On Afghanistan: What to think of the withdrawal, the war, and the embarrassing loss this is for our elites

What can be said about Afghanistan that hasn't already been said?

First, let's get through what to think of it all. The withdrawal is a good thing. It's been consistently supported by a large majority of the population, though many people have been critical of how it's been handled. The war had long been a lost cause and the pullout had to be done, the sooner the better. It should have been done a long time ago in fact. The killing of Osama Bin Laden has been suggested as the date from which the war should have been drawn down, what with its symbolic significance (there may not be a more practical date given the pointlessness of the war). Regardless, it had to be done at some point.

There are things to criticize in the handling of the withdrawal. There's the Fall of Saigon-like images we got from the airport in Kabul that those who are still invested in the image of the United States as a serious world power will take offense to, but also the 13 American servicemembers who died (in addition to the 100+ local Afghans) in one of the deadliest attacks on Western forces of the war, one that was highly predictable and likely avoidable. How the war was mishandled from its initiation through the whole 20 years of its span deserves more attention than the half-assed cleanup job at the very end, but as far as we restrict the subject to the withdrawal, there's plenty to take issue with.

So what could have been done better? Few people expected the US and NATO-backed Afghan government to be that stable, but it seems almost no one in charge saw things falling apart as quickly as they did. Here are a few simple criticisms we can probably all agree on. Military intelligence should have had better intelligence on the battlefield situation and the forces they trained for 20 years and given civilian leaders proper warning of what was to come. There have been news stories based on leaks to reporters that have tried to claim that the intelligence community properly warned of this outcome but they spoke of a timespan of months, not the less than two-week lightning Taliban advance we got. The Biden admin and US State Department definitely should have better read the situation and been better prepared for the evacuation. It was clear to me, even as just a casual follower of the conflict, that the country was rapidly falling to the Taliban and it was a matter of days, not weeks or months. At one point the Taliban had taken almost the entire country and all the roads that lead to Kabul and even then there didn't seem to be the sense of urgency you'd expect. Lastly, there's the fact that US forces were put in harm's way for over a week, in an ill-defined mission to evacuate hundreds of thousands of Afghans — many we know little about — and assorted foreign citizens who really shouldn't have been there in the first place. Those deaths should not have happened.

It can definitely be said that it was a bungled withdrawal, and in an ideal situation we'd be able to reap whatever political gain we get from the Biden admin owning this mess while working towards the interests we have, but unfortunately, that's not our reality. Many of the criticisms we're seeing of the Biden admin from conservatives and others (e.g. the war hawk centrists all over the media who sometimes vote GOP, or pass themselves off as right-leaning) have not just concerned the handling of the withdrawal but the idea of withdrawal itself. There have been arguments made that the deployment we had until recently, a few thousand troops in the country facing almost no attacks, was a light burden to manage, even if indefinitely. This is badly misleading of course given that the Taliban had let up on their attacks on foreign forces due to the long-planned draw-down and withdrawal of troops. It is concerning that the pro-war/interventionism side scored a bit of a propaganda coup with the ending of this war leading to such embarrassing imagery (as unfair as it is to put all the blame on those responsible for putting an end to this mess, it's just that the dirty nature of democratic politics makes it so). That and the fact that although conservatives adopted some anti-war rhetoric under MAGA, they're never far away from embracing it again just to own the libs makes one of the biggest risks here a shifting of public opinion in favor of further foreign adventurism. Don't have too much fun bashing Biden because we're at serious risk of going off course in the wider war here.

That's unfortunate because this whole affair has been a major failure for our elites and the system they've built and are so proud of. This is much worse than Vietnam in several ways. South Vietnam was a fake entity carved up to delay the inevitable decolonization of the country. The American war in Vietnam was a valiant effort given the circumstances, the formidable organizational skill of the Viet Cong and the military strength of the superpower-backed North Vietnamese regime. It's not clear at all that Afghanistan was always a lost cause. It's beyond my knowledge and the scope of this article to review the history in detail but a few things that show how much worse this loss was than Vietnam are the record speed in which the government collapsed (South Vietnam held out for more than a year in fierce combat and the Soviet-backed Afghan government lasted for years), the broad international backing of the war (dozens of countries contributed troops to the mission at different times and there was no Vietnam-style anti-war movement), the greater technology gap between the sides (total air superiority, drones, etc.), the Taliban not being near as capable as the Viet Cong, and the possibility of a political solution (with all the money in the world and no reason we couldn't have backed policies broadly popular with Afghans). If Vietnam led to a loss of national confidence, Afghanistan should lead to even more soul-searching, but we've so little left of a serious society these days that it probably won't.

This is a new and unique sort of failure stemming from the total absence of any serious leadership in our countries and a complete lack of accountability, the kind only modern liberal democracies are capable of, ironically. It's the fact that a failed war effort was somehow continued for 20 years, with military leaders knowing the hopelessness of it the whole time but holding that back from the public, and civilian leaders kicking the can down the road, hoping that their successors would be the ones to shoulder the blame. Serious countries don't do things like this. Compare with Russia's far more goal-driven and precise foreign excursions in Ukraine and Syria, or China not getting involved in any dumb foreign entanglements at all. Of course, nations, republics, and empires have always got themselves into dumb wars, but there were often at least harsh consequences for failure (i.e. execution) and this idea of a hopeless war being carried on indefinitely, managed by an array of international bureaucrats, seems very modern.

There was a major human cost to this war though too. Thousands of Americans died along with thousands more other Western troops in the NATO war effort (the Afghan casualty toll is staggering too). This is a war that seemed to make sense in the beginning. Many of us were pissed off about 9/11 and we can understand the thinking of those who chose to serve in the surge of patriotism that followed. What do you tell these people and their friends and family, especially those who've lost something? Well, you can at least be honest. No, it definitely wasn't worth it. How could it have been given we're back to square one, only with the Taliban more powerful and secure in power than when they were deposed in 2001? If the war made sense — or seemed to — early on it long since stopped, and that means that at some point being had just came with service in the military. People need to question the role of the military and point of military service going forward. Why would you continue to trust people who used you this way?

So there's a lot there, and a lot more that could be said. I think the main takeaways are that we need to make sure that this withdrawal from foreign military interventionism in general proceeds unabated, and there are unsettling signs there. Also, to not forget the significance of this failure. I'll defer though to those with actual expertise on the conflict and others who just have more to say for more on this subject.