On Afghanistan
Afghanistan is Afghanistan’s Problem
I don’t know if I really have anything groundbreaking to share about Afghanistan but I do have some thoughts that I believe I should explain. I believe we should leave and we should have left the day after OBL was killed. I do believe Pres. Biden was right to remove all remaining forces swiftly and he only could have a done a little to stave even a fraction of the chaos that ensued upon our exit.
My experience in Afghanistan during one of my five deployments was one year, 2013-2014. Fighting season to fighting season with a brigade combat team.
I would read the news and talk to my friends who had been to Afghanistan as advisors whether on BCTs converted to advise and assist mission or as SFAB members. From all this input I received from 2001 to now, there was always one and only one outcome that was so inevitable, it was as solid as gravity, everyone knew it: the Taliban would rule Afghanistan the day we left. I’ve been saying it for decades now. It was overtly obvious to any person with a functioning brain.
The ANSF did not have the will or capability to defend Afghanistan from the Taliban. They had zero chance without significant support from the U.S. No matter how much money we pumped into training their soldiers. The training has been riddled with significant problems highlighted by many journalists over the years. We’ve had million-dollar training institutions abandoned. The ANSF commanders creating ghost soldiers to collect their pay. Kandaks with 80% attrition rates due to soldiers going AWOL or deserting. I won’t neglect to mention the green-on-blue attacks which make advising impossible without tripling manpower and prove that even half-vetted Afghans have loyalties that can be called upon so we should be careful about the call for increasing the number of refugees we bring into the U.S.
Then we have the social-cultural conflicts. The first problem is ANSF does not care about having a nation-state. Their culture does everything at a tribal and regional level. Afghanistan as a country was a concept that the average soldier just didn’t care about. They had no will to defend this vague concept. Will can win wars. There was none on the side of the ANSF as evidenced by the horde of military-aged males running away from the fight trying to hide in the wheels of a C-17.
The next problem is that Afghanistan is a wholly uneducated country incapable of nurturing complex western philosophical ideas like representative democracy at a national level. How are they supposed to care about these concepts when they are almost all illiterate? At best they can function at a second-grade level. At best. It doesn’t bode well for a military that has to maintain complicated machinery and defend a complicated construct of a nation-state. It took western civilization 1000 years from Magna Carta to produce a democratic nation-state. Are we going to occupy it for 1000 years?
I really have zero sympathies for cowardly men who run away from their obligation to defend their people and expect another country to spend their blood and treasure to make them comfortable. Because even with a modicum of will to fight they could force the Taliban to retreat or at least make life so miserable they want to give up. They can essentially flip the script on the Taliban. Remember the occupiers have all the clocks, the insurgents have all the time.
We have systemic conflicts of culture that we just cannot overlook any longer. The bacha bazi is one example. Soldiers and contractors were told to overlook the heinous acts of Afghan commanders because it was just a “difference of cultures.” Islamist beliefs are held by the majority of the population in Afghanistan which includes the institution of Sharia as the governing law. Not something advanced western societies should abide by or support in any measure.
For the remoaners, the people who believe we shouldn’t leave ever because “muh Afghanistan.” It’s not your Afghanistan and remaining under the status quo isn’t an option that makes much sense. I present to you two options for us to remain we can either remain under a more proactive construct of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency pushing the Taliban back into hiding, or we can invade with significant force, suppress and colonize Afghanistan.
We have people like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) who says a small force stuck in Afghanistan forever in a perpetual stalemate with a bunch of 8th-century savages in flip flops is a much better outcome. This is a better outcome and better strategic statement than admitting the truth: Afghanistan will never be a safe and functioning country.
Then we have the neo-cons like Ben Shapiro, Dan’s best buddy, saying it’s fine to keep service members in the middle of a never-ending quagmire because only one died last year. Well, worth it to people like Shapiro who haven’t served in a combat zone a day in their lives. He says it’s not a never-ending war because very few American soldiers are dying. What is it when we are in a war and we adjust the operational objectives, but we’re still stuck in the same war without any rational ends? Would you say it’s a never-ending war?
Honestly, both arguments are disgusting and lack any foresight or plan for the eventual removal of all forces from a war. And both should be disregarded with complete prejudice. Yes, Dan, there are those of us who aren’t little John McCains and don’t want a forever war stuck in a stalemate. You fucking war-simping hack. The best part about Crenshaw is that he likes to wrap his warmongering in a thin veil of pseudo-intellectualism.
Under a proactive counter-insurgency approach, we would reinvade with significant force, create a stronghold and continue decades of counter-insurgency fighting against the Taliban from May to October every year. We would maintain a military presence under the constant threat of a violent jihadist insurgency supported by the local population.
We can invade Afghanistan, again, with a significant and overwhelming force. We push the Taliban back into the mountains. We form our own government of Afghanistan with colonial governors who have the authority to actively suppress any resistance to the government or support of the Taliban. We brutally and violently force our western values onto the population. Then we extract the resources we want to pay for our benevolence. This is at least an option that allows us to save face and demonstrate our military might and will to our large adversaries.
Now, given the increasing scarcity of rare earth minerals and the need for them to be in every car by fiat of the Green New Deal, I would almost agree to the colonialization just for the minerals and to keep them out of the hands of China.
There are no refugees from Afghanistan. The only people who should even be considered are the select few thousand, and their families, who worked directly for and with U.S. forces. Their lives are in danger due to their connection to us and we should get them out.
Now, none of this criticizes the manner in which this withdrawal was done, because I think it’s absolutely a given that it was a complete and utter shit show from the operational level.
It also has broad strategic implications as far as assuring our allies. In other words, it tells the truth about America: we are not a shining city on a hill, we are a waning empire that never wanted to be an empire, with a culture in decline and military in atrophy. This is all thanks to the infection of a Chinese virus that completely debilitated the country over the last few years: Maoism, aka Critical Theory.
The Generals
As I’ve stated from the beginning our current and past slates of political leaders, including Generals are woefully inept. They have been found lacking in every measure on every question. They should resign in disgust or disgrace. They either gave proper advice and counsel and knew this would be the outcome but chose to keep their positions of authority and power and stay silent, or they didn’t and they are horribly bad at their jobs. SecDef Affirmative Action and General White Rage Milley should all be resigning. Perhaps if they had spent time thinking of solutions or ways to convince the obviously mentally degraded President this could have been avoided.
Even the bull-headed Orange Menace and reigning champion of being right about everything, President Trump, was convinced to keep a residual force in place at least until the Taliban started making headway on keeping their promises. It’s at least a plan for leaving. Unlike anything proposed by people like Crenshaw and Shapiro.
Afghanistan is incapable of becoming a nation-state. The US does not have the will or power to do what needs to be done if they in fact want to help the country. In our waning days as an empire it’s time we take realistic stock of what’s happening and assess what and where we really are.