I haven’t been closely following the news from Afghanistan in recent days, partly because it’s so depressing, but mostly because I don’t think knowing additional detail would change my general view of the situation. I don’t doubt that Biden made the right decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.  It was long past time for the US to get out, and I see no reason to believe that staying another 3 or 6 months or 5 years would have made any difference in the outcome.  It does look like the implementation of the withdrawal decision was terribly flawed. Maybe a certain amount of chaos was inevitable.  But, while the intelligence was mixed, there was sufficient basis to justify, and even mandate, careful planning for the scenario which in fact occurred—an instant collapse of the Afghan army and state.  Evidently there was no such plan.

There will be a lot of hand-wringing in this country about how our failure in Afghanistan reflected a typically American excess of good intentions.  We tried to help the people of Afghanistan but we didn’t understand the obstacles to imposing a Western democracy on a tribal society.  I don’t entirely dismiss such talk, but it elides the terrible damage the US occupation inflicted. Atrocities by the American military and its allies undoubtedly accounted for much of the civilian death toll of nearly 50,000 (probably underestimated). Corruption fueled by American largesse flourished.  Afghan democracy was a sham, but many warlords and drug barons become rich thanks to American patronage.

If any good is to come out of all of this, it will be a hopefully durable Afghanistan Syndrome.  Remember the Vietnam Syndrome? It was the alleged skittishness of the US to exercise its power abroad following our debacle in Vietnam.  George H.W. Bush proudly proclaimed America’s recovery from the syndrome with his triumphant war in the Gulf.  That recovery paved the way for the much more costly second Iraq War, and of course, for Afghanistan. Maybe this time we will have learned something that will stick.

PS

I want to pass on this excellent piece by Eric Alterman, which I read just after I posted mine, in which he skewers critics of Biden’s handling of Afghanistan, many of whom were involved in the misjudgments and lies that kept us there for 20 years.  Alterman provides lots of links for good background reading on the war’s history and the media’s coverage of same.