Afghanistan will Fall Soon

Afghanistan will fall because of failed US policy and military leadership.

A Green Beret, a real hero, told me that Americans have fancy watches but Afghanistan has all the time.

Blame Biden all you want, but when Afghanistan falls, and it will, four presidential administrations failed her.

Everyone will and should be offended here.

If the US Embassy comes under attack before it is evacuated, we should send in a hundred thousand troops and nuke every hill the Afghans have and bring the survivors into Kandahar or whatever passes as a civilized town and execute any goat-humper who can’t sing God Bless America.

In a nutshell, if we can’t kill all the bad guys, we should leave post-haste… and it is 19 years too late. Perhaps we can justify the first ten years it took to cap Bin Laden, but the last ten have been a warmongering boondoggle.

Hard evidence shows that 75% of the Taliban and Al Qaeda threat in country were destroyed in the first four months after 9/11, twenty years ago.

75%. Maybe those were easy pickings, but tell that to the Marines of 3/5. To be there for 20 years just for the house of cards to collapse is an insult to professional military men and women who have sacrificed greatly while you and I wore or burned MAGA hats.

Bush 43’s strategy was for nation building. The Afghans are culturally backward and will never be a model of Western Civilization. They are tribal, politically unreliable and corrupt, avoid strong alliances unless someone is standing on their collective neck or gives them bags of money, have a chief export of one of the worst substances known to man (heroin), they kill young girls for attending school and calling that honorable, and an absurd cadre of war-fighters think buggering young boys makes them more, uh, manly.

Bush’s failed strategy was eclipsed only by Obama stating publicly a withdrawal timetable, which he reneged on. Trump did the same thing for the same reason: to curry votes. At least one Sec Def, USMC (ret) general Jim Mattis had the courage to resign when his recommended policy was jettisoned by Trump.

Now Biden holds the bag, and it is not his fault (as much as I would like to place that albatross around his neck). Biden’s biggest mistake, arguable, was seasonal. The fighting “season” is May to November in that hell-hole, give or take, and the Taliban is gunned up, baby, and killing is in season. By the looks of it they aren’t wasting any time moving into power, regardless of all the “negotiations” that the US had sponsored and entertained.

There are great, noble, and honorable Afghans: the interpreters, town guides, police volunteers, etc., but they don’t even have the support from official US policy. There is no concrete way to protect these people for risking their lives from any administration, any congress. That is both a sin and a crime.

It is easy to fault politicians. We should fault ourselves, first, for trusting their judgment, but a huge level of responsibility for the Afghanistan failure lies at the feet of the commanding generals in theater.

There was never a mission that advocated a final win or what that would look like. Twenty commanders of that region arrived, did nothing of real lasting value, and came home to a parade, retirement, maybe a book deal, a lucrative industrial contract or a corporate board seat. They, the generals, were never held accountable. One was, McChrystal, for a repeated lack of personal and staff discipline in the presence of a free press. But the other 19 should have been fired for no balls, for not emphasizing winning the war in Afghanistan. They protected their rank and retirement. Each one failed magnificently, judging by their beribboned uniforms.

That is more of a statement of a myopic, selfish, bureaucratic and careerist officer corps, but that’s for another time.

The US should have left Afghanistan 10 years ago, at least. The situation in that pre-historic country is hopeless, and we can’t change it.

Here’s an analogy, loose but fitting (no pun intended). If Rhode Island had an orange party and a yellow party and the latter blew up the Alamo, Texans would flip out. Sorrow would give way to righteous anger in a heartbeat. Texans would call in the community of states and curry favor from the orange party in Rhode Island and seek to eradicate the yellows from existence, for daring to export terror to Texas.

The problem is Texans don’t know beans about Rhode Island, and though they are unafraid they can be stupid (no offense); they don’t know the oranges and yellows are related, interwoven, inter-married, and have no affinity at all to Texans. The oranges will blame the yellows for expediency and wait and wait and when the power vacuum shifts they will take over the yellow properties and families. The community of states will be long gone from boredom and lack of real skin in the game. And the Texans must go home, sooner or later.

My Green Beret friend also tells me that Americans have the technology, but that will never be as strong as Afghan misery.

China is watching. That despotic rogue nation has already encroached on Pakistani territory. You know that China is watching the US closely in Afghanistan.