Remaining in the ‘Graveyard’
Going back to Alexander the Great, leaders of superpower nations have underestimated the cost of war in Afghanistan. That cost was huge for Great Britain as it was for the Soviet Union. U.S. presidents from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan have dealt with it as well.
The country has been nicknamed the Graveyard of Empires for a reason.
Reagan armed the Mujahideen there, including Osama bin Laden, in the 1980s to oppose the Soviets. We’re still dealing with the blowback from that effort.
President Donald Trump’s recent speech suggests we’ll remain in the country for the foreseeable future.
The current war began in 2001, presumably as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. George W. Bush sent troops to Afghanistan, purportedly to get bin Laden, but the terrorist leader was soon in Pakistan. Bush himself was more interested in pursuing war in Iraq, a country which was uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks, but despite his relative lack of concern, and his complete lack of strategy, we remained in Afghanistan for the duration if his two terms.
President Obama got bin Laden, eventually, but he also employed a cynical, yet effective, political strategy. Given the country’s opposition to the war in Iraq, he positioned himself in the middle of the road, not opposed to all war, but just to what he called “dumb wars.” So, while he pledged to pull out of Iraq, a move that had been negotiated by his predecessor, he ramped up the effort in Afghanistan. Yet he too never came up with a timetable or strategy for success or withdrawal. Mr. Trump campaigned on isolationism, a Republican of the Pat Buchanan mold, different from the neoconservatives who have dominated the party for the past three decades. He had repeatedly criticized the Afghan war and suggested we pull out.
But as has happened so often in the past, once in office, a president acts differently than while campaigning. Generals do not like to lose wars and presidents do not want to preside over withdrawals. So, he reversed course.
Trump said something in his speech that has been a common Republican criticism in recent years, that we should favor a conditions-based approached, not a timebased one. That’s a fair enough critique.
But the conditions one sets do matter, so let’s take a look at the ones Trump established. Apparently, we will leave Afghanistan when we have achieved victory, which has this “clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.”
Sorry, but these do not make a clear definition. Instead, they range from the impossible to the indefinable.
Attacking our enemies, OK we can do that. But we will leave once ISIS and Al Qaeda have been obliterated and crushed? President Obama had both organizations on the defensive, but crushed they were not and won’t be any time soon. And our strategy has never been geared to accomplishing that.
Aerial bombings, which more often than not involve mass civilian casualties, create new recruits for terrorist organizations. Every wedding and funeral we hit provides opportunity for radicals to recruit the disaffected, who view America as at war with them, their nation, or their religion. The rhetoric Trump employs encourages that view.
Then there is preventing the Taliban from taking over. While Trump has said we will not engage in nation-building, that is exactly what would be necessary to prevent Taliban influence. The repressive organization is still powerful in rural areas of the country and the official government has control of less than two thirds, and much of that only tenuously.
The last point is so vague it is impossible to define when success could be achieved. Preventing all terrorist attacks is both a laudable and an impossible goal. While many are inspired by organizations like ISIS, few today, particularly in the west, are actually conducted by them.
We’ve seen this before, in Vietnam, and elsewhere. A war with a vague purpose conducted for vague reasons, with unclear strategies for either success or withdrawal. While the American casualties are fewer this time, they are still substantial, already in the thousands. And the Afghan war is now the longest one in American history.
None of what happened in the past is President Trump’s responsibility. In fact, he criticized some of it. But the futures of American soldiers and the Afghan people are now in his hands and he is continuing the same failed policies of his predecessors.