Endless War category archive

In the great majority of the bloviating about the chaos accompanying the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, I see a failure to acknowledge that this occupation was doomed from the git-go. Delaying the withdrawal would have served only to delay the chaos, not to prevent it.

Nor do I see much acknowledgement from those well-paid talking heads that President George W. Bush created this mess by choosing to stage a long term occupation, as opposed to simply rooting out Osama bin Laden (who was a Saudi hiding in Afghanistan, not an Afghani) and then going home. Nor do I see sufficient acknowledgement of the previous Federal Executive’s role in setting the stage for what’s happening now.

I fear that too much of our punditry views war in much they same way as they view politics: as a game for their amusement and their ratings, as grist for their talking points.

War is not a game. War is unpredictability and death and suffering and capriciousness and chaos.

I find it galling when well-paid stuffed suits sit safely in their luxurious abodes thousands of miles away from danger and say to others, “Suffer more so that we are not embarrassed.”

This does not mean that I have any sympathy for the Taliban, nor does it mean that I have no concern for the threat they pose to their own people. They are Afghanistan’s religious right (perhaps more inimical than our own religious right, but not by much), but we have seen that we cannot magically make them go away through force of arms. Twenty years of futile death have proved that.

President Biden is not responsible for our failure in Afghanistan. Rather, he is to be commended for having the courage to bring it to an end.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier reflects on the failure of the United States to learn from experience, whether it be the experience of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, or even itself. A snippet:

No country that lost 56,000 of its bravest in Vietnam, that convulsed at the shredding of its social fabric in its own cities and towns as a result of opposition to a war without any persuasive purpose or exit strategy, could find itself in, of all Godforsaken places, Afghanistan, and barely a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon.

Could it?

Oh, sure.

We’re allergic to learning. See the virus. See the climate.

David takes what I find a sane and balanced look at events in Afghanistan. (Short commercial at the end.)

We could stay and keep failing, or we could leave.

Methinks Noz has a point.

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PolitialProf sees parallels between the conclusions of two of America’s Great and Glorious Patriotic Wars for a Lie, one coming to a close today and another that ended half a century ago. A nugget:

Notably, the “let’s blow people up for freedom” crowd who led us into Afghanistan (and Iraq, and Vietnam) are predictably using the unspeakable tragedy that is going to come to Afghanistan to make a desperate, last-minute effort to shame the United States into staying there and perpetually supporting the wildly corrupt, utterly illegitimate “government” of Afghanistan. They argue that the horror of Taliban rule justifies – indeed compels – the United States to remain in Afghanistan and lead it to create a stable, effective, non-Taliban government.

This argument has a very real appeal. It is undoubtedly the case that what the Taliban are going to do to Afghanistan’s women is beyond brutal. Whatever else US intervention did, it changed the status of lots of Afghani women for the better. What’s coming is almost certainly beyond imagination.

The thing is, you know what twenty years of US intervention did towards building a stable, non-Taliban Afghan government? Virtually nothing.

At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dan Simpson tries to draw some lessons from America’s war in Afghanistan. A snippet; follow the link for the full piece:

There had to be a reason why the British and Russian empires ended up crawling away from Afghanistan . . . .

I get that there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth about President Biden’s committing to withdraw from Afghanistan. And I share Bob Cesca’s fear that the Taliban will rise again and his concern that the Taliban’s holding power next door to Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, is disquieting.

Mongers of war, believers that the sword is the ultimate solution to every problem, fans of false macho, and manufacturers of weaponry will wail and gnash their teeth. But, frankly, after twenty years, what have we accomplished? An endless running-in-place.

Zilch, nada, nothing.

We should sacrifice no more lives on the altar of pretending that it was not a fool’s errand from the git-go, and two decades has shown us that we cannot fix Afghanistan’s internal problems from afar, however in need of fixing some of them might be.

This may be President Biden’s bravest act to date–to stand up to the mongers of endless war.

Image via Job’s Anger.

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David and his guest. Phil Gurski, a Canadian intelligence veteran, explore the origins of terrorism.

What’s more alarming: That Trump lies all the time about everything or that the Trumpettes willingly believe him without question?