Some would say it was a fool’s errand to ever believe we could control the place. The British couldn’t. The Soviets couldn’t. Why would we think we could?
On the other hand, it’s discouraging to see it fall back into the hand of the foaming 14th century fanatics, and I’m sure the men who risked life and limb over there are disgusted.
But why is it our problem? Why should we spend our lives and treasure to prop up a system that they’re simply not ready for? There seem to be cultural prerequisites before a society can have a Republic, and they don’t have them.
Perhaps we need a strategy of containment. E.g., “you can be lunatics if you want, but we’re going to keep you in your country. Nobody gets out.” Although I’m not sure that’s practical, given the rough borders. We could hardly watch them all. We can’t even watch our own border.
I’ve heard a pretty decent argument that small U.S. presence = no Taliban running Afghanistan, and no Taliban running Afghanistan means much less of a global terrorist threat. As someone phrased it, “We can’t make Afghanistan into Denmark, but we don’t need it to be Denmark.” Just keep it from being run by insane people who cultivate international terrorism and regional instability. We can’t, and don’t need to, “fix” Afghanistan, but we do need to keep it from finding the worst possible level. Apparently, in the last several years, minimal U.S. presence in support of non-thug Afghanistan self-rule has been quite effective. As soon as we announced the pullout, things started getting drastically worse.
It’s also been pointed out that for broader reasons, having a base in Asia is desirable. None of this stuff would be necessary if the rest of the world left us alone, but that’s not really how it works. And it’s an absolutely pie in the sky idea that if we left them alone, they’d leave us alone. China isn’t responding to U.S. meddling, it’s trying to dominate the world in whatever ways it deems useful.
Yes, I think there’s some merit to the “ongoing small presence” idea.
I hear some comments by veterans and I understand their disgust. All I can say is… better than Nam. I just don’t buy the argument that because x many American soldiers died in Afghanistan, that means forever that y many more American soldiers have to die every year in perpetuity.
Probably the best argument for staying there that I can think of is to test our weapons. It’s sort of sick, but the truth.
Did we have to nuke Japan? Probably could have settled and they probably would have surrendered without a massive land invasion and killing all the civilians we did with the nukes. But, it was a great operational test and demonstration to the world.
I have always wondered why we didn’t nuke the emperor’s holy mountain. We would have demonstrated the new bomb, fewer people would have been killed, and we would have completely demoralized the Japanese.
About Afghanistan, I suppose there’s a similarity to the old saw, “don’t throw good money after bad.”
But if we’re able to keep the Taliban out of power with a small investment of troops, that might be well worth it.