It feels tone-deaf to blog about anything but Afghanistan this morning. I’d rather do what I did during the previous administration’s sheninanigans, i.e., take some time, read opinions on both sides, let the fact-checkers have their day, etc., but the past few weeks have been heartbreaking.

Although I don’t feel prepared to write about this, I’m going to throw a few thoughts at you.

The excuses that the Biden team has made aren’t adding up. I’m in full support of pulling out of Afghanistan, but not like this. We rolled in, years ago, ran out the Taliban, and set up something that more resembles the Western world in that region than ever before, convincing ourselves that these particular bad guys were like all the other bad guys. In a short while, we’d have them under control, we told ourselves.

As soon as we pulled out, the Taliban showed themselves to be just as prolific as ever, undaunted in their drive and ability to fill whatever void we might leave behind. This ordeal reads like the Isrealites walking through the parted sea, surrounded by walls of water that would soon come crashing down soon as the good guys were out of harm’s way.

In a very short while, the Taliban will be in full control of Afghanistan.

Politically speaking, this is a mess, and it’s our fault. But the humanitarian implications of what we’ve perpetrated here are far worse. The Taliban can say whatever about how they plan to run things, but there’s no way they’ve changed their spots. Human rights violations will abound.

The majority of us will watch in safety, blaming whatever political ideology got us to this point, pointing fingers at the people who don’t think like we do, etc., all the while refusing to lift a helping finger.

Taliban 101

There are millions of facets to all of this, but it’s important to note a few significant things that the Taliban has taught us, in a few short weeks, about the Taliban:

First, running them out of the country, hunting them down/doing whatever it is that we’ve been doing for the past 20 years seems to have done little to control them. They haven’t waned or withered in their resolve and ability to sustain a force that can march in and take over an entire country.

Second, because of Taliban fact #1, it doesn’t seem to matter how we exit, a Taliban-run Afghanistan is where this story ends.

In a recent opinion piece, Condoleeza Rice doesn’t agree. From her much more experienced point of view, Afghanistan needed more time, probably a permanent presence, to keep the Taliban at bay. My far-less-seasoned opinion says that we needed to pull out at some point. But the idea that a permanent presence in the Middle East would serve national security is compelling, as is the remainder of Professor Rice’s article.

“In the wake of Kabul’s fall, though, a corrosive and deeply unfair narrative is emerging: to blame the Afghans for how it all ended. The Afghan security forces failed. The Afghan government failed. The Afghan people failed. “We gave them every chance to determine their own future,” President Biden said in his address Monday — as if the Afghans had somehow chosen the Taliban.

No — they didn’t choose the Taliban. They fought and died alongside us, helping us degrade al-Qaeda. Working with the Afghans and our allies, we gained time to build a counterterrorism presence around the world and a counterterrorism apparatus at home that has kept us safe. In the end, the Afghans couldn’t hold the country without our airpower and our support. It is not surprising that Afghan security forces lost the will to fight, when the Taliban warned that the United States was deserting them and that those who resisted would see their families killed.”

She’s also quick to remind us of the extreme sacrifices of our occupation, something we all need to reflect upon:

The past years in Afghanistan have been difficult for every president, our armed forces, our allies and our country. The sacrifices of those who served — and those who died — will forever sear our national memory.

American Intelligence

Our recent decision leaves me with a disturbing question that I haven’t been able to answer. Maybe that’s because I haven’t done enough homework, or because I’m nothing to close to a foreign policy expert. Probably both.

Did we know that Afghanistan was our Red Sea? Were we aware that the walls would come crashing down the moment we left? Or did we simply underestimate the Taliban?

Our hasty and seemingly unorganized exit suggests the latter:

“If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban. The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to Mr. Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks.”

We bailed, fast, and marvelled at the Taliban’s equally hasty homecoming. To add insult to injury, we deployed a bit of political duck tape when we tried to blame things on the Afghan government.

Go figure.

At this point it’s impossible for me to believe that we purposefully and hastily departed in full knowledge of how fast the Taliban would fill our void. Please correct me with whatever is missing for a functional understanding, but I’m convinced, temporarily at least, that we underestimated this group.

I have a fantasy that the administration I helped elect into power simply wanted to get the bad guys all in one place so that the good guys could incinerate them. But I doubt that’s where we’re heading. Fantasies don’t work that way. And I didn’t vote for Biden because I think he’s a brilliant politician, I was (and am) simply convinced that the last president was a dangerous one.

Note that the Trump administration had previously made a deal with the Taliban, promising full troop withdrawal by May of 2021. The agreement also promised, in an act of goodwill, the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners held in custody by Afghan forces.

All of this because we thought – previous administration included – that everything was under control. It’s not, and that should frighten us.

More importantly, the Afghan people will suffer under whatever regime installs itself. That would be true no matter how we left.