By refusing to use overwhelming air power to blunt the Taliban’s rise, President Joe Biden is failing to protect American interests in Afghanistan and ultimately undermining national security.
The Taliban clearly hold the current strategic initiative. That said, Afghan forces, especially special forces units, are managing to inflict casualties on Taliban forces. Still, provincial capitals are beginning to fall. As more Afghan units become exhausted, the Taliban will find it easier to compress major population centers such as Kandahar and Kabul. U.S. policymakers should consider the prospective fall of those cities to be intolerable.
Contrary to the Trump and Biden administrations’ assertions, the Taliban remain an ally of al Qaeda. It is thus not simply the girls and women of Afghanistan who have much to fear from a Taliban return to power. A new Taliban regime would help revitalize al Qaeda’s forever war on the West. It would do so in 2021 for the same reason it did in 2001. Namely, because the Taliban share al Qaeda’s theologically vested belief that the United States is intrinsically evil and requiring of forcible submission to political Islam. In turn, it should be clear that a Taliban regime would pose a profound threat to American security.
This is not to say that the U.S. should return to its nation-building adventurism in Afghanistan. Twenty years of experience have proven that, however noble, America’s efforts to build a nationwide network of schools, commerce, and a functioning democratic civil society were ultimately foolish.
Over 20 years, the Taliban’s dominance of Afghanistan’s eastern and southern hinterlands was matched only by the Afghan government’s incompetence and corruption. What has changed since the U.S. withdrawal is not that the Taliban have finally seized vast areas of territory. Rather, it is that where the Taliban’s control was once practiced from the shadows, it is now practiced overtly. It was a mistake to send tens of thousands of American troops to patrol the Helmand River valley and the valleys of Nangarhar. So also was it a mistake to believe that vast injections of American cash wouldn’t end up as feed in the trough of Afghan corruption.
Still, even while learning from these errors of statecraft, the U.S. must defend its national interests.
President Biden should commit to extending the use of air power and nonmilitary ground support beyond his Sept. 11 withdrawal deadline. Within this framework, the U.S. must act to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming one big terrorist safe haven.
The foundation for how to support Afghan forces is already apparent. We’ve witnessed it this week, as B-52 bombers and AC-130 gunships out of Qatar joined F-18 Super Hornets off the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group. Biden should ensure these assets are committed and available to U.S. Central Command. Targeting Taliban convoys and fixed weapon emplacements, U.S. air power is helping Afghan forces withstand some of the onslaughts they face. In tactical terms, American air assets are disrupting the Taliban’s movement and their concentration of force. In strategic terms, these air assets are helping to prevent the Taliban from bringing down the Afghan government. In that sense, U.S. air power offers very high value to U.S. interests in return for a very low risk to U.S. personnel.
There is no point in denying that Taliban influence and control in Afghanistan are increasing. But it would be folly to accept the Taliban’s return to nationwide power as a fait accompli. U.S. interests demand reasonable actions to obstruct the Taliban. U.S. air support is a reasonable and necessary price for upholding those interests.
