Afghanistan

I was going to write something about President Biden's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan eventually, but with the sudden fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban to power after twenty years, I have to say something right now.

I think it's obvious that the efforts to put a stable government in Afghanistan has shaky from the start, and there wasn't enough done to get said government on a firm footing.  But with the now-deposed Afghan movement so corrupt (a government President Ghani abandoned) and the troops and national police fighting the Taliban for little more than a paycheck to prop up such a corrupt enterprise, the return of the Taliban was inevitable.  Our few successes - killing Osama bin Laden, integrating women in to the power structure- was overshadowed by the attempts to reform Afghan society, stop attacks in the cities, secure the countryside, and neutralize the Taliban in general that were doomed to failure because we only threw money and weapons at the problem and didn't really get to understand the Afghan people.

I don't think it had to be this way.  We might have been able to find a better way to help the Afghans set up a government and trained them without looking too much like foreign occupiers - the very thing the Afghan people are inclined to resist the most - and get out sooner.  Any hope of securing a stable Afghan government was probably dashed when we unnecessarily invaded Iraq - which, ironically, is working out better than Afghanistan.  Relatively speaking, of course.

One thing I agreed with Trump with was taking action to avoid getting into foreign wars like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In this new age, we have to fight disease and climate change instead of each other, maybe President Biden understands that we can't fight wars like that anymore.  In fact, he made it clear that he didn't want to pass this war on to his successor.

And what happens in Afghanistan going forward is anyone's guess.  But it won't be pretty.

War is Over

The Iraq War is over for real this time.  I was premature - okay, dead wrong - in suggesting over a year ago that the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq in August 2010 would effectively end the conflict and begin a mollified period similar to the fragile peace that followed the 1953 Korean armistice.  In fact, American troop deaths continued, as did violence in Iraq.  But now, it's over.  It's really over.  A war that began with a huge invasion and a roar of public approval whipped up but Republican hawks ended this week with the sound of muted bass notes played at a slow tempo . . . accompanied by the faint sound of "Taps."  The Iraq War cost the lives of 4474 American service personnel, left 32,226 wounded, and cost countless of Iraqi lives.  And it got us nothing except a stronger Iranian influence in the Middle East.  We went into Iraq under false pretenses - that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and may have had something to do with 9/11 - and the Bush White House had us believing we'd enter as liberators and leave a prosperous, first-world nation behind.  The reality could not have been any more different.

The only good thing about this war, aside from the fact that it's over (for us - violence is likely to continue among Iraqis for awhile), is that Iraq veterans are likely to be treated with the dignity and respect that eluded Vietnam veterans.  They also have a wealth of real-world experience that will come in handy in the outside world and make our civilian instituions stronger.  But their maturity came out of a wasteful exercise that took valuable resources from building up our strength at home.  We will not recover from this for a long time. 

Alas, neither will Iraq.