Sunday, February 23, 2025, 9:13AM |  27°
MENU
Advertisement
1
MORE

Keith C. Burris: Complexity is not easy

Jennifer Kundrach/Post-Gazette

Keith C. Burris: Complexity is not easy

American life is full of apparent contradictions that are not contradictions, but complexities.

A complexity is when two things are true though they seem to be in tension, even opposition.

The American idea of government is a complexity: We believe in both equality and merit; in personal responsibility and collective compassion.

Advertisement

Sometimes it is necessary for government to contract and sometimes it is necessary for it to expand — to help people.

Complexity — the tension of two equally held values or value sets — must be balanced or managed in the necessity of the moment. That’s American pragmatism.

And it’s not so easy.

So, here is a complexity for you:

Advertisement

We should never have been in Afghanistan in the first place. The war was a tragic mistake.

But we should have stayed until that nation was relatively stabilized and our friends there could be safe.

And that could have taken a very long time — maybe another 20 years.

Nation building in Afghanistan, and the cause of “freedom” there, whatever that might mean in that land, was not worth one drop of American blood.

No one’s American son or daughter should have died there.

And, President Joe Biden was right, in his address to the nation last week: There was no way to stay there and maintain the peace without another surge — more troops and more war — after 20 years and more than 2 trillion American dollars spent. Yes, trillion.

We lost the war a long time ago. And the moment of withdrawal and capitulation had to come.

But, it should not have ended this way — in chaos, with the people who helped and believed in the United States at risk, and with women who believe in human rights for themselves at extreme risk.

We didn’t break Afghanistan. The Russians and the Afghans themselves did that. But we made it worse. We had an obligation to keep trying to fix it.

We owed it to our Afghan allies there — not just soldiers but translators, drivers and other helpers.

We owed it to our countrymen and women who fought and died there.

It would have been better had we never sent them there, but we did send them and we owed them a more decent ending than this.

Almost everything the president said in his address was true:

• If Afghans will not fight for their nation, we cannot be expected to continue the fight.

• There is no threat to the United States in Afghanistan and no American national interest is at stake there.

• And we gave the Afghans every tool imaginable — every chance — and then some.

I admire the president’s Truman-like clarity and bluntness. He did what Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump wanted to do.

But …

We abandoned our friends.

Our very mistake obligated us to at least create a more orderly withdrawal and get our friends out. We failed in this as we failed in the war.

We must still try to protect and extract our friends.

Here is another complexity: We need to better support our troops — the enlisted men and women who are the daughters and sons of the working class — but be much tougher on the generals at the Pentagon.

We have not paid much attention to the war in Afghanistan, or the casualties there, for at least 10 years. That’s one reason I believe a draft is better for democracy than a volunteer Army. We should all shoulder the burdens of war and national defense.

At the same time, we need to hold the top military brass more accountable than we do. They got nothing right about Afghanistan from Day 1 to last week. They told the president the Afghan government would collapse, but not for weeks or months. It took hours and days.

Many comparisons to Vietnam will be made. This one is fair: There never was a consistent or coherent strategy for winning the war.

Similarly, we need a foreign intelligence branch. But, for all its reach and bloat, U.S. intelligence has gotten almost nothing right since the last world war. It’s unacceptable.

In the days of Eisenhower and Allen Dulles, the CIA abused its power, but at least it had solid information.

But since the era of Richard Helms and William Colby, and their ilk, U.S. intelligence has only gotten worse — 9/​11 being the most glaring example. In the case of Afghanistan, a few CIA experts and desk officers are now saying that some of their scenarios did imagine the total collapse that their superiors say surprised them. Everyone is covering their hides. No one is asking, “Why do we never get it right?”

My guess is that any Kabul cab driver could have told the president what our intelligence apparatus did not — count on the denouement being chillingly swift.

We need actual spies on the ground.

American political life is full of complexities. Lyndon Johnson, a bully and something of a bigot, did more for human and civil rights than any president since Abraham Lincoln. The late Rich Trumka, a wily and tough labor leader from the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania, presided over the decline of organized labor in the United States though he was perhaps labor’s bravest and most thoughtful leader, ever. Judicial originalism is full of hypocrisy and its own excess while still, arguably, a needed corrective to unbridled judicial activism.

American foreign policy has its own yin and yang: We are citizens of the world. We are for “America first.” We are the beacon and champions of democracy. We cannot police countries we only dimly understand.

Both truths are true. But managing complexity is not easy.

The tragedy of Afghanistan is that we utterly misapplied both ideals. We went to Afghanistan to help the Afghan people, maybe to “save” them and set them free. But we were clueless about them and their history.

And, then, having created a vulnerable population within Afghanistan and given them false hope, we reverted to self-interest and left them to the killers.

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers (burriscolumn@gmail.com).

First Published: August 22, 2021, 4:00 a.m.

RELATED
SHOW COMMENTS (39)  
Join the Conversation
Commenting policy | How to Report Abuse
If you would like your comment to be considered for a published letter to the editor, please send it to letters@post-gazette.com. Letters must be under 250 words and may be edited for length and clarity.
Partners
Advertisement
The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning
1
business
Amid funding uncertainty, Pitt pauses doctoral admissions
Pirates outfielder DJ Stewart gets congratulations from teammates after his home run against the Baltimore Orioles in the first game of the Grapefruit League season at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Fla., on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025.
2
sports
5 takeaways from Pirates' spring training victory over Orioles
A new report advises retirees in 2025 to aim for just 3.7% when withdrawing from savings -- down from 4%. Over a 30-year retirement, that could mean the difference between financial security or outliving your cash in your 80s or 90s, financial experts say.
3
business
How much can retirees safely withdraw from their nest eggs? Financial experts weigh in.
Preston Coleman, 52, was beaten and strangled inside an Aliquippa VFW on Jan. 5, 2025, in what police described as a vicious, unprovoked attack.
4
news
Bartender working at Aliquippa VFW during beating that left man unconscious facing charges
York County District Attorney Timothy J. Barker reacts during a news conference regarding the shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York, Pa. on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025.
5
news
Police officer killed, gunman dead in shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York
 (Jennifer Kundrach/Post-Gazette)
Jennifer Kundrach/Post-Gazette
Advertisement
LATEST opinion
Advertisement
TOP
Email a Story