The easiest way to bankrupt yourself at the casino is to refuse to quit when you’re losing. If I just play one more hand, I can recoup my losses; many a man has told himself. This story ends with an empty bank account.
When it comes to the United States’ many military misadventures in Central Asia, many well-intentioned hawks follow similar logic. They should be cutting their losses, but instead, they keep doubling their bet in hopes of an elusive and, in fact, impossible long-term victory. They insist on remaining engaged until some imaginary future point where all the stars align in some fantasy reality where the threat of terrorism no longer exists.
It’s not going to happen.
President Trump unveiled an agreement with the Taliban to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 14 months if all goes according to plan. This would finally fulfill one of the president’s key campaign promises, made to a war-weary public, that he would end our forever-war in Afghanistan.
Critics went apoplectic at the news. The American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin wrote that the “Taliban deal confirms Trump’s doctrine is betrayal.” Former CIA agent Kevin Carroll called it a “U.S. surrender.”
In terms of pointing out the drawbacks of the deal, neither of these writers is really wrong. But they both go astray in suggesting that a less-than-ideal agreement or retreat is somehow worse than continuing a failed 19-year-old war that has cost $2 trillion and almost 2,500 American lives, with no better end anywhere in sight.
The U.S. launched a military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks. Our goal was to punish the Taliban, who 19 years later control or contest much of Afghanistan, for harboring al Qaeda, the group that carried out the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. We achieved this goal within the first few years and dealt them a serious blow. Around 2004, we could easily have declared victory, packed up, and brought the troops home. Instead, we’ve engaged in a decade-and-a-half of nation building, trying to prop up an alternative Afghanistan government.
What do we have for our billions of dollars in waste and the sacrifice of thousands of American lives? An Afghan government which, most analysts agree, would collapse in short order if we ever stopped propping it up. A country mired in poverty, where the Taliban are as strong as ever.
In reality, we lost the Afghanistan War long ago when we defined victory as turning that country into a stable Western-style liberal democracy. Trump’s Taliban deal simply reflects the reality on the ground. Frankly, the president should embrace any exit route at all if it means no more Americans will die in a fruitless, failed attempt at nation building.
The main reasons critics cite as to why we should stay are twofold: First, our exit would create a dangerous power vacuum in which terrorism could rise, and second, the terms of the deal aren’t good enough for the U.S.
The first reason is insufficient justification for staying in Afghanistan. The Taliban lack transnational terrorist ambitions, and it’s hard to imagine they would ever harbor anti-U.S. terrorists after what happened the last time they did that. (The war hasn’t been much fun for them, either.) The argument that we need to stay because there could possibly be a threat to the U.S. from terrorism someday is ultimately an argument for occupying the entire world. Moreover, the importance of terrorists having a territorial safe-haven is overrated. In the age of online radicalization and lone-wolf attacks, it’s less important than ever for terrorists to have an actual territorial base for their operations.
As far as the terms of the exit deal not exactly being stellar for the U.S., critics have a point. But after 19 years, with American casualties continuing to pile up, that’s not sufficient grounds for staying either. We lost the war — what sort of terms can we reasonably expect? A stunning victory and amazing deal for the U.S.?
As Washington Examiner contributor Daniel DePetris put it, “The American public sees no reason to stay mired in a civil war that has lasted for four decades. There is no victory in Afghanistan, only more lost lives, more resources thrown down the toilet, and more distraction from issues that really matter to U.S. national security.”
Trump understands that there’s no winning the Afghanistan War at this point. Let’s just hope hawkish critics don’t convince the president not to follow through.
