“It is past time to end the forever wars,” then-candidate Joe Biden argued in March 2020. “We should bring the vast majority of our troops home from the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East and narrowly define our mission as defeating al Qaeda and the Islamic State.”
It was a catchy slogan and polled well. In his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, President Biden repeated that “the United States should not, and will not, engage in ‘forever wars'” and pledged to end the war in Afghanistan.
Even before his team completed their overview of Afghanistan strategy, Biden ordered an expedited withdrawal. The fruits of that decision are now apparent. The Taliban are steamrolling across Afghanistan, bodies left in their wake, women confined to their homes, and girls are seized, Islamic State-style, as sex slaves.
Biden does not care.
“They’ve got to want to fight,” the president said of the Afghan forces who once fought side-by-side with their American counterparts. Biden omitted to mention that first President Donald Trump and then he himself demanded the elected Afghan government release battle-hardened and unrepentant Taliban prisoners from custody in pursuit of a peace agreement that U.S. intelligence acknowledges the Taliban never intended to honor.
Taliban victories today have more to do with momentum than military prowess. Biden’s decision to kneecap the Afghan government on the way out signals that accommodation with the Taliban, who maintain full Pakistani support, is a safer bet than relying on a White House more concerned with Washington politics than overseas realities.
The “forever war” mantra has always been stupid. National security should be more substantive than a slogan. Nor is ignorance an excuse. President Barack Obama sought to end the war in Iraq with a unilateral withdrawal only to return forces when the Islamic State arose in the vacuum. Small deployments can pay big dividends in terms of holding terrorists and hostile forces at bay. Every casualty is a tragedy but, in recent years, there have been fewer American casualties in Afghanistan than traffic fatalities in Montgomery County, Maryland. The presence of American forces, even if they remained in well-fortified bases, was sufficient to embolden the Afghan Army and enable them to hold the Taliban.
In effect, the American presence in Afghanistan had a deterrent effect that was equivalent to the U.S. presence in both Japan and Korea. Those deployments, like Afghanistan, cost tens of billions of dollars. Across the partisan spectrum, however, U.S. officials recognize that far from being a symptom of “forever war” (even though the Korean War technically never ended), the American presence in East Asia protects the post-World War II liberal order. It has dissuaded China and North Korea from attacking. Contrast this with the U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines that now is impotent in the face of Chinese naval aggression toward its territory.
Consider also America’s 75-year military presence in Germany. While policymakers might quibble about troop numbers and debate whether any should slide eastward to Poland or the Baltics, even in these polemical times, few politicians would argue that the American military presence in Europe represents “forever war” rather than a shrewd defense investment.
“Forever war” sounds scary, but Washington will soon see that defeat by the Taliban and their Pakistani handlers is even worse.
In reality, the “forever war” calumny is just Washington spin for containment and deterrence. Ending both is at stake. Biden can say he has ended “forever wars,” but, actually, he has emboldened enemies and ensured far greater, bloodier, and more conflicts will erupt.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
