On the Fall of Saigon, er, Kabul

First off, Happy Reinstatement Day, everybody. I’m sure the festivities will begin any minute now.

Tomorrow is a travel day for me, and today is a packing day, so I don’t have a lot of writing time. I just want to say something briefly about Afghanistan. This will not be an in-depth analysis, and if anyone wants to fill in the blanks, be my guest.

The Taliban are taking Afghanistan with astonishing speed. I get the impression that even the U.S. military brass are stunned by how quickly the Afghan military is crumbling. U.S. officials predict Kabul will fall within 30 days. I suspect it will be sooner. President biden still says we are leaving, bye. Naturally, President Biden is being pounded for his decision to pull troops of Afghanistan.

There is probably an argument to be made that this withdrawal could have been better planned and more skillfully executed. If someone wants to make that argument, I would not argue.

However, the failure of the Afghan millitary to defend Afghanistan is, to me, a big flashing neon sign saying that there was no point to the U.S. being there. Our troops have been there just short of 20 years, and most of that time we were supposed to be preparing the Afghan government to defend itself from militant terrorists on its own. It’s pretty clear now that this was never going to happen. Whenever the U.S. withdrew, this would be the result.

The Taliban is a regional threat, not a global one. Our troops were in Afghanistan because of a decision made 20 years ago, and then the target was al Qaeda. And whatever good we did in Afghanistan initially was thrown away because the focus shifted to Iraq, which was very stupid. President Obama refocused on Afghanistan, but by then IMO it was too late to do the right thing, and we should have bgone into damage control/withdrawal mode immediately, in 2009. Juan Cole believes we should have left Afghanistan in 2003, and he’s probably right.

Instead, the Afghanistan issue was handed off to that Great Incompetent Blob known as Donald Trump. Trump made noises about getting out of the region altogether, but notice he didn’t actually do it, and between his “policies” and Jared Kushner’s meddling the U.S. position in the region was even more befuddled than it was already. I wonder if Trump’s blunders in Syria might well have just emboldened all the extremists in the region.

Just read The Great Washington Ponzi Scheme in Afghanistan comes Crashing Down by Juan Cole. Explains it all better than I can. And let me also say I am very sorry for the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban are monsters. This is a genuine tragedy. But the fault of that is with the Taliban and the regional culture that grew them. There is only so much anyone else can do.

Will Biden pay a political price? I doubt it, since most Americans weren’t all that interested in staying in Afghanistan. Domestic issues will likely be front and center in the campaign next year.

I’ve been asking myself if anyone paid a price for the Fall of Saigon. Did they, really? Americans were much more emotionally invested in Vietnam than they ever were in Afghanistan, so you would think the infamous Fall of Saigon would have been a political watershed, but I don’t remember that it was.  President Ford lost his election in 1976, but I don’t recall that vast numbers of people were angry at him about Saigon. It probably did cost him some votes, but the sluggish economy and the pardon of Nixon were bigger issues. Likewise, I think next year Afghanistan will not be on people’s “top five issues of concern” lists.

In 1975 most Americans didn’t want to know anything about Vietnam; they were exhausted with it. I suspect all but the most hawkish feel about the same about Afghanistan now. We shouldn’t have stayed so long.

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan