Dear America,
As usual, the Republican crocodile tears are flowing in torrents. Republicans, conservatives especially, are castigating the Biden administration over how the evacuation from Afghanistan is being executed, albeit not without good reason, without ever mentioning how we got into our misbegotten war there. They seem to have forgotten that the AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) that led to our invasion of Afghanistan in the first place was passed ostensibly for the sole purpose of apprehending those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, specifically Osama bin Ladin who was then believed to be hiding out in the caves at Tora Bora. The resolution hit the floor just three days after the attacks, and despite some moderate expressions of reservation it was passed less than a week later, almost unanimously, thanks in part to the jingoism and putative patriotism of the likes of Ann Coulter, who if my memory serves, blathered that any Democrat who voted against it should be prosecuted (I believe she actually said shot) as a traitor. Our Republican president, enjoying a majority in both houses of congress that gave the AUMF bill juggernaut momentum, had no problem getting it passed. He signed it immediately and only a matter of a couple of months later initiated the invasion of Afghanistan for the explicit and solitary purpose allowed by the law: apprehension of those responsible in any way for the 9/11 attacks. That mission, which had palpably failed within months of its inception because bin Ladin was nowhere to be found and al-Qaeda was so dispersed as to be impossible to assail with anything approaching precision, morphed into the war against the Taliban intended to reform the nation into what the United States thought it should be.
Now, after twenty years of what quickly became nothing more than a military adventure in the name of "American Exceptionalism," we are faced with the daunting task of removing the dross left behind from that witch's brew of imperialism and chauvinism, and it is going badly. Americans who are in Afghanistan for dubious reasons are complaining that they are in jeopardy and can't reach the sanctuary of Kabul airport, conveniently ignoring the fact that they've had close to a year since Trump agreed with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. troops by May 1, 2021, to get themselves out of harm's way. And our diplomatic apparatus, egregiously pared down in terms of personnel under the Trump administration with the complicity of Republicans in congress, is unable to handle the crush of applications from Afghanis who have a legitimate fear of retaliation from the Taliban in consequence of the aid and comfort they gave our forces during the war. Meanwhile, the Republicans offer no constructive suggestions, preferring to take political coup ala Donald Trump. There is no refuting that the situation in Afghanistan is a deplorable mess, but it is time that someone pulled the Republicans up short and forced them to take some responsibility for the fact that we find ourselves mired down in a third world country in which we have no business being in the first place...largely thanks to them. And they still seem to be arguing that we shouldn't leave the country in the first place, clinging to the delusion that only we know what's best for Afghanistan. The fact is that foreigners have been trying to subdue Afghanistan for a couple of thousand years and while some have succeeded for a century or so, no one has succeeded long-term. And most who have adventured there have paid mightily for their miscalculations as to how feasible it would be to create their own dominion over what seems to be not much more than a human primordial soup. Just ask the Russians.
So, here we are, having obdurately refused to learn the lessons of a couple of millennia of woe and decimation suffered by those who would do what we attempted to do. We find ourselves engaged in an ungainly effort to extricate ourselves from what was a fool's errand from the start, having spent twenty years, countless billions of dollars that could have fed people instead of killing them, and burying over four thousand young Americans not to mention countless thousands of Afghans. And the Republicans, instead of taking the lesson from the enterprise, try to make political hay out of it. Their constituents might want to ask themselves why before they cast votes for them in the future, but what else is new.
Your friend,
Mike
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