Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
A Biden decision to suspend a final pullout of U.S. forces will be well received by our foreign policy elites. But the anti-interventionist wings of the two parties are growing in strength.
Is President Joe Biden prepared to preside over the worst U.S. strategic defeat since the fall of Saigon in 1975?
For that may be what’s at stake if Biden follows through on the 2020 peace deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1 — just two months from now.
Consider. If the 2,500 American troops remaining in Afghanistan are pulled out, the entire 10,000-troop NATO contingent departs.
This would write an end to the Western military commitment.
And the likelihood the Kabul government could then survive the constant and increasing attacks from the Taliban, as the latter now control half of the country and many roads leading to the capital, is slim.
After all, an Afghan army that could not defeat the Taliban a decade ago, when 100,000 U.S. troops were fighting alongside it, is not going to rout the Taliban after the Americans have gone home.
In short, if Biden does not breach the terms of the deal the Taliban and U.S. signed last year and keep our troops there, he would be inviting a repeat of Saigon ’75, with all that would mean for the Afghans who cast their lot with us.
Biden knows what Saigon ’75 was like. In his first Senate term, Hanoi overran South Vietnam and Saigon, and the boat people began to flee in the thousands for their lives into the South China Sea; the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh. And the Cambodian genocide began.
In Brussels, Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that any NATO departure from Afghanistan is “conditions based.”
What are Stoltenberg’s stated conditions?
The Taliban “has to reduce violence … negotiate in good faith and … stop supporting international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.”
Yet, the May deadline looms, and if the U.S. does not meet it, Taliban attacks on American troops in Afghanistan could start again, forcing Biden to send more troops back into the country to protect the U.S. logistics and training personnel still there.
What makes this problematic is that Biden has long been known as a supporter of a smaller U.S. footprint and a swifter U.S. pullout than were other advisers in the Obama administration.
But if we fail to meet the May deadline, what new deadline would Biden set? And what guarantee is there that we can ever, after withdrawing, avoid an outcome like South Vietnam — with the enemy overrunning the capital after the Americans have left?
If no president — Bush II, Obama, Trump, Biden — is willing to risk a strategic defeat on his watch, then when can we ever end our involvement in this longest of the long wars? If Biden cannot get our troops out of Afghanistan, when, ever, do we get our troops out of Syria and Iraq?
Given what is being said today in Washington, and in Brussels by NATO defense ministers meeting there, Biden will likely decide to follow in his predecessors’ footsteps. He will extend the May deadline for months, kick the can up the road, and leave in place enough troops to prevent a collapse of the Kabul government but not enough to reverse the inevitable outcome of this war.
Just as the Taliban are likely to achieve their goal in Afghanistan, as they persist and we withdraw, Bashar Assad appears to have prevailed in his civil war in Syria, and the Houthis have, after six years of fighting, held off the Saudi interventionists and their U.S. allies in Yemen.
A Biden decision to suspend a final pullout of U.S. forces will be well received by our foreign policy elites. But the anti-interventionist wings of the two parties are growing in strength. And “America First” retrenchment, which Donald Trump championed in 2016, but could not deliver as president, is going to be represented in both parties’ presidential primaries in 2023 and 2024.
America today is taking on more of a load than this nation can carry.
We are out to contain mighty China, a peer competitor with four times our population, across the Indo-Pacific theater, including the East China and South China seas and Taiwan Strait.
We are containing Vladimir Putin’s Russia, whose strategic arsenal is comparable to our own in Central and Eastern Europe. We are fighting a war on terror in the Middle East, supporting Sunnis against Shiites, and containing Iran in the Persian Gulf.
Our national debt is larger than our national economy. We are running deficits unseen since the late days of World War II. Our economy has sustained crippling blows from a year-long COVID-19 pandemic that has taken the lives of half a million Americans.
A migrant invasion appears to be shaping up on our 2,000-mile Southern border. Our country is as divided as it has been since the Civil War. And we seek to remain the nation that writes the rules for the world order in the 21st century.
Something’s gotta give.
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Team America World Police. Fuck Yeah! /sarc
WITAF do we think we are accomplishing by maintaining our military all over the world?
I guess I’m an isolationist.
Live and let live.
Live and let die.
Fuck me not lest ye be fucked.
GTFO of everywhere. Bring ALL the troops home. Work on trade agreements not force projection.
Although any country with any sense knows the US Govt doesn’t honor it’s agreements. Ever. So I guess I’m JAFO without a clue…
Non-interventionist is NOT THE SAME as Isolationist. Pat Buchanan is an isolationist. He doesn’t wish to trade with folks, interact with folks, etc. Not wanting to stick your nose in other people’s business is just common sense…especially if death is a likely outcome.
Maybe not, but I support both.
I can almost see Buchanan weeping at his keyboard at the thought of America pulling out of Afshitistan. Oh, the horror.
Once a warmongering fuktard, always a warmongering fuktard.
I almost fell out of my chair laughing when he wrote that the USA!USA!USA! is containing Russia in central Europe.
Buchanan should just re-post his articles from 30 years ago since he has nothing new to say since then. Or, he could just fuck off.
Buchanan needs to retire to a nursing home and stop writing Neocon nonsense…
Pat’s crap articles are still being carried on a lot of sites, though his brand has fallen to the level of other neocon “conservative” armchair warriors. If I wanted to read his positions on things, I could start back watching TV news. That’s where he gets all of his points anyway.
Neocon? He’s been the least neocon-y of his generation. He’s a paleocon. We paleocons are a small contingent. I take this article as just a reminder that there never was any alternative to eventually “losing” Afghanistan. It was never ours in the first place. What does it even mean to lose Afghanistan – that they’re going to become a backwards backwater of tribal fiefdoms? Uh… ok. That’s pretty much the definition of Afghanistan. Whatever. It would suck to be born there, especially if you’re a girl, but there’s nothing we can do about it. And there are probably aspects of life there that are less dysfunctional than what we have here. The goat curry is probably decent.
We should have left in late winter of 2002 after an incredibly successful punitive expedition against Al Qaeda. At that time the entire US military contingent could have been flown out on one plane. Then W had a bright idea: nation building and more graft for the MIC than had ever been seen before.
Cancelling the agreement with the Taliban would be yet another broken treaty in a long line of them. The US is not, actually cannot be, a reliable negotiating partner. Each new President feels free to abrogate whatever his predecessor agreed to.
The US is worse than a banana republic. It is a failed state. And its leadership is irrational. On the one hand, the warhawks in Biden’s regime (eg Rice, Nuland…) will try to expand the number of small wars. There’s plenty of room for them in South America, even Africa has some space left.
On the other hand, the SJW think this nonsense is more important than actual war training:
“I pledge to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy. I pledge to engage in ongoing self-reflection, education and knowledge sharing to better myself and my communities. I pledge to be an example in establishing healthy, inclusive and team-oriented environments. I pledge to constructively share all experiences and information gained from activities above to inform the development of Navy-wide reforms.”
That combination of aggression and weakness will end our Republic. We are about to get our own Stalingrad or Tsushima, or maybe both.
On the bright side, a military that cannot fight foreign enemies won’t be able to fight Americans.
Agreed. I don’t know why anyone trusts us, knowing we don’t honor commitments and we change our minds every couple years.
Since when was Afghanistan part of the US? The idea that it is something that belongs to the US (prepared to lose it) as Buchanan suggests is asinine.
Ah, but the real take away here is the fact that Biden is doing good to eat his pudding while his nurse/wife/doctor wipes his mouth and leads him around, answering questions for him. Kamala smirks and um hums and is ready to take over from Biden and will let her handlers tell her what to do and say.
Afghanistan is too important to walk away from, who would guard the poppy fields if the Marines are removed?
MG..M – Bingo! Leaving would dry up one of the sources of funds for CIA black ops.
If the U.S. military Opium overseers leave, the wholesale price of Heroin worldwide would actually come down.
Kind of like when the price of single malt Scotch came down after Ted Kennedy died…there was an increase in available supply.
“The spice (opium) must flow.”
I took it as Buchanan just prepping everybody for the inevitable. “Losing” someplace is the accusation that used to be thrown around. I think he’s preemptively defending against a charge that no one these days is old enough to remember to make. So yeah, he’s out of touch.
” No more War Pigs have the Power…..HAND OF GOD HAS STRUCK THE HOUR “
Is it possible to lose something you never won or ever had a desire to win?
Twisted gov’t logic. Similar to gun “buyback” programs.
If you want to win in Afghanistan, just fly in every spring and napalm the big poppy fields. No boots on the ground or anything else. There isn’t anything else there worth 10 cents other than opium. They and the CIA will quickly squeal and beg for terms.
I seem to recall reading that there’s about a trillion dollars of rare earth metals/minerals under Afghan soil.
The US was using Russian geological maps to find it. One of the many reasons ol’ Don Rumsfeld gave for being there. First floated there is oil, true, just not a lot. Lastly, how do you mine it when the locals attack you. For the record, the Afghani’s don’t like the Chinese either who want the stuff as well
Re: USA!
From my perspective, The “USA” was in many senses United/States of (N.) America.
Within a thirty-year time span, it was much less United and many of the states looked more like puppets
under the direct rule of the Fed Gov’t.
But, you can’t just refer to it as “America”,or North America since that would include Mexico and Canada. Besides, there is a South America too.
Politically, governmentaly , “USA” is gone. Like a slow burn fire work and a little pop (gasp?) at the end. Hell, I can’t even see the smoke wafting away on the breeze anymore.
What name is to be used now for what was once the USA?
BidenLand?
StoogeLand?
NVKD-Land?
Idiocracyville?
Sheeplevania(c)?
“Besides, there is a South America too.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZF6fHU-zEY
Pull out and let the Chinese handle those people…. not joking.
The major cities are sh*tholes and ungovernable. Outside the half dozen or so cities, there is jack sh*t; remote areas are run by ‘war lords’, tribal councils, HMFIC, whatever you want to call them. It’s their history, their culture, the US has proven that 20 year presence, billions of dollars spent, our real treasure wounded and killed, did not change Afghan culture and bring about a functioning democratic society.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”…. quote from Peter Drucker and others
All of our politicians and bureaucrats need to learn this.
Assholistan was a lost cause as soon as Dubya sent regular forces into it. We are only there for two reasons: opium, and Iran is in between the other shit hole we had no business going into.
Rudyard Kipling found himself in Afghanistan in the 1880’s, I believe. The Brits were there before in the 1840’s. “When you find yourself wounded on Afghanistan’s plains…. And the women come out to cut up what remains…. Roll to your rifle and blow out your brains….. And go to your god like a soldier.”
Is it bad to lose an unjust war? Asking for a friend.
Seems like we could have left that shithole 19 years ago and declared the job finished. Trying to bring civilization to those savages is pointless. What happens if we do magically “win” in Afghanistan? What happens? Do they suddenly embrace peace and modernity? Do they suddenly open banks and take out loans to buy Apple products? What does winning look like in a medieval religious shithole? Why do we care?
The US Govt had a contractor build a modern school for girls in the middle of no where , installed modern toilets with indoor plumbing just like in the states. The Army Corps of Engineers turned the building over to the local tribal leaders. (BTW the plumbing was hooked up to nothing, no water supply, no sewer system, portable electric generators. The locals did not allow the girls to go to school, the toilets filled up with feces, the building fell in to disrepair over night. But some congressman got that spending approved, and bragged about it.