President Joe Biden, 78, isn’t sure how to respond to the chaos-and-panic for U.S. diplomatic personnel and asylum seekers to escape the Taliban, now in control of Afghanistan, including the capital Kabul. U.S. officials are paying a price for occupying Afghanistan for the last 20 years, since 75-year-old former President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom Oct. 7, 2001, only five weeks after Sept. 11. Sept. 11 dramatically reshaped American lifestyle and security, knowing that terrorists could strike the U.S. homeland causing so much carnage and mayhem. Today’s U.S. Transportation Security Agency [TSA] directly resulted from of the late terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, breaching U.S. defenses, blindsiding U.S. intel officials watching the worst attack on the U.S. homeland since Pearl Harbor. Reports of Mideast terrorists streaming across the U.S. southern border raise concerns.
Instead of working years ago for an orderly U.S. withdrawal, successive U.S. administrations since Bush-43 couldn’t redefine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. What started as a legitimate effort to capture or kill Bin Laden morphed into a nation-building exercise where the U.S. promoted human and civil rights in a series of U.S.-backed governments. Former President Donald Trump saw the handwriting on the walls, negotiating a drop-dead date with the Taliban Feb. 29, 2020. Trump’s 70-year-old experienced Afghan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated the withdrawal plan with soon-to-be Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar is the heir-apparent to the late Mullah Mohammed Omar who, after Sept. 11, refused to give the U.S. information related to the arrest-and-capture of Osama bin Laden. In fairness to Omar, he may never have known Bin Laden’s whereabouts.
Baradar won’t let Western powers or the press bully him into making concessions with the U.S. or EU government when it comes to post-U.S.-controlled rule in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. When it comes to a Taliban takeover, it’s a failure of the U.S. policy, losing sight of the original Afghan mission. Propping up successive U.S.-backed puppets was not the way to create a lasting presence in Afghanistan. Baradar has already showed interest in continuing a Russian and Chinese presence in Afghanistan but not with the U.S. So for the $1 trillion the U.S. poured into Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has nothing to show for its 20-years in Afghanistan. Even Russia, that fought a bloody war in Afghanistan for 10 years, gets to stay put in Kabul but not the United States. Chinese President Xi Jinping sees another chance to stick it to the U.S.
Keeping some 3,500 troops around Kabul and the Hamid Karzai International Airport should help the U.S. mission to evacuate some 5,000 to 9,000 passengers a day for the next two weeks. After the Aug. 31 drop-dead date, the U.S. military will no longer have the authority to continue its evacuation operation. Watching Biden’s botched withdrawal operation, it looks like the same chaos when President Gerald Ford continued the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975. While comparisons to Vietnam are tenuous, it does show that the U.S. presence was unwelcome, similar to what’s happening in Kabul. Vietnam had over 58,000 U.S. casualties over a ten-year period from 1965 to 1975, plus Vietnam had a draft where the Afghan War was voluntary military. But whatever the comparisons, Russia and China are again the beneficiaries of the U.S. failure, cleaning up the mess after the U.S. leaves.
Bush’s misguided Afghan War was eclipsed by the March 20, 2003 Iraq War, where he took most U.S. military resources to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Bush and his 80-year-old Vice President Dick Cheney practically stood on their heads to convince the American public that Saddam Hussein was responsible for Sept. 11. During the height of the Iraq War some 60% of the U.S. public believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11. Yet Bush and Cheney diverted most of the U.S. military resources to Iraq, leaving Afghanistan to rot as a low-intensity, guerrilla war, battling the Taliban primarily in the spring trough the fall, only to watch the conflict go dormant for another six months. Instead of getting out of Afghanistan once Bin Laden was no longer a threat to the U.S. homeland, Bush and Cheney continued their nation-building debacle until the recent Taliban takeover.
No one quarrels with Biden over his decision to end the Afghan War after nearly 20 years. Where things could have gone differently was the advance planning to have enough U.S. military presence to stop the human stampede to exit the country. Whatever happens with the Taliban, the U.S. mission is Afghanistan ends in failure, retaining Russian and Chinese influence as the U.S. and Western allies pull out. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight,” Bush said, reaffirming his decision to withdraw U.S. forces. Backing successive U.S. puppet regimes did nothing for Afghanistan other than pretend the public really wanted a U.S.-style democracy. U.S. and EU groups want to make the Afghan War about human or women’s rights. U.S. must now deal with another foreign policy failure, leaving Kabul in disgrace.
