THREAD: 5 Bad Afghanistan Takes you should Ignore
1. Tragic: ‘What about all we lost there?’
If Afghanistan collapses this fast, there wasn’t actually that much there to lose. If anything, the rapid collapse indicates just how accurate were all those leaks over the last
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1. Tragic: ‘What about all we lost there?’
If Afghanistan collapses this fast, there wasn’t actually that much there to lose. If anything, the rapid collapse indicates just how accurate were all those leaks over the last
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decade, including the A Papers, about how little progress we were making, how corrupt the government was, how soft its military’s independent capabilities were, and so on.
2. Demagogic: ‘Did our soldiers die for nothing?’
That is an emotionally manipulative version of the
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2. Demagogic: ‘Did our soldiers die for nothing?’
That is an emotionally manipulative version of the
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sunk cost fallacy. We cannot bring back our war dead. If we must stay in an unwinnable conflict to ‘honor their sacrifice,’ then we condemn more to die later. That’s immoral. The logic of this argument means also we can never leave a commitment, no matter misconceived, which
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leads to imperial overstretch. We’d still be in Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, and Iraq.
3. Histrionic: ‘America has lost its credibility’
No, relax. This is one small conflict in the wide range of US commitments. It was widely understood to be unwinnable, yet we fought for 20
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3. Histrionic: ‘America has lost its credibility’
No, relax. This is one small conflict in the wide range of US commitments. It was widely understood to be unwinnable, yet we fought for 20
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years anyway. That signals a lot of resolve. Also, not all US commitments are the same. Just because the US withdrew from A does not imply it will abandon Taiwan, S Korea, the Baltics, and so on. When the Russians and the Chinese say this now, that is obviously motivated
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reasoning you should ignore. Allies just as likely to think Biden was wise to end an unwinnable war.
4. Declinist: ‘How did a superpower get defeated by a bunch of medieval hillbillies?’
This is not how counterinsurgency works. The conflict was not a stand-up comparison of
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4. Declinist: ‘How did a superpower get defeated by a bunch of medieval hillbillies?’
This is not how counterinsurgency works. The conflict was not a stand-up comparison of
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military capabilities – insurgents rarely fight openly in the field - and the US cannot just ‘bomb the hell of out ‘em’ to win. The point is to win hearts and minds of course, and in that we needed a reasonably non-corrupt and competent local partner. We had that neither in
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Vietnam, Iraq, nor Afghanistan. Other powerful states have lost insurgencies and retrenched without a wider unravelling. Think Rome and Scotland/Germany/the Middle East; or Britain withdrawing east of Suez. This is not the end of American power.
5. Hypocritical (Trump/GOP):
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5. Hypocritical (Trump/GOP):
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‘Biden is an incompetent overseeing a failure greater than Saigon’
Gimme a break. GOP takes are wholly in bad faith. A GOP president started and then ignored this war. Another GOP president, who claimed to want to leave, was too weak-minded and conflict-averse to fight the
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Gimme a break. GOP takes are wholly in bad faith. A GOP president started and then ignored this war. Another GOP president, who claimed to want to leave, was too weak-minded and conflict-averse to fight the
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blob to push through a withdrawal. Until a week ago, the GOP also wanted to get out of Afghanistan. All this sudden concern for our credibility or Afghan human rights is entirely situational and exploitative. Fox caring about Muslims? Are you kidding me?
The rapidity of
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The rapidity of
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the collapse strongly suggests Biden was right to withdrawal. If Afghanistan fell apart this fast, then it almost certainly would have done so too in another 5 or 10 years. Even America makes mistakes. Don’t let American exceptionalism blind you. Sometimes we don’t win;
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sometimes we make errors. And sometimes it’s wise to cut our losses and retrench. That’s all this is. There is no greater lesson to be drawn, and once this is off TV in a week or so, a lot of this hysteria about a US ‘fiasco’ will fade.
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