The Return of the Taliban

[Zorro]

Their comeback has taken twenty years, but it is a classic example of a successful guerrilla war of attrition.

Watching Afghanistan’s cities fall to the Taliban in rapid succession, as the United States completes a hasty withdrawal from the country, is a surreal experience, laced with a sense of déjà vu. Twenty years ago, I reported from Afghanistan as the Taliban’s enemies took these same cities from them, in the short but decisive U.S.-backed military offensive that followed the 9/11 attacks. The war on terror had just been declared, and the unfolding American military action was cloaked in purposeful determinism in the name of freedom and against tyranny. For a brief moment, the war was blessed by that rare thing: public support, both at home and abroad.

In the wake of the horror of Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States, most Americans polled believed that the country was doing the “right thing” in going to war in Afghanistan. That level of support didn’t last long, but the war on terror did, and so did the military expedition to Afghanistan, which stretched on inconclusively for two decades and now ends in ignominy. Donald Trump set this fiasco in motion, by announcing his intention to pull out the remaining American troops in Afghanistan and begin negotiations with the Taliban. In February, 2020, an agreement was signed that promised to withdraw all U.S. military forces in return for, among other things, peace talks with the U.S.-backed Afghan government. The American troops were duly drawn down, but, instead of engaging in real discussions, the Taliban stepped up their attacks. In April, President Joe Biden announced his intention to carry on with the withdrawal, and pull out forces by September 11th. However much he says that he does “not regret” his decision, his Presidency will be held responsible for whatever happens in Afghanistan now, and the key words that will forever be associated with the long American sojourn there will include hubris, ignorance, inevitability, betrayal, and failure.

In that regard, the United States joins a line of notable predecessors, including Great Britain, in the nineteenth century, and the Soviet Union, in the twentieth. Those historic precedents don’t make the American experience any more palatable. In Afghanistan—and, for that matter, in Iraq, as well—the Americans did not merely not learn from the mistakes of others; they did not learn from their own mistakes, committed a generation earlier, in Vietnam.

The main errors were, first, to underestimate the adversaries and to presume that American technological superiority necessarily translated into mastery of the battlefield, and, second, to be culturally disdainful, rarely learning the languages or the customs of the local people. By the end of the first American decade in Afghanistan, it seemed evident that the Western counterinsurgency enterprise was doomed to fail, and not only because of the return of the Taliban in many rural parts of the country: the Americans and their nato allies closed themselves off from Afghans in large regional bases, from which they operated in smaller units out of combat outposts, and distrust reined between them and their putative Afghan comrades. “Green-on-blue attacks,” in which Afghan security forces opened fire on their American and European counterparts, became alarmingly frequent. The Taliban, meanwhile, grew inexorably stronger.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-return-of-the-taliban

[wyn borkins]

1. The U.S. War in Afghanistan (1999 - 2021)

"The Taliban insurgency remains resilient nearly two decades after U.S.-led forces toppled its regime in what led to the longest war in U.S. history."

[sanatanadharma]

2. Actions have consequences

The results of our doings are rarely what was intended and can be opposite.
But the human ego is determined.

The results of actions are variously seen and unseen, desired and unwanted.
But the human ego is desirous.

The more subjective (identified with the outcomes) the actor is, the more likely volition will miss the mark.
But the ego will bully on.

The PNAC people who populated the GWB administration had too much hubris to be objective.
Because the ego is completely subjective.

Any one factor of the many truths pointed out in the New Yorker article is/was sufficient to birth a string of consequences.
All the strings of many choices wove a tapestry of tragedy.
And the ego continues in ignorance.