Writing the kind of post that really sums up what we're watching in Afghanistan would take a staff of researchers, time and a check made out to me. I have none of those, so my quick hit is this: The proper amount of time to stay in Afghanistan was either very short or quite long, with no in-between.
The initial goal was to eject the Taliban from power and take away the safe haven they gave to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. It happened pretty quickly, using a number of Afghan warlords as allies and with groundwork being laid over some time before attacks finally started. The very short time would have been to then get out and let the warlords have their way. Afghanistan would be slightly less of a hellhole and it would be one run by someone other than the Taliban. If the Taliban came back and wanted another go, then they could be smacked around some more. If that remained our goal, we stayed too long.
The other goal came to be creating a healthy nation in Afghanistan that could organically resist Taliban power and advance its people from the 8th century to maybe the 18th or 19th. In the cities, perhaps all the way to the 1950s. For that goal, we didn't stay nearly long enough. Two of the key elements for a healthy nation are a respect for the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of democratically elected power. Without both of these, people rely on old-fashioned tribal structures rife with corruption that are trusted by no one: This judge will never respect my claim because it's being made against one of his extended clan members -- so I'll take matters into my own hands.
Between the British East India Company and the Raj period, England more or less occupied and directed India for the better part of 200 years. It never had the goal of building a nation for the benefit of its people, but those core values -- the rule of law and peaceful transfer of power -- gradually came to be built into the way the Indian people thought about running their own government. English people were not better than Indian people. English culture was not better than Indian culture. The Raj, especially in its early years, was brutal, imperialist and more than a little racist, although it was a lot safer to be an upperclass Indian widow after 1829.
But those English busybodies brought with them the idea that if everyone, even the king, obeys the law, then everyone, not just the king, can have a shot at getting rich. The English stayed long enough for the Indian people to learn and like that idea enough to try it for themselves. With the 1991 election of Narasimha Rao, they decided to ditch even the socialism imposed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv. Although India's commitment to democracy seems to waver sometimes, especially in some remote regions, it's been able to maintain both of those key features.
The U.S. was not in Afghanistan nearly long enough to help those key features become a part of the Afghan culture and fabric. Since the effort was intentional and since the U.S. had no desire to rule the Afghans it might not have taken ten generations, but it was definitely going to take more than one. The short-sightedness of former President Trump and President Biden, who both wanted everyone out of Afghanistan now if not sooner, made disaster inevitable. Biden's statement of not wanting to hand the Afghan war to a fifth president demonstrates the false understanding of what could have continued to work in the country had we desired to continue to build it. More U.S. troops die in training and in accidents than in combat; combat deaths in Afghanistan were down below one every two weeks. Soldiers were more likely to die on U.S. soil than Afghan soil.
Our choices were fairly clear: Pure national interest, which means kicking the Taliban's ass, leaving and then kicking it again if they ask us to. Or nation building and humanitarian concerns, which means committing to thinking beyond one's own four-year term and what polls say. We tried to split the difference -- which, King Solomon would have pointed out, doesn't work when dealing with children and other living things.
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