The enemy in Afghanistan was not ten feet tall. All the talk of how our defeat was inevitable ignores the reality noted long ago that it is easier to see your own problems.
We never seem to remember this wisdom from Kipling:
Man cannot tell, but Allah knows
How much the other side was hurt.
Air power was a terror for the Taliban:
Prisoner interrogations plus eavesdropping on internal or public Internet chatter show declining morale, higher desertion, fewer recruits and demands for higher pay and benefits to keep numbers up. There was also more pressure on Taliban field commanders, by their own gunmen, to keep casualties down. This was done by avoiding actions that attract airstrikes. A common mistake is attacking army or police bases or staying in one place too long while blocking an army or police operation.
Not every jihadi has the fervor of a suicide bomber. The good news is that air power was very effective. And not just strike missions. And we built an Afghan air force able to take up some of the slack as we scaled back.
The bad news is that we made the Afghan ground forces reliant on air power on the strategic defensive with largely static garrisons. And then yanked away our support for their security forces as we skedaddled.
The war was on the knife's edge. We--with our local allies doing almost all of the dying--could have won, given time. We certainly should have avoided defeat. Unfortunately, nobody back in America gave a damn:
During the first half of 2021 many of those in the Afghan air force and special operations could see the government and regular army forces and police rapidly declining. There were fewer American troops around to pass this information on to and fewer people back in the Pentagon who would do anything about it.
So we screwed the pooch by choosing to lose.
We chose to lose in South Vietnam by abandoning our allies. Then we did the same thing in Afghanistan. So we've gone through happenstance and coincidence. One more decision to throw away a victory means it is enemy action.
