us into this whole mishkadenze in the first place, and the ravings of the Madman of Mar-a-Lago, who cut the deal that set the chaotic endgame in train, and all the rest of the second-guessing world. He made the decision. He stands by it. And if America can’t take that, then America should grow up.
And by the way, Lord, do we need a new foreign-policy establishment. One more white guy in a suit talking to me about “credibility” and I very well may move to the Maldives.
Early returns are not promising. A quickie poll from Politico and Morning Consult reported that support for the military withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan had fallen from 69 percent in April to 49 percent this week, a true measure of how public opinion in this country is nothing more than a dandelion in a gale. And Senator Rick Scott of Florida, once America’s premier Medicare crook, decided to go whole hog. From Politico:
Scott, who is widely viewed as a potential 2024 presidential candidate tweeted: “We must confront a serious question: Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?”
Oh, shut up. Please.
There are open questions about why the administration was caught so flat-footed by the speed with which our erstwhile allies folded. (We were there for 20 years. Somebody should have had an inkling.) But there is no question about why the president made the decision he did. He spoke as plainly about it on Monday as any president has on any event or policy in my lifetime. What I recalled halfway through his speech on Monday was an interview John F. Kennedy gave to Walter Cronkite one day on Cape Cod, talking about Vietnam.
"In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it.”
Two months later, Kennedy went to Dallas. Less than two years later, the first combat troops landed in South Vietnam—3,500 Marines, sent to “stabilize the situation” around the airfield at Da Nang, and we were off. On Monday, another American president said:
More importantly, I made a commitment to the brave men and women who serve this nation that I wasn’t going to ask them to continue to risk their lives in a military action that should’ve ended long ago. Our leaders did that in Vietnam when I got here as a young man. I will not do it in Afghanistan.
Now he has to stand the gaff of screaming recriminations from his political opponents, and the gaff of an elite political press corps that will be more than happy to amplify those screams into an apocalyptic howling. That’s the real test: will this president stand by his decision to stand by his decision?
emphasis added