It seems there a lot of conservative folks out there who are impressed with what the Taliban has accomplished in such short order and would like to repeat it in the United States, among them the Navy Seal who claims to have been the one who took Osama bin Laden out. He's changed his tune a little since then, now claiming he would only need nine guys to save Americans still trapped in Kabul. However, the Right-Wingers once consigned to the fringe are raving on the internet how effective the Taliban was in its assault, including "Li'l Fucker" Carlson. These Magaheads believe that the Fall of Kabul represents the end of Liberalism, and the validation of their autocratic conservative principles.
I suppose we need a recap of events to let these Magaheads know the war was generated not under the guise of Liberal principles, but the need to create conflict to validate a gargantuan military industrial complex that helps propel our economy. Dick and Rummy didn't give a rat's ass what kind of government Afghanistan formed in the wake of the 2001 invasion, only that they would allow the US to use the country as a perpetual battle ground. It was only at the halfway point of the Bush administration that Daddy had Junior can Rummy and bring in Robert Gates to shift the foreign policy toward nation building - a "compassionate conservatism" that would turn Afghanistan from a hell hole where hundreds of America's finest had met their dusty deaths to a humanitarian project where we projected our concept of Western Democracy on them. In this way, these American and NATO soldiers didn't die in vain.
But, that's not the way Li'l Fucker tells it, he praised the Taliban for imposing their brand of "masculinity," and saying we failed in Afghanistan "because the entire neoliberal program is grotesque." It's all part of Carlson's narrative that our military has become soft, or "woke" as he likes to say, and no longer has the balls to fight like real men. Coming from this little boarding school brat one can only laugh, but when you get an ex-Navy Seal saying the same thing, the Proud Boys are happy.
For them the Taliban victory is a reaffirmation of their toxic masculine view of the world, where a woman's only purpose is as a sex surrogate. They love nothing more than being around other men, but can't quite bring themselves to sodomize each other. The Taliban imposing their patriarchal will on the country is a wet dream for these Proud Boys.
It's all too appalling for words but I feel the need to counter it somehow. Of course any attempt to apply reason is like pissing into the wind, but what gets me is how they all conveniently forget who started this war, how many deaths have occurred, and how their dear MAGA leader breathed second life into the Taliban by pursuing a deal with them that led to the release of the principal military commander and 5000 foot soldiers. This is how the Taliban managed to take over the country so fast, as the US had shifted to a non-combat role in 2014, leaving the burden of the civil war to the Afghan army, which had lost over 60,000 men, and appeared to be burned out after 20 years of continuous war.
Had Trump even bothered to consult the Afghan government, not to mention NATO allies, most likely the Afghan government would still be in place and we wouldn't be going through this harrowing ordeal. We might have been able to negotiate an armistice, but instead Trump gave the Taliban everything they wanted with very few conditions. He recounts the conversation he had with the Taliban military commander Baradar in his own unique way to Hugh Hewitt, seeming to have forgotten that it was him who let Baradar out of a Pakistani prison. Trump tries to explain that if only he was still president, the whole evacuation would have gone smooth in silk because the Taliban loves him.
The fact that he is suffering from vascular dementia aside, Trump seems to think the Taliban are a swell bunch of guys. He offered nothing but praise for them in his interview with Sean Hannity. The conservative media plays along with him, either because they decided not to argue with a doddering old fool or because they actually believe him. I understand that authoritarian regimes are greatly appealing to these conservative pundits and the proud boys that listen to them, but I would think the Taliban is a bridge too far. It really makes you take pause when you consider how deadly the January 6 insurrection could have been if these guys had been similarly emboldened.
Of course, that insurrection has become lost in the news cycle as the media remains fixated on Kabul, anticipating the next suicide bomber as they do the landfall of Hurricane Ida. They don't want to miss the carnage. News reporters have become no more than glorified ambulance chasers.
What's worse is how European leaders have jumped all over Biden, believing he could have averted this disaster, when the wheels had already been set in motion by the previous administration. I guess they somehow thought Biden would reverse Trump's Taliban deal, and help stabilize the Afghan government so that this civil war could go on another four years.
The Taliban long held control of many outlying provinces and had been contesting many more for years, but for the most part EU leaders turned a blind eye to it. This didn't happen overnight, it just felt that way because no one seemed to anticipate the Afghan army crumbling so quickly. NATO bears much of the blame, as they were charged with making this army into an elite fighting force that would be able to control the country. However, it seems the Afghan military was never anything more than a paper tiger, used primarily to give jobs to disgruntled unemployed men, which the Taliban was easily able to infiltrate, as this 2012 article notes had been going on for a long time. This was one of the reasons there were so many fatal attacks on Afghan army bases.
No, Li'l Fucker, this isn't the death of Liberalism. It's what happens when you only make a half-hearted effort at nation building, not that we should have ever engaged in it in the first place. This was never supposed to be anything more than a counter-terrorism strike, but morphed into a nation building exercise when the war began to drag longer than it should and the Bush administration and NATO struggled for justification to keep their forces in Afghanistan.
We were all so heartened by the seemingly benevolent leadership of Hamad Karzai, who each month promised his country and the world that peace was at hand, if only NATO remained there to back him up. He finally stepped down in 2014 after a tumultuous 13-year "temporary" tenure, and with it the patience of the rest of the world in any kind of long-term peace prospects, as the new Afghan government seemed even more hopelessly corrupt and inept.
Trump just sped up the process by giving the Taliban the green light when his administration first began negotiations with the enemy in 2019. He was even going to invite the Taliban to Camp David at one point, until that secret meeting became public. John Bolton tried to point out the folly in these secret negotiations but he was outranked by Pompous Mike Pompeo. This must have made Dick and Rummy's tummies churn.
In retrospect, I think Trump imagined he had another shot at the Nobel Peace Prize, hoping to reprise the same press coverage he got when he recognized the North Korean regime, as the international awards were right around the corner. Instead, he got derided from all sides but that didn't stop him from pursuing the deal, as he wanted to live up to at least one of his campaign promises in getting our troops out of "forever wars." But, when he lost the election in 2020, he no longer seemed to care, too caught up in his own self-pity.
If pulling out of Afghanistan had been so important to him, why didn't he pursue this policy when he first came into office, or simply pulled the plug in Afghanistan like he did in the Kurdish-held province of Iraq, leaving everything behind for the Russians and Turks to parse out between them? No, he made an oddly protracted deal that gave the Taliban the time they needed to launch their final assault. No wonder Baradar loves Trump.
Mercifully, this is all taking place more than a year out from the midterm elections so that by next summer all will be forgotten. Republicans will try to reprise the awful events in attack ads, but if they think the insurrection is yesterday's news, then why should we be that worried about Afghanistan? This evacuation was long overdue and I believe most Americans will be very happy to finally have this "forever war" behind us, no matter how atrocious the Taliban turn out to be.
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