The bookends of our two-decade entanglement in Afghanistan are two men falling from the sky. The first, on September 11, 2001, happened in Manhattan, as a figure facing imminent immolation in a skyscraper chose to jump instead. The second we witnessed this week, as another young human body, losing what grip he had on an airplane taking off from Kabul airport, tumbled through the sky for the last moments of his life. Their deaths were both a function of one thing: resurgent theocratic barbarism. And today, they can be seen as punctuating its resilience.
Between these two horrors, we have the story of the West’s attempt to save Afghanistan from itself, to direct and control this non-country from outside. We failed. Everyone who has ever tried this Sisyphean task has failed. We lost the war long ago, and had conceded defeat already. Despite extraordinary sacrifices by Americans and Afghans and Brits and others, a viable, stable, less-awful alternative to Taliban rule existed only so long as it was kept on life support by the West — and not a day longer.
Our swift victory in the winter of 2001/2 soon became a circle of pointlessness, with al Qaeda underground, Bin Laden in Pakistan, and a Western-designed “government” wallowing in a fathomless pit of corruption. We should have left then, instead of flattering George W Bush’s utopian “nation-building”. Obama should have done the deed in his first term, but he figured he couldn’t end two wars at once, and tried to turn the Afghan project into a moral calling, as he drone-killed thousands. He caved — against Biden’s advice — to the blandishments of the top brass and the piety of the Blob. Trump should have done it — as he promised — but Trump couldn’t even build a wall. And real battle and conflict — along with real accountability that executing withdrawal would have demanded? Trump ran away from all of that for four years.
We can flagellate ourselves over this — and the futility of it all seems heartbreakingly obvious in retrospect — but it was not ignoble. Two difficult things can be true at the same time. Lives were saved, minds were opened a little, women breathed freer air for a while, bodies were less frequently bludgeoned by torture and barbarism, and souls were less stricken with constant dread. We know this because of so many glimpses of hopeful humanity these past two decades, from schoolgirls to voters, and because of what we just witnessed: a flood of people fleeing in panic and terror from the regime that comes next. Even a futile project can do some good — for a while.
But we also know that countless Afghans, exhausted by the incompetence and kleptocracy of their own government, unmoved by Western liberalism, had, over the last year, swiftly made deals with the winning party as it swept through all the provincial capitals. And we know the putative Afghan president ran like Sir Robin the moment he feared he might face the music and lose his life as well as his access to his well-padded international bank account. The final days proved the Potemkin emptiness of the entire project.
Of course, we should have gotten our people out before the Taliban’s imminent victory — all the Americans and every single Afghan who helped us. That we didn’t is horrifying. To contemplate this betrayal is to shudder. Think of the family of an interpreter now hiding from the Taliban; think of the girls who dreamed of careers; think of the gay men about to be murdered; think of the boys we are now effectively consigning to sexual abuse (as we had already, anyway). Some Americans glibly talk of “oppression” in this country as if they have any idea of what that word actually means. They should turn on the television and learn something.
We will soon have a better idea of exactly how this disastrous exit happened, how faulty the intelligence was, how deaf the White House might have been to the warnings, why the visas for our friends took so long to process, and so on. I’ve learned not to jump the gun on these stories, when we don’t yet know all the details. But if Biden delayed evacuation and refugee plans because he was spooked by Republican anti-immigrant rhetoric, he’s an idiot. If he delayed exit to coincide with 9/11’s anniversary, he’s way out over his skis. And if the military’s decades-long disinformation, bullshit and feel-good blather blinded us to reality in Afghanistan, they deserve a long-overdue shellacking too.
Between these two horrors, we have the story of the West’s attempt to save Afghanistan from itself, to direct and control this non-country from outside. We failed. Everyone who has ever tried this Sisyphean task has failed. We lost the war long ago, and had conceded defeat already. Despite extraordinary sacrifices by Americans and Afghans and Brits and others, a viable, stable, less-awful alternative to Taliban rule existed only so long as it was kept on life support by the West — and not a day longer.
Our swift victory in the winter of 2001/2 soon became a circle of pointlessness, with al Qaeda underground, Bin Laden in Pakistan, and a Western-designed “government” wallowing in a fathomless pit of corruption. We should have left then, instead of flattering George W Bush’s utopian “nation-building”. Obama should have done the deed in his first term, but he figured he couldn’t end two wars at once, and tried to turn the Afghan project into a moral calling, as he drone-killed thousands. He caved — against Biden’s advice — to the blandishments of the top brass and the piety of the Blob. Trump should have done it — as he promised — but Trump couldn’t even build a wall. And real battle and conflict — along with real accountability that executing withdrawal would have demanded? Trump ran away from all of that for four years.
We can flagellate ourselves over this — and the futility of it all seems heartbreakingly obvious in retrospect — but it was not ignoble. Two difficult things can be true at the same time. Lives were saved, minds were opened a little, women breathed freer air for a while, bodies were less frequently bludgeoned by torture and barbarism, and souls were less stricken with constant dread. We know this because of so many glimpses of hopeful humanity these past two decades, from schoolgirls to voters, and because of what we just witnessed: a flood of people fleeing in panic and terror from the regime that comes next. Even a futile project can do some good — for a while.
But we also know that countless Afghans, exhausted by the incompetence and kleptocracy of their own government, unmoved by Western liberalism, had, over the last year, swiftly made deals with the winning party as it swept through all the provincial capitals. And we know the putative Afghan president ran like Sir Robin the moment he feared he might face the music and lose his life as well as his access to his well-padded international bank account. The final days proved the Potemkin emptiness of the entire project.
Of course, we should have gotten our people out before the Taliban’s imminent victory — all the Americans and every single Afghan who helped us. That we didn’t is horrifying. To contemplate this betrayal is to shudder. Think of the family of an interpreter now hiding from the Taliban; think of the girls who dreamed of careers; think of the gay men about to be murdered; think of the boys we are now effectively consigning to sexual abuse (as we had already, anyway). Some Americans glibly talk of “oppression” in this country as if they have any idea of what that word actually means. They should turn on the television and learn something.
We will soon have a better idea of exactly how this disastrous exit happened, how faulty the intelligence was, how deaf the White House might have been to the warnings, why the visas for our friends took so long to process, and so on. I’ve learned not to jump the gun on these stories, when we don’t yet know all the details. But if Biden delayed evacuation and refugee plans because he was spooked by Republican anti-immigrant rhetoric, he’s an idiot. If he delayed exit to coincide with 9/11’s anniversary, he’s way out over his skis. And if the military’s decades-long disinformation, bullshit and feel-good blather blinded us to reality in Afghanistan, they deserve a long-overdue shellacking too.
