Joe Biden appears to have dodged a bullet. For whatever reason of their own, the Taliban has restrained itself in Kabul, content to see the infidels leave without putting up much resistance. There are reports of gunfire near the airport and some Afghans being detained, but so far the evacuation has gone relatively smoothly after a moment there when many thought the Taliban might want to nab a few hostages and make life miserable for Biden. This is certainly what some conservative pundits hoped.
Nope, the Taliban is playing nice, or at least their version of nice, hoping that they get some international recognition out of this. When they were last in power, 1996-2001, only four countries recognized the Taliban government and the US wasn't among them.
Joe played it smart, he took the blame for the ugly evacuation while at the same time noting we wouldn't be in this mess had not the previous administration negotiated a deal exclusively with the Taliban that greatly emboldened them. Americans for the most part are blaming the collapse of Kabul on George Bush, who got us into this mess in the first place. The Obama administration, which Biden was a part of, couldn't find a way to pull itself cleanly from Kabul without pissing off NATO allies, so eventually it called for an end to combat in 2014, with the idea NATO would train the Afghan military to fend for itself.
Unfortunately, that never happened. The Afghan military suffered nearly 70,000 deaths over the past 20 years, roughly 10 times more than the US and NATO. This appeared to create a major drain on Afghan troop morale. As the Taliban regrouped, especially in the wake of Trump's 2020 deal, the Afghan military became less and less combative, allowing the Taliban to take over large swathes and re-establish their hold on the country. This was sped by Trump ordering the release of Taliban commander Baradar from a Pakistani prison in 2018, when negotiations first began. Baradar is allegedly the mastermind of the Kabul offensive. In 2020, Trump ordered that Afghanistan swap prisoners with the Taliban, which then President Ashraf Ghani was very much against. But, the Afghan government was never part of negotiations. Little wonder Ghani chose to flee rather than stand up to the Taliban when they came knocking at the doors of the Presidential Palace.
The problem with Trump's deal is that the Taliban didn't have to make any real concessions other than they wouldn't impede the withdrawal of American troops. Trump didn't involve NATO anymore than he did the Afghan government. By the end of his tenure, Trump had greatly reduced our presence in Afghanistan, leaving Biden with one of two options. He could restore our presence in the country, satisfying the Afghan government and NATO, essentially consigning the US to four more years of a long protracted war, or honor the agreement and withdraw the American presence entirely. He chose the latter, not wanting this war to hang like a dark cloud over his administration. According to Joe, he advised Barack to pull out during his presidency.
The only problem is that Biden moved the timetable from May to September, and later back to August. The Taliban wanted American forces out of the country as set in the original timetable and swept toward Kabul with even greater vigor now that the US was out of Kandahar and Bagram. This made things particularly thorny for Biden, as Americans and their NATO allies were trapped in Kabul, with the Afghan government no longer in control of the corridor to Pakistan. This meant everyone had to be flown out of the capital, and knowing the Taliban's pension for shoulder rocket launchers, this was a nightmare in the making.
One of the odd calm voices to emerge from this debacle is Taliban spokesman Mujahid, who has offered reassurances, not threats, and even talks to female reporters. He's been a real class act so far, if I can call him that, far more articulate and intelligent than the cacophony of conservative politicians and pundits calling for Joe Biden's head. Among them Donald Trump.
Yet, as John Bolton pointed out, Trump would have gone through with the withdrawal lock, stock and barrel had he been re-elected with most likely the same hasty evacuation. Bolton referred to Trump and Biden as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, saying he was never part of this awful agreement. That's because Afghanistan was perfect for American defense contractors. They had milked this war for two decades to a tune of $2.26 trillion. Bolton, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, would be perfectly happy having this war go on two more decades, although Rummy is no longer around to enjoy it.
Time will give Biden the benefit of the doubt. I'm not so sure about Trump. It wasn't so much that a troop withdrawal was a bad thing, but the former president set no real conditions. He didn't involve the Afghan government, ensuring no power-sharing agreement could be made. Now, the Afghan government is in exile with the Taliban setting the terms.
Like it or not, the Biden administration is forced to recognize the Taliban to avoid any serious hindrance to its evacuation efforts. An estimated 11,000 Americans were in Afghanistan prior to the fall of Kabul, not to mention countless other foreign military and civil workers. The last thing Biden wants is another hostage crisis situation like that Carter had to face with the fall of Tehran in 1979.
Mujahid speaks of peace and reconciliation, but with Baradar now in Afghanistan that remains to be seen. The Taliban has a very hardline view of the Koran, so it is not likely to make too many concessions. However, it craves recognition so we shall see what unfolds in the weeks and months ahead.
Most Republican leaders are more outraged by the collapse of the Afghan government than they are the insurrection attempt that took place on their doorstep this past January. They don't seem to have any qualms bringing more shame upon themselves for their two-faced politics. To hear Republican minority whip Steve Scalise calling for Biden's resignation after the Fall of Kabul was too much. This is a guy who stood idly by when Trump loyalists laid siege to the Capitol, and refused a probe into the riot afterward. Not only that, he voted against certification of Biden's electoral college win. Now, he is calling for a probe into the Fall of Kabul. Predictable, I guess, but no less unsettling.
The real victims in all this are the Afghan people, who were offered a 20-year window of relative peace and prosperity only to see it closed virtually overnight with the Taliban once again having a tailgate party in the streets of Kabul with their Toyota Hiluxes, the official truck of terrorists the world over. Women especially, who have been forced into buying blue burqas at greatly inflated prices. Mujahid promises that women will have educational and professional opportunities within the limits of Sharia law, a very convenient way to duck the question of whether the Taliban will force women into subservient roles once again.
As bad as it all is, the US was never going to reverse the situation in Afghanistan on its own. For decades, the only thing that kept the Afghan government from toppling was the US and NATO presence. This government had neither the will nor the inclination to stand on its own. Ultimately, as Joe Biden said, it was the Afghan government that failed its people, not the US. That's a pretty hard pill to swallow, but I have to say there's a lot of truth in this.
Hamid Karzai was the "interim president" for more than a decade, promising some kind of power-sharing government with the Taliban throughout his tenure. That never happened. Instead, government officials reaped millions in corrupt deals causing widespread resentment throughout the country. When successive elected governments failed to deliver, that unrest grew deeper, allowing the Taliban to regain their footing and ultimately win back support among the outlying provinces. Now, here's Karzai again trying to broker a last-minute deal that is doomed to failure. For Karzai to be blaming the US, which had propped him up all those years, is the height of hypocrisy.
I suppose Joe could have found a way to make the evacuation more smooth, but his state and defense departments felt let down by President Ghani, who had promised to keep the Taliban at bay. With all the firepower the Afghan military had at their disposal, one can understand why the Biden administration felt confident that they had nothing to fear from the Taliban, but then Ghani decided to skip out and the Afghan military folded virtually overnight, leaving the US and NATO forces to deal with the evacuation on their own. After a rough start, the US is now evacuating 6 to 9000 persons per day, hoping to have the process complete by the end of the month.
In a few months, perhaps even a few weeks, this whole sordid chapter in American foreign policy will be forgotten. It wasn't like Americans had even thought about Afghanistan in years. Many considered the war over, if not in 2014 then certainly in 2020. You have disgruntled servicemen and diplomats who now openly question the price they had to pay for this epic failure, but this isn't the first time or will it be the last time we go through such soul searching. For many, "war is the force that gives us meaning," but as Chris Hedges pointed out in his book, it is just a drug that gives people the temporary illusion of overcoming evil, when in reality it is nothing more than a subterfuge.
We should have never been in Afghanistan in the first place. In all likelihood, the Taliban would have undermined itself in a few short years time. Instead, we gave them what they wanted most, a war with the infidels, which only served to more permanently entrench themselves in the country, and make them heroes among the populace, much like the mujahideen during the Soviet war of the 1980s. The sooner we forget about it, the better.
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