ith twenty years to prepare for it, there should be plenty of clarity in the post-mortem on “what went wrong in Afghanistan” for American policy. History warned us with everything but flashing red lights that all was not well as the twenty years progressed. History should also tell us that there will be as little clarity as to how America and allies failed in Afghanistan as the lack of clarity that doomed the enterprise.
The comparisons to Vietnam were already numerous. These will only proliferate as photojournalists -- instinctually sensing a fall of Saigon moment -- capture images of the chaotic and poorly planned evacuation of Kabul. Like America’s involvement in Vietnam, this failure did not happen in a vacuum; it happened in a sequence. Policy failures, lacking political will, military issues, and cultural upheaval all contributed to the images of the helicopter leaving the American embassies in both Saigon, with a long line queued up for an escape that was never to come.
That sequence continued after the Vietnam War. In the decades since, that failure has been studied and debated militarily, politically, and policy-wise. The United States military took the lessons of failure and revolutionized itself, moving to an all-volunteer force, integrating National Guard and Reserve components, and focusing on technological superiority and precision. The result was a much smaller overall force that is more capable, lethal, and diverse, while constituting only 1% of the American population.
The government which that military serves, however, failed to carry out a similar soul searching and rebuilding process. Lip service was given, policy papers were written, debates were had, but the power structure largely remained unchanged. The decades of distance meant the personal lessons of Vietnam were operationally lost to the very impersonal machine of American governance. Accountability for decision-making is lacking. The politics of the day has become more about overseeing the system for what could be gained individually and for one’s party than about operating it effectively for the gain of all. The watchdogs of the free press became increasingly reliant on access journalism to the superstars of the political world, and by omission or commission had their investigatory mandate dulled. A vast majority of the American citizenry, most of them lulled into complacency by a level of prosperity unheard of in all of recorded human history, had little interest in changing the systems that weren’t bothering them, even as the number of individuals suffering from it steadily grew.
The answers to "what went wrong in Afghanistan" begin in that grey area of unlearned history lessons from the last failure of American foreign policy leading to desperate evacuations of an embassy in Saigon to the embassy in Kabul. Afghanistan is a political failure, it is a policy failure, it is a military failure, and it is a human failure. Most of all, it is, was, and will forever be known as an avoidable failure as too many of us watched idly while it slowly metastasized into today’s crisis -- a crisis which history and common sense were warning us about.
Any post-mortem on "what went wrong in Afghanistan" that does not include a root cause of dysfunction within the United States government to operate as a competent and accountable governing mechanism is missing the root domestic cause of the foreign policy disaster that the Global War on Terror has become. The failures of the United States government to learn from past mistakes incubated the current dysfunction that inevitably bled through to foreign policy failures like America’s 20 years in Afghanistan. A United States that cannot conduct conflict resolution within its own government can neither project nor maintain a coherent foreign policy to the rest of the world.
The artificially sterile environment in which policy and politics are too often debated dulls the senses with monochrome facts, devoid of the human factors involved. Black and white versions of foreign policy are presented more for the gain of the presenters than the stability and prosperity of humanity. The red versus blue of American partisan politics does not work toward a negotiated and rational purple, but instead to generate profit and power. In the case of America’s policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere, this money went flowing to contractors feeding off the Global War on Terror and a corrupt Afghan government that was a government in name only. It is an incestuous mess that prevents any action but kicking the can down the road to keep the machine going a little while longer. This reality doesn’t break through by design, and observers and watchdogs have gradually become blinded to its dysfunction.
In the real world, such policy failures show vividly, calling out the lies presented to uphold power structures within the pristine halls of governance, far removed from the dirty reality of places like Afghanistan. In the real world, the results of such failures in governing and policy are as stark and shocking as the images of nameless, desperate people who are the human grist ground out of the bad, unaccountable policy mill. In a world with every color of the political and policy spectrum trying to outshine each other on paper, in power, and for media influence, the blood red of humanity bleeds through and damns the whole sorry enterprise, and everyone responsible.
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The Root Cause of the Afghanistan Crisis? U.S. Domestic Politics.
Map of Afghanistan. Image via Pixabay.
August 21, 2021
The Afghanistan crisis is the troubling but unsurprising result of the U.S. government's failure to follow the military's lead in soul searching and reforming following the lessons of Vietnam, writes Andrew Donaldson.
W
ith twenty years to prepare for it, there should be plenty of clarity in the post-mortem on “what went wrong in Afghanistan” for American policy. History warned us with everything but flashing red lights that all was not well as the twenty years progressed. History should also tell us that there will be as little clarity as to how America and allies failed in Afghanistan as the lack of clarity that doomed the enterprise.
The comparisons to Vietnam were already numerous. These will only proliferate as photojournalists -- instinctually sensing a fall of Saigon moment -- capture images of the chaotic and poorly planned evacuation of Kabul. Like America’s involvement in Vietnam, this failure did not happen in a vacuum; it happened in a sequence. Policy failures, lacking political will, military issues, and cultural upheaval all contributed to the images of the helicopter leaving the American embassies in both Saigon, with a long line queued up for an escape that was never to come.
That sequence continued after the Vietnam War. In the decades since, that failure has been studied and debated militarily, politically, and policy-wise. The United States military took the lessons of failure and revolutionized itself, moving to an all-volunteer force, integrating National Guard and Reserve components, and focusing on technological superiority and precision. The result was a much smaller overall force that is more capable, lethal, and diverse, while constituting only 1% of the American population.
The government which that military serves, however, failed to carry out a similar soul searching and rebuilding process. Lip service was given, policy papers were written, debates were had, but the power structure largely remained unchanged. The decades of distance meant the personal lessons of Vietnam were operationally lost to the very impersonal machine of American governance. Accountability for decision-making is lacking. The politics of the day has become more about overseeing the system for what could be gained individually and for one’s party than about operating it effectively for the gain of all. The watchdogs of the free press became increasingly reliant on access journalism to the superstars of the political world, and by omission or commission had their investigatory mandate dulled. A vast majority of the American citizenry, most of them lulled into complacency by a level of prosperity unheard of in all of recorded human history, had little interest in changing the systems that weren’t bothering them, even as the number of individuals suffering from it steadily grew.
The answers to "what went wrong in Afghanistan" begin in that grey area of unlearned history lessons from the last failure of American foreign policy leading to desperate evacuations of an embassy in Saigon to the embassy in Kabul. Afghanistan is a political failure, it is a policy failure, it is a military failure, and it is a human failure. Most of all, it is, was, and will forever be known as an avoidable failure as too many of us watched idly while it slowly metastasized into today’s crisis -- a crisis which history and common sense were warning us about.
Any post-mortem on "what went wrong in Afghanistan" that does not include a root cause of dysfunction within the United States government to operate as a competent and accountable governing mechanism is missing the root domestic cause of the foreign policy disaster that the Global War on Terror has become. The failures of the United States government to learn from past mistakes incubated the current dysfunction that inevitably bled through to foreign policy failures like America’s 20 years in Afghanistan. A United States that cannot conduct conflict resolution within its own government can neither project nor maintain a coherent foreign policy to the rest of the world.
The artificially sterile environment in which policy and politics are too often debated dulls the senses with monochrome facts, devoid of the human factors involved. Black and white versions of foreign policy are presented more for the gain of the presenters than the stability and prosperity of humanity. The red versus blue of American partisan politics does not work toward a negotiated and rational purple, but instead to generate profit and power. In the case of America’s policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere, this money went flowing to contractors feeding off the Global War on Terror and a corrupt Afghan government that was a government in name only. It is an incestuous mess that prevents any action but kicking the can down the road to keep the machine going a little while longer. This reality doesn’t break through by design, and observers and watchdogs have gradually become blinded to its dysfunction.
In the real world, such policy failures show vividly, calling out the lies presented to uphold power structures within the pristine halls of governance, far removed from the dirty reality of places like Afghanistan. In the real world, the results of such failures in governing and policy are as stark and shocking as the images of nameless, desperate people who are the human grist ground out of the bad, unaccountable policy mill. In a world with every color of the political and policy spectrum trying to outshine each other on paper, in power, and for media influence, the blood red of humanity bleeds through and damns the whole sorry enterprise, and everyone responsible.
