On September 11th, 2001, Kristy and I were moving into a new apartment in Columbus, OH. We had lived in Berlin for a year, and we were getting re-integrated into life in the U.S. before going back to our grad programs at Ohio State.
I was listening to Howard Stern on the radio in the car when the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. We were on our way to the apartment to drop off our first load of stuff, and Howard saw the North Tower get hit and started talking about it, and it was surreal. It’s always hard to tell if Howard is exaggerating or not, but this was different. It was urgent and serious and actually shocking.
When we got to the apartment, we plugged in the TV and turned on the news and saw that the South Tower had also been hit with a plane. It was unbelievably awful. We spent the rest of the day in a stupor, just going through the motions of lifting boxes and setting furniture in place.
Less than a month later, on October 7th, the American military began its invasion of Afghanistan. In the 20 years of that conflict, here have been the costs:
• American Soldiers: 2,448 dead, 20,666 wounded • U.S. Contractors: 3,846 dead • Afghan Civilians: 47,245 dead • Afghan Soldiers: 66,000-69,000 dead • Journalists: 72 dead • Aid Workers: 444 dead • American Money: $2.26 trillion • Congressional Approvals for War in Afghanistan: 0
(That last one is admittedly not a cost, per se, but it is a pertinent fact.)
In some ways, the costs of this 20-year war are measurable. But in most ways, they’re not. The emotional toll the war has taken on wounded soldiers, combat veterans, and a nation united (and then very much divided) are vast and immeasurable. The mounting costs were so great, in fact, that this became a war we largely tried to shut out of our collective conscience for a long time. It existed on the periphery, and none of us really understood why – especially after Bin Laden was killed.
The awful truth is that this is a war that couldn’t be won. The Russians showed us in the 1980s (and the British showed us before them) that Afghanistan is where empires go to die. But we didn’t learn.
What's important to understand here is that Afghanistan is not a “nation” in the traditional sense of the word. It’s a regional collection of dozens of tribes, factions, ethnicities, and denominations all warring for power. That’s all they’ve known for hundreds of years. Its borders were arbitrarily set by the British last century. The country isn’t just violently anti-democratic; it’s uniquely ungovernable. After 20 years of sustained effort, any continued investment in building democracy and infrastructure in a volatile foreign country while our own country continues to struggle with both democracy and infrastructure is a fool’s errand and an exercise in futility.
A year ago, Donald Trump was running for President on the idea that we had to pull troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. It was a campaign stunt, for sure. He could have pulled troops out any time during the previous four years, but in true reality TV fashion, he was using it as a big campaign teaser. Who knows if he actually intended to do it if he won?
He was right about very little during his presidency, but his words (at least) were right about Afghanistan. If he had been the one to pull troops out of the country, he would have said “Look, I just pulled our brave soldiers out of this shithole country” and the Right would have eaten it up. The same Fox/OAN/NewsMax/MAGA crowd who is lighting Biden up today would have been praising their ringleader for doing the thing that had to be done. The Neo-Cons who drove the continuation of this war would have been pissed no matter what, but no war is apparently long enough for the Bill Kristols and Max Boots of the world.
But it had to be done. Here are some facts:
- US military leaders repeatedly misled multiple presidents about our progress and success in Afghanistan. - If the intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan was so bad that we thought our withdrawal would go more smoothly, then we were even more fucked than we knew. - The Taliban had been steadily gaining ground in Afghanistan for years, and this traction escalated when Trump had Mike Pompeo secretly meet with the Taliban leadership to strike a deal last September (effectively kneecapping an official Afghan government that was already shaky and tenuous). Per this agreement, the original U.S. withdrawal date was May 31st — more than two months ago. - Even a small troop presence in a country that’s this unstable costs a lot to maintain. When is the investment in blood and money enough? Are we just trying to tell ourselves that we have to keep doing this thing because we can’t face the failure of our efforts over the last 20 years?
This happened on Biden’s watch, and he’ll undoubtedly be the scapegoat for this two-decade-long debacle. But he did not create this mess. If he failed to secure the safety and extraction of the Afghan interpreters, guides, and insiders who have helped us for 20 years, then that’s the one shameful part of his involvement. Time should have been built in for that effort.
But this is a tragedy that was bound to happen. I don’t know if it had to happen, but it was certainly going to happen eventually. I truly hate that this is the end result. It’s devastating for the thousands of parents whose sons and daughters lost their lives in this conflict. It's crushing for soldiers who served in Afghanistan – who believed in their mission and who watched friends and fellow soldiers die or get wounded or struggle with the aftermath. It's humiliating and demoralizing for a county that contributed an obscene amount of resources and watched from a safe distance. It’s obviously a tragedy for the Afghan civilians, but we have tried repeatedly – incessantly – to prop them up and give them the ability to build a better, more stable country.
There comes a point at which we all have to admit that it wasn’t enough. It would never have been enough. And the notion that America – and more specifically, our current President – is somehow the prime culprit in the massive failure of the last week is wrongheaded, ill-informed, ahistorical, insincere, and beyond the pale.
20 years ago, Kristy and I (and most Americans) were walking around in a stupor because of Afghanistan. We’ve all remained in that stupor for 20 long years. Maybe it’s time to start being more clear-headed and honest about what it all meant, even if that truth isn’t something we want to face.
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