One of the most tragic aspects of the West's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is how "well-meaning" Western progressives thought our disengagement would be the solution to all of Afghanistan's problems.
Instead, it handed Afghanistan to the Taliban.
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By peddling narcissistic arguments that all of Afghanistan's problems had to do with Western involvement, the "anti-war" lobby gave credence to the most ethically and strategically irresponsible policy possible:
Legitimizing the Taliban and betraying our allies.
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Now, the very same "anti-war" narcissists are making the very same arguments about Ukraine:
"If only we stop supporting the people defending their country and legitimate the claims of the terrorist aggressors everything will be fine."
It's as mad as it sounds.
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The crazy reality is that the Western "anti-war" folks are the most loyal allies terrorists like the Taliban and tyrants like Putin could ask for.
Whatever our enemies' demands are, their chorus is: "Give in!"
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Because Western "anti-war" progressives are so narcissistic they can't imagine anyone other than the West as the cause of anything, they end up supporting tyrants, authoritarians, and terrorists everywhere world - just because they aren't "us".
The people arguing for abandoning Afghanistan forget that we tried this thirty years ago...
...with disastrous consequences - both for Afghanistan and the rest of the world.
9/11 was just one of the results of pretending Afghanistan didn't exist in the 1990s.
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2001 was not the first time in modern history that the US + allies got involved militarily in Afghanistan.
Albeit at arm's length, the West and others heavily backed the Mujahideen guerillas fighting the Afghan communist government and their Soviet allies in the 1980s.
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That struggle against the communists in Afghanistan was successful.
The last great proxy conflict of the cold war - it even contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union itself.
But at a tremendous cost - after defeating the communists, Afghanistan was utterly broken.
🇦🇫 THREAD:
Afghanistan was not destroyed by post-9/11 war, or even (first and foremost) by civil war in the 1990s.
Afghanistan was destroyed by the Soviet intervention of the 1980s.
More Afghans died *every year* from 1979-89 than in all the 20 years after 2001 *combined.*
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In 1979 Afghanistan's population was about 14 million people. By 1989:
- ca. 1.5 million had died
- ca. 1.5 million had become invalid
- ca. 5 million people had become refugees.
In total, that's 50% of Afghanistan's pre-war population.
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More civilians died in Afghanistan from 1979-89 than in the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Finland *combined* during World War 2.
Those countries had a population of ca. 150 million people in 1940 - more than ten times Afghanistan in 1979.
#OTD Exactly 50 years ago, Mohammed Daoud ousted his cousin King Zahir Shah, took power in Afghanistan, and declared it a Republic - first opening the door to more than 40 years of violence and war in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, his legacy remains a complex one.
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To be clear, the War in Afghanistan did not start with Daoud's reign as president - but with the end of it.
He was killed in 1978 with his whole family when Soviet-backed Afghan communists mounted a coup of their own.
But the seeds for that too were sown by Daoud himself.
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1973 was not the first time Daoud held power in Afghanistan. From 1953 to 1963, he had been prime minister under King Zahir Shah.
"The decade of Daoud" as it has later been called, was a period of rapid economic development, as well as social progress. For good reasons.
🇦🇫 THREAD:
One of the most baffling decisions of the whole War in Afghanistan is the 🇺🇸US refusal to provide air support to Afghan Forces during the Taliban offensive of 2021.
Despite all the other mistakes made, this alone could have changed the outcome of the war.
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The summer of 2021 was the decisive moment of the war since 2001, and a point when the Afghan forces (for a number of reasons I've discussed elsewhere) were at the breaking point.
But also a point when the Taliban -out in the open- was at its most vulnerable to air strikes
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Sustained air support to the Afghan forces for just 2-3 months in 2021 would have inflicted huge losses on the Taliban and made a successful offensive out in the open impossible.
It would also have done wonders to shore up flagging Afghan morale - a decisive factor.
There was no reason why the Taliban should have won in 2021.
Much has been said about the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021, and how it might have been done differently.
The far more important point is how we could have avoided an evacuation at all.
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The idea that a Taliban victory was unavoidable and just a matter of time is total nonsense.
The Afghan Republic faced many challenges, especially corruption and disunity. And many big mistakes had been made over 20 years.
But none of that made defeat inevitable.
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Even after:
- The disastrous Doha agreement in 2020
- The losses of districts in early summer 2021
- The severe supply shortages across the Afghan forces
- The US leaving Bagram airbase
..the Taliban offensive could still have been stopped and the Afghan Republic saved.