A question is being posed, and sometimes by military experts including retired generals that appear on networks other than Fox. The question is why we didn’t choose to maintain a (more or less) permanent small force in Afghanistan to prevent exactly the kind of collapse we’ve just witnessed. The argument, especially from (all of a sudden) conservatives, most of whom were just fine with Trump’s pullout order (he wanted it before Christmas last year in case you forgot) is that we still have tens of thousands of troops in Germany, Japan and South Korea and bases too. It’s also being pointed out how a couple of thousands of troops in a corner of Syria had for years worked in tandem with a larger force of locals to keep the Syrian regime (and Russia) at bay. And what happened when Trump pulled the rug out from under that mission. There are other examples in other places. (For the record, I think a good deal if not most of the commentary from experts – yes, some are actual experts – is at least partially ass-covering that will go on with top military and civilian brass, publicly known intelligence types and even diplomats for the rest of their lives. In some cases it will be MAJOR ass covering. However that doesn’t mean the issues I will explore are invalid.)
There aren’t many such issues, but one area in which a surprising mix of conservatives and liberals make for strange bedfellows is the “We shouldn’t be the world’s police force” philosophy. It’s certainly a point worth of serious political discussion and a broader, and more important honest, no b.s. (as in attempts to score cheap political points against the other side) discussion for our elected leaders to periodically have with the American public.
Sadly, even purely humanitarian foreign aid (stuff like food, medical supplies etc.) became something many conservatives and even some liberals opposed and it’s paltry compared to what it once was. I get the argument that we have plenty of need right here at home. I also understand the role humanitarian aid can play in developing and maintaining international goodwill, and the diplomatic bargaining chip it has at times given our country on the world stage.
Before I go on, let me say again I always believe our attempt at nation building in Afghanistan was a stupid idea, and it would eventually end pretty much as we’ve seen – just as happened in Vietnam. I am writing this to provoke discussion of the use of small, specialized military forces (two or three thousand) in some countries as force multipliers for locals willing to fight oppressive regimes and/or provide a measure of stability in war ravaged areas/regions. It has been proven that can work, but that kind of thing raises the whole “should the U.S. be the world’s police?” question. Especially because part of the cost is paid not in dollars but blood. Severe injuries or even deaths, both to troops and Americans acting in civilian roles. That my friends is a sobering thing to contemplate.
However, the dirty secret no one likes to think about when they beat their chests about having the best, most powerful military in the world is that severe injuries and deaths happen in training in the countries I mentioned already, on the oceans with our Navy and even here in the continental U.S. every week. Each is tragic, and despite all the best efforts to minimize such casualties at least some are inevitable. So considering all of that I’d like those reading this to consider the question I’ve been hearing: Should we have considered striking an agreement with the government (not the Taliban but the actual government) once Biden was in office to keep a small force based there to back up the Afghan military something we should have at least tried to do?
Yes, that government was corrupt and part of why its army and security forces handed over (or left behind) their weapons and melted away – they hadn’t been getting paid! We had some leverage to use after all. Back after 9/11 Pakistan was given an ultimatum and while they didn’t fully purge themselves of their extremists in their Army and intelligence services they did enough to be an often useful ally. I don’t know the answer to that question, and probably won’t form a firm opinion either way for some time. We weren’t going to drive out the Taliban, but since their control was in the countryside and not the major cities they could have been kept at bay, albeit with at least some ongoing American casualties.
What I am however certain of is that the type of honest, open discussion of the pros and cons of such a policy simply isn’t possible in our country anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time and I’m not terribly hopeful it will be in the years (hopefully a couple of decades) I have left on this earth.
I will however say this. I’m reminded of a moment in an episode of The West Wing when Lord John Marbury was introduced to the cast as a part-time character. Although in a different context (his suggestion was to buy India off by providing the infrastructure for them to build a computer industry in exchange to stop a war with Pakistan) when asked why we should bear such a cost (by Chief of Staff Leo) his reply was spot-on as it spoke directly to the whole of the issues of humanitarian foreign aid and even some military support I’ve raised. To the issue of why should WE be the one to step up and keep the world duct-taped together? He said “Because that is the price you pay for being rich, free and alive all at the same time.” Think about it.
I still haven’t answered the title question so here goes: What is the difference between our maintaining/not maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan vs. those other countries? Well, first of all the other three were developed countries when things went to shit. They had functioning societies and national identities even if the latter had gotten warped. Second, we were wanted there. And have remained so for the most part. We don’t have anywhere near the number of troops we once had in any of those countries these days but the ability to ramp up and quickly (if needed) is there. Are there elements in each of those places that protest our presence? Sure. But even if significant (not majorities but significant) numbers of people in those places don’t like us being there (same with other allies whether NATO or in the Pacific) a part of them looks at other countries out there (like Russia or China, or North Korea) and are if only secretly glad we are there.
Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has a thousand years or more of history of people living in their villages who see the world only as the area they can see from their village whether it be on a hillside, a valley or rice paddy. They grow and raise the food they need to survive and build the homes they have out of what’s available – trees, stones and mud. Life is hard, but for generations going back centuries that’s all they’ve expected out of life. Outsiders, even their own countrymen aren’t welcome. They just want to be left alone to live their lives as best they can and they don’t ask for, much less expect more. Even in the cities there are large areas of people who stay in their own enclaves and the local government is as foreign (and disliked) by them as much as it is for those in the countryside.
If that sounds weird to to let me point out there are places in the good ole U.S. of A. that are similar. Amish country for example. And in large cities there are enclaves of people who seldom in their lives wind up venturing beyond the few blocks of their neighborhoods. If it seems inconceivable that such feelings could exist on a wider geographic basis I suggest you gather a a couple of friends and make sure your vehicle is in excellent working order and spend a few weeks travelling through the swath of the country we call Appalachia.
If you already understand what I’m talking about, it’s no leap to understand how insular the people in a place like Afghanistan can be. It’s more than just tribal. The separation among it’s people, even the Pashtuns (by far the largest group) is down to, as I said the level of villages in a given valley or on a hillside. That is their world. They have been taught since they can remember that their own government is some far off thing that makes no difference, and that outsiders who have tried to come in and change their ways are to be resisted to the death because that’s what’s always happened going back centuries. I said in another piece even Genghis Kahn gave up on the notion of conquering the place!
The parallels with Vietnam are eerily tragic. If you’re old enough, remember the term “Vietnamization?” It meant teaching the Vietnamese Army how to fight for their own country. Sadly, when much of the Officer Corps owes their rank to political connections instead of merit and don’t want to be anywhere near real fighting there’s a big problem. And it take generations to develop a tradition of NCO leadership that is such a crucial element in any real, effective national army in any country. In addition to that, in both places we installed an propped up a corrupt regime that didn’t put it’s people first. As a result, even the slimmest of chances to do any so-called nation building was a fool’s errand from the beginning. In Afghanistan the best we could have done was to, once we’d taken out the Taliban’s ability to provide a safe haven for terrorist groups (Al Queeda in particular) was to cut a deal to train and equip an Army and provide a small force and maintain a couple of secure bases/airfields to back them up when they needed help. And handle administrative stuff like paying those Afghan soldiers!
I fear the time may come when we will have to go back in and in large numbers to take down another large terrorist network operating out of that country. Maybe the Taliban learned its lesson from the last time around and won’t allow some outsider from say Saudi Arabia to operate freely from their country. Only time will tell on that.
What I am saddened by though is all the waste. American (mostly) tax dollars, and more importantly the appalling casualties and lives lost. Both ours and that of innocent Afghan civilians and their troops that fought along side ours. But I am also saddened by the fact that it’s not even possible (nor as I said earlier has been for a long time) for us to even have an honest discussion about whether the costs of maintaining a small but permanent presence there might have been worth the humanitarian, diplomatic and ultimately national security gains. A small, properly trained small force with a narrowly defined mission has in the past proven to be within our capabilities. Nation building as we envision it in countries like Afghanistan (or Vietnam) so different from ours and other western democracies was never in the cards, but as with the initial limited objectives of deposing the Taliban and driving Al Queeda out were worth it after 9/11, a limited presence such as we used to have in Syria might one day prove to have been worth it.
That trillion dollars could have bought a high-speed rail network and properly repaired highway network including all the bridges and tunnels, and properly funded education and health systems. Like China did.
On the other hand, the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about is doing very nicely.
“Before I go on, let me say again I always believe our attempt at nation building in Afghanistan was a stupid idea, and it would eventually end pretty much as we’ve seen – just as happened in Vietnam.”
Well, you had a point until you brought up Vietnam in a discussion about the folly of “nation building.” Vietnam had ZERO to do with “nation building.” There were two competing nations already fully established, each claiming full control to the entirety of the territory. By the time the US got formally involved in the conflict, both sides had established fully operating governments (though the survival of both relied heavily on outside military and economic aid). The US never really supported the South’s position on “total control over Vietnam” and pressured the South to give up that idea and accept the idea of two Vietnamese nations. And once the war did end and the two parts were finally reunited, there was only a matter of combining the two existing countries’ services and operations into one single set of services and operations.
Go back and take another look at that country’s history, more specifically going back to Ho Chi Minh even prior to WWII. He was the one who forced the issue of “reunification” and while he was tolerant (and convinced others to be) of outside help after WWII pushed hard to get the French to leave after WWII and even turned to us to help pressure them. We refused to do so and so he went to war and incredibly (to us and others – especially France) got them to say fuck it. But he wanted them and others completely gone from all of Vietnam and for it to be one country. There were enough “leaders” in the south portion who didn’t want rule by Minh and his folks and during the 1950s we stepped in as Minh turned to the Russians for help in driving out foreign influence. Russia of course, like the Chinese (who provided assistance against Japan prior to and during WWII) thought that they would actually call the shots eventually but they were never anything but an ally of convenience. That country has had a long, LONG history of other countries coveting control of it. Yet it has been populated by people who live simple, hard lives who didn’t give any credence to their own countrymen in their capitol city, much less to outsiders from other countries. They just wanted to be left to their lives in the little few square miles of land they lived in.
Those in the south, not just the corrupt leaders but educated people wanted nothing to do with Minh’s having sway over their part of Vietnam and that is why they sought help in fighting back against Minh’s reunification. There are significant differences, but the North and South Korea situation is a parallel – a northern half led by a determined leader willing to sacrifice countless people in a fervent belief that the only foreigners “acceptable” were those willing to drive out everyone else and then leave themselves once the country was firmly under the control of that would be dictator.
While many in the south came to want us gone as much as the north did they quickly came to regret it as Russia was a worse proposition for them. “Americans without dollars” was the lament but war against foreigners who wanted control of their country was something people in both the south and north had grown up learning went back countless centuries.
It took a long while after we left for Vietnam to tamp down Russian efforts to control them and for them to more or less figure out how to make their own way in the new structure emerging in the Pacific rim. Now they have China looking hard at them again but that’s another subject for another time. My point is that South Vietnam didn’t want reunification, at least under Minh’s rule any more than that it wanted the French as colonial masters but for the middle and upper classes the French (and then us) were preferable to Minh. At least in the cities there was some measure of prosperity, although as in so many countries (including our own) too much of the wealth was concentrated in too few hands and that kind of resentment among the working class and poor was no different in Vietnam than any other country you can name.
Again though I dispute your premise that it was South Vietnam that was the aggressor in reunification of that country. Yes, they liked the idea of one Vietnam but wanted nothing to do with a Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh and his followers. Had Minh left things alone the war we wound up fighting would never have become one in which we wound up sacrificing so much.