Hunkered Down in Bremerton

Goodbye Afghanistan

As this is being written American troops are leaving Bagram Airfield for (hopefully) the last time. The planned withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan will happen within the next few weeks. All that will remain will be security forces at the United States Embassy in Kabul. This is the third world superpower to withdraw its forces in seeming defeat in the past 150 Years: The British in 1880, The Soviets in 1989 and United States forces.

However unlike the British and the Soviets, and unlike the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 this is not a defeat for the United States. The original objective was accomplished. Subsequent objectives, however, were not.

American forces went into Afghanistan shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. It was believed that Al Qaeda was using Afghanistan as a staging and training ground for it's terrorists. The U.S. objective was to wipe out that threat. In the twenty years since there have been Al Qaeda has launched no major terrorist attacks against the United States homeland. As a major terrorist threat it has been effectively defeated. The military accomplished it's original mission.

Quickly, however, politics got involved...or should I say politicians. Mission creep entered the picture. As they had in Vietnam, as in Korea before that, the politicians changed the mission and and it's objectives. The goal became to bring some sense of stability to the region and create a freely elected democratic or republican style goverment with liberty on justice for all. Additionally, women's rights needed protecting because the ruling Taliban was a bunch of misogynistic thugs. Public schools needed to be developed to replace the madrassas. And so-on and so-on with good intentions.

To paraphrase the late Rush Limbaugh (who I originally thought was a patriotic American)...The military is good at two things...hurting people and breaking things. Whenever we create goal that extends beyond what the military is useful for, we are setting it and our nation up for failure.

Following through with our good intentions (even if the Christian God is on our side) is not what the military is good at. However many schools you build you cannot create a good outcome with men and women who wear body armour and cammo and night-vision goggles, carrying automatic rifles, grenades and Saw weapons, flying F16s and Blackhawks, Bombing weddings and other civilian activities do not create good will.

The United States military could have killed more Afghans and destroyed more infrastructure. They easily had the ability to paraphrase former senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater "Bomb them back to the Stone Age" as he said about Vietnam. Short of that goal the political goals set by several successive presidents were not (and never were) achievable.

Let's congratulate the military for a job well done. Let's salute the Veterans of this ordeal as the heros that they are. America is truly a safer place today than before our troops were sent to Afghanistan twenty years ago.

Howard B. Julien

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Updated July 3, 2021