Anyone who was not moved and troubled by the calamitous U.S. exit from Afghanistan has a hardened heart and a harder head.
What a mess.
We should never have been there.
We never had a plan.
We never knew what we were doing.
We needed to get out.
But not like this. Not like this.
True, there is no unmessy way to lose a war, and a prolonged exit might well have been an even greater human and logistical disaster.
But, given that the withdrawal had been announced and agreed upon months ago, how is it possible that there was no plan for an orderly and reasonably secure exit?
And how is it that we really were not prepared for such a rapid Taliban conquest?
How deep would the intel have to have been? How enlightened would our imaginations have to have been?
In the end, President Joe Biden was right that the U. S. military did an exemplary job of evacuating approximately 125,000 people — an unprecedented and remarkable number.
But those were our troops.
Military planning and intelligence were abysmal, as they had been for the past 20 years.
And someone really should be fired or resign.
Remember when Lord Carrington resigned as foreign minister in Britain, after the Brits failed to anticipate Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands? He said he and his office should have done more and were responsible.
There must be accountability.
Our exit was appalling.
I say this as a fan, generally, of the Biden presidency and of the president himself.
And I say this as a fan of what he was trying to do in Afghanistan and what he said last Tuesday night.
• Our soldiers have suffered enough. (He is right about the ongoing wounds and suicide rates.)
• We are not good at nation building.
• The waste of life and treasure there for 20 years was an obscenity.
We should have gotten out years ago.
Mr. Biden promised to get out and he did.
I think of two quotations:
One was by “Deep Throat” in the film “All the President’s Men.” He said of the Nixon administration: “The truth is these guys weren’t all that bright ….”
They were arrogant and in over their heads.
That’s how it is with men and women of power. They are good at acquiring power, seldom good at using it. Knowledge and wisdom are not aims.
That’s how it has been with the foreign policy establishment since World War II.
They don’t learn.
The nation’s leaders knew 10 years ago that Afghanistan was hopeless. Yet they kept sending young Americans to fight and die there.
The same was true of Vietnam. Our leaders knew the war was lost in 1967. We stayed until a very undignified exit in 1975.
And why was it hopeless? Quote No. 2. A fellow professor said to me after I made a presentation many years ago: “What if that is not what people want?”
What we were sure the Vietnamese people and the Afghan people wanted, they did not want.
At least not enough of them. At least not enough to fight and die for it.
Mr. Biden and Donald Trump were right to say “enough” and to be angry about the waste of lives and resources.
So, have we learned?
Have we learned?
Or will folly march on and on?
It was not too much to ask that we had an exit plan.
But how about having an entrance plan?
Before we intervene in another country, we need to know :
• Why we are there?
• What is really going on there?
• Do we have clear objectives?
• Are these objectives attainable?
• Does the American public have the stomach for it, regardless of where it may lead and how long it may take?
Without these answers, we get Afghanistan, the brutal and stupid war and its abysmal ending, over and over again.
Be clear before we commit. And if we commit, we stick with it, and all share the burden.
One more thing that would help along the way: A press and an electronic media with an attention span — capable of informing and inquiring and not just reacting and hyperventilating.
Let’s never do this again.
Let us learn from our mistakes, illusions and folly, at long last.
Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers (burriscolumn@gmail.com).
First Published: September 5, 2021, 9:00 a.m.
