Aka. This was always how it was going to end
[ This is an opinion piece and should not be taken as hard news ]
I don’t quite know how to start this… these last few days have surely been shocking to many and hard to watch for others.
Yet I write this for you as an individual who has no memory of 9/11 or the mood of America after that tragic event.
Yes, many of the courses that I have taken over the many years of my life have gone over 9/11 and its aftermath.
But none have explained to me the utter failure that was our government’s response to that grim day.
Now, we as a nation must contend with the moronic decisions that we have made over these 20 years that have led us to this point.
We must recognize that this was always how it was going to end in Afghanistan , not with the roar of democracy but the thud of hard Islamic rule.
What has been interesting to me, at least, is that now everyone on twitter is a foreign policy expert who saw this coming…
SHUT THE HELL UP.
We can have some debates on the failures that have occurred, but some of y’all need to stop pretending that you’re a foreign policy expert.
The only people that can talk about this situation with any authority are the veterans that served our country and fought in the trenches.
Some takes have been novel. From horror, to revelation, there are a lot of hot takes coming from this accursed web browser.
One that is more novel is the take that Afghanistan was doomed from the start (some of these takes come from Santiago Mayer, Michael McDonald, and former congressman Justin Amash).
Personally, I do agree with this take. I personally believed that whenever we left Afghanistan that it’s government and Army would collapse.
I must ask this question to those that read this: what would another 20 years in that country have done?
Maybe it buys us an extra month, maybe it doesn’t.
And what were we supposed to do, stay there forever?
(which is a point Judd Legum made)
No matter how you try to slice it, the same outcome will always occur.
That is if you are trying to slice the same item.
The blame game has already started on all political sides, with arrows and slings much like we saw after the 2020 election cycle.
Yet four presidents over these last 20 years have held the white house and each one has contributed to this failure.
We will start from the current president to the one that started this whole mess.
For Biden, he does deserve some blame for how this exit has been executed (as the New York Times editorial board pointed out).
And he does deserve blame for the situation he has created for those that helped us during the war.
These folk will be killed if we don’t help them, thus we must help them as it is the only moral thing to do.
From George Packer: “All of this was foreseeable—all of it was foreseen. For months, members of Congress and advocates in refugee, veteran, and human-rights organizations have been urging the Biden administration to evacuate America’s Afghan allies….”
That is a grave error and one that will once again trounce our reputation, as pointed out by many.
It does seem as if the Biden admin is making a greater effort to try and get these folk out, but we will have to wait and see.
But, yes Biden deserves some blame, but not 100% of it, more like 15-20%.
(Let the record also show that most veterans groups agree with Biden’s decision to end the Afghan war)
For Trump, his desire to end America’s longest running conflict ended up blowing up in all of our faces.
Yet listen to Trump from 2012: “As soon as we leave it’s all going to blow up anyway…the minute we leave, everything blows up. It will go on for many years and the sad part is as soon as it ends, you have those guys sitting back waiting.”
What a difference 4 years made.
This man’s insistence on ending the Afghan war was so strong that he wanted to meet with the Taliban.
Mike Pompeo even met with the leader of the Taliban (by the way, have fun defending this image Mike).
OH I ALMOST FORGOT, THAT MAN WAS RELEASED BY TRUMP IN 2018.
So it seems odd that many from MAGA land are trying to retcon this as a Biden problem and not a Trump one.
While Trump doesn’t deserve all of the blame either, he does deserve 20% of it as well.
Obama had a chance to end the war, but chose to persist, this in itself earns him 20% of the blame pie as well.
Thus we get to the man of the hour, George W. Bush, who get’s 45-40% of the blame for this whole fucking fiasco.
IT WAS BUSH WHO DIDN’T TAKE THE TALIBAN SERIOUSLY UNTIL 9/11.
IT WAS BUSH WHO INVADED AFGHANISTAN.
IT WAS BUSH WHO STARTED THE FAILED IRAQ WAR.
This individual is the reason the war began in the first place, the main reason we got into this situation.
I see the 2000 election brought up a lot throughout the web and how things would have been different if Al Gore had prevailed.
I must now agree with these individuals in cocuring that things would have been a lot different.
In fact this whole issue feels like 2000 reborn for the 20 millionth time.
We must seriously consider the consequences of 2000 and what that did not only to us but to the world at large.
I fear that we haven’t reckoned with this issue deeply enough yet.
As an individual once told me, “Prepare for unforeseen consequences”.
I fear that we are now finding out what these consequences are for 2000.
There are other issues at play, electorally, internationally, nationally, emotionally,and psychologically.
While this may be my generation’s Saigon, people didn’t realise that Vietnam was already lost.
Most people that I know knew that this day would come.
Also, the lesson from Saigon was to know when it was time to leave.
This was always going to be like Saigon, no matter what your political beliefs are.
All that matters now is getting our citizens and those that helped us out.
Some final thoughts summed up by others.
From Brandon Friedman: “Biden fumbled the exit. Trump put him in this situation. Obama doubled down when we should have left a decade ago. Bush neglected the narrow mission to focus on Iraq.
Afghanistan has been a string of predictable failures. Blaming Biden for the outcome is patently absurd.”
And from Mehdi Hasan: “Americans should be furious with the governments of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, which told us, for 20 straight years, that we were winning in Afghanistan, that the billions we were pouring into the Afghan government & military were worth it.
It was all a lie.”
Thanks for reading one man’s rambles.
-SRB
Additional reading: After Sunday It’s Even More Clear Biden Was Right
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