America's Reach Cannot Exceed Its Grasp
Joe Biden recognized that yesterday, but the chattering class has yet to accept that there are limits to American power
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
Twenty years ago, the United States went to war in Afghanistan for the most justifiable and legitimate of reasons: to avenge the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Within a few months, in concert with Afghan rebels, the US dealt a grievous blow to al Qaeda and unseated the Taliban from power.
Soon after, the US mission in Afghanistan evolved from a war of self-defense to a military and political mission focused on nation-building. Over two decades, US leaders convinced themselves — and the American people — they could turn Afghanistan into a stable, functioning, self-sustainable democracy and that it was in the US national interest to do so. It is a quintessential example of hubristic American exceptionalism — one oriented around a refusal to recognize the finite limits of US power and a belief that other countries and cultures could be molded in an American image. This week, as 20 years of blood and treasure melted away in a matter of days, America’s armchair generals and keyboard warriors railed against the alleged failure of the Biden administration to control and shape the unfolding events in Afghanistan. In doing so, they showed they’d learned nothing from two decades of failure.
Herd Cats Better
Approximately ten days ago, the Taliban did not control a single one of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals. Today, it rules the entire country — and unlike its first takeover in the 1990s, there are no remaining pockets of armed resistance. It represents a stunning and complete victory. The unexpected evaporation of Afghanistan’s military and governing structure in such a short period of time has, not surprisingly, sowed chaos in the country.
In his speech yesterday to the American people, Joe Biden said that he did not foresee the Taliban taking over the country so rapidly because he did not expect the Afghan government to give up so quickly. He is unquestionably correct.
Yet, the past 48 hours have been filled with recriminations about the White House’s alleged “failure of execution,” a “botched withdrawal,” and a lack of contingency planning. But the simple fact is while many predicted that the Kabul government would eventually capitulate, no one saw the fall coming this swiftly. And with only 2,500 troops left in the country — and the Afghan Army refusing to fight — how did anyone expect the US to prevent the ensuing chaos? No rearguard withdrawal can succeed if those on the frontlines walk away from their posts. Yet, in Afghanistan, that is precisely what happened.
Missing from the coverage of the fall of Kabul is a larger recognition that the US cannot control events in foreign lands — even foreign lands that we spent 20 years trying to pacify. The enemy gets a vote. Our supposed allies get a vote, and there are situations in which the US must respond to facts on the ground rather than controlling them. The same blinders that allowed Americans to believe we could sow democracy in the Hindu Kush and build an Afghan Army modeled after America’s remain firmly in place as that strategy has crashed and burned.
In the 2003 documentary, “The Fog of War,” former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara defined that expression in terms that resonate today, “war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables.” One cannot simply “execute” a better withdrawal out of complete chaos.
And the very fact that the US was able to rush thousands of troops to Kabul to expedite the further withdrawal of American citizens and Afghan allies is because there was contingency planning in place for a situation as dire as that which is unfolding in Afghanistan right now. Is it possible that the Biden administration could have handled the past 72 hours in Kabul better? Perhaps. We will never know. But the fact is, in war and in peace, “shit happens,” and sometimes the best you can do is clean up the mess.
So much of the criticism has the feel of Monday morning quarterbacking and a futile search for scapegoats — often by the same commentators who advocated for, supported, and even implemented the disastrous US policy in Afghanistan that led to this calamity. This morning, I was momentarily gobsmacked when I read this quote in the Washington Post from former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta criticizing the Biden team, “It just struck me that they were crossing their fingers and hoping chaos would not result. And it doesn’t work that way.”
In his 2014 memoir, Panetta said this about the 2009 debate within the Obama White House about the military’s proposed surge in Afghanistan, “For him (Obama) to defy his military advisers on a matter so central to the success of his foreign policy and so early in his presidency would have represented an almost impossible risk.” According to Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama’s Wars,” Panetta was even more direct. “No Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it,” Panetta reportedly said. His recommendation wrote Woodward, “would be ‘just do it. Do what they say.’” In his view, the policy “should have been decided in a week.” Apparently, in Panetta’s mind, there are times for “crossing one’s fingers and hoping chaos would not result.”
Though Panetta was integrally involved in the decision-making on Afghanistan, he was hardly alone in simply hoping for the best. For years, political pundits and objective journalists took at face value the optimistic statements of military and political leaders about success in Afghanistan and parroted one percent scenarios about the threat to the homeland if America departed too soon.
What so few were willing to consider was the possibility that at some point, the war would have to come to an end and that the outcome would be far messier and uglier than any of us wanted to imagine. It was jarring yesterday to listen to President Biden state, in no uncertain terms, that the US is not responsible for the situation in Afghanistan; and that we did our best, but our best was not good enough. Biden said there are limits to what the United States can achieve; that we can influence but not control events in foreign lands; and that it’s better to put one in the loss column than sacrifice more blood and treasure for a fight we cannot win. In that respect, Biden’s speech is one of the most unvarnished and, thus important, foreign policy addresses ever delivered by an American president. For 20 years, Americans needed to hear his painful but honest words: that the reach of even the mighty United States cannot exceed its grasp.
Because of decisions made two decades ago by a Republican president — and reinforced by the Democrat who followed him into office — the die had long been cast in Afghanistan. The fall of Kabul was startling and unexpected, but it was only surprising to those who refused to recognize for so long that America is indeed mortal.
The crazies will all be out in force. Forget Jan 6, this will rivet the blockheads for a long time.
Someone please point out that the Russkies left just about the way that we just did. They obviously the Russian general staff did learn something about the Afghan hill people. Don't mess with mother nature, especially if she wears a head scarf!
JustJoe158
You recall the 2009 Camp Chapman attack where a triple agent managed to get seven senior CIA operatives (including the station chief) in a room in Khost where a suicide bomber killed all of them? That's the sort of intelligence Biden is relying on.
Whatever spin they wanted to put on the chain of betrayals that led to the apprehension and execution of bin Laden in Pakistan (if you believe the narrative), the CIA has fucked everything up there from day one.
Sure, W Bush came into office with a Saddam vendetta on his mind, eager to prove to his dad that he was more than a charming goof-off by invading and liberating Iraq, installing a more compliant version of the Shah, and having oil money pay for everything. He had former Nixon staffer Rumsfeld cheering him on, assuring him everything would be fine.
The more pragmatic Cheney was mostly interested in the no-bid logistics contracts for KBR, but the oil looked good to him too. It was all in train to be an even bigger success than Desert Storm, and then 9/11 made it imperative to invade Afghanistan.
You know, that god forsaken mountainous country that broke the spine of the Soviet bear, a place where three men in their seventies armed with Krag and Enfield rifles from WW1 could hold off an entire platoon of Marines for two days (wounding two of them, plus one Corpsman) before surrendering and then melting back into the countryside. A country so rugged that Frank Herbert based the Fremen on the people who lived there, warriors who have been fighting off and on for two thousand years.
But hell, we were AMERICANS. We won WW2, right? (ahem. The Soviets did, actually).
So yeah, arrogance, blindness, incompetence. Biden is smart to get out now, sooner rather than later. Americans have amnesia, and by next November nobody will recall anything about this.
I'm going to watch Team America: World Police now. It's a pretty realistic depiction of how we thing of ourselves.