Blog#80-8/25/21
NO EASY WAY TO END A WAR
By
Richard Davis
I am not a military strategist. I am not a diplomat and I make no claim to knowing anything about how to end a war. I do possess a functioning level of common sense and I use that as a guide to try to understand the events that have unfolded in the last few weeks as the United States withdraws its troops from Afghanistan.
Most estimates indicate that over 80,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan as the Taliban seize complete control of the country. I have to wonder what the American evacuees were thinking over the past year or so when it became clear that the United States was on the brink of pulling all of its troops out of Afghanistan.
Since most have been living in the country for some time they must have come to understand some of the internal politics at play. The Americans have always been looked at as interlopers. The reason we started fighting in their country 20 years ago was based on bad decision-making by a lot of people who did not learn the lessons of Viet Nam.
The U.S. had many chances to pull out of Afghanistan in the early years of making the world safe from terrorists as the mission creeped into “nation building”. We were fed the lie that the Afghan military was being trained to take over the country and that when we left that army would be able to defeat the Taliban.
The reality that I saw was that those Afghans who were being trained jumped on the gravy train to collect a paycheck and have a job. There were plenty of indications that the Afghans we were training had no loyalty to the politics that the Americans were trying to force on them.
Anyone living in the country over the past 20 years should have known that the Taliban would never go away and that the Taliban would never give up their own country without a fight to the death. Americans who are now fleeing at the last minute should have been prepared for the takeover by the Taliban.
If I had been living in Afghanistan the past few years I am pretty sure I would have figured out a way to get out of Dodge before the final mad exodus. That is why I am baffled at why there is such a last-minute rush by so many Americans to get back home.
Did they all feel they had to wait until the last minute because they had to have a final word from their own government? Perhaps many now consider Afghanistan their home. Are all of these Americans so loyal to the American cause in Afghanistan that they felt it was in the best interest of the U.S. for them to stay as long as possible and hope for an outcome that any sensible person knew would not happen?
I haven’t heard any comments from Americans fleeing Afghanistan saying, “We thought that the Afghan army was going to defeat the Taliban and that’s why we waited so long to leave.” President Biden has done what no other president had the will to do by ending the war in Afghanistan. He and other presidents knew that such a move would explode a political bomb that would scar a presidency.
Those who helped the American effort in Afghanistan also need to leave the country. The longer they stay the greater the chances they will be killed by the Taliban. The U.S. is evacuating the country and it is a very messy and complicated operation.
I don’t know if there could have been a better way to end a war and exit a country we had no right to be in in the first place. No matter what exit strategy we employed, people would die. At some point you just have to make a decision and cut your losses. I think that is what Biden did.
