“I am concerned about the Afghan military’s ability to hold on after we leave,” the top commander for U.S. operations in the Middle East and Near East, General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 22, 2021.
The CENTCOM commander’s stern warning came one week after President Joe Biden had announced that by Sept. 11, 2021, the last remaining 2,500 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
McKenzie’s words have now become prophetic. The Taliban has gobbled up control of Afghanistan and found itself back in precisely the same place it was 20 years ago. Back then, it was declared to have been a de facto co-conspirator in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The world will now watch the Taliban reinstate their violent fundamentalist view of Sharia law on the Afghan population. Sadly, this was always highly likely to be the outcome.
The Taliban did rapidly return to power because they possessed a superior, well-equipped fighting force. The Taliban’s supposed opposition, the NATO-backed Afghan security forces, had two decades of military training, $88 billion in weapons and equipment, and outnumbered the Taliban 4 to 1. Yet, against all of these military advantages, the rag-tag, undisciplined soldiers of the Taliban essentially conducted a road march through the country, seizing most regions without ever firing a shot.
The biggest takeaway from the blistering capitulation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is that most Afghans simply didn’t consider the democratic freedoms held dear by the West to be something worth fighting for.
For a nation that in the last 182 years has successfully resisted being brought to heel by three of the most powerful military powers in history — the British Empire, Russia, and the United States — it’s clear that the Taliban’s message of a national identity based on overcoming foreign occupiers sufficiently resonates with the majority of Afghans. Adding to this is a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and Sharia law that views resistance to the oppression of outsiders as a religious obligation.
Ultimately, the Taliban resumed control of Afghanistan because their message strikes to the core of what the majority of the populace defines as what it means to be Afghan. America’s idyllic visions of Afghanistan emerging from the lingering conflict, a democratic, freedom-loving, McDonald’s-eating society, were always delusions of grandeur.
Short of forced change in an entire people’s cultural identity, something that sparks entirely new philosophical and moral questions, whether it was 10 years ago or 30 years from now, whenever the U.S. pulled out its military, the outcome in Afghanistan was always likely to be precisely what we see today.
In the days ahead, sharp debates will ensue about the rash folly of political leadership. Mixed in these conversations will be thematic discussions on the wastefulness of war and innocence lost by the soldiers who fought the battles. People will struggle to find meaning for the 2,500 U.S. service members and 3,900 American contractors who lost their lives during the 20-year war. But again, as history shows, when it comes to the conclusion of modern conflict, the unsightly wrapping up of America’s war in Afghanistan is the norm, not the exception.
History has struggled to keep alive the memory of World War I, mainly because understanding why a conflict that claimed nearly 22 million lives was ever fought in the first place has proved difficult. That war, the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all conflicts that eventually reached the general consensus that these were wrong wars being fought for the wrong reasons.
Conversely, World War II has been well memorialized, and still, today, it is considered a war that was both necessary and worth fighting. Of course, this enduring support comes from the war’s clearly defined meta-narrative of good versus evil, with recognizable heroes and villains. In this, WWII is the exception.
Modern conflicts all tend to end in generally the same way. Years of gradual blood-letting culminating in an abrupt departure after politicians and the public suddenly fail to remember why they were so eager to go to war to begin with. This doesn’t make the scenes of Afghans clinging to American military planes and frantically trying to flee Taliban rule any less heartbreaking.
However, it is the uncomfortable truth that the current outcome in Afghanistan is one we all should have expected.
Tim McMillan is a retired police lieutenant, investigative reporter, and co-founder and executive director of the Debrief. His writing covers defense, science, and the intelligence community. Follow him @lttimmcmillan.
