“We
are there and we are committed” was the regular retort of Secretary of State
Dean Rusk during the war in Vietnam.
Whatever
you may think of our decision to go in, Rusk was saying, if we walk away, the
United States loses the first war in its history, with all that means for
Southeast Asia and America’s position in the world.
We
face a similar moment of decision.
Wednesday,
a truck bomb exploded near the diplomatic quarter of Kabul, killing 90 and
wounding 460. So terrible was the atrocity that the Taliban denied complicity.
It is believed to have been the work of the Haqqani network.
This
“horrific and shameful attack demonstrates these terrorists’ compete disregard
for human life and their nihilistic opposition to the dream of a peaceful
future for Afghanistan,” said Hugo Llordens, a U.S. diplomat in Kabul.
The
message the truck bombers sent to the Afghan people? Not even in the heart of
this capital can your government keep civilian workers and its own employees
safe.
Message
to America: After investing hundreds of billions and 2,000 U.S. lives in the 15
years since 9/11, we are further from victory than we have ever been.
President
Obama, believing Afghanistan was the right war, and Iraq the wrong war, ramped
up the U.S. presence in 2011 to 100,000 troops. His plan: Cripple the Taliban,
train the Afghan army and security forces, stabilize the government, and
withdraw American forces by the end of his second term.
Obama
fell short, leaving President Trump with 8,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and
Kabul’s control more tenuous than ever. The Taliban hold more territory and are
active in more provinces than they have been since being driven from power in
2001. And Afghan forces are suffering casualties at the highest rate of the
war.
Stated
starkly, the war in Afghanistan is slowly being lost.
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Indeed,
Trump has inherited what seems to be an unwinnable war, if he is not prepared
to send a new U.S. army to block the Taliban from taking power. And it is hard
to believe that the American people would approve of any large reintroduction
of U.S. forces.
The
U.S. commander there, Gen. John Nicholson, has requested at least 3,000 more
U.S. troops to train the Afghan army and stabilize the country while seeking a
negotiated end to the war.
Trump’s
conundrum: 3,000 or 5,000 more U.S. troops can at best help the Afghan security
forces sustain the present stalemate.
But
if we could not defeat the Taliban with 100,000 U.S. troops in country in 2011,
we are not going to defeat a stronger Taliban with a U.S. force one-seventh of
that size. And if a guerrilla army does not lose, it wins.
Yet
it is hard to see how Trump can refuse to send more troops. If he says we have
invested enough blood and treasure, the handwriting will be on the wall.
Reports that both Russia and Iran are already talking to the Taliban suggest
that they see a Taliban takeover as inevitable.
Should
Trump announce any timetable for withdrawal, it would send shock waves through
the Afghan government, army and society.
Any
awareness that their great superpower ally was departing, now or soon, or
refusing to invest more after 15 years, would be a psychological blow from
which President Ashraf Ghani’s government might not recover.
What
would a Taliban victory mean?
The
Afghan people, especially those who cast their lot with us, could undergo
something like what befell the South Vietnamese and Cambodians in 1975. It
would be a defeat for us almost as far-reaching as was the defeat for the
Soviet Union, when the Red Army was forced to pull out after a decade of war in
the 1980s.
For
the USSR, that Afghan defeat proved a near-fatal blow.
And
if we pulled up stakes and departed, the exodus from Afghanistan would be huge
and we would face a moral crisis of how many refugees we would accept, and how
many we would leave behind to their fate.
Fifteen
years ago, some of us argued that an attempt to remake Afghanistan and Iraq in
our image was utopian folly, almost certain, given the history and culture of
the entire region, to fail.
Yet
we plunged in.
In
2001, it was Afghanistan. In 2003, we invaded and occupied Iraq. Then we
attacked Libya and ousted Gadhafi. Then we intervened in Syria. Then we backed
the Saudi war to crush the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Given
the trillions sunk and lost, and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
dead, how have we benefited ourselves, or these peoples?
As
Rusk said, “We are there and we are committed.”
And
the inevitable departure of the United States from the Middle East, which is
coming, just as the British, French and Soviet empires had to depart, will
likely do lasting damage to the American soul.
