The rapid reconquest of
the capital, Kabul, by the Taliban after two decades of a staggeringly
expensive, bloody effort to establish a secular government with functioning
security forces in Afghanistan is, above all, unutterably tragic.
اضافة اعلان
Tragic because the
American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the
values of civil rights, women’s empowerment, and religious tolerance rule
proved to be just that: A dream.
This longest of the US’
wars was code-named first Operation Enduring Freedom and then Operation
Freedom’s Sentinel.
Yet after $83 billion and at least 2,448 American service
members’ lives lost in Afghanistan, it is difficult to see what of lasting
significance has been achieved.
It is all the more
tragic because of the certainty that many of the Afghans who worked with the
American forces and bought into the dream — and especially the girls and women
who had embraced a measure of equality — have been left to the mercy of a
ruthless enemy.
The Biden
administration was right to bring the war to a close.
Yet there was no need for
it to end in such chaos, with so little forethought for all those who
sacrificed so much in the hopes of a better Afghanistan.
Numberless Afghans who
had worked for years alongside US troops, civil society groups, aid organizations,
and journalists, including the many who had worked with The New York Times,
abruptly found themselves in mortal danger on Sunday as the Taliban swept into
Kabul as leaders of the
Afghan government, including President Ashraf Ghani,
headed for the airport.
It was tragic, too, because with the bitter political
divide of today’s US, efforts to draw critical lessons from this calamitous
setback have already been enmeshed in angry recriminations over who lost
Afghanistan, ugly schadenfreude, and lies.
Within hours of the fall of Kabul,
the knives were already out.
While the speed of the
collapse of the Afghan government was shocking, the result should not have come
as a surprise.
This calamity cannot be laid alone at
President Joe Biden’s
feet, but it is incumbent on the current administration to make right what has
gone wrong with the withdrawal plans.
The US military is, if nothing else, a
logistical superpower, and it should move heaven and earth and anything in
between to rescue those people who have risked everything for a better future.
Red tape shouldn’t stand between allies and salvation.
The war in Afghanistan
began in response by the US and its NATO allies to the attacks of September 11,
2001, as an operation to deny Al-Qaeda sanctuary in a country run by the
Taliban.
How it evolved into a two-decade nation-building project in which as
many as 140,000 troops under American command were deployed at one time is a
story of mission creep and hubris but also of the enduring US’ faith in the
values of freedom and democracy.
The Afghanistan papers
published in The Washington Post, including a confidential effort on “Lessons
Learned” conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction, an agency created by US Congress, painted a
devastating picture of corruption, incompetence, lack of motivation and other
flaws among the Afghan forces the US and its allies were trying to mold into a
serious military.
One Navy official said
Afghans viewed their police as “the most hated institution” in Afghanistan.
Other officials described systematic looting by soldiers and officers, as well
as Afghan casualties so huge — 60,000 killed since 2001, by one estimate — that
the government kept them a secret.
The corruption was so rampant that many
Afghans began to question whether their government or the Taliban was the
greater evil.
The Pentagon and the US
Congress deserve a share of the blame for the debacle, and certainly for the
rosy progress reports that so often emerged.
But what the US or its allies
could or should have done differently — and whether that hoary cliché about
Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires has been validated once again — is a
debate that should consume politicians, pundits and historians for years to
come.
The responsibility lies
with both parties. President George W. Bush launched the war only to shift
focus to Iraq before any stability had been achieved.
President Barack Obama
was seeking to withdraw US troops but surged levels instead.
President Donald
Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban in 2020 for a complete withdrawal by
last May.
When Biden came to
office, some Defense Department and other officials urged him to keep a small
counterterrorism force in Afghanistan for several more years.
But Biden, old
enough to remember Vietnam and a veteran of foreign relations from his years in
the Senate, became convinced that a few thousand troops remaining for a few
more years in Afghanistan would not prevent an eventual Taliban victory.
On
April 6 he told his staff that he wanted all the troops out by September 11.
“I
was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in
Afghanistan — two Republicans, two Democrats,” he said later.
“I would not, and
will not, pass this war on to a fifth.”
It was a decision that
took courage and wisdom. The president knew full well what his critics would
make of it — what they are already making of it.
There will always be the
what-if that if only US troops had stayed longer, the outcome would have been
different.
Biden himself has been somewhat disingenuous in blaming Trump for
his deal with the Taliban, which the president said “left the Taliban in the
strongest position militarily since 2001.”
It has long been clear
that a US withdrawal, however or whenever conducted, would leave the Taliban
poised to seize control of Afghanistan once again.
The war needed to end. But
the Biden administration could and should have taken more care to protect those
who risked everything in pursuit of a different future, however illusory those
dreams proved to be.
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