The U.S. has dispatched troops to Kabul to evacuate American personnel in anticipation of the Afghan capital’s imminent fall.
So ends our two-decade intervention in Afghanistan. Looking back, the present endgame was inevitable. It was typical American hubris to believe the United States could bring order among an unconquerable people. That assumption, of course, arose from America’s historical amnesia. We never learn because we never remember.
The misbegotten idea of American exceptionalism also played a part in bringing about this latest debacle. The experience of the British and the Russians were irrelevant to the extent they were considered at all. That we helped facilitate the latter’s defeat likely skewed perceptions of our chances of victory.
Not that any of this was in the forefront of the discourse surrounding the decision to intervene. The 9/11 attacks were a fresh, raw wound in the fall of 2001, with the events of that day endlessly replayed and rehashed on the cable news networks. A national adrenaline rush in anticipation of unknown horrors yet to come combined with a collective grief blocked rational discussion. When the invasion began that November, it seemed victory was in sight despite the Bush administration’s warning that the War on Terror would take many years. (This was about the only prediction they got right.)
We are easily distracted, and issue saliency is perishable. In this case, it was the lead up to the Iraq War and the grueling stalemate which ensued that shifted our attention from the Afghan War. By 2009 matters had deteriorated to the point where the incoming Obama administration ordered a “surge” comparable to the one implemented in Iraq a couple of years earlier. It was deemed successful, but was really a Band-Aid on a fatal wound.
Now we are back to square one, with nothing to show for it. The Taliban have taken Kandahar and Herat and it’s only a matter of time before they are in the capital. I’m seeing visions of people lining up to board helicopters on the U.S. Embassy roof.
Comparisons to the fall of Saigon are inevitable, though the North Vietnamese exercised a bit more decorum than the Taliban. Hanoi observed a “decent interval” between the U.S. withdrawal and launching its campaign to take the South. The Taliban began to aggressively sweep the country even before U.S. forces had fully withdrawn. The execution of the withdrawal raises eyebrows, with troops abandoning bases shared with Afghan government forces in the dead of night. I’m sure that did wonders for morale. The Afghan National Army is collapsing just as surely as the ARVN did in 1975, but more rapidly.
The return of the Taliban as Afghanistan’s masters does not bode well for human rights, particularly women’s rights and the rights of ethnic minorities. There will undoubtedly be retribution against the Taliban’s enemies much as there was when they came to power the first time in 1996. In any case Afghanistan will become even more unpleasant than it already is.
But
as always, the American public is scarcely aware anything is happening outside
its hermetic world. It’s true that there
are a lot of serious distractions at the moment, but even if things were “normal”
it’s unlikely anyone would pay attention.
Our failure in Afghanistan is destined to be another foreign policy
lesson unlearned.
© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar
