As if there hasn’t been enough digital ink spilled over Afghanistan, allow me to give you one more piece to consider. But, first, don’t worry about whether I’m on your political team – I’ll tell you right now, that I’m not. I’m team America, and team humanity. If you are team Democrats, or Team Republicans, you’ll never be Team America, because, you’d rather the other side lose, so that your side can win, which is at odds with the interests of both the Nation, and humanity as a whole. Before we get to the current situation, we need to examine how we got here. If you walk upon a car accident, where one car seems to have driven headlong into the trunk of another car, it’s very easy to say, “this car in the front got rear ended by the car in the back.” But, sometimes, the car in the front backs into the car in the back. If you don’t rewind the tape far enough, you’ll only ever be jumping to conclusions, instead of analyzing fact based evidence. I promise that I will provide only facts until the end, and, at that point, I’ll let you know that we’re diving into the world of opinion, by denoting the editorial section for what it is. Some of this might make you think I rewound the tape too far, but, I think it’s brief, and necessary, enough to take a few extra seconds.
9/11/2001: The World Trade Center is attacked by terrorists.[i]
9/14/2001: The U.S. Congress votes on the open ended authorization of military force. The vote passes, 518-1, with two senators not casting a vote, and only one member of the House voting against the measure. The one vote against, was a Democrat, who was moved by the prayer of the minister at the memorial service, praying that “as we act, we not become the evil we deplore.” She was branded a traitor by the press and by many in Congress.[ii]
10/7/2001: After weeks of planning, and, angry demands for vengeance across the United States, The U.S. begins bombing Afghanistan. The stated mission was to hunt down Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.[iii]
11/2001: The Taliban retreat.[iv]
12/2001: Bin Laden escapes.[v]
4/2002: The mission changes to “bringing democracy to Afghanistan.”
09/2008: Barrack Obama campaigns on ending the war and closing Guantanamo Bay.
02/2009: Obama, having become President, is convinced to send a surge of troops to Afghanistan, as opposed to ending the war.[vi]
9/2016: Donald Trump campaigns on ending the war in Afghanistan.
8/2017: Trump, having become President is convinced to send more troops to Afghanistan, as opposed to ending the war (starting to sound familiar).[vii]
10/2019: Donald Trump betrays the Kurdish Troops, who had fought, side by side, with U.S. Troops for years, against the real world Voldemort(s) known as ISIS. U.S. Veterans are aghast.[viii]
02/2020: Trump enters into a peace agreement with the Taliban. The particulars are as follows – Within 135 days, the U.S. would reduce the total number of U.S. Troops to 8,600; The U.S. and its allies would abandon 5 military bases within 135 days; release 5,000 Taliban prisoners of war, in exchange for 1,000 Afghan soldiers being held prisoner by the Taliban. The agreement makes no reference to the actual elected Afghanistan Government. The Taliban agreed not to attack U.S. Forces, and, the U.S. agreed not to attack Taliban Forces.[ix]
07/2020: The terms of the peace agreement have been fulfilled.
10/8/2020: President Trump announces that the U.S. Military will be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2020, blindsiding Military leaders, who, according to “The Military Times,” stated that there was no such plan, whatsoever.[x]
11/2020: Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump.
02/2021: Biden sticks with the Trump plan, but, extends the deadline for withdraw, moving it from May 1, 2021 to August 31, 2021.
04/2021: Trump attacks Biden’s new deadline, saying, the closer to May 1st, the better.[xi]
2018-Present: No one in the Pentagon, or the White House, believes for a second that the existing Afghanistan Government will survive. The only question is how long will it take for them to fall to the Taliban.
Time to editorialize!
2008-2021: Americans seem to only care about the War in Afghanistan when asked in polling questions, around national elections; generally lack any knowledge whatsoever, regarding what military conflicts our government is waging, and basically seem contented to fixate on prime time television, having largely decided that all of the world’s remaining problems (including our own) are too complicated to be solved, or else, should be solved by someone else, and, so help us God, if that nameless, faceless, person doesn’t solve them, we are going to be very angry.
07/2021: America, seeing the beginning of the fall of the Afghanistan Government, realizes that we have been at war for two decades; thinks they finally understand what all those veteran suicides might be about; still, basically clueless.
08/2021: Amidst horrifying images, which lay bare the consequences of America’s actions, coupled with the evil acts of the Taliban and ISIS, Americans decide that things should have been done better. While offering no solutions, we pivot from general indifference to generalized rage and finger wagging. While the 1% of Americans who are or were service members watch in horror, wondering what they lost friends, or body parts for – and, realizing that, once again, America betrayed the very people who risked their lives, by buying into what we were selling, and, deciding to help us.
08/2021: For the second time in as many Presidents, the highest ranking members of the U.S. Government have revealed their true character: they simply don’t care about our abandoning our allies to their deaths. And, if you look at it through their eyes, why should they? Everyday, around the globe, untold numbers of innocent, peaceful, people are slaughtered by wicked people, who possess zero regard for human life, and, we do not act. We, as a government, only act when we think it will benefit American Citizens. We, as a people, hardly give the government any reason to worry that we will be upset by their indifference. And, if you think you don’t have blood on your hands (as I know I have on mine), tell me: how hard have you worked to make sure you’re not wearing products produced by slave labor? If you didn’t know that China was keeping over a million people in concentration camps, and, using them as slave labor to make your goods, then you either are an impoverished person, who is working multiple jobs to survive, or else, one who opts for the tv remote and some relaxing prime time entertainment over reading the news. If you wonder what you can do, there are two really big things, which are completely free: inform yourself, and, use your voice. If you think public opinion doesn’t accomplish anything, take a fresh look at the way that the GOP Congresspeople have had to swap their suits and ties for QAnon t-shirts and Viking helmets with horns. The elected want power. We are the ones who give it to them. They will do whatever we demand of them, in order to maintain their power. It’s time to start changing our demands. It’s time to start taking responsibility, ourselves, for not even being well enough informed to know which way is up.
A final thought on our relationship with the rest of the world: we have powerful enemies who want to see us destroyed, while our government actively seeks ways to bring those same governments down. Billions of innocent lives hang in the balance of a few madmen who crave power above all else. There are only a few ways to get people to do what you want; you can manipulate them, use the carrot of gifts, the stick of force, or a combination of these. That’s really about it. Presently, China is using all of these methods. Recently, China gave a small Pacific Island Nation $2.6 Billion dollars, for infrastructure, and, for the construction of a palace for the Island’s King. In the U.S., we threw a shit fit over the international aid in the 2020 budget. We have twice abandoned major allies in the middle east, to their deaths – in just the last two years. No one wants to be your friend when you routinely screw your other friends over, and, when you won’t share any of your toys. If you never buy anyone lunch, don’t expect them to grab your dry cleaning, when you are in a pinch. Americans who identify with one political party or another need to stop thinking in terms of scoring political points. We need to stop thinking in overly simplistic terms, and learn to examine the details before we start shouting at one another in moral outrage. Hell, we need to stop shouting, all together, and start having legitimate conversations, as if we still believe that the people with whom we disagree deserve the right to breathe. If we can’t manage to make those changes, we will get to see the demise of our Republic, and, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
[i] https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan
[ii] Id.
[iii] Id.
[iv] Id.
[v] Id.
[vi] https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan
[vii] https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan
[viii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-us-soldiers-its-a-dagger-to-the-heart-to-abandon-the-kurds/2019/10/14/f0a1db60-eecf-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html
[ix] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
[x] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/10/08/taliban-cheer-trump-tweet-promising-early-us-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/
[xi] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/18/politics/trump-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/index.html
thereluctantcommentator 