Take a long hard look at that picture. An American soldier comforting an Afghani infant. The smile. The care with which he is holding the child. Truly, these are the best we have. And they were utterly betrayed.
The efficiency and ferocity of our fighting men and women is legendary. They are technical, tactical and lethal. But they are also Americans and in that spirit, they are kind and compassionate. They will perform superhuman feats just to save an infant that they do not know and may never see again. They deserve so much better than what they were just handed in the rout from Afghanistan.
They know, and the enemy knows, that if cut loose they could win the battles. They also know that the war was always un-winnable. They knew that one day they would exit and that veterans of the conflict would debate for years to come what should or should not have been done, but they deserved to exit on their terms with the honor and dignity that this young soldier is showing. They would have been happy being the last ones out, as these remnants that had to go back in will be. They would have been fine securing a safe exit for the Afghans that helped them, the American diplomats and citizens now behind Taliban lines in Kabul and elsewhere. But instead, they were told to kill the power at Bagram Air Base and leave in the middle of the night without telling the Afghans that were left behind. They obeyed their orders - many of them, I am sure, reluctantly.
You do not have to be a Von Clausewitz to understand the mindset of the Afghan Army. We have known for years that they were only capable of standing up in a fight when American air power backed them up. The moment we pulled the plug on Bagram, they had to know the jig was up and that we would not be providing the air cover they needed to defeat the Taliban. Sadly, we have also known for years that a reasonably high percentage of the Afghan Army was already loosely affiliated with the Taliban. In that neck of the world, your tribe and heritage mean a whole lot more than a national flag. [SIDEBAR: Interesting how the liberals in this country want to turn our society into tribes and away from the national flag.] So, in the face of our betrayal, they folded.
As a nation, we need to get serious again. There are many wolves around the world that would love to become the leaders of the pack of nations - they do not care if we are masking our five year olds. They don’t give a damn if you’ve read any “anti-racist” racist screeds. They seek power. And now, they have seen extraordinary weakness. It will not surprise me in the least to watch China take a swing for Taiwan, Russia try to gain back former satellite nations, and for everyone else to simply take advantage of the dottering old man that wanders aimlessly around our White House.
In a serious nation, what just happened would have immediate consequences. Senior military personnel would be canned. Diplomats that did not provide ample warning would be fired or resign. Intelligence officials that failed would be dumped and Congressional hearings would begin immediately, demanding to understand how the debacle went down and who is to blame. Sadly, instead, we will have some finger pointing, some partisan squabbling and then nothing. Nothing will be done to avert the next adventure that the elite class in DC decides to engage in and send our sons and daughters back into the slobbering jaws of another pointless, un-winnable war.
We haven’t won a war since 1945, but our military has won the overwhelming majority of the battles. Korea devolved into a stalemate where to this day we maintain a throw away force as a “trip wire.” Vietnam was “peace with honor,” until we betrayed the South Vietnamese and refused to back them with air power when the North broke the treaty (sound familiar?) Iraq has been a debacle several times and now comes far Afghanistan, the “graveyard of Empires.” I submit that we haven’t won for two reasons. First, we have lacked the political will to allow our military to do what they do very well - kill people and break things. Remember the First Gulf War when we rolled through the vaunted “Republican Guard,” like a razor through packing tape? We had the capacity to finish the job - march on Baghdad and take Hussein out. But instead, after the images of the Highway to Hell leaked out, we backed away and told him not to bother us again. War, as Sherman noted, is hell. It is ugly and it is done by rough men for rough ends. There is collateral damage. But when you engage in war, the object should always be to bring it to an end as quickly as possible and in a way that your enemy begs for mercy. Once defeated, you can show them kindness - Americans have done this in the past, just look at Europe and Japan.
Second, we have been infected with the notion that everyone wants to be like us and therefore we should help them do so. The vast majority of the“silent sullen peoples” of Afghanistan, could care less that they have the right to vote or that women are finally able to major in women’s studies at a university. Same goes for just about everywhere we’ve been in the “Global War on Terror.” I thought we had learned our lesson about “nation building” with Vietnam, but the smart people were right back telling us how we could do it out of Kabul and Baghdad twenty years later. We must not let them fool us again.
Our anger should be directed at those “smart people.” This is a bi-partisan failure. Bush of the W got us into this mess, Obama, peace be upon him, perpetuated the failure. Trump at least recognized that we had to get out and set us on the course to do just that. But Biden botched the plan and got it completely bass ackwards. So here we are. We have until the end of August to get our people out, we shall see.
But as we lick our wounds, I repeat - the anger must be directed at the source of the problem. It sure as hell is not the rank and file of our military. They are our very best and we owe them gratitude and affection. We owe them the willpower and political force to take care of them and to make the changes necessary to make sure this never, ever happens again.