Western Civilization has been trying, and failing, to civilize Afghanistan as far back as Alexander the Great. All who tried have failed, publicly and with great humiliation. We are not the first nation to make this mistake. Odds are we won’t be the last. In 1838 the British decided it would be great fun to invade Afghanistan.
Massacre of British Army in Afghanistan in 1842 (thoughtco.com)
They arrived with about 20,000 British and Indian troops and headed off from India to Afghanistan. The mountains gave them some trouble, but they basically arrived in Kabul in 1839. Dost Mohammed was removed and replaced with Shah Shuja. Predictably the British were only going to visit for a while, but the government they installed was, shall we say, a little on the weak side. There was this nice ancient fortress the British could have used as headquarters, but Shah Shuja thought that would make it look like it was the British in control, so even though that was the plan, so they brilliantly decided to build a temporary base much more difficult to defend. Predictably the Afghan people were united on only one subject, getting rid of the British. By 1842 everything was a mess, so the British contingent, about 4,500 troops and 12,000 civilians who had stupidly followed the British army into Kabul decided to leave. They planned to march from Kabul to Jalalabad, which was about 90 long, cold, miles away. When they were attacked in a mountain pass, it was a massacre. Perhaps the best way to understand how well this worked out, is to read the following article published in the North American Review in July of 1842:
“On the 6th of January, 1842, the Caboul forces commenced their retreat through the dismal pass, destined to be their grave. On the third day they were attacked by the mountaineers from all points, and a fearful slaughter ensued…
“The troops kept on, and awful scenes ensued. Without food, mangled and cut to pieces, each one caring only for himself, all subordination had fled; and the soldiers of the forty-fourth English regiment are reported to have knocked down their officers with the butts of their muskets.
“On the 13th of January, just seven days after the retreat commenced, one man, bloody and torn, mounted on a miserable pony, and pursued by horsemen, was seen riding furiously across the plains to Jellalabad. That was Dr. Brydon, the sole person to tell the tale of the passage of Khourd Caboul.”
It appears that 16,000 people started out on that trip and exactly one person survived. Years later it was discovered that other people were apparently captured, as babies, and raised as Afghans.
One would think that Britain would give up on Afghanistan after this fiasco, but no. They fought a second Afghan war between 1878-1880. This was to keep out the Russians. It worked, for a while. But in 1979 the Russians, who also don’t study history, invaded Afghanistan. They had over 100,000 troops, lots of nasty modern weapons and a really bad attitude. Jimmy Carter punished them by boycotting the U.S. participation in the Moscow Olympics. He should just congratulated them for being remarkably stupid and waited for the inevitable.
The Russians left with their tail between their legs in 1996. That is when the Taliban took over. The U.S. came roaring in, in 2001, following 9-11 because Afghanistan had become a haven for terrorists. We fought there spending lots of money, losing a lot of people and apparently accomplishing nothing for over 19 years. Donald Trump decided enough was enough, so decided, when none of his generals could even define what victory would look like, that we are out of there. He started negotiating with the Taliban. “We get the message, we’re leaving, let us go peacefully and we won’t have to kill so many of you on the way out.”
The plan was to leave, gracefully, having cut a deal with the Taliban. It might have worked, but he American People choose Joe Biden to be the man. Joe quickly decided that anything Trump could do he could do better. So, he just announced we would pack up and leave, on September 11. When someone woke him up long enough to explain why the optics on this were beyond bad, he moved up the schedule. We literally abandoned Bagram airbase in the middle of the night, without bothering to tell our Afghan hosts. Now everyone is, predictably, shooting at us on the way out and the fall of Kabul may look a lot like the fall of Saigon. Fortunately, we only spend $800 billion on Bagram Airbase, and trillions elsewhere so it is not like we lost a lot of money. That amount of money would feed the homeless in San Francisco for almost an entire week, with similar results.
Joe, who has been wrong on every foreign policy decision for nearly 50 years, was also wrong about Afghanistan. He predicted the Afghan government could and would defend itself and defeat the Taliban. It wasn’t even close. The only city in Afghanistan left to conquer is Kabul and that is days if not hours away from falling. The U.S., UK and Canada are sending in troops, again, this time to try and save the remaining survivors. They will probably do better than the British in 1842, but perhaps worse than the fall of Saigon if that is even possible.
Only one thing is certain, a humiliating defeat for the U.S. Incredibly the State Department is still publicly pretending that the U.S. remains committed to maintaining a strong diplomatic and security arrangement with the Afghan Government, while secreting telling the current temporary leader, Ghana, it is time to go. In reality we are sending in only enough troops to hopefully evacuate our staff and close our embassy. This will be similar to the grace with which we left our embassy in Tehran under Carter’s brilliant leadership.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded by calling a snap election in hopes he can get re-elected before people realize how badly he mucked this up. That may or may not work. We may or may not get our people out safely. Fortunately, our military might just pull this off. But the people in Afghanistan who foolishly considered the U.S. to be a trustworthy ally, will pay a terrible price for that miscalculation. The few people who managed to survive the mess we left in Vietnam could have warned them.
I doubt that even CNN or the NYT will even pretend this is anything other than an unmitigated disaster. They are just desperately trying to find a way to blame everything on Donald Trump or just change the subject. How about that Delta Variant!
TDM