At Bloomberg James Stavridis argues that we should maintain troops in Afghanistan forever:
The case for maintaining a small yet strong military presence in Afghanistan is sound, if not popular. The U.S. doesn’t want to see the country slip back into the essentially ungoverned state that existed before the 9/11 attacks, conditions that allowed al-Qaeda to take hold so strongly and launch the attacks on U.S. soil. Costs have already been reduced enormously by drawing down 95% of the U.S. forces. There are also about 5,000 non-U.S. NATO troops on the ground, more than America’s commitment at this point.
The future of those combined forces will be discussed in depth at this month’s meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. If the U.S. continues to pull forces out, the other NATO members will follow. The right balance would be about 5,000 U.S. troops and 5,000 allied troops — a credible force that would push the Taliban back to the negotiating table.
There is no evidence that the conditions for withdrawal from Afghanistan will ever occur.
Some, incorrectly in my view, compare our presence in Afghanistan with our continuing military presence in Germany and Japan. There are many differences including
- Germany and Japan were states before the war. They were still states after the war. Afghanistan is only a state by courtesy. It’s actually small pockets of governed territory surrounded by large areas of ungoverned territory.
- Our troops haven’t been taking fire or being killed by IEDs on an ongoing basis for the last 75 years. We will continue taking casualties as long as we’re in Afghanistan. 11 U. S. military were killed in Afghanistan in 2020. That’s greatly reduced from the nearly 500 per year during the “Afghan surge”. The reasons it’s reduced is lower troops levels and operational tempo.
- We spent about $38 billion keeping troops in Afghanistan last year. That’s about double Afghanistan’s GDP.
“The U.S. doesn’t want to see the country slip back into the essentially ungoverned state that existed before the 9/11 attacks, conditions that allowed al-Qaeda to take hold so strongly and launch the attacks on U.S. soil.”
Most of the country is currently in an ungoverned state except for the major cities and some of the district capitals. All US forces really do is prevent Taliban forces from massing to take direct control of the major population centers.
His argument also assumes that Afghanistan will return to the state it was in 1999. It’s a different world, way different. Afghanistan will still be a mess, but the idea that staying is the only way the US can prevent Afghanistan from harboring the kind of organization AQ was in the 1990s is simply not true. It assumes the US had no other methods, sources of power, or means to prevent that from happening.
It is to weep.
Context matters.
We are not fighting merely the Taliban. They are the armed militia of the Pashtun, some 40 million people living in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are backed by Pakistan, a country of 212 million people covering 881,000 sq mi, with a military of 600,000 troops armed with strategic and tactical nukes. Afghanistan is an existential strategic issue for Pakistan. China, which shares a border with Afghanistan (the old Silk Road) is Pakistan’s ally. China has an agreement with the Taliban to permit the BRI/OBOR to operate.
The central government of Afghanistan lacks support. Historically the parliament served merely as a consultative body to resolve disputes among the tribes, who actually governed their own territories. The King merely presided over the negotiations. The Afghani communists overthrew that system, and tried to set up a modernized (almost westernized) central government. They failed, and invited in the Soviets, who also failed, largely because of the US-funded Taliban.
Taliban has stated that if the agreement with Trump is abandoned (as Stavridis recommends) they will resume attacks against both the US and NATO contingents.
Of course, we’ve been in Germany for 75 years, 28 since the fall of the USSR, which NATO was supposed to resist. And we fought in Somalia for over 28 years, stalemated by one of militias, first Aidid and now al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate. They won, and we’re leaving.
The imperial ambitions of America’s idiot Ruling Class will not end until an American army or navy is crushed, Stalingrad style and magnitude, and the federal regime collapses.