That the United States and NATO had no real hope of winning the war in Afghanistan, in the sense of defeating the enemies of the incumbent government and enabling it to live in peace, I’ll gladly concede. Yet more readily, I’ll agree that the U.S. stopped seriously trying to win a long time ago. American soldiers were last killed in action on February 8, 2020, almost a year and a half ago. In the last seven years (2015–2021), our KIA’s have totaled 64. Chicago, which almost doubled that figure last month, looks a lot more like a war zone.
Lots of people all along the political spectrum see that as an airtight argument for cutting and running. There’s no daylight here between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I don’t dispute the logic, but I do have a quibble.
As the American withdrawal nears completion, the Taliban have made tremendous advances, government forces have been deserting in droves, and the consensus is that the rebels will take control of most of the country almost before the world has time to blink. Prior to our departure, the enemy advance was much slower. There was no obvious reason why the conflict might not have continued indefinitely.
It appears, then, at least to my naïve perception that the tiny U.S. and NATO forces, although they barely engaged in combat, made an important difference. So long as they remained, the Taliban either couldn’t or wouldn’t decisively defeat the government.
The stalemate was advantageous to American interests. An anti-Islamofascist government, however shaky, on Pakistan’s border reduces to some degree that risk of a hostile takeover in Pakistan, which would be a highly undesirable development. Undesirable, too, would be a return to Afghanistan’s status quo ante 9/11, when it served as a hard-to-monitor refuge for terrorists.
A further consideration, one of increasing significance, is that Afghanistan has major deposits of rare earth metals. It would be best if those could be mined by friendly pickaxes, but their current dormancy is better than possession by hostile parties. Red China is pretty close at hand and would have no scruples about making deals with Taliban.
Continuing Operation “Freedom’s Sentinel” would cost little in the way of additional blood and treasure. Leaving humanitarian considerations aside – Taliban massacres are already escalating – the cost-benefit analysis looked favorable. Why then was it in our national interest to quit?
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