Has Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?

[Sheilbh]

Hard to say  - that statement lumps in a lot of very different people in very different context doing pieces of different things over 20 years.

America isn't run by Napoleon; four different Presidential administrations have owned this mess and more cabinet iterations than that; this is before getting into the civil-military interactions and the various responsibilities of the Joint Chiefs, the regional commands, and the combat commands.  You could (e.g.) point a finger at Don Rumsfeld.  But he's dead. And if he was alive he'd say it was never really done the way he would have done it.  Power in America is always divided and fragmented; there are many virtues to that in a democracy, but it does tend to diffuse responsibility.  Accountability is left to elections.  Messy and perhaps unsatisfactory, especially for those who want a few witches to burn, but it's about the best we've figured out for now.

But I don't think we're looking for one witch to burn - any more than just burning Biden really helps. Isn't that exactly Douthat's point?

Responsibility for the failure is diffuse and across civil and military - across not just government but also the private sector and NGOs and international organisations. A lot of those people who have helped contribute to this failure - from liberal hawks in the media to various civil and military or academics - are on the media primarily looking to blame Biden for this messy withdrawal as if it is the singular failure of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean there is no responsibility or no mistakes to learn from.

The lessons need to be learned of what did we get wrong but it's across each of those institutions and sort of all together. Some of that will be political leaders, other bits will be operational. Now I don't know about a purge across institutions, but everyone involved should have their credibility severely dented by this rather than being welcomed onto TV sofas or op-ed pages to opine as foreign policy wise men. Or it would be nice if some of them showed a little humility and explained the mistakes they made rather than being able to pivot so comfortably into the strident explanation of why what Biden's done is wrong (which is the same as their explanation for why withdrawing would be a mistake at any point under any leader for the last 20 years).

I've mentioned before but I have a friend who worked in Bosnia for several years (for one of these NGOs that's been in Afghanistan). I remember him once saying that every Western diplomat or military attache who'd been in Bosnia for more than a year thought there was a reasonable to strong chance of another civil war - that it would not take much of a crisis for the institutions we (the US, the EU, the UN, NATO etc) have carefully cultivated for 25 years to collapse because no-one really buys into them - people buy into their community leadership but not the structure that's meant to hold those groups together. I always thought that might be a little bit overblown but looking at this I'm not so sure.

[The Minsky Moment]

But I don't think we're looking for one witch to burn - any more than just burning Biden really helps.

That's why i used the plural.

Isn't that exactly Douthat's point?

There are 2 points, in tension with each other.  Once is searching for people to shame, punish, and even silence.  Another is to learn from mistakes.  Doing one does not always facilitate the other.

[Sheilbh]

There are 2 points, in tension with each other.  Once is searching for people to shame, punish, and even silence.  Another is to learn from mistakes.  Doing one does not always facilitate the other.

I think they're linked - learning from mistakes also identifies them and some, I think, can in certain circumstances deserve punishment. Similarly I don't think a bit of shame is a bad idea because I don't think we're socially in a place where we can rely on people personally feeling shame or guilt for their own mistakes. But I don't take him literally when he says NGOs and development studies should be burned to the ground I think that's just hyperbole - except maybe their concepts and their basic ideas do need to have a bit of a year zero given that they've got it very wrong.

I don't think asking for a period of silence from the people who've run our policy and implementation in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, until they've actually considered what went wrong
Maybe in different times but I think we live in an age of people not behaving with a great deal of shame and of pivoting - I think it's astonishing for example to see Frum or Bill Kristol or Jennifer Rubin shift from their positions in the early 2000s to heroes of the anti-Trump resistance with no pause over whether, maybe, the politics and policies contributed to this moment. Not to mention that they failed on their own terms. I find it incredible there's no consequence, even in public opinion, for that - at least Kissinger would normally get protesters.

And it's not necessarily silence - but should media outlets reach out to people who've been wildly wrong for twenty years for commentary, or should they maybe focus on the people (who were around - certainly after 2008) saying there were mistakes here.

It seems to be something special about foreign and national security policy. You know we don't really go to the CEOs of banks or the chiefs of financial regulators in 2000-2008 for their commentary on what to do about the financial sector. Fox might because they'll say what'll get the audience going - but I expect better of the rest of the media, unless it's an interview about what went wrong.

Edit: At core I suppose I just don't feel this is a moment that has me thinking "people are really good at self-criticism and dealing with their own mistakes, we should definitely give them a media platform" And I feel that is part of how we have, socially, ended up here.

[alfred russel]

Your comment was that "There is no general as powerful, wise and farsighted as the Armchair variety." If it took him 18 years to figure shit out and say it out loud, that is better than our actual generals.

Except that his 2019 article does not really say the same things as his 2021 article.  His 2019 article did not propose a withdrawal and in 2019, he stated the case for sustainability that he seems to reject in 2021.

But it's also possible that in cutting troop numbers the Pentagon is groping toward sustainability rather than an endpoint — toward some figure that's deemed sufficient to manage stalemate, to preserve certain American objectives and prevent the embarrassment of real defeat.

In that case, despite the similar pattern of deception and denial, Afghanistan could represent something very different from the Vietnam experience. Vietnam proved that despite a certain amount of patriotic naïveté, Americans ultimately wouldn't put up with a seemingly unwinnable war founded on lies and self-delusion. But Afghanistan may yet prove that given an all-volunteer military, the right amount of cynical detachment at home and a low enough casualty rate in the theater itself, Americans will accept a war where there is no prospect for victory, and no clear objective save the permanent postponement of defeat. More even than our Indochina debacle, it could bury George Patton's dictum about our addiction to victory, our contempt for defeat, by proving that 21st-century Americans have learned to swallow stalemate.

In which case the documents published by The Post will tell a story of how policymakers lied their way not toward a Vietnam-style debacle but through a strategic transition — one which, when complete, won't require quite so much official lying, because nobody will even be paying attention anymore.

He was not advocating "sustainability" in 2019. He was arguing that our profoundly dishonest officialdom were hoping for a stalemate to avoid a defeat, and held out the possibility that they might succeed. It is not hard to see how distasteful he found this - just a possible outcome.

Of course it isn't a possible outcome anymore. But it seems self evidently true. If we still maintained a significant military presence in Afghanistan, it is unlikely the Taliban would be in Kabul, even if the cause was just as failed.

[Admiral Yi]

Responsibility for the failure is diffuse and across civil and military - across not just government but also the private sector and NGOs and international organisations. A lot of those people who have helped contribute to this failure - from liberal hawks in the media to various civil and military or academics - are on the media primarily looking to blame Biden for this messy withdrawal as if it is the singular failure of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean there is no responsibility or no mistakes to learn from.

No mention of the Afghan people.

[Neil]

Responsibility for the failure is diffuse and across civil and military - across not just government but also the private sector and NGOs and international organisations. A lot of those people who have helped contribute to this failure - from liberal hawks in the media to various civil and military or academics - are on the media primarily looking to blame Biden for this messy withdrawal as if it is the singular failure of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean there is no responsibility or no mistakes to learn from.

No mention of the Afghan people.

Which makes sense.  Why would you hold the Afghan people responsible for the fall of a deeply unpopular government that was foisted upon them largely against their will?  That's like blaming the collapse of Soviet policy in the Baltics in 1991 on those pesky Lithuanians. 

[Admiral Yi]

Which makes sense.  Why would you hold the Afghan people responsible for the fall of a deeply unpopular government that was foisted upon them largely against their will?  That's like blaming the collapse of Soviet policy in the Baltics in 1991 on those pesky Lithuanians.

Because those deeply unpopular governments were foisted upon them through elections.

[Sheilbh]

No mention of the Afghan people.

No. I mean obviously I think they, unlike the other people I've listed, have borne a lot of the cost. As I mentioned civilian deaths pa have been over 10,000 for the last 6 years and I think the number of civilian deaths has been climbing year on year for over a decade.

But I don't think they really had significant agency in terms of deciding how to structure their state after 2001 - I don't know that they would have chosen a republic with division of powers between three branches etc if it was just up to the Afghan people. But I'd include Ghani, Karzai and the various other corrupt nobs and nabobs we sustained in that criticism because I think they did help shape the type of state we were trying to create but the choice was, ultimately, ours. It was also those institutions from all states, international orgs, private sector contractors, NGOs who were in charge of implementing decisions to try to build and support a durable Afghan state (with certain principles around human rights and democracy). We thought we had the expertise and could do this. As I've mentioned I think there's far too much talk about the ANA and not nearly enough focus on the state that we built, which evaporated in a fortnight.

Maybe that was the only type of option that was available to us because of our politics and values etc - in which case I wonder if we're suited to nation-building in complex or divided societies? I think it worked in Kosovo because one side won - I think everywhere else we've tried to help construct a post-conflict state there are problems and questions of sustainability.

Perhaps we should have been just ruthless and entirely focused on the counter-terrorism side. Or maybe indifferent and basically said that we'd help convene a loya jirga so rely on local powerful figures to decide the nature of the state and support it for stability but that's it. From what I understand that would probably be a monarchy, with a lot of warlord power and not great human rights (not wildly different from other allies in the region). Again I don't think the Afghan people really have agency in that decision.

So I don't think the Afghan people are responsible for the state we built failing to win legitimacy in their eyes anymore than I think they're responsible for the failure of Najbullah's regime to do the same.

I think responsibility isn't necessarily a great framing - but it's clear there is a level of domestic popular support for the Taliban and that there is support for local warlords (as there often is in civil wars). For me the bigger issue is why, after all the money spent and the advice of the best and the brightest from around the world was our alternative not able to build foundations or enough legitimacy to compete with warlordism or the Taliban. I think legitimacy is a bit like a pyramid of needs that starts with basic things: security, trust, economics. In the case of Afghanistan we constructed a state that struggled to provide security outside of the cities against armed insurgent groups, was very corrupt (especially in the bits people interacted with in regular life in the cities - like the police) and was trying to stop the cultivation of a common cash crop. I think - if it delivered on those points (which might have required more support but maybe less money from the West) then you can start to rely on other buttressing bits of legitimacy like elections, rights etc.

Because those deeply unpopular governments were foisted upon them through elections.

When was the last fair election in Afghanistan? I think the last one without significant fraud allegations (or with turnout over 50% - those two factors may be linked) was in 2004.

I think Iraq was a mistake on its own terms, but I think that also played a role here.

But elections on their own mean anything if the state doesn't have popular legitimacy (and, by contrast, a state can have popular legitimacy without elections).

[Admiral Yi]

Well, my impression is there was a lot more *allegation* of electoral fraud (like, every election) than there was substantiated fraud.

But I agree with you that the mission to build a flourishing democracy with protections for women was a pipe dream.  We catered to a small minority of educated Afghans in Kabul.  Like Iran, without the Shah  and SAVAK.

[The Minsky Moment]

He was not advocating "sustainability" in 2019. He was arguing that our profoundly dishonest officialdom were hoping for a stalemate to avoid a defeat, and held out the possibility that they might succeed. It is not hard to see how distasteful he found this - just a possible outcome.

He wasn't advocating in the sense that he didn't take any concrete position on what should be done going forward.  And that is another mark of the armchair general - trenchant critique of the mistakes other have made in the past (once the returns are in and the results undeniable), demands for accountability for their conduct, but all while shying away from takin any responsibility oneself for the hard choices to be made - even the attenuated and cheap responsibility of putting one's credibility on a columnist on the line.

[The Minsky Moment]

Sheilbh - Perhaps our differing responses says more about differences in our respective backgrounds then anything else

I take your point on the Frums and Kristols of the world, but they have received their punishments - more severe than that which could be dealt by lefty bien pesants.  They have been rendered powerless and irrelevant in the very conservative moment they worked to create and shape. From my perspective, jumping on the ashes of their burnt up reputations has little return. America is in a fight for its soul; I'll take allies wherever they can be found, even if they failed to say all their Hail Marys after confession.

[alfred russel]

He was not advocating "sustainability" in 2019. He was arguing that our profoundly dishonest officialdom were hoping for a stalemate to avoid a defeat, and held out the possibility that they might succeed. It is not hard to see how distasteful he found this - just a possible outcome.

He wasn't advocating in the sense that he didn't take any concrete position on what should be done going forward.  And that is another mark of the armchair general - trenchant critique of the mistakes other have made in the past (once the returns are in and the results undeniable), demands for accountability for their conduct, but all while shying away from takin any responsibility oneself for the hard choices to be made - even the attenuated and cheap responsibility of putting one's credibility on a columnist on the line.

He called his shot--the war was unwinnable and the narrative we were getting full of lies. Our options were to leave and watch collapse, or stay indefinitely.

You may dismiss that as trivial, but our leadership was optimistic on the Afghan military holding its own just a few months ago.

[Sheilbh]

Well, my impression is there was a lot more *allegation* of electoral fraud (like, every election) than there was substantiated fraud.

I think it's more than that. In 2009 there were such serious allegations of fraud around the first round (which Karzai claimed to have won 50%+) that he was pressured into doing a run-off/second round but his opponent (Abdullah Abdullah) withdrew because he said he had no faith that there wouldn't be the same fraud. In 2014 the EU sent six observers who said what they observed justified far wider investigations, again Abdullah Abdullah lost. The same result happened in 2019 Ghani narrowly beating Abdullah - and it led to a crisis that the US had to step in and negotiate a solution.

Maybe despite the failure of the Afghan state to establish basic services or a non-corrupt police force, it did succeed in organising fair elections. I think it's more likely they were fair enough for people outside Afghanistan to go along with things.

Even setting that aside though - turnout in 2004 was 85%. In every subsequent election it was around or under 50% - I think that is an indiciation of people's view of the state and perhaps of the elections. It maybe should have set off some alarm bells with Western diplomats, advisers etc as a bit of a canary in the coalmine.

But I agree with you that the mission to build a flourishing democracy with protections for women was a pipe dream.  We catered to a small minority of educated Afghans in Kabul.  Like Iran, without the Shah  and SAVAK.

The point, I think, isn't that it was a pipe dream it might have been possible - but that it was our pipe dream, so if it worked or not is on us. As I say my observation would be that we are not great at building democratic solutions with wide legitimacy and support in divided post-conflict societies. That is really difficult in any circumstance. Afghanistan is an extreme example, but the failure of popular legitimacy - and of it just being a tool for elites within each community to divvy up the gains and swap seats/power - is a criticism I've heard of Bosnia and Northern Ireland as well.

You know this is why I have an issue with the criticism of the ANA rather than the state we built. But would any of us fight for a state that was perceived as not elected in fair elections, that's appealing to Pashtun nationalism to counter the Taliban (I think the ANA was low Pashtuns but I could be wrong), was (rightly) suspected of doing backroom deals with the enemy and was very corrupt?

And I'm not sure Iran is a useful comparison - as you say the situations were different, but also what happened is different. Iran was a revolution and it's not the only revolution were the most committed, the most disciplined and often the most extreme take power during the tumult and then eliminate their enemies.

There's huge differences but the historical parallel I keep thinking of is post-war China/Chinese civil war - where there is this similar incredibly rapid and sort of cascading state collapse. Again it makes me think that we underestimated the corrosive nature of corruption in a state. You know, during the last 20 years there have been several years where the volume of money sent by the international community in aid was larger than Afghanistan's GDP. I think you can have the best controls in the world and that situation will create huge amounts of corruption.

Incidentally - which I only recently found out - weird to think that Afghanistan's had two Presidents who studied at Columbia (Ghani and Taraki of the Communist regime). That's one more than the US has had. It's a bit like in the 60s and 70s when you had loads of LSE or Sorbonne graduates governing countries around the world

[jimmy olsen]

Biden called it 10 years ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1433566975612133376

On the morning of October 9, 2009, Obama learned that he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize. That afternoon, his generals, cabinet, and vice president met with him to debate the war in Afghanistan.

Biden repeatedly posed a key question nobody could answer, but nobody cared

[The Brain]

Now that's a frank, honest discussion right there. A professional telling it like it is. Petraeus 4ever.

Oh wait, he was talking about the Afghan government?