Kabul airport

 Kabul airport.

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.

June 30, 2021. An odd day.

 An odd day, historically.

Rumsfeld the second time he served as Secretary of Defense.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977, and again under George W. Bush, died at age 88.

Rumsfeld had a long career in government, including a stint in Congress.  His association with the military began in 1954 when he was a Naval aviator.  Under President Gerald Ford he would oversea the dramatic destruction of the Cambodian navy due to the Mayaguez Incident, demonstrating that the Untied States was not as weak communist forces in Southeast Asia might imagine.  And yet, in spite of serving in the Navy, and that example, and as Secretary of Defense twice, it was his gross overestimation of the effectiveness of modern technology that lead to the under deployment of US forces early in Afghanistan, a result which lead to a protracted guerilla war, and perhaps to the situation in that country which exists today.

And on the same day the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Bill Cosby's conviction.

Cosby in 1969.

Cosby went from the heights of fame to the height of infamy when a series of allegations against him lead to convictions for sex crimes.  He's being released not because he was found to be innocent, so to speak, but because his prosecutor failed to honor an agreement with a prior prosecutor.

As for the allegations, we can leave them as they are, but we will note that Cosby had the odd status of having been viewed nearly universally as a conservative family man while simultaneously being one of the individuals frequently found at parties at uber creep Hugh Hefner's mansion. That should have raised some red flags, although he certainly wasn't the only one who shared this status.

Perhaps that should in some ways be his legacy.  What he was accused of was gross creepy sexual behavior, in a nation that has come to celebrate creepy sexual behavior.  If that didn't match his image of being the ideal patriarch, perhaps that signifies that in our modern society we've come to tolerate conduct in the patriarchs and matriarchs that's creepy.  We may be holding him to a higher standard than we hold ourselves, none of which argues for a restoration of his reputation, but a condemnation of our own.

Suffice it to say, both men have obtained reputations that will remain defined by events surrounding them late in life, and which stand in contrast, to some degree, with reputations obtained earlier in life.

Drawdown in Afghanistan

Special Forces and Northern Alliance troops, 2001.

I'm separating out this material from the Wars and Rumors of War thread for this year due to its historic importance to the United States.  It's not, and not to put it lightly, "just one more war".

I'll of course add some commentary on the way, assuming this blog survives Google's effort to render blogspot obsolete.

While this post is going up on April 18, it includes the old posts from the Wars thread that started with President Biden's announcement of earlier this past week.

April 15, 2021

United States v. Taliban.

 THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon.  I’m speaking to you today from the Roosevelt — the Treaty Room in the White House.  The same spot where, on October of 2001, President George W. Bush informed our nation that the United States military had begun strikes on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.  It was just weeks — just weeks after the terrorist attack on our nation that killed 2,977 innocent souls; that turned Lower Manhattan into a disaster area, destroyed parts of the Pentagon, and made hallowed ground of a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and sparked an American promise that we would “never forget.” 

We went to Afghanistan in 2001 to root out al Qaeda, to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States planned from Afghanistan.  Our objective was clear.  The cause was just.  Our NATO Allies and partners rallied beside us.  And I supported that military action, along with overwhelming majority of the members of Congress. 

More than seven years later, in 2008, weeks before we swore the oath of office — President Obama and I were about to swear — President Obama asked me to travel to Afghanistan and report back on the state of the war in Afghanistan.  I flew to Afghanistan, to the Kunar Valley — a rugged, mountainous region on the border with Pakistan.  What I saw on that trip reinforced my conviction that only the Afghans have the right and responsibility to lead their country, and that more and endless American military force could not create or sustain a durable Afghan government.  

I believed that our presence in Afghanistan should be focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again.  We did that.  We accomplished that objective.  

I said, among — with others, we’d follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell if need be.  That’s exactly what we did, and we got him.  It took us close to 10 years to put President Obama’s commitment to — into form.  And that’s exactly what happened; Osama bin Laden was gone.  

That was 10 years ago.  Think about that.  We delivered justice to bin Laden a decade ago, and we’ve stayed in Afghanistan for a decade since.  Since then, our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear, even as the terrorist threat that we went to fight evolved. 

Over the past 20 years, the threat has become more dispersed, metastasizing around the globe: al-Shabaab in Somalia; al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; al-Nusra in Syria; ISIS attempting to create a califit [caliphate] in Syria and Iraq, and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia.  

With the terror threat now in many places, keeping thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country at a cost of billions each year makes little sense to me and to our leaders.  We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal, and expecting a different result.  

I’m now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats.  I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth. 

After consulting closely with our allies and partners, with our military leaders and intelligence personnel, with our diplomats and our development experts, with the Congress and the Vice President, as well as with Mr. Ghani and many others around the world, I have concluded that it’s time to end America’s longest war.  It’s time for American troops to come home.  

When I came to office, I inherited a diplomatic agreement, duly negotiated between the government of the United States and the Taliban, that all U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, just three months after my inauguration.  That’s what we inherited — that commitment.  

It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something.  So, in keeping with that agreement and with our national interests, the United States will begin our final withdrawal — begin it on May 1 of this year.  

We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit.  We’ll do it — we’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely.  And we will do it in full coordination with our allies and partners, who now have more forces in Afghanistan than we do.  

And the Taliban should know that if they attack us as we draw down, we will defend ourselves and our partners with all the tools at our disposal.  

Our allies and partners have stood beside us shoulder-to-shoulder in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, and we’re deeply grateful for the contributions they have made to our shared mission and for the sacrifices they have borne. 

The plan has long been “in together, out together.”  U.S. troops, as well as forces deployed by our NATO Allies and operational partners, will be out of Afghanistan before we mark the 20th anniversary of that heinous attack on September 11th.  

But — but we’ll not take our eye off the terrorist threat.  We’ll reorganize our counterterrorism capabilities and the substantial assets in the region to prevent reemergence of terrorists — of the threat to our homeland from over the horizon.  We’ll hold the Taliban accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to threaten the United States or its allies from Afghan soil.  The Afghan government has made that commitment to us as well.  And we’ll focus our full attention on the threat we face today.  

At my direction, my team is refining our national strategy to monitor and disrupt significant terrorist threats not only in Afghanistan, but anywhere they may arise — and they’re in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.  

I spoke yesterday with President Bush to inform him of my decision. While he and I have had many disagreements over policies throughout the years, we’re absolutely united in our respect and support for the valor, courage, and integrity of the women and men of the United States Armed Forces who served.  I’m immensely grateful for the bravery and backbone that they have shown through nearly two decades of combat deployments.  We as a nation are forever indebted to them and to their families.  

You all know that less than 1 percent of Americans serve in our armed forces.  The remaining 99 percent of them — we owe them.  We owe them.  They have never backed down from a single mission that we’ve asked of them. 

I’ve witnessed their bravery firsthand during my visits to Afghanistan.  They’ve never wavered in their resolve.  They’ve paid a tremendous price on our behalf.  And they have the thanks of a grateful nation. 

While we will not stay involved in Afghanistan militarily, our diplomatic and humanitarian work will continue.  We’ll continue to support the government of Afghanistan.  We will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defenses and Security Forces. 

And along with our partners, we have trained and equipped a standing force of over 300,000 Afghan personnel today and hundreds of thousands over the past two decades.  And they’ll continue to fight valiantly, on behalf of the Afghans, at great cost.  They’ll support peace talks, as we will support peace talks between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, facilitated by the United Nations.  And we’ll continue to support the rights of Afghan women and girls by maintaining significant humanitarian and development assistance. 

And we’ll ask other countries — other countries in the region — to do more to support Afghanistan, especially Pakistan, as well as Russia, China, India, and Turkey.  They all have a significant stake in the stable future for Afghanistan.  

And over the next few months, we will also determine what a continued U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan will look like, including how we’ll ensure the security of our diplomats. 

Look, I know there are many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust U.S. military presence to stand as leverage.  We gave that argument a decade.  It’s never proved effective — not when we had 98,000 troops in Afghanistan, and not when we were down to a few thousand. 

Our diplomacy does not hinge on having boots in harm’s way — U.S. boots on the ground.  We have to change that thinking.  American troops shouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip between warring parties in other countries.  You know, that’s nothing more than a recipe for keeping American troops in Afghanistan indefinitely.  

I also know there are many who will argue that we should stay — stay fighting in Afghanistan because withdrawal would damage America’s credibility and weaken America’s influence in the world.  I believe the exact opposite is true.  

We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago.  That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.  

Rather than return to war with the Taliban, we have to focus on the challenges that are in front of us.  We have to track and disrupt terrorist networks and operations that spread far beyond Afghanistan since 9/11. 

We have to shore up American competitiveness to meet the stiff competition we’re facing from an increasingly assertive China.  We have to strengthen our alliances and work with like-minded partners to ensure that the rules of international norms that govern cyber threats and emerging technologies that will shape our future are grounded in our democratic values — values — not those of the autocrats. 

We have to defeat this pandemic and strengthen the global health system to prepare for the next one, because there will be another pandemic.  

You know, we’ll be much more formidable to our adversaries and competitors over the long term if we fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20.  

And finally, the main argument for staying longer is what each of my three predecessors have grappled with: No one wants to say that we should be in Afghanistan forever, but they insist now is not the right moment to leave.  

In 2014, NATO issued a declaration affirming that Afghan Security Forces would, from that point on, have full responsibility for their country’s security by the end of that year.  That was seven years ago.  

So when will it be the right moment to leave?  One more year, two more years, ten more years?  Ten, twenty, thirty billion dollars more above the trillion we’ve already spent? 

“Not now” — that’s how we got here.  And in this moment, there’s a significant downside risk to staying beyond May 1st without a clear timetable for departure.  

If we instead pursue the approach where America — U.S. exit is tied to conditions on the ground, we have to have clear answers to the following questions: Just what conditions require to — be required to allow us to depart?  By what means and how long would it take to achieve them, if they could be achieved at all?  And at what additional cost in lives and treasure? 

I’m not hearing any good answers to these questions.  And if you can’t answer them, in my view, we should not stay.  The fact is that, later today, I’m going to visit Arlington National Cemetery, Section 60, and that sacred memorial to American sacrifice.  

Section sisty [sic] — Section 60 is where our recent war dead are buried, including many of the women and men who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.  There’s no — there’s no comforting distance in history in Section 60.  The grief is raw.  It’s a visceral reminder of the living cost of war.  

For the past 12 years, ever since I became Vice President, I’ve carried with me a card that reminds me of the exact number of American troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That exact number, not an approximation or rounded-off number — because every one of those dead are sacred human beings who left behind entire families.  An exact accounting of every single solitary one needs to be had.  

As of the day — today, there are two hundred and forty- — 2,488 [2,448] U.S. troops and personnel who have died in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel — our Afghanistan conflicts.  20,722 have been wounded.  

I’m the first President in 40 years who knows what it means to have a child serving in a warzone.  And throughout this process, my North Star has been remembering what it was like when my late son, Beau, was deployed to Iraq — how proud he was to serve his country; how insistent he was to deploy with his unit; and the impact it had on him and all of us at home.  

We already have service members doing their duty in Afghanistan today whose parents served in the same war.  We have service members who were not yet born when our nation was attacked on 9/11.  

War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multi-generational undertaking.  We were attacked.  We went to war with clear goals.  We achieved those objectives.  Bin Laden is dead, and al Qaeda is degraded in Iraq — in Afghanistan.  And it’s time to end the forever war.  

Thank you all for listening.  May God protect our troops.  May God bless all those families who lost someone in this endeavor.

2:45 P.M. EDT 

April 17, 2021

United States v. Taliban, cont.

Interestingly enough, the drawdown in Afghanistan is now predicted to temporarily increase the US troop presence in Afghanistan.   This includes reasons that run from logistical to force protection needs during the drawdown.

In addition to the 2,500 U.S. troops being withdrawn, it should be noted, 7,000 allied troops will also be withdrawn.  It's little appreciated that the US forces amount to only about 1/4 of the non Afghan forces supporting the Afghan government.

April 18, 2021

United States v. Taliban.

Wyoming Representative Elizabeth Cheney has strongly criticized President Biden's announcement to withdraw from Afghanistan.  Cheney was also a strong critic of President Trump on the same issue.

May 1, 2021

The US withdrawal commenced.

The Outpost

Helicopter landing at Camp Keating, the location of the Battle of Kamdesh

There are actually a lot of movies about the United States in Afghanistan.  I don't know if the fact that I haven't seen but a few of them means that, like in regard to World War Two, there's a lot of bad ones, or just that I don't see very many movies.  But there are a lot.

The other day I saw The Outpost on Netflix.  This movie is centered on the real life battle of Kamdesh and portrays the actual soldiers who fought there.

The battle took place at a remote outpost which, as the movie depicts, was extraordinarily poorly located. The photos posted here of the actual location demonstrate that as well.  The base was located in a valley, a classic military blunder, and the subject of constant sniping.  On October 3, 2009, the Taliban attempted to overrun it which resulted in a pitched battle.  The resulting fighting was dramatic, and two Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to American soldiers who fought there.

By all accounts this movie is a very good depiction of the actual battle, including the location. The film is well done and the portrayal of the soldiers extremely unvarnished.  The battle scenes are harrowing and gritty.  The modern U.S. Army including its equipment is very well portrayed.  Well worth watching.

SSG Clinton Romesha near the area where the battle was fought.  He would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor as a result of his heroism in the battle.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan. . .

a terrorist attacked a maternity ward in Kabul and killed sixteen people, including two infants.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for this so far but the range of suspects is pretty short. Suffice it to say, somebody who would do such a thing is a real bastard.  It's no surprise that nobody has claimed the act, even though the act itself is impossible to hide.

Lex Anteinternet: The peace treaty in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's flag.

So does anyone really believe that this will work?

Lex Anteinternet: 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 p...

I certainly don't believe that the Taliban will reform itself and observe this long term.  Wyoming Congressman Liz Cheney, who commented on it yesterday, doesn't believe it will work at all and publicly criticized it yesterday, to her credit.   The leadership of Afghanistan indicated it wouldn't honor the prisoner exchange, for which it can't be blamed, as it hadn't agreed to it.

Flag of the Syrian anti government forces.

It's hard not to be really cynical about this.

This arrangement working out will require the leopard to change its spots and a willingness on the US to go back into the country if it does not.  I don't see either of those things occurring.  It would also require the Afghan government, which has suffered far more causalities than we have, being willing to go along with an accord with the Taliban, which also seems quite unlikely.

Flag of the 1956 Hungarian revolutionaries.

And it can't help but be noted that this has the appearance of being a deal to end a war that comes months before a Presidential election and which features a timeline that will preclude it from failing before the election, which has a rather Nixonian feel to it.

Cambodian flag, 1970-75.

The United States has sustained 2,440 combat deaths in Afghanistan and the war has lasted twenty years, thanks to Donald Rumsfield's blundering tactics on the war in its initial stages.  2,440 lost lives is not inconsequential, but in normal historical terms its not the sort of bleeding that most wars entail.  The Vietnam War and Korean War were over twenty times as deadly.  Single days during World War One, One and World War Two were that bad and much worse.  Over 4,000 deaths occurred during the Philippine Insurrection, which in some ways is the war that's most comparable to the war in Afghanistan, and we don't ever remember that war, which was just about as long lasting.

Let's hope that those lives were not lost in vain.

Flag of the Republic of Vietnam.

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.