Kabul has fallen. President Biden followed in the footsteps of his mentor, President Obama, in abandoning a fight. Obama did it to the Iraqis and we got ISIS; Biden repeated the ignominy and we’ll get a reinvigorated Taliban/Al-Qaeda. Expect a return of the 1990’s: the near sinking of the USS Cole, the bombing of our Kenya and Tanzania embassies, and escalations to grander slaughters.
Both parties were at fault in stirring the pot against “forever wars”. Trump tried to implement a bugout in Syria and had been laying the rhetorical groundwork for the same in Afghanistan. But at least he was amenable to common sense and could be dissuaded from the worst of his instincts. Not so with Biden.
Biden’s “gut instincts” seduced him to turn his back on what was already a light footprint. Clearly by 2018, US forces were reduced to a level that resembled the overthrow of the Taliban: reliance on indigenous forces, CIA operatives, special forces, and US air power. The 100,000 troop levels ended over a decade ago. Biden decided even that wasn’t enough. The bugout was fully on.
The parallels with the 1975 Fall of Saigon are tempting. But the worst parallel is the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform who suffered so much for an ignominious ending like this. They were brave, and abandoned by politicians childishly patronizing crowds who had gotten used to thinking of wars ending like World War II.
Our light footprint could have worked, not at nation-building, heaven forbid, but at killing the thugs who would turn jet airliners into missiles. Intelligence gathering, a base in the country and a few in the surrounding region, special forces scurrying around the country at a moment’s notice, and tactical and strategic killing of the ringleaders and their henchmen would have worked. Israel’s Mossad pointed the way. But no, Biden forsook that possibility for a bugout.
The vaunted pivot to Asia and the China threat will now be diluted by worries over Pashtun tribesmen infiltrating a Lollapalooza or college student union to blow it up. Today, our future just became darker.
RogerG