My latest in PJ Media is a VIP article. I am happy to be able to offer you a 5% discount on becoming a VIP member at PJ Media. Just enter the code SPENCER when you sign up here.
Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it: “We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to leave.”
That explains why we haven’t been able to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan after all these years: there is nothing going on there that will provide any stability, and there will not be, so apparently the State Department establishment wants us to stay there until the end of time.
In reality, the new revelations in the Washington Post make it clearer than ever that it is long past time to end the fool’s errand in Afghanistan. Michael Brendan Dougherty sums it up in National Review: “The more troubling revelation in the Post’s story was that multiple presidents and generals had lied elaborately to the public about the war, pretending it was going well even though they’d privately concluded that our objectives were contradictory and our strategy was a mess. Worse yet was the lying they did to themselves, creating endless color-coded metrics and then manipulating the data that was measured by them.”
Frank Anderson says
As long as Afghanistan continues to be a major source of illegal heroin, with the aid and comfort of its corrupt government and “terrorists” the need for a US and allied presence will continue. While Agent Orange and Roundup have been identified as unsafe, and rightfully out of use, there are other agents that could destroy major portions of the poppy fields openly cultivated to produce heroin that is destroying major populations while funding the Islamic war of conquest. There is the same problem with cocaine in South American countries that permit unrestricted cultivation. Drugs are just another weapon in the war conducted by international terrorists.
Leaving Afghanistan to fall to total muslim control is leaving it to gain economic and extra-military strength to take their war to us; both through drugs and terrorism..
Mario Alexis Portella says
+1
mortimer says
Yep, it’s no more likely that US troops will be withdrawn from Germany or Japan, than they will be withdrawn from Afghastlistan. It is still a long way from being a stable country. The process of dragging Afghanistan into the modern world will take another generation. They cannot be allowed to remain in the 7th century.
Thomas Richard says
There is no stability under Islam……just submission……That is why the US must get out!
gravenimage says
‘We Are Never Going to Get the U.S. Military Out of Afghanistan’
………………
We can never civilize this Muslim hellhole. Time to cut our losses and pull out.
Frank Anderson says
GI, I agree completely that we are never going to civilize a country where there is utterly no possibility of reform: islam will remain at war with the world. It does not matter what non-believer/infidel/kafir people do or not do, the war will continue. It is not a spiritual contest, as conducted by many other true religions, but a real, live, killing war to conquer and dominate the world. Accepting that fact is the first step to working on a solution.
The next logical step is to decide, given that war has been declared by them, whether we declared war back or not, either we fight or we surrender.
If we do not surrender, we must fight. That is a binary choice-no middle ground to negotiate. Then the next question is where do we fight?
The military exists to kill people and break things. It does well at that. It does not exist to build democracies in places where the idea of self-rule is totally contrary to the “religious” teaching of “submission”. Afghanistan is a continuing active HARM, not just threat, to the rest of the world because it is a primary source of heroin. Allowing that cultivation and harvest weakens “us” and empowers “them” in enormous economic terms. What would happen in the absence of force in Afghanistan with billions of dollars flowing in annually from the drug business?
As I wrote earlier, the same reasoning applies to the cultivation, harvest, production and smuggling of cocaine. I think my comparison of the reception Nazis would give to Jewish counsel is worthy of consideration. Non-believers are nothing but slaves and future dead people to believers. Their thoughts, ideas and guidance are without value to change the unchangeable.
How many more drug addicts committing crimes all over our country, effectively engaging in destruction comparable to any other war, must we expect if we abandon the first step in drug production? Fight there or fight here? Or surrender to slavery or death.
mortimer says
It’s a pipe dream to think that leaving Afghanistan will not be disastrous for the US. They will only get worse. US troops will eventually have to return. The hunt for a simple solution is just a simplistic solution.
Infidel says
Mortimer, it won’t be disastrous if we make it a point to not just stay out of there, but keep their people out of our lands as well. Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling on the Travel Ban, we now do have a simple, constitutional template of how to execute. We should simply add Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to the list of banned countries, so that we don’t have to worry about more of their people coming in. Also, we make entry to the US impossible for foreign family members of US muslims by putting them at the back of the line of H2Bs, H1Bs, L1s and so on so that they just can’t enter.
Keeping those countries stable, or saving them from themselves is not our job. If we have to put in a stablizing force, why not have our Saudi ‘allies’ have the OIC do it for us? Pick the biggest Muslim countries that have no history of supporting any of the warring factions in Afghanistan’s civil wars nor are ethnic comrades of Afghans (which excludes Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan), which would be Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and maybe Turkey, and have them send a peacekeeping force to both Afghanistan and Pakistan under the OIC umbrella. Let them monitor all the ceasefires, and manage their civil war. And let it be financed by the OIC as well, where the Saudis and others can determine who has to pay how much into this project
gravenimage says
Frank and Mortimer, I respect you both and take your points. I have said that we were far safer when we had Islam largely isolated, and this very much applies to Afghanistan as well, in my opinion.
Meremortal says
Withdrawal of 4,000 troops in the next week just announced.
Infidel says
Yeah, good first step. The remaining 8000 or whatever troops should follow. In fact, ask our Saudi ‘allies’ to have an OIC force occupy that country instead – consisting mainly of troops from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Turkey and other Muslim countries that have no record of supporting any of the groups in Afghanistan
gravenimage says
Good.
Lotus says
There’s a good recent article in the Guardian about this issue.
The Afghanistan campaign has cost a staggering trillion dollars, and there’s not much to show for it.
As one military person in the article correctly says, how can a campaign be winnable if there is no clear definition of what winning the campaign actually means?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/14/afghanistan-papers-detail-us-dysfunction-we-did-not-know-what-we-were-doing
pennant8 says
I had to buy a subscription to the Washington Post to read this report, and it was worth it. I have read all six parts of the report. It covers a lot of issues but mainly corruption, incompetence and the drug trade. However one aspect of our involvement there is predictably absent. Unless I missed it, I did not come across a single mention of the word Islam. Not surprised. Not a single question raised about the wisdom of putting an infidel army on the ground in a 100% Muslim country, and all the cultural conflicts that entails.
After reading the report I got to thinking how it will impact family members and loved ones of our troops who have come home in flag draped coffins. Not to mention the number of troops who came home with life changing injuries. I would think this report will generate a lot of anguish and anger which might translate into some rapid reassessment of our presence there, followed by a complete and total withdrawal.
Wellington says
American involvement in Afghanistan is even worse than our involvement in Vietnam. Even though the way the war was conducted in Vietnam was highly inept and even stupid (e.g., America could not invade North Vietnam—just imagine if the same restriction applied in WWII to Germany), at least the enemy was named, i.e., Communism. Now, we have in Afghanistan not only the ineptness and stupidity that existed with the Vietnam War, but we can’t even name the enemy. Well, the enemy is Islam—all of it.
Finally, I want to make it crystal clear that my comment above in NO WAY serves as a rebuke to America’s armed services, to those who actually did and have done the fighting. They performed their job in Vietnam superbly as they have in Afghanistan. The shame in no way lies with them but rather with the politicians and some of the higher military command who, in each war, have sacrificed some of America’s finest with absolutely no plan for ultimate victory. Shameful beyond all measure.
With any war, properly identify the enemy and then the mission should be to utterly destroy that enemy. This is the only way to fight a war and those who actually fight it deserve no less than this kind of strategic thinking and goal.
Infidel says
Let’s look back at history of Operation Enduring Freedom. We started the war in October 2001, after the Taliban ignored our deadlines, and by December, both Kabul and Kandahar had fallen and the Taliban had dispersed. That was when we won!
Everything after that was a waste – starting from the international conference to put together an Afghan government, rewrite a new Afghan constitution, blah blah blah. In fact, a pretty embarrassing exercise, given that we helped them write a constitution that includes the death penalty for apostasy from islam, which was showcased in the Abdul Rahman fiasco. 2002 was when we should have pulled out having toppled the Taliban, and left Afghanistan w/ an unstable balance of power where no side got the upper hand. That would have left the Taliban w/ a lot more to lose.
Not to mention the elephant in the room that the Bush administration pretended didn’t exist – Pakistan. When Osama was finally hunted down in Abbottabad, that was when the US should have terminated diplomatic relations w/ Pakistan and destroyed their nukes. They are not Saudi Arabia who have the dollar at their mercy if the US gets tough, so the US should have totally cracked down on Pakistan for running this Jihad remotely and making Afghanistan the battlefield
gravenimage says
Agreed. Wellington and Infidel.
Frank Anderson says
Islam declared world war 1400 years ago and has killed according to estimates most of a billion people in that time. It has enslaved more billions. It is not going to change or quit because we quit. If we stop resisting they continue fighting until we “Convert, Submit or Die.” That is THEIR “final, perfect, complete and unchangeable” offer to all non-Jews. Expecting to end that war one place at a time is somewhere between erroneous and delusional. Their goal is nothing short of world domination and slavery.
gravenimage says
Frank, I don;t think that pulling out of Afghanistan, which entanglement is futile–is the same as surrendering ti Islam or refusing to defend against Jihad.
Lotus says
The Washington Post articles are behind a paywall. For those who do not have a subscription, here are a few extracts from one of the Post’s articles. They paint a very sorry picture indeed.
// The Lessons Learned interviews contain few revelations about military operations. But running throughout are torrents of criticism that refute the official narrative of the war, from its earliest days through the start of the Trump administration.
At the outset, for instance, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had a clear, stated objective — to retaliate against al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Yet the interviews show that as the war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of faith in the U.S. strategy took root inside the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.
Fundamental disagreements went unresolved. Some U.S. officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’s rights. Still others wanted to reshape the regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia.
The Lessons Learned interviews also reveal how U.S. military commanders struggled to articulate who they were fighting, let alone why.
Was al-Qaeda the enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an adversary? What about the Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, let alone the warlords on the CIA’s payroll? According to the documents, the U.S. government never settled on an answer.
As a result, in the field, U.S. troops often couldn’t tell friend from foe.
“They thought I was going to come to them with a map to show them where the good guys and bad guys live,” an unnamed former adviser to an Army Special Forces team told government interviewers in 2017.
“It took several conversations for them to understand that I did not have that information in my hands. At first, they just kept asking: ‘But who are the bad guys, where are they?’ ”
As commanders in chief, Bush, Obama and Trump all promised the public the same thing. They would avoid falling into the trap of “nation-building” in Afghanistan.
On that score, the presidents failed miserably. The United States has allocated more than $133 billion to build up Afghanistan — more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II.
The Lessons Learned interviews show the grandiose nation-building project was marred from the start.
U.S. officials tried to create — from scratch — a democratic government in Kabul modeled after their own in Washington. It was a foreign concept to the Afghans, who were accustomed to tribalism, monarchism, communism and Islamic law.
“Our policy was to create a strong central government which was idiotic because Afghanistan does not have a history of a strong central government,” an unidentified former State Department official told government interviewers in 2015. “The timeframe for creating a strong central government is 100 years, which we didn’t have.” //
gravenimage says
Thank you, Lotus.
I knew things were hopeless when Afghanistan put stoning back on the books.
roberta says
If the world were just so simple. I’d like to get all US troops out, and just carpet bomb the shthole about once a week. It would cost no US lives and probably cost less money also.
No doubt be more effective.
Making treaties with muslims–laughable if it were not so sad.
Kepha says
Afghanistan has always been the classic Catch-22. We touted that winning by eradicating Taliban and building a strong, central, democratic government (an oxymoron?) was “the war we have to win”. Yet history has shown Afghanistan to be eternally unwinnable, unless, like the Mongols, we are prepared to raze cities, build towers of skulls on the ruins, and make sure that a few succeeding generations descended from the surviving women and children look a lot like us (think the Hazara and Aimaq). The country was set up by the Durani clan, which had the sense to accommodate its tribal structure, and was saved when imperial Britain and imperial Russia agreed to keep it as a buffer.
And how can we possibly win when our logistics train depends on unstable, duplicitous Pakistan?
Frank Anderson says
Kepha, to me you ask absolutely sound, righteous questions. Please consider what I hope is another: What happens when we leave? Building a democracy in a society that has lived supporting mindless totalitarian rule for more than a thousand years is as delusional and futile as any idea I can imagine. That part is understood. But what are we sure to happen if we go?
Getting out of Vietnam was really popular in 1975. But shortly after the US exit, the predictions of mass slaughter in both Vietnam and Cambodia proved true. Congress prohibited Gerald Ford from performing the Presidential commitment to South Vietnam to stop an invasion from the North. With the precision guided weapons of the time, the invasion could have been destroyed in days. But Congress said NO.
A Presidential promise was made to Ukraine that if they surrendered a nuclear arsenal left by the Soviet Union that made them at the moment among the largest holders of nuclear weapons in the world, Ukraine’s territorial integrity and borders would be guaranteed. Like France and UK guarantees of the Czech border, that guarantee has been shown meaningless.
Why does not the US simply get out of Israel, UK, Korea, Japan and Germany; and for that matter NATO? That would invite the same aggression that will reach the US as has been shown in history. Fight there; or fight here; or surrender. “There is no free lunch.”
Frank Anderson says
Addendum: The US entered Afghanistan suffering under the lie “religion of peace” I suffered under that lie for about 7 years. That lie gave cover to the false and delusional objective of bringing democracy to a land ruled by one form or another of totalitarian dictatorship from “time immemorial”. Democracy, liberty and individual value are foreign to islam, and always have been. Most of us who read and write here understand the teachings of islam have never and will never change. Without change, we are faced with THEIR choices of “Convert, Submit or Die” or others, Resist or Escape. If we escape from Afghanistan today, where will we be forced to leave next? Cowardice and appeasement have limits-sooner or later there are no places left.
gravenimage says
Frank Anderson wrote:
Why does not the US simply get out of Israel, UK, Korea, Japan and Germany; and for that matter NATO?
………………..
Frank–with all respect–Israelis, South Koreans, Japanese and Germans–and the people of NATO (save for Turkey) are civilized people and allies.
One can argue that this was not the case in 1945 with the Japanese and Germans, but it was believed that these places could be civilized after the defeat of Fascism, and this belief turned out to be warranted.
The same is *not* true of Afghan Muslims.
Frank Anderson says
GI, if they are not civilized after 75 years, when will they be? I would never accuse any muslim country of becoming civilized by standards that are totally in violation of every rule they are taught.
I think the issue is not civilization of countries, but assertion and protection of our interest. Civilization is more an excuse or cover than a true statement of motive. Truth has been in my experience very helpful in focusing and achieving goals.
gravenimage says
I don’t think it is possible for Muslim countries to become civilized, Frank–an adherence to Islam does not allow it. As for Japan and Germany (and Italy), they have been civilized for a very long time–since just a few years after WWII.
I understand your point, but I don’t think that our being in Afghanistan is in our interest. I am fine with using drones on threats, but having troops on the ground there will always, in my estimation, be more dangerous for us than makes sense, with little to nothing to gain from it.
I realize we may have to agree to disagree on this point.
Frank Anderson says
GI, please remember my thirst for wisdom from every source. Included in that wisdom is the Presbyterian teaching that all children are the duty, the responsibility, of all adults. Mother and father have such rights as they are; but the rest of us have duties.
Putting OUR children in danger is the least desirable alternative. A truly ruthless alternative, that would almost certainly qualify under present law as a war crime is to simply sterilize the country. The idea of using remote devices in place of live people is a viable second choice. The absence of a human presence is also an absence of what are effectively hostages. The legal avenues to deprive the tools “they” need to attack us, particularly attacking their cultivation of drugs for the international market, are adequate for the task; as are the means. If they are too busy trying to eat and have no time for attacks or drug dealing, they may find time to reconsider their commitment to world conquest.
Notice the progress being reported on robots. Real life terminators are in sight. Until then, keep the pressure on those who would enslave or kill us so they do not grow stronger and reach out thousands of miles to us. They did it on 9/11 and dearly wish to do it again many times over.
Why is Iran making such an effort not just to obtain nuclear weapons, but to build and deploy MANY of them? They are NOT for defensive use. You have seen my estimates on the production of nuclear bombs from spent reactor fuel. Iran had 19,000 centrifuges before the sham nuclear deal. It has added more and better to increase its ability to produce bombs. It has no rational purpose for nuclear reactors other than to obtain spent fuel with Plutonium for bombs. Iran by any reasonable analysis has nuclear weapons now thanks to its cooperation with North Korea. The only real question is how many? Since Iran has been a major source of shaped charge weapons to Afghanistan, killing or injuring many US people, when will they pass along a few nuclear weapons to up the ante? A small bomb is about the size of a basketball. Models can be seen in Albuquerque. Getting a few into Europe or the US, or both, would give rise to many cheers in the muslim world. Controlling, reducing or eliminating Afghanistan’s role as a delivery vehicle makes sense to me.
David says
Check out the book: One Million Steps, it’s the story the that embedded (former Marine) journalist with our Marines. Great read. All about Sangin. Describes our soldiers interactions with the Taliban and landowners working hand-in-hand in prime fertile growing areas of Afghanistan. Has a nice assessment of how our changes in the ROE and politically correct top-down anti-leadership foiled some of our best campaigns there. The book does a great job of honoring our KIA.