America didn't need to lose the Afghanistan war. But we chose to do exactly that.
Heartily endorsed:
Contrary to simplistic arguments one hears in the United States, the immediate reason for the Afghan regime’s collapse was not that Afghan soldiers didn’t want to fight for their country. In fact, tens of thousands had fought and died trying to stop the Taliban, only for the US suddenly to withdraw all political and material support for their fight. The regime collapsed because America had decided to get out, the consequences be damned.
Despite the claims that Afghan security forces would not fight, when America (and NATO and other allies) backed the Afghanistan government, 7,000 Afghan security forces were killed every year fighting the Taliban. Indeed, while American military leadership worried Afghan forces could not sustain that level of casualties, Afghan security forces continued to enlist, fight, and die.
Until we lost a number of troops at the Kabul airport to a jihadi suicide bomber, we hadn't lost a troop in combat in a year and a half. Afghan troops were fighting and dying to kill jihadis, making it one front in what could have been the Global Troubles of mowing the jihadi grass with allies.
They would have continued to do that if we hadn't so visibly walked away from them, predicting the time of their demise after we left. What a shock that so many Afghan forces decided not to be the last one to die at the long end of the American estimates. Predictions of doom were a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There was a danger in leaving after helping Afghan government forces for so long. When we were on our way out in 2013, I worried about the effects of our withdrawal on Afghanistan morale.
Sadly, just saying that we can win with a reduced Afghan and American presence is not enough to convince people that is the case--even if it is absolutely true. If we are reducing our commitment--and we are, as we must eventually--we shouldn't take the risk of shaking the morale of our friends and bolstering the morale of our enemies by visibly reducing Afghan capacity to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda any time soon. Give the Afghans time to see that things will be fine before we take that step.
That was gradual enough to not lead to dramatic collapse. Afghan forces got the time to see that they weren't doomed. The Biden administration failed to do that.
In 2021, we failed to bridge a danger zone for Afghan morale created by the withdrawal of American forces:
On paper, the Afghan government can hold. But in the real world, fear of death is heightened by the American-led withdrawal. If enough time passes without a general collapse of government morale, the paper balance will win out.
But the Taliban have a window of opportunity when fear of the unknown without America holding the hand of government forces makes government officials and forces scared enough to preemptively give up.
America decided to lose the war--with a spin that we kind of won that was amazing to behold. Don't be fooled. We screwed the pooch.
America snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
UPDATE: Sure, the Air Force conducted a technically proficient evacuation from Kabul--based on volume rather than getting out our actual friends. But they shouldn't put lipstick on the pig we screwed in Afghanistan the way the Pentagon is shamelessly calling our defeat a year ago the "conclusion of" and the "end of" the war.
Yes indeed, our secretary of defense wrote, "the Afghanistan war has ended", like we wished it and it was just magically so.
FFS, how can we
learn if we can't even admit out loud we were defeated? Hell, maybe the
problem is that too many of our flag officers just don't feel the defeat deep down where it counts. Is simply commanding for a while in a war zone the punch in their ticket for promotion? Is victory or defeat irrelevant for too many?
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
