Congress covers up Afghanistan appalling war debacle
No investigation of squandering more than $300 million per day for 20 successive years culminating in the restoration of the Taliban more beastly than when the war began
In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States launched an extravagantly funded military misadventure in Afghanistan praying for the wisdom to graduate Afghans from the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment with bombs, bribery, and bayonets. The military objective was as lunatic as the idea of boiling the oceans to destroy Nazi submarines in World War II. Indeed, arch-narcissist-diplomat Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, confessed that he could not define victory beyond, “I’ll know it when I see it.”
The military mind, however, never balks. Exit strategies in case of miscalculations are taboo. Civilian and miliary leaders are complacent with dispatching soldiers to die on fool’s errands like the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.
Thus, in 2001, the United States commenced squandering more than $300 million daily for 20 successive years in Afghanistan. The utopian objective of dragging Afghans into the Age of Enlightenment at supersonic speed (with soldiers clueless about Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, or Rousseau) was superseded by the objective of simply not losing, i.e., pointless fighting for the sake of fighting.
Year after year, civilian and military leaders would reassure a stupefied and somnolent Congress that progress was being made but would be reversible unless $300 million per day continued to flow. There were no Senator J. William Fulbright hearings as regards the Vietnam War folly.
Members of Congress would gaze starry-eyed at military leadership and even more starry-eyed at handsome defense contractor campaign contributions and plants in their States or Districts and hymn “American exceptionalism at its best in Afghanistan.” Only one among the broad array of civilian and military imbeciles responsible for squandering lives and staggering sums on a campaign to nowhere paid a professional price: General Stanley McCrystal for indiscreetly speaking truth to power to Rolling Stone.
Troops were finally withdrawn in August 2021, but no civilian or military leader was called to account for the stupendous debacle—like Ted Williams striking out at every at-bat during a Boston Red Sox season but losing no pay.
Further, our Afghanistan putative war wizards left the Afghan people worse off than when the war began. Taliban 2.0 has taken Afghanistan back to the Age of Dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era. Among other things, women are treated as chattels and the cerebral faculties are scorned. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates a record 28.3 million Afghans will need humanitarian and protection assistance in 2023. President Barack Obama had applauded the Afghanistan calamity as the “Good War.”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee belatedly held a hearing on Afghanistan yesterday. But instead of examining the criminal stupidity of the 20-year war itself and the responsible players (reenacting the predecessor stupidities of the British and Soviet Empires), the Committee myopically fixated on the short-lived exit derelictions-like investigating the sinking of the Titanic by questioning the flower arrangements before the collision with the iceberg.
Like the French Bourbon dynasty, we forget nothing, we learn nothing, and should expect the same ending.