“Is President Biden right?”
After 20 years of involvement in a war in Afghanistan, the United States finally withdrew in defeat. Now with the fall of Kabul, the Taliban has taken over the reins of government for the second time after the Afghan president surreptitiously fled to Tajikistan.
The Taliban defeated an Army organized, trained, and equipped by the United States which was on paper much larger than their own. The defeat was so precipitous that even the Americans are at a loss to explain how it could have happened so fast.
The Afghan War, as the Americans call it, is America’s longest war and it should not have been allowed to end the way it did. The images of people in the airport jockeying and rushing to get airplane seats was reminiscent of the rooftop evacuation and chaos during their Vietnam withdrawal in 1975. Those airport scenes will surely damage US prestige in the near and medium term.
Several weeks ago, US President Joe Biden decided to withdraw American military personnel from Afghanistan. It is something that three former American presidents wanted to do but failed to implement.
One reason given by President Biden was that after 20 years of fighting, it is time for the Afghans to be the ones to fight for their country.
Another reason given was that the Americans cannot simply continue fighting a war indefinitely, with no end in sight. At some point, it has to stop.
Is President Biden right?
I believe the decision to withdraw was correct. Biden was also right that the Afghans should fight their own war and not expect someone else to fight their war for them. If the people and former Afghan government believed in their cause, no one can fight the Taliban better than the Afghans themselves.
The way the withdrawal was planned, choreographed, and executed, however, leaves much to be desired. The Afghan withdrawal, regardless of the reasons, gives the impression that the Americans seem not to have learned anything from their many military interventions in many countries since the 1950s.
After 20 years of involvement in the country, one cannot simply leave in the middle of the night without even informing the Afghans who will take over the administration of Bagram air base near Kabul. Whether it was a mistake to have withdrawn so abruptly will become the subject of much debate not only academically, but also politically and militarily in the years to come.
In fact, even when the body is still warm, the recriminations and blame game have already started. The American investment in Afghanistan in terms of blood, treasure, prestige, and standing as an ally may have suffered serious damage in the eyes of many countries because of the way the withdrawal was executed. How was it that an Army numbering 300,000 that the Americans organized in their own image was defeated by a guerrilla army that is much smaller in number without much of a fight? How could the US military and intelligence not detect that morale was practically nonexistent in both the Afghan Army and civil government? With zero morale, it follows that the will to fight would not be there. That is a given.
Now, about 6,000 American military personnel had to go back to secure the airport and assist in the evacuation of American citizens and Afghans who worked for them. Perhaps, the United States which is the preeminent power in the world failed to study and understand what happened to two previous powers that fought the Afghans in three wars in the past.
The British empire in the second half of the 19th century was defeated by the Afghans in two wars. So was the former Soviet Union in the 20th century. It invaded the country in 1979 but had to withdraw in defeat, partly contributing to its eventual collapse. The US will now join the two in having lost to the Afghans in a war.
With the Taliban taking over the reins of power in the country, the world will have to wait and see whether fighting will finally stop after 42 years of continuous combat. Ordinary Afghan citizens remember the brutal rule of the Taliban in the 1990s and are understandably fearful that it will come back. This is especially true with Afghan women.
The US has now failed twice in its attempt to intervene militarily in the affairs of two countries — Vietnam and Afghanistan. The two endings are eerily similar. We see videos of thousands of Afghans trying to escape certain persecution and even death with no third country offering any help at this time.
I am therefore glad that our government is upholding our country’s tradition by offering refuge to a number of Afghan refugees fleeing danger from their country.
