The Afghanistan bugout: the GOP “hawks” called this one
When you look back at the reactions to Biden’s fateful April 14, 2021 announcement of a plan to pull out of Afghanistan by 9/11, you will find that almost the only people criticizing it at the time (the article appeared the day after) were those much-excoriated neocons:
[Lindsey] Graham is among the most passionate deniers of Biden’s decision for troop withdrawal, calling it “dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous.”
President Biden will have, in essence, canceled an insurance policy against another 9/11,” Graham said in a statement reported by The Hill.
He went on to say that a residual counterterrorism force would essentially be the US’s insurance policy against the rise of radical Islam in Afghanistan. This insurance, if taken away, he said, could pave the way for “another attack against our homeland or our allies.”
Graham continued to repeat claims that a US withdrawal from Afghanistan would spark another 9/11 in a Fox News interview, telling Sean Hannity that Afghanistan will “disintegrate into civil war.”…
Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell said: “The administration decided to abandon U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, which have helped keep radical Islamic terrorism in check. And bizarrely, they’ve decided to do so by September the 11th.”
“Apparently, we’re to help our adversaries ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by gift-wrapping the country and handing it right back to them,” he added.”
He went on to call the withdrawal of US forces a “retreat in the face of an enemy that has not yet been vanquished, and an abdication of American leadership.”
Well, they get to say “I told you so.” That’s scant comfort, though.
There are others in that article, too: Liz Cheney of course, and Jim Inhofe (“No one wants a forever war, but I’ve consistently said any withdrawal must be conditions-based”). At least one Democrat, military veteran Tammy Duckworth, protested as well: “You don’t tell your enemy what your actions are going to be that’s just common sense.” And Mitt Romney, with whom I have disagreed over so many things ever since he entered the Senate, was right about this one:
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney opposes President Joe Biden’s plan to pull American troops from Afghanistan, putting him at odds with other GOP members of Utah’s congressional delegation…
…Romney said the president’s decision to withdraw all troops by September is an error that could have serious consequences for U.S. national security interests.
“The U.S. and our allies maintain a small number of troops with an outsized ability to prevent the Taliban from providing terrorist groups like al-Qaida and ISIS the ability to train and flourish,” Romney said in a statement.
I didn’t write anything in reaction to Biden’s April speech, but my viewpoint on withdrawing from Afghanistan was similar to that expressed in all these quotes, and it was summarized in this post from four years ago and never substantially changed.
The Neocons can remain seated. When David f****** Frum is now saying the entire endeavor was pointless, the Neocons have a problem. They shouldn’t get a treat because their clock has been broken since, well, ever.
The only issue is that the people who weren’t criticizing it assumed that there was a withdrawal plan that managed to pass the Does It Sound Stupid To A Five-Year-Old test. We have since been painfully disabused of such a notion, though perhaps it was all foreseeable given President Magoo’s record over the past fifty years, and a senior military leadership with hideously misplaced priorities – neither of which the Neocons were basing their objections upon.
Biden claimed that his only choice was pulling out, no matter what, or sending tens of thousands of troops back to Afghanistan. Yet later in his speech he stressed the need for counterterrorism efforts in Africa and elsewhere, carried out by small deployments of military specialists. In essence he seems to argue that we can and should have small deployments anywhere they’re needed — except in Afghanistan. There his only options were between total retreat and massive invasion. This seems a false dichotomy.
gmmay70:
I could not disagree more.
And I could not care less about David Frum. The “neocons” are not a unitary bunch with unitary ideas. I’ve written tons about this and am not going to go into it again, except to say that, and also that although some are really awful (Frum, for example) many are not.
Obviously this was an extraordinarily stupid way to pull out. But any complete pullout was doomed. I think it is a wishful-thinking dream to believe otherwise. A plan for complete withdrawal, even one that “managed to pass the Does It Sound Stupid To A Five-Year-Old test,” would still have allowed the Taliban to take charge of the country and to further the terrorist aims. I can think of no complete withdrawal that would not have done so. Nor have you suggested one.
Some day, yes. But not in the foreseeable future, and not without retaining some air power potential nearby.
And no, you don’t read their minds. I see no lack of awareness of Biden’s enormous flaws. I’m sure some of them are not as critical of the military as they should be, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t and shouldn’t have maintained a small force there at less risk and cost than our complete leavetaking would have been, no matter who planned that leavetaking.
In a press conference on Tuesday Banks, a member of the US House of Representatives who served in Afghanistan, launched a stinging attack on president Joe Biden and his administration.
“My job there was as a foreign military sales officer so I was on the front lines of acquiring the equipment that the Americans turned over to the Afghan army and the Afghan police,” Banks says in the video shared by Mercer and Morgan.
“I’m going to read to you what is so painful for me and so many other Afghan veterans who served in that capacity, others who served as part of the train, advise and assist equip effort as part of helping the Afghans.
“We now know that, due to the negligence of this administration, the Taliban now has access to over $85billion worth of US military equipment.
“That includes 75,000 vehicles, over 200 aeroplanes and helicopters, over 600,000 small arms and light weapons.
https://twitter.com/JohnnyMercerUK/status/1430963234845118469?s=20
Up to 100 Afghans airlifted by Biden are on terror watch lists
https://foxhole.news/2021/08/28/up-to-100-afghans-airlifted-by-biden-are-on-terror-watch-lists/
All those in the hands of the “terrorists”
We shall have to agree to disagree then.
“The “neocons” are not a unitary bunch with unitary ideas.”
Of course no label accurately describes an individual within group. But “Neocons” serves as an accurate cognitive shortcut, particularly on this matter. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say that “some of them are truly awful”, only that they lack any sort of foreign policy credibility within the party to which they have metastasized.
“A plan for complete withdrawal, even one that “managed to pass the Does It Sound Stupid To A Five-Year-Old test,” would still have allowed the Taliban to take charge of the country and to further the terrorist aims. I can think of no complete withdrawal that would not have done so.”
I’m not sure of anyone arguing for a pull-out who claimed the country wouldn’t regress to Taliban control (besides Biden). The issue is that we had no business over there trying to convince 7th century barbarians that 16 point UN plans for sustainable development were going to work within our lifetimes, and that spending any more blood and treasure on such foolhardy schemes was a waste.
“Nor have you suggested one.”
As someone who has experience with military planning – there’s not enough room in your comments section for a satisfactory “suggestion”. But since you seem to think I’m obligated to offer such a “suggestion” in a blog comment, I’ll give a brief one: State arranges for all Americans to be evacuated, followed by Afghan “partners”; Defense deploys additional troops for withdrawal operations; Defense allocates appropriate resources for withdrawing civilians; Defense executes civilian withdrawal phase; Defense executes military withdrawal. It’s not a difficult order, but one that Biden’s admin clearly botched.
Maintaining a small force in Afghanistan?? I’m not sure I have a charitable way to describe such an idea. Perhaps you’ve written on that elsewhere, so I can perhaps see a more fleshed out version?
And no, I’m not confusing Neocons and NeverTrumpers. Are you perhaps still clinging to some of your past positions?
gmmay70:
I am referring to a plan that would have stopped the Taliban from taking charge once again and the terrorists from using it as headquarters. You have no such plan and apparently no interest in it. I think it is necessary.
But even I would be able to come up with a better complete leavetaking plan than Biden’s abominable one. But I can’t come up with one that doesn’t leave us very vulnerable. I have read proposals for leaving a fairly small but not tiny force there that would be basically preventative in nature and would include air support.. Retired Colonel Austin Bay has written several articles quite recently on the subject
That is my goal there, and at this point that is the sole goal of the vast majority of the so-called “neocons.” My views have not changed in many many years.
“Neocons” became a misleading term a long time ago. I’ve written many posts about that and am not going to repeat myself except to say that it has become a worthless all-purpose and common pejorative.
I already have proven I have no need to cling to outdated ideas because I’m incapable of changing my mind. In this case, I continue to think that we need a terrorist deterrant there. I would change my mind if and when it seems otherwise.
gmmay70:
By the way, I had removed my question about whether you might be confusing neocons with nevertrumpers about 3 seconds after I wrote it, because I decided it probably didn’t fit. That was before I read your later response. I will say, though, that I’ve seen many people use the terms interchangeably. However, I’ve seen no evidence that you are one of them.
Neocons don’t have a lock on common sense. Once the info that our deaths were low and that the Afghans under our air support were keeping the Taliban down and given that the Taliban hadn’t changed, no other recourse existed under America’s current attitudinal constraints. But that ignores the astronomical sums we’ve been paying to a corrupt Afghan government and to Pakistan.
Danegeld, jizya, i.e. payoff money is a strategy with an expiration date. Why take a cut, when you can own the business?
The idea of a small force that can stop the Taliban from taking charge again is pure fantasy. Air support is not magic, and any effective occupation force (no matter how small) requires boots on the ground. The culture in Afghanistan doesn’t support the various Western schemes I’ve seen floated by people who don’t seem to learn lessons.
And you certainly can’t use a small force to keep the Taliban from becoming de facto rulers. At best you end up with a contingent of forces that it becomes a challenge just keeping supplied, let alone an effective counter terrorism, a “deterrent”, or “preventative” force in a country the size, culture, and geographic character of Afghanistan.
“I think it is necessary“
To stay in Afghanistan FOREVER?
Spending tens of billions of dollars on a useless regime FOREVER?
Having some number of Americans killed in Afghanistan FOREVER?
There’s no other place on Earth terrorists can train and plan? There’s no way for us to keep an eye out that doesn’t involve a permanent military presence in Afghanistan?
No, the neocons can sit down, shut up, and never speak again. They were in charge of Afghanistan. Not Biden. Not Trump. As bad as Biden’s choices were, Afghanistan collapsed because of 20 years of utter neocon failure. All keeping American forces in Afghanistan was accomplishing was allowing the neocons to disguise their disgrace.
Mike
To stay in Afghanistan FOREVER?
I see it’s time for another trademark MBunge rant on “Neocons are sooo stupid.”
Who said forever, or FOREVER — as you put it in scream-caps? Followed by a von Daniken series of rhetorical questions.
Get yourself a math book and learn the difference between a few multiples of ten and infinity.
We still have bases in Germany and South Korea, you know.
@MBunge:
Had gotten the vague idea that you lacked fans in these parts because skimmed over the occasional pile-on.
Well, I read this one and it all makes sense now :P.
One is minded of Cromwell’s speech to the Rump Parliament:
https://speakola.com/political/oliver-cromwell-speech-dismissing-rump-parliament-1653
(Although there is a wee not-so-deeply-buried Irony where Cromwell is concerned… but another day for that one.)
The Old Left and the Corrosive Progressive Left are easy enough to delineate and deal with given the right conditions given that one day they will push that one micron too far and unleash the strictly domestic likes of that which they cannot conceive.
The slavering Neocons and associated Forever War types though… They’d sooner burn the USA to the ground than stop being the Scorpion on the Frog’s back. It’s their nature. And besides the money is good.
@huxley:
“We still have bases in Germany and South Korea, you know.”
But what for?
Germans almost single-handedly bankroll Big Bad Bubbe Raping Putin by buying up his Gas. South Koreans in 2021 perfectly capable of defending themselves and are ever-increasingly cozying up to China anyway.
There’d be nothing better than North Korea trying it on with a South sans US Tripwire — would keep the PRC busy for half a decade sorting it out.
I suppose it’s possible that keeping bases in Korea stops those maniacs from having a go at Japan — Korean hatred cannot be underestimated and is reason number eleventy-nine they’d pile on with China if unattended push came to shove. Still… heavy price to pay for subsidizing all that offshoring with very little gratitude or much of anything else to show for it.
It’s all a business. Lots of folks (not called Huxley) make very good livings out of the Empire. For example, here is the tip (only, mind you) of just one iceberg:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/singapore-executives-sentenced-fraud-international-navy-corruption-scandal
These guys were giving away ship movements to foreign agents for bribes. Outermost layer of the onion was a kickback scheme for repairs and provisioning.
Zaphod:
Maybe we don’t need bases in Germany and South Korea at this point. I’d have to think about it. We’d have to think about it.
But unless your argument is we should just have bugged out of G & SK (and Japan) as soon as hostilities ceased, it becomes another annoyingly difficult pragmatic debate based on the ongoing merits.
Yes, I get brave men died for this and that and the rest. I am not worthy… standard disclaimers, etc. But that’s history. Now it’s mostly a business. And a sordid one at that.
@Huxley:
Obviously not as soon as hostilities ceased. But I think we have circled in on a problem faced by democracies as well as empires and perhaps all the more pernicious when both are combined: they’re not good at stopping doing things which made sense once but don’t make sense now. It’s often very difficult to mark the exact moment in time when something stopped making sense and I’m not going to try in these two cases (although 1990s would seem obvious in *hindsight*). Still, the Big Thing is to not keep compounding errors.
Zaphod:
No. I appreciate the brave men and all that. But that’s not my point.
For instance, I’d say it was important to keep bases in Germany after VE-Day to prevent Nazis from reassembling and the USSR from rolling up the rest of Europe.
That seems to have worked. If you would argue, “Nah, it’ll be fine,” have at it.
Zaphod @ 10:28:
So you take my point that it’s a pragmatic discussion about when, where and how to exit.
It’s sad how complex life becomes when there’s not a general principle, always true, to rely on when making such decisions.
@huxley:
I do.
General principles at least as pertaining to the doings of Nations get too many people killed. Plus they attract boring people. I don’t like being bored…. Makes me start generalizing. And then we’re off to the races! 🙂
And I’ve just generalized.
Time to call in DNW and the philosophical big guns, methinks.
Zaphod:
Oh.
Geez, I wanted to argue some more. 🙂
…philosophical big guns…
Zaphod:
I try to live my life by What Would Heidegger Say?
I get confused a lot.
@gmmay70:
Re David Frum:
Don’t worry… He’ll be all for invading someone else pretty soon. It’s his nature. Just this particular ship is sinking.
@huxley:
“What would Heidegger Say?”
Now you’re just messing with me! 🙂
But you’ve reminded me of his banal bonk Arendt. I await with bated breath the Neocon Recantations when they put out erudite articles on her work in the Banality of Evil and the myriad parallel ways by which which Pentagon and State / Deep State / Defense Industries / Energy / Finance have Gone Bad on the Installment Plan.
Hmm… I seem to be turning blue. Am I Krishna, after all? Giddy up and Bombs away!
Zaphod:
I recall Jerry Pournelle’s mini-rants about the “egregious Frum.”
It’s still worth dipping into Pournelle’s old website and browsing.
As to Arendt, I revisited her ten years or so ago and was less than impressed with her Banality of Evil. She took Eichmann’s word at face value. But she made her bones with the catchphrase.
When I wrote this post I had little doubt that it would draw a lot of angry neocon-hatred, as well as misrepresentations of what I had actually written.
And my expectations were not wrong.
We’ve fought this fight here in one form or another for the entire life of the blog. It was particularly heated back when Iraq was in the spotlight. I expect we might fight it again. I’ve written an enormous number of words on what happened in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan; I’m certainly not going to re-create it all here and now.
But just a few added points –
Quit the “FOREVER” strawman. I didn’t say it should be forever; I explicitly said we could not withdraw now or in the near future. Then does not mean forever. As far as how many people it would take and what the details would be, I mentioned that Col. Austin Bay has written a number of general articles on the subject of a small force that he calls “guard duty” (this and this, example, and here’s his resume. You can disagree all you want – that’s fine – but there are plenty of knowledgeable people who say it not only could be done but must be done.
Too late now, though. We’ll never know, because it didn’t happen. And we’ll also never know what would have happened if the pullout had been a total one but accomplished in a smarter way. I think that, even then, the Taliban would have taken control and terrorism would have gotten an enormous boost in the arm. But certainly I think we can all agree that if we did pull out entirely, we should never have withdrawn as much as we did while Americans were still living in the country. And there are plenty of other things we should have done that would have made it much better than what actually occurred.
I had resigned myself to the idea that a complete pullout would occur, even though I thought it was a very risky idea for the aforementioned reason. But it never occurred to me that it would be undertaken in a manner that was utter folly. And that that’s what happened, which is tragic and absolutely infuriating.
@Huxley:
I was a daily reader of Pournelle’s blog at Chaos Manor and remember ‘The Egregious Frum’ popping up from time to time in his writings. Pournelle really was a Trouper — it must have been a struggle to keep writing in his last years post tumor and strokes. But what a fortunate ending: getting home from a successful convention appearance with a bad cold, going to bed and not waking up.
Geoffrey Britain:
Of course neocons don’t have a lock on common sense. That would be an absurd idea. And, as I said earlier, “neocons” is such a protean phrase that it can mean almost anything a person wants it to.
By the way, the impetus for this post was not me wanting to say anything about neocons. What happened was that I started to wonder what people – like members of Congress – had said about Biden’s plan when he first announced he was pulling out by 9/11. I discovered he announced that in a speech on 4/14, and I saw the reactions on 4/15. I was surprised at how few people were displeased with it. And I was also surprised at how prescient the remarks of Graham and McConnell (not my two favorite people by any means) turned out to be.
I was quite surprised to discover that, at least in this case, these particular people were correct, and other people I tend to respect more were incorrect about what happened.
No, the neocons can sit down, shut up, and never speak again. They were in charge of Afghanistan.
William Kristol was not in charge of Afghanistan. Neither was David Frum.
Art Deco:
Agreed.
But by the way, whether someone like Kristol is even a “neocon” depends on one’s definition of the word. Certainly under its old definition he is not. His father, Irving Kristol, was a neocon, and a far superior mind. Irving Kristol – like the other neocons at the time – had been on the left and ended up as a conservative, someone who saw where liberalism was going and departed from it (you can read a discussion of Irving Kristol and neoconservatism here). His son Bill, on the other hand, was always on the right (or pretended to be, anyway – his behavior since Trump makes me wonder). He never defected from the left or liberalism.
Neocons actually have a fairly wide spectrum of ideas on foreign policy and on intervention. But the meaning of the word used to always include the idea of a political change from left to right.
Bill Kristol actually is a hawk which is something quite different. It always used to amuse me when George W. Bush was called a “neocon,” and for the same reason. He was a hawk, a reluctant one at that, and on the right from the day he was born. Nothing “neo” about him.
As for Frum, he is Canadian rather than American, although he become a US citizen in 2007. He became politically conservative at the age of 14, so I don’t think he fits as a neocon, either. He was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, not a policymaker, and he left that job in 2002 so he didn’t even do it for long. Basically, he’s a writer.
Had George Bush in 2001 said that we are going into Afghanistan to catch Bin Laden, overthrow the government, pour a trillion dollars into building a new country there, stay forever in a state of war because we aren’t willing to do what is necessary to exterminate the Taliban, the public never would have accepted that as a mission in 2001, and everyone knows it. Each of these actions, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya were sold on a false basis every single time. It has to end somewhere, sometime. The country is bankrupting itself trying to police the entire planet.
The rationale that we need to keep a presence in Afghanistan to stop terrorist cells from forming there is ridiculous- they can form in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, etc. Iran can finance and harbor them and does. To perform this preemptive work really requires us to have armed forces in all of these countries, and additional other Africa and Asia.
This withdrawal could have been done in a much more competent fashion, but, yes, the Taliban were always going to retake their country- it is their country and it is all but certain that they enjoy the support was a majority of the Afghans themselves. They were never going to become westerners- the entire idea was foolishness squared.
The Mitt Romney link had some interesting points further down in the article.
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/4/21/22395800/utah-sen-mitt-romney-opposes-biden-plan-to-pull-u-s-troops-from-afghanistan
The question is always, “How small is big enough?” given that the Taliban will not want them there at all. Hence Biden’s “over the horizon” idea, which is a non-starter in the Afghanistan situation as detailed on other reports I’ve read — mostly due to the country being surrounded on all horizons by entities hostile to the US.
See:
https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/08/15/u-s-not-getting-takers-to-host-anti-terrorist-ops-in-afghanistan-from-central-asian-nations/
Back to the original topic:
See the Lee Smith posts I linked here:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/08/28/on-leaving-bagram-on-leaving-afghanistan/#comment-2573867
A reminder of the status quo ante Operation Biden’s Blunder (Utah again):
” You can disagree all you want – that’s fine – but there are plenty of knowledgeable people who say it not only could be done but must be done.”
Not persuasive. Americas failures – yes even their military ones – are all authored by highly knowledgeable and credentialed folks. I’m not quite sure which is more preposterous – that staying in Afghanistan with a small force could be done, or must be.
I have several substantive critiques of the plans – such as they are – in the links to Col. Bay’s writing. Suffice it to say, not impressive. He makes an elementary error of conflating Afghanistan with South Korea (a couple of glaring problems with this comparison), and seems to have the same reaction to “forever war” as we see in these comments.
If the standard response to characterizing a twenty year conflict with no end in sight as “Forever war” is to pretend it doesn’t mean anything…well, it’s time for a better response.
Anyway, thanks for the responses.
Respectfully,
YW
President Bush declared a new approach to foreign policy in response to 9/11: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Bush declared that the United States considered any nation that supported terrorist groups a hostile regime.
We need at least one positive story out of this mess.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-u-s-special-forces-vets-secretly-rescued-hundreds-of-afghan-allies-left-for-dead-amid-biden-withdrawal
The Taliban was always going to take over Afghanistan. It’s the power of the “intolerant minority” at work.
The overall US Policy failed because you can’t win the “hearts and minds” of sociopaths. The vast majority of Afghans don’t want the Taliban in charge, it doesn’t matter, if you “go along to get along” with sociopaths then you get the Taliban, Antifa, and Karenistan. Afghan Policy was sold as changing the Afghan culture, while simultaneously proclaiming our culture to be inferior, but it was really all about keeping the “intolerant minority” at bay (call it “Peace Through Strength”).
The policy failed because it was never honest about what why we were there. Maybe initially it was “nation building” (why not do “city building in Chicago?”) but ultimately the forces were a “tripwire” as they are everywhere else. But, if you can’t explain why you need a “tripwire” then you’re doomed to lose to “intolerant minority” whom you’ve expressly identified as “the most Tolerant of Tolerant”.
I agree we cannot keep a military presence in Afghanistan forever.
I also believe that we are not going to build a democratic nation out of Afghanistan. That has to come from within, and until an Afghani Jefferson or Hamilton (for example — not an exhaustive list) shows up, no one is going to impose it from the outside.
As for the Chinese taking over from us, well I’ve seen their work up close and personal in Tanzania in the seventies, and I am not worried.
Quick explanation: loan Tanzania money to build a railroad from Tanzania to Zambia. Design the track gauge to be incompatible with any other track gauge in Africa except South Africa, so all goods must be unloaded/reloaded where they meet. Make the loan payable in ivory and precious gems when the Tanzanian can’t pay in cash. Build the railroad with Chinese labor even though there’s high unemployment domestically. Make it obvious wherever interaction occurs that the Chinese are enormous racists. Yeah — they’re a perfect fit with Afghanistan.
BUT, and this is a big one, Biden botched this badly. To begin with, he should not have announced a date certain. And if he had to do that, he should not have made it the 20th anniversary of 9/11 (what in hell was he thinking?). He should not have given operational control to Gen Milley, who really needs to be fired, at the very least for his lecture to the Congress about toxic whiteness if not for incompetence. Biden should not have allowed any Obama holdovers to be involved in any manner in Afghanistan deliberations. Biden should not have made any policy decisions to be made primarily because they were a rejection of Trump policies. Biden should have mandated that the Pentagon not “sneak” out of Bagram, and should, in fact, have kept it open until the last flights out of the country. He should have given preference to AmCits on repatriation flights. I could go on, but you get the drift.
Oh heck, let’s tell it like it is: Biden should not have accepted his party’s nomination for the presidential race. He has truly passed Jimmy Carter in the “worst President” sweepstakes.
But by the way, whether someone like Kristol is even a “neocon” depends on one’s definition of the word. Certainly under its old definition he is not. His father, Irving Kristol, was a neocon, and a far superior mind.
The term properly applies to people who were associated with a certain menu of publications and letterhead organizations during the period running from about 1972 to about 1992. By 1992, there wasn’t much daylight between those people and the Republican mainstream as far as programmatic preferences, with the exception of a segment who were associated with Schachtmanite organizations; these last returned to the Democratic Party at the end of the Cold War.
The epithet ‘neocon’ is a commonplace among purveyors of a discourse peddled by those associated with the Rockford Institute. Their thesis stated crudely is that once-upon-a-time there was a fine conservative movement, but then it was ruined when it was taken over by a bunch of Trotskyist yids who were allowed to do so by the traitor Wm. F. Buckley. That sounds like a strawman summary, but it actually is not. Consumers of this thesis also loathe Israel and maintain everything done by the U.S. government in the Near East was done at Israel’s behest for Israel’s interest; purveyors are seldom so viciously stupid.
The pinhead of truth in all this is that Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and Seymour Martin Lipset were all members of a Trotskyist discussion circle at City College of New York ca. 1939. Kristol abandoned Trotskyism in 1942 and gave a fair summary of why it was at that point no longer convincing. Lipset, who was the leading spirit of that discussion circle, had abandoned any kind of exotic perspective by 1960. Ditto Glazer by about 1965. Bell was always the odd man out in that crew and just sat in on their meetings because they were opposed to the campus Communist cell (which, in that era, included Julius Rosenberg); his viewpoint was always within the main currents of political thought in this country.
Others associated with them after 1972 were people who had been ensconced in the Democratic Party’s intelligentsia and were disaffected from it for one reason or another and to one degree or another. Most eventually left the Democratic Party while some stayed. Note, the crew of writers and academics Wm. Buckley assembled in 1955 when he founded National Review contained a mess of people who were lapsed leftists, among them Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Willmoore Kendall, and Ralph de Toledano. Somehow, in the minds of the Rockford Institute meme generators, that did not discredit Buckley, but his congenial dealings with Norman Podhoretz (whose political odyssey never included any association with communist organizations and only passed through the orbit of the red haze during the period running from 1963 to 1968) did.
Wm. Kristol fits the bill as he was as late as 1976 and aide to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. David Frum has re-invented himself so many times it’s made it difficult to pigeon hole him. He presented himself as a libertarian ca. 1994, as a roughly mainstream Republican ca. 2003 (except for his pro-abortion stance), as the recrudescence of Rockefeller Republicanism ca. 2009, and as the scourge of Donald Trump a decade later. He’s a poseur.
FB,
See this part of my comment for the reply to Bush:
“stay forever in a state of war because we aren’t willing to do what is necessary to exterminate the Taliban”.
Bush was mistaken, and I think a case can be made that he lied in that address.
The country is bankrupting itself trying to police the entire planet.
It’s doing nothing of the kind. The ratio of military expenditure to domestic product is 0.042. In the run of years since 1939, the nadir was around 0.037. Overseas contingency operations have averaged about a quarter of the sum spent on the military since 2001.
We are bankrupting ourselves, but that’s because we have garbage politicians who have been chronically unwilling to match expenditures and revenues. The latest spending puke has scarcely anything to do with the military.
“William Kristol was not in charge of Afghanistan. Neither was David Frum.”
So, if somebody declares themselves a Nazi, a communist, or a Stalinist, they should not be criticized or held accountable unless they personally executed or tortured anyone? That kind of infantile reductionism is among the worst sorts of sophistry and is the equivalent of a public admission that you are wrong but are just too bullheaded to admit it.
Mike
So, if somebody declares themselves a Nazi, a communist, or a Stalinist, they should not be criticized or held accountable unless they personally executed or tortured anyone? That kind of infantile reductionism is among the worst sorts of sophistry and is the equivalent of a public admission that you are wrong but are just too bullheaded to admit it.
Reading comprehension is an issue with you.
Whatever Kristol and Frum did do or did not do, they are not even remotely responsible for the military’s operational failures. If you’d like to critique things they’ve actually said over the years, or their general stances, or how they’ve occupied their time or earned a living, go ahead. Saying someone can ‘sit down, shut up, and never speak again’ seems rather de trop. I’d save it for people rather more malevolent than either of these characters. (Say, Noam Chomsky).
In 2021 if I’d known so few Americans were dying and that the situation was stable without too much yearly outlay, I’d have reconsidered. — huxley, from previous thread
Some days ago, Trump cited a number of $42B/year spent in Afghanistan, as a reason (The reason?) to get out. How much will it cost us if the Golden Gate bridge is downed, or a suitcase nuke is detonated in SF or NYC?
It is almost astonishing how much equipment was there. Plus, there is all this bribery payola. I wonder how much of that could have been reduced with an attitude readjustment in the geniuses at State/NSC/CIA/Pentagon.
I think Afghanistan is unique in being able to support terrorist bases. Libya, a Hillary Clinton as Sec. of State fiasco that’s now been papered over, is a billiard table. Afghanistan has lots of mountains and is close to Peshawar.
I thought that things were relatively stable in Afghanistan as of a few years ago, but maybe that’s just the propaganda. Great comment from AesopFan.
Why quibble over the likes of David Frum, when there is someone consequential like Paul Wolfowitz. Here is the left-wing common wisdom Wiki,
He was an early advocate of the Iraq War and has widely been described as an architect of the war. In the aftermath of the insurgency and civil war that followed the invasion, Wolfowitz denied influencing policy on Iraq and disclaimed responsibility. He is a leading neoconservative.
I was shocked by the Iraq invasion. I thought that the two possible real reasons were: 1) a permanent air base in Iraq and, 2) Saddam had started paying $23K approx. (IIRC) to any family whose family member had successfully carried out a suicide attack in Israel. Oh, and just maybe 3) an Al Qaida leader beneath bin Laden spent a few days or a week at Saddam’s royal compound.
Title: Behold the Military Industrial Complex Profiteers and Uni-party Group
I mentioned this before, and it gets more amazing the deeper one digs. Repeating this from Wiki,
He [Lloyd Austin] also operates a consulting firm and has been a partner at Pine Island Capital, an investment company with which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy are affiliated.
Flournoy was an Obama person and did not come back into gov. service with Biden. But the current Sec. Def. and Sec. of State were close business partners before the 2020 election. It is entirely possible, and I’d say likely, that the broad strokes of the Afghanistan plan were worked out before Biden was inaugurated. It terms of planning after the inauguration, it appears that Blinken got exactly what he wanted. One congressman has specifically proposed impeachment for Blinken only.
Given that large sections of military policy has been violated by this withdrawal, it seems obvious that with the Austin/Blinken team putting Blinken in charge, it allows Blinken to claim ignorance and incompetence. That is, the claim to ignorance and incompetence is a tactic. Austin should know full well what was required and would be derelict to ignore it.
Check out the Pine Island Capital Partners team.
https://pineislandcp.com/team/
This is where politicians from both parties go to get rich. The team is headed by John Thain. Where have I heard that name? He was the long time chairman of the NY Stock Exchange, then the CEO of Merrill Lynch around the time it was imploding during the credit crisis and merged with BofA.
This page shows that Pine Island and Mitt Romney’s old firm Bain Capital are working together to acquire a military related company.
https://pineislandcp.com/news/
You gotta love the homepage with its picture of the Washington monument,
https://pineislandcp.com/
In spite of that picture, the company is located in Fort Lauderdale. Sweet.
We know that Pres. Biden is in love the notion of “over the horizon” military operations now. I have to wonder if the Austin/Blinken team has been pushing that one too. Now Pine Island and Bain generally deal with smaller fry companies, but Austin was connected to Raytheon and was a shareholder, and they could be involved in selling this technology, though I wouldn’t know.
I recall that when GW Bush brought Hank Paulson into the Treas. Sec. postion, Paulson was able to (required to) liquidate $1B worth of Goldman Sachs stock with zero capital gains tax. Double sweet.
“…I wonder how much of that could have been reduced with an attitude readjustment in the geniuses at State/NSC/CIA/Pentagon…”
And THAT may well be why Michael Flynn HAD to be neutralized.
(Except that the fear was that Flynn was going was going to launch a lot more than an “attitude readjustment”…)
F:
In other words, Biden is Biden, and he’s president, and we’re screwed.
And even if they manage to somehow remove him, his possible replacements (right down the line) are no better.
About Neo’s title, The Afghanistan bugout. The term bugout is extremely apt.
I was listening to some State Dept. guy, not Blinken, drone on for a couple hours the other day, and I was spacing most of it out, until he spoke of the evacuation. He talked about how important and essential the native folks are in supporting a U.S. embassy in a foreign land. He implied that these people are embassy people. He gave lip service to State’s duty to protect U.S. citizens, but it was clear to me that embassy people came first.
Also, I commented on how we should have blown up military hardware, but the instant the first explosion occurs, everybody knows that the bugout is in high gear. State engineered this to protect State.
ChrisS:
I don’t recall getting a “nation-building” message about Afghanistan since at least 15 years ago. It was only in the first few years we heard much about nation-building there at all. Perhaps someone somewhere was still saying it, but if they did it certainly didn’t filter down to me. For most of those 20 years I got the distinct impression we were just preserving some sort of status quo that prevented the place reverting back to what it had been on 9/11/01.
And now we’ve abandoned that idea.
Paulson was able to (required to) liquidate $1B worth of Goldman Sachs stock with zero capital gains tax. Double sweet.
I think you’re referring to this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/servicenow/2021/08/12/the-mbius-strip-of-cx-and-ex/?sh=544a3c5b125b
Evidently it was $484 million, not $1 billion, and he only avoids the tax if he holds the replacement assets until death.
gmmay70:
And your calling something “preposterous” is not the least bit persuasive.
Just as calling something a “forever war” does not make it an actual war for America, certainly not in the usual sense. Most of the American casualties in Afghanistan were in the early years. It has not been a war in the usual sense for a long time.
“Forever” is hyperbole. Even the 70 years in South Korea is hardly forever. And of course Austin Bay’s credentials alone are not enough to justify endorsing his views; they merely are a way to indicate that the views to which I happen to ascribe are not some idle “fantasy” (your word) cooked up by a blogger with no particular military knowledge. Bay has plenty of military knowledge. You may not agree with it, but he has it. And his position re Afghanistan is not unique to just him, either.
US combat troops stopped being stationed there around 2014, and about 9K troops remained for many years, with additional drawdowns in the past year or so. I’m sure people disagree on how many non-combat troops should have remained, but when I’m talking about a small force remaining I certainly don’t mean a few hundred.
Withdrawing totally under the conditions present when Biden did it (and without making the Taliban meet any conditions, as well) was always going to be disastrous both in terms of the Taliban taking power in Afghanistan and, more importantly, the encouragement and opportunity it would give to radical Islamic terrorism.
TommyJay’s comment: Behold the Military Industrial Complex Profiteers and Uni-party Group …
That’s horrifically appalling, though not a shock. But it’s even more upsetting when I think of how the left & other
never-Trumpers accused Trump of profiting his business by exploiting the POTUS office.
And not just accused! They continue the lawsuits & “investigations” to bankrupt &/or jail him, family, & associates.
Such hypocrites.
“And your calling something “preposterous” is not the least bit persuasive.”
That would be because I’m not making the claim of possibility or requirement, however I have given brief reasons why I think such notions are foolhardy. You may find those unpersuasive, but they are not unstated.
“Just as calling something a “forever war” does not make it an actual war for America, certainly not in the usual sense. Most of the American casualties in Afghanistan were in the early years. It has not been a war in the usual sense for a long time.”
I’m not sure I have a brief enough response to those semantics.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on “forever war”. It’s incumbent upon the parties who wish to maintain a presence in Afghanistan to prove that we will not remain there for the next 70 years (to continue the poor parallel with highly developed, culturally mature, easily accessible, strategically important South Korea), or “forever”, because there has been no indication of progress after twenty years.
Would you be less torqued by “Indefinite war”? I generally prefer that sort of precision, but I have a hard time mustering up a significant objection to the use of “forever war”. Your mileage clearly varies, and I’m fine with that.
I referred to Bay because you cited him; so I addressed your citations directly. I call them “fantasy” because they are not grounded in reality. In fact they run contrary to the empirical evidence of our involvement there. It hinges on the implication that This Time, We’ll Get It Right! Despite having up to 100k troops in country for almost two years, with an average of about 80k there for four, we’re back at square one, and have been for about the last two years.
What it would take to make progress in Afghanistan is beyond the tolerance level of our society, so continuing to do the same old thing and expecting a different result doesn’t make for sound foreign policy.
“…but when I’m talking about a small force remaining I certainly don’t mean a few hundred.”
I didn’t think you did. A few hundred would be a death sentence.
Respectfully,
gmmay70:
Words such as “preposterous” add nothing to whatever argument you might be trying to make on the merits.
You call my discussion of whether it is a “forever war” “semantics.” That’s a way to say that it’s just some argument over words and their meaning, and to imply that such arguments and the points they make are trivial. I disagree. I bring the words and their meaning up to point out that “forever war” is propaganda, inaccurate, and misleading – and I certainly am not the one using words there in the service of making something seem worse than it is. “War” has a meaning and “forever” has a meaning, and neither is used arbitrarily by those who use that phrase. The phrase is carefully chosen not by me, but by them. And it has an effect on the people who hear it and then spread it around.
I repeat that combat troops were withdrawn in 2014, and since then we’ve had about 9K non-combat troops there. You can find a chart here. The high number of troops you cite were there during the Obama administration, for a few years. That was quite some time ago.
“Indefinite” is a better word than “forever,” certainly. And it is more accurate.
Using some analogy to South Korea to cite the fact that in some cases we have been in other countries for 70 years is not to say that South Korea is anything like Afghanistan in most ways. Austin Bay is not a fool and he is well aware that South Korea and Afghanistan are different in a host of ways.
As far as your statement “no indication of progress in 20 years” goes, it depends what progress you are looking for. The terror training camps were gone and we have been relatively safe from organized large-scale terror attacks of the nature of 9/11 since our invasion of Afghanistan. You have no idea what the deterrent value of the Afghan war, then occupation, then “guard duty” was.
I think there are also measures of progress for the Afghan people, but I am relatively sure that is not your concern or interest and I agree that it is not the reason and certainly not the main reason we should be there at this point. The reason is our own security.
No one can prove exactly how long we need to be there. Obviously, I think we still need to be there. I will say this, though. After 9/11 I realized pretty early on that this fight (and by “fight” I don’t just mean wars, although it would include military action at times) would be going on for the rest of my life and beyond. That prospect was a bitter one, but I saw it as necessary. I also realized that the US probably didn’t have the will for it, and that was ominous. It has all played out that way so far.
I was shocked by the Iraq invasion. I thought that the two possible real reasons were: 1) a permanent air base in Iraq and, 2) Saddam had started paying $23K approx. (IIRC) to any family whose family member had successfully carried out a suicide attack in Israel. Oh, and just maybe 3) an Al Qaida leader beneath bin Laden spent a few days or a week at Saddam’s royal compound.
TommyJay:
I recall another reason. I’ve forgotten from whom. If you look at a map of that region, you see that between Iraq and Afghanistan is a larger and more dangerous country — Iran.
These days Iran is a sidebar. But they really hate the US, they really are crazy and they really are close to nuclear WMD. Since Obama and Biden, more than ever.
We don’t think about Iran much these days, but the Bay Area or NYC or DC might suddenly disappear in a mushroom cloud and we would remember.
Even the neocons might look good after that.
I was referring more to your contention that it wasn’t a real war.
Propaganda? I’m having a very hard time getting on board with that. At worst, it’s a mischaracterization, but more likely a simple rhetorical jab. Again, we disagree; and that’s fine.
As for “non-combat” troops, that’s a bit of a misnomer (it *IS* the BBC after all). But the point was that having nearly ten times the troops than we’ve had there for the past two years wasn’t able to accomplish the mission, given the ROE.
The terror training camps were simply displaced to other areas in the region (we got OBL in Pakistan), and it was far more than a presence in Afghanistan that has managed to keep Islamic terrorism from being exported. Though I must add that your last sentence cuts both ways. The inability to quantify or measure an operation is not a strong argument for keeping it.
The US doesn’t have the will for a lot of things. Such are the pitfalls of pluralistic liberal democratic societies.
Respectfully,
gmmay70:
My point holds for the word forever and the word war. And I wonder whether you read the link I gave about the “it’s only semantics” type of argument.
You are confusing two missions. The mission that was the reason 100,000 troops were there is not the mission now. This has been discussed many times here.
When I say “training camps” I’m talking about the very large training camps they had in Afghanistan, not the presence of terrorist cells and groups in Pakistan. Of course there was a dispersal of terrorists around the world, but Afghanistan had offered a very special haven and concentration of terrorists.
And another strawman is the idea that I was saying that the Afghan occupation was the only reason there had been no repeat of 9/11. That would be an absurd thing to say and I didn’t say it. But I think it was an element that contributed to that fact. What happened in Afghanistan also, at least till now, represented a deterrent to other countries who might offer terrorists something like what Afghanistan offered prior to 9/11. And of course I am not offering the inability to prove how long the mission will last as a reason to undertake or continue such a mission. I was responding to your saying that people advocating staying would need to prove it wouldn’t last 70 years.
I’m torn over the withdrawal itself (not referring to the absolute disaster of a way that it’s been executed). I see a use for a footprint in Afghanistan. But at the same time, I’m also of the opinion that if a country can’t defend itself after twenty years…
Note that I’m open to arguments that at least some of that last bit is the fault of the US.
On another note, I’m of the opinion that China and the Taliban won’t be friends for very long. I’m sure that in the not too distant future, Beijing will realize that the Taliban are playing host to Uighur extremists.
Motivational Thought for the Day:
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/083/504/225/original/df7ed46b4dd0a32c.jpg
Disagree for reasons I’ve already stated and feel no need to keep belaboring. It really is fine. I didn’t read the semantics link before, went back to read it, and verified that my assumption was right. I’m well aware of that objection, and the formal meaning of semantics. It’s sort of like when people get bent out of shape when someone doesn’t use “begging the question” in its technically correct context. I thought your attempt to apply your own definition of war a bit self-serving for your argument. Still do. But it’s really secondary to the meat of the discussion.
Hardly. You’re missing my point, or perhaps I’ve been unclear. I’m uninterested in what’s been discussed many times here, only what we’re discussing right now. My point is that it took a massive force to temporarily subdue the Taliban. When that force was scaled back, the Taliban slowly reasserted control over the majority of the country up until we withdrew what relative few forces remained, when they then took it all. Against a small force, the Taliban are unchecked. Against a large force, they are. The latter is no longer tenable politically, which leaves us with the former – a speculative proposition at best.
…which requires a large force to be able to keep subdued.
What?? Speaking of strawmen. Please point to the part where I said anything of the sort. What you DID say, and I responded to appropriately was: “The terror training camps were gone and we have been relatively safe from organized large-scale terror attacks of the nature of 9/11 since our invasion of Afghanistan.”
Now, if you want to offer clarification on that point, I welcome it. But to pretend I’ve mischaracterized your fairly clear language here (as well as elsewhere since this is allegedly “another” strawman) is…unexpected.
It’s not unreasonable for the polity to have expectations that their sons and money are not going to be wasted over the course of two generations…or more. And with statements like we “have no idea what the deterrent value of the Afghan war, then occupation, then “guard duty” was,” the argument for maintaining the status quo becomes fairly weak.
Since it seems we’re either A) talking past one another, B) not going to persuade one another, or C) both, I will bow out here. I will sincerely read any response you have, but have nothing else to add. (I have enjoyed our exchange.)
Respectfully,
gmmay70:
How you went to the semantics link and “verified” that your “assumption was right” is beyond me. From the link:
As for what I meant when I wrote, “And another strawman is the idea that I was saying that the Afghan occupation was the only reason there had been no repeat of 9/11….”, I was referring to this statement of yours, which was in response to my contention that our presence in Afghanistan had been preventative towards another large-scale terrorist attack:
“it was far more than a presence in Afghanistan that has managed to keep Islamic terrorism from being exported.”
And of course I “have no idea what the deterrent value of the Afghan war, then occupation, then ‘guard duty’ was.” No one, including you, has any idea. That does not mean that the argument for our staying there is any weaker than any other argument for our staying in any country where we have a presence. It is simply pointing out that demands such as yours that I be able to prove that we won’t have to stay there for 70 years is always going to be unanswerable and is by definition unanswerable. One cannot prove such a thing in advance. The only way such things can be known is ex post facto. However, evidence such as what I cited – that we haven’t had a large-scale terrorist attack here since the Afghan war and “guard duty” – is actually the only type of evidence we can have, and it argues in the direction of a continued presence of some type for such preventative purposes.
You write:
That massive US military force started to be scaled back in 2012 and was substantially scaled back by 2014 to about 25K and by 2015 to 9K (only very recently, in 2020, was it scaled back further than that). So the massive force was substantially reduced by 2014 and very reduced by 2015 and thereafter. Are you saying that the Taliban took over the majority of the country between 2014 till about 2019 or 2020? This was the situation in May of 2020:
So even after 5-6 years of reduced forces, the Taliban did not control the majority of the country.
That article also makes this interesting statement:
As for money being wasted on the war, of course no one wants the money to be wasted and people want proof it wasn’t wasted. But I don’t see how such proof can be provided. I am virtually certain that money was wasted, and that it was not an insignificant amount, but that is true in all wars. It’s a question of how much money should be expended now to get how much benefit. We have different opinions on both the amount and the benefit, but neither of us can ever know. I think we can probably agree that the manner in which the Biden administration has handled this retreat is extremely costly, perhaps not so much in immediate loss of money (although if you count the weaponry we lost it is an enormous amount) but future loss of reputation and trust of the world.
On the withdrawal and criticism, nobody thought the Biden Administration would F it up this badly. They forgot Obama’s comment on Joe.
Could the US have arranged things so the US Kabul Regime lasted longer and withdrawing us troops?
That is a more interesting question.
Trump at least mentioned the elephant in the room, Pakistan. Iran is another Taliban supporter.
The sneaking out of Bagram in the middle of the night had a huge impact psychologically and logistics wise. Especially since it had all the spare parts.
A major reforming of the Army and making the government into a federal system would have been required for long time success.
Addressing the corruption issue, so much mis-spent money.
And allowing foreign contractors to stay would have helped.
I am with Neo on this one. The US should have maintained a small footprint, as it has in recent years, in order to support and to assure that the assets given to the Afghan army were properly used. The sudden US pullout guaranteed the results we now have to live with.
When a funding agency loans money to a foreign government for an infrastructure project, it does not simply turn over the funds and “hope for the best”. The recipient country is required to employ a competent third party to oversee that the funds are properly spent. This was, in part, the role of the US military in Afghanistan, to oversee that the Afghan forces were keeping their part of the deal. The US pullout simply goes against all management principles if the goal was to keep the Taliban in check.
What actually happened leads to the question….was this the desired result?
https://twitter.com/ES_Nahari/status/1431923161386430468?s=20
Yes, we can agree on this. 🙂
Respectfully,
Neo:
You got it. Much more succinctly.
Reports that seven busloads of US citizens,females, were turned back at KIA by US forces, MG Donahue’s order.
They were taken by Taliban.
Results?
Anybody see anything on this?
Presuming this is true and not misunderstood: Donahue, as a normal person, would not have turned them away on his own. Thus, if true, there were orders.
This is the report which I posted on the Kurt S. thread. h/t insty
https://twitter.com/emilymiller/status/1432179085942345730
And this.
https://twitter.com/Michael_Yon/status/1432221325439893506
More:
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/senator-seeks-investigation-into-americans-reportedly-denied-entry-to-kabul-airport/
@geoffb
There is a link in comments at https://www.weaselzippers.us/ that says NYT (for what that’s worth) confirmed the tweet/story but it’s behind paywall and i can’t read it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/29/world/taliban-american-university-of-kabul-afghanistan.html
If true about Americans turned away, Donahue hangs unless he can show hard orders. Or should, anyway.
More on the bus loads of students here:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/08/28/on-leaving-bagram-on-leaving-afghanistan/#comment-2574218