Cliffsnotes of the Zeitgeist, Part XIX. Making Michael Coreone look good

Hypocrisy. 

Warren G. Harding, whom during his presidency looked like a solid person of conservative values, but who was banging his young assistant in the Oval Office, after having only recently dumped his long time paramour, who was potentially a German spy during World War One.  He wasn't exactly what he seemed to be.

Senator Pat Geary: I despise your masquerade, the dishonest way you pose yourself. You and your whole fucking family.  

Michael Corleone : We're both part of the same hypocrisy, senator, but never think it applies to my family.  

The Godfather, Part II

So goes the exchange from The Godfather, Part II.

Indeed, the scene early in the movie is full of hypocrisy.

When I started typing this out, some time ago, there was something that was really bothering me, but I've managed to forget precisely what it was.  I will say, however, I'm constantly amazed by the degree of hypocrisy that people engage in but don't seem to realize it.

Perhaps that's because realizing it requires a real element of self awareness and, more than that, self-sacrifice.  If you are doing something, that is, that is hypocritical, you either have to acknowledge it and carry on as a hypocrite, which we all do to at least some extent, or reform what you're doing, if you can.

That "if you can" element of this, I'll note, is a biggie.  Public social moralists, who often turn out to actually be hypocrites themselves are big on dumping criticism on folks on topics you can't really do anything about, at least right away.  For example, you'll find people who go after other people about driving and their carbon footprint, but that's an easy thing to do if you aren't employed in the sticks and have to drive to get where you are going simply to put food on the table.

As another example from our own times, I used to subscribe to a Twitter feed that started off on the topic of Prisoner of War camps in Nebraska during World War Two.  Somewhere along the way it devolved as the author got divorced and took up continually dumping on her ex spouse (why does anyone think that people who respond to that on Twitter are really your friends), and then dumping on her former fundamentalist Christian faith of her upbringing, and then gushing about the new boyfriend with even occasional references to their doing, shall we say, the deed.  Blech. . . 

But what was the final straw for me was when COVID hit and there were constant suggestions that those who did not stay home were the worst people in the world. Well, madam, It's easy to stay home if you are employed by a university which will pay you to sit on your butt at home. . . it isn't easy to stay home if you are a mechanic, for example.  

If that doesn't seem like an exercise in hypocrisy, it is.  There are entire classes of people who dip their cups in the government well and then criticize those who are scrapping out in the cold world for a living.  Get a clue.

Anyhow, the essence of the quote from The Godfather Part II is that both men engaged in the conversation present themselves to the outside world as respectable men, but in reality, their incredibly corrupt.  Michael Corleone has gone from somebody who realized his family was corrupt but who didn't wish to participate in the corruption, to  completely corrupt himself and head of a murderous crime family.  Pat Geary is a U.S. Senator (something that we know from the first installment of The Godfather that Michael's father Vito Corelone had hoped his son Michael would become), but at least Michael has the ability to still grasp that he's involved in crime and therefore hypocritical.  Geary may condemn Corleone for his "masquerade" but Geary can't even see that in himself.

There's an awful lot of that going around society wide.  Perhaps there always is.

I'm just frankly seeing, however, absolutely everywhere.

 One such instance is some really strong populist outrage at President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan.  I'm upset about that too, but I was in favor of staying in the country indefinitely.  What I don't get is Trump diehards who somehow blame Biden for carrying out what Trump started and don't also criticize Trump.  The scenes at the Kabul airport became inevitable the moment that Trump announced we were pulling out, after dealing with the Taliban without the central government.  Yes, the pull-out was botched, but it was going to be botched.  Biden shouldn't have gone down the primrose path that Trump set out, but you can't be mad at one without being mad at the other.

And yet I keep seeing some proclaim that things would have been different if Trump was in office.  

How?  This is exactly what he wanted to do.

One such instance is some really strong populist outrage at President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan.  I'm upset about that too, but I was in favor of staying in the country indefinitely.  What I don't get is Trump diehards who somehow blame Biden for carrying out what Trump started and don't also criticize Trump.  The scenes at the Kabul airport became inevitable the moment that Trump announced we were pulling out, after dealing with the Taliban without the central government.  Yes, the pull-out was botched, but it was going to be botched.  Biden shouldn't have gone down the primrose path that Trump set out, but you can't be mad at one without being mad at the other.

And yet I keep seeing some proclaim that things would have been different if Trump was in office.  

How?  This is exactly what he wanted to do.

On this, I'll note, I'll give props to Tulsi Gabbard.  I'm not a Gabbard fan, but she released a video criticizing pretty much everyone,  but noting that its almost certain the nation will get committed to another war that sooner or later it doesn't want to be in.

Locally, we're back to the typical hypocrisy regarding oil prices. When oil is down, we cry that the low price is killing the economy. When its up, we cry that it's killing our pocket books.  You really can't have it both ways.

A major national exercise in hypocrisy is going on right now over Texas having restricted abortions.  Democrats, and much of the Press, is all verklempt over what amounts to an exercise in democracy.  Everyone seems to be for democracy until people vote, then they're not.

Boiled down to its essence, if Texas votes to ban abortions, and if Roe v. Wade isn't the law anymore, which it probably isn't, they can do that.  Complaining that this is somehow wrong is not much different from claiming the last election was stolen.  You either respect the vote, or you are anti-democratic.

Regarding personal hypocrisy, we're also getting a major dose of Boomer left wing Catholics moral blindness.  Both Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic, and Nancy Pelosi, a practicing Catholic, are expressing public outrage.  In doing that they've gone from obvious moral ambiguity, at best, to outright departure from the tenants of the Faith.

This really crosses over the morally dubious position of "I'm personally against, but . .  " line that is usually the pathetic excuse that's laid out for taking a position contrary to the moral teaching of the Church here.  That isn't much different from a German in 1942 saying, "well, I'm personally against gassing the Jews, but . . "  That's never been any sort of real excuse, but it's one the Bishops have put up with for some reason, although it appears that day is ending.

This is really crossing a line.  You can't be an adherent Catholic and hold those positions.  The Bishops really need to act on that.  Frankly, at this point they really should be denied Communion.

Pelosi is promising to bring a bill in Congress to protect "reproductive rights", which is a hypocritical term in and of itself, as what she really means is "anti reproductive rights for women--but not men".  In doing this, she called the Supreme Court "cowardly" for not taking up a Texas appeal. That's complete bullshit and she knows it.

The point here is that Biden and Pelosi really can't hold the positions the are and pretend that they not only aren't square with the tenants of the Church, they've crossed into mortal sin.  I'm not saying they should leave the Church, they shouldn't.  I am saying that at their ages they're about to meet their maker as a guaranteed certainty and if they are believing Catholics, which I believe they are, they need to reform their conduct right now before It's too late.

On that, I'd also note, they're both in the "to whom much is given" situation that most of us aren't.  Powerful people seem to frequently compromise their morals at some point, and frankly average people do as well. That's not the point.  Their problem is that most of us could simply go to Confession and we'd be good to go.  The repentance requirement here, however, means they really have to do something more. They can't simply go to Confession and then ignore the entire topic.

What they could do, however, is respect democracy, or even reality.  Is it that hard to say "well, the legislature of Texas has spoken, and we all knew that Roe didn't make much sense in the first place. .  "

On the Supreme Court, politicians who are gnashing their teeth over the Court not taking this up right away know that the Court doesn't have to take anything up it doesn't want to, and if it did take this up, it'd just reverse Roe v. Wade.  Given as Pelosi rather obviously in the pro abortion camp, she ought to be really glad they didn't take it up.

This gets to the topic of politicians lying.  I grasp sales puffery, but lying is another matter entirely.  We're seeing this anymore all the time.

I'm still, I'd note, bothered by the hypocrisy that has become endemic in the law, of which I'm part.  I don't know if that makes me Geary or Corleone. .. but it's probably Corleone in context (at least he's a better dresser than Geary). Lawyers still tend to yawn and declare that "we have the greatest judicial system on earth" which has just about as much factual backing as getting a big foam finger and yelling out "we're number one" at a sports event.  Oh, really?  The evidence of that isn't very good.

That would argue, I'd note, for major league tort reform, but that's not going to happen as lawyers are too much of the legislative session for it to happen.  We make money from the system, and hence, we're going to keep it just as it is.

And that aspect of it goes on and on, starting with the stuff force-fed to prospective law students about how broadly applicable a law degree is, which it isn't.

Speaking of law schools, a public figure has finally managed to note that the University of Wyoming's College of Law picks up professors that are dedicated opponents of the state's industries.  You have an absolute public right to be an opponent of anything, but the state employing professors who have had a history of trying to do in big sectors of the state's economy is hypocritical and should be stopped.  Indeed, at this point, as I've stated here before, with the UBE now the laughable path to entry into the practice of law in the state, simply doing away with the law school makes economic sense.

Finally, I keep hearing people base their views on religion, politics, and science, on their pocket books.  That doesn't make sense.  If your religion, politics, and science, all square with your pocket book, you probably ought to rethink something.

One final thing on politicians.  If anything proves that it's really time to move on from Boomer politicians, it's the defeat in Afghanistan.  Indeed, it really brings up, once again, the degree to which we've tolerated a group of leaders who when the country's call came, didn't go.

That's a little over broad, I admit, but we got into a long war in Afghanistan thanks to a President who had served, in the Air Guard, who was a Boomer, listening to bad military advice from Donald Rumsfeld, who wasn't, but who was associated with the end in Vietnam to a degree, and to a host of former Trotskyite Neo Cons.  Our embarrassing departure was presided over by two Boomers who didn't serve in the service during the Vietnam War as they both had medical deferments.  I'm not commenting on the deferments, but there's something that's just flat out unsettling about all of this.  I'd feel a bit better if the guy yanking us out in the Saigon like fashion was able to say that, if he was a Boomer, "well, I look back when I was with the Marines in DaNang and . . ."

That's not happening.

Why is Billie Eilish hanging out on my Twitter feed?

I was getting this ad on my Twitter feed for a while.

I'm not sure why the pouty visage of Eilish was showing up there, and I don't know what the Adobe Creative Cloud is.

According to technogeeks, your feed is based on what you've been looking up.  I was updating Adobe the other day and this appeared shortly thereafter, so perhaps that's it.  I don't like Eilish's music at all, so I was downloading any of her stuff, but I will admit she's sort of a fascinating example of a persona evolution, although she can quit pouting any time now.

For comparison . . . 

Governor Gordon, probably too beat up to dare to attempt any renewed mask restrictions, has announced that there won't be any. This comes at the same time that the state's largest hospital is now full to overflowing with COVID 19 patients.  Yes, they're mostly unvaccinated people, but they're people.

Anyhow, it's interesting to see what restrictions are like in other English-speaking countries that share a common heritage with our own.  Consider Sydney Australia:

Greater Sydney restrictions

The situation is now so bad in Sweetwater County that they've opened up a new wing in their hospital to deal with it.  And I'm not at the point where I once again know people or know of people who are dying.

On COVID, conservative firebrand Candace Adams reportedly was turned away from a rapid test station when the owner recognized her as somebody who had been discouraging vaccinations.  Adams then tweeted on it and received a blistering back from the Twitterverse.

I think that Christian charity madates that she be allowed to be tested, but this is an interesting evolution in public attitudes. We're now seeing people reacting towards the refusals openly, and getting support for doing so.

Tanzanian female soccer players and their president.

The president of Tanzania is a woman, which should be noted given her recent comments about emigrating Tanzanian female soccer players.

She said they were "flat chested", looked like men, and therefore had "no prospects of marriage".  She termed it sad.

Eee gads.

First of all, I'm not going to bother to follow it, but I'm pretty sure that they'll find husbands, if they want to marry, and it'll all be okay.  I'm also pretty sure that they're leaving for better economic prospects.

I guess its also an interesting example of how our world outlook really doesn't translate globally at all.  We often forget that.  Many of our social trends, for example, are strictly our own, or limited to the Western world.  This is particularly the case regarding recent gender based trends.  In much of the world, probably most of it, this isn't happening and there's no sign that it will.  That fact says something regarding science and sociology, but we'll not go into that here.

This, of course, is a different matter, and President Samia Suluhu Hassan wasn't commenting on any of that, at least directly.  Being Tanzania's first female president is a really notable accomplishment and frankly means a lot more, in context, that being the first "female" in any political role in the United States at this point.  So we'd of course expect her to be a feminist icon.

Well, at least right now, she't not going to be.

More hypocrisy

News reports hold that the Taliban tricked a homosexual man into meeting with a group of them on the pretext that they were offering help for him to escape the country.  Reportedly, Afghan homosexuals are desperate to leave as they fear the treatment they'll receive under a Taliban regime, with it being a given that they were no doubt not exactly very open about things even before that.

Upon meeting with them, they beat him, and. . . raped him.

We don't mention this to simply be gross, but there's something exceedingly strange about the logic at work here, and its something that's actually been noted about things in Afghanistan.  Islam specifically prohibits homosexual acts, with it having been mentioned as prohibited in the Koran.  None the less, there are relatively common reports of men on boys at the village level.

And then there's something like this.  In seeking to punish this person, the Taliban committed a homosexual rape, which is a homosexual act.  What sort of weird logic allows a person to think this is somehow acting in accordance with a faith that condemns homosexuality?

Sins of Omission and Commission

One of the things I've become aware of recently is omission.  I.e., things we didn't do, but could have.

This is a tricky matter.  I suppose some people might be charged with a broad public duty because of their stations in life, which require them to speak up all the time.  Most of us, however, probably aren't in that category.

It comes to mind because of the topic of lying, which we've dealt with up above, again.  It'd be a rare person who tells no lies at all, but in spite of that in Catholic moral theology there's very low tolerance on lying.  This isn't to say that every lie is a mortal sin or something, but even "white lies" are regarded as sinful, even if only in a minor way.

But what about the situation in which you're a bystander to an error?

This comes up as I'm a witness to a situation in which one person is encouraging another to do something pretty significant.   What's being urged isn't morally wrong in any way, it's simply based on a set of erroneous assumptions.  It's more or less like Person A is urging Person B to get on the train at Cheyenne as he believes the train will take you to Worland, when in fact the rails down't lead there, and you'll end up in Rock Springs.  Maybe Person B will love Rock Springs, but if his goal is to go to Worland, he won't be going there.  Person A, however, really believes the train goes to Worland.  Moreover, it's not impossible that tracks will be built to Worland in the future.

So, if you are Person C, and nobody is asking you to join in this conversation, do you have an obligation to say "um. .  the tracks don't really go to Worland, they go to Rock Springs."

I dunno.

Added to that, what if the situation is that much more complicated as what Person A has said is that B should get on the train, go to Worland, meet Person C there, and the three of you can go fishing in the Big Horns.  Person C really is going to go Worland and then go on fishing, but he's not taking the train, as it doensn't go there.. What about then?  Person B can go to Rock Springs, and he might go on to go fishing at Flaming Gorge, and he might really like that, but it isn't quite the same thing.

Well, fwiw, in my hypothetical I think Person C will just shut up and let A and B plan out their rail trip.  Nobody is asking C anything, and until they do, C isn't going to speak up.  

What about Pakistan?

 

As the Biden Administration conceded, whether it needed to or not, defeat in Afghanistan, there's been a lot of talk, here and elsewhere, about could we have won the war.

Hardly any of it has touched on Pakistan.

As pointed out on a list I subscribe to elsewhere, it needs to be considered.  

And the reason is that Pakistan effectively operated as a Taliban ally over the past twenty years, whether we wished to openly acknowledge that or not.

Indeed, Osama bin Laden, is well known, was killed in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and was living in a compound only two miles from a Pakistani army base.  Maybe the Pakistani government didn't know that.  We won't know for years.  There's some suggestion that the location of Bin Laden's compound may have come from a Pakistani army source.  Indeed, it's not unreasonable to assume that the Pakistani army was actually complicit in arranging for the raid that killed Bin Laden.  Indeed, its not unreasonable to believe that Bin Laden's whereabouts were known and tolerated, and that they tipped the US off as well.

What the heck?

Well, Pakistan is following Pakistan's interests, not the US's. The problem is that its really hard to figure out exactly what those are.  Whatever they are, what is clear is that Pakistan was a safe harbor for the Taliban for the past 20 years, and for Al Queada to some extent as well.  Members of the Taliban, moreover, were educated in Pakistani Islamic schools, not Afghani ones.

And all that does mean that over the past 20 years, while we were fighting the Taliban, Pakistan was at least operating as a safe harbor for them, and even fostering their recruitment by tolerating it.

Looking at the Central Intelligence Agency map from above probably helps explain Pakistan's point of view, and its cynical game, to an extent.  And what it shows is that Pakistan is, essentially, a false country.

Indeed, Afghanistan is as well, and so is nearby neighbor Indian. That is, none of these countries are nation states, but rather assembled nations that were put together by the British.  There really are no "Afghanis" any more than there are Pakistanis.  India is practically the exception to the rule as British colonialism was so successful that the enormous number of tribes in India did in fact come together, form a national identity, and emerge with a functioning democracy.

Even at that, however, its notable that Indian once included Pakistan and Bangladesh.  However, upon independence the Muslim regions of India rebelled and successful separated.  East Pakistan later rebelled against Pakistan, in 1971, and became its own country.  Pakistan is a democratic country with Islam as the state religion, but it's a shaky one with the army always in the background as a potential power broker, or power seizer.

Pakistan has never really accepted the demarcation line that was drawn between it and India, and frankly India hasn't either.  Pakistan's problem, however, is that some of its people have latent loyalties that do cause it concern.

The entire region bordering Afghanistan is one of those areas.  Its really popular to believe that the British "lost" both of their wars with Afghanistan, but the British were really good at constructing defeats to their advantage.  In reality, after the Second Anglo Afghan War, the British incorporated what is really part of Afghanistan into Pakistan, and that makes up about 1/5th of Pakistan today.  The demarcation was geographic, not ethnic, as that suited the British.  Added to that, the Punjab people are ethnically related to the Pashtuns, which doesn't make them the same people, but which does create complications.  Pakistan has never accepted that the Punjab region of Indian shouldn't be in Pakistan, but when making an argument like that, you nearly have to concede that the Pashtun region of Pakistan should be part of Afghanistan.

Now, nobody is arguing the latter, as far as I know, but it does mean that if you are the Pakistani government you really don't want to anger the Pashtuns too much. The majority of the Taliban are Pashtuns, even if most Pashtuns aren't supporters of the Taliban.

And the government is also an Islamic parliamentary democracy.  Indeed, the only reason for Pakistan's existence is Islam, as that's why it and Bangladesh didn't want to be part of India.  So you also don't want to be suppressing Islamic schools, if you are the Pakistani government.

And you don't really want the US in the neighborhood either.

The US generally wants countries to get along.  It wants India to get along with Pakistan, and Pakistan to get along with India, and China to get along with both.  None of those nations is really willing simply to lay down their claims to the territories they view as theirs across each other's borders. The US, from their prospective, is really annoying in this regard.

And indeed, both Pakistan and India, traditionally, regard themselves as the major regional power broker, not the US, and not Russia (or the USSR in former days).  The Indians don't get along with the Chinese either, and the Pakistani's sometimes don't, and sometimes do, depending upon how it suits them.  And their major countries, not third world backwaters, whose opinions really have to be taken into account.  All of them possess nuclear weapons, for that matter.

So, cynically, from Pakistan's point of view, harboring the Taliban made some sense.  It served to push out of the region, ultimately, and they emerge, in some ways, the real victor.  At the same time, however, they can only go so far, as they don't want a Pashtun insurgency either.

So could we have won under these circumstances?

I think so yes, but it's a real difficulty, to say the least, as the examples of this prove.

Indeed, in a way, this is what the Germans faced in 1940 as the US operated as a sort of safe harbor for the British war effort.  The Germans were not really able to do anything about.  This example, of course, isn't really perfect, but as we've been discussing it here, I've noted it.

A better example would be the situation faced by France in the Franco Algerian War.  Algerian insurgents had refuge in recently independent Tunisia.  The French tried to address it by fencing and patrolling the border and conducting air raids near it, that sometimes accidentally crossed over the border, all of which proved completely ineffective.

The United Nations faced this to a degree as well during the Korean War, with China being the safe harbor.  This proved so frustrating to the US that there were repeated suggestions that the US Air Force raid China, something the Chinese apparently feared, but which the Administration, wisely, wouldn't allow.

And for the US, the classic example is the Vietnam War, during which North Vietnam was the safe harbor that expanded that harbor into Laos and Cambodia.  The US conducted covert operations in Laos as a result in and in 1971 it invaded Cambodia to attempt to end it.  The Republic of Vietnam invaded Laos later that same year and again later, all to no avail.

So the examples are not great.

Now, invading Pakistan would be out of the question, so that's off the table.  The US did conduct drone strikes over Pakistan, and the raid on bin Laden.  Much more than that, openly, would have been far to risky.

So what could we have done.

Well, weathering the storm for another 20 years probably would have accomplished things.  At some point really reinforcing the border, with Afghan troops, would have been necessary.

And perhaps leaning more towards India.

Indeed, India, for really the first time in its history, was pretty friendly to the US during the Trump administration as its leader is also a populist.  The US has no real interest in Central Asian border disputes, so leaning towards the country, simply as a country, would have to be in that fashion, but leaning pretty hard would have created a problem for Pakistan.  And as we can see, at the point that something becomes too big of a problem for Pakistan, it tends to act in its own interest.

None of that would have been quick, however.

Afghanistan: What We Should Do.

 I thought I was alone in this opinion, but in Bloomberg's editorial today:

Even at this late date, the U.S. should stand with what remains of the national government and the heroic holdouts in the Afghan armed forces. Targeted U.S. air strikes and a rushed deployment of 5,000 American troops may yet stave off a collapse of the capital and buy precious time for evacuations. But no one should doubt the end game: In all likelihood, the Taliban will soon be in complete command.

And:

As a start, the administration must offer more help to the Afghan people. It should continue funding the government and military as long as they remain viable, while also offering aid to civil society. It should accelerate efforts to evacuate the roughly 17,000 Afghans who worked for the U.S. — as cooks, translators, drivers, security guards and engineers — and have now become targets, along with their families. It should make every possible effort to enable imperiled Afghans in the broader population to flee, including establishing air corridors. And it should work with its allies to establish a viable resettlement plan for refugees, while pressuring Pakistan and Iran to accept their share.

Not exactly my view.

I subscribe more to the "you broke it, you bought it" model of things.  And this is our responsibility.

We should stand with stand with the remaining Afghan forces still fighting, and by standing with them, go back in, in force while we still have a toehold.

Let's be honest, the Taliban isn't the Herman Goering Division, or a seasoned NVA unit in 1975.  It's never been that adept of a fighting force.  It is, basically, a religiously motivated force of very light infantry.  If we go back in, it'll collapse rapidly.

We should.

But we won't. We will instead sit by cowardly and wring our hands about how awful this is, and in a few weeks be blaming the Afghans for their loss.

Not that this isn't without some merit. The country never put together a government anyone could love.  People who might wonder why the Saur Revolution happened in 1978 have an idea now. The country is a mess.

None of which proves the opposite.  A brave nation would go back in.  We're not going to do that.

Defeat in Afghanistan

This morning, when I stumbled out of bed at what has now become a stress induced "late" time for me of 4:45 a.m., and then clicked on the computer and saw the morning's news, I saw a photograph of a Chinook helicopter landing on the US embassy roof in Kabul.

The Taliban has entered Kabul.

It immediately made me recall the North Vietnamese Army entering Saigon and our embassy personnel being taken off the roof.

There is no reason this had to happen.  And it's going to be a bloody disaster.  

That blood will be on our hands.

There's a lot of reasons this has occurred, and the blame for the disaster goes back to President Bush II and his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.  There was never a reason for the United States to launch a war against Iraq in 2001 and the fact that we committed our forces, there, rather than in Afghanistan were there was a dire need to do so, set us off on a half cocked strategy of minimal force that allowed the Taliban to continue to exist and, eventually, recover.

Beyond that, the simple fact of the matter is that the American concept of instant national reform, simply because we are there, is idiotic.  Germany didn't reform at the end of World War One.  It took a second war and the dismantling of the nation to cause that to occur, and it had somewhat of a history of civil government.  Japan, which had a parliament that had been semi functioning as well before it was co-opted by the military, saw its military dismantled and its culture swamped by Americans.  Simply setting up a democratic government and thinking it was going to work right away was naive.

An American general has recently opined that significant forces in the nation combined with an intent to stay until 2030 was what was really needed.  Rather than that, we hoped for a cheap and easy war and that people would suddenly become democratic and peaceful as that's in their DNA.  Recent events should cause us to question if that's even in our political DNA.

If we were going to just go in, get Bin Laden, and not worry about what happened after, we could have done that.  We didn't.  And that was an option. A big raid just designed to kill Bin Laden could have been done. But once you invade a country, it's your responsibility.

There's no excuse for this whatsoever, and every American administration from George Bush II on deserves the blame for it.  There's going to be piles of hand wringing and excuse making, and one of the things we will here is that our actions over the last several months don't really mean that our troops died in vain.

A person should question that.

Losing in Afghanistan.

 

United States Navy photograph by Lt. Chad Dulac.

A recent article I saw somewhere stated that a lot of Vietnam veterans are having an unwelcome recollection of the end of that war.  One Vietnam vet I know personally told me that.

And the reason why is that they're seeing an abandonment of a cause we fought for in Afghanistan, just like we did in Vietnam.

It's an open question how long a democratic country can maintain a fight against an enemy that doesn't threaten to overrun it.  The US fought for four years in the Civil War over what the nation would be, and twice that long to bring the nation into existence in the 1770s and 1780s.  World War Two was fought, by the US, for four years as well.  All those wars, and others, were fought to a conclusion, so obviously the US will do that.  We more or less did that with Iraq, actually completing what we had started with the second Gulf War.

We didn't do that with Vietnam.  We entered, in a minor way, in 1958 and left officially in 1973, but in reality we didn't really get rolling until 1964 and had pretty much gotten out by 1972.  Still, Vietnam was a pretty long war by American standards, and we'd grown tired of the whole thing by 1968.  Nixon was elected on a promise to get us out, which he did. 

By the time we left Vietnam the American Army had basically been destroyed.  Not a battlefield destruction by any means, the NVA and the VC were not capable of doing that. But its moral had completely been destroyed.  Of the four services, probably the Marines and the Air Force were in the best shape. The Navy actually experienced a late war mutiny on an aircraft carrier, showing how bad things were for it.  That's important to know, but it doesn't change the fact that we entered Vietnam in strength in 1965, converted the war to an American style war, were complicit by omission in the assassination of its civilian head of state, and then left.  The US could have prevented the North Vietnamese victory in 1975 by the application of air power, but we chose not to.  

That may beg the question of what would have occurred in the war had the US simply not become involved.  Frankly, the Republic of Vietnam stood a good chance of falling on its own.  But we did become involved and even had a bit of a role in seeing a non-democratic civilian government become a series of military ones.  Only the first one arguably understood the country itself.

Intervening in a nation militarily imposes obligations on a country, wish for them or not.  Wars don't end when the party initiating them concludes they're over.  They end when both parties do.  When we left Vietnam we did so under a fiction that we were turning the war over (back?) to the South Vietnamese.  But we'd converted the war's nature into something else by that time, and taught the ARVN to fight like the US Army, with US equipment, and US airpower.  It's no wonder the rank and file of the ARVN collapsed in 1975. They no longer had all of that like they had before.

And that's what is going to happen in Afghanistan.

Somebody whose feed I get on Facebook, at least for the time being, claims that we entered Afghanistan on a limited "punitive expedition" and should have gotten right back out. There's some merit to that claim, but that isn't what we did at all.  Indeed, we botched the war there right from the onset, and that set the path for the next twenty years.

Donald Rumsfeld, who just died recently, was Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense and therefore was familiar with punitive expeditions. The US reaction to the Mayaguez's taking by Cambodia was sort of that.  But by the time he was George Bush II's Secretary of Defense, he'd become a member of the technology v. troops trap that has so often ensnared Americans.

Moreover, while U.S. troops first touched ground in October 2001, the US put the war on a back burner preferring instead to take on Iraq in a war that was completely unconnected with the 9/11 attacks and which didn't need to be fought, or if it did, it didn't need to be fought at that time.

Indeed, often missed in the story of "America's longest war" is the fact that the US never committed to it in the way that was either required or really military necessary.  At a high point, in 2011, there were 98,000 US troops in Afghanistan, which is a lot, but pales in comparison to the 500,000 men commitment that was made to Vietnam and Korea.  Of course, those were large wars in comparison as well.  By and large, however, the US kept its commitment to Afghanistan low and slow, which meant that the Taliban was able to adjuster, and for that matter so was Al Queada.  That kept the war running.  In December 2002, well after the US commitment had commenced, there were still just under 10,000 US troops in the country. 

Fighting guerilla wars isn't easy to start with, but to really have caught and addressed the Taliban, the initial commitment should have been heavy and exclusive.  We never did that.

It's also easy to now forget that Osama bin Laden wasn't killed until May 2011.  It took us a full decade to achieve that goal, which had been part of the initial goal in the first instance.  Having engaged the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and having not achieved that goal until a decade later, those who argue that the effort was to be a punitive raid have more or less missed that point.

As we were in the country for that length of time, it was necessary to attempt to restore a functioning Afghani civil government.  But that sort of thing takes a very long time, which we should have been well aware of.  As we're addressing in another post on a completely unrelated topic, democracy isn't instinctive and building a democratic culture takes a very long time.  Germany and Japan, which had functioning parliamentary systems that were not completely democratic, but which did function, flunked it in the mid 20th Century and didn't achieve democracy until they were occupied after World War Two.  China, which started off attempting in 1911, has never pulled it off.  The US, our own example, started off with the reputation of being radically democratic, but only 6% of the population could vote in the country's first democratic election.

Given this, we can't really expect the Afghani government to be stable for a long time.  It's had twenty years, some might note, but many nations have taken longer than that.

And its military is collapsing in the face of a Taliban onslaught.  The best we can now hope for is that some regions of the country will become self-governing under their own local warlords.  Not a cheery thought, but the best one.  A 30,000 man strong body of Afghani commandos continues to fight well, but they are about it. The best they can hope for is that the Afghan central government becomes one more contesting force, sort of in the model of Lebanon of the 1970s.

None of this had to be.  We could have avoided this by fighting the war intelligently and according to well established military principals in 2001 and 2002.  But we botched that.

Having failed that, that committed us to the long haul. That would mean keeping some troops, and more particularly air assets, in the country for a long time, perhaps another twenty years.  If that seems outrageous, we've now had troops in Europe since they landed in Italy in 1943, and some forces on Japanese soil that have been there since 1945.  Our troops in the Philippines were there, under somewhat analogous conditions, from 1898 until the country was really made free in 1945, and continued on for various reasons decades after that.  We've been in South Korean since 1950 in a technical state of halted hostilities.

When we left Vietnam in 1972 it took three years for the country to fall, giving the US the hoped for illusion of "peace with honor" that Nixon had hoped for, even as he knew the country would fall.  The country has followed the Communist path since then, with all that entails, including a slow move towards a market economy directed from above.  Lenin's New Economic Policy may never have taken root in the USSR, but it seems to have elsewhere in the Communist world, save for the Stalinist theme park of North Korea.  No such hope can be realistically conveyed for an Afghanistan with the Taliban back in power.  It never had any interest in anything other than a strict Islamic rule. And that's what is most likely to return in that country.  We'll be complicit in that.

Addendum

Prior to the US announcing its intent to withdraw during the late portion of the Trump Presidency, total non Afghani forces supporting the government amount to 7,500 troops, of which 2,500 were Americans. The Afghan National Army was doing 98% of the fighting.

The peace treaty in Afghanistan.

 Signing the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which allowed the US to pretend that it was leaving Vietnam with an honorable peace.

The peace deal with the Taliban, executed today, reads as follows.

Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America February 29, 2020 which corresponds to Rajab 5, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 10, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar 

A comprehensive peace agreement is made of four parts: 

1. Guarantees and enforcement mechanisms that will prevent the use of the soil of Afghanistan by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies. 

2. Guarantees, enforcement mechanisms, and announcement of a timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. 

3. After the announcement of guarantees for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and timeline in the presence of international witnesses, and guarantees and the announcement in the presence of international witnesses that Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will start intra-Afghan negotiations with Afghan sides on March 10, 2020, which corresponds to Rajab 15, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 20, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar. 

4. A permanent and comprehensive ceasefire will be an item on the agenda of the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. The participants of intra-Afghan negotiations will discuss the date and modalities of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, including joint implementation mechanisms, which will be announced along with the completion and agreement over the future political roadmap of Afghanistan. The four parts above are interrelated and each will be implemented in accordance with its own agreed timeline and agreed terms. Agreement on the first two parts paves the way for the last two parts. Following is the text of the agreement for the implementation of parts one and two of the above. Both sides agree that these two parts are interconnected. The obligations of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban in this agreement apply in areas under their control until the formation of the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. 

PART ONE 

The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement, and will take the following measures in this regard:

A. The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will take the following measures in the first one hundred thirty-five (135) days: 

1) They will reduce the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to eight thousand six hundred (8,600) and proportionally bring reduction in the number of its allies and Coalition forces. 

2) The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from five (5) military bases. 

B. With the commitment and action on the obligations of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban in Part Two of this agreement, the United States, its allies, and the Coalition will execute the following: 

1) The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will complete withdrawal of all remaining forces from Afghanistan within the remaining nine and a half (9.5) months. 

2) The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases. 

C. The United States is committed to start immediately to work with all relevant sides on a plan to expeditiously release combat and political prisoners as a confidence building measure with the coordination and approval of all relevant sides. Up to five thousand (5,000) prisoners of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and up to one thousand (1,000) prisoners of the other side will be released by March 10, 2020, the first day of intra-Afghan negotiations, which corresponds to Rajab 15, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 20, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar. The relevant sides have the goal of releasing all the remaining prisoners over the course of the subsequent three months. The United States commits to completing this goal. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban commits that its released prisoners will be committed to the responsibilities mentioned in this agreement so that they will not pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies. 

D. With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will initiate an administrative review of current U.S. sanctions and the rewards list against members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban with the goal of removing these sanctions by August 27, 2020, which corresponds to Muharram 8, 1442 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Saunbola 6, 1399 on the Hijri Solar calendar. 

E. With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will start diplomatic engagement with other members of the United Nations Security Council and Afghanistan to remove members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban from the sanctions list with the aim of achieving this objective by May 29, 2020, which corresponds to Shawwal 6, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Jawza 9, 1399 on the Hijri Solar calendar. . II F. The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.

PART TWO 

In conjunction with the announcement of this agreement, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will take the following steps to prevent any group or individual, including al-Qa’ida, from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies:

1. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qa’ida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies. 

2. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will send a clear message that those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies have no place in Afghanistan, and will instruct members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban not to cooperate with groups or individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies. 

3. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies, and will prevent them from recruiting, training, and fundraising and will not host them in accordance with the commitments in this agreement. 

4. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban is committed to deal with those seeking asylum or residence in Afghanistan according to international migration law and the commitments of this agreement, so that such persons do not pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies. 

5. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents to those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies to enter Afghanistan.

PART THREE 

1. The United States will request the recognition and endorsement of the United Nations Security Council for this agreement.

2. The United States and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban seek positive relations with each other and expect that the relations between the United States and the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations will be positive.

3. The United States will seek economic cooperation for reconstruction with the new post settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations, and will not intervene in its internal affairs. Signed in Doha, Qatar on February 29, 2020, which corresponds to Rajab 5, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 10, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar, in duplicate, in Pashto, Dari, and English languages, each text being equally authentic.

I'll believe that the Taliban will adhere to the terms of this agreement after we've left Afghanistan.

In other words, I don't believe that they will.

Surrendering in Afghanistan. Maybe the Senate has learned history even if the President has not.

Make no mistake about it, the "peace" that's being considered in Afghanistan isn't a peace.  It's a withdrawal which will be followed by the collapse of the Afghan government and a return to power of the Taliban. 

Saigon, 1975.

It's the helicopter from the Saigon Embassy roof all over again, after a fictional peace with Hanoi, except in this instance, it's worse.  Much worse.

Which is why its refreshing to see the Republican controlled Senate find its backbone, as noted here in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Senate, in a bipartisan rebuke to President Trump’s foreign policy, voted overwhelmingly to advance legislation drafted by the majority leader to express strong opposition to the president’s withdrawal of United States military forces from Syria and Afghanistan.

The 68-to-23 vote to cut off debate ensures that the amendment, written by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and backed by virtually every Senate Republican, will be added to a broader bipartisan Middle East policy bill expected to easily pass the Senate next week.

I hope the Senate's view prevails.

It's frequently noted that the war in Afghanistan is the longest running war in American history, which it is if you don't count the Indian Wars as a single war.  If you do that, no other American war even compares as those wars started sometime in the 1600s and concluded, depending upon how you look at it, in 1890 or 1916.  They're a bit longer.

But the war in Afghanistan is pretty darned long, to be sure. 

Donald Rumsfeld, who reprising the role of Robert Strange McNamara chose to ignore the lessons of history and presume that the United States was not subject to them.

A lot of that can be laid at the feet of the second President George Bush, or perhaps more accurately at the feet of his controversial Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.  Rumsfeld took the view that all prior laws of war were no longer applicable to the United States, and therefore even though we knew that Al Queda was headquartered in Afghanistan and sheltered by the Taliban, we could commit an absolute minimum of force to the war there, fight the war with a few specialists and air power, rely on dubious native allies, while taking on a second war with Iraq for what turned out to be dubious reasons, and still win the war in Afghanistan.

Carl von Causewitz looking on with disdain at Donald Rumsfeld from history.

Carl von Clausewitz would have whacked Rumsfeld with his riding crop for thinking such a stupid thing.  

Classic military Clausewitzian thought would have held that having determined that war in Afghanistan was necessary, which it was, it was then incumbent upon the U.S. to use overwhelming force to crush the enemy immediately and leave Afghanistan basically compliant in the wake of a crushing defeat of the radical Islamists.  Instead, we chose to engage basically with special forces and air power while we built up a force to attack Iraq and left much of the ground fighting to Islamic militias of dubious dependability.  That in turn meant that we didn't get around to really committing until well after the war in Iraq, which we didn't have to engage in, in the first place, had become a second guerrilla war which in turn meant that no how badly the Taliban did in combat they'd learned that they could keep on, keeping on.

U.S. Special Forces troops with Northern Alliance troops. The Northern Alliance was a genuinely anti Taliban force, and truly useful in the field, but it wasn't the sort of force that was any more likely to result in a stable government long term than the Montagnards were in Southeast Asia.  Using them was wise and necessary.  Leaving the war nearly entirely to them was not.

Since that time we've fought a war of decreasing commitment sort of hoping against hope that the Afghan government we supported and created after the Taliban were driven out of Kabul would be able to take over, much like we hoped that successive South Vietnamese governments would be able to take over the Vietnam War after 1968.

That didn't work then and its obviously not working now.

Which has lead to the conclusion that we need to do is dress up a defeat, like we did in Vietnam, and get out.  

Of course getting out meant the ultimate fall of our ally, the Republic of Vietnam, and the installation of a brutal communist regime that still remains in power.  The analogy there probably ends, as Vietnam isn't Afghanistan and it never posed any direct threat to the United States.*  Afghanistan has been used as the headquarters for a global radical Islamic war on the world with the goal to establish a new Caliphate and subject the world to Islam.  Hanoi just wanted to subject Vietnam to communism, which it did, but which it is now loosing due to the pervasive nature of American pop and consumer culture.**

If and when we leave Afghanistan, if we haven't succeeded there, it will return to the control of the Taliban in short, probably very short, order.  Compelling the Afghan government to include the Taliban in the government will be no more successful than Hanoi's promise not to resume the war with Saigon, or the fusion of the Royal and Pathet Lao armies was.  The result is inevitable.

Of course, a person might also ask if the same results as the Vietnam War might also be inevitable.  If we haven't won after an eighteen year commitment, why would we win now?

Well, the numbers are part of the reason.

The United States has less than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.  At the absolute height of our commitment, in 2011, when we "surged", we had 110,000 men there, which we built up to rapidly after we crossed the 20,000 number in mid 05 and which then fell off rapidly, falling below 20,000 again in 2014.

10th Mountain Division troops in Afghanistan in 2005.

Now, before we go on, something about this should be obvious.  A country which proposed to unseat its de facto, if not de jure, government of the size of Afghanistan but which didn't even get up over the division level commitment for the first three plus years of that was either acting stupidly or wasn't serious.  And a nation that would commit over 100,000 men for a very brief interval and then presume, when it was known that the war wasn't won, that everything would be fine, also wasn't acdting particularly rationally.  The U.S. should have committed that 100,000 men in the first three months of the war in which case we probably could have totally withdrawn by 2011.

Donald Rumsfeld, here's your sign.

United States Drug Enforcement personnel burning  hashish as part of an American policing operation in an ancillary quasi military operation guaranteed to make enemies of the rural populace.

The thought was, of course, or rather the naive hope was, that the Afghan army we built would take over.  Just like the ARVN. That in fact was not an irrational hope in the late 1960s, but in the case of the Afghan army, given the way we went about it, it certainly was.

Soldier of the U.S. Army (Michigan National Guard) on patrol with Afghans and, in German desert camouflage, Latvian soldier

Afghanistan has had an army since 1709, and a fairly good one in the 1950s, but that all came apart following the Communist coup that took over the country in the 1970s. The army fell apart and the country fell into civil war, from which its never emerged.  Reconstituting a real army after a twenty five year gap has proven extremely difficult and like most armies that exist in a scenario in which a foreign power is putting them together, it's been infiltrated by the enemy.  It's going to take quite a while before that army can stand on its own.  By comparison again, the French put together what would become the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the early 1950s and it wasn't until the late 1960s that it was capable of somewhat standing on its own, although it never really achieved that status.  And like the ARVN its not only has very loyal soldiers, but it's subject to being accused of being a colonial puppet by its clearly nativist opponent.  So while it has 174,000 men, it can't field that number as an effective fighting force.

Afghan commandos waiting for airlift from Russian made helicopters.  With their western airborne transportation and American arms and equipment they bear a worrisome resemblance to crack ARVN units of the late Vietnam War.

Indeed, it's lost over half the country.

So we've lost, right?

Well, we might have, but before we give up, we better at least try to win.  And we can do that.

Indeed, there's no doubt that a second surge, like the first one, would reoccupy the country and drive the Taliban out, probably into Pakistan, in the case of the survivors.  We can debate what to do about that, but serving notice on Pakistan that its border will be regarded as fictional would be one thing to do.  Pakistan isn't going to fight the Untied States under any circumstances, and indeed India would dearly love it to even suggest that it would.  An effort of that type would reoccupy the country and, if a remaining commitment of at least 50,000 men stayed for at time, as in a decade, the country would have a chance.

A chancier, but also probably likely to work means, would be to commit a large, but lesser, force of 50,000 to 60,000 and do the same thing.  Of course, that's not a small commitment either.

The odds are better, however, that we'll simply abandon it, and our effort there, and live to regret the consequences.

________________________________________________________________________________

*See, however, Was The Domino Theory Right? and Looking at the Vietnam War differently.  Not as a war but a campaign in the Cold War.

**Whatever the results of the war have been, the inevitable trend of Vietnam is exhibited by the presence of a Victoria's Secret in Hanoi and V-pop in the country at large.  The South Vietnamese never ended up embracing Communism and the North Vietnamese are abandoning it.