For years, U.S. officials used a shorthand phrase to describe America’s mission in Afghanistan. It always bothered me: We are there to train the Afghan Army to fight for their own government.
That turned out to be shorthand for everything that was wrong with our mission — the idea that Afghans didn’t know how to fight and just one more course in counterinsurgency would do the trick. Really? Thinking you need to train Afghans how to fight is like thinking you need to train Pacific Islanders how to fish. Afghan men know how to fight. They’ve been fighting one another, the British, the Soviets or the Americans for a long, long time.
It was never about the way our Afghan allies fought. It was always about their will to fight for the corrupt pro-American, pro-Western governments we helped stand up in Kabul. And from the beginning, the smaller Taliban forces — which no superpower was training — had the stronger will, as well as the advantage of being seen as fighting for the tenets of Afghan nationalism: independence from the foreigner and the preservation of fundamentalist Islam as the basis of religion, culture, law and politics. In oft-occupied countries like Afghanistan, many people will actually prefer their own people as rulers (however awful) over foreigners (however well intentioned).
“We learn again from Afghanistan that although America can stop bad things from happening abroad, it cannot make good things happen. That has to come from within a country,” said Michael Mandelbaum, a U.S. foreign policy expert and the author of “Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era.”
[That is so true. American presidents should be made to recite that along with the oath of office when they are inaugurated.]
… I’d invoke one of my ironclad rules about covering the Middle East: When big events happen, always distinguish between the morning after and the morning after the morning after. Everything really important happens the morning after the morning after — when the full weight of history and the merciless balances of power assert themselves.
And so it will be in Afghanistan — for both the Taliban and President Biden.
Let’s start with the Taliban. Today, they are having a great morning-after celebration. They are telling themselves they defeated yet another superpower.
But will the Taliban simply resume where they left off 20 years ago — harboring Al Qaeda, zealously imposing their puritanical Islam and subjugating and abusing women and girls? Will the Taliban go into the business of trying to attack U.S. and European targets on their soil?
[The thought is expressed as a question which suggests doubt. It is the same thought I danced around expressing on that “terror” article. Friedman, inexplicably to me, cites that for evidence that this is the same ol’ same ol’ Taliban. I read that article as contradicting its lede.]
I don’t know. I do know they just inherited responsibility for all of Afghanistan. They will soon face huge pressure to deliver order and jobs for Afghans. And that will require foreign aid and investment from countries that America has a lot of influence with — Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the European Union nations… They might want to keep the White House phone number on speed dial.
[I was surprised that on Saturday(!) the U.S. and the Taliban were negotiating!]
“The post-2001 Taliban have proved to be a learning, more political organization that is more open to the influence of external factors,” said Thomas Ruttig in a paper for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, according to The Washington Post.
We’ll see. The early signs — all sorts of Taliban abuses — are not promising.
[I clicked on the link and it was the “terror” article.]
But we need to watch how, and if, they fully establish control. The Taliban’s main beef with America is that we were in their country. Let’s see what happens when we’re gone.
Maybe on the morning after the morning after, the Taliban will just order them all [women] back under burqas and shut their schoolrooms. But maybe they will also encounter pushback from wives and daughters that they’ve never encountered before — precisely because of the social, educational and technological seeds of change planted by the United States over the last 20 years. I don’t know.
[Friedman’s going all flat earth now. I don’t think the proliferation of cell phones is going to spawn chapters of Afghans for Democratic Action among the Taliban. I would be shocked if they don’t force women into burquas again, c’mon. And I would be okay, as between evils, if they “merely” closed girls schools. But I second Friedman’s “I don’t know."]
And what if all of the most educated Afghans try to emigrate — including civil servants, plumbers, electricians, computer repair experts and car mechanics — and the morning after the morning after, the country is left with a bunch of barely literate Taliban thugs to run the place? What will they do then?…
As for the Biden team, it is hard to imagine a worse morning after for it in Kabul. Its failure to create a proper security perimeter and transition process, in which Afghans who risked their lives to work with us these past two decades could be assured of a safe removal to America — not to mention an orderly exit for foreign diplomats, human rights activists and aid workers — is appalling and inexplicable.
[Ditto.]
… I’d invoke one of my ironclad rules about covering the Middle East: When big events happen, always distinguish between the morning after and the morning after the morning after. Everything really important happens the morning after the morning after — when the full weight of history and the merciless balances of power assert themselves.
And so it will be in Afghanistan — for both the Taliban and President Biden.
Let’s start with the Taliban. Today, they are having a great morning-after celebration. They are telling themselves they defeated yet another superpower.
But will the Taliban simply resume where they left off 20 years ago — harboring Al Qaeda, zealously imposing their puritanical Islam and subjugating and abusing women and girls? Will the Taliban go into the business of trying to attack U.S. and European targets on their soil?
[The thought is expressed as a question which suggests doubt. It is the same thought I danced around expressing on that “terror” article. Friedman, inexplicably to me, cites that for evidence that this is the same ol’ same ol’ Taliban. I read that article as contradicting its lede.]
I don’t know. I do know they just inherited responsibility for all of Afghanistan. They will soon face huge pressure to deliver order and jobs for Afghans. And that will require foreign aid and investment from countries that America has a lot of influence with — Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the European Union nations… They might want to keep the White House phone number on speed dial.
[I was surprised that on Saturday(!) the U.S. and the Taliban were negotiating!]
“The post-2001 Taliban have proved to be a learning, more political organization that is more open to the influence of external factors,” said Thomas Ruttig in a paper for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, according to The Washington Post.
We’ll see. The early signs — all sorts of Taliban abuses — are not promising.
[I clicked on the link and it was the “terror” article.]
But we need to watch how, and if, they fully establish control. The Taliban’s main beef with America is that we were in their country. Let’s see what happens when we’re gone.
Maybe on the morning after the morning after, the Taliban will just order them all [women] back under burqas and shut their schoolrooms. But maybe they will also encounter pushback from wives and daughters that they’ve never encountered before — precisely because of the social, educational and technological seeds of change planted by the United States over the last 20 years. I don’t know.
[Friedman’s going all flat earth now. I don’t think the proliferation of cell phones is going to spawn chapters of Afghans for Democratic Action among the Taliban. I would be shocked if they don’t force women into burquas again, c’mon. And I would be okay, as between evils, if they “merely” closed girls schools. But I second Friedman’s “I don’t know."]
And what if all of the most educated Afghans try to emigrate — including civil servants, plumbers, electricians, computer repair experts and car mechanics — and the morning after the morning after, the country is left with a bunch of barely literate Taliban thugs to run the place? What will they do then?…
As for the Biden team, it is hard to imagine a worse morning after for it in Kabul. Its failure to create a proper security perimeter and transition process, in which Afghans who risked their lives to work with us these past two decades could be assured of a safe removal to America — not to mention an orderly exit for foreign diplomats, human rights activists and aid workers — is appalling and inexplicable.
[Ditto.]
But ultimately, the Biden team will be judged by how it handles the morning after the morning after. Biden made a claim — one that was shared by the Trump team — that America would be more secure and better able to deal with any terrorist threats if we were out of Afghanistan than if we stayed embedded there, with all the costs of people, energy and focus.
The Biden team essentially said that the old way of trying to secure America from Middle East terrorists through occupation and nation building doesn’t work and that there is a better way. It needs to tell us what that way is and prove it out the morning after the morning after.
[Ditto, ditto, ditto.]
…
But the theory [Bush’s nation-building] relied on there being enough Afghans willing to sign on for more such pluralism. Many were. But too many were not. So Biden determined that we needed to stop this effort, leave Afghanistan and readjust our defense strategy. I pray that he is right. But he will be judged by what happens the morning after the morning after.
…
But the theory [Bush’s nation-building] relied on there being enough Afghans willing to sign on for more such pluralism. Many were. But too many were not. So Biden determined that we needed to stop this effort, leave Afghanistan and readjust our defense strategy. I pray that he is right. But he will be judged by what happens the morning after the morning after.
