Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
Truth be told, Afghanistan was never a vital interest of the United States but has always been the most priceless possession of the Afghan people… There never was a vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan worth a war of the cost in blood, treasure and time that we have just fought.
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan.
Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost.
And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was flaunting the banner “Mission Accomplished,” America did not accomplish its mission.
President Joe Biden said as much Thursday, when he responded to a reporter’s question, “The mission has not failed — yet.”
As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 impends, and with it our final exit from the Afghan war, the Taliban are overrunning districts at will, and Afghan troops are avoiding battle in what many see as a lost cause.
Monday, 1,000 Afghan soldiers fled into Tajikistan rather than face advancing Taliban forces.
Why did we not succeed? And what does our failure there portend?
We failed, first, because our initial mission, once accomplished, was altered and enlarged to where it became unattainable.
We went into Afghanistan in 2001 to deliver retribution to the al-Qaida terrorists of Osama bin Laden who perpetrated the 9/11 massacre and to overthrow the Taliban regime that had provided them sanctuary.
This we could and did do. We succeeded.
That mission was indeed accomplished by May 2003, when Bush landed on the Lincoln, as Biden said yesterday:
“We went for two reasons. One, to bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell … The second reason was to eliminate al-Qaida’s capacity to deal with more attacks on the United States from that territory. We accomplished both of those objectives. Period.”
But by June 2003, Bush and his neocon advisers had expanded their horizons. A global crusade for democracy was now the great new mission. We were going to remake the country. We were going to build a new nation, along Western lines, out of a fundamentalist Muslim country in Central Asia with a long and proud history of fighting and expelling foreign invaders.
Some knew this and said so. For, in the eight years of the Reagan era, with our military aid funneled through Pakistan, Afghan mujahideen had driven out the mighty Soviet Union that had invaded in 1979.
By 2003, we had moved on to Iraq, where we had stormed in and ousted Saddam Hussein. Brutal dictator though he was, Saddam had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and had offered to bring inspectors in to roam around his country to prove he did not have the weapons of mass destruction we said he was planning to use against us.
We were also going to remake Iraq into a model democracy, this one in the heart of the Arab world.
What was clear in a few years was that the U.S. military could knock over hostile regimes and rout their regular armed forces. But we could not eradicate a resistance that had time on its side, plus tradition, tribalism, nationalism and an abiding faith that martyrdom and paradise awaited those who died in the cause.
As Napoleon said, “In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one.”
The Taliban were willing to fight as long as necessary to expel us and topple the regime we had helped to impose in their place. But we were growing increasingly reluctant to invest the blood and treasure for as long as necessary to impose our will upon what is, after all, their country, not ours.
Truth be told, Afghanistan was never a vital interest of the United States but has always been the most priceless possession of the Afghan people. But how the Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara of Afghanistan rule themselves, 8,000 miles away, is not our business.
There never was a vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan worth a war of the cost in blood, treasure and time that we have just fought.
Because any collapse of the Afghan government would occur on Biden’s watch, and be traceable to his April decision for a pullout of U.S. forces by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, what happens there this summer and fall will now become his to explain and defend.
For certain, we are going to read and hear of more defeats for the Afghan forces we trained, of the surrender of districts and provincial capitals, of atrocities against those who sided with us, and of horrors against those who embraced our “Western values.”
Many who cast their lot with us are going to pay with their lives, as will their families. And the enemies of the United States are likely to be energized by what they perceive, not wrongly, as a strategic defeat of the USA.
We did it to ourselves. Hubris was our failing, as it often is of great powers, the mindset exhibited by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she declared: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”
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The Republic is a filed mission. We The People had one job.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5tgAovXMAgvbV7?format=jpg&name=360×360
Speaking of “fail ” …. Matthew Shepard was killed by mean, hate filled, redneck bigots… tolerance is muh virtue …..reeeeeeeeeeeee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj4UffoHcjo
Just like the way the CIA secured the heroin business in the “golden triangle” and used Air America to transport its heroin around the world during the Vietnam War, the massive poppy fields came under their authority during this planned conflict with similar results for the CIA – $$$$$$$$.
For them, it was Mission Accomplished in both cases…..as if there was some other reason we went to either country.
Don’t forget about the M.I.C. they did alright in Vietnam and Afghanistan
You left off the second C – Congress.
You obviously spent too much time listening to Richard Pryor ridicule and denigrate White people to understand anything about the purpose of going to Vietnam.
I’ll attempt to sum it up with as few words as possible.
Big Capital was loathe to be sharing so much profit with middle class America . 3% average was not enough ROI. Labor was digging too deep. BC needed cheap, near slave labor to produce the goods in order to get more ROI. Vietnam was to be that cheap labor Mecca. Ford and other American manufacturing companies had already begun investing in production facilities even before the country i.e labor pool had been secured McNamara was the BC tool.
China wanted in too and when BC’s project to own their very own slave labor camp ended in defeat, BC had to send their newly acquired tool Nixon, under the guidance of the crypto-Bolshevik Kissinger to make the hard pivot to China, thus began the rise of the Red Dragon which is a grave threat to US national security today and all it cost America was poverty, death and loss of our nation. In Realpolitik, the people are always expendable. Profit before Nations, Bolsheviks always say.
So instead of the great American middleclass/mfg siphon beginning in Vietnam, it went to China and that is the summation of the beginning of the end of American empire.
There’s an entire book written on BC’s siphon project , but I can’t recall who authored it, though.
nevertheless, same as it always was…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5tarB-XoAcpBTC?format=jpg&name=900×900
So the rise of China is in effect a blowback against Big Capital? An “I am the captain now” moment in history.
China plays a long game that makes Zionism look like an impulsive teenager.
The guesstimate was the CIA grossed $1 billion a year from poppy somniferum.
I served – briefly – in Afghanistan. I concluded after one week in country that the war was lost and we should get the hell out. I had to wait a while longer to get out, of course. I also concluded that even if we won it was not worth it. It was glaringly obvious that this was nothing but a giant circle jerk of so-called “defense contractors”. Everybody was making money, lots of it. I was paid well over $1000 per day and I was a regular direct government contractor (a retired officer brought back to fill in some alleged personnel gaps). The private company men were making much more. The scale of the operation was astonishing. Little known fact. The “evil Russians” allowed us to send supplies to our troops through their country. ISAF, the international force involving a huge number of countries, was humorously called “I Saw Americans Fighting”. That is unfair, as many of the foreign detachments were too small for actual independent combat ops and/or had severe restrictions placed on them by their governments. The Germans (who had the only significant armored force in country) took care to place their troops in the least dangerous part of the country. The British, Danes, Norwegians, Italians, French, Poles and some other Eastern Europeans did their part; the British and Danes in particular were in the thick of it.
We should honor the American service personnel who sacrificed there and vow never to let such a fiasco happen again.
If only someone told Congress, they’d soon put a stop to this sort of thing!
I talked with guys I served over 2 years in country in Iraq with. They didn’t ever seem interested in talking about Afghanistan. Neither did the guys who we picked up before our second Iraq tour that had been there. At first I thought maybe it was hellish, then I settled on it must have just been boring and tedious.
I consider any country who sent troops to either place to be corrupt, but at least you can tell which commanders care about their troops by where they stick them. Nothing we did in either place was worth a single American soldier’s life.
Why?
Those soldiers were not conscripts. We have an all-volunteer military. They made their choices, let them live with the benefits or consequences.
Stop being such and ungrateful anti-American prick and thank a trans for your freedom .
https://vidmax.com/video/205429-the-us-military-actually-just-released-this-video-of-a-trans-lieutenant-colonel-to-prove-how-woke-we-will-be-when-america-is-invaded:bert-#
Wow. That left hook came out of nowhere. And here I thought we had a mutual respect for each other. My bad.
So, let me see if I get this right. The government who makes war is to be condemned but, the people who go there and do the warring are to be praised. Got it.
I read that as irony, not as a left hook. Clumsy, but still irony.
Yer fergot the “/s”, Flashy.
FDR knew the location of the Japanese fleet. NSA documents prove this. The Brits cracked the code…so who decided to let things happen ? Bush Sr called troops OFU’s ( One Fodder Unit)
In 3500 years of recorded history only 230 years of PEACE.
I can’t believe it is not now common knowledge that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen and that it was deliberately provoked. FDR put over a thousand Jews in the government and those kikes wanted to destroy Germany since at least the 20s. Just like the Jews in Russia wanted to destroy that country and in so doing formed the USSR.
I have to agree. That is a reasonable position for citizens to take. Myself and my brothers thought that somehow (but never quite explained) we were serving the interests of our country. But good intentions are not deeds.
I lost friends over there and almost died myself, if that gives any weight to my opinion. There is no honor in serving an unjust cause. We (my platoon and company) can be proud of how we served, but not of what we accomplished. We just tried to fulfill the commanders objective with as little death and destruction as possible. We were very successful. It accomplished nothing, which I think vindicates our philosophy. We never ran from a fight unless we were ordered or (a couple of times) surrounded.
I just want to people to think about all of the lives lost and destroyed and damaged over a lie meant to enrich certain people and benefit a foreign country. Think about that before you wave flags around supporting the next “righteous and just” conflict.
War is a Racket.
I was a facilities maintenance contractor in Afghanistan, I never served in the military. My own way to rationalize the situation was to view it as policing gangs. These gangs (Taliban) had AK 47s, RPGs, IEDs, and rockets. My point is we here in the US still have a the Crips and Bloods in cities across America, the Hells Angel’s and Mongols, and many others such as MS13. The police here can’t get rid of the gangs, what makes getting rid of the Taliban any different?
Peace with honor! /s
The Afghani Taliban have shown freedom fighters around the world how to defeat debauched first world militaries. Give them much credit: faith, independence, grit, determination, and tradition make for a martial spirit that becomes indominable. *
Same with the Vietnam experience. And, yes, leadership is critical in such adventures.
The Communists had Ho Chi Minh. America, R. McNamara and H. Kysynjer.
At least now the Pentagram will have moar time and resources for combatting Rayssissm and supporting LBGTQIPIBN+.
*(Auntie is thinking that legacy Americans will need Taliban support after the current Color Revolution is completed.)
At least the Taliban attempts the mode of virtue. Only vice seems to be driving the USA.
I remember reading that we left enough arms in Viet Nam to equip the 5th largest military in the world. I wonder how much we left for the Taliban?
The dirty little story behind the Nam weapons is that we knew they would need them later.
The military and media will never allow showing the real pictures.
*(Auntie is thinking that legacy Americans will need Taliban support after the current Color Revolution is completed.)
Astute observation Auntie.
Maybe five hundred Taliban advisors, to start.
18 years of getting our men and women thrown into the Graveyard meat grinder. for what ?
General Smedley Butler was right. It’s a Racket $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Not even conservacuck Buchanan managed to define the goal of the war in this article. Nobody else did either. And collectively insane people do not see a problem with this.
Damage Al Queda’s ability to attack us? That makes sense to someone? Only ignorant people think Osama Bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11. Even if he did, it still has fuckall to do with Afghanistan.
It is not incompetence, people. That is the BIG LIE. It is deliberate at some level of power at all times.
Yup.
Pat Buchanan is a failed mission.
Pat is/was among my Pantheon of Pols, but he does not seem to have successfully transitioned to the current century. I seldom read his stuff these days… it’s mostly irrelevant.
I think he is being ghost written by a neoclown.
Anyone who still supports the US military, is either ignorant or on the payroll. Even the warmonger Eisenhower in the 60s warned of the MIC, and the evidence has become crystal clear since. The military role is to enforce the USD reserve status, expand the empire, import drugs, provide profits for selected individuals, provide employment opportunities for otherwise unemployed and maintain currency creation. Currency creation is often missed, but because the US has a debt based currency, they must continue to create it for the system to survive – the military is a good way to keep the creation going.
I see you didn’t get the memo. Eisenhower, The empty suit as Carroll Quigley called him, was the MIC’s tool and a mass murdering crypto-Bolshevik POS. Dig a little deeper , John dear.
No where did I say anything positive about Eisenhower – I pointed out that even he, a warmonger, spoke about the MIC. He deliberately murdered the German population at the end of the war, he was a horrible person, unfortunately, every comment cannot include a complete biography of a person. Read a little deeper, John dear.
Satan can quote scripture too.
That is basically what I said, nice job reading deeper.
Flash deary go back and read lines 2 and 3 of his exhaustive 9 line reply. It’s a lot of reading so we’ll wait for you dear.
That kind of talk doesn’t look good on you. It’s something a smartass like MG would say.
Afghanistan was a failed mission the very day that Darth Cheney and Shrub decided to become the next empire to fail.
Late Boomers and early Gen Xers had a front row seat to Empire Boom and Bust. We saw the best of time and now bear witness to the worst. It was such long climb to end in such a short fall.
Yeah… the Fifties were pretty cool. We even had Elvis!
GW Bush did not lie. He did accomplish his mission.