The only President to get the war in Afghanistan right was. . .

 

Barack Obama.

Yes, I meant that.

Already I can hear screaming from some that this is absurd.  Obama was a Marxist Socialist Agent of Destruction who never got anything right. . . 

Well, gentle readers, I'm not a fan of President Obama's.  Basically, I think he stood for very little and like Woodrow Wilson confused talking with action.  But he got Afghanistan right.

Here's why.

President Bush blew it with Afghanistan. The US had to go into the country after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, but the US should have treated that as a criminal act, not military one, which Obama would have done, had he been in office in 2001.  Going into Afghanistan was necessary, but a short, sharp, destructive punitive expedition would have sufficed.

Yes, the last punitive expedition the country went into didn't catch the bad guy, Pancho Villa, but then neither did the long slow invasion of Afghanistan. That took years, and indeed it occurred under President Obama's watch.  The Punitive Expedition into Mexico did serve, FWIW, to keep big forays across the border (well, at least armed ones, big forays across the border are going on right now, but not armed ones), from occurring again.

We could have done that.  We pretty much could have destroyed much of the Taliban, maybe killed Bin Laden, and wrecked Afghanistan as a potential threat for some time without occupying it.

But once you do that, you are in it.  You break it, and we did, you bought it.

President Obama seems to have gotten that. He intended to get out, but didn't. He even launched a "surge" which regained lost ground.

President Trump didn't get it, or didn't care.  Probably the latter.  No matter how you look at it, however, the Doha Agreement was inexcusable.

Also inexcusable was committing to a May pull out, which under the circumstances was abandoning the country to the Taliban.  Further inexcusable was the effort to abandon the country prior to President Biden's inauguration.  It's still unclear what that was even about.

At least Trump listened to his military advisers to the extent he didn't pull out in January of this year.

Then came in Biden and made a hasty, botched, departure.   The administration has given the thin excuse that they expected the country to fall, but not so fast.

So, we have three Presidents who messed it up, and only one who got it right.  We rarely give President Obama credit for much here, but we'll give him credit for that.

September 11, 2001. Where we were then, and where we are today.

 I was getting ready for work.  My wife was getting ready to take our son to preschool.

She was watching the Today Show, and called me up because a jet had hit one of the Twin Towers.  I came up and watched the footage.

Then the second one hit.  I was watching from the stairs.  Right away, I told her it was terrorism.

We all seemingly know the story.  Another jet hit the Pentagon.  Heroic passengers stormed the cockpit of a fourth and in the resulting struggle it went down, taking all of them, and the Islamic jihadist who justified murder in the name of God, to their deaths.

President Bush promised revenge and retribution.

The nation united.

The Administration soon went off course, mistaking necessarily retribution against Al Queda, to whom the jihadist belonged, with the Baathist of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with whom the same didn't get along.  The nation soon set ground in Afghanistan, but the commitment was small.  A larger one went to war in Iraq, leading to the end of the Baathist regime there, but a guerilla war against ISIL thereafter which was eventually won.  In Afghanistan, the larger commitment, and one to rebuilding the nation with a democratic model after the Taliban regime that gave safe harbor to Al Queda was removed.   The slow commitment lead to a messy and protracted war.

That war was more or less won, but a guerilla war against the armed Islamic students of the Taliban, a force that exists only because of Pakistan's support, continued on for 20 years.  President Obama tried to extract the US and then reversed course.  At the end of his administration President Trump negotiated with the very entity which had given safe harbor to those who attacked us on this day 20 years ago and then committed to withdrawal.  President Biden, whom never approved of the nation building mission in Afghanistan, completed what Trump had started with an inept and messy withdrawal that amounted to a surrender to the Taliban and an abandonment of our allies in Afghanistan.

The nation will look back on this day with sadness, as it should.  But what it should be considering as well is what its recent acts mean in terms of its immediate future.  We've left our enemies in power and rejuvenated in a region which gave rise to this attack 20 years ago and their dedication to an isolated and extreme interpretation to a religion that started as a Christian heresy and spread first by excusing primitive and male vices, and then spread by the sword remains unabated and will not abate.

Killing Osama Bin Laden and devastating Al Queda has made us safer, to be sure.  But the ineffective and misdirected nature of our following efforts, followed by the abandonment of that which we created, has not made the world safe.

"America's longest war. . . wasn't"

By now, everyone on the face of the globe has heard that the war in Afghanistan was "America's longest war".

It wasn't.

The long war, regarded as a series of wars, but nonetheless a continual thing involving continual deployment of American troops, ran from 1848 until the tragic end at Wounded Knee in 1890, a total of 42 years.  This doesn't represent the totality of combat against Native Americans, however, as I, and others have pointed out. Consider this recent letter to the Wall Street Journal.

America’s real longest war was the conflict against Native Americans, called the American Indian Wars, which most historians characterize as beginning in 1609 and ending in 1924.

Lt. Gen. Michael M. Dunn, Wall Street Journal letter.

Total involvement in the Vietnam War, FWIW, was shorter only by a period of months. That may seem unfair, but if you consider that involvement in Afghanistan has actually been very minimal for a period of years, I'd argue it is a fair comparison.

The point is this.  We've fought long wars before.  The Indian Wars were epic in length.  The Philippine Insurrection was long, 13 years by some measures.  What's really notable about Afghanistan. . . and Vietnam, is that in the post television era, the country doesn't endure long wars well.  Before we seemingly had them out of sight and mind, most of the time they were being fought.

Oh, and technically the Korean Conflict, which started in 1950, is still on.  No final peace has been reached, and it's in a state of armistice.

Defeat In Afghanistan. How It Came About.

Flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

The pathetic blame game going on regarding the debacle in Afghanistan has me once again stunned, even though I really ought to know better.

My right wing friends were backing withdrawal from Afghanistan fully when Trump launched the current disgrace.  As soon as Biden started what Trump started, they switched to decrying what occurred.  The mess isn't praiseworthy by any means, but this exercise is really a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black.

Let's look at what really occurred leading up to this embarrassing American defeat.

Indeed, we'll go all the way back.

Afghan ambush during the First Anglo Afghan War.

• 1838. The British invade Afghanistan and install King Shah Shujah. The event is termed the First Anglo Afghan War.
• 1842.  King Shah Shujah assassinated and Afghanis rebel, driving the British from Afghanistan.

Horse artillery in the Second Anglo Afghan War.

• 1878  The Second Anglo Afghan War commences resulting in British control of Afghanistan's foreign affairs.
• 1919  Emire Amanullah Khan declares British protectorite status over.
• 1926 to 1929.  Amanullah attemptes to modernize the country, leading to his being driven from teh country.
• 1933  Zahir Shah becomes King of Afghanistan.
• 1953  Gen. Mohammed Daud becomes Prime Minister, turns the country towars the Soviet Union for economic and military aid, and introduces social reforms.
• 1963  Mohammed Daud forced to step down as Prime Minister
• 1964  The country becomes a constitutional monarchy.
• 1973.  Mohammed Daud seizes power in a coup and deposes the monarchy.
• 1978  Mohammed Daud is overthrown in a pro Soviet coup.
• 1978   An anti Communist insurrection begins.
• 1979.  The Soviet Union interevenes to keep the pro Communist government from falling.
• 1980  Babrak Karmal installed as Soviet backed ruler.
• 1980  Western powers, Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia start aid the mujahideen.
• 1985  Half of the Afghani population is in exhile.
• 1989.  Red Army pulls out and communist government collapses, followed by civil war.
• 1996  The Taliban, represeting armed Islamic extremist, seize control of Kabul
• 1997  Pakistan, with strong Islamic leaning, and Saudi Arabia, which is also the domain of extreme Islamic sentiments, recongize the Taliban as the legitimate government.
• 1998. The United States, in retaliation for terrorist acts by Al Queada, hits Al Queda basis in Afghanistan with missile strikes
• 1999  The United Nations impose sanctions on Afghanistan due to its harboring Osama bin Laden.
• 2001  Afghanistan based Al Quaeda stages the Twin Towers attack on the the United States.

• 2001  The United States invades Afghanistan in October following air raids, but with limited forces.  The main US effort rapidly turns towards Iraq, which was not involved in the terrorist strike.
• 2001  In December Hamid Karzai is made president.
• 2002   The invasion becomes more substantial with the arrival of NATO forces.
• 2002  Deposed King Zahir Shah returns, but makes no claim to the throne.
• 2003.  NATO takes control of Kabul.
• 2005.  First Afghan election in 30 years.  Most of the seats in parliament are taken by warlords.
• 2006  NATO takes control of security from the United States for the entire country.
• 2007  Afghanistan threatens to intervene against the Taliban in Pakistan, which is harboring them.
• 2008  US increases troop strength by 4,500 men.
• 2009  US increases troop strength by 17,000 men.
• 2009 US troop strength brought up to 100,000 men for "the surge" but President Obama also declares the UW will withdrawal by 2011.
• 2010  The Netherlands pulls out of Afghanistan.
• 2010  NATO declares it will turn security of the country over to Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
• 2013 Afghan army takes control of security of the country from NATO.
• 2014  The United States and United Kingdom end their combat operations.
• 2015  The United States announces it will delay full withdrawal from the country at the request of the Afghan government.
• 2015.  The Afghan government and the Taliban hold informal peace talks.  The Taliban refuses to lay down its arms.
• 2015.  The Taliban briefly takes Kunduz.
• 2015.  President Obama announces that 9,800 US troops will remain in the country.
• 2015. A Taliban splinter group forms but is crushed by the main Taliban.
• 2015. The Afghan National Army defeats a Taliban effort to take Sangin, backed up by US air support.
• 2016  Pakistan forcibly repatriates Afghanis in Pakistan.
• 2016  US air strikes reverse Islamic State advances in eastern Afghanistan.
• 2016  President Obama indicates 8,400 US troops will remain and that NATO will also remain until 2020.
• 2016  The Taliban makes advances in Helmond province.
• 2016  The Islamic State captures Tora Bora.
• 2017  President Trump, contrary to campaign pledges, indicates US troop strength in Afghanistan will be increased to fight the Taliban.
• 2019.  The United States enters negations with the Taliban
• 2020  The Unites States enters into a peace agreement with the Taliban without hte participation of the Afghan government.
• 2020  President Trump, following his election defeat, indicates that he will withdraw from Afghanistan before the inauguration of President Biden.  It doesn't occur, but the wheels for withdrawal are set in motion.
• 2021.  In July, the United States withdraws from Bagram air base overnight.
• 2021  President Biden commits to withdraw Americans forces from Afghanistan by September 11.
• 2021.  In August the Afghan government collapses and its armed forces do as well, the Taliban take the country.

And so that's where we are now. 

Now, what to make of all of this, that's the question.

Well, to start off with, perhaps we can make some conclusions about Afghanistan itself.

This long history of the country, from an American prospective shows that the country has in fact little evolved from what it was at the time of the First Anglo Afghan War.  The country isn't a country, but a collection of tribes, not all of whom are ethnically related, living within a certain border.  It's more defined, in some ways, by what it isn't, than it is.

The Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group, but there are significant numbers of Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Nuristani, Aimak, Turkmen, and Balochs in the country as well.  Indeed, in the far north of the country the native population has a distinctively Asian appearance.  Genetically, if you will, all of these groups are represented as are the genes of those who came through and with the forces of the Mongols in the Middle Ages.  The only really common thread among all of these people are that they are all Islamic.

Now, people are going to be quick to blame Islam on the plight of the Afghans, but the biggest single thing impacting their situation is their extremely tribal nature, and tribal natures are always local.  In this fashion the Afghans resemble the Russian peasantry of the 1910s and 1920s, which overwhelmingly opposed the Communists, but only when they were in the neighborhood.  With no real national identify, Tajikes, for example, from the country's far north have very little desire to go to war against anyone in the far south of the country, but are perfectly willing to fight if people show up in their own valley.  Just as the Russian peasantry didn't like the Reds, almost all Afghans don't really like the Taliban, they just don't identify with any country and therefore so need to fight hundreds of miles away against somebody else.

And this is why, we'd note, the Afghan parliament was a failure.  It was simply a collection of warlords.

We don't need to go through every year from 1839 to the present date to see that, but we can touch upon the highlights.  Afghans always opposed the British presence in the country in the 19th Century, but they never supported their own governments either.  Those governments managed to persevere mostly because they were so weak.  You don't need to worry about a king in Kabul if he really doesn't impact your actual life in your own valley.  That became really evident, in the 1970s, when there was a real effort to form a real national government, with that government being a Communist one.

It's seemingly forgotten by us now, but Communism was a real force throughout the Middle East and Central Asia in the 1950s through the 1980s not because it was reveolutionary per se, but because it was modern.  It offered educated people something the politics of their own countries completely lacked, modernization.  We may, and should, look at the forced modernization of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s with horror, but to educated people living in Middle Eastern and Central Asian backwaters after World War Two, that looked good in comparison to tribalistic village societies.  And no wonder.  Building a dam, for example, for hydroelectric power and increased irrigation may look good to you if you are an engineer, but to a local poppy farmer who has complete domination over his wife and daughters and enough money from heroin to get by, it doesn't look nearly as appetizing.  

This has, we'd note, been the history of forced civilization throughout history, something we very oddly forget even though its the history of our own cultures.  The Romans didn't spread through Europe as they were handing out kittens and greeting cards.  They fought their way through against tribes that bitterly resented their presence. And those tribes weren't "freedom fighters" like we imagine today.  Boadicea's rebelling wasn't about the vote.  It was about keeping civilization out, tribal society in, and all that meant. And that always meant the same thing.  Tribal rights, which may have been very free at the local level, or may not have been, depending upon the culture, but which were violent and often, well weird.

And this is also why 19th Century Colonia endeavors frankly were much more realistic than modern "nation building" endeavors have been.  European countries, when they went into the distant regions of the globe, flatly accepted that the local cultures had no concept of more civilized values and that they had to be forced upon them. If that sounds brutal and racist, and both may be true, our current view has tended to be that the entire world is populated by Jeffersonian democrats, which is both naive and incredibly stupid.

And indeed, while we hate to admit anything of the sort, for the most part colonization was a success in terms of turning tribal societies into countries.  For the most part, European colonial enterprises didn't invade other countries to force them into empire, they invaded tribal regions to do that.  Even examples in Europe, such as when the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland, provide that example in context. And that's why it was so late in the day before any country attempted to invade and conquer Ethiopia.  It was already a nation.

The key is, however, that for this sort of thing to really work, a long presence is an absolute given, and that presence will be nearly wholly unwelcome.  Vietnam, perhaps, provides a good example. The Vietnamese never wanted the French in Indochina, but by the early 20th Century it had gone from a collection of local tribes of various types to an area with a real national identify.  When nationalism really broke out as a fighting force in the 1940s, due to World War Two, the Vietnamese of all stripes could see themselves as a nation.  When the French first showed up, well, not so much. The same example, in the case of the French, could be given in regard to Algeria.  By 1945, Algerians could identify an Algeria, and their interest with Algeria.  In earlier eras, they were simply local tribesmen.

Afghanistan has never gotten there.  It's made up of local tribesmen.

Taliban flag.

Well, what about the Taliban. They aren't a tribe, now are they?

No, they aren't, although they incorporate Pashtoon norms, and ironically they represent a more modernizing force than their opposition, even though we dare not admire them or regard them as modern.

The Taliban is a Deobandi Islamist movement which seeks to impose a Sunni Deobandi Islamic rule upon the country governed by their interpretation of Sharai law.  Most of its members are Pashtuns and they were educated as students, which is what Talib means, in Pakistan for the most part.  Their movement incorporates Pashtoon social norms with Sharia law.

We noted them as a more "modernizing" force than simple warlordism, but we do not suggest to mean a fully modernizing one. Their goal is to impose Sharai law, in a harsh form, over the entire country. To the extent it's modernizing, it would be simply because it would be based on a unifying national principal, rather than the current Afghan norm of everything really being local and tribal.

But, that principal, provides its own problems, to say the least.

The Taliban has no desire to actually modernize the country in any form. Rather, what it wishes to do is to impose a strict theocracy on the country.  What it will do in the future can be predicted by the past.  Women stand to not only lose their political rights, for example, but to become completely subservient to men.  In essence, what the Taliban intends to do is to put Sharia law combined with the Pashtunwali, the Pashtun social code, into effect as the law of the law of the country.

Traditionally Afghanistan has not only been tribal, and regional, but not extremely strict in the application of Islam. Islam is the religion of the country, both culturally and legally, but a fairly lax variant of that. The Taliban will end that. And it'll suppress all regionalism.

Now, it's tried that before, which lead to a civil war in various part of the country against it. That will repeat as well.  So what the future holds for the country is a retrograde advancement in regard to individual rights, particularly those for women, and a suppression of regional power, which will lead to civil war. 

So, what conclusions can we draw from all of this:

• The Bush neoconservatives who thought that the United States could make the country into a western democracy overnight were naive in the extreme.
• The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's fundamental problem was tribalism and regionalism.
• The Islamic Republic, however, was making progress in forming a national army, as long as it was backed up by the United States.
• The Taliban isn't popular in the country as a whole.

In short, what the Bush neo cons failed to appreciate is that it was going to take a very long time to make Afghanistan into a modern country.  A country that has no national identity has to form one.  That would have taken at least an additional two decades from the two that have already passed.

Should we have undertaken to do that?

Well, here's the thing, if we weren't going to, we shouldn't have started trying.  We could have simply engaged in a punitive raid in the country and left it.  That would have left it to the Taliban, to be sure, but that's what we've now done after having had an influence on the country and its people for 20 years.  We've done the worst thing possible, which is to go half the way.

Back in 2001 when this was debated, I took the position we could just do a punitive raid, although I did that elsewhere, as this blog wasn't a thing yet.  I thought we should go in, get Al Queada, and leave.  But we didn't.  We didn't even fight the initial war wisely.  

But fight it we did. And at that point, we had an obligation to stay.  There was no excuse for leaving.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the situation in Afghanistan.

Mr Speaker, I beg to move –

and may I begin by thanking you and all the Parliamentary staff for enabling us to meet this morning.

Before I turn to today’s debate, I am sure the House will want to join you and me in sending our condolences to the family and friends of those killed in the appalling shooting in Plymouth last week.

Investigations are, of course, continuing but we will learn every possible lesson from this tragedy.

Mr Speaker, I know that Members across the House share my concern about the situation in Afghanistan, issues it raises for our own security, and the fears of many remaining in that country – especially women and children.

The sacrifice in Afghanistan is seared into our national consciousness, with 150,000 people serving there from across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, including a number of Members on all sides of the House, whose voices will be particularly important today.

And so it is absolutely right that we should come together for this debate.

I thank my honourable friend and I can assure him that I will be saying in just a few moments, we will be doing everything we can to support those who have helped the UK mission in Afghanistan and investing everything we can to support the wider area around Afghanistan and to do everything we can to avert a humanitarian crisis.

Mr Speaker, it is almost twenty years since the United States suffered the most catastrophic attack on its people since the Second World War, in which 67 British citizens also lost their lives at the hands of murderous terrorist groups incubated in Afghanistan.

In response, NATO invoked Article V of its Treaty, for the first and only time in its history, and the United Kingdom, amongst others, joined America in going into Afghanistan on a mission to extirpate Al Qaeda in that country and to do whatever we could to stabilise Afghanistan, in spite of all the difficulties and challenges we knew that we would face.

And we succeeded in that core mission.

As I said in the House just a few weeks ago, there was an extensive defence review about the Afghan mission after the combat mission ended in 2014, and I believe most of the key questions have already been extensively gone into.

It’s important Mr Speaker that we in this House should be able to scrutinise events as they unfold.

Mr Speaker, we succeeded in that core mission and the training camps in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan were destroyed, Al Qaeda plots against this country were foiled because our serving men and women were there, and no successful terrorist attacks against the West have been mounted from Afghan soil for two decades.

Mr Speaker, I think it would be fair to say that the events in Afghanistan have unfolded and the collapse has been faster than I think even the Taliban themselves predicted.

What is not true is to say that the UK Government was unprepared or did not forsee this, because it was certainly part of our planning, of pitting the very difficult logistical operation for the withdrawal of UK nationals has been under preparation for many months Mr Speaker, and I can tell the house that the decision to commission the emergency handling centre at the airport took place two weeks ago, Mr Speaker

Alongside this core mission, we worked for a better future for the people of Afghanistan.

And the heroism and tireless work of our armed forces contributed to national elections, as well as the promotion and protection of human rights and equalities in a way that many in Afghanistan had not previously known.

Whereas twenty years ago almost no girls went to school and women were banned from positions of governance, now 3.6 million girls have been in school this year alone, and women hold over a quarter of the seats in Afghanistan’s parliament.

But Mr Speaker, we must be honest and accept that huge difficulties were encountered at each turn and some of this progress is fragile.

The honourable gentleman raises exactly the right question.

I spoke this morning to Ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow as well as to Brigadier Dan Blanchford who is handling the evacuation

And it would be fair to say the situation has stabilised since the weekend but it remains precarious and the UK officials on the ground are doing everything that they can to expedite the movement of people, those that need to come out, whether from ARUP scheme or eligible persons to get from Kabul to the airport.

And at the moment it would be fair to say the Taliban are allowing that evacuation to go ahead.

But the most important thing is that we get this done in as expeditious a fashion as we can, and that’s what we are doing.

And I may say that I am grateful not just to the UK forces who are now out there helping to stabilise the airport but also to the US forces as well

The combat phase of our mission ended in 2014 when we brought the vast majority of our troops home and handed over responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves, and we continued to support their efforts

Even at that stage, we should remember that conflict was continuous, and that in spite of the bravery and sacrifice of the Afghan army – and we should never forget that 69,000 of those Afghan army troops have given their lives in this conflict – significant parts of the country remained contested or under Taliban control.

And so when after two decades, the Americans prepared to take their long-predicted and well-trailed step of a final extraction of their forces, we looked at many options, Mr Speaker, including the potential for staying longer ourselves, finding new partners, or even increasing our presence, I think that when he asked for a commentary on the respective military potential power of the Taliban and the Afghan forces, it’s pretty clear from what has happened that the collapse of the Afghan forces has been much faster than expected

And as for our NATO allies and our allies around the world, when it came for us to look at the options that this country might have in view of the American decision to withdraw, we came up against this hard reality that since 2009, America has deployed 98 per cent of all weapons released from NATO aircraft in Afghanistan, and at the peak of the operation, when there were 132,000 troops on the ground, 90,000 of them were American.

The West could not continue this US-led mission, a mission conceived and executed in support and defence of America, without American logistics, without US air power and without American might.

I spoke to Secretary General Stoltenberg of NATO only the other day about NATO’s continuing role in Afghanistan.

But I really think it is an illusion to believe that there is appetite amongst any of our partners for a continued military presence or for a military solution imposed by NATO in Afghanistan.

The idea ended with the combat mission in 2014 and I do not believe that today deploying tens of thousands of British troops to fight the Taliban is an option, no matter how sincerely people may advocate it, and I appreciate their sincerity, but I do not believe that is an option that would commend itself either to the British people or to this House.

Mr Speaker, we must deal with the position as it now is, accepting what we have achieved and what we have not achieved.

The government has been working around the clock to deal with the unfolding situation.

We must deal with the world as it is, accepting what we have achieved and what we have not achieved.

The UK will work with our international partners on a shared plan to support the people of Afghanistan and to contribute to regional stability.

There will be five parts, Mr Speaker, to this approach.

First, our immediate focus must be on helping those to whom we have direct obligations, by evacuating UK nationals, together with those Afghans who have assisted our efforts over the past twenty years.

And I know the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the bravery and commitment of our Ambassador, Sir Laurie Bristow, I thank the right honourable gentleman for raising the very needy case that he does.

I am sure that colleagues across the House, literally every member will I imagine have received messages from people who know someone who needs to get out of Afghanistan,

And I can tell the right honourable gentleman that we are doing everything we can to help out of that country those people to whom we owe a debt of obligation

And on that point, I want to repeat my thanks, not just to Sir Laurie Bristow, but also our commander on the ground, Brigadier Dan Blanchford and the entire British team in Kabul.

I can tell the House that we have so far secured the safe return of 306 UK nationals and 2,052 Afghan nationals as part of our resettlement programme, with a further 2,000 Afghan applications completed and many more being processed.

UK officials are working round the clock to keep the exit door open in the most difficult circumstances, and actively seeking those we believe are eligible but as yet unregistered.

That’s why it’s been so important that we maintain a presence at Kabul airport and that’s why we’ve been getting the message out that we want people to come through

As I said earlier on, it is important for everybody to understand that at the moment in the days that we have ahead of us, which may be short, but at the moment, this is an environment in which the Taliban are permitting the evacuation to take place.

Mr Speaker, these are interpreters, they are locally engaged staff and others who have risked their lives supporting our military efforts and seeking to secure new freedoms for their country.

We are proud to bring these brave Afghans to our shores – and we continue to appeal for more to come forwards.

Mr Speaker, that’s the 5000 on whom we are spending £200 million to bring a further 5000 on top – I think it will be 10,000 altogether that we bring under the ARUP and other programmes.

We will be increasing that number over the coming years as I said to 20,000.

But the bulk of the effort of this country will be directed, and should be directed, to supporting people in Afghanistan and in the region in order to prevent a worse humanitarian crisis

I tell the House that in that conviction I am supported very strongly both by President Macron of France and by Chancellor Merkel of Germany.

We are also doing everything possible to accelerate the visas – we are making sure that we bring back the 35 brilliant Chevening scholars, so that they can come and study in our great universities.

We are deploying an additional 800 British troops to support this evacuation operation, and I can assure the House that we will continue this operation for as long as conditions at the airport allow.

We will not be sending people back to Afghanistan and nor by the way will we be allowing people to come from Afghanistan to this country in an indiscriminate way.

We want to be generous but we must make sure we look after our own security.

Over the coming weeks, we will redouble our efforts, working with others to protect the British homeland and all our citizens and interests, from any threats that may emanate from a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, from terrorism to the narcotics trade.

Like many of us I have been extensively lobbied on behalf of the excellent work done by Mr Pen Farthing – I am well aware of his cause and all the wonderful things he has done.

And for animals in Afghanistan I can tell my honourable friend that we will do everything we can to help Mr Pen Farthing and others who face particular difficulty like himself

But as I say without in any way jeopardising our own national security

These are concerns shared across the international community, from the region itself to all the NATO alliance and indeed all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. and I will chair a virtual meeting of the G7 in the coming days.

Third, Mr Speaker, we also have an enduring commitment to all the Afghan people, and now, more than ever, we must reaffirm that commitment.

Our efforts must be focused on supporting the Afghan people in the region itself, particularly those fleeing conflict or the threat of violence.

We therefore call on the United Nations to lead a new humanitarian effort in this region.

I’m very grateful to right honourable lady opposite because I think she’s asked a question that formed in many people’s minds about the 5000

And yes indeed the 5000 extra and the resettlement scheme and in addition to those already announced – we will support those people in coming to this country

We will also support the wider international community in delivering on humanitarian projects in the region by doubling the amount of humanitarian and development assistance that we had previously committed to Afghanistan this year, with new funding, taking this up to £286 million with immediate effect.

And we call on others to work together on a shared humanitarian effort, focusing on helping the most vulnerable in what will be formidably difficult circumstances.

My Right Honourable friend makes an excellent point and that’s why the UK has chaired the security council of the UN, and asked to put the motion together with our French friends to get the world to focus on the humanitarian needs of Afghanistan

And we’ll be doing the same thing in NATO, in the G7 and the other bodies in which we have a leadership role.

We want all these countries to step up as he rightly says and focus on the most vulnerable in what we will be formidably difficult circumstances

Fourth, while we must focus on the region itself, we will also create safe and legal routes for those Afghans most in need to come and settle here in the UK.

So in addition to those Afghans with whom we have worked directly, I can announce today that we are committing to relocating another 5,000 Afghans this year, with a new and bespoke resettlement scheme focusing on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children, and we will keep this under review for future years, with the potential of accommodating up to 20,000 over the long-term.

And so taken together Mr Speaker, we are committing almost half a billion pounds of humanitarian funding to support the Afghan people.

Fifth, Mr Speaker, we must also face the reality of a change of regime in Afghanistan, and as President of the G7, the UK will work to unite the international community behind a clear plan for dealing with this regime in a unified and concerted way.

Over the last three days I have spoken with the NATO and UN Secretaries General, with President Biden, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron, and Prime Minister Khan, we are clear and we have agreed that it would be a mistake for any country to recognise any new regime in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally.

Instead, those countries that care about Afghanistan’s future should work towards common conditions about the conduct of the new regime before deciding, together, whether to recognise it and on what terms.

We will judge this regime based on the choices it makes – and by its actions rather than by its words.

On its attitude to terrorism, to crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian access and the rights of girls to receive an education.

Defending human rights will remain of the highest priority.

And we will use every available political and diplomatic means to ensure that those human rights remain at the top of the international agenda.

Mr Speaker, our United Kingdom has a rollcall of honour that bears the names of 457 service men and women who gave their lives in some of the world’s harshest terrain, and many others who bear injuries to this day

fighting in what had become the epicentre of global terrorism, and even amid the heart-wrenching scenes we see today, I believe they should be proud of their achievements, and we should be deeply proud of them, because they conferred benefits that are lasting and ineradicable on millions of people in one of the poorest countries on earth, and they provided vital protection for two decades to this country and the rest of the world.

They gave their all for our safety, and we owe it to them to give our all to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a breeding ground for terrorism.

Because no matter how grim the lessons of the past, that future is not yet written, and at this bleak turning-point, we must help the people of Afghanistan to choose the best of all their possible futures, and in the UN, the G7, in NATO, with friends and partners around the world that is the critical task on which this government is now urgently engaged, and will be engaged in the days to come.

Ben Sasse on Afghanistan.

Our troops didn’t lose this war. Politicians chose defeat. We never had to let the Taliban win, but a bipartisan doctrine of weakness has humiliated the world’s greatest superpower and handed Afghanistan to butchers. In the next few weeks, the situation in Afghanistan will get much worse. Americans need to pray for that troubled country. President Biden needs to man up, come out of hiding, and take charge of the mess he created. Secure the airfields and get as many souls out as possible. Time is short.

National Review, "Worse Than Saigon".

How we lost the war in Afghanistan

How did we lose the war in Afghanistan and set it up for collapse?

And yes, we lost it.

A few short points.

1.  Conducting a war when a punitive expedition will do.

French navy raiding Mexico during the Pastry War.

A friend of mine has this better put than I do, but the fact of the matter is that we never needed to take over Afghanistan in the first place. We shouldn't have.

Our invasion of the country was done in reaction to the Al Qaeda attack upon the Twin Towers in New York City.  We needed to react to that. And Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda had taken refuge.  That meant something had to be hit there.

But that something should have been proportional, something that's now been forgotten.  The terrorist attack was just that, a criminal terrorist attack. But we treated it effectively as an act for war by two foreign nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.  Iraq  had nothing whatsoever to do with it, which we'll address in a moment.

A proportional response would have been a heavy series of raids. . . a punitive expedition, aimed at Al Qaeda and its infrastructure in Afghanistan.

Examples of this abound.  Ronald Reagan's administration carried one out against Libya while he was in office, which was directed at Gaddafi himself. That event turned out to be hugely successful.  The most famous US one was the one against Pancho Villa in 1916-17, which had mixed results, but after that threats to the border did diminish.  The US has carried them out additionally against Fiji and local forces in Korea, way back in the sailing ship days, which you rarely hear about.  

Arguably, the US reaction to the taking of the Mayaguez ship by Cambodia following the Vietnam War provides the best recent example in addition to Libya. That was a criminal act, and President Ford sent the Marines to take the ship back and destroyed the Cambodian navy in the process.

A heavy raid, designed to wipe out Al Qaeda, which in the end took years to wipe out as it was, would have been a better, proportional, response.  It would have left the Taliban in power, but they're back in power as it is.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but that's actually what I expected at the time.  Not an invasion.

Before moving on, I'd further note that treating the perpetrators of the terror attack as criminals, rather than soldiers, would have been a better philosophical and legal move as well.  Treating them as soldiers, as we did, means that at some point here all of them remaining in captivity will have to be released really.  You don't keep Prisoners Of War forever.

2.  If you invade, you don't ignore Clausewitz.

Clausewitz, who warned against half measures.

Having determined to invade, we did it incompetently with a minimal amount of force.

That never made any sense at all, but that was the way Donald Rumsfeld saw it.  He thought that we'd advanced so far technologically that a mere handful of US troops could invade and control the country.  

He was wrong.

The application of US technology to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were amazing.  But it hasn't carried the day in Afghanistan.  It did in the conventional war in Iraq. The problem with our campaign in Afghanistan, other than it being unjustified and probably an illegal act under the US Constitution, is that we subordinated the war in Afghanistan to our war in Iraq.  I don’t think the war in Iraq was necessary, and the fact that it became the main show meant that our early efforts in Afghanistan were with smaller unconventional forces.  By the time we got around to a large commitment the war was on and the initial shock over.  That caused it to drag on.  Had we gone in big right off the bat things may well have turned out differently, long term.  By and large we did so well against the Taliban that even having a small force there, before we began to withdraw it, was enough to keep the country from collapsing.

What ever the war in Iraq was about, it wasn't about the Twin Towers and was an unnecessary manpower suck that went on for years.

In someways, I  think we just liked invading Iraq better than Afghanistan.  The early part of it was like the Six Day War on steroids.  Of course, that lead us into a protracted guerilla war as well, but at least so far our efforts there, unnecessary though they were, seem to have worked.

A full scale invasion of Afghanistan, if we were going to invade it, may also have worked.  Massively overrunning the country would have caught the Taliban off guard and potentially destroyed it.  Putting it on the back burner to take on a different war didn't serve that aim.

It also committed it to a long stay and nation building.

3.  The long stay

Wounded US soldiers in Manila, 1899.

The US, and indeed maybe any democracy, has a limited staying power.  At least in our case, we get tired of things after a few years and are ready to leave, even if we regret leaving later. 

Supposedly having an “exit plan” was a lesson learned from Vietnam, but if so we really didn’t exhibit it when we went into Afghanistan.  I’m not saying that going in was the wrong thing to do (although I do think we didn’t do it well when we did it), but we didn’t seem to have a clear exit plan.

The reason seems to be that the George Bush II administration was a "neo conservative" one, not a conservative one.

Neo cons have their merits, but they are far from being conservatives.  Actually growing out of the Trotskyite wing of the Communist Party, but with a latter-day loss of faith in Communism and a restoration of faith in something greater than that, Neo Cons believed in their hearts that everyone was just like Americans and that all you had to do was get the bad guys and democracy would bloom.  That's naive, but it reflects their original views as Communists, as well as a sort of perpetual American naïveté on these issues.

The Bush Administration really believed that we could invade Afghanistan, take the Taliban out of power, and a modern democracy would just pop up.  That was never going to happen rapidly.

Building a nation is a messy process and most countries have gone about it badly.  There are European countries that were still enduring military coups as late as the 1970s, for example Greece.  If Greece, which experimented with democracy really early, was still trying to make it work out that late, we can’t expect Afghanistan to pick it up in two decades.  Russia, which of course some would debate as not really being European, hasn't managed to pull it off yet, even though it looked like it was going to after Communism fell, and It's had some sort of supposedly deliberative body since 1905.  Some countries in the region still hover on backsliding, with Turkey being a prime example.

Indeed, while Afghanistan is a Central Asian nation, not a Middle Eastern one, no Middle Eastern nation has managed to pull off becoming democratic save for Israel, Turkey, and so far Iraq.  Even the countries that have some sort of deliberative body aren't really democratic.  There are historical reasons for this, but before a person goes too far in attributing it to anything, we should keep in mind that Portugal and Spain only became democracies in the 1970s, and they certainly have long histories of western political culture.

Probably what we need also need to keep in mind is the example of countries like South Korea. South Korea is a functioning democracy but as late as the 80s the military still basically ran the country.  It took nearly 40 years from WWII for the country to get the hang of it.  During that interval, the country was ruled by some folks that really weren’t super admirable. 

And that presents an uncomfortable truth.  To really cause a nation to cross over this bridge, its political culture, and even its culture, needs to be reformed, and it won't be reformed very easily from the inside.

The Philippines, when we took it from Spain in 1898, was a country rife with internal political and cultural divisions, but which also wanted freedom. We fought a war there against that goal that we declared over, when it really wasn't, in 1902.  "Civilizing them with a Krag" actually took a really long time, and it wasn't until 1946 when the country imperfectly became independent.  In other words, we ran it for about 50 years.

South Korea provides a different example. We didn't run it, but we supported it, as a dictatorship, for about the same length of time.

And there's a real lesson there.  To build democracy, in real terms, sometimes you have to back the non-democratic.

Spain became democratic, ironically, because of Franco.  Nobody wants to admit it, but it's true.  Spanish democracy had collapsed in the mid 1930s and the country was going to be Communists, Anarchist, or Authoritarian.  Franco won, and he wasn't a democrat, but in later years he facilitated the transfer back to a civil government which was sustainable.  Salazar achieved the something, without even meaning to, in Portugal.

People like to call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires", and it sort of is.  But not for the reason people imagine.  It's just hopelessly backwards and to really address its situation you have to try to advance it 2,000  years.  Unfortunately, you can't do that overnight, and you really can't do it with the culture that's in place.  We would have been better off turning the country over to a strong man who was at least our strong man.

There might be a lesson from Vietnam there too.  We got irritated with Diem as he wasn't a Democrat.  He wasn't. But he was the last guy who ran the South competently.  The country might have become a democracy eventually, but it would have taken a long time.  It still might, as at least it isn't hopelessly backwards like Afghanistan.

If we didn't have the stomach for that, and it appears we never did, we should have just done a raid.

Not sending "American boys to (fill in bank) boys should do for themselves". The President's speech.

I've posted on this on our thread cataloging wars, but I'll do so here again separately

Good afternoon.

I want to speak today to the unfolding situation in Afghanistan, the developments that have taken place in the last week and the steps we’re taking to address the rapidly evolving events.

My national security team and I have been closely monitoring the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and moving quickly to execute the plans we had put in place to respond to every contingency, including the rapid collapse we’re seeing now.

I’ll speak more in a moment about the specific steps we’re taking. But I want to remind everyone how we got here and what America’s interests are in Afghanistan.

We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure Al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again. We did that. We severely degraded Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and we got him.

That was a decade ago. Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.

I’ve argued for many years that our mission should be narrowly focused on counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency or nation-building. That’s why I opposed the surge when it was proposed in 2009 when I was vice president. And that’s why as president I’m adamant we focus on the threats we face today, in 2021, not yesterday’s threats.

Today a terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan. Al Shabab in Somalia, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Nusra in Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources. We conduct effective counterterrorism missions against terrorist groups in multiple countries where we don’t have permanent military presence. If necessary, we’ll do the same in Afghanistan. We’ve developed counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on the direct threats to the United States in the region, and act quickly and decisively if needed.

When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, just a little over three months after I took office. U.S. forces had already drawn down during the Trump administration from roughly 15,500 American forces to 2,500 troops in country. And the Taliban was at its strongest militarily since 2001.

The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season. There would have been no cease-fire after May 1. There was no agreement protecting our forces after May 1. There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1. There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, and lurching into the third decade of conflict.

I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces. That’s why we’re still there. We were cleareyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency. But I always promised the American people that I will be straight with you.

The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.

American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong. Incredibly well equipped. A force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies. We gave them every tool they could need. We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force, something the Taliban doesn’t have. Taliban does not have an air force. We provided close air support. We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.

There are some very brave and capable Afghan special forces units and soldiers. But if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that one year — one more year, five more years or 20 more years — that U.S. military boots on the ground would have made any difference.

Here’s what I believe to my core: It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not. The political leaders of Afghanistan were unable to come together for the good of their people, unable to negotiate for the future of their country when the chips were down. They would never have done so while U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan bearing the brunt of the fighting for them. And our true strategic competitors, China and Russia, would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention into stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely.

When I hosted President Ghani and Chairman Abdullah at the White House in June, and again when I spoke by phone to Ghani in July, we had very frank conversations. We talked about how Afghanistan should prepare to fight their civil wars after the U.S. military departed. To clean up the corruption in government so the government could function for the Afghan people. We talked extensively about the need for Afghan leaders to unite politically. They failed to do any of that. I also urged them to engage in diplomacy, to seek a political settlement with the Taliban. This advice was flatly refused. Mr. Ghani insisted the Afghan forces would fight, but obviously he was wrong.

So I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not? How many more lives, American lives, is it worth, how many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery? I’m clear on my answer: I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States, of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country, of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of U.S. forces. Those are the mistakes we cannot continue to repeat because we have significant vital interest in the world that we cannot afford to ignore.

I also want to acknowledge how painful this is to so many of us. The scenes that we’re seeing in Afghanistan, they’re gut-wrenching, particularly for our veterans, our diplomats, humanitarian workers — for anyone who has spent time on the ground working to support the Afghan people. For those who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan, and for Americans who have fought and served our country in Afghanistan, this is deeply, deeply personal. It is for me as well.

I’ve worked on these issues as long as anyone. I’ve been throughout Afghanistan during this war, while the war was going on, from Kabul to Kandahar, to the Kunar Valley. I’ve traveled there on four different occasions. I’ve met with the people. I’ve spoken with the leaders. I spent time with our troops, and I came to understand firsthand what was and was not possible in Afghanistan. So now we’re focused on what is possible.

We will continue to support the Afghan people. We will lead with our diplomacy, our international influence and our humanitarian aid. We’ll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability. We’ll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people, of women and girls, just as we speak out all over the world.

I’ve been clear, the human rights must be the center of our foreign policy, not the periphery. But the way to do it is not through endless military deployments. It’s with our diplomacy, our economic tools and rallying the world to join us.

Let me lay out the current mission in Afghanistan: I was asked to authorize, and I did, 6,000 U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan for the purpose of assisting in the departure of U.S. and allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan, and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside of Afghanistan. Our troops are working to secure the airfield and ensure continued operation on both the civilian and military flights. We’re taking over air traffic control. We have safely shut down our embassy and transferred our diplomats. Our diplomatic presence is now consolidated at the airport as well.

Over the coming days we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan. We’ll also continue to support the safe departure of civilian personnel — the civilian personnel of our allies who are still serving in Afghanistan. Operation Allies Refuge, which I announced back in July, has already moved 2,000 Afghans who are eligible for special immigration visas and their families to the United States. In the coming days, the U.S. military will provide assistance to move more S.I.V.-eligible Afghans and their families out of Afghanistan.

We’re also expanding refugee access to cover other vulnerable Afghans who work for our embassy. U.S. nongovernmental organizations and Afghans who otherwise are a great risk in U.S. news agencies — I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. And part of it because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence.

American troops are performing this mission as professionally and as effectively as they always do. But it is not without risks. As we carry out this departure, we have made it clear to the Taliban: If they attack our personnel or disrupt our operation, the U.S. presence will be swift, and the response will be swift and forceful. We will defend our people with devastating force if necessary. Our current military mission is short on time, limited in scope and focused in its objectives: Get our people and our allies as safely and quickly as possible. And once we have completed this mission, we will conclude our military withdrawal. We will end America’s longest war after 20 long years of bloodshed.

The events we’re seeing now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure Afghanistan, as known in history as the graveyard of empires. What’s happening now could just as easily happen five years ago or 15 years in the future. We have to be honest, our mission in Afghanistan made many missteps over the past two decades.

I’m now the fourth American president to preside over war in Afghanistan. Two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president. I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference. Nor will I shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here. I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.

I’m deeply saddened by the facts we now face. But I do not regret my decision to end America’s war-fighting in Afghanistan and maintain a laser focus on our counterterrorism mission, there and other parts of the world. Our mission to degrade the terrorist threat of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and kill Osama bin Laden was a success. Our decades-long effort to overcome centuries of history and permanently change and remake Afghanistan was not, and I wrote and believed it never could be.

I cannot and will not ask our troops to fight on endlessly in another country’s civil war, taking casualties, suffering life-shattering injuries, leaving families broken by grief and loss. This is not in our national security interest. It is not what the American people want. It is not what our troops who have sacrificed so much over the past two decades deserve. I made a commitment to the American people when I ran for president that I would bring America’s military involvement in Afghanistan to an end. While it’s been hard and messy and, yes, far from perfect, I’ve honored that commitment.

More importantly, I made a commitment to the brave men and women who serve this nation that I wasn’t going to ask them to continue to risk their lives in a military action that should’ve ended long ago. Our leaders did that in Vietnam when I got here as a young man. I will not do it in Afghanistan.

I know my decision will be criticized. But I would rather take all that criticism than pass this decision on to another president of the United States, yet another one, a fifth one. Because it’s the right one, it’s the right decision for our people. The right one for our brave service members who risked their lives serving our nation. And it’s the right one for America.

Thank you. May God protect our troops, our diplomats and all brave Americans serving in harm’s way.

I continue to be amazed by how the country has consistently made resort to politicians from the Baby Boom generation which are also, it might be noted, the Vietnam War era generation.

George Bush II, who committed the US to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the second one, following Clinton, who had not served in the war, who was the first.  Bush had been in the Texas Air National Guard which is real service.

The next one was Donald Trump, who had not served.  Trump may or may not have evaded service, depending upon whatever the truth of his medical disqualification for service was.  Joe Biden also had medical deferments, for asthma.

I note this in part because this speech recalls the Vietnam War so strongly.  We've blamed the military of the nation we abandoned for not wanting to fight, much like we blamed the ARVN for the same, and still do, not appreciating I suppose the culture of the nation they're in, and the situation they found themselves in.

I'll post a separate summation of what I think happened in Afghanistan, but blaming the people we left behind and political predecessors doesn't really excuse an incompetent present assessment of the situation, which is what occured.