Afghanistan Hot Takes II: Φ's Thoughts

The Afghanistan mission was a spin factory*. As has been amply documented, the entire narrative of our presence there was an edifice of lies. In 2011, I had a front row seat in the maintenance of these lies; indeed, I had a small hand in constructing them. These lies continued to the very end, e.g. this hilarious headline from 12 August.

If we actually had a culture of accountability, Congress would have already scheduled hearings. Every general, CIA weenie, and deputy-assistant-undersecretary-for-stoopid would be called to account for whatever combination of incompetence and duplicity led to 20 years of effort coming acropper this dramatically.

Obviously we don't have that culture. We have the opposite culture, and it runs straight through the armed services to every level of command. We have done nothing for the last year but #blacklivesmatter and searching under the bed for "extremists". But this is only a change in degree; the military has been colonized by cultural Marxists since the 1980s. They gained power in 1991 with respect to feminism in the wake of Tailhook, and more power yet in 2004. Their dominance is now complete. Literally every level of command swears allegiance to the Big Lie, and all the smaller lies, including those about Afghanistan, flow from that. We are now seeing the consequences.

We were not the Good Guys in Afghanistan. We propped up a puppet government of thieves and pederasts, who however much may have been willing to take our money, never merited that support. It was an unfortunate accident that we ever came to cross purposes with the Taliban, who are infinitely more deserving of more respect than our supposed "allies".

Many servicemembers are grappling with the meaning of their time in that country, the wounds they suffered, the deaths of friends they witnessed. This is understandable. Many of them can say, as any Russian, British, or Alexandrian soldier said before them, that, in the moment, they supported their teammates and saved each others' lives. That may not sound like much, but for a soldier it must be enough.

I can say none of it. My tour saved no one's life, and I supported nothing worth supporting. My presence there was pointless (as MG Hood told me to my face on my first day). I may speak more truth than average, but only because my stakes are lower: every possible injury to my self-worth has long since been inflicted. Don't cry for me. Cry for those who are just now realizing the truth.

We now enter the battle of narratives. The Left and its organs will say what it wills, and those that would believe are surely beyond reason. My concern is for the battle on the Right. As my earlier post indicated, there is much good analysis. There is also some dumbassery:

So here’s my dream: let our SEALs, Rangers, Marines, and any members of our toughest units shred these goat fuckers to smithereens.

For pete's sake, why? What purpose would it serve? It wouldn't bring back the non-Taliban government, not that we should even want that. It would not aid the repatriation of our citizens, who in any case seem as of this writing mostly unmolested by the Taliban and appear to be free to remain in Afghanistan or depart as they will. It might serve as a temporary salve to our wounded egos, but that would only be a distraction from what we should really be after: a full accounting for two decades of lies and waste.

I read that Glenn Beck has raised $22M to "rescue Christians" from that country. It comes as something of a surprise to find out that there are $22M worth of Christians in Afghanistan, but reading the story closely, I'm not seeing that Beck's proposed airlift will be limited to Christians, nor how he would verify Christian identity if it were, nor what safe haven has agreed to take them. My suspicion generally is that although the initial rush to NKAIA** was in fear of the Taliban, the hordes lining up now are there for the same reason we have a southern border crisis: they sense free entry to the United States, the land of endless welfare payments.

My primary concern is an attempted retread of the Vietnam narrative: "Our mission was betrayed by the politicians!" I've been thinking about that narrative a lot: it was the story I grew up on in the 1980s. I'll admit to having something of a reappraisal in light of the past week, but for now, the Vietnam narrative looks far more defensible than it does when applied to Afghanistan.

For all we might quibble about the details in his speech, former VP Biden told a singular truth on Monday:

We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure Al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again. We did that. We severely degraded Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and we got him.

That was a decade ago. Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.

. . . So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

President Trump deserves credit (and Biden appears to give him credit, if that is what it was) for negotiating our withdrawal -- up to a point. The fact is that Trump, as Bush and 0bama before him, set the withdrawal date after his term expired. Biden, to his credit, is the one to see this through, assuming; as of this writing, we have only increased our troop levels, but the circumstances make it difficult to imagine a continued long-term presence. Perhaps the withdrawal was bungled -- that too should be part of the full accounting -- but better it be done badly than not done at all.

* Not original with me; I know I read "spin factory" somewhere this past week, although as of this writing I can't find it.

** As it was called when I was there.