KERRY NATION: The more that things change …

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2021 (1487 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A decade ago, I wrote that NATO coalition forces should declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan and depart forthwith. The situation on the ground didn’t matter as it was only going to be a greater quagmire with each passing day. I didn’t write this suggesting I could see the future, but because we should learn from the past.

This past weekend, we witnessed sobering reports of Taliban forces overtaking Afghan cities and villages. U.S. President Joe Biden subsequently sent in American troops to ensure the safe departure of embassy and NGO officials. Then, just as night follows day, we heard the steady drumbeat of pundits and so-called experts who were calling for troops to return to the battlefield.

Folks, Afghanistan is done. Move on. This is not a surprise. In fact, I’m surprised that you’re surprised.

Eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam War, mission creep and an unwillingness to call an embarrassing end to a tragic episode continued to add to the tragedy. Recall that the invasion of Afghanistan was the result of 9/11 and the U.S. decision to pursue the chief protagonist of that attack, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban who protected him.

NATO forces did not originally invade Afghanistan in order to build schools, democratic institutions or to equip and train Afghan forces. This was not nation-building. Keep in mind there are countless failed states that lack appropriate schools, fail to preserve human rights, and suffer from unspeakable poverty. We don’t send troops to fight there — this was all about 9/11.

This was a trillion-dollar war and thousands of people were killed.

The grandiosity of the United States in particular, and western nations in general, is that we believe our values should be those of the whole world. This may be a worthy goal — I’m not sure — but it isn’t going to happen.

I’m saddened to read of brave soldiers who blame governments for the injuries incurred while fighting a lost war. These soldiers are instruments of a failed policy, just as the 58,000 American soldiers who died in Vietnam were also casualties of another failed policy.

Let us not forget a young John Kerry (who later served as a U.S. Senator and Secretary of State) who, after returning from the Vietnam War, asked Congress in a famous 1971 testimony: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

It is incredibly unjust that young men and women carry lifelong injuries resulting from a policy that wasn’t thought through. These young people are simply the sharp end of the spear — they are not decision-makers. They never will be. They are pieces we move around a chess board.

To underscore this point, consider Kerry’s additional comments from his 1971 testimony: “Because we couldn’t lose, and we couldn’t retreat. And because it didn’t matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point.”

I have toured museums in Vietnam that serve as testimony to decades of war. They are stark reminders of how devastating war is, but more importantly, the often-futile outcomes.

Today, pundits are tut-tutting about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as it pertains to the Taliban overthrow of the existing American-backed government. They should not allow themselves to be overwhelmed by their emotions. They should ask history for guidance.

The sad reality of the bulk of these foreign misadventures is that they are doomed to fail. Both the French and the Americans were defeated in Vietnam. The French lost in Algeria and Libya, just as the Belgians retreated from Africa. The Russians also lost in Afghanistan, in addition to their largely bulletless withdrawal from Eastern Europe. The British lost everywhere. There are very few “good” wars.

Biden should not be castigated for the outcome of the Afghanistan reversal, but instead congratulated for the courage to make this tough decision. There will be many who blame him for losing this “war,” but it was lost before it even began. Wars of occupation are rarely successful, and they most assuredly are not successful when the conqueror’s commitment is not complete.