Longest war is done — new challenges await
The war in Afghanistan has ended for the United States. Not only is the war done, but the argument about whether and how to leave is done. Most Americans decided long ago that it was not worth risking American lives to protect women’s rights in Afghanistan or craft an Afghan national army. Nor do they think was it worth spending billions to support a regime that never managed to tamp down corruption or curtail the heroin industry.
But we are not done with Afghanistan. Even though the U.S. military has withdrawn from the country, many challenges remain on which the United States must stay engaged. We will learn in the weeks and months ahead — assuming Western media can still operate in Afghanistan or that Afghans’ cellphones still work — about the plight of Afghan girls and women and the other victims of Taliban fanaticism.
We will see the hardship, the violence and the misery of people whose country we invaded and tried to transform.
It will be harder to imagine the trauma and misery avoided by ending our military involvement. The losses not suffered are abstract, although we know there will be American families spared from worry about a deployed spouse, parent or child. We know no more families will experience the trauma of losing a child or coping with a severe injury from a war in which we made no measurable progress in two decades.
We know billions of dollars more won’t be wasted on that futile effort (and may instead be used on counterterrorism operations or to support women and girls’ development around the world).
Nevertheless, we must make good on Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s promise to remove every last American who wants to leave the country. On Monday, he estimated that “under 200, likely closer to 100” may still want out. We will see if the Taliban continues its self-interested cooperation in facilitating American departures when the United States has no troops on the ground. Even more challenging, Blinken will need to demonstrate that Afghans partners and others at risk who remain will be able to evacuate if they want.
“If an American in Afghanistan tells us that they want to stay for now, and then in a week or a month or a year they reach out and say, ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ we will help them leave,” Blinken said. As for Afghans, “We’ve gotten many out, but many are still there. We will keep working to help them. Our commitment to them has no deadline.” There may be the will to do right by them, but the mechanism to accomplish the administration’s goals is sketchy. Blinken touted the international community’s demand to allow free transit out of the country, but, again, it is far from clear how to “hold the Taliban accountable if they renege.”
The Biden administration must also demonstrate its capacity to, as Blinken put it, “prevent terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a base for external operations that could threaten the United States or our allies, including al-Qaida and the Taliban’s sworn enemy, [Islamic State-Khorasan].” Much will hinge on the administration’s ability to maintain the web of international alliances and agreements forged in the fiery days of the evacuation, which Blinken believes will give us leverage with the Taliban. One does not need to buy into right-wing hysteria that we are heading for another 9/11 to understand that far less dramatic consequences would discredit the United States’ “over the horizon” counterterrorism operation.
Blinken concluded, “We have a plan for what’s next. We’re putting it into action.” Perhaps it is more accurate to say we still need to develop tools to make these lofty aspirations a reality. But Blinken was right to declare, “This moment also demands reflection. The war in Afghanistan was a 20-year endeavor. We must learn its lessons and allow those lessons to shape how we think about fundamental questions of national security and foreign policy.”
The need for introspection among pundits, military commanders, intelligence officials, politicians and voters themselves has never been more acute. We need time limits on congressional authorizations for use of force; more rigorous oversight of our intelligence and military operations; less credulity from mainstream media (which are wooed by the military and cheerlead at the beginning of wars, however ill-conceived); a reaffirmation of civilian control of the military; and more widespread use of inspectors general.
But mostly, voters need to elect mature adults, not rage performance artists who use military casualties to demand the president’s impeachment. Voters need to grasp the concept of “no good choices” and “opportunity cost.” In other words, we must be better citizens who insist on better leaders — and then not punish them when they take principled action.
The Biden administration is confident we can separate effective international leadership from futile military operations. Now, Biden must prove he can fashion and implement a post-Afghanistan anti-terrorism policy.
He ended a war that should never have gone on for 20 years, a thankless task three presidents could not bear to undertake. That’s not nothing — but it will not be enough.