Thank you for this, our troops must return home. Because we do not know how to prosecute a war anymore. There is about zero evidence since 1945, that we can manage a war some other place (i.e., any place other than western Europe).
In Afghanistan, we outdid ourselves. We did not deal with the real enemy (Pakistan); we did not destroy the ideology we were fighting (nihilist, militant Islam). Instead, we coddled Pakistan. Taliban has re-surged (flush with our cash, Pakistani matériel, and young recruits who want to burn everything down). Our friends, the Afghan government, took every cent we gave them, lined their pockets.
We paid a lot of bad guys a lot of money to not shoot at at us all across Afghanistan. They took our money and shot at us anyway, and laughed all the way to Pakistan to rest, relax, refuel, re-arm (with cash we gave Pakistan). We funded Afghani opium and hashish production and distribution. The Taliban will restore the medieval Afghanistan once we leave.
While Bush II and neocons lived dangerously, with no skin in the game, and obsessed over bombing what they could, militant Islam remains alive between Indus and Morocco. Now, this force is returning Europe to pre-1934 (with Britain standing pretty much alone). We did all this.
It might not be too far fetched to require that the next president who declares war when we have not been attacked - must send his or her close family members as the tip of the spear.
4
I am stunned that In your lengthy analysis of the Afghan war you could offer little more than a one sentence bit of rueful regret for what a resurgent Taliban would mean to the lives of the women and girls of Afghanistan. The New York Times and the United States government should not be writing them off as merely a bit of collateral damage.
26
"Yet it’s also possible that a decision to withdraw could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution..."
Is it. I think to use the word "possible" here a reasonable test might be if it's occurred before ever anywhere. Otherwise it's equally possible that Martians might land and stabilize the region.
10
Yet, this is what America has always done, get us into unending wars but never Ending the wars the powerful begin!
Vile!
9
I was in the 6th grade when this war started and I am about to start getting my PhD this fall. It’s time to bring that war to an end.
11
If I was an E-5 back in the Army again stationed in Afghanistan and they cut orders for me to return home, you'd get no argument from me. I'd say, "When's the next transport, sir."
9
Anyone notice the Marine recruiting ads during the Superbowl? The US militarism machine isn't going to disappear overnight. These guys have to have someone to beat up on.
10
Can’t agree more. Well written. Thank you.
6
Afghanistan is a great stain on Obama's record. He had 8yrs at the helm where he accomplished nothing.
Cession of murder and mayhem should have top priority, over all considerations, foreign and domestic.
8
Bush. Clinton. Bush. Obama. Ship of Fools.
6
Yes! Excellent article. But you must be on the lookout for absolute bare skulduggery on the part of the Trump administration fomenting a crisis in the Middle East, specifically Iran. Besides the idiocy of the wall, Trump is psychotically driven to undo anything accomplished by Barack Obama. Putting Iran on the defensive in a violent confrontation would result in conditions worse than were we to drop a surprise nuclear device on Moscow, in my opinion.
5
For once we are in agreement.
Bring them boys and girls back home.
2
US should now leave and declare victory - even though it may be "Pyrrhic"
King Pyrrhic of Epirus, who defeated the Romans at Asculum in b.c. 279, but lost his best officers and many of his troops at a huge economic cost prayed to Gods "please save us from such victory in future".
6
Sure leave and say it's about the lives of your soldiers and the cost to your treasury. Don't take the time to mention the cost in Afghani lives and the destruction of their country.
But please do admit you LOST.
7
Not that I'm a fan of "the US is police of the world", but there goes civil, secular society in Afghanistan. :/
5
Thank you NYT’s editorial board. Our withdrawal from Afghanistan is long over due. Next should be Iraq.
5
After the misbegotten Bush II Iraqi invasion, the only thing that could have been worse for us and for World Peace was to invade Afghanistan- So, we invaded Afghanistan. So now 17 years past and with almost 2500 US military and 1700 contractor casualties and probably a Trillion dollars in wasted treasure later we have not made a single step forward in making us, the Afghanistani people or the World safer by still being there.
If Trump ever, ever wants to be remembered as having done something right that Obama and the Democrats failed miserably in ,it will be pulling the plug on this rolling fiasco.
7
Yes, end the war in Afghanistan, just like the war in Irak was gloriously ended, and then a few years later send again American troops because - well, who would have guessed - now we’re dealing with ISIS.
If the Americans want to face reality, they should acknowledge that there are nasty spots in this world, like Afghanistan, Syria/Irak, Somalia, northern Mali and Nigeria, from which bad trouble is poised to come to our shores. Like it or not, keeping a lid on those places, which inevitably involves limited military involvement, is needed to keep us and the world safe.
I thought that 9/11 focused minds, but apparently ideology is stronger than logic for some.
2
I am afraid The NYT Editorial Board has chosen to wear rose-coloured glasses, taking an unduly optimistic view of Mr. Trump's peace negotiations with Taliban. I submit there is a fair chance that US negotiations with Taliban are part of a plan to put the war in Afghanistan on the back-burner, to allow a much bigger and potentially longer war gets started.
Clearly, with Mr. Bolton formulating Mr. Trump's foreign policy, Pentagon has been busy preparing plans to attack Iran militarily. To implement such a plan, US needs to be sure that its forces, entering from south, are not vulnerable to "flank attacks" by pro-Iranian forces. That requires presence of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be moved to those countries' borders with Iran at the time of invasion.
Hence the US is fortifying its forces in Iraq by moving its special forces from Syria to Iraq. And is entering into a peace treaty with Taliban that allows US bases remain in Afghanistan for foreseeable future.
Apparently, the key remaining problem with this plan has been Mr. Putin's resistance to allow US forces occupy Iran; a country in its backyard. That may explain Mr. Trump's desire to privately discuss this matter with him, possibly offering concessions to Russia in exchange.
There are also much rumors circulating online suggesting that this was the war that Gen. James Mattis was fiercely opposing. He considered it to be contrary to the US interest and resigned to express his deep disagreement with it.
10
After reading this NY Times Editorial, One can see it was painfully hard for the NY Times to agree with Trump who wants us out. The NYT couches it language by giving full credit to Obama who actually did nothing and giving it as little as possible to Trump. Face it, Trump is all by himself on this one, but he has the guts to get us of these wars. Even Schumer is telling Trump not pull out. Hey NYT, give Trump more credit for guts to do this than you want to admit!
5
how many are charged and convicted in 9/11 attack in last 19 year.?? any one have answer??
2
Wherever the British Empire goes....the USA follows. As the British Empire spent close to 50 years fiddle flarking around in this region, with nothing accomplished except creating a farcical Durand Line that created more problems than it solved. A vain attempt to maintain a vast land of plunder in India.....India....a place nearly impossible for Britain to defend and occupy...but the British soldiered on with typical bulldog-like tenacity. As the Empire collapsed in financial ruin after WW2....we Yanks jumped in with enthusiasm.....eager to pick up the pieces and prove WE were the Champions of the World. USA had already negotiated control of all the British ports around the world as part of that LendLease Program....now we set about claiming the prizes.....Oil.
But Afghanistan has no oil............it is only a crossroads for Iranian Oil, Iraqi Oil to China........across the Chicken Neck of Afghanistan.............and that is why 50 years from now....there will no longer be an American Empire.
4
I am surprised that the New York Times had been in favor
of the Afghanistan war. What if somebody in the UK masterminded that attack , what would we do?
3
This whole opinion is about what Americans want, what NATO wants, what Russians want or what American or Russian stooges want. Nowhere do I see what the Afghans themselves want. They are non-entities in their own country. The 17 yr. Afghan war is a stalemate at best. There has been so much bloodshed on the American side and even more so on the Afghan side. The fact remains that Afghanistan remains the burial grounds for powerful kingdoms of past and now powerful countries with their superior wealth and technological warfare. It's amazing that incurring wrath from so many powerful enemies for centuries, Afghanistan remains unconquered. So let's acknowledge Afghan's great resilience and let them be with their own laws and way of life. Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans. Let's remember they were not behind 9/11 but Sunnis from Saudi Arabia whom we call one of our greatest ally.
12
Exactly. Same for Libya and Iraq, ask the people there what they want, NOT what the US Commamder in Chief thinks what they want.
4
What could we learn from the history?
The quick, easy, profitable and decisive victories always lead to the protracted, prolonged, depleting and debilitating quagmires.
It happened to the Nazi Germany. Quick victories over Belgium, Netherlands and France led them to invasion of the USSR…
The same happened to America.
A quick victory by George H. Bush over Saddam Hussein has lead his son to the reckless invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
When you embrace the wrong way of solving the problems, that’s the gift that just keeps giving…
Beware of the glorified victories. Those just encourage you to start the bloodsheds like North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria…
The fact is that we are in the endless state of war since the end of the WWII.
That was the last time some foreign country actually attacked us. Everything else were the conflicts of choice stemming from our desire to impose our system of values upon the rest of the globe.
If it were profitable and smart, we wouldn’t be $21 trillion in debt.
Those not capable of understanding the true danger stemming from the colossal national debt are not capable of predicting anything.
Are you familiar with the concept of “debt slavery”?
Do you know what happens to the students coming out of the schools with the colossal debt?
5
It is always hard to admit you've lost a war.
5
George W Bush.....meerly just another Bush Minion in the Greater EVil of the Bush-Clinton Axis....completely and utterly fumbled his moment of greatness.
1
Wait for it!
Despite all the haranguing of the Times for their “fake news”, I expect Trump to reference this Times editorial as his rationale for bringing US troops.
Of course someone will have to read it to him first!
2
Remarkable well thought out writing. Thank you for another expert education.
I too put forth the notion of war in Afghanistan after the horrific attacks but adopted your line of thinking after Osama Bin Laden was killed. Everything after that was putting out brush fires sparked by the main fires.
The military and their leaders are not in the business of Peace and that fact was forgotten but for one Congressperson. In hindsight, it was a mistake to support a military leader of our nation to go to full scale war without limits.
I do write one important fact that cannot be ignored; our unwavering biased support of Israel is what prompts the hatred behind the terror. Until we lend credibility to it's opposition, the Palestinians and those who support them, we will incur the wrath of hate.
Trump is right to end the wars but was wrong to lend his monopoly support to Israel and his embassy embarrassment. That tells me his underlying reasons for ending the wars and returning troops has a sinister purpose.
He has barely held back from martial law and now appears to me to be planning it. It is now we who should fear him and the military and prepare in the event we lose our freedom.
1
America's actions do not occur in a vacuum.
The war in Afghanistan is very complicated.
Steve Coll has written excellent books on this conflict. It is worth reading them before rushing for the exits.
1
@Richard Blaine Time to cut the Gordian Knot. And that is a simple thing.
Ask yourself, how is it that a relatively small number of poorly equipped people can hold off and outlast a global superpower and allies for seventeen years?
Ask yourself, why a local lAfghan government, drawn from that same population and supported at great expense by outsiders like us, lis scarcely able to stand against their foes, largely drawn from the local people around them?
Ask yourself what more you are willing to sacrifice?
2
It is astonishing that we keep repeating the errors of our own history. Perhaps, it would cease if their authors were publicly shamed via a detailed public examination of the facts.
This process should include a national tutorial in prime time to present the case that all of our undeclared wars have been totally ineffective, (perhaps with the singlar exception of Kosovo.) The evidence tells us that these were simple-minded reflexive efforts that never yielded the desired result.
This presentation should also dispel the myth thst these ventures “made us safer”, or liberated the target countries.
As noted in this article, the opportunity cost of these follies needs to be presented too. The public is unaware of the staggering costs of these wars, the debt that was incurred, and its implications to their future.
Recent news reports hint at yet another stupid involvement in Venezuela. It is time to stop the madness.
2
Very rarely do I agree with The NY Times and Trump at the same time, but the next time I hear somebody like Lindsey Graham utter the cliche, ‘If we don’t fight them in their backyard, they’ll be in our backyard,’ my head will explode! We’ve been in their backyard for 17 YEARS, and I challenge anyone to show me what good has come of it.
4
@Jeff Ashbrook Of course, you understand that Good Fences make for Good Neighbors. meaning sometimes that Wall idea makes realllll gooooood sense.
1
I absolutely agree that the US should rapidly abandon this Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney worse-than-useless legacy neocon nightmare.
This would appear to put me in agreement with the current White House occupant. Unfortunately, this alleged pullout is just one of a long line of stunts which, like all the others, originated in this person's nether regions and primarily meant to generate adulation from his base.
But given the major blowback/pushback from his principle advisors in the conservative media, we can expect to continue to be mired in that hellhole for the foreseeable future with the added benefit to China of protecting its multi-billion dollar natural resource extraction concessions.
5
The Taliban know that Afghanistan is a graveyard of empires in history and that time is on their side. They are aware of the mood in the US - most Americans favour an exit. Hence they see little need to compromise. It is only a matter of time before the US grows weary of stationing troops in a far-off country and spending some $45 billion a year on a war that can’t be won.
America’s policy in Afghanistan should be one that avoids the risks of a rapid, unconditional withdrawal. The US must work on a diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan’s six immediate neighbours, which include China, Iran and Pakistan, as well as other regional players like Russia, India, and the EU, that have a stake in the country’s future.
4
Leave-or-stay is a "trolley problem" - somebody dies whichever track the trolley is sent down - and we've been gamed by politicians and generals into letting more people die over the years than would die in a pullout.
The document referenced on the half-million dead makes clear that it includes about 100,000 actual enemy and 250,000 innocent bystanders. That ratio makes continuance the greater crime.
If you feel bad about those left behind, consider a refugee program, like you didn't for Syria. If Canada took in 50,000 Syrians, (and we're fine!) the 10X larger US can take in 500,000 Afghans as easily.
But that's dark comedy to suggest these days, I know.
So another mitigation idea: Consider that there are 10 million school-age girls in Afghanistan, but 3.7M of them out of school because of the endless war. You're spending $45B on the country right now, (more than the "radical" free-college plan for America would cost). For $10B, you could pay every girl's family $80/month to stay in school. Their GDP is $20B, so this would raise the national income by 50%, all dependent on girls' report cards.
I started that point just meaning to highlight that $45B spent on war in a country only generating $20B in positive, life-supporting economic activities...is insane. But the more I think about it, the more I'm only half-kidding.
2
@roy brander The point of US occupation of Afghanistan is NOT to win and go home.......Our govt simply uses that as a ruse to lead us on ..... the mighty Military Industrial Complex is based on values that havent changed since 1930. Oil. Oil and MORE Oil. We are in Afghanistan to stay. Just like the Foolhardy British before us. And its a desparate fight to prevent China's obvious geo-political advantage across the pipelines through Central Asia(ie....the Chicken Neck, Panjir Valley) Iran, etc.....to the Oil.
USA starts to look like the jealous Golem who is outraged that "they stole our Preicious!!"
The 21st Century Reality is that no matter how much oil there is.....Oil is Obsolete. We cannot base a Space Age Economy on Oil. USA is caught inside a moribund bureaucracy that cannot and will not adapt.
1
This Afghan government is totally dependent on U.S. support to prop it up and remain in power. The Karmal government in the 80's was totally dependent of Soviet support to prop it up and remain in power.
We, as a nation, did not approve of the latter. We should no more approve of the former. If an government depends of a foreign power to keep it in power, then is does not deserve to rule. Let the people of Afghanistan decide who will rule them; we do not have toe right or the duty to make that choice for them.
1
Afghanistan is a natural resource rich landlocked country bordered by five nuclear nations who all hate each other. Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran and India all depend on a weak Afghanistan to exploit these natural resources which include the the largest copper and lithium deposits in the world as well as access to trade routes. The most valuable of all natural resources is water which originates and passes thru the mountains of Afghanistan and supplies Pakistan and India and Iran. If we Americans think Pakistan, China, Iran, Russia or India can do a better job, stabilize Afghanistan, protect women and girls and boys, why haven't they done it in the last millennium? The last time we left we got the Taliban and Al Qaeda. ISIS-Kurasan has now decided Tora-Bora is a nice place to be, why? That's the major trade route between Pakistan and Afghanistan and access to South Asia. That's why the Afghans let us drop the Mother of All Bombs in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province. That's why we knew about those caves where we helped the Afghans battle the Soviets the last time we left. Now we have a focused Special Forces strategy and Afghan soldiers being supported by Afghan aircraft and US Drones shutting down and controlling Nangarhar Province. Should we leave again? As General Mattis advised, "The Enemy gets a vote." Slow learners we.
The worst threat to America doesn’t come from the Al Qaeda but from the extremely stupid notion that three hundred thirty million people should rely upon a single person to protect us and solve all our problems.
One cannot be against the foreign wars while simultaneously benefiting from them. One cannot truly be against the free trade while profiting from it. One cannot be for the financially sound America while hiding own tax returns. One cannot be against the political divisiveness while relying heavily on it for the political protection. One cannot protect us from the war in Afghanistan while pushing us into the war with Iran.
One cannot be for democracy in Venezuela while sharing the bed with the worst tyrants of Saudi Arabia and Egypt that created the fertile ground for the rise of Al Qaeda with their oppression of the local population.
5
According to the financial predictions and the sound logic, within a decade the US federal government will be spending more money on servicing the national debt than on the defense budget.
It means the endless wars financed by the deficit spending will cut the national defense budget by 50%. Without the enormous debt, all the money wasted on paying the interest could have been used for the national defense or rebuilding the national infrastructure.
It means that the endless wars are the worst threat to our national security…
It means that those supportive of the endless wars are the worst national security threat…
4
"Afghanistan, which has remained for more than 17 years an open-ended war without an exit strategy or a focused target."
Wasn't the focused target supposed to be Osama Bin Laden?
That's why people supported the war in the first place isn't it?
Interesting that virtually all commenters agree on getting out of Afghanistan but not much praise for Trump being the one to do it. Obama promised to do so but did not follow through.
3
After the 911 attack, my coworkers (and most Americans) were bent on revenge and bombing terrorist locations in Afghanistan.
At that time Russia had been defeated by the Taliban and left the country.
Afghans are independent and can make their own guns!
I suggested we print new currency with George Bush on the bills and dump billions on the terrorist hot spots.
In other words, kill them with kindness because they will not be defeated. It would have created a different outcome. Even if a few leaders got a hold of the money.
This would probably still work and lead to enriched rather than dead Afghans and Americans.
We cannot bail on Afghanistan. We should be there to control the Taliban. Structural changes have been made in Afghan culture because of our presence. If we leave, these improvements in human rights will be ripped out by the Taliban at the roots.
1
@DENOTE MORDANT
??? You're just trying to get a rise out of the sane readership, arent you?
1
If you pay close attention to the Trump- Super Bowl interview he let's it slip, "they won" referring to the Taliban in Afghanistan. I'll agree with Trump on that one..
We need to look at this as a broken marriage... Even the best marriage counselors will ultimately suggest a couples' separation is the only healthy alternative ...
We tried our best.. but we just couldn't count of the years.
You Yanks have a bad habit of mistaking military and political goals for each other. It failed in Vietnam, and now it's failing because you won't define your goals properly either way, so you can't achieve them.
This terrorism is global. You can't use WW2 theories to fight it. You've never really needed boots on the ground for endless periods of time, but you insist on putting them there. You've done precisely nothing about the networks which continue to produce terrorists in safe havens of "allies' in the Middle East. These basic causative problems have not been solved, largely due to America's sycophantic groveling to oil and other interests in the region.
Troops can come and go, but thanks to this dilatory approach to the obvious, you're still going to be fighting this war. Change your approach, stop wasting people on insignificant, low-yield results, and for god's sake get a clearer picture of what you're trying to achieve.
4
February 4, 2019
The advanced nations that has participated in the taming the violence of this nation of Afghanistan and with neighboring infiltrators wrecking the civility of a people and indeed having the to give deep caution to the drug economy and its barbarism towards any and all that would challenge the state of best in interest is given a new life and with redevelopment and got to say deep appreciation by the united international efforts to get where are today an Afghanistan that will be proud and thankful for its future and with the lessons learned for it going forward to call on friends and support by those that know the path to peace and the grace of civility is earned as in this land and things will only get better.... ( With vigilance forever by a world that needs the health and wisdom of all people in all lands....
1
We know pretty well why Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfiwitz kept us at war - it's really a no-brainer. But WE need to ask why did OBAMA keep us at war (and even increase it and spread it to other countries). Obama got elected promising withdraw from these wars and major investments within America. His cabinet picks (that were apparently pre-determined by Axelrod, and included Hillary), as well as his Fed picks told another story altogether - one not told at NYT. When middle Americans hoping for real change (many voting for Obama, twice) went with Trump they were labeled racists, misogynists, bigots, etc.. If establishment forces are too great for a brilliant and solid guy like Obama, we shouldn't stop Trump from doing it until we have someone who who can do it better (like Bernie, IMO).
3
@carl bumba Bush. No Brainer. You got that right.
1
I was opposed to all of Bush2's wars based on our bitter experience in Vietnam. Now it seems that we must leave Afghanistan with another draught of the same bitter cup. The editorial says that we must leave Afghanistan to our antagonists: Russia, Iran and China and possibly Pakistan and India.
That is a bitter pill and it will be even more bitter for the girls and women of Afghanistan.
Ryan Crocker one of several American ambassadors to Afghanistan, said in a TV interview several years ago the we should carefully think through the consequences of a war before we start one. That seems to be a hard lesson to learn. One can only hope that as John Quincy Adams said, we should not go looking for foreign monsters to destroy.
Whether we can truly just walk away from Afghanistan with all the grief we created without future involvement remains to seen given the blood and treasure expended there. One can only hope so.
1
@LES One episode of midnight de-nuttings...and the whole situation in Afghanistan takes a turn for the better.
As a resident of the college educated left wing echo chamber, my views on this subject are a bit of an outlier compared to those of most of my friends, who generally jumped on the “opposition to all things Bush” knee jerk reaction during his terms. I always thought the Bush Administration made a clear and cogent moral case for going into Afghanistan, only to perform the biggest strategic and moral blunder of my lifetime by diverting so much time, personnel, money and attention to Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Our nation has a moral obligation to the people who worked with and supported the coalition, as well as those who stand to suffer under a newly empowered Taliban: Women, girls, Muslim apostates, etc.
Considering these two thoughts, a poorly managed withdrawal would be a moral and strategic disaster. My fear is that Trump will push for a rapid timeline to appease his base of simple solution seekers, with no attention paid to the realities on the ground.
@Dusty Pilkington OH Good Grief Dusty. Afghanistan was this awful when we funded the Taliban to fight Russia. Now they are just as awful when they are fighting us and when they have their hands out looking for freebies. You know that. I know that. The troops could line up in formation at Bagram AFB,, take a unit leak on Afghanistan, then board the last troop transport out of there.......nothing would change.
1
We have made a gift of $5.7 Trillion to defense contractors, their employees, and their stockholders, to support countries where 80%of the population still use wood-fired cook stoves. Here are two great investigative stories: how many power plants were built and at what cost and how many are not working. Investigate how many vehicles are parked In Kuwait, that could have been repaired but defense contracts are allowed a total replacement of the vehicle for a lost wheel or other repairable damage.
1
We cannot solve all the world's problems, and honestly, we shouldn't even try unless those problems are threatening to spread. At the time the war in Afghanistan began, spread was a real possibility, but that threat soon dissipated. We failed to react appropriately and the results are all too clear to see. We should have left in 2003. But Americans, of all political persuasions, are too arrogant to recognize the limit of our power and the futility of always trying to use it to "do good". If we are ever to help another culture, we must lead by example, not by force.
1
The only real beneficiary of this war is the military-industrial complex with their consultants, suppliers and contractors who make money from death. I suspect they're the ones who kept it going through their captives in Congress who didn't want to upset the status quo.
We've paid the price over and over for our naive belief that we alone can solve a nation's problems while ignoring our own. The Russians paid a similar price, and they got out for essentially the same reason.
For once and only once, I will agree that Donald Trump is right. We have no right to be there and we should get out now.
Afghanistan will have to do their own work from now on. We can't be everyone's keeper any more.
There is no honor in dying for a lost cause.
2
We want our $5.7 Trillion back.
2
@Mary Hilton The Question is....Ar our childern laerning.
American withdrawal, followed by a very likely resumption of power by the Taliban, will be a grievous blow to the souls of the American and allied fighting men and women who gave so much for such poor results. When will the US electorate realize that supporting the troops means demanding that the civilian leadership presenting a workable plan for winning the war and winning the aftermath? Generous care packages are much appreciated by troops far from home; more appreciated would be a demand on the part of voters for a plan for victory BEFORE the shooting starts. The American citizenry can count on the troops to give their all. The civilian leadership—particularly those long on ideas but short on military service—cannot be relied upon to execute sound analysis and good planning unless the electorate forces them to do so by putting pressure on the holders of the purse strings: the House of Representatives.
1
Superb distillation even if you are preaching to the choir. Maybe, by some sliver of a chance, someone with authority to bring about such change will read and take heed.
2
Actually Afghanistan isn't our longest conflict. That honor goes to Iraq. We've had continual operations in Iraq since 1991. First there was Desert Storm. This was followed by Operation Provide Comfort which saw 31 coalition members killed in action and an estimated ~100 Iraqis killed as well as 2 Iraqi aircraft shot down and numerous air defense sites attacked. Provide Comfort was followed by Northern and Southern Watch. No coalition members were killed in these operations but again we destroyed several Iraqi air defense sites. These operations were then followed by Operation Iraqi Freedom which in turn was followed the Iraqi civil war and ISIS conflicts. That's 27+ years of uninterrupted military operations - a full decade more than Afghanistan.
4
But then who will distract the Arabs from attacking and conquering Israel now done via the blowing to pieces of mostly morally inferior Christian 'baskets of despicables' at the cost of trillions to that same inferior American majority? Oh, right! That problem is solved, because the success of the NY Times 24/7 Open Borders brainwashing of the American populace will make possible an 'exodus' of everyone in Israel as a 'refugee' to the USA when the Arabs eventually win in the Middle East. Who will in turn guilt trip the 97% of the rest of us Americans for another century in order to get all manner of undeserved deference and sacred victim white "privileges".
1
What could we learn from the war in Afghanistan?
That we should always pay attention to the basic system of values of the White House.
We don’t need the government willing to start the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran.
We need the leaders capable of turning them into the friends.
How could it be done?
Ability to communicate has always been the prerequisite.
If the leaders cannot negotiate and compromise, then they are not qualified to serve as the presidents.
Anything is better that 18-year long futile war.
However, we don’t need the leaders willing to cut the peace deal with North Korea only to start the conflict with Iran. It is absolutely irrelevant whether we are going to waste the highly precious resources, time, lives and social energy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, North Korea or Venezuela.
Ability to turn the enemies in the friends is universal and it could be applied at the every corner of this world…
It could be applied even toward the Kremlin and Moscow because we need them to counterbalance China’s size and power.
It is most important to have the fair and just relationship with China too. We can simultaneously be the friends while preventing them from taking advantage and exploiting us.
That’s the very essence of the viable and permanent friendship…
1
Thank you for this editorial. I agree completely.
You should challenge all candidates running for President to immediately comment and give their opinion as to what you have proposed.
I personally will not vote for Trump under any circumstance, but I’m unlikely to vote for any Democrat who doesn’t agree with your newly stated opinion.
Howard Schultz should jump on board your view immediately.
Immediately!
1
LESSONS:
> Vietnam.
> Iraq-nam.
> Afghanistan-nam.
CONCLUSIONS:
The big shots who [promote the flow of other people's blood and money are its only beneficiaries.
The gullibility of a sucker population seems to be the enabling factor.
The "fringe groups" who object may have found an alternate source of drinking water that doesn't taste like koolaid.
When the humanity loses desire to learn, then every communication is useless. The worst obstacle to the progress isn’t a lack of knowledge but the cravings to protect the status quo, meaning our own hubris, conceit, stupidity and tradition. We as the people discriminate against the facts proving our misconceptions and bias wrong. The facts undermining our worldviews are willfully ignored and discarded. The only thing forcing us to learn, subdue our instinctive hubris and face our own mortality and limitations is the faith. The faith has never been about the God. The faith is our commitment to the truth and the facts. That’s why the social polarization is so crucial in negation of the truth. When surrounded by the identical kind of stupidity, the supportive crowd makes us more confident that we are right and good. Both sides of the schism are flawed, but all our focus is directed toward THEIR mistakes and our proven track record. The opposite approach would be far more desirable and efficient – focusing on our mistakes and recognizing the good in the people around us. What makes us act in such a way? It’s called the faith, stupid!
I could write every NYT war editorial (since WWII) using just one sentence: “We were for the war before we were against it.”
Credit to John Kerry, of course.
5
We've let our own country go along with the idea of leading by example.
1
I think I needed a comma after "go".
1
As in Viet Nam, we are failing to picture the end game. Our military finally got to the point of a program of "winning the hearts and minds of the people." These warning signals came from distinguished military leaders, political representatives, and the population. Our intentions were honorable, but our implementation was naive.
Outside the cities, Afghanistan is a tribal civilization with extreme local religious and civil influence. When most education you receive is religious in nature, it is hard to imagine anyone with more that a third grade education or a western moral point of view. Wealthy families can afford to send their children abroad for a western education, but don't normally go back because of the turmoil.
The stakes are too high for withdrawing. We still haven't mastered the radical Muslim Imams circulating terrorists in our Homeland society. Many of your readers have at least one or two of the more salient points in their responses. I personally would like to see a more in depth study by The Times of the reasons some of the outcomes of withdrawing are so atrocious.
As in Viet Nam, you cannot denigrate the service and the sacrifice of those who were maimed , wounded, or died over there or their families. The cost in blood and treasure is just too high. This can't be a "spur of the moment, quick fix" with drawl. We have a lot of lessons from Iraq that can help guide us here.
Please consider tapping down to the roots of some of these issues. Thank you.
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Extremely well analyzed situation and well deserved support for our troops @John Lilly
Let's be clear that when we went into Afghanistan it was in response to 9/11 attack that was planned there. It was a safe haven for the Taliban and Bin Laden. Then Cheney faked the Yellow cake lie to get us to invade Iraq, leaving us to take our eye off of Afghanistan.
That is where we lost our mission and were unable to take back the reigns to accomplish our goals. It is another Vietnam and it will be retaken by the Taliban and we very well be facing another safe haven for terrorists, just not as obvious.
It is time to get out! With our poor diplomacy as a negotiator between Palestine and Israel, forfeiting our leverage by moving our embassy to Jeruselum, we may as well station forces there to help protect our ally and make any defense from terrorists a more local deployment.
As to the cost, catching an insurgence early will prevent a small hill to become a mountain., likely protecting our homeland at a lower cost.
I keep reading in NYT about the horrible damage to our international relations from the Trump administration. Yet our military "adventures" overseas are rarely considered in this regard. And this is far more of a concern to other countries who must live "at our mercy". We started in Afghanistan with a great deal of international support and sympathy - and we threw it all away. Since Trump's election, NYT has been throwing stones from their house of glass without even pretending to look inward, blind to the ironies that surround them.
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Ah! A breath of fresh AIR from the NYT Editorial Board!! As that well known Bolshevik (Lenin) once said - 'Luchshe pozdna chem nikogda' (i.e., better late than never). All of us who never wanted our country to chase mirages in foreign lands in the first place must welcome this change of heart among those who played their part to push us into the quagmire of our current wars. At least for me, this op-ed restores a tiny bit of faith in this paper's desire to do the right thing - even if it is 18 years in coming.
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Last week I heard NPR interview former Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, who was arguing that withdrawal from Afghanistan is unthinkable. The interviewer was pretty good, but he failed to ask the one question that could have silenced Crocker: "With respect, it's not YOUR grandchildren who will have to fight the war, is it?"
2
While I understand and agree with many points issued here, the board notes that we must let it be known that if the Taliban again takes charge and becomes a nest for terrorists the US will return. But everybody, including the terrorists, will know there is no way we will return. Given how entangled and difficult to leave this has turned out to be, once we leave we are done. So we risk actually more emboldened terrorista rather than less. And I believe out intelligence agencies state recurrence of terrorist activities plotted from this area is exactly what is expected to happen. So what then? The taliban is taking with the US in exclusion of the afghan government currently. That is unacceptable.
2
if the country is allowed to again become a base for international terrorism, the United States will return to eradicate that threat
Another red line in the sand, if crossed, and we enforce retribution, just brings perpetual war back again.
I remember coming brack from a walk with the dog the morning of 9.11, and turning on the television and watching in total amazement. I was mesmerized by the image of the planes flying into the WTC. Completely mesmerized. That is what comes to mind 18 years later when I see a plane preparing to land whenever and wherever I am. I give those 19 Saudis a lot of credit - it took some time, but was it ever effective, and in the scheme of things did not cost them that much. But the oil is still flowing. And we are killing not only ourselves but the planet as well. Call me cynical, but i do give them a lot of credit. The USof A? Not so much. Our response to this day is so typical.
2
The federal government has borrowed trillions to limit the bad effects of war to "relatively few." Have the benefits to all those receiving those trillions offset the costs? Cheney and Rumsfeld will tell us that the harm to our military personnel, our contractors, and others in and out of Afghanistan has all been worth those trillions (because they believe we're all safer and the folks who provide all those great security services are taking that borrowed money and putting it to good work).
Gas is still cheap.
Alas, most Americans have not felt much pain from Afghanistan or Iraq, or really from any of the tragedies taking place from Africa to Asia. (And we care little about terrorist attacks in Europe.) Until the nonsense really "costs" more of us, I doubt Congress will do much. "Going to war with the army you have . . . ," has made inflicting death and destruction way too easy. (See e.g., the Roman Empire.)
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A courageous and daringly truthful editorial by the NY Times.
American policy and military actions in Afghanistan have patently failed.
Further military engagement will not salvage our national reputation nor will it promote a better future for the Afghan people. Not one more American in uniform should be killed or maimed or psychologically maimed this fruitless endeavor.
Americans who care and are committed to to finally and rightly end of this misconceived and misguided war should forthwith forward this editorial and their personal endorsement of it to the President, to their congressional representatives, and to the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader.
That communication should be doggedly repeated until there is concrete actions to fully end America’s futile military presence in Afghanistan.
And the Democrats complain about the cost of spending 5 billion dollars to build a wall to secure our southern border.
A great supporter of the New York times, I almost never found an editorial article mediocre but this time the article about withdrawal from Afghanistan is insanely wrong at every paragraph. Even if you're not an Historian as I am you would like to shoot yourself after reading this editorial. Some examples. .....
The USA will return to eradicate that threat..... (AKA the return of the Taliban ) I cannot even understand how you can write that because it is incredibly wrong after our troops leave never ever ever any US government or Allied government will sign on to return troops to Afghanistan . Seriously you have lost your analyzing power. This is jibber jabber from left-wing progressives. This is Neville Chamberlain reasoning. You are saying Welcome back Afghanistan's Hitlers. On an other subject do you think that President Trump will allow tens of thousands non white skin people and in addition Muslims to immigrate to the USA, you have not read you own newspaper for the last 3 years.
One of your extravagant insanity and an insult of the last ten thousand years of History is when you say that ....... The Afghan the taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and Russia ( could be prompt to work together ) on a Cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan...
Yes Russia will work shoulder-to-shoulder with the USA; Hello!
In this rare instance your analyzing powers have being obscured by your progressive agenda. Profoundly unintelligent editorial
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When the war in Vietnam finally ended, we opened a path to immigration to a large number of former allies in that war who knew they'd probably be in trouble when the country was unified under the control of Hanoi.
As a result, these people were saved the re-education camps and discrimination, and possibly much worse, that they might well have suffered if they had stayed in South Vietnam. That large-scale immigration has, over the years, proved to be a blessing for America as we had a battered but determined group of smart and extremely hard-working immigrants who did everything they could to live the American dream. Many have prospered and contributed hugely to the common good. And of course I should mention that they brought their wonderful cuisine with them which many millions of us have enjoyed and continue to enjoy.
After our longest war, in Afghanistan, comes to an end, we can expect the Taliban to re-take control of the country, at which time our individual allies, co-workers, translators, educated women and the like may well be targeted by the new Taliban regime. And, of course, those women and girls who've benefited from our presence, with enhanced civil rights and education, will probably suffer the brunt of it.
I'm certainly fine with a full withdrawal from Afghanistan so long as we open our doors to Afghani refugees to settle in our country. We owe them at least this.
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"the Taliban ... that refused to turn over ... Osama bin Laden."
Omitting the small detail that there were discussions being held through diplomatic back channels to do exactly that. The Bush team was aware of those talks. The Bush team wanted a war and nothing would stop them getting it.
The NYT should at least take care to not misrepresent the history of those days.
2
I see so many agonizing over what we must do next.
At every crisis in the world, from Somali pirates shooting at oil tankers bound for Europe, to Venezuela, to the Balkans to the East China Sea, we Americans go through this debate as we bankrupt ourselves and treat our legions of wounded.
No one ever asks, "What are the Dutch going to do? What are the Japanese going to do? How about those wealthy Arab states?"
Despite our Dick Cheneys and John Boltons, this NOT America's problem--Afghanistan is the entire int'l community's problem. Yes, we must work with others; we must play a key role, perhaps on occasion the leadership role; but let's stop pretending to be the world's only cops. It offends others as it also lets them off the moral hook.
1
A comment here, in essence, says that all contries’ fiscal contribution to world affairs should be equally proportionate, implying that it is inappropriate for the US fiscal contribution (Dollars and military might) to be as disproportionately large as is found currently in world affairs. It cites a comparison of the US with Holland.
So, the Dutch and the US are different which explains why the US will always choose to contribute proportionately more.
Here's why.
Despite its continuing success as an essentially introspective people, the US sense of needing to mould the wider world will inevitably remain proportionate to its impact on the rest of the world. This has always been true of all countries/regions/tribes and - until we enter the Star Trek Universe - I believe it will remain true.
The Dutch just don't have this ’inevitable influence’, so they have no need to contribute a similar proportion of GDP/GNP (or whatever).
This is the irony of a globally successful country, especially one as young as the US.....
Again, great editorial by the Editorial Board. I agree totally, and I also totally agree with Barbara Lee's comment:
"In the House of Representatives and the Senate combined, there was only one vote in opposition: Barbara Lee, a Democratic representative from California, who warned of another Vietnam. 'We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target,' she said. 'We cannot repeat past mistakes.'"
I thought the same thing as she when Bush decided to go into Afghanistan. I served in the Vietnam War as a volunteer for a full term; even before I volunteered, I had serious qualms about that war. When Bush and Cheney, men who were able to avoid going to Vietnam, opted for unlimited funds for Afghanistan, the first question to answer was, "What is your definition of victory?"
We weren't prepared. We had no understanding of the tribal culture, and it was said that no one in the CIA knew how to speak Pashto. Despite that, we leaped off of that cliff because of panic, not rational thought.
I've thought that Bush had to show the public a resolute posture, no matter what that was. He avoided a perception of the snarky command, "Don't just do something, stand there!" So we attacked Afghanistan, unprepared..
And to add fuel to the futile fire, Bush and Cheney went into Iraq, which weakened their Afghanistan effort. These events kept us from entering a progressive 21st century. We aren't there yet.
The worst part of the U.S. government's terror war is the hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed. For those of us who reject "ethical" views based on trading the lives of innocents with other goals, but take the deontological view that attacking innocents is wrong, the immorality of the terror war is obvious.
However, we should not blame George W. Bush and the other government members for this decision, as if that decision was a matter of free-will. The government's behavior was, in fact, determined.
Barbara Lee was the only one, out of over 500 legislators. to vote against the terror war, and Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening were the only ones to oppose the Tonkin Gulf resolution -- this supports the deterministic view.
My favorite terror war story is of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, with indignation rising in his voice, guilelessly stating into a news camera, "We're here to help them and they're killing us." Government lies to its own didn't start with Trump.
Another cost of the terror wars is the incitement of hate at Arabs and Muslims, which Trump did not create, but used this racism and bigotry effectively to win.
The Editorial Board calling for withdrawing without victory in Afghanistan, while knowing about the Vietnam Holocaust and Afghanistan history, should that now surprise us?
5
Bush of course failed to acknowledge that 9/11 was blowback, also for Carter/Brezinsky's huge crime of tossing a country of 25 million to the dogs of war by destabilizing Afghanistan in 1979 so as to draw in the Russian Bear for it to get bloodied maintaining its dominance. Nor does this otherwise unexceptionable editorial pay obeisance to history and its consequence. "Mr. Bush declared. “It [the war on terror] will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” I It will not end until the U.S.A. ceases to wage its imperialist capitalist terror, if it can
1
Re: "...On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress wrote what would prove to be one of the largest blank checks in the country’s history. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists gave President George W. Bush authority to attack the Taliban, etc., ...that refused to turn over the mastermind of the attacks perpetrated three days earlier, Osama bin Laden..."
If memory, still serves...Didn't Ronald, 'Bitburg_Cemetery', Reagan, (aka: 'Iran - Contra' Reagan) / his speech writers coin the current 'rhetorical' usage / often, directly, refer to O.B. Ladin as, a...'freedom_fighter'?
Remind me again, 'cause I'm remembering a few of my, (359), coworkers, lost, (Lwr. Manhattan), and...this 17 year, 'N, counting...), 'N.-W.M.D.'s, in Iraq, Etc.-Mushroom-Clouds, Over-U.S. Cities' invasion-rationale-excuse, making, IS...wearing, thin!
we talk about war in Afghanistan, but like our other disastrous foreign adventures, it is not a war, despite the death, destruction, horror, and expense. there is no winning, there is no national opponent, there is really no one to negotiate with; it is no more a war than the war on drugs, crime, or cancer is a war. it's a PR stunt to boost America the Mighty as bully of the world,and it's flopped. it is a fight that is unwinnable and very poorly chosen for highly suspect reasons.
Can't believe there's something I agree with Trump on -- yes, let's get out of the Middle East. There will never be the perfect time. What if we don't go? Do we stay for another 800 years? As usual, war is profitable for many and watch the ones in government who cry loudest to stay.
1
Substitute Afghanistan in this Editorial with Vietnam, and it is obvious that we have learned nothing from the Vietnam War, where over 58,000 Americans came home in body bags.
And for what exactly? To prevent North Vietnam from sailing its 25-Junk Navy into Pearl Harbor? Domino Theory notwithstanding, the war was based on a lie - the Gulf of Tonkin incident - and 58,000 Americans paid the ultimate price.
Fast forward to the 17-year (and counting) war in Afghanistan. The War on Terror is not a conventional war, but we are fighting there as if it is one. The Taliban is not a conventional army, and terrorism by its very nature knows no geographic boundaries.
I have long thought that the War on Terror was more of a police action than a military one, a police action that can be aided by the military with carefully planned and executed surgical strikes (think Navy Seal Team 6 and Osama bin Laden), but not by using a convention army.
Taking ground and holding it, the aim of all warfare, is pointless in Afghanistan, which has one of the most inhospitable terrains in the world.
Time to leave, declare victory, and put the trillions of dollars we are spending there to better use.
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As a 3 time veteran of Iraq, I agree wholeheartedly with this column.
1
Barbara Lee, the only person in congress to vote against the war in Afghanistan, should be recognised as a national hero. Along with Iraq and Viet Nam, the war in Afghanistan is another tragic American mistake resulting in the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Those responsible for these wars will be rewarded, not penalised for their actions.
1
I think if we were to do this whole thing again, we should declare war against individuals and networks composed of individuals, rather than organizations or ideas. Ideas don't really die and organizations die too easily and can't be held accountable. Get the people, get the money and the strings controlling those people, and you have a chance at tackling organized terroristic activities. Maybe appoint a long-standing special prosecutor with support from FBI HRT and JSOC to capture those responsible and bring them to open court. In everything, always tie up more loose ends than you create.
Of course, this all assumes somebody or many somebodies on the inside isn't profiting from fat defense contracting budgets to keep the war going. Which is never the case, war is always a racket.
Cheney wanted to project robust America power on a global scale following the fall of the USSR, just fo show who the big dog was and to steal everything not nailed down, and was looking for excuses to do so, finding one in Afghanistan where an obnoxious regime was accused of harboring a terrorist mastermind, as though bin Laden had no alternatives. like the invented WMDs in Iraq, all this was cover for Cheney's real objectives and that of his shadowy employers. America has been taken to the cleaners over these phony and illogical threats for many years, so it is hard to believe Congress has just been hoodwinked and not co-opted. it's long past time for America fo get back to reality, even if it's unpleasant, and even if for a brief moment it comports with something President Trump has said. it took the Times a long time to get here, but now that the editorial position has come around, start beating the drum louder! and yes, I do mean look into the finances of Congresspeople who have been bribed into accepting and supporting endlessly profitable war.
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If we withdraw the enemies of democracy will know even more that America has no staying power. We sell smoke. We are already known as fair-weather friends who dispose of their allies as they were plastic coffee cups to be tossed away when the last drop is sipped. the women and young people of Afghanistan will be tossed to a pack of control-freak men professing a barbaric medieval interpretation of Islam. The Romans, often cruel, got their way and extended protection and citizenship eventually to millions by persevering, never giving up. Only when they lost the will to fight pay the price, and forget the values they had to re-learn - put down the haughty and spare the weak (Virgil) - did they collapse. If you believe in democracy and the basic rights of all human beings put up or shut up, walk the walk.
1
Uh oh. Is an editorial in the New York Times supporting a Trump agenda on Afghanistan? Excuse me?
The war in Afghanistan was a stupid move, notwithstanding the support from the NYTimes.
It has made the world more deadly.
The shame is not just in American lives and deaths, but also in the lives and deaths of Afghans.
We need negotiations -- the UN and regional partners. The U.S. should stand at the service of the negotiators and be prepared to pay damages.
1
If China wants to be a superpower like the United States and Russia then they should step and take their turn invading Afghanistan. Maybe THEY can turn it into a groovy Scandinavian meritocracy.
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I do not envy anyone whose decision on this will be the ultimate choice. It is indeed "Sophie's choice." I wish it were as black and white as "get out" or "commit to keep the world (and us) safe" but it is not any any of the commentators here are fooling themselves if they believe so. No, alas a damned if you do damned if you don't decision has to be made and I for one am glad that I don't have to make it. Let the Republicans, who after all got us into this mess, take on the task. But let us remember our national commitment to humanitarianism throughout the globe, our commitment to protect our allies, and our commitment to save our soldier's lives. Can we do all three?
Please, invest some personal time, find and read all my comments published today in regard to this editorial and you will get an idea what kind of the analytical op-eds were trashed for almost two decades, thus preventing America from solving the problems in the best possible way and promptly…
thank god. well done.
I vote for Obama twice. He was not perfect. The day after Ossama Bil Laden was killed we should have declared victory and begun withdrawing from Afganistan, right after that ended all relations with Pakistan.
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We might start with a resolution to stop using the vapid McConnell-esque phrase"It's time . . ." In this case, it's long past time.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole nation blind."
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" The war on terror has been called the “forever war,” the “long war,” a “crusade gone wrong.” It has claimed an estimated half a million lives around the globe."
Half a million lives around the globe? You can double that number and will be a lot closer to the actual fatalities suffered so far.
The survey/statistics that this article draws its details from (including the " half a million lives around the globe." figure) is considered by almost every other group,NGO's and most governments as severely under representative of the true casualty figures which DO NOT even count deaths outside of the conflicts/operations and Terrorist attacks outside of Iraq, Afganistan and Pakistan.
They do not even include Syrian fatalities at all.
Go to the URL linked in relation to the figures and the survey to understand how little it reports, covers and why it is considered the lowest estimate of actual deaths incurred as compared to every OTHER survey, study and investigation...
It also mentions that the Pentagon cannot tell how many Americans have died in Syria and how many have died in Iraq...it only has a total combined figure of U.S fatalities in Syria/Iraq!
One must be concerned when the Pentagon doesn't even know what is critical information and the most basic data that should be available and known when it concerns U.S Forces/Citizens...it doesn't take an expert to realise the information it has on Foreign Citizens, combatants and civilians would be severely lacking.
For sure.
1
They took their sweet time reaching this obvious conclusion! Afghanistan was once called "Russia's Vietnam", as if we learned our lesson (at the expense of a million Vietnamese people.) The trillion dollars we spent in Vietnam is probably an order of magnitude less than what our Wars on Terrorism have cost. Besides interest costs, the cost of supporting the Mujahadeen (proto-Taliban) against the Russians and then beyond, over a couple decades, needs to be figured in. (In the 80's, we even gave "freedom fighters" and their families citizenship with benefits, like a house and college education... I was acquantited with one of these families.)
Now NYT needs to give Trump sincere credit for trying (with success) to extract us from these "adventures". They should also acknowledve that NYT has been PROMOTING that Trump take console from his military advisors and secretaries who, of course, will not relinquish their power in that region (or any other). NYT's recent celebration of our military and intelligence "communities" needs some explaining.
2
Let’s summarize the facts again.
The 9/11 attacks were led, envisioned, organized, financed and executed by the Saudi and Egyptian citizens. All the terrorists were overwhelmingly from those two Arab countries. The fatwa that authorized the terrorist attack in direct contradiction and in spite of the explicit ban on killing the innocent civilians by the Quran came from a Saudi cleric.
However, the Congress sheepishly reneged on its constitutional duties and provided the White House and the Chief of Staffs with the blank authorization to launch the wars.
What did the politicians and generals do?
Instead of dealing with the problems created in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our alleged allied countries, they invaded Afghanistan (a non-Arab country) and Iraq (a socialist regime, thus a natural dam against the spread of the radical Wahhabism), as well as running the covert operations to destabilize two another socialist regimes in Libya and Syria, thus creating the fertile ground for the creation and rise of the ISIS.
These day we have the Mueller investigation leaving no stone unturned in search for the alleged Kremlin meddling.
However, there was no criminal investigation regarding the catastrophic negligence and malpractice by our elected officials that saddled us with the longest war in US history, the colossal cost of almost $6 trillion and the unnecessary deaths of 14,000 servicemen…
" The Taliban have paid a very high price for harboring Bin Laden..."
Unlike Pakistan, America's supposed Ally who not only harbored Bin Laden, but allowed him and his family to live there in a large home and compound all whilst the U.S was paying Pakistan Billions of dollars to aid it in the War against Terror!
Unlike the Taliban who the U.S ensured paid a very high price for harboring Bin Laden...Pakistan charged the U.S a very high price whilst it accommodated America's greatest enemy and most wanted Terrorist in a comfy home with his entire family!
Pakistan however, has not paid ANY price for its treachery against its Ally except to reap Billions of dollars in aid whilst also at the same time providing support to the Taliban who were also initially created and supplied by Pakistan right from the get go!
But they are our Ally...so I guess that makes all the difference even though it makes no sense at all in a 17 year conflict that has achieved nothing except lots of dead people many and most of which should still be enjoying life versus dying for no acceptable reason , let alone any better or more positive outcome...but only made things worse.
How many more Vietnams, Koreas, Iraqs and Afghanistans (and the many other smaller but bloody "no results" or "worse outcome" actions) will it take before America realises there might be better ways (than in going to war to achieve nothing) to address perceived threats it thinks needs a response.
Waging War shouldn't be one.
1
Yes, bring the troops home, and not just from Afghanistan, but also from Korea, Japan, Germany, Africa, and all the hundreds of other places we have military personnel.
And don't just bring them home, demobilize them and reduce the size of our military - both in cost and numbers of personnel. That would include civilian defense department personnel, too. With a smaller active duty force we need fewer support personnel.
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The problem here is that the probability anyone on the NYT editorial board has spent a single day in a military capacity is just about zero, making their military strategy decisions a bit hollow. Lets stick to talking about things we have at least a minimal amount of experience with, or we risk coming off as arrogant dilettants trying to lecture professionals.
I don't like war either, but we are talking about a conflict in Afghanistan that has now spanned three separate administrations and we obviously don't feel comfortable leaving there yet. We've seen the problem with power vacuums and its clear we don't feel there is a structure to support a functioning society in Afghanistan yet.
2
But how the Russian government manipulated Facebook is crisis, correct?
The U.S. has so little moral standing that the world laughs at our outrage. Scaling back our meddling is simply a baby step, but it still needs to be done.
1
The Times Editorial Board is either naive or disingenuous to believe that the Taliban would honor any pledges to refrain from terrorist attacks against the United States, given the Taliban's quasi-merger with the Haqqani Network. As some of the Times' own reporting has explored, the Haqqani Network has been deeply intertwined with Al-Qaeda since the latter group's foundation (in a Haqqani-sponsored training base), and the Haqqani Network is the "fountainhead" (their own term) of local, regional, and global jihadist terrorism. The Haqqani Network has the motivation and the ability to attack the United States and there is little that we could do to deter them if we withdraw from Afghanistan.
The Taliban will not give ground on their conditions of refusing to talk to the "puppet" Afghan Government and refusing a ceasefire because they know that Trump will cave since he lacks patience and only cares about withdrawal. When we throw the democratically elected Afghan government under the bus, the result will be massive (and probably public) executions of Afghan government and military officials. Maybe you can say that they deserve their fate for being too foolish to realize that partnership with us is doomed because Americans are weak, dishonest, and treacherous. And shame on me for lacking the introspection and wisdom to realize that we will betray those Afghan government officials with whom I worked during two tours in Afghanistan.
1
"The Taliban have paid a very high price for harboring Bin Laden and — whatever their role in the future of the country — are unlikely to trigger a return of American forces by making a similar mistake in the future." Just what is the Times' source for this?
I may be wrong, but I thought the Taliban were fundamentalist religious fanatics who consider it a privilege to die in the fight against infidels? And having survived (bruised and bleeding to be sure) for 17 years, and seeing the Americans leave, just as the Soviets did, how serious can the threat of a US return be taken?
If 14,000 of the 16,000 NATO troops are American, what difference does it really make how many other countries are involved? It seems to be mostly PR at this point... bad PR.
1
We allow politicians and Generals to waste the lives of young Americans and the wealth of our country. While we are off fighting in (according to the NY Times) 80 countries, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China are not going to be cooperative partners. They are there to do trade and make money. When a president, including Trump and Obama, indicate a desire to dial back the war and America's involvement, the Generals and politicians dig in their heals and say we must stay so we are not fighting terrorists in our cities. I was a stupid young man who went to Vietnam so we wouldn't have to fight the communist in California. Strangely enough we are now only fighting Asians for admissions slots in the University of California system.
We are wasting our children's futures by fighting in these endless wars. Look at China building up their infrastructure and watch us spend our money and future on military adventures throughout the world. Take that money and start a war on global warming and the infrastructure and educational systems of the USA. These military adventures and endless wars are our path to decline.
Now, I am no fan of Trump but he has it right on getting out of the Middle East and the New York Times is wrong on planned and gradual withdraw. Leave and make trade and aid deals based on certain behavior. Now the other issues. Global Climate or Warming needs a Manhattan style project. Immigration has to get addressed or we will be facing what Europe faced last year.
1
America's role as the world's police force is a two edged sword. While a sable, safe world is beneficial to U.S. economic growth and our world trading partners, imposing "Americanism" on a world who has become tired of us or no longer idealizes American values breeds resentment and other unintended consequences as well. America has become that house guest who has over stayed their welcome and like 3 day old fish begins to stink. It's time to come home, but keep an eye on our neighbors from afar instead of living their living room.
3
Conducting operations to kill terrorists over there before they can complete plans to blow stuff up over here can be a good idea.
Trying to turn Afghanistan into a functioning democracy (or even a functioning country of any kind) is a fool's errand.
Perhaps if the west committed for 100 years it might work, but a majority of Americans, myself included, oppose such a commitment.
3
The U.S. has failed miserably in Afghanistan.
50% of the country us under Taliban control. The two mediocrities running for president, Ghanzi & Abdullah, are nothing more than U.S. puppets.
Harold MacMillan, a British PM, once presciently observed that the first rule of politics was "never invade Afghanistan".
Time for the US to stop lying to its people. The Afghan war can never be won. get out and leave the country to the Taliban
1
Why is getting out even a question anymore?
Of course some Afghan leaders don't want us to leave - the bags of cash will stop.
Yes, some thousands will die - its the price of our mistake that someone else always has to pay
Yes, we will still have to repair the crippled, damaged soldiers we will live with to their deaths.
Do we study history so we can repeat our mistakes - exactly, precisely, without any error?
2
It's good that you wrote this; it needed to be said.
Rather than planning a withdrawal, I would first like to see the following:
What is the present mission in Afghanistan?
How will we know when that mission is accomplished?
How long will that take?
If we don't address the basic issues, we're just spinning our wheels, spending our wealth, and spending the lives of young people in our military, and in that country.
"Walking away from a war is not a strategy."
Yet it has been America's prime strategy for over 50 years.
2
To rely on intelligence, interdiction, diplomacy and development will require a new American government, money and an educated American population. America is on an isolationist, threat based policy with a willingness to hide behind walls and expensive weapons programs. Today's question is what can we do in the next two years to avoid total disaster given the government we have?
I am amazed that this editorial doesn't mention Vietnam, which also represented an unwinnable war and involved "fig leaf" negotiations that resulted in the take over by the North. But this outcome is unavoidable and the sooner we bite the bullet the better. I believe the only thing that protracted this war was the fear of our commanders in chief that they would be accused of losing Afghanistan. Because Trump ran on a pledge of withdrawal this should no longer be the case and we should get on with it.
4
A welcome editorial, thank you.
As an independent voter not yet supporting any candidate, I'd like to know if the NYT will provide coverage for the only Presidential candidate running on an anti-war platform consistent with this editorial.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's official campaign launch was on Saturday but I missed the coverage. Perhaps the backlash she's getting now is newsworthy, given that she's under vicious attacks and labels based on her efforts to pursue peaceful dialog and negotiations rather than supporting war as the solution to conflict.
That's likely why other less courageous candidates without the strong backbone from being a military veteran and women of color hesitate to speak out. Or maybe they simply are war supporters. Gabbard's stance clearly distinguishes her. She has the courage of her convictions and a willingness to subject herself to attacks.
Like her or not, she's exemplifying leadership. Our young people deserve to see and hear from someone like her, even if she doesn't stand a chance of becoming President, instead of always being exposed to the usual cast of mealy-mouthed politicos. They need examples and role models.
Please give credit where credit is due. It's time for anti-war voices to be heard instead of being shut out of the media. Until they're given more of a voice (there are many), we'll end up with more endless wars and the tragic consequences.
Thank you for starting this conversation. Please don't stop now.
4
@Yellow Girl
Thank you. If only more people could be as reasonable and sincere as you (including myself).
3
Leaving the Taliban in charge in Afghanistan is a betrayal of a people who deserve much better. If we could manage to prevent their resuming the cruel treatment of their own citizens by leaving a sufficient force to resist them, it might be worth the effort. Going into Iraq was the big mistake, not following up on our supplanting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now we should live up to our responsibility, and I'll bet a good number of our military there would have no objection; especially our female soldiers.
1
Some wars are bad. Some are worse. Some are longer.
As always, follow the money. Private contractors, fuel supplies, food, munitions sales, jets, helicopters, uniforms, humvees shipped halfway around the world every day. Enormous profits for someone. We get in return heroin, legless soldiers, PTSD psych trauma and political flag waving. Heck of a bargain.
8
@Michael
Yes, and they get even FAR worse. Once again, business wins and people lose.
Fight first, think later.
1
Given The New York Times' own storied and controversial role in supporting foreign wars since 2001, this op-ed rings hollow.
9
@Sándor
Right on!
3
Ahh yeah. 12 years ago.
1
After 9/11 the US had the moral authority, sympathy and support of most nations to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. No one should have been naive to believe this task would be quick and easy. But then Mr. Bush took his eye off the ball and invaded Iraq. This was akin to poking a fire ant mound. For those that don’t live in Texas or neighboring states, as flipping a light switch instantly brings light, disturbing a fire ant colony instantaneously unleashes the ants from hell. They bite and hang on tenaciously. Neither the proper use of insecticide nor copious amounts exterminates the colony. It just relocates to somewhere else in your lawn or landscaping. Similarly our venture into Iraq resulted in an endless battle to rid the region of malevolent forces which reappear as the insurgents of the Sunni triangle, ISIS etc., etc. etc. The likelihood of peace and freedom from suffering in the region is centuries away as the ideologies and grievances that fuel much of the violence and corruption in the area are centuries old.
3
"The plight of women and girls in Afghanistan has been perilous in wartime, and it could become far bleaker if the Taliban topple the current government and reimpose their barbaric pre-2001 regime."
When I read this article and the accompanying comments I was struck by how short our collective memories seem to be.
George W. Bush was a terrible president in most respects. However, his decision to send troops to Afghanistan was the right one. By the time he decided to do so, the Taliban had been waging a horrific war on Afghani women and girls for some time. Yes, war -- in everything but the technical sense of the term. (The article's statement that the plight of Afghani women and girls was perilous "in wartime" is incorrect; their situation was desperate for many years before the war started, and was one of the reasons Bush finally sent in our troops.)
The articles in this newspaper and The Washington Post before our troops were finally sent in painted the Taliban's war on females as nothing short of barbaric and shocking. After we pushed back the Taliban, the lives of women in Afghanistan improved dramatically. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that Afghani women and girls now have lives, period. By pulling our troops out of Afghanistan now, we will be condemning Afghani women and girls to live in hell again. There has to be a better way than just abandoning them to their fate.
2
Kudos to the editors for getting this one right. Bring the boys home. It’s been wayyyyy too long.
2
Bless Congresswoman Lee. She was this war’s Senator Wayne Morse. Both were the only ones to stand against the costly, failed wars.
5
In scrolling through some of the comments I didn’t see any praise for the Congresswoman across the Bay from me. I know you recognized her in the editorial but can no one else give her credit for getting it right? Being the only person out of 535 to get it right deserves more than a comment in a NYT editorial. I wonder what the news coverage of her vote/comment was like when she delivered it?
2
@Pragmatic
I don't know about the news coverage, but Barbara Lee received death threats as a result of that vote.
1
The war in Afghanistan has accomplished nothing but the deaths of untold numbers of troops and civilians, and further enrichment of war profiteers. If the powers that be cared half as much for the American people as they do fighting wars that can't be won we just might be the great country that we think we are.
2
This editorial, while welcome, comes far too late. Where was this skepticism, courage, reason, and due diligence when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were first proposed? The time to stand fast, speak to power, and save countless lives was then. No matter how dubious or shallow their premises may be, the Times supports US wars when they begin, and almost always finds them bad in hindsight. Your continuing unwillingness to name, objectively analyze, and confront deceptive jingoism when it starts isn't "standing shoulder to shoulder" with fellow citizens, it's a cowardly betrayal of responsible journalism and American lives. Your job isn't to sell readers what the government wants them to believe, or to tiptoe around wrongheaded passions that have gripped the nation. Your job is to investigate, question, and report in the pursuit of truth.
6
This editorial seems to gloss over what will happen to women and girls, longtime victims of the taliban, in such a peace arrangement.
Columnist, activist and sometime Presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan wrote a piece when the troops were sent that Afghanistan is where all empires go to die. 5 trillion in borrowed money and no discernable gains proves him prescient.
1
Just maybe winning isn't everything...
Just maybe...
Geopolitics aside (!), this has become 'The Women's War'... There can be no doubt that an American capitulation will result in the oppression morbidity and death of generations--literally tens of millions--of girls and women. Is there no one to justify 14,000 US troops not in a direct combat role and a chronic but limited treasury drain of $billions to avert this monstrous result? Because this is not a sunk cost case but rather one of marginal cost --the relatively small marginal costs of American presence even if it is only to preserve the status quo not worth the price? Does it not provide us with better negotiation leverage and an opportunity strengthen institutions and human rights?
Just maybe...
And can India (and others...) not be induced to challenge Pakistan to do good by increasing the supply of military and civilian support if the prize is influence over their critical northern neighbor and an opportunity to improve their blemished gender rights record?
Just maybe...
In the sixties we sang 'Where have all the young girls gone....long time passing...' Must they always accompany the young men 'gone to graveyards every one'? 'When will we ever learn?'...
Just maybe...
33
@Chris Parel
Just maybe...
China has more interest in a peaceful region, there, today, then it had a couple of decades ago. If Kandahar has a 3 Happiness take-out in '20, that would be a bit embarrassing for Uncle Sam, but good for all. We (US) can always claim timing was everything.
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Ecc 9:11
3
@Chris Parel The treatment of women in current Afghan Muslim culture and religion cannot be changed by non-Muslims, no matter how good-hearted.
17
@Hypatia
Tell that to the Muslim women and girls who can go to school and walk around today, because we are there, but will be flogged tomorrow, when we are not. Tell that to the Muslims in government and teaching in schools who have worked to secure their freedoms, and may well be killed for it.
Your choice of name is just tragic.
10
Bin Laden found haven in Pakistan , the safe harbor for Islamic extremists .
An unstable Afghanistan allows Pakistan to sell itself to the US and NATO as a stable neighbor and counter-force which essentially entails paying for its oversized military.
Pakistan is also not interested in eliminating the extremist training bases in Afghanistan as they provide a steady supply of terrorists to attack India.
Obama's first state dinner was with the PM of India to remind the Pakistanis that its southern neighbor was a more reliable ally as well as the world's largest democracy. In short Pakistani would be left to its own devices in its dangerous pas de deux with Afghanistan. Of course Trump couldn't pick out India on a map and geopolitics, the fluid connectivity of people and places, does not compute in his small, transactional zero sum mind.
1
Or perhaps we should do what we should have done in 2001-2002, divide Afghanistan into multiple nation states, as a united Afghanistan is an impossibility . Hazarastan (for the long suffering Hazara people), Pashtunland, for the Pashtuns, which would create a counter balance to Pakistan in the region, as Pakistan's Pashtuns have longed for their own land living under the domination of Muslim migrants from India. And a Tajikistan to counter Chinese influence in the north.
Well written piece. I have some guilty feelings when I think of the women and girls that we will leave exposed to the Taliban's worst traits. For a variety of reasons, the time has come to leave Afghanistan. Perhaps a permanent military bas in Iraq would be sufficient.
You simply cannot continue to support, train and protect a government that’s not willing to protect and fight for its rights stronger than its opposition. We should have learned that lesson in Viet Nam. We supported that government with massive American forces and tons of equipment for their own armed forces. At one time the Vietnamese army was the 6 th or 7th largest standing armed force in the world. We left and in less than a year, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong occupied Saigon and quickly renamed it Ho Chi Min City.
End the war, but where do the opiates end up next? We know these farmers won’t change crops today, tomorrow or ever.
What a strange article. It does a good job of presenting statistics. Other than that, there is no useful point made. Right! It's horrible and agonizing and we want it to end, but there has to be a plan to replace the current one that includes a way of helping our friends. It's not about winning, it's about keeping evil dogs at bay lest they take the entire region. You don't just quit because you are tired. Noone should be surprised that this struggle spans generations. History sees many very long wars. That's unfortunately what we signed up for. Didn't 'they' read the fine print?
2
Leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban takes the world backwards 30 years when the USSR pulled out allowing the Taliban to seize control once again, erases the memory of all the lives wasted since then, and leaves the people of Afghanistan in the worst situation possible moving forward.
It is such a tragedy that no one blames Ronald Reagan's administration for this whole mess.
Well done, NYT editorial board. An overdue but comprehensive assessment of a failed occupation.
"... the US military is engaged in … 80 nations on six continents." !!!
Isn't the pressing question: to what ends? Isn't it about time to review the strategy of defending our" interests "by defining those military interests in 'strict construction' as defense of our borders against, well, any invasion by the Canadian or Mexican troops (&, of course, nuclear deterrence.)?
Obviously, with Afghanistan and Iraq we need to ask, what was the deep strategy, really? Did we, as Teheran had to believe, after seeing two of its neighbors taken over by NATO, intend to take the 150,000 man army in Afghanistan, and the quarter million in Iraq and just grab Iran too? Is that why they went fast to the nukes development?
As The T regime moves to use a humanitarian/democracy fig leaf to begin a military adventure in Latin America it is past time to critically look at something like Bolton's Brigade (5,000 troops) being sent to "protect" humanitarian convoys.
The threat of a Nam in more than Venezuela, given hunger and lack of medicine is endemic south of the border, needs serious consideration. Like today.
Use of military power to maintain an empire never succeeds forever... it is time for a new paradigm.
1
Like in Orwell's 1984, we've been a war state for so long that most Americans have forgotten. Long gone are the days of mass protests for Vietnam. Those who profit from war have been so successful at making war nothing more than background noise that most Americans don't hear anymore. Where is this happening? How many maimed and killed? How many families separated, torn apart? How many billions? A trillion? Are we any safer? Is America more loved because of these wars?
I agree; end this war.
2
The hardest thing in the world for both political and military leaders must be to stand up and say out loud, "We've made a horrible mistake. Every dollar, and worse, every life we have spent in this cause has been a total waste." That was the message required in Vietnam and now in Afghanistan. I can more or less understand the thinking to the people who got us into Vietnam--most of us knew we were wrong by 1964, but I can see how it happened. There is no excuse for Afghanistan or our invasion of Iraq.
80
We'd still be in Vietnam if it was up to Conservatives.
4
Afghanistan is, and has been, a country of lawlessness. I agree with a withdrawal of US troops, as it's reached a point where military force can only do so much, and that line is political. American can, however, still exert influence in the way it always ultimately does. We can support development efforts, understanding that the very human traits of greed and corruption run rampant in lawless societies. But it's a carrot, and safer than the current strategy, with hopefully a potential for improved long-term outcomes.
I view the Taliban as an organized crime family with a libertarian belief in its right to grow poppies and export valuable opioids. I was dismayed to read that cultivation is up four times over 2002. The cash flow makes it clear who won the war. No fledgling Afghanistan government can prosper against the massive evil of organized crime. John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, reports that the U.S. military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) says it will not plan, design, or implement new programs to address opium-poppy cultivation.
If the U.S. can’t win a war against poppies grown in an open field; or opium brought over the Southern U.S. border, it may be time to give up. Mr. Trump understands the power of big business, including organized crime business. Perhaps he can make a deal to keep the Afghanistan opium out of the U.S. so we can concentrate on imports from South America. The Afghanistan government, like many governments to our south, must come to terms with the poppy growers on their own.
1
Get out of Afghanistan ? You bet. We should never have set foot in that miserable backward 14th century graveyard in the first place. Our military leaders and politicians that led us into that quagmire should have been booted out of office and even jailed.
2
Nice Call, EB, though it’s many years late. Whatever we learned from the American experience in Vietnam and the Russian experience in Afghanistan was either ignored or overpowered by American hubris—a hubris that seems to be all encompassing and never-ending. Perhaps most shocking is that there was but one voice who spoke out, with her solitary vote, against granting Mr. Bush the nearly unfettered authority to send our men and women to die for another cause contrived.
There was a time, long ago, when I thought we had learned something from our experience in Vietnam, where we initiated and continued a conflict based on lies and willful ignorance. It took a few years before those lies were uncovered and before it became obvious that Vietnam was not a war that could be won. And the media, including the NYT, played an important role in exposing those truths. It has been obvious for many years that Afghanistan was and is a losing proposition, so why is it only now that the NYT editors decide it’s time to get out? Perhaps because the NYT suffers from its own brand of hubris.
The U.S. easily eliminated al Qaeda in Afghanistan and forced the Taliban from power. What happened since, as with South Vietnam, is another failed attempt at nation-building. The expiration date for that effort has long since past. It's time to face the political reality of the failure of the Afghan government to defeat the Taliban and negotiate the best peace deal possible and withdraw our troops. Too many lives have been lost and too many resources squandered.Who knows we just may end up trading with Afghanistan as we now do with Communist Viernam.
It is time that Americans, and the politicians that represent them, understand that US military forces cannot overturn concepts such as extremism without Total War on a foreign population. This is how the US failed in Vietnam and it is how the US has failed in Afghanistan. It is common knowledge that the Bush 43 administration had no understanding of what it would take the win the war and had no exit strategy. Bush 43 is one of the worst presidents in history for this reason.
The American people continue believing this myth that the American military can do anything. What happened when the US dropped the MOAB? The war continued after plenty of damage. Unless the US plans to completely destroy and invade Afghanistan and turn it into a colony, US forces need out. This chapter of American history needs to be done.
Will future leaders learn from this disastrous episode? Well, given that the US politicians learned little from Vietnam, I will go out on a limb and say, no. Just remember that the GOP wants to kill the social sciences in school. I guess that will keep the Military Industrial Complex alive and well so GOP backers can make tons of money on future useless wars.
1
Our failures should be studied for generations. I agree. Let’s study which countries supported, and still support, radical, extremist ideologies; Pakistan, Saudi Arabia- our....allies these long years. Let’s study using the warlords instead of ....retiring them and their power structures early on. Let’s review our history of too quickly anointing puppet government heads (what was that ...Loyal Jurga process (yes my spelling is horrible) that magically disenfranchised the Northern Alliance.) Our typical reliance on roads...road-bound....easily susceptible to IEDs. Horses? Early dismissed- good grief. And the drug trade, the turning away from some Afghan politicians’ penchant for little children....goodness, we can’t impose our values. Look away.
Never mind the women- that’s just collateral damage of our withdrawal. We’ll get over it, even if they won’t.
17, going on 18. Taliban, extremist supporters, win. Kiss the shoulder.
The AUMF by Congress is dangerous as an open ended declaration of war as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was for Vietnam. In 1975, Congress voted to end the US role by cutting war funding. Lessons learned: we weren't winning; efforts to train local forces weren't successful as long as we continued to support them; and most important, nationalism.
The Afghans have never had a centralized government, but nothing unites them more than being occupied by violent interlopers. The US gave assurances to accept refugees from Afghanistan, language interpreters especially, who would be in jeopardy for cooperation with us, which have not been fulfilled.
Congress may not like a two front war -against Trump for border wall building, and against terrorist threats from Southwest Asia, but Congress must assume its responsibility for foreign policy when it comes to war funding.
Solutions with the Taliban must be diplomatic and political. As others have said, the generals will offer victory plans, but soldiers and innocent civilians pay for them with their lives.
Thank you for your editorial. I suppose I agree with it. What else is there to do.
BUT--
--one sentence does not (as far as I can see) make a lot of sense.
IF the Taliban (after this "negotiated capitulation")
--takes over in Afghanistan--
--then YES. They are exceedingly LIKELY to reimpose their "barbaric regime." That INCLUDES their barbaric oppression of women. AND--
--I do not see how any quantity of multi-national get-together's and pow-wows will change that in the slightest.
You say that putting in some sort of ground rules would "be in the interests of all parties." This is a phrase I do not understand.
Since when does the Taliban have "interests"? What "interests"? They are--they always were--a fanatical, super-conservative branch of Islam. Their goal--as far as I can see--has always been to same. Impose their vision of Islam upon the Afghan nation with whips and stones and halters.
Back when they were in power (as I recall) the nation was lapsing into starvation. The Taliban was totally unconcerned. As I recall (and maybe I'm wrong) they spent their time listening to sermons and taking naps.
Walk away from this long, bloody stalemate? Yes--you're probably right, New York Times.
But there'll be a cost. A high and bloody cost, I'm thinking.
So don't let's delude ourselves. If we have to PAY that cost--
--or insist the Afghans pay it--
--let's do it with both eyes open.
They deserve THAT much--
--don't they?
4
@Susan Fitzwater best comment of the day.
Oh, NOW it’s time. Thank heavens.
When people think of the 'military industrial complex' they tend to think of those at the top making all the money. However, if you stop using bullets than you don't need to make more bullets. I use 'bullets' as a catchall to include all things military. How many American jobs rely on the military being somewhere else in the world other than here in the US? If you don't 'use up' equipment there is no need to build more of it. On another note, I wonder how long it will be before Russia starts marching towards Afghanistan again. War would be just as good for Russia's economy.
1
The USSR fell apart because they couldn’t afford to finance and wage the endless wars.
Equally communist China didn’t wage any conflict over the last half of century and they are on the path to become the world largest economic power over the next few decades.
However, our generals don’t see anything wrong with the global corporations exporting the entire US manufacturing sectors and newest technologies as well as the enormous sums of capital to develop and aid our most dangerous competitor.
Why do our general believe that America can afford to fund the never ending global conflicts?
Shouldn’t the West Point graduates understand the very basics of the economics and the nuisances like paying the bills?
It is the economy that wins the wars, not the generals and the metal stars attached to their shoulders…
It’s the brain power and intelect that counts, not the ranks and official hierarchy…
The generals managed to lose every war in history.
That’s why there are no eternal superpowers - neither the Roman Empire nor the Ottomans nor the Spaniards nor the Great Britain - nobody lasted forever.
No society has ever managed to subdue own generals and their untamed cravings for the war glory.
All they wanted for Christmas was to be the next Alexander the Great…
1
In October 2001 when the war began, public support was 94% measured by the polls. We are mighty and we are righteous, and apparently that is enough for most of us, if our leaders say we are in danger. As long as this state of mind continues, defeat will be the only remedy for misadventure. It is too bad it takes so long and costs the lives of so many people. The use of force is not a good remedy for most problems, a fact we have trouble learning since we are so much more powerful than anyone else.
1
We lost the war in Afghanistan in March 2003, the day we went to war in Iraq. Everyone in the world, good guys and bad, outside a few lackeys in Washington, could see that the Iraq war was but a naked grab for oil. Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan himself said as much.
Once you've ceded the moral high ground, you've lost the war.
5
If our leaders would just keep the US out of protracted war, America could better take care of its own and extend a helping hand to some of the needy in other parts of the world. We can't ever do it all; but with endless war behind us, we can make a real difference. All the military and civilian lives lost did not make America safer. All the billions spent on war could have gone toward curing or lessening disease, feeding children, helping the disabled, helping the homeless and drug-addicted -- and so much more. We all know it, but most of our leaders won't lay down the sword. It's way way past time to end the war in Afghanistan.
2
Of course bring the troops home from Afghanistan, and Iraq and Syria. Do it immediately. Our violent interventions served to create tens of thousands bin Ladens. The citizenry of NY, California, much of Europe protested against these wars and were ignored by the majority of our elected officials.
1
The US has spent $1,070,000,000,000 on the war in Afghanistan. The average Afghan income per month is $52. Star Wars meets the Stone Age. it's not surprising to be confused, but 17 years on..
America would be better off if Obama Barack didn’t listen to the warmongering generals who never met any war they didn’t like.
For them there is nothing wrong with the endless wars.
Why?
They are not paying the bills and they are not dying in the front trenches. The only thing they care about are the history books in which they might be recorded as the officers who signed the withdrawal.
Since when is the personal ego of any general more important than the American national interest?
However, for the sake of the truth we must say, if we listened to our generals we would have never invaded Afghanistan.
We would be too busy trying to win the Vietnam War in attempt to confine the global reach of the communism.
Why would any sane president listen to those generals, including Donald Trump?
Don’t they understand that the worst threat to America is coming from the loss of many trillions dollars wasted on waging the global wars?
I read all these comments from people worrying about the women of Afghanistan because they don't have 'rights.' Do the women of America have all the rights we should? Let's worry about violations of human rights here in the US before we ever again try to police the world.
1
The problem with America's Forever Wars is in the indirect (and deliberately obscured) financing, which promotes citizen complacency and ignorance. If the Congress/Pres. were forced by statute to finance a war they wish to start with a publicly stated/shown Federal War Tax on alcohol, gasoline, cigarettes, etc. (stuff that already has a federal tax schedule) and a surtax on estate taxation, then citizen buy-in would last as long as citizens would willingly put up with direct cost$. Guaranteed to shorten the excesses of politicians and the DOD.
((((Remember: American Presidents JFK—Nixon unnecessarily killed 50,000 soldiers in VietNam (knowing there was nothing to win) and many more Vietnamese because they were concerned about re-election and not much else. Shameful what they do.)))
3
@Theo D
You forgot to manyion Lyndon Johnson’s part in the death of 50,000 Americans not to mention the thousands who were physically and mentally scarred for life.
@jwgibbs My punctuation means JFK through Nixon. Yes, LBJ was awful in this regard and even let himself be recorded worrying about re-election. Nixon was pretty awful with the phony "secret plan" promised in the same campaign in which he treasonously conspired to kibosh LBJ's peace process. Effectively the same settlement occurred under Gerald Ford except for additional 15,000 deaths and all of the additional trauma, too.
Donald Trump is two years into his term. When he started, he wanted us out of these wars. As a new newly elected President he was convinced to stay by our military leaders and he gave them the resources and command they asked for. But time has shown his initial instincts to be correct and he has begun pulling us out of these theaters.
In response to Trump’s announcements, Mattis resigned and this paper and the rest of the establishment pronounced certain doom. Again. Now, this paper has decided that we need to exit Afghanistan and they criticize President Trump because he hasn’t got the first 7000 troops out yet.
I understand that it is this paper’s policy to hate Trump with with every fiber of their being. To criticize every breath he takes. You should reconsider, however, just how intelligent such a policy is. This editorial should have been complimentary to at least his intentions to get us out of these occupations. It would have been helpful in many ways. But you can’t control yourselves either.
2
You simply cannot continue to support, train and protect a government that’s not willing to protect and fight for its rights stronger than its opposition. We should have learned that lesson in Viet Nam. We supported that government with massive American forces and tons of equipment for their own armed forces. At one time the Vietnamese army was the 6 th or 7th largest standing armed force in the world. We left and in less than a year, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong occupied Saigon and quickly renamed it Ho Chi Min City. How does that expression go about continuously repeating history?
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
1
It's not about "bring the soldiers home." They're not dying over there any faster than they'd be dying on the freeways over here. What we need to bring home is the money we're funneling into the gigantic American defense industry -- money that is not being spent to keep our country modern and competitive.
4
I think the best option is for US Forces to leave Afghanistan as soon as reasonably possible and hand over external influencing to the cited 'regional players': Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Iran. Encourage them to form a consortium that will promote what Americans, I believe, hope for most: Afghan women getting access to education.
These countries may not be paragons of democracy, but their women generally have access to education. In their 'old world' ways of dealing, these neighbors can mix economic incentives with subtly 'modernizing' Afghan society.
Conservatism in the face of advancing technology is what holds back societies (USA included). A Taliban-led Afghanistan is the poster-child of backwardness. Let its neighbors move it forward.
As one who has marched against foolish wars for 50 plus years, it is heartening to see a glimmer of sunrise after decades of darkness. And may I exhort your readers to listen to Tulsi Gabbard's 26 minute speech from this weekend formally announcing her candidacy for the Democratic nomination to run for president. She truly understands the complexities of war and the way our eternal war machine deprives Americans of a better life.
1
I think that it would be unwise to announce our intentions for a full withdrawal before we see the results of the talks with the Taliban. Announcing a withdrawal while the talks are in progress would seriously weaken our position and ability to achieve any concessions from this fierce enemy. Why should they agree to anything at all if they know the decision to leave has already been made? Another reader pointed to the dangers to women and children and the flood of desperate refugees that will result from withdrawal. And under our current administration, ironically and horribly, these desperate refugees may not be welcomed by the very country whose soldiers have fought so bravely to protect them. This is a time to put a full-scale effort into peace talks.
1
Afghanistan is not our problem to solve, if it is even solvable at all.
Focus on fixing America.
4
Always listening to the generals will always produce the same results. Is there one time in our history that military leaders have agreed that they don't need more troops or that it's just time to leave?
2
Apparently Mr. Trump’s meeting with the publisher and management of the New York Times was successful. Just one great story.....
1
You do what you must, what you believe is right.
But hear me well.....America broke it's promise.
Perhaps the promise should never have been made. Perhaps it was made in good faith against impossible conditions, or in bad faith in good ones.
But it was nonetheless made and then broken. The world will not forget that, least of the people who gambled everything on that promise. Future generations will take a lesson from it, and see the American government for what it has become; an unreliable and feckless force. To be taken lightly. To be pushed around. To be disregarded. To be ignored.
Never again will we know this kind of power and influence. Perhaps that is a good thing, as now we can finally concentrate our remaining strengths inward on building the fair and compassionate Union our forefathers could only have dreamed of, rather than wasting away our best and brightest on foreign misadventures.
But it is also a dangerous thing, because the wolves are still out there. Putin. China. And God only knows who else. They won't be idle. We are not an island in an empty sea. This world's problems will impose itself on us, sooner or later, whether we like it or not. We must be ready to meet that challenge when it comes. And we will need all the friends we can get when it does.
4
@AJ Garcia
"And we will need all the friends we can get when it does. "
Which is why we should stop destroying countries with our bombs and should stop trying to impose our religious values on them.
1
Afghanistan? When does the US military ever go home? OK, Vietnam was one case, but when is the US military going to reduce it's presence in Japan or Europe or a hundred other places where the wars ended decades ago? Seriously, when we go broke like the Soviets which is one of those things that can't happen - until somehow it does.
1
Bringing our troops home will not end the war.
Let's end the war, then bring our troops home.
2
The problem of terror is the problem of statelessness (compounded by Saudi export of fanaticism and other players' national interests, addressed below).
We destroyed the state in Afghanistan to make trouble for the Russians, and the terrorists out of that stateless mess caused 9/11. Then we destroyed the state in Iraq. Then we destroyed the state in Syria and Libya, and have allowed statelessness to continue in Somalia, to develop further in Yemen, and now in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. These are monstrous idiocies with incalculable human costs.
We need to legalize and reasonably regulate all recreational drugs to de-fund terrorists around the world, especially in Afghanistan. We need to support the creation of states, and focus those states on the rule of law (not on democracy) such that feudal and mafia-like "warlord" relations are replaced with respect for law and legally-found facts.
America needs to "build states," or, more precisely, pick a local warlord and help him build a state, with our only requirement being that it be an actual state with rule of law. "Democracy" can come later. Without a legal system, democracy means nothing, and the capacity for democracy cannot develop without legality.
Finally, we need to be more willing to use force against Saudi and Pakistani "allies," and other "friends" who have sown chaos for their own ends. It is not time to "come home." It is time to "be competent" in our use of force to rebuild world order.
1
@Craig Mason Clear eyed response. The US military should be ordered to impose order and establish the rule of law first, before attempting to nurture democracy in societies with no history or traditions make democratic leadership happen virtually overnight.
We Americans are most comfortable in action. Not for us the dispassionate assessment of a course of action before we commit to it.
Any one who dared to analyze the reasons behind 9/11 was judged insufficiently patriotic if not outright treasonous. Yet, had we analyzed the causes behind the attack, we would have seen the danger of an open ended war on an enemy that was supposedly every where.
Even now we continue to act in the Middle East as if it is within the sphere of American power, the Monroe Doctrine extended far beyond the Atlantic Ocean.
Why should we dictate to the nations in the Middle East how they should manage their foreign policies, labeling as "terrorist" any country who does not follow our wishes? Unless they are directly hurting the United States, why should we get involved in their quarrels?
We are hated in the Middle East because we have consistently supported the monarchies and military dictators who imprison and kill their citizens for actions that would be perfectly normal and lawful in US.
I don't see the kind of introspection that is needed if we are not to repeat this mistake again. In spite of so called free press, our mainstream media says the same thing, leaving the diversity of views to be expressed by less known entities.
I hope we have become wiser. I don't want my grandchildren to be fighting another of these senseless wars in years to come, but I am not very optimistic.
4
The war in Afghanistan should have never taken place and the Times shouldn't have supported it. It was a monumental folly leading to the destruction of much of Afghanistan and loss of thousands of civilian lives.
The US doesn't seem to learn from history. The Brits were never able to bring it under their control and the Soviets got stuck in the Afghan quagmire eventually retreating. History repeats itself!
2
The premise of this article isn't correct. The Taliban didn't refuse to hand over Osama bin Laden. President Bush simply refused to negotiate with the Taliban about how, when or where the Taliban could or would capture and hand over bin Laden.
So, with blind hubris, jingoism, thuggery and cynicism, President Bush plunged into war without negotiation.
On departing from Afghanistan, US and allied forces have the choice of leaving a stable, sustainable democracy (including the participation of the Taliban in the government), or leaving a civil war dominated by a theocratically inclined Taliban. I want the US to choose democracy.
There may be nothing else on which I agree with Mr. Trump, but his administration is right to negotiate with the Taliban.
1
Spineless politicians who put their election before country. And, a media campaign at the front of the pack beating the war drums. A big thank you should go to Barbara Lee for having the courage to vote NO! Afghanistan should have been in-and-out, no more than 6 to 9 months! Afghanistan has become and abyss just like Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq!
1
Wow! The editorial board was praising something Trump is doing without giving him a hint of credit. Well done!
3
Two simultaneous fronts, one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq, is never easy. What made Georgia's Saakashvili think President Bush would be foolhardy enough to want to open a third one there is anybody's guess.
Barbara Lee had the guts and prescience to say what some are only now acknowledging. I felt, right from the start, that the invasion of Afghanistan was unjustified. Americans felt deeply violated after 911, and there was an appetite to lash out. So, on the justification of destroying the training grounds of the bombers, the US and its allies invaded a whole country and have occupied it ever since. Later, other justifications were used: bringing democracy to Afghanistan, women’s rights, opium production, and the general war on terror. All have been exposed as shams. I suppose many Americans are concerned about the waste of their money and their soldiers’ lives. As someone whose country (Canada) also participated in this travesty, I am more concerned about what has happened to the people of Afghanistan - the deaths, injuries and the plunge into anarchy. An American withdrawal will undoubtedly produce negative results, but the continuation of occupation will be far, far worse.
4
$5.9 Trillion is an incredible amount of money. Imagine what could have been accomplished if that money had been spent at home, rather than squandered moving troops around and supporting corrupt regimes. We could have had the $1 Trillion infrastructure plan, plus universal health care and preschool. Or maybe just that much less debt owed to the Chinese and others. America's priorities are all wrong. We worship the military while it bleeds us dry.
6
I agree that "terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy force that can be defeated, and it knows no borders. It can be thwarted in certain instances, but it cannot be ended outright". Based on this standard, Trump is right to withdraw our forces from Syria as well. We went there to eliminate ISIS caliphate and we achieved that. We should have withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq after achieving our initial objective of overthrowing of oppressive governments there that supported terrorists, instead of trying nation building. So it is time for bringing our boys and girls home. Trump is doing right, though many are criticizing him.
1
@Alex E
Those opposing Trump in this are in thrall to the military-industrial-Congressional complex. For once Trump is correct and we should support him in this initiative, regardless of our other problems with him.
1
We've done everything we can for Afghanistan. There is nothing more we can really accomplish there, except for spending our own treasure and blood, when the funds can be used for infrastructure spending here at home. At this point, it's got to be up to the people of Afghanistan to have the will and the ability to compromise and find solutions for Afghan problems. It's definitely time for us to leave.
2
Oh no, we can’t end the war in Afghanistan! That is what Trump wants to do and therefore it must be wrong. Besides, it will reduce the big profits of all of those military suppliers and contractors who make huge campaign contributions to members of Congress. And don’t forget about all of the defense workers in the US who will become unemployed because of less demand for their products and services.
3
As it so often does, the Times Editorial Board addresses this serious question of whether the continuation of this US military intervention in Afghanistan is necessary solely from a strategy perspective, i.e., whether it's working, whether it goals have been met, whether this 18 year US commitment to this cause has been worth the cost in lives and treasure.
The progressive left in this country rejects using this perspective as the sole analytical basis for discussion.
What must be examined, we believe, - and hardly ever is in editorials like this - should be: Who benefits? Where does a huge chunk of this almost $2 trillion in US spending go and how does it get there? It goes to the military industrial complex, the arms manufacturers and dealers, the Halliburtons and all the rest. And how does it get there? How have they made sure this river of wealth and profits would keep flowing into their coffers for all these 18 years? They bribed US congress persons and senators with their unbridled campaign finance spending. That's one powerful reason this 18 years of military madness in Iraq and Afghanistan continues on without surcease. And electing progressives to the US House and Senate who vow to refuse money from any corporate donors, their wealthy backers, and PACs is one powerful way to stop it.
1
@bigbill
To have members of Congress who will refuse these obscene 'donations' (read 'bribes') we must enact term limits for all members of Congress. Yes, this will take a Constitutional Amendement, but the effort would be worth it if it helps clean up Congress and end the power of the donors who keep our legislators on life support.
1
@farhorizons
Many have suggested, as you have, that invoking a constitutional convention to enact term limits for all members of Congress or to repeal the US Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is the way to go. However many constitutional experts warn that a constitutional convention may open the door to the enactment of many other, more harmful, changes to our governing document beyond those you and others espouse as set out above. Another suggestion to stop the 'obscene" donations (as you correctly describe them) is campaign finance reform. However one session of congress enacts such reforms while two sessions later they are weakened or repealed. No, I respectfully suggest and urge that one very powerful solution lies in this movement wherein now many progressive (and why not all?) candidates running for Congress, state and local office, etc. vow to refuse campaign donations from these corporate entities and their wealthy backers and PACs. So candidates for office should cut them off by refusing their campaign finance funding at the outset and thereafter when they seek to gain control and keep control of elected officials by funding their initial and subsequent election campaigns. If you refuse their money, they cannot control you. Isn't that the solution?
1
While the war in Afghanistan has proven to be another Vietnam and our departure at some point is inevitable, this editorial glosses over the risk that a withdrawal will cause to the millions of women and girls who will be subjected to subjugation and oppression under the Taliban. For the past 17 years, girls have been able to go to school, women are practicing as doctors, lawyers, business entrepreneurs, and public officials. They have been able to dress as they see fit. Once we leave and the Taliban take control, all this will end and women will once again be enslaved and beaten for the audacity to be seen in public with exposed ankles. If we are to leave, we must be willing to accept Afghan refugees who need to flee from the persecution of the Taliban.
Finally.
Sadly, it is the politicians’ share of that $6 Trillion of completely wasted taxpayer IOUs that will drive the attempt to prevent any diminution of the largesse.
2
We should never have sent troops in the first place. Cruise missiles and smart bombs would have accomplished everything we needed to do (take out Al Qaeda training camps), in combination with money for airport security. It was a colossal misjudgment to view the fight against terrorism as a conventional "national" war, just as the Iraq war destabilized the whole Mideast.
Unfortunately, we're now in a different place, dealing with the mess GW left us, compounded by Obama's failed attempt to remove Bashar Al Assad. I'm no isolationist, but America has made almost as much of a mess of the world as Britain did. So should we leave a small force? Regrettably, yes, just as some should be left in Syria. Perhaps a UN presence would be better than just the American coalition.
3
Before we put our first troops into Afghanistan, there were voices warning us not to get involved in the same tar pit that had swallowed up Soviet soldiers and efforts for 10 years. The Soviet occupation led to a civil war and a million+ deaths. We haven't fared much better. Not only have way too many soldiers died there, but many more have come home with deep emotional scars. The financial toll on the US has been heavy and seems endless. And Afghanistan is still a quagmire. I had hoped for better, much better. Not any more. Let's get out.
4
I have never served in the armed forces. Yet, I benefit from all that this great country offers. In the past several years, there were many moments when I was comfortable seated at my dinner table when PBS News hour would broadcast the names of soldiers with their photographs who died in different wars and they broadcast them in silence. I am struck by the sadness and poignancy of the moment. Almost all of them young enough to be my children. They say it is a voluntary army but it does not take long before it is clear that they have been conscripted by need (jobs, economy, education) although all of them become men and women of valor and dignity. I know somewhere a Gold Star parents are mourning an irreplaceable loss. And it begs the question what is the worth of an American soldier's life to our politicians and the military industrial complex! Do we still value them as we did of the greatest generation? Are they still seen as members of greatest fighting force in the history of mankind? Or they just pawns in the political games we see on television. Did we not see the vicious debate when President Obama traded prisoners to obtain release of a
sick soldier captured in Afghanistan? What is true support of our solider means? It is sending them in harms way only if we truly believe it strengthens what American stands for, it is providing healthcare to those who have been injured physically and mentally (PTSD) and finally providing a way forward to the returning soldier.
1
You wrote, "The military has given honorable service."
Our soldiers have, but they always do.
The generals should be court-marshaled for allowing this travesty to go on for decades. But they got their promotions and pensions and sweet jobs in the private sector, so for them I guess it was worthwhile.
6
Any honest reckoning with the U.S.'s involvement in Afghanistan should begin with a discussion of Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's 1977 plan to lure the Soviet Union into what he later called "the Afghan Trap" by encouraging an Islamist insurgency in response to the left-wing Afghan government's efforts to break the grip of feudalism through land reform and expansions of the rights of women.
Afghanistan in 1977 was a poor but modernizing society in which women enjoyed a degree of freedom they still don't have under the present US-supported regime and of course they are immeasurably more traumatized after the 40 years of war. Photos of Kabul University from that era are heartbreaking evidence of the immense human costs of the US policy.
The causes of the conflict in Afghanistan that prompted the 1979 Soviet intervention were complex, but US support for the 1977 military coup that overthrew the left-leaning Bhutto government and initiated the dictatorship of General Zia-al-Huq in neighboring Pakistan -- through which much US support for the Islamist insurgency would flow -- played a critical role in aggravating the situation.
As the NYTimes beats the drum in support of a coup d'etat in Venezuela that is likely to plunge that country into civil war, some deeper reflections on the costs of similar US-sponsored efforts -- in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973, in Pakistan in 1977, to name only a few - might be in order.
7
A wonderful, thoughtful comment.
By a 68-23 margin our Senate has voted to keep a war going that no longer has an effect on US National Security. No more lives should be lost there. It's time to consider this dangerous policy of fighting wars without a draft. Something as serious as War especially one that's been going 17 years is a horrendous drain on those who serve and a disgraceful reminder that our country seems to be ok with this "Let those Guys/Gals fight over there" attitude. The quality and quantity of policy and military decisions would at the very least have more urgency to get the job and get our military home in a more timely matter. It would also put Washington on greater notice about getting involved and getting the job done because the country would have more of the populace involved in the fight.
1
"may not be achievable, and certainly aren’t achievable without resources the United States is unwilling to invest."
This is the key to deciding whether to stay. The traditional force ratio for counterinsurgency is 20 soldiers per 1,000 civilians. Are we willing to station 700,000 troops in Afghanistan? If the answer is no, then we should withdraw.
3
Once NATO forces leave, any treaty will be impossible to enforce. Once the US is gone, we aren't going back. The Taliban is perfectly aware of this political impossibility. Absent another 9/11 scale attack, a 2nd US mission in Afghanistan isn't happening. If there is another massive terrorist attack originating in Afghanistan though, the disaster has already happened. The treaty will have failed.
We're just going through the motions. This is a Nixon style surrender. Once we leave, the Taliban are going to overwhelm the Afghan government and the Taliban can do whatever they want again. We never sent troops back into Vietnam. We're not sending troops back into Afghanistan. "Negotiated capitulation" is just another way of saying "honorable peace." It means surrender.
Of course, no one has a better alternative. That's why Afghanistan is the forever war. There is no exit with even a partial victory. There isn't going to be an international coalition dedicated to preventing terrorism in Afghanistan. We all have different definitions of what constitutes "terrorism." Your terrorist is potentially my ally and vice versa. Don't pretend there is an upside; there is no upside.
Withdraw means surrender followed by a humanitarian crisis of unknown proportions. Are you okay with that? If not, we keep fighting.
@Andy
We already have a humanitarian crisis of unknown proportions. I'm not okay with that but time has proved that we can't solve this problem; only the Afghans can.
When the US initiated its adventure in Afghanistan what was overlooked was that external forces tend to not do well in Afghanistan. Alexander the Great, one of the finest military minds to ever live, never prevailed there and gave up. The Russians, with their brutal spetsnaz troops, finally gave up and went home. The US is in the same mess. It’s long been said that nobody wins in Afghanistan except the Afghans. If we wanted to eliminate specific terrorists they should have been targeted and eliminated by special operations forces using time tested special ops surgical tactics: speed, surprise and overwhelming violence of action. As usual, those in the US are convinced that everyone in the world thinks like we do and has our values. Wrong! Pashtun culture is very different than ours. They have little use for centralized government but rather are village oriented with strong tribal affiliations. In many cultures, democracy and social justice are not looked upon favorably despite the US predilection for spreading it like a bunch of evangelists ringing your doorbell to hand you pamphlets and save your soul. We made the same mistake in Vietnam and got our butts kicked. We forget the words of a former president, John Quincy Adams, to applaud countries embracing democracy but to not go forth beyond our borders looking for dragons to slay. Yes, it’s time to realize our efforts in Afghanistan are just as futile as our efforts in Vietnam were. It’s time to learn from history.
5
I’m old enough to remember this paper calling Ron Paul a crazy isolationist for saying we should bring our troops home back in 2006-7. But we needed to spend another 12 years of blood and treasure to prove him right eh?
6
Unless we decide to make Afghanistan the 51st state, ahead of Puerto Rico, we need to withdraw our troops. We cannot impose our cultural values on another country. If it is important enough for the women that live there, to keep the freedoms they have now, then they will need to fight for them, just as women in the West did, for their rights.
3
@MarkKA: Women can return to the struggle after jail. Much harder after being beheaded. Let'em fight for it, like American women, eh?
@Berck Yes, let THEM fight. If it's a choice between a young American guy getting his arm blown off, or a female Afghan guerrilla fighter, I'll go with the Afghan. I fail to see why this is problematic?
I remember all the ridicule and accusations of unpatriotism thrown at Barbara Lee and anyone who dared oppose the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Tragically, it included the NYT which acted as big cheerleaders for Bush adventures.
5
@Chris Many were cheerleaders, including the public. I remember the deafening pronouncements that "we need to fight them there instead of here".
I remember well the politicians and media trying to be the first in line to cheer this endless conflict.
I remember well those who were quietly opposed to any long-term invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were placed on the platter of "unpatriotic".
So, many "went along to get along", this publication included.
Sadly, our patriotism is now measured not by love of the country, but by supporting the wishes and whims of presidential and congressional decisions regardless of the soundness of those decisions.
However, many realize their support of some issues may put them on the wrong side of history and attempt to correct that support-this publication included.
1
I only wish Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice. A trial and sentence would have contrasted nicely with the form of justice he sought and wrought.
I have just one condition for us quitting Afghanistan: the Taliban must commit to not allowing terrorist to base themselves there. We invaded after the Taliban refused on extradite bin Laden. We stayed ostensibly so that neither he nor anyone else could stage another massive terrorist operation.
This must be, the end of sending troops to fight truism aboard.
We have the ability to fight them with guiderd missiles form the air or from Submarines.We can outlast them without the loss of lives,
1
@Joe Blow: Guided missiles have been known to cost lives.
@Berck
There is always collateral damage in warfare it cannot be avoided. the only way to avoided it, is for the Host country of the Terrorists to rid their country of Terrorists.
1
"Yet it’s also possible that a decision to withdraw could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan and deny terrorists a regional base."
It is possible that Amazon may consider using flying pigs to deliver its goods to households across the nation. But unlikely.
A war that has persisted longer then both world wars, Korea and Vietnam combined continues for a reason having nothing to do with terrorism or achieving victory over our enemies. The fact that more "contractors" (mercenaries) than US soldiers have died in the fighting provides one hint. International plans for gas and oil pipelines across Afghanistan another.
Mull 6 trillion dollars for a moment considering our national debt, crumbling infrastructure, failing public schools, and vampirish healthcare system. And yet, we have nothing to show for the lives sacrificed and minds and bodies crippled.
Do the right thing, do the selfish thing, let the Afghanis fend for themselves.
3
The terrorists came to America and killed almost three thousand civilians on the 9/11/2001.
It is impossible to defeat the enemy by embracing their logic and worldviews.
It is impossible to defeat the Al Qaeda by imitating them, crossing the oceans and killing the hundred times more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.
By doing it we just embraced and promoted the terrorist system of values and their life objectives.
That’s why we have failed to defeat the initial few thousand terrorist hiding in the Afghan caves even after spending several trillion dollars on waging the wars against them.
We actually spent several trillion dollars on promoting their way of thinking.
We cannot defeat our enemies by hating them.
Love is opposite to hatred. Love is the deadly antidote to every wrong, self-destructive kind of ideology.
Ms Lee was derided as a coward and unpatriotic. She was the only individual in Congress to have the guts to stand up and say what was on her mind. Mass desertion of responsibility and accountability under a patriotic guise by the other members of Congress, We talk about the American dead and wounded. What about the people who live there? They have been starved, bombed and relocated, their lives lost and destroyed. We don't like untidy and brutal images on our media, prefer to think of war as a Disneyland exercise, where the Lion King eats the antelope out of view of the audience. What kind of people are we? Perpetually at war.
4
@Nev Gill
Probably the most sickening display was Tom Daschle giving George W. Bush a huge bear hug before a joint session of Congress, thereby cementing Democrats' complicity in the matter. And for all Daschle's reach at pompous bipartisanship, Republicans then promptly went out and defeated him in the next election.
There is sufficient commentary on this subject by the Times op-ed columnists and editorial board to show that the current pious position is hypocritical. How often did we read that President Trump opposed the good judgment of intelligence chiefs when he suggested withdrawal? Selective references in this editorial don't cut the mustard.
5
Yeah, but, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, folks. The article calls for an “orderly withdrawal” at the same time as it presses it’s case of the utter disfunctionality of the country and it’s governing class.
There’s only one way to leave. Leave. Whatever happens after that will happen, and we probably won’t care much for it. Likewise the lingering threat that “we’ll be back” if things get nasty after we leave. This isn’t a Schwartzneger movie. Those are the sort of half-step feel good bromides this editorial page indulges in far too often.
It’s time to go, so let’s go, and spare us the wish washy mumbo jumbo. Go.
We did it in Iraq, and things turned out about as well as we possibly could have expected. No, these colors don’t run. But they certainly should be smart enough to walk out the door when the room stinks.
1
Yes, I totally agree with the Times but I can hardly bare the useless horrors put upon our brave, patriotic soldiers and the people of Afghanistan.
The United States has shown again, as in Vietnam, its crazy lust for useless blood and destruction.
Homo sapiens? Sapiens is definitely the wrong word.
2
Great idea! President Trump has proposed to do this, but because he's Trump, the usual suspects have all come out against the idea. The NYT should also start standing up to the cyber-bullies who smear anyone who objects to our "Forever Wars" as being a Russian stooge. Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard springs instantly to mind as someone who is targeted with McCarthyite slurs whenever she advocates ending our splendid little wars of aggression.
3
Every time I see Barbara Lee I thank her for her vote. Too bad she was the only one
4
The long American occupation of Afghanistan is just one more example of American ignorance of history. Alexander the Great saw his empire start to decline because of Afghanistan. The British wasted their empire on Afghanistan. The collapse of the Soviet Union was hastened by Afghanistan. Afghanistan will be the end of the American empire as well. We should have left when Bush and Cheney allowed Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora. If not then, clearly we should have left when Obama caught up with Bin Laden in Pakistan.
The only thing Afghans hate more than each other is an occupying army. Time for us to go.
181
@Peter,
I absolutely agree with your point. The contemporary accounts of Britain's misadventures in "the Graveyard of Empires" are chilling--and familiar. We seem unwilling or unable to learn from history. Imagine what good could have been done right here in the United States with the money we have poured into the miserable sinkhole of Afghanistan!
14
@Peter But think of all that taxpayer money that's gone to our military contractors and defense industries. Gosh, you wouldn't want to harm their profits, would you?
10
@Peter
Sorry, but your analysis that invading Afghanistan equals failure is simply nonsense. Genghis Khan had no such trouble.
The correct historical lesson to draw is not that one avoids fighting or occupying Afghanistan, but rather that one should not over-commit time, troops, and resources to a minor problem while ignoring major problems. Al Qaeda was a one-trick pony, and while the smoke was still rising from lower Manhattan, safeguards were already in place to ensure that no 9/11-style attack would ever succeed again.
Afghanistan, and the Taliban in particular, deserved every bit of the pounding that we gave them in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The only reason we foundered and are still there is because of the invasion of Iraq.
7
Joe Biden, in 2009, argued for pulling out most troops, leaving a small contigent of special forces and trainers.
Instead of listening to his VP, a green president with little foreign policy experience listened to his generals. The result was that in the 8 years of the Obama presidency, more Americans died in Afghansitan than during the Bush presidency. Other than postponing the inevitable, what was gained to justify the loss of life?
141
@Hugh Obama was the best President of my lifetime but like LBJ, he failed in one important area: Have the spine to pull the troops out after killing Bin Laden.
Obama was fortunate there was no draft and he was smart enough to keep the blood letting small volume.
He had no Walter Cronkite commanding a huge national audience every night on TV. Fewer than 1% of American citizens fought this war, as mercenaries in most respects. Had more had "skin in the game," this ware would have been over long ago.
22
@Hugh That is exactly why POTUS needs to listen, but often ignore military and intel "advisors"
4
@WiseGuy If Trump listens to his military advisors regarding Afghanistan we will be there forever. He is, for once, right. We should not have military outposts all over the world.
19
While my heart goes out to the Afghan people, particularly women and girls, who will have to live under the Taliban, I have to admit that they do not benefit from a U.S. presence in their homeland. Obama had the right idea when he wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan but he did not heed Eisenhower's warning--beware the military-industrial complex. This protracted war has made billionaires of a few, created misery for millions and is bankrupting our nation.
186
@Jacqueline Gauvin - difficult but brilliant comment.
4
There are rare moments when a liberal must acknowledge a decision from the political opposition that is correct and necessary for our country. We have been engaged in a series of endless wars everywhere and in Afghanistan 17 years of blood and money and sorrow is the harvest that we have reaped. I hold great reservations on how the decisions were made but here in this instance withdrawal is the right course of action. We have been torn with conflicting “lessons” to be learned from history, one of appeasement, the other found in Vietnam. Which lesson must we evoke now? There is a smell of retreat in the air if you are of my generation where a president promised that America would go anywhere, pay any price in the name of Democracy. Yet there is another odor that of the blood of our soldiers on flooded fields of rice and the damp rotting stench of a jungle and that smell we should remember too. Two compelling narratives which to choose from? This not an easy question to answer, not a simple right or wrong there will be consequences no matter which is followed. End our war in Afghanistan, is my voice, is my troubled voice. What say you my fellow Americans, what say you?
59
@Richard Kinne Oh and don't forget the "light at the end of the tunnel". Any day now.
4
@Richard Kinne
Agreed. End it.
5
@Richard Kinne
May I thank RK for a thoughtful, articulate and intelligent post about the complex and challenging realities of our world. My answer is to be the best I can be...and still hope and imagine our country might be the best it can be as an example for the world.
5
Let's extract something out of Afghanistan ( and Kurdistan too). Let's implement an American version of the China Belt and Road Strategy. In Afghanistan let's mine and process rare earth elements are essential to high tech medical, clean energy, telecommunication, and military devices. We can control and operate such sites and offer employment to USA managers and coal miners looking to earn a living with their skills. Keep locals away since they would pose a security risk. Let's salvage something tangible from this mess.
@Told you so
How about if we just leave Afghanistans to the Afghans and let them decide who will do what for them.
A blank check indeed.
No one ever said then, or even says much now, how can we pay for it? The nation just forges ahead, spending on the military as if there is no tomorrow, while the country literally crumbles around us, government workers stand in food lines, young adults can't afford to get a higher education or, if they try, find themselves in debt for most of their adult life, and Americans go without health insurance.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
133
@avrds When will WE ever learn?
5
@avrds
They will only Learn if they stop stop their Yearn to Earn...
...as much as they can, regardless of the cost to any, all and others, as long as it's not to them.
4
I am not informed enough to understand this stalemate as well as others but I can say one thing with certainty. We have been training Afghans to fight their own war for 17 years. On the present course, we will soon be training the sons and grandsons of the original soldiers. Either we have lousy training or the trained soldiers are incapable or unwilling to pass along the knowledge gained.
In either case, the conclusion is the same. We've done our part. How the Afghans continue is totally up to them.
3
I could not disagree more about leaving Afghanistan. We have influenced a generation of millions of Afghan women and girls to be more free, educated and Westernized. If we leave we will be throwing them under the Taliban bus. Millions more desperate Afghan refugees will head to Europe as more of the country is attacked and falls to the Taliban. The the tsunami of Syrians were destablizing for European politics. Millions more Afghans, who are already the second largest group of refugees, will create a new crisis. Their presence will fuel extreme right-wing parties allied with Russia. But mostly, it would be despicable and shameful for the United States to abandon so many women and girls, heavily influenced by us, to medieval slavery under the Taliban.
28
@hb: "I could not disagree more about leaving Afghanistan. We have influenced a generation of millions of Afghan women and girls to be more free, educated and Westernized. If we leave we will be throwing them under the Taliban bus."
How long would you like us to say in order to guarantee everyone's safety?
33
@hb Enough women and girls there have learned to read that it may be possible to spark amongst themselves a movement to advance out of slavery. The seeds have been planted, and it may ultimately be Afghan women who lead Afghanistan out of the Middle Ages. We can't do it for them.
14
@hb
If that is the purpose of US troops occupying Afghanistan, why haven't we also invaded Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the numerous other countries where women are second-class citizens?
15
As I recall, the Afghan government was trying to negotiate the turnover of Bin Laden when we rushed in and sent him fleeing to the mountains.
My war was Vietnam. It has become clear to the world that the intel was cooked regarding Tonkin Gulf to get congress to vote for that war.
Yes we do rush to war because it is a racket as General Smedly Butler pointed out in his book, WAR IS A RACKET.
4
The plight of women is just as dire in Saudi Arabia as it was and will be in Afghanistan when the Taliban take control of more of the country.
There is a form of Islam that is medieval, has not changed for centuries and women's sexuality is received as a threat. The US is not going to change that.
The Taliban were able to take over Afghanistan after the Russians left because the government that replaced the Russians was corrupt beyond belief and by contrast the Taliban did not look so bad.
The Pashtuns have been fighting outsiders from time immemorial and will continue to do so. It is what they do.
We have done all we can and it is time to leave as the British and the Russians did.
If Trump does one good thing in his presidency it will be to tell the generals they are not telling the truth about Afghanistan and worse have never told the truth and bring the troops home along with any Afghans that are at risk for helping us.
48
@Edward B. Blau, the Pashtun have not been around since time immemorial. Islam didn't firmly establish itself even after the destruction of Mahmud of Ghazni in all areas, it took longer than that. People, Pashtun among them, wore miniskirts with the rest of the world in the 1960s in Kabul. The harsh society you are seeing there isn't a centuries old one with lots of since the dawns of time, it's the product of endless war, as much perpetrated by warlords as by outsiders. You failed whatsoever to mention the Pakistani military and intelligence services, who introduced Afghanistan to opium production, and ran and run a large number of the "Taliban" suicide operations.
Other than that, your comment is worth a Times Pick. Get a real history book and stop pulling bogus "centuries old" and "time immemorial" junk out of nowhere.
2
The original purpose of the Afghan conflict was to hunt down Bin Laden and eliminate the Taliban from the Afghan government. Both were eventually accomplished. As the NY Times stated, Trump is correct in wanting to withdraw. However, Obama maintained that the Afghan conflict was the war worth fighting. See his address to the graduating class at West Point. (NY Times, Dec. 1, 2009). As such, he increased the number of troops fighting there by nearly 100%. My son and I were both in Afghanistan. We both saw too much carnage and lives lost on all sides. For what? A hopelessly corrupt government and a people that cannot sustain themselves. We did not learn our lesson in Viet Nam. After 17 years, stop this madness and let Afghanistan decide, or suffer their own fate.
231
@cb
Thank you for this, and thank you for your service. If only it could have been for something worthwhile.
7
@cb
Obama was wrong about Afghanistan and not strong enough to stand his ground.
11
@ cb
" After 17 years, stop this madness and let Afghanistan decide, or suffer their own fate".
What do you consider the "Afghanistan" to decide their future or suffer their own fate?
Is the the present elected, albeit quite corrupt government? Is it the Pakistan supported Taliban trying to topple the present government and wanting to establish their stone-age laws against women again?
Is it Afghanistan and Pakistan having fought for over 100 years about the Kyber Pass and the borders between them.
You are correct though that the original purpose was to hunt down Bin Laden, whose ultra riche family members were secretly sent back to Saudi Arabia courtesy of W.
The president who entangled us in a war against Iraq - based on lies - should have gotten "our boys" out of Afghanistan the moment it became clear that Bin Laden could not be found in some of the bunkers built into a mountain of the Kyber Pass and the 100+ year disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
7
The war is continuation of the politics by the other means.
The war authorization was the admission by our leaders and politicians that they were incapable of performing their constitutional duties and leading the country in the peaceful way by creating the friends and allies all over the globe.
Those willing to deploy the troops to compensate for their tragic lack of personal abilities, thus sending the others to die in vain, is unconscionable kind of behavior never to be supported by our free press.
Don’t think for a second that your enemy lives at the opposite end of the world and that we should fight them to the death.
If you are looking for your worst enemy, just walk to a nearby bathroom and look in the mirror.
You will instantly recognize a face of the worst danger you will ever meet.
Nobody can harm us as much as we do.
The same is absolutely valid for the people living in the Afghan wilderness or the Arabian deserts.
If they believe their most important objective is to kill the Americans, they have nothing to live for.
That’s what our politicians should have explained to the Muslim world after the 9/11.
They never fully understood their patriotic duty!
1
It is time to reevaluate not only our war in Afghanistan, but the prevailing foreign agenda that justifies our endless Mideast wars. Our interventions have not resulted in a new birth of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.
Those who advocate continued presence, as indicated in last week’s Senate vote, pay no price. Our wars are not fought by the 1% nor do we raise taxes to cover their cost. How long would war last if the top social-economic level lost their sons, or paid increased taxes to pay for these wars?
Afghanistan is deadlocked. If 130,000 soldiers were unable to stop the Taliban, will 14,000? The claim that we are training Afghans to take our place sounds a lot like the Vietnamization project that was to allow our departure and prevent the fall of Saigon.
We supported Afghans against the USSR to get the Taliban and al Qaeda. We removed Saddam to get radicalized Sunnis and the fear of Shiite power reaching to the Mediterranean. Got rid of Gaddafi to get a mess and thousands of refugees. Pushed to remove Asad to get ISIS, a rebirth of al Qaeda, massive destruction, immense loss of life, and more refugees.
It is time to leave Afghanistan and to change our foreign policy.
96
@doughboy
Thank you for expressing what I firmly believe.
4
@doughboy
You nailed it. I hate to see sick people going to work, self medicating themselves with over expanding list of OTC drugs, as out Govt. would not or cannot provide them healthcare. Kids paying the student loans, just because they were nice and wanted higher education. All because our resources are being spent unwisely.
3
@doughboy
Right, Afghanistan has turned into a tar baby of military entanglement. Then, we can admit that we failed in our nation building effort there. As painful as it will be to watch the results of our pull out manifest themselves-its time to leave and let the chips fall where they may.
2
A short list of powers that have lost in Afghanistan includes Darius the Great (Persia) Alexander the Great (Greece) Russia (repeatedly) India, Pakistan, United Kingdom (innumerable times). What in the World made the USA and NATO think they could do any better?
The country With its mountainous geography and extreme tribalism is unmanageable and unconquerable.
The best thing we could do is get out and let others (China?) make fools of themselves there.
3
Thank you New York Times.
Please, do as you advise others to do. Be more skeptical. Please, fiercely challenge the war calls from Washington and the Pentagon. There are winner in this eternal war—- the Pentagon is awash in money and the military industries have reaped untold wealth wrung from the blood of our soldiers.
War is a sometime necessity. We must remain militarily strong,but our focus on the military to the exclusion of our internal needs has weakened not strengthened the country. The military brass with their chests full of metals and ribbons claims they hate war. They don’t. Indeed they love war, it is their life. The media and the citizens should never forget the warning of Eisenhower——- beware the military industrial complex.
3
Seventeen years, 4,000 deaths and 20,000 casualties too late.
3
What I always found fascinating in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and all the other places where US foreign policy has been one generational long “Oopsie!” is how rarely I would see journalists.
Not in the bars, journalists were always there. And not in the offices of directors, ambassadors, generals, ministers and other high officials. But I rarely saw them talking to the functionaries whose job it was to actually implement US (and UN, NATO, etc.) policy.
It was access journalism, just like in Washington.
The way journalists would impress each other was all too often not with their stories but with their access to important leaders. Usually these leaders were talking pointed up to their ears and worse, often had their own 35,000 foot delusions about what was going on under them. So it’s not like the stories they got from these interviews were anything groundbreaking.
That’s not to say good journalism didn’t happen. But it happened too rarely, and it wasn’t enough to challenge the Washington Consensus.
And now we see it again with Venezuela. “Senior White House officials,” “Senior Pentagon Officials,” blah blah blah, regrettable, democracy, people of Venezuela... but is anyone asking is what we are doing a good idea? I don’t see a lot of that...
I hear the drums of war beating. I don’t hear enough people asking “Given Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., what are the chances that a military intervention will work out?”
Maybe we get a mea culpable in 20 years...
2
Support the President and bring our troops home. It's time.
1
Raise your hands, affluent blue-staters, if you will offer your children to serve in the military to protect women's rights in far-away lands.
3
"The initial American objective — bringing Bin Laden to justice — has been achieved."
And could have been achieved in the first few weeks of conflict if we had done our job at Bora Bora. What a waste.
1
The whole reason that the US waged a war against the Taliban was based on Bush declaring "that you are either with us or against us", which besides not being a valid reason to go to war, was also based on his basic ignorance as to why the Taliban refused to hand bin Ladin over. The reason they didn't hand him over was because it was against their Pashtun code to hand over anyone who seeks refuge by a Pashtun even if they agree that he is guilty of the crimes he is wanted for.
It is entirely possible that had somebody explained to Bush that a Pashtun would not hand over even the murderer of his own brother, and that their refusal to hand over bin Ladin was not at all based on them agreeing with what bin Ladin did, Bush would never had seen the Taliban as the enemy. And that once bin Ladin had slipped out of Afghanistan the US would have seen no reason to keep the Taliban from regaining control of the country and would have left in 2002.
So the whole war in Afghanistan from the beginning which was about keeping the Taliban out of power was never because they were our enemy or that it was a compelling US interest, but was based on a single misguided declaration by Bush. And that is truly a very pathetic cause for which America's longest war was fought.
2
I wonder if the NY Times would care to post an apology for advocating the invasion of Iraq? If that had not happened, much more resources would have been available for Afghanistan. Though, of course, the chief thing needed in Afghanistan was individuals who understood and respected Afghan culture. For more than 100 years, women in the US were not allow to vote. Though it would have been admirable, it was unreasonable to expect Afghan women to instantly be granted equal rights.
"Yet it’s also possible that a decision to withdraw could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan and deny terrorists a regional base." Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
2
15,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more wounded or traumatized -- and for what? A false narrative about defeating terrorism abroad instead of on our shores and a photo op in front of a Mission Accomplished banner.
Obama once said his goal was "don't do stupid stuff." And he was denounced for it. But is it too much to ask that American presidents think very, very carefully about what can and cannot be accomplished with firepower, before spending precious blood and treasure.
1
Your war was not lost in Afghanistan. It was lost in Pakistan.
6
No more American lives need to be lost in Afghanistan. I couldn’t believe the US sent forces there in the first place. It’s terrain, culture and tribalism has crushed armies throughout history.
It is senseless to lose lives in a country that will never be able to maintain a civilized government for the voice of its citizens. My new mantra: “democracy - it’s not for everyone.”
4
I'll take my own advice and repeat: When have we heard all this before? I wonder... As other perceptive people have already commented here, I'll just add one more voice about "The Graveyard of Empires": Repeat it about a thousand times. Terrorism which obviously includes 9/11 is not just some "tactic" but also a hideous crime, so of course there never was a war to declare. Labeling some things "war" is a simplistic way of provoking public support for a mistaken strategy. Rather, an international, true "coalition of the willing" is indicated to hunt down and round up suspected perpetrators to bring them to justice. It would serve as a model of American justice, encouraging friendship rather than create even more enemies. But invasion as revenge is chosen over inspiration through justice. Bush/Chaney were the latest "leaders" to cover their incompetence about terrorist attack warnings, promote the military-industrial complex, and commit to that ghastly revenge. The U.S. has had to be pretty tough to endure such vainglorious waste and neglect of the needs of its average citizens. I think that the most awful aspect of it all was abuse uncritically thinking citizens rather than to enlighten them through true leadership. The key propaganda element here was to equate Bush/Chaney and the "troops," thereby neutralizing criticism of the former because it was supposed to mean returning to a wrongful, Vietnam-like criticism of the latter. So much for "no more Vietnams."
1
Agree. Yet "mission . . . Failed" is false." The mission was to render the country unable to serve as a base to plan attacks on us. The tactics to chose from were (good) defeat a lot of terrorists, or (great) install a civil order that would prevent a return of terrorists. We should not let the pursuit of great tactics make us forget the mission. The mission has been achieved. We will return if we need to. The U.S. should leave Afghanistan.
3
Let it never be forgotten that the spark that started this war was, and remains today as its fuel source, religion. The founders of the American experiment recognized that religion is not essential to governing; religion is not even a good partner. Witness the election of 2016. Over time all religions bend toward extremism.
The result of US withdrawal will doubtless be much worse than the predictions written by the Times editors. The mere thought of the straits in which those who cooperated with American troops, of the stone-age life in store for the Afghan women is a leaden weight in the pit of one's gut.
So, yes, let us cut and run. Let us also make some changes here at home. An amendment to the Constitution to require a minimum of 3 years of active military service to be eligible to serve as president would be a starting point. That alone would have prevented the sequence of what have arguably been the three most divisive presidents in this country's existence.
Let us also begin the arduous process of rooting religion from the governing of our country. We need no constitutional amendment to do so. As written, the document put religion where it belonged --a non-player-- so now we must remove the myriad concessions and favors granted to religion that have been written into the laws over the centuries.
Those two actions will do more to make America great than will all the walls ever built.
7
forever war, pointless and endless, profits and death and the manufacturing of generations more of martyrs
keep the military as a jobs program and teach them to build roads and bridges here, and paint schools, and put community centers in schools and keep them open from 7 am to 10 pm so children who are homeless or have parents or guardians working two or three minimum wage jobs have meals and pre care and after care
keep the military as an economic stimulus program and have them build things we need -- infrastructure, like China is doing around the world -- and have the usual thieves take their usual 30 percent off the top, but without death and bloodshed
7
There are good historical reasons that Afghanistan came to be known as "the graveyard of nations". The British learned why in the Khyber Pass in the 19th Century. Not too many decades ago, the Russians achieved similar comprehension in the late 20th Century.
The Taliban's support and hiding of bin Laden was an act of war against us but this did not mean we had to squander lives and treasure to retaliate. There has never been any hope of "reforming" Afghanistan. It is what it is. Curtis LeMay, long dead, might have been right for once in his advice to bomb such an adversary back into the Stone Age, forgoing an invasion. This ongoing fiasco has produced nothing other than a generation of wounded veterans and a lifetime of debt.
5
The last time that America ended a war in Afghanistan al Qaeda came calling in Kenya, Tanzania, New York City and the Pentagon. And the Taliban rose from the ashes. Afghanistan earned the name of " Graveyard of Empires" by 2200+ years of war. Pulling out of war in Afghanistan is not a policy.
Instead of war in Afghanistan perhaps educational, socioeconomic and medical and healthcare and infrastructure humanitarian aid could and would be a weapon of mass construction.
Along with diplomatically recognizing and addressing the ethnic sectarian conflict roots of the war in Afghanistan. The quest by ethnic Pashtun Muslims for a nation state where they are the majority.
While a plurality of Pashtun live in Afghanistan a majority of Pashtun live in Pakistan where they are a 15% minority. The Taliban is a majority Pashtun organization. But not all Pashtun are Taliban. What of the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, Hazzara, Haqqani in Afghanistan ?
2
"...any treaty with the Taliban would be difficult to enforce."
Any treaty with the Taliban turns to dust the day the last US soldier leaves Afghanistan
"...it should be made clear to the Taliban, the Afghan government and neighboring nations that if the country is allowed to again become a base for international terrorism, the United States will return to eradicate that threat."
Like we did the first time? Right.
Any self-examination of how we blew it in Afghanistan had better take a look at our real (as opposed to our stated,) foreign policy over the last fifty years, including and especially our relationship with the state of Israel and the Palestinians.
Otherwise all the blood, treasure, grief, and heartbreak was for nothing. Again.
8
@Ralph Averill
All correct, but when Mr. Obama rethought his initial assessment on Syria, he realized that this would be another futile unnecessary war. He was lambasted by that decision but he was right. Syria, too is still raging.
For decades, our Military, Congress, President and his Cabinet have made numerous mistakes in regard to War and Nation building. Most were willful ignorance and incompetence.
1
Yes, of course we need to withdraw from Afghanistan. Also from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Niger and any other countries where our combat forces might be engaged without specific authorization by Congress. Then Americans need to ask why the safest, richest, and most powerful state on the planet, with two oceans on either side and only two friendly countries that touch our land borders, has become the greatest threat to world peace. What sick mindset has infected our foreign policy and military elite that has made us the world’s worst violator of human rights on the globe—no peer competitors. After decades of multiple failed wars, interventions, and regime change operations we are now waging economic war on Iran, and Venezuela, and doing our very best to heat things up with Russia and China. We have withdrawn from the INF treaty, the JCPOA with Iran, and the Paris Climate accords. We have also authorized a $1 trillion upgrade to our nuclear weapons arsenal and are planning on establishing a new Space Force that VP Pence has stated must be “dominant.”
Climate change is our greatest and only real threat yet our current leadership is in denial and we have a criminally insane political and military elite in charge of our blundering and failing empire.
9
Looks like the NYT is onboard with Trump trying to end this endless war in Afghanistan. The headline should read Trump pursuing the correct path in Afghanistan by negotiating with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan. You should give credit where credit is due.Personally I find this new foreign policy refreshing and one of the reasons as an independent I was an early advocate for Trump. Trade deals,immigration and foreign policy. About time someone has tried to change policies that have obviously been a failure.
Thanks NYT for this editorial, the best gift.
This sort of finish in Afghanistan was as predictable there as it was in Viet Nam.
Along with others' dreams of what might have been done with the trillions of dollars spent, how about a full out campaign for hearts and minds and health in Afghanistan, especially for women and girls? That would be worth spending some dollars on, if done very thoughtfully.
Next part of the wish, stop the imminent nuclear arms race that this administration is about to re-enter with the crazies like Bolton in the WH (see today's Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2019/02/01/inf/?utm_term=.4409949e402f
Let's not trade one kind of war for another.
Let's not keep making warmongers rich.
Let's start spending the money on where it might do some good for people inside the US and/or outside it.
6
what a masterful editorial. your conclusions are first rate as are your plans for action
1
When the best military in the world negotiates to surrender, is it still the best?
It is still the most expensive military in the world so some bragging rights remain.
No army how ever powerful it may be , can win a war without a legitimate and sound cause ,enthusiastically appealing to those who are asked to offer the ultimate sacrifice !
Most of the US adventures in the recent history had no sound and legitimate reason and that is why the ever rising disability of PTSD and suicides of veterans .
When those in power keep themselves and their loved one out of harms way and impose merciless decisions of wars and shove others into the battle field , that is the root cause of end less despair and ultimate failure to achieve the desired results !
Trump may be appearing to make mistakes about these decisions to bring back the troops home from these endless wars to the the Generals and politicians ,but he is soundly appealing the those who are really fighting the burden of the war along with their families .
May be his ‘bone spur ‘ is constantly reminding him about the sacrifices of those who were not rich and influential enough to invent excuses to stay away from the battle field.
May be he just wants to redeem himself now to end these wars engineered by the lying neocons with external and internal dark forces and morally bankrupt politicians.
Barbara Lee was the only elected politician with foresight and a conscience. Now almost 18 later the US is negotiating with the Taliban something it should have done in 2001 to get Bin Laden.
The Times does not mention the Afghans killed or maimed by this war which cannot be won. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empire so the U empire should beware.
Now, of course, the troops from Afghanistan should not fly direct to Venezuela where a military intervention would be as crazy and murderous as in Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan itself.
5
Afghanistan has a hard earned reputation as a "graveyard for empires," as Britain and Russia can attest. It's not just a cliche.
Beyond our search for Osama Bin Laden, our adventurism has been misguided by our own blind optimism. Our presence didn't root out ingrained societal corruption or reduce the influence of medieval warlords with no interests in democracy.
We cannot save the world, however good our intentions. The fate of innocents in Afghanistan is a tragedy. The costs of 17 years of war has accomplished exactly nothing. For centuries, Afghanistan's "leaders" have been manipulators and takers, getting whatever they can from those who dare to intervene, with no intentions of submitting to another way of life. The "nation" is a tar pit.
If possible, we should join with others to offer humanitarian aid, but that can't be through continued military intervention. The Taliban won't honor any commitments of a treaty.
It's time to go.
7
Not everything is about American soldiers. We need to respect the choices of other countries. THAT and respect for the lives of non-Americans should be a central concern.
Of course, American soldiers also matter. But they at least joined our armed forces voluntarily. Afghans and Syrians and Libyans who died because of our foolish actions, did not volunteer for anything.
But they died nonetheless.
Let us treat THEIR lives with respect.
9
When we leave many Afghans will be slaughtered by the Taliban. This also happened when we left Vietnam. These societies do not adhere to Western principles of equality, freedom, and democracy. They will only reform when we hold them to our standards, and that means no commerce. The riches are skimmed off by the elites leaving the populations destitute and uneducated. The only pressure we can exert is economic. That means Europe and the US must stop trading with most of the Muslim world, Russia, and China. Not easy but neither was winning WWII or landing on the moon.
1
It's been said before that the US has not fought a single 18 year long war, but fought the same war and enemies 18 times. In one long conflict, tactics and strategy would evolve from the actions in the war, and the US fighting forces would succeed due to the improvements in our approached to fighting our enemies.
But we have not learned much, and our tactics may in fact have evolved in directions that describe how constrained we are by politics and society.
From Herat to Jalababad, Mazar-i-Sharif to Kandahar, we are participating in a conflict with vastly different groups and histories. I don't meet one American in 10,000 who knows where these cities are, what languages they speak, where these groups came from, and not a thing about the past few decades of Soviet and US participation in this country.
Over all of Afghanistan is the shadow of the Pakistani ISI as it exports the internal divisions within Pakistan into conflict to the West and in Kashmir, much as the Iranians do in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
Successfully engaging in these countries with our political, technological and economic capabilities is our only hope in this part of the world. Problematically, those engagements do conform with our self image, and any administration that tries to do so will be challenged by the other party.
Much as the Russians are encouraging us to do domestically, the US is defeating itself in Afghanistan.
Change the battle plan - or leave.
3
Barbara Lee was right on point, and this summation later in the article, "7,000 service members — and nearly 8,000 private contractors — have been killed. More than 53,700 people returned home bearing physical wounds, and numberless more carry psychological injuries. More than one million Americans who served in a theater of the war on terror receive some level of disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs." speaks for itself. America has made a near art form of "helpful" war efforts.
However callous it appears, we must admit to the established and well proven fact that futility and Afghanistan are one in the same. 17 years is all the proof we need, and going back in history offers even more.
Right now, Afghanistan is defeating every effort by the world to tame it and the world needs to listen. There is really nothing like "encouraging progress.4" Don't be fooled . . . again.
Always, the losers will be the women and children at the hands of the Taliban who are most capable at resisting change.
7
Yes bring the troops home, but, is Trump readying us for another foreign adventure in Iran?? For three decades or more our country has been stuck is a forever war cycle---one right after another---fast to get in, slow to get out. We keep repeating that tired phrase about learning from history, but, in this country it is just that a tired phrase.
6
War started with fists, sticks and stones. Human beings are bellicose fighting animals. That’s how “early humankind” survived. It’s in our DNA. What is also in our DNA is compassion, love, hope for a better life and Spirit.
Dropping bombs by Drones has become so high tech, that the so-called “enemy camps” can be destroyed from base computers right in the US, yet it hasn’t really stopped “The Enemy.”
If we spend a fraction of monies on education and reconstruction in these areas, that kind of philosophy is much more endearing to the populace than guns and bombs.
8
Afghanistan like Iraq has been a fiasco. And the military did know they were on a mission that was unachievable. The sainted Petraeus told them so in that famous counterinsurgency analysis of which he was the principal author. It was going to take ~600,000 US troops at least ten years and also require a huge investment in social projects. And even then the outcome was not guaranteed. Not surprisingly the US was never willing to make that kind of investment. This set up the usual dynamic. The politicians didn't want to be identified as the one (s) who lost Afghanistan, and as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously pointed out No officer corps has ever lost a war.
9
Your editorial dismisses "the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan" in one sentence, with zero discussion of what our leaving might mean to them, except that their "perilous" situation might become "bleaker."
I don't have a solution, and your editorial may be right. But surely "the plight of women and girls" deserves more consideration.
6
@BGZ123 Right. I wish there was some way a withdrawal agreement could include a plan for evacuating women and girls.
7
@BGZ123. It is as if half the population in Afghanistan being engulfed in a falsely paternalistic enslavement is “worth” benefitting those mentioned “Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan and deny terrorists a regional base. Such a solution that preserves some of the civil society gains that the Afghans have made, while keeping the country free of international terrorists, is in the interests of all those parties”. It is ludicrous to assume that civil societal gains there...and the quality and promise of a life of freedom for women/girls within a radical Islamist state...would ever occur without NATO interventions and protectionism. And why would we want to support a doctrine that, perhaps other than India, benefits the players mentioned, all of whom have shown little support for achieving control over terrorist Islamists in their midsts and are certainly not our friends? Further, our own country touts its dedication to influencing countries with human rights abuses to change their ways, yet this will provide once again for stonings, closure of educational institutions that have already enhanced the lives of women and families in Afghanistan, and does anyone really believe that the Taliban will allow any Western influence in their own boys only educational institutions? So yes BGZ123 “the plight of women and girls deserves more consideration”.
1
I rarely agree with Trump. But on this one he has been a solid voice of reason for a long time. As much as it pains me to say it, if he gets us untangled I’ll have to say good job.
6
The real losses will be felt for years by those who lost family members and friends along with those who returned scarred in one way or another by the experience. The rest of us owe them a debt that will be difficult to or even impossible to repay.
The fighting also shows the limited commitment our leaders through several administrations have made to the effort, which at the very least contributed to the lack of victory.
If the battle is worth fighting, the effort should be all out. If not, stay home. Haven’t we learned anything since 1945?
There’s a reason Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires.
5
The politicians still do not understand the trauma this creates for the soldiers or those around them. Media producers still make entertainment out of war, spy missions, and put on shows of action packed weaponry shootout competitions. And every survivor is a super hero. This just isn't reality. Such a short time after Viet Nam and in the same lifetime leaders forgot what brought that war to an end. And those of us who truly believed in a better world have very quietly seen our hope disintegrate. War destroys those it does not kill. Thank you for this piece, I almost forgot how deeply disturbing the Bush leadership has been for this country.
6
Thanks for this editorial. There has never been a way to "win" in Afghanistan and it is foolish to think western powers can somehow change the ancient culture of this part of the world into something resembling western democratic culture. This war is great for the military-industrial complex which makes lots of money from the weapons it sells. It is not so great for the soldiers and civilians who die. As a woman, it is disturbing to think we will be abandoning Afghan women to lives as chattel but my guess is that may not be any worse than lives lived in a war zone.
Can't the U.S. continue to monitor Afghanistan from satellites above, instead of putting our soldiers at risk in a war which can never be won?
3
“The longest conflict in modern American history...”. One wonders what boundaries have been used in making that assertion.
Perhaps it is just pettifogging—or perhaps not—to note that the ongoing conflict of the Seminole wars lasted from 1816 to 1858.
Maybe we don’t care much about our prolonged wars against our own dark-skinned indigenous peoples. Who can say how long the western Indian wars lasted? Presumably from 1820 to 1890.
It would be an embarrassment to our ill-deserved sense of moral superiority to remember how long and ruthlessly our government attacked and pursued Native Americans. But before we whine too much over how long we have been fighting in Afghanistan, perhaps we should remember, if only fleetingly, the much longer conflicts we undertook to steal land and sovereignty from our own indigenous people.
11
Thank you TIMES: Maybe we little people writing letters or now typing comments for years has had a modicum amount of success, there is no win to wars such as we are engaged In in Afghanistan, it’s been whack a mole time for seventeen years just as it was in Nam with the same predictable result “stalemate”. Afghanistan has proven itself to be the graveyard of Empires for millennia, most notably in our lifetime it brought the Soviet Union to the brink of bankruptcy, Reagan took credit, but it was Afghanistan that “brought down that wall”. We must accept other people’s wishes to govern as they see fit, Communist Vietnam with its rising middle class and vibrant economy is the prima facia example of that for my generation, the domino theory is no more relevant now than then, bring our brave men and women home, let’s put them and millions of other good Americans to work under an umbrella not unlike that of the W.P.A. A rebuilding of America, done buy Americans run by our government, surely a better use of resources than dropping on average 26,000 bombs per year on nations as we now do. Were we to direct or replace those Generals with a Corp of Army Engineers, we could solve a multitude of problems including giving millions of American Citizens meaningful work and a future rather than privitazation of the projects and boondoggles leading to more inequality: *especially germane to this conversation, WITHOUT nation building by Goldman Sachs with Saudi money as proposed by Kushner.
5
Way past time, but yes, bring them home. I had the same feeling with Vietnam, just bring them home. Maybe, just maybe Afghanistan without the US will have 10% of the success as does Vietnam.
As a matter of fact we should choose very carefully what we authorize in Congress and what if any wars we get into.
5
The goal of military force is to achieve the political goals and we are not in a better position to negotiate with Taliban today than the day we first invaded the country albeit the cost of thousands of lives and trillion of dollars we don't have. No one including NY Times and most mainstream media even questioned the necessity of the invasion in views of the repeated failures of British and Soviet occupation during the 19th and 20th century? Americans have spent more time analyzing a football game than the future of the country which explains we have not only repeated our mistake but also replicated our failure like a delinquent student.
6
I've been reading Times editorials for a long time & this is the very best piece I've ever read by the Times editorial board. My only criticism is that it's years later than it should have been.
8
While the US is doing war in Afghanistan, the Chinese are extracting valuable minerals worth billions of dollars there.
Just sayin’.
2
@New World
In 2007 China paid $3 billion for the rights to mine copper at the Mes Aynak copper mine. To date zero copper has been mined by China. I would call this an epic fail by China and suggest you check your information sources.
I agree, we lost sight of the oringal goal, get Bin Laden. Our beef is not with the taliban even if they are radical people. Your editorial is correct, terrorists will come from all kind of places including The USA. Deal with them individual. It’s time.
2
Are you still there???
Big mistake from the start. On hindsight an over reaction to the 911 attack. Should have attacked and not occupy.
Over confidence to what the Soviets can't do, and America thinks it can .
Trillions spent to what end? Money that could have being spent at home for the benefit of milions of poor Americans.
4
It is so uplifting to realize that both the White House and the NYT were able to recognize their mistakes and change their behavior. That’s the kind of the inward thinking we should demand from all of us – improving our analytical abilities and learning harder.
The Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force should have never been issued. It especially shouldn’t have been approved only three days after the 9/11/2001 at the moment the country and the Congress were overwhelmed with the raw emotions and in state of the utter shock. You never make the strategic decisions under those horrific conditions because you will make the catastrophic mistakes.
A few months later I recognized that structural failure and was fully aware of the tragic events to happen. I tried to advise and assist. I offered to our government the way to win the war on the terrorism a thousand times cheaper and ten times faster. Nobody ever called back.
Later I tried to explain the basics in the op-eds submitted to the NYT many, many times. Similar to our government, the newspapers didn’t show any interest.
1
I am a bit surprised by the content of this Editorial. It is very clear, and the author(s) of the article are insinuating it, that the mayhem in Afghanistan will return, once the Taliban will storm government buildings, taking prisoners and killing every one who collaborated with NATO. It will be a total bloodshed. It is also illusive to think that Russia, China etc. will even try to intervene, they don't want to burn their fingers neither. It is very true though that the NATO-partners are not supportive enough towards the Americans. 14000 soldiers out of 16.000 are American! That is unacceptable and the Europeans should look themselvers in the mirror; shame on us!
And are you aware of the fact that once the foreigners are gone, the schools for girls will be closed? Music forbidden? Women again treated as slaves? You can't leave these people in the hands of the sadists of the Taliban for God's sake!
The conclusion from the NY Times Editorial Board (after admitting that it was wrong about supporting the war) is the following: "If efforts to deal with international terrorism are to be sustainable indefinitely, they need to rely principally on intelligence and interdiction, diplomacy and development."
Gee, what if, yet again, the NY Times Editorial Board is also wrong about that?
What if - and it's just an "if" - the NY Times added to its recommendations that the USA (which is the undisputed world power in advertising and marketing) used its power to convince people, most particularly Islamic radicals, that their ideology was fundamentally beyond-dumb and negatively hollow?
Which would mean - horror of horrors - taking the politically incorrect step of dissecting some of the really bad ideas underlying this ideology, within Islam - throwing gays from rooftops, throwing acid in the faces of young women seeking an education, giving political power to imams who hate infidels.
No mention of these things in this mea culpa editorial. Maybe a follow-up editorial acknowledging this omission would be a constructive step. A brave step.
Any negotiated agreement with the Taliban should include preserving the rights of women and girls. Those rights include the right to education, the right to work, and the right to vote. Anything less (which amounts to throwing women under the bus) for the sake of withdrawal is a sham and a shame.
In order to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, our military must enter Pakistan and rout them out of their strongholds. Pakistan is not even mentioned in this weak editorial. A mediocre history lesson at best, the Editorial Board should at least offer a realistic endstate of the US withdrawal, if that is what the Board truly wants, instead of some examples and numbers of what has transpired. Otherwise the opinion of the Editorial Board is baseless and unsound. This needs a re-do.
1
This article does not mention the key role of the Israel Lobby in pushing for our troops to remain in Afghanistan to threaten Iran and, if need be, to attack it.
2
It does seem reasonable to admit defeat and flee. But know that the Taliban will take over, and they have not become suddenly civilized in the last 17 years. Women will be beaten to death for the crime of not covering their faces, or for going to school. Gay people will be executed for being gay. And sooner or later, the Taliban will allow terrorist groups to plot attacks on civilized nations.
So that's what will come of leaving. I think the alternative is one we wouldn't like at all, which is what we should have been doing from the beginning. The only way to eliminate the Taliban would have been ruthlessly, and the country should not have been turned over to its inhabitants to be governed corruptly and incompetently.
As it is our best hope is for global warming to render Afghanistan uninhabitable, and that its violent culture goes extinct at that time. If this seems harsh, bear in mind I saw the twin towers get destroyed, and lost people in that attack, and I will never forgive nor show mercy to the verminous terrorists that carried it out. When their culture is eliminated, at long last, the world will be better for it.
1
On the day of 9/11, I immediately wished we wouldn't take military action. It was so obviously exactly what the perpetrators wanted. I'll forever regret not having the courage to share this opinion widely. Later, when the stupid idea of attacking Iraq was floated, I was in the streets in opposition like millions of others. It would have taken more courage to express opposition to an invasion of Afghanistan, already long known as The Graveyard of Empires, but I still criticize myself for not having it.
1
All troops must immediately be removed from all foreign countries. America is daily killing innocents. Trump must be jailed. Secretary Clinton must be installed as President under the immediate authority of the special counsel and the grand jury. Private property must be abolished to save the planet from global warming. Houses and buildings must be demolished in favor of adobe huts. Only in tat way can people be happy and equal.
1
The MIC will not allow us to leave in fact they are all looking to get us involved in Iran with the Neocons. Lots of money to made feeding at the MIC Trough.
1
It was time to end all conflicts we cannot win, all the way back to the Korean conflict.
Vietnam was the worst example anyone could ever find. Tens of thousands gave their lives for what?
The answer is for the Politicians.
How about we try to end the conflicts here at home?
4
Rich man's war...poor man's battle. War is also an industry like any other. Vast fortunes are made off of war. Americans want Afghans to become Baptists and for their women to wear mini-skirts and drive to the Kabul Starbucks in their SUV's. Not. Going. To. Happen.
We chose guns over butter here and that is why we can't have nice things. We get air force flyovers at football games as a consolation price though. Yippee!
7
One item that is under reported is the role of ISIL in SW Afganistan. The Taliban is now fighting them for control of large areas. This is another reason that is forcing them to peace talks with the US.
Amen. I agree. Bring our troops home now.
1
It’s past time to leave Afghanistan and bring home our service members. We’ve accomplished what we said we wanted, and then over stayed an interminable time. I disagree, we should not tell Afghanistan we’ll be back if the country becomes a stage for international terrorism. We should say that if they become a stage for international terrorism, we’ll bomb them back to 500 BC without an American boot on the ground. Enough.
The United States has become a serial loser of wars. Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan makes it 3 in a row.
We must learn from history. The United States and other countries have won insurgencies before. Sherman‘s march to the sea and the brutal but successful war in the Philippines come to mind.
But fighting an insurgency in the midst of a indifferent or hostile population following Universal declaration of human rights rules is impossible. The cost of due process is far too much in the case of such situations. It is no surprise that such defeats have only come about after the 1960s.
Look at the experience of countries in today’s age which have successfully prosecuted insurgencies. India, China, Myanmar etc have all fought Islamic insurgencies and defeated them not by the futile effort to win hearts and minds but by filling them with fear as and when needed. Sometimes, especially with Islam, fear is just cheaper than love.
takmarg.blogspot.com
We have been there for well over a decade and we have accomplished nothing, they are still slaughtering each other. I agree get out, get out now.
Then go further, get out of the entire Middle East. Bring our people, our war machines and our money and come home. Cut off all of the countries of the Middle East, yes, that includes Israel. Let them find their own way to peace, they are the only ones who can. This is not our fight, let us focus our attention on improving things in our country. We know how to make a difference here, we can improve lives here, it is time, past time to improve our own lives. Let the peoples of the Middle East determine their own fate.
5
I just started reading this and already take issue with the numbers. The 7,000 killed includes the war in Iraq. And that is most of the casualties. That war was not a war on Terrorism but a war I guess to install a Democratic government. a government that the U.S. & Israel would approve of. There were no terrorists' in Iraq before we invaded ... the War caused the rise of Al Qaeda & ISIS... And as far as I know the Taliban while allowing Bin Laden to stay there has never attacked this country. They have attacked our soldiers in Afghanistan. So the whole premise this article starts from is wrong. I mean you can call it all a war on terrorism, you can say the moon is made of green cheese, but that doesn't make it correct.
1
"Stalemate" in Afghanistan means "defeat" at home. I lived through 9/11 right here on the streets of Manhattan. When I finally saw the attacks on TV a day after they occurred, I couldn't believe that I had lived through the worst day in human history. The hatred against us, demonstrated on that day, remains unspeakable. While I'm generally a pacifist, I realized that there was no room on this planet for the vermin who were involved in events of that day. Now while we haven't "won" an outright victory in Afghanistan, we HAVE secured our borders against foes that would love nothing more than to bring the new Tower down into rubble. Don't muddy the waters by discussing "home-grown terrorists" - they are mostly of our own making and result from disgraceful gun laws, among other reasons. Terrorists at home can never be fully prevented but terror from abroad can be and HAS BEEN. No place on earth would give more comfort to our enemies than another full-scale attack on these shores and if the price to pay to avoid that is continued military activity overseas then so be it. It's too easy to forget how completely crushing 9/11 was. Don't forget the image of those desperate souls jumping to their deaths to escape the flames! Our military intervention in Afghanistan hasn't been an unqualified success but our foothold there has given tremendous caution to our enemies who WILL seek to destabilize as soon as we pull out our last soldier from that god-forsaken, barren wasteland.
1
Do you think the Afghan government will last as long as the South Vietnam government did after we withdrew there? Doers anyone care3 about what will happen to Afghan women and girls when the Taliban resumes control?
I spent a year in Kabul. Never have I been to a more God-forsaken place, yet, ironically, all decisions are religious based. Afghanistan has been this way as far back as Alexander, it will never change as long as the tribal entities want it the way it is. Get out, let them fight it out. It's a waste of money and lives.
4
So, Vietnam was our Vietnam and Afghanistan was the Soviet Vietnam. And our Afghanistan is...
A lot like Viet Nam-declare victory and send the troops home.
4
Actually studying U.S. secret ops JSOC and CIA, drone and missile targeted assassinations the record is even worse than described herein. When Bush-Cheney left office forces carried out ops in 60
countries (Jeremy Scahill's, "Dirty Wars"). As technology improved, and utilizing these elite secrecy forces-strikes, when Obama left office they were involved in 80 special ops per day (average), in 134 countries worldwide, while U.S. citizens have been assassinated. Abdulrahman Awladi was 16 years young when missile strike assassinated, Yemen, and indeed, U.S. citizen. It is time to go much further than bringing home troops from Afganistan. It is time to end bush-cheney war powers-blank check provided, Congress taking back war powers, establishing transparency, oversight, accountability for all military operations; those by U.S. military and mercenary-"Black ops" opacity.
4
Unfortunately, isolationism does not prevent the specter of war from reaching our neighborhoods. It's like the gentle kid on the block who doesn't want to join a gang in a gang-infested neighborhood; he either runs away or has to join for survival. The Taliban and other radical Islamists are driven by an ideology that welcomes death as a ticket to Paradise and believe that they must spread their hateful ideology throughout the world. To just leave them be and march away would allow them to metastasize ---especially in this internet age when ideologies can spread quickly. If we can keep our alliances whole (e.g., NATO) we might be able to police the area with less manpower.
1
We should have thought about it when we went in. Then we invaded Iraq recklessly.
We are responsible for keeping a modicum of peace in Afghanistan. Without a decent number of American troops, Taliban will take over and Afghanistan will again become a network terrorist camp.
3
This is, once again, the result of heeding the generals’ tired mantra, “more money, more men, more time.”
1
I have long supported getting out of the Middle East. I must chortle a bit, however. Many were for Obama when he wanted out. I was. When Trump said he wanted out, many of the same people who wanted out under Obama crucified Trump. Let’s just get out.
4
It is a sad ending to a story that started with a tragedy (9/11).
- Some of our soldiers fought bravely. Most were too young. Void of any purpose or “fire-in-the-belly”. They were too pre-occupied trying to avoid IEDs. I would’nt blame them. The leadership focused on the wrong enemy: the PanIslamist Al-Qaida was lumped with the nationalist-Taliban.
- Our Officer fatalities were too low. The officers largely did not lead from the front. A four-star General was romancing with his auto-biographer (someone’s wife) while his private soldiers were in the line-of-fire (and he was not even stripped of his pension).
- NPR’s daily list of soldiers who died did not help either. This made us weaker.
- An opportunity for peace was missed within the 1st few weeks of the war when the Taliban were ready to “talk”. We paid a high price for our arrogance.
- Pakistan should have been kept in the loop. Allowing India to open Consulates close to thier western border added to their paranoia. And the BinLaden raid should have been a joint operation. The price for “political point-scoring by Obama by taking all credit in his re-election” resulted in a complete breakdown of our 50+ year strategic relationship. And in an intelligent and subtle way our connotation that Pakistan was hiding BinLaden made things worse. We had the USB drives and BinLaden’s written correspondences from the raid (we should have provided evidence of their duplicity and if we couldn’t we should have set the record straight)
End this war now. And to those who have served, thank you.
1
War is expensive. In lives and in money. But it doesn't put any loot into Trump's pocket. So who needs it? After we got rid of that Obama guy - a disaster - we were going to wrap up that Afghanistan thing right handy. Like ISIS and Syria. Shoot a few Tomahawks at an abandoned airstrip after you give the Russians a heads-up: "Mission accomplished."
We need to focus on serious foreign policy issues with the guidance of Fox News veterans: John Bolton. Mr. Blood and Guts - our blood, his guts - is now Mr. Cut and Run. Let's just leave it to the Russians and the Chinese - they're our friends now - to sort out that Afghan mess. It's in their backyard, and nobody wants to finance a Trump hotel in Kabul (or anywhere else).
National security. A big emergency! "The Wall." Plague carrying, drug-dealing, six-year-old gang members. Kidnap 'em. Put 'em in cages. Loose 'em. That'll show those asylum seekers.
Let's get serious about this foreign policy stuff. How about destabilizing Venezuela? Cut 'em off cold - no drilling equipment, no oil, no money -- let the populace fall where it may (in the street). Or maybe the Russians and the Chinese will work it all out for us while we talk about "democracy" and "capitalism" on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, back in West Miami Beach: "Melania, pass the meatloaf..."
3
1. The Taliban did not refuse to turn over O.B.L. they asked for proof to do so, which we refused to provide.
2. $5.9 trillion. This is the first time I have seen this number used by this paper to impress, although it has been available for years. Borrowed money? Never once has this paper suggested we pay as we go. Paygo is a marching tune in Congress, but only to with respect to progressive projects that would help vast numbers of Americans like practically free college.
3. X numbers of Americans hurt in various ways. No mention of bombs reigning down on Iraqi civilians and the damage to their infrastructure.
4. "Radical Islam" is not a "motivator for attacks." Islam is a set of ethics that provides both the courage and the duty to behave morally, but act against percieved oppression. It is oppression that motivates attacks, a common human theme for thousands of years that did not change in 2001. If there is hate it can be argued we caused it.
This article is simply put, a crock, designed to make a very unwise NYT seem wise. I see no apology in it, without that I recommend that readers refuse future advice from this board, reading it on a lark not as an authority.
3
I disagree with the overall assessment. The Taliban was driven from power and has been only able to propagate their existence with massive mercenary help from Pakistan and other actors. They have been denied power for a generation.
What more can you ask for? That Afghanistan would be a democracy after 17 years? Ha ! We should have stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for 50 years. That’s what Superpowers do - impose a civil order for its own benefit. Then maybe after the first 50, democracy might take hold during the following 50. Maybe by then the Taliban will have made peace with the enlightenment.
Ok, let's go over it again what history has taught us.
1-We had the right to go in their, America was attacked and Bin Laden's group was based there. We listened to Lincoln, only start a war if you are attacked or about to be attacked.
2-We should not have been there after we got Bin Laden. The Taliban did not attack us, Bin Laden did.
3-We should hands over the reigns of gov't to The Taliban since they were the ruling gov't before we went to war.
4-If the people in that country want to live in the Middle Ages, ie women don't go to school, they are second class citizens etc., there is nothing we can do unless we want to station 100k troops there till the next century. We don't got involved with indigenous population of places like New Guin. or Brazil.
5-Maintain a troops presence there or nearby in case groups like ISIS or Bin Laden reappear.
6-Only get involved and preferable in a multi lateral way if agreed upon crime/war crimes are committed like genocide, starvation, mass rape/murder, etc. etc. Don't invade if women are forced to wear burkas.
7-Encourage immigration to this country to any people/groups that do not like the Taliban.
1
I have little doubt that the presidency of Donald J. Trump will go down as one of the most corrupt, most ineffective, and certainly the most ill-led in US history.
Nevertheless, IF Trump can manage to do only one thing right—the jury is still out—I hope it is this: to end the war in Afghanistan and to bring the troops home with honor.
They deserve it.
Tens of thousands of Afghans killed, maimed, and traumatized for life. 15,000 Americans killed, 53,700 wounded, an uncounted number with psychological injuries. How many NATO troops killed or wounded? This article doesn't say. $6 trillion spent. All to get one man, bin Laden? And then to stop terrorism, as if it could be stopped by terrorizing the people of Afghanistan?
Barbara Lee was right. Many of us knew it back then. Many of us demonstrated against this war (and the invasion of Iraq) before it started. It wasn't a miscalculation. It was a crime against humanity.
5
When the Republicans talk about military conflicts in Venezuela or Iran they are talking about a new revenue stream to replace Afghanistan.
4
“This page has been supportive of the Afghan war since it began.”
WHY???
Spending millions in money and a priceless amount in lives just to get ONE man? A man that was eventually gotten by using intelligence and a small force of Navy Seals?
Obama said the this war was the “right” war without explaining why. I’m relatively certain that he didn’t because he never could find an explanation that made any sense.
1
Thank you, NYT, for showing some spine on this issue and standing up to the powerful military-industrial-chickenhawk complex, even though it means you have to agree with Trump.
If we pull out, as we should, I predict that within 3 years we will be sending weapons and aid *to* the Taliban, to support their fight against ISIS and the Haqqanis. And such an arrangement would actually make more sense that what we're doing now.
It will also transport Afghan society back to a medieval, misogynistic, sharia-law dystopia. That's a shame, but it's not the USA's job to get killed and maimed and indebted over it.
So it is time to admit defeat. That's what you get when you try nation building with drug chieftains and take Pakistan for an ally. This is one thing Trump didn't mess up, you have to give him that.
2
It is long past time to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.
It has become another conflict with no definite goals, costing trillions of dollars, the loss of thousands of American lives with tens of thousands of lives disabled, and tens of thousands of civilians killed or maimed all in service to people who support the forces against whom we are fighting. Sound familiar?
In the future I pray that we use our military only when we have clear and measurable goals and the full support of the people, both at home and abroad.
As for the politicians who started this effort and those who continue to pour our troops into this meat grinder, I imagine that there is a special place in Hades for all of you.
1
That there have been so many reasons offered for our war in Afghanistan signifies there really is no good reason for Americans to die there:
1/ Bringing Osma Bin Laden to justice: That rationale ended with his capture and execution.
2/ Liberating Afghan women: One has to ask why Afghan women are more important than Saudi or Sudanese or any other Muslim women under the whip and chain elsewhere.
3/ Crushing the source of opium and poppy cultivation: As if!
From the shire in New Hampshire we are left imagining the why.
Why were American soldiers punished and discharged for objecting to child rape by Afghan police and military officers, if we were there to bring American enlightenment?
Why is the Taliban still in the driver's seat, a force we still have to "negotiate" with after 18 years?
We can only imagine we are there because American officials do not want to admit defeat, whatever that may be or, more likely, because of profit for some in the American business community.
Jim Jordan's district builds tanks and arms for war. He is a member of the "Freedom Caucus." He is a Congressional "tough guy." He is the Undershaft of modern America and Barbara Lee was the Major Barbara of her time.
That lone Congressional voice, Ms. Lee, you quoted, got it right. This was a quagmire going in; it has been a quagmire all along.
Bring 'em home.
I would like to know the details about how the US negotiated with the Taliban to "turn over" Osama Bin Laden. Who were the US negotiators? Who were the Taliban negotiators? What was the timeline? Did the Taliban actually acknowledge that had the ability to "turn over" Osama Bin Laden?
It pains me to no end to agree with DJT on anything, but on ending this seemingly interminable war I must. 17 years with no real success, other than killing OBL, in a country that has swallowed up empires since Alexander. It's their country, for better or worse, and if they wanted actual change it would have happened by now. Afghanistan is above all tribal and fiercely independent, although they undoubtedly like the pallets of money that we have been sending without fail. And that money has only made one of the most corrupt governments even more corrupt. The Taliban isn't going away. The corruption isn't going to end. The tribal hatred will not abate. And the narco state will remain. It's time to go.
"Some experts predict an even fiercer civil war as the Kabul government and its army weaken and warlords gain new power."
Spare the civilians from slaughter on our way out by literally dispatching the top two or three levels of each warlord organization?
The war on terror should have been waged domestically at our Military-Industrial-Complex. It is our meddling in Muslim countries and shameless alliance with brutal regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel which is the root cause of our terrorist issues.
Until we acknowledge this, we are doomed repeat the endless cycle of destruction and violence.
1
There is little or no chance that Afghanistan's neighbors will stabilize the nation. Pakistan is in deep financial distress. Unemployment in India is at a 45 year high. There are regional rivalries between India on one side and Pakistan's army and China on the other. Iran is reeling from US sanctions. Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 70s, lost the war and left. The most likely scenario in Afghanistan if the US leaves is another Vietnam withdrawal and lost war. The taliban will overrun the country, impose it's barbaric laws, and prevent women from going to school. The Al queda and isis will regroup in afghanistan. The US has maintained it's presence in afghanistan at a high cost-in lives of US soldiers and civilians lost to drone strikes gone wrong. An exit now will have wasted all the lives lost, and the money and effort that went into stabilizing Afghanistan since 2001. There have been many suicide attacks in Afghanistan in recent months. The nation is far from stable and stabilizing that nation will take many more decades. The US and it's allies could do the most to stablize Afghanistan but Trump is the most ignorant and incompetent US leader yet who has undermined US allies.
Finally someone is standing up to the military industrial complex, wasting $ billions of taxpayer's money and worse, getting US military men and women killed for nothing. Politicians would rather please their corporate sugar daddies than do what is right.
Bring them home, close the border and put Americans first, for a change.
In the absence of full commitment and clarity of strategic goals, the 17-year old US' Afghan war is a lost mission now. It's time to quit Afghanistan and better deploy human/material resources to further improve the American lives and infrastructure.
1
DO WE DARE Withdraw completely from Afghanistan, only to allow Al Qaeda and ISIS to grow and to continue threatening world peace? Conversely, it is not credible to think that if every day security and government buildings are blown up in Kabul and elsewhere both in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region, there is any possibility of building up defenses. Not if those in training and those who train are being slaughtered daily. There is no best answer. The only choice remaining is to choose the least worst option. Meanwhile, on home front we've got Trump, his Cabinet of horrors and White House advisers who look like a bunch of leftovers from a remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Trump's undermining of the GOPpers will end up being his undoing. His failed presidency can still cause damage. But Congress is uniting to employ its checks and balances on both the Executive and the Judicial branches. When you consider the number of deaths in the US at approaching 60,000 deaths from opioid overdoses last year, along with about 32,000 fatal auto accidents as well as about 32,000 fatal gunshot wounds, those numbers make it indisputable that we've got to start shoring up our national defenses of the homeland before our internal warfare defeats more completely than any outside influences, including fake news, hacking and other forms of disruption caused by our enemies. Not to mention allies of long standing that have been cut off by Trump's lies about better deals. SOS!
We won the Afghanistan War in five weeks. The war profiteers have kept us there for seventeen.
End the wars ,all of them. They are not in our countries best intrest .It is the bomb makers profits that keep us bombing eight different countries as we speak.
3
Hard to know what to think. Noble intentions brought low by reality and an ocean of malice and hatred. The military industrial complex wants to keep us in Afghanistan forever. That’s reason enough to leave.
1
We are spending over 72 Billion dollars annually just for Compensation / Pension to the veterans apart from all other expenses of health care .
Thousands of young veterans are suffering from PTSD with increasing suicide rate .
What have really achieved in these wars?
Think logically before opposing Trump who became President with certain promises against the recent
un necessary wars and against insecure borders with clear mockery of legal migration which law abiding people !support .
Better late than never. I'm glad that the Times finally sees what many of its readers have been saying for a while now, that terrorism can not be won by military means alone.
Most importantly, Islamic terrorism will never be defeated unless the philosophy behind it is defeated. The madrassas that formed the terrorists are still operating in Pakistan and other Muslim countries and are funded directly or indirectly by US allies such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Middle Eastern countries.
The Wahhabism which inspires terrorists around the world is the official religion of Saudi Arabia. The Times editorial board, like most US politicians has barely mentioned it as one of the root causes of terrorism.
The war on terror was launched back in 2001 when 19 terrorists , 15 of which were Saudis attacked the US.
Eighteen years later, it seems as if the root of terrorism should not be mentioned at all. The Times offered solutions to counter terrorism but not once did the board mentioned the role that Saudi wahhabism plays in spreading the virus that is Sunni extremism.
5
There's a caveat, and that is that departing Afghanistan entirely will allow international terrorist groups to have a place to rebuild and to base operations.
Those who call for complete withdrawal must accept responsibility for helping create a situation that will require more extensive use of remote methods of killing: aerial bombing, and guided missiles.
One cannot insist n total withdrawal and then go on to complain about collateral damage.
Another option would to use the French approach, which shold be popular with urban leftists: hire someone else to go in and tidy the place up, and don't complain about how they do it.
I support moving the majority of our forces out, mainly because I think the Russians suckered us into another mini-Vietnam here, but also because out Congress doesn't have the spine to do the right thing, which is to aid those who helped us and kill those who don't, and then build roads, schools, water plants, power plants, and most important, western style educational institutions - and bring the place out of the 16th century.
1
This is an important article for the future of America.
We Americans have a long history of using militaristic force to solve diplomatic problems with countless countries.
Our mindless attitude toward war will continue a future of a very unhappy America unless we embark on a peace oriented foreign policy.
We must change our militaristic attitude now!
1
This is a good first step towards separating the peace and prosperity of America from the hatred-fueled, resource-wasteful American Empire.
Not so fast, hombre. Going on a killing spree of half a million people isn't going to end so cleanly. A withdrawal is necessary because defeat is evident and has been for years. However, "Bin Laden brought to justice" is self-delusion; his ideology and motives are ever present among tens of thousands of fighters worldwide. The more get killed, the more keep coming up.
What was supposed to happen was simple: get less people to become violently anti-American, whether through fear or love. Neither was sufficiently employed, and now there is a big increase in the intensity of anti-American sentiment wherever the American military has landed. Bin Laden has achieved his goal of turning the Muslim world against or away from America and the West. They may not realize it, but they are now cornered. The third world, the former colonies, held the West's back during the world wars. Today the West has enemies closing in from all sides: Russia, China and Islam, while Africa and South America are unable to be of any help.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, but it is what it is. The Taliban and the Islamists fought hard with the little arms they had, and the Americans built nothing with the little they spent.
That $5.9t did not go to waste in the Middle East and Afghanistan; it fed the American war machine here. The waste is having no result to show for it except long lines at the airport, a surveillance economy and heightened aggression and distrust in American society. That is not a win.
1
Let's be honest. America is leaving Afghanistan and Syria because there is no oil there. America is staying in Iraq because there is oil in Iraq.
Oil should not be a determining factor in matters that may result in loss of life of innocent people.
1
A terrible, thoughtful piece. Accepting so many have, literally, a "death wish" as a route to an imaginary paradise they will never know is a "Lose, Lose" situation. The US (and we) have tried and done, within limits, our best. As one who followed ME politics as best I could from the safety (then) of the UK, I was (unusually) in favour of deposing Saddam - as bloody a dictator as you could wish. NOW how I wish we had left him - the very people I was hoping to save, turned on the West and we are, I feel worse off; though we will never be sure. And - OK, I do know there were many other than humanitarian reasons by our then leaders for this enterprise, but there were others who I respected with this genuine desire. TRAGIC for the poor, wretched women we would/will have to abandon :-(
1
We have a drone base in North Afghanistan near Pakistan. There we need with soldiers protecting it. That base is able to strike terrorists camps like the one bin Laden had prior to 9-11. Our other drone bases are too far away to monitor terrorist activity in that area where al-Quada and ISIS are planning attacks as we speak.
Other than the 1,000 or so we need there I agree. We need to bring our kids home.
I don't know which is better. Providing a live training base for soldiers who want to be warriors. Or letting them sit at home, relatively far from danger, playing first person shooter games. I have kinda given up on my ideal that humans aren't killers. I don't even know if we would save any money.Why don't you poll a large group of Afghanistan War veterans and those presently stationed in Afghanistan and ask them what they think. You know like a show of hands.
you wrote that "all Americans — the news media included — need to be prepared to examine the national credulity or passivity that’s led to the longest conflict in modern American history." this credulity and passivity are the direct result of the all-volunteer army; if citizens were being drafted for the war you so accurately depicted, we would've been out of there years ago.
Afghanistan is a country created entirely by colonialist agendas; it hasn't gone even a single decade since its creation without being a pawn in the machinations of foreign powers. You are right that military action isn't the solution, but neither is abandoning a desolated country whenever the cost has gotten too high. The many failed states that the US's reckless foreign policy has left in its wake are breeding grounds for extremism, and simply leaving countries such as Afghanistan to rot will ultimately do more harm than good.
1
Here is the scary part:
"The plight of women and girls in Afghanistan has been perilous in wartime, and it could become far bleaker if the Taliban topple the current government and reimpose their barbaric pre-2001 regime."
This will happen. No one will stop it. This is the only valid reason to even keep one US troop in Afghanistan. Yes radical Islam is a 'forever" threat. ( traditional Islam is not however). The single focus is how to protect Afghani women and girls, however, in m opinion only.
"Yet it’s also possible that a decision to withdraw could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan and deny terrorists a regional base."
--yeah, right... How naive can we be...
1
One of the great tragedies here is that, were he to follow through, Donald J Trump could actually lay claim to having a executed a tough but totally correct decision, one that should have been made a decade ago.
What was Obama thinking?
"The plight of women and girls in Afghanistan has been perilous in wartime, and it could become far bleaker if the Taliban topple the current government and reimpose their barbaric pre-2001 regime."
The NYT is stating this right after having stated in a previous paragraph that the Taliban do not consider the current government to be "a legitimate entity — just a puppet of the United States." So whom are we kidding here?
It is time that the US end this conflict and send the troops home. A pre-emptive thermonuclear air strike on Khansahar would allow a peaceful and riskless withdrawal of troops: There would be no opposition because the opposition would have been terminated. We faced this moment as a nation in Japan in 1945, and we manned up at the plate and scored grand slam homeruns at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A repeat performance in Afghanistan would restore America’s place in the world as THE power to fear. Make American Great Again.
1
When America and allies invaded Afghanistan they acquired legal and moral obligations to the Afghan people in and outside of the country.
Withdrawing from Afghanistan without ensuring a stable government and the rule of law is an act of moral cowardice that I am shocked that the NYT editorial board could support.
And I fully recognise that the Australian government is invoking the same moral cowardice.
The US cannot win in Afghanistan. Just ask the Russians. They had far more at stake than we do and they left.
I wouldn't trust any country in the Middle East with a Muslim-majority government (no matter if it's elected or inherited). The "nations" there have been fighting with each other for 13 centuries with no end in sight. In many ways, it's a family war.
Send our soldiers home and leave those in Afghanistan to deal with their own madness.
Wow. A cogent argument for withdrawal and what seems to be an about face from NYT based on recent articles. Even faint praise for President Trump. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at that editorial meeting! I am not sure the problem with Afghanistan was so much a lack of clear goals, as that after 17 years the goal of defeating the Taliban and creating a stable democratic Afghan government has not been achieved (and may never have been achievable). I especially like the idea of granting asylum to Afghans who collaborated with the US, as it is just for those who put their life on the line and sets a good precedent for those who assist the US in any future conflicts. However, I am skeptical about this will actually happen. Time will tell whether a withdrawal at this point will lead to a resurgence of ISIS, or other similar terrorist groups and the loss of any gains that have been made by military action rendering the whole operation even more of a waste of time and resources. Unfortunately, for Afghan women the future looks bleak indeed.
4
@Kay The US hasn't done much for women in Afghanistan. The Russians were attempting to do something positive on the mysogy front. We should have left them there.
1
"Barbara Lee, a Democratic representative from California, who warned of another Vietnam. “We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target,” she said. “We cannot repeat past mistakes.”
Barbara Lee, the one hero associated with the issue of the, probably illegal, invasion of Afghanistan.
This, ladies in gentlemen, is why we need more African Americans in Congress. Looks like they are not, like the rest of Congress, bought by the military contractor apparatus yet.
5
I completely agree with the premise and conclusion of the NYT editorial. Many of the posted comments shed light on the stupidity of a unwinnable war in a pseudo-nation like Afghanistan.
My only problem is trying to stake-out a talking point to mostly liberal,women who say that we are not abandoning Afghanistan as much as were are abandoning the young women who fed on the false hopes that US involvement in this conflict would somehow open up to them basic human rights-education,freedom to move around without burkas, the right to exercise SOME degree of freedom in their very constrained lives.
It's a valid question :"So we are just walking away from the women of Afghanistan with a shrug and a more rapid stride towards the exit.
Even in doing the "right thing" and walking away from this pointless war, our retreat can easily be seen as an abandonment of 14 million girls and young women to the mercy of Taliban vs warlord governance for the next 50 years of their lives.
What answer would you give?
2
Why US troops are still in Japan? That war ended in 1945 with a humiliating and decisive defeat of Japan. Is it because Japan pays for the troops stationed at Japan? What about US troops in Korean peninsula? I hear that 45th will ask for more money from South Korean govt. for US troops stationed there. How about asking money from PUPPET Afghan for US troops stationed in Afghanistan? Well, Afghanistan does not have money to pay. But remember hastily withdrawing troops will bring more misery. Easy solution may be to make Afghanistan 51st.
1
Don't you mean: "Change the Combatants in the War in Afghanistan."? In the words of the great American philosopher Bill Joel 'We Didn't Start the Fire'. America leaving won't end the war.
3
If we fail to stop our enemies in their home country they will and have proven to us that they will come here and harm us.
Unless a peaceful solution can be found we need those that serve so that we can continue the life we lead now.
When ever you see someone in uniform, be thankful and let them know it.
We should have paid attention to the Russian’s failure in Afghanistan. Pure hubris on our part. Now we have our second unsuccessful war, the other being Vietnam.
There’s a big difference between fighting evil, as we did in World War II, and protecting our resources. A moral fight vs a geopolitical skirmish. I don’t think we’ll learn.
4
@Annie Eliot, MD lPerhaps the Russians would have failed in Afghanistan, but The US actually forced them out, before that was clear.
We would have to swallow very hard but the dual US/Afghan tragedy could be concluded and limited through two actions: (1) withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and (2) bring with us EVERYONE in Afghanistan who wants to come. We grant them all (possibly several million) US citizenship and, yes, some might be terrorists. This approach would both be more just and less expensive in the long run. Can you think of a better solution?
3
@opus dei I totally agree, except we should be able to keep out people we have good reason to think are members of ISIS.
It's about time that NYT stated what has been obvious for many years. The Marshall Plan that assisted in the rebuilding of Europe after WWII does not work in cultures with different religious understandings, different values and different traditions than those of America and western Europe. Everyone on the planet does not want to be like us; American Exceptionalism is the myopic view of many Americans, but the rest of the world does not necessarily share that view.
Meanwhile, the US war machinery has received billions of taxpayer dollars from the reckless wars in the middle east, and countless politicians have pounded their chests and envisioned America the Great transforming the culture of that area into mini-Americas.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Many young Americans have been maimed or killed in faraway places, Trillions of dollars have been spent without any return. Our intelligence/military/corporate war profiteers have run this pathetic show, employing deceit and false hope to market their deadly schemes. And you, NYT, have sat on the sidelines, pom-poms at the ready, prepared to encourage the deadly insanity of the elite echelons of America's power structure.
It's about time you took a moral and rational position. Better late than never, I suppose. Thank you for this editorial.
6
We Americans have an all-consuming arrogance regarding the rest of the world. We believe, wrongly, that ours is the only way to live, that all others should be "democratic" or embrace our values. Here's why Afghanistan was and always shall be "the graveyard of empires,": The Afghans are one of the most tribal people in history. They neither believe in, or indeed, need our democratic way of life. We will continue to squander trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in the senseless pursuit of forcing them to be something they are not. It's time to bring our troops home.
151
@mrfreeze Couldn't agree more!
8
@mrfreeze6
Was the Afghanistan the graveyard of the Mongol empire because I don't recall that?
It all depends on the goal.
2
@mrfreeze6 vast majority of the soldiers who died in these wars were kids, young men and women. My salute to them. Bring the kids home.
2
I recall John Kerry's argument during his presidential campaign that the war on terrorism could never be won but it could be minimized by addressing it as criminal acts . The Bush campaign derided this enlightened view and labelled Mr. Kerry as willing to tolerate terrorism furthering their claim that he was not a true patriot. The Republicans 'swift boated" John Kerry to ensure that their war on terrorism would continue.
5
Right. For most of my life I have found the practice of proxy wars to be highly disturbing. Mr. Bush's words express a variation of the theme. It is no longer troops backed by the US & the USSR fighting on someone else's land, killing some other country's civilians, and destroying that country's infrastructure. Lately it has been fighting terrorists in some other place so that they do not come to us. The result is the same, though. It is viewed as good when we fight in someone else's land, killing some other country's civilians, and destroying that country's infrastructure rather than our own.
Surely, that seems good to many Americans as it protects us and our country, yet we also find it acceptable to do our fighting in someone else's back yard. That ought, at least, to give us pause.
6
Afghanistan is a problem, war is not the answer. When these situations arise why don't we say to ourselves "We know from Viet Nam that military action won't work, so let's see if we can think of something else." After all, we have something like a $5 trillion budget to work with.
4
I often reflect on my own role as an enlisted infantryman in the conflict from 2011-2012 and the moral burden I've had to carry as a result has only grown as I have watched the US strategy in Afghanistan fail to address the social injustices that galvanized my enlistment in the first place.
I continue to lose friends to combat on a near-annual basis, and I watch the areas I gave blood and took lives to secure on behalf of the Afghan "Government" devolve into havens for insurgencies as war planners declared them too destabilized for our forces to impact.
Many of us enlisted because we wanted to have a driver's seat role in improving the lives of the Afghan people. The violence we partook in and witnessed has left many of us with substantial baggage we will have the privilege of carrying for the rest of our lives. Perpetuating this half-in/half-out war policy only costs lives, causes trauma, sustains the war industry, and fails to acknowledge that the American people and strategic planners of this war had neither the gumption nor stomach for the scale of warfare that would have been necessary for successful counter-insurgency. This is what happens when you send an army to fight a war with one hand tied behind its back, in a country where the populace has little interest in the brand of ideology you're there to impose.
7
We are in the 18th year of this war and the Pentagon’s assessment is “stalemate.” That says it all. And whenever we leave - given the weakness of the Afghan government, corruption, the strength of the Taliban in various areas and dynamic of the opium trade - things will likely get worse. I hope not but that is the more likely possibility.
This is tragic. But we have to realize that we can’t permanently change the dynamic in Afghanistan with so many forces working against us. Ultimately Afghans will have to support the type of government they want.
I think we should negotiate a settlement. Perhaps for a defined term we could keep 2-3 thousand troops to continue training Afghan forces and help maintain support. But perhaps this is not tenable either and we will just have to leave.
3
The USA isn’t “ending the war” in Afghanistan.
You’re simply taking your ball and going home. We can be certain a civil war with the Taliban will rage for years until either the Taliban again control the country and impose an extremist government based on shariah law
As many in the GOP have so stridently put it in the past, you’re “cutting and running.”
And rightfully so, attacking Afghanistan didn’t help at all in killing Bin Laden. Pakistan was sheltering him. The perpetrators of 9/11 were predominantly Saudi, your putative “allies”. And the war is unwinnable.
As for protecting women’s rights and building a democracy - both motives were never more than smoke and mirrors - convenient public relations pretexts for pursuing symbolic vengeance against an Arab state for 9/11. They’ll be callously thrown under the bus at the first convenient moment.
It was a senseless war to begin with - accept the ignominy and disgrace for pointlessly pursing such a bad idea for so long.
15
@Norman McDougall ........... Vengance on the WRONG state. The Saudis were responsible for the attacks on 9/11 - & not just Bin Laden. Most of those who actually committed those horrors were Saudi. & we know that Saudis were supporting Bin Laden's activities in Afghanistan.
2
"The Long War"? - US military involvement in Afghanistan began well before 2001. It's been a very long war.
5
"Bring the troops home" or "keep the troops in place". How can we know the best option with our State Department so gutted and unable to provide sound advice about what is in America's best interest? What options are out there that are not even being considered?
4
RE: While Mr. Trump’s foreign policy has been unwise if not self-defeating in many areas, he is right, as was Barack Obama, to want to scale back a global conflict that appears to have no outer bound.
Obama spread the "Global War on Terror", committing coups in Honduras, Ukraine, Libya and attempting but failing to do so in Syria. He did not create peace anywhere. Just the opposite. He re-started the Cold War by re-starting the nuclear arms race.
He also made the people of the USA cynical, by promising things and then doing the opposite. Hopey Changey elected Trump, who, as this reasonable op-ed points out, is doing what Obama promised to do.
What a world.
5
Mr. Trump, here's the "very good" story--an editorial, no less--that you wished for after sitting for your recent Times interview. We do need to get out of Afghanistan, in as orderly and safe a way as possible. This is one campaign promise that the great majority of Americans want to see you keep.
21
"The failure of American leaders — civilians and generals through three administrations, from the Pentagon to the State Department to Congress and the White House — to develop and pursue a strategy to end the war ought to be studied for generations."
Asymmetric warfare coupled to effective "terrorism" tactics leveled the field with the most powerful militaries in history. What is obvious today, as was in 1968, is that dominance in the traditional domains of war alone is incongruent with the wars of today and the future. To achieve victory a resistance force need not win, it need only remain and not lose. Our national defense strategy should not focus on how we win in this long and costly type of war--a death of a thousand cuts--but rather how we employ instruments of national power to avoid such engagements in the first place.
13
Afghanistan needs to abolish the growing of poppy for the illegal heroin trade. It should stick to growing non-psychoactive industrial hemp instead, which can be used for an assortment of different products from building material, to clothes, to bio-plastics, soap products, etc. Industrial hemp would be an excellent choice for Afghanistan's main agricultural export product.
4
You are right, opium has to go, but that's yet another oncoming war. Warlords use drugs income to finance their agendas.
And believe me, drug's money is close to endless since demand is also endless.
And that problem (drugs culture) is nowhere close to an end.
3
@Victor Sanchez Certain drugs make people feel good. It's the illegality that creates the killer drug gangs. The mafia got it's start in the US because of the illegalization of alcohol. So now that alcohol is legal, you don't hear about gangs with high caliber weapons moving it around. So then there are support groups who want to stop drinking, which is a whole other problem, which was only made worse by the gangs & the police.
Let's put this in context. The president has hinted that he will attack Iran. Let's call this his "Get Re-elected Plan", because Americans do, truly, love wars and it boosts even terrible presidential ratings. He gave the military a huge increase in funds. He probably kind-of wants to get out of Afghanistan and Syria so he can re-direct money to his new target. It is time for Americans to plan to stop this.
16
Trump was right. They actually said it. It would have been braver to come out and support him as soon as Trump announced plans to draw down the troops, to give him needed bakup in the face of the reflexive negative reaction of his critics, but the New York Times finally did say it: he was right.
5
All the U.S. ever had to do was pay the opium farmers for their poppies. How hard is that?
5
It's time to end the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and to pay reparations for the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the US military.
3
Perhaps, Rep. Barbara Lee should be among the Democrats who have entered the 2020 race.
8
@C. Bowling almost. I prefer to vote in primaries for Democratic Presidential candidates who got the 2002 Iraq vote right. There are many more of them.
"86% of attacks were carried or but far right extremists" So the Republican party's right leaning intolerant ways have inspired groups of hateful, sexist, racist people to commit violent acts against others of differing opinions or skin colour. There's the real threat to people lives. They tell us it's the immigrants. The statistics show us it's not. The biggest danger is domestic right wing terrorists and the political party sheltering them. The propoganda filled lies of the Murdoch press also should be held accountable.
6
@Wonders Never Cease
Dear Wonders Never Cease,
You need to re-read the article it says,
"But there have been more than 200 deadly terrorist attacks during that period, most often at the hands of Americans radicalized by ideologies ... Half of those attacks were motivated by radical Islam, while 86 came at the hands of far-right extremists."
86 attacks by right wing extremists, not 86%
1
So happy warriors of America, tell me, were so many dead and wounded on both sides worth the insult to your pride you experienced on 9/11, however spectacularly horrible it was?
Was it worth the waste of trillions, the degradation of your own rights with warrantless eavesdropping? Abu Graib / Gitmo and a pointless 17 year quagmire? Was it worth the creation of a new generation of terrorists? ISIS? Was it worth letting Iran have forces much closer to Israel? Was it worth being rendered a eunuch in Syria while Russia runs the board? Was it worth setting up a major conflict between the Saudis and Iran that is slowly coming into focus?
Yes, 9/11 needed to be answered. Yes, the terrorists needed to face justice, but what they did was a criminal act, not an act of war. Your response was vastly out of proportion to the crime, and has become the greater crime.
But all that aside, after all that waste, you lost.
35
Having sons in actual combat arms, I typically never agree with the NYT or WaPo. But every now and then they come to their senses and publish something that I'll support. Yes, it is time we end the war in Afghanistan. How many tours must a soldier make?
We have become the lazy nation. We don't have a draft and don't require anything of our citizens other than to pay taxes. Those who serve are being asked to do more with less, being the guinea pigs of American society. One giant experiment, run by politicians who now want to allow for the killing of any child born or not. Not a way to run a country.
The forever war must end. One cannot fight a war against a nebulous catchphrase. Wars should be avoided and when all negotiations and diplomacy have failed, entered into with the express purpose of defeating our enemy and then ending it. We were never designed as a country or a civilization to become the Hun. Nor should we desire to be. End it. And bring our boys home.
12
"Four more wars!" is the unspoken mantra of far too many multinational corporations. There's simply too much money to be made from the foreign entanglements that the venerable Washington warned us against over 2 centuries ago. Poppy is another valuable commodity that the world's largest consumer of opioids is loath to dispense with and we must maintain our access to it to ensure the enslavement of millions of undesireables to the needle or pill. Most important is the contrivance of the "war on terror" that is actually a code term for "war on American civil liberties." That must be maintained and supplanted at all costs...taxpayers, ignore this liberal propaganda and continue to prepare your young people of military age to travel to this fabled land.
5
Let’s remember that surveys after the US invasion in 2001 indicated that over 80% of Afghans supported the US ousting of the Taliban.
However, by the end of 2004, Bush administration policy of avoiding any Clintonesque nation-building, diverting its attention to a new war in Iraq and concentrating only on eliminating Al Qaeda, permitted the Taliban to reconstitute itself inside the country from Pakistan. The war was basically lost then as the Taliban returned to take charge of the narrative: no longer just fanatics denying human rights for the people but defenders of the Islamic republic against a foreign infidel occupation. From that point on more military involvement reinforced that narrative and produced less success for the ISAF forces. Only one of several factors, but an important one, in explaining the Taliban’s increasing territorial command over the years and now our rueful recognition of a lost cause.
8
National governments rely on national support - democratic or not. The less support they get the greater the chance they will fall.
Foreign intervention takes that need for local support away. That is the paradox of foreign interventions: the more you support a foreign government - the less likely it will be to be capable of standing alone.
It certainly doesn't help that the US tends to support pliable straw men who are open to US interests rather than staunch nationalists.
This also explains why US interventions seldom result in successful democracies. The US appointed leaders weren't chosen for their ability to listen to the population and they never really will get used to it.
5
And while we're at it, time to shine a light on what the US is doing in northern Africa, which is going on under the radar and with no public accountability or discussion. That's where the next Afghanistan "forever war" may be brewing, and we won't know it until we're waist deep in the Big Muddy.
And it's time for the next president to vow a comprehensive reassessment of the US defense strategy. We have domestic needs that are going unmet. It's time to figure out how to defend our country, in concert with our good allies, without breaking the bank. The current strategy is unsustainable.
7
Bin Laden wasn’t brought to justice. Justice was brought to him on a cold starry night.
5
In the U.S. it's always and only about the money.
The money to military contractors which senators and representatives can bring to their states. These senators and representatives then leave government to become lawyers and lobbyists for these same contractors.
War is big business in the U.S., just like elections and the medical system. There is too much profit to be made by too many people. Humans lives don't count for much when corporate profits are at risk.
It's always the money.
30
Let’s hear from soldiers who have served in Afghanistan. Not the generals, not soldiers still in the military so they would fear facing consequences.
Let’s open up this discussion as a forum. Let us read or hear what they have to say. How about Congress open their ears to these servants? After all, these citizens, who served in the military are the ones who have put their lives on the line. Have hearings open to the public, televised. We were all affected by 9/11. That was the commencement of our Afghanistan involvement. Eighteen years ago. So now, these years later, let them tell us one way or another - should the United States still be in Afghanistan? Why or why not?
The time has come to listen to the real people involved, not politicians, not those making money from involvement. I want to hear it from those who served in the troops. And I think others should have the opportunity, too.
14
@MIM
So well stated. It would definitely be worth the effort but I wonder if there is enough of a thinking and listening public who even care.
MIMA, while well intentioned, your call to “listen to the troops” is part of the problem.
In addition to the military, there have been countless thousands of civilians who have sat with Afghan government officials in their offices every day, worked with their legislatures, worked in ministries, worked with governors, worked with local NGOs and civil society groups, entirely outside the American bubble of Baghram or a FOB.
And many lost their lives doing so.
America’s presence in Afghanistan, for good or ill, was more than just the military. And, in my mind, should have been MUCH more than the military.
“Listening to the troops” would be like trying to diagnose the problems that ail America by just talking to the police.
It’s an understandable oversight though.
Compare the budgets for all things military in Afghanistan with that of civilian operations. Given that after the invasion we were (allegedly) trying to build a government and stable state, you would have expected the funding to be focused on that rather than blowing things up. You’d be wrong. We spent the past two decades spending most of our money on bullets, bombs, foot patrols, and bribing warlords and politicians, and somehow, after all that time, money, and lives, we are shocked that a stable state hadn’t been built.
On the bright side, our defense contractors made a LOT of money.
@Objectively Subjective
I’m open to speaking and listening to anyone who was there and is not in jeopardy of consequences if they are speaking now. I have served on numerous boards, councils, committees through my years. Hearing from the horses’ mouths makes most sense to me.
Your comment well taken.
MIMA
The wars in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan were lost on day 1 of their inceptions. This good article says that in the first few lines. No realistic military objectives, no coherent sober mission, and no exit plan, but just this open ended blank check. As a veteran of the Vietnam era, I mourn my fellow fallen comrades, who gave their lives, limbs, and minds, for such meager gains. I think of that argument that those that sacrificed, now, will and have died in vain. However it is time to stop the carnage, America can't fix the world with wars, that drain national blood and treasure. America should use its resources to feed the world's hungry, heal the worlds many poor sick populations, help other nations less fortunate to build for their futures. America is still the most powerful nation on the planet.
25
@Milque Toast wrote: "America should use its resources to feed the world's hungry, heal the worlds many poor sick populations, help other nations less fortunate to build for their futures."
These are noble goals, but you're forgetting that, as a nation, the US is *tremendously* in debt. This is largely due to costs of endless 'wars' and tax relief for corporations and rich individuals.
Until we have realistic economic leadership we cannot afford to "feed... and heal... the world's many poor sick populations".
1
The Romans fought the Parthian, Sassanid empires for over five hundred years. They captured their capital, Ctesiphon two or three times. Armies were destroyed, Emperors were defeated and captured on occasion. Treasures and blood were spilled over the centuries of conflict.
The Brown University, Smithsonian Lily Pad map paints an Empire of outposts and outreach. The scope of which any Emperor would savor.
What if the Empire had spent their treasure and blood on infrastructure, social welfare and commonweal? Which Empire?
7
You seem to worry about women's right, if the Taliban take over, but on one utters a word, when Saudi commits the same kind of brutality.
19
Yes, it was nice to get Bin Laden, but the only things we needed to do to prevent another 9/11 were things at home: beef up airport security and lock the cockpit doors, letting no one in during flight except airline/security personnel.
There will be future attacks, and they won’t all be on the airlines. Truck bombs and attacks on the rail systems are also likely. But defense is most important, followed by information gained from our intelligence services.
Endless wars against an enemy that can’t be defined or defeated is a massive waste of money and lives.
34
@Steven Roth - Searching the globe, attacking and invading other countries, killing their babies and grandpas, under the guise of trying to sort through 7.6 Billion people to locate a "terrorist" who might find their way here to attack us is beyond absurd. Chickenhawk George's "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" could be the stupidest slogan mouthed by this stupid man.
We should have learned from Vietnam. The problem is that our constitution (and Congress) gives massive power to the President as 'commander in chief' to an office (person) who has no business making military decisions. But where does the President get his advice? From the military, who like a carpenter with only a hammer sees only nails. We are caught in a trap, and always have been. We need revolutionary change in how the system works.
18
It was good that you began your article by quoting Barbara Lee. You should have ended it by reminding the readers that she was right.
23
Well, I suppose. I’ve argued for ending our Afghan debacle in the NYT and elsewhere since at least 2009, as if it wasn’t already too late even then, or isn’t now. As if we haven’t already done immense damage to ourselves.
The cost of any war whatever its aims or exigencies is measured not just in lost lives but in foregone opportunities elsewhere — the actual cost of all the money squandered in the misadventure, as President Eisenhower explained in his Farewell Address. Lost and ruined lives and foregone opportunities aside, how much money — nearly all of it borrowed — was spent pursuing a strategy not of winning but of refusing to admit defeat? Two trillion dollars? Three? Four?
Nobody knows, least of all the small legion of U.S. government officials whose sole purpose in life was to cover it up.
Historians writing about this catastrophic period in our history spanning the years 1947-2027 (?) will probably describe our Afghan/Iraqi strategic overreach as equivalent to Bourbon France’s disastrous wars in the Americas. Those destroyed its finances, igniting a host of underlying social tensions that first led to an insurrection in Paris, then anarchy; destruction of the monarchy itself; The Terror and civil war; invasion by foreign armies; a series of weak, unstable governments called “the Directory”; and, finally, an “imperator” — what ancient Romans called it. A general riding a white horse cast in the mould of Caesar who crowned himself king in a most Caesarian way.
10
what of the suffering of the people under Taliban?
What of the suffering of woman under Taliban?
3
Joe Yoh acts as if he's asking two new questions. In fact the original essay answered those questions as follows:
"The plight of women and girls in Afghanistan has been perilous in wartime, and it could become far bleaker if the Taliban topple the current government and reimpose their barbaric pre-2001 regime.
Yet it’s also possible that a decision to withdraw could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan and deny terrorists a regional base."
Joe might find this answer inadequate, but it's foolish to raise these two questions as if they hadn't already been considered.
8
@Joe Yoh
Joe, this is an easy set of questions. The United States has plenty of people suffering right within our borders that we don't have the resources, or don't have the wherewithal to help.
We should focus within our borders, plus, the suffering of the Afghan people has multiplied many times over since the USA invaded.
7
American troops should have come home from Afghanistan after Seal Team 6 got Osama Bin Laden (who had been hiding out in Pakistan).
7
This editorial is at least a decade overdue.
46
Senator Barbara Lee was right. The only one of 535 who was.
It gave president Bush the opportunity to coin what is perhaps the most nonsensical phrase ever introduced into the American lexicon - "war on terror." As if we could declare war on an emotional state. That phrase has been used to abuse the English language and strike more fear into the hearts of gutless Americans than any *terrorist* could from half a world away.
It is long past time that we extricate ourselves from Afghanistan. We've shed enough blood and visited more destruction in return for 9/11 than was deserved, in my opinion. No more nation building. Get out.
No more wars of choice.
10
Those trillions of dollars wasted on the Afghan valleys and mountains could have transformed the lives of millions of Americans, including the brave veterans.
Leaving Afghanistan would need an indispensable review of the foreign and global security strategy of the USA, recognizing the financial and military limits of the still world liberal power.
But, who is dictating sound criteria and objectives of that review?
The current POTUS, Mr. Pompeo or the old style neocon, Bolton?
A bipartisan Congress should convene urgently a special committee to reform the American foreign policy to adapt it to the new world landscape. And offer suggestions to the POTUS.
7
"Afghanistan is where empires go to die."
So let it die and get out.
11
As someone pointed out in WAPO, the US can't win in Syria or Afghanistan.
But we can certainly lose.
And I don't think the 'decisions' to leave were made with any due deliberation. More like, "Maybe this will distract the public from Mueller's investigation of how I got elected with Russian help, in exchange for promises of favoritism."
So I don't know what our goals should be in Afghanistan, but I do know this is no way to make a major geopolitical decision.
And we know from Nick Kristof's article on Portugal's drug policy vs ours that we're going about that all wrong. Whether Afghanistan produces opium is irrelevant, because interdiction and prohibition don't work and never have.
What we need is statesmanship. What we have is a distraction.
17
Forever war is highly profitable for some who are well connected by crony capitalism. Contractors to hire. Weapons to destroy so new ones can be bought. And it speeds up the promotion opportunities in the Pentagon. And all this for a mere $5 trillion and counting.
41
We never should have been there in the first place. No coincidence that the opioid explosion happened after the invasion. The question that we need to ask is, why now. To give the market back to Russia, of course.
10
This is a very thoughtful, informative and well written opinion. As a mother who’s only child is about to embark on a tour in Afghanistan I pray and hope for the president and Congress most of whom have no clue what a war zone is nor the sacrifices of military families, will do the right thing and end this futility. After 18 years, thousands of American livesand billions of $ its time for the Afghans to stand on their own and others to help them as needed.
20
Yes, our soldiers have fought bravely in Afghanistan. And yes, with a plan in place that's more detailed than a pinky swear from the Taliban for a ceasefire, the war should end.
But is the war ending, or is Trump planning to funnel defense dollars to Betsy DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, the CEO of Blackwater? Prince pitched Trump on hiring Blackwater mercenaries to staff the war and report directly to Trump, and General Mattis objected strenuously. But Mattis is now gone, so the coast is clear - and for what exactly?
A New York Times piece on October 4 explained that it's not only the mercenary profits of staffing the war that Erik Prince and Trump are after:
"Mr. Prince has also tied his proposal to an effort to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, including rare earth deposits — a favorite topic of Mr. Trump, who has complained that the United States does not gain enough resources from its war efforts." During Prince's visits to Afghanistan, he met with both government officials and mining officials as an advisor to Donald Trump.
It's worth a reminder, from the same Times piece, that "Mr. Prince’s former company, Blackwater, won hundreds of millions of dollars in United States military contracts, mainly in Iraq, before it was essentially blacklisted after the firm’s contractors massacred civilians in Baghdad in 2007."
Prince just ran an advertisement "We Are Coming." This editorial needs a follow-up on who benefits, the risks, and oversight - before they get there.
69
"There are now 16,000 soldiers from 39 countries in the NATO force. More than 14,000 of them are American. "
Trump has been correct in pointing out the nearly free ride we give our NATO "allies". Aside from the question of should we be there, if we ARE going to be there then the burden should be equitably shared.
5
As a Brit I must point out that your comment is very US-centric. America chose to put its military forces into Afghanistan in order to pursue a purely American agenda. Why then should other countries feel obligated to support such action? The US is there because it chose to be, and that is not a valid reason for other nations to sacrifice their service men and women for what was from the outset a lost cause. @hb freddie
53
The point that you are missing is that almost every other allied country has spun down their military commitments or totally withdrawn from Afghanistan.
Only the USA seems doggedly committed to endless war there.
9
@hb freddie
Why? Why should other countries join in this madness?
The mission to leave a stable Afghanistan which will not be a haven for international terrorism has not been accomplished. Leaving under these circumstances is just walking away from an unstable situation which could present the same problems which developed in the 1990’s after we left that country in a scrambles.
There are three very vexing conditions unaddressed. First, there is no central government that enables the country to organize itself and to prosper. Second, it is a battleground between India and Pakistan who fight with surrogates that contend with violence. Third, Afghanistan has nothing but war and opium that brings wealth into that country, even though there are minerals which are valuable to the world economy and perhaps other potential offerings to the world economy.
Question asked out of true ignorance and desire for enlightenment: At any time in its post-Ottoman history, has there ever been a stable central government in Afghanistan, a land of a multitude of independent peoples who have spent and wasted too much of their time, capital, and children fighting for either a united nation, at the hands of assorted autocratic thugs, the former USSR, the bloody justice of the Taliban - with its initial US support - the attempt to create a government against the Taliban, initially sponsored, and given a handful of US troops, and now a guaranteed method to split the nation along non-geographic lines - pro- and anti-Taliban forces under the US-sponsored “coalition” government which will simplify things for a while as the Afghan peoples divide up on two sides of autocratic theocracy, great if you’re on its good side, ready to add your body to a pile in a public stadium following a pre-assumed guilty without any other potential change in verdict stadium trial.
It will, at the least, give the Afghan population a place where they can attempt a two/sided war in a land which, as far as I can tell, has never been allowed to know peace- if only the peace within one’s separate ghetto village surrounded by lines one does not dare cross or uncrossable mountain borders.
Only we’ve shared some responsibility for the mess for a long time now-ever since we interested a group of religious fanatics into attacking the USSR in an attempt to destroy said superpower.
11
Points taken, but please articulate how you believe military forces can fix any of these problems.
Also, are any of these problems that the USA can or should be involved in?
1
While I agree with this op-ed in the main, what will happen to women there if the Taliban reimpose their brutality? Will we go back? And if we do, will the US public be supportive? The war should end, but this should be one concern we don't leave behind.
16
@Andrea W. If we are worried about Taliban orthodoxy and how it will affect the lives of women in Afghanistan, we need to start taking a hard look at Saudi Arabia and its role in exporting fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology all over the world. Its their oil money which led to the fomenting of fundamentalists like the Taliban and the ISIS. And thats the only way to get it to stop, by cutting it off at the source.
3
@Andrea W.
The women will suffer. That's sad. But tell us: What can we do to change or prevent that? I can't see how. Do you think we should stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, for another 20 years, maybe 40, maybe 80? The answer will depend on your values.
4
@August West I think once we safeguard the women, then we leave. And even the threat of it would hopefully make the Taliban relent. And all of this is moot in a way. So long as Trump is in office, with his extreme disreguard for women, nothing like this will come to pass. Women will be brutalized, and we will do nothing.
very well done piece. encompassing. probing.
sad to think of the gains made being lost,
the Taliban overrunning a weak Afghan government,
but we must think of the American lives lost.
not having done so properly,
is testament to not having made Afghanistan
a centerpiece of an ongoing national discussion on how we spend
our blood and treasure.
Why wasn't this done?
Have we not devalued the lives of those sent abroad?
Maybe that's exactly what was at the heart of Barbara Lee's lone dissenting vote to authorize the intervention, back in 2001.
and maybe, also, she was saying that wars are too serious a business to be left to the military and the reigning political class.
13
Congress speaks for the people. As such, it should pursue the outcome that a majority of Americans want and hold the executive branch accountable for withdrawing troops from a country in which there is no achievable end game strategy.
8
Congress may speak for the people, but in a Potemkin democracy every elected official that matters is owned by the military-industrial complex.
Choices or voices permitted will only be those which in no way threaten the arms-industry gravy train.
To whom has this not been clearly evident ever since the days of our "I Like Ike" buttons?
13
This is a huge policy flip for the NYT editorial page, but it echoes Walter Cronkite’s impactful declaration about the Vietnam War in early 1968. Time to acknowledge the failure of war to achieve its original goals. The consequences of pulling out will be very distasteful and uncomfortable (especially watching the fate of the women of Afghanistan), and the US will likely experience new attacks like the ones which prompted this war in 2001. But continuing an endless and likely fruitless military deployment will also be painful.
41
FORM A COALITION OF COUNTRIES AS STATED IN THE OPINION TO WORK TOWARDS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE, BRING THE TROOPS HOME.
6
@robert brucker
There was a coalition of countries nearly 20 years ago. We didn't listen and invaded Iraq anyway. Afghanistan isn't that different. The U.S. never has been very good at listening to other countries.
13
U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler in 1935...
"The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get. Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and nothing else."
94
@James More from Gen. Butler, who earned two Medals of Honor and who many believe stymied a fascist coup by US industrialists against FDR in the 1930s: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." and "Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
6
The underlying concept of the USA dispatching troops throughout the worldto destroy terrorism is precisely the same as, within domestic territory, to use a police force to punish a population for violating criminal laws. Although there are many underlying causes for criminality, authoritative force is not necessarily always a good solution to ensure a beneficial social culture. Legislatures frequently pass criminal laws against sexual practices, against necessary public freedoms, in favor of powerful businesses that are damaging to health and ecology an many other bad reasons where proper analysis and intelligent understanding of the use of power would be far more effective and far more considerate of proper social structure. And frequently more economical. The world in general, through modern technology, has declined greatly towards the use of brutality rather than towards intelligence and the consequential resulting massive destructions are approaching a level that can easily destroy us all. An intelligent withdrawal and acceptance of necessities and development of more sensible use of the huge powers of state is not a defeat but a victory of the huge understandings of human potentials towards achieving human survival and world peace.
5
It's clear that after nearly eighteen years and billions spent by the US and our western allies has yet to create an effective Afghan military and government the Afghan people and government have no real desire to take charge and defeat the Taliban. Why are we still there? Economically, any chance to win contracts to mine the vast mineral wealth will never go to western countries because they won't pay the bribes which China will
8
Get out of Afghanistan? Why stop there? The U.S. needs to quit the whole accursed region- everything east of Turkey, west of India and north of the Sahel. The U.S. has zero interests there, and that includes Saudi oil (we've got our own) and Israeli democracy (blown away with the desert wind). The inhabitants of this sorry region are too busy killing each other to be interested in the dividends of peace and, considering the idea they share that God is on their side and no one else's, they require no assistance from us to descend into Perdition.
129
@stu freeman We do have interests in the middle east. Quite a few. The goal is to create a stable situation not using our troops so that we don't have to go back there. Populist ignorance mixed with anti-semitism is what is truly not in our interests.
3
@Mark: Please name one of those interests. And are you implying that loathing the government of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian Arabs is equivalent to anti-Semitism?
8
@stu freeman
1. Intelligence sharing that saves American lives
2. counter-terrorism cooperation
3. Joint missile defense development
4. Joint un-manned UAV technology/capability
5. Cyber-defense/cyber-warfare capability
6. National resilience planning
7. Default American forward base in the ME with no need for US troop presence.
8. Maintaining Jordanian stability
Your second question underscores my first post in a very clear way.
2
The efficacy of withdrawal depends on where you sit. From a US / western alliance perspective it would be good to end involvement in this interminable war. Just as it was good to end involvement in Vietnam.
However, as with Vietnam, the likelihood that the Taliban will stick to any agreement once western forces have left seems similar to that of the North Vietnamese abiding by the Vietnam peace treaty.
Any gains that the female population of Afghanistan has made is likely to be in particular peril when the West has gone.
12
NYT has shown its mettle by outlining how it’s support of the Afghan war has changed over time. Before I comment, I like to pay my deep respect for all the men and women around the world who have lost their life and limbs. Any failure isn’t their fault.
Hindsight is always perfect, in 2001, it was probably right decision to invade Afghanistan, the springboard of terrorism.
But now we must leave and leave to Afghans whichever way they want to be governed. Expecting them to change to an American style democracy is delusional.
To thwart the terrorism from our own people, we need to take actions. I know censorship is indeed a pejorative word, the business and operational models of the social media is extremely vulnerable to export of radical terrorist ideas.
Terrorism has many forms involving race, ethnicity and ideology. We need to be vigilant against all forms of terrorism. Most virulent form of terrorism has been nursed in the Saudi Arabia and surrounding area. Our Muslim congressmen and congresswomen ought to take a lead that terrorist ideas and concepts aren’t preached and propagated.
Civil harmony is the final answer. We need harmony among racial, religious, and ethnic lines. Our media and our leaders have great responsibility in this.
5
@Mr C
To thwart terrorism we should have no immigration from Afghanistan. I wish them well, but don’t wish their culture to be imported here.
@Mr C - No "hindsight" needed. It was a horrible decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001, and much of the world knew it at the time. I and millions of others around the globe were marching in the streets, trying to convince Chickenhawk George he was making a terrible mistake. But no, "war president" George and the rest of the Bushies cooked the intelligence books and rushed to judgement, beginning the bombing of Afghanistan less than one month after 9/11.
Neither the citizens of Afghanistan or Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. Most of the attackers were Saudis and both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were supporters of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It would have made more sense (???) to attack the Saudis and/or Pakistan, but nuclear-armed Pakistan could fight back and House of Bush wasn't about to attack House of Saud.
It was disaster then and it's disaster now. Meanwhile mass murderer Bush paints bad paintings and delivers pizzas in an attempt to atone for his vile actions.
There's absolutely nothing new in this excruciating delienation of the costs of America's delusional reliance on military solutions to non-military problems. It has been staring us in the face for decades. What needs to be examined now - in painful detail - is the overwhelming influence the military industrial/national security complex has had in dictating America's very profitable and successful -for them- lead with the military, forever war constantly covert and overtly meddle everywhere always be increasing tensions around the planet foreign policy for the last thirty years. It was always a mistake to ask what were America's goals in these conflicts. The pivotal question was always what were the military-industrial national security complex's goals? What were their goals? Making money, prolonging the war/profit and raising tensions/increasing interventions elsewhere to make more money. Looked at through that filter the last 30 years makes enormous sense. It is that simple. Now the hard part. Who takes on the US military industrial complex? Current versions of both the Democrats and Republicans have demonstrated they are totally co-opted. (As are most of the K street think tanks and learned foreign policy experts that produce those "American values and why we are at war" howlers.)
The last time the US demonstrated anything like the stomach for this kind of battle was the depths of the Vietnam War but that was because of the draft. Where are our heroes now?
30
There are, obviously, no “good” choices, only an “acceptable” choice for our disengagement from the generational Afghan War. Are we prepared to “accept” the eventual reinstatement of the Taliban’s slavish subjugation of the girls and women of Afghanistan once we leave the battlefield?
4
@John Grillo - Are we prepared to accept the continued mindless destruction and deaths of theirs and ours in perpetuity?
The Afghans live there, we're just the invader du jour, and they've been repulsing invaders for centuries. They have far more to "win" and to "lose" than do we. Our departure is inevitable. Leave now!
It is humiliating to admit defeat, particularly to a force far less sophisticated than the United States military.
It is painful to acknowledge that lives were lost or shattered in vain.
But it is irresponsible to increase the suffering and the striving for a futile effort. The writing is on the wall. Afghanistan's future will not be remade in America's imagined version. We can't take back the bloodshed, but we must stop wasting more.
5
@NM, Are you kidding? The U.S. hasn't actually "won" a war since WWII, and that was with the help of many allies. Korea, nothing won (not even a peace treaty), Vietnam, nothing won. Gulf War I, incomplete at best (it was started because of the incompetence of the Bush Admin). Nothing won in Iraq. Still losing in Afghanistan. The fact is, the U.S. is good at starting armed conflicts and never finishing them.
3
I’m disgusted of Trump's every bigotry, hate-spreading, and fear-mongering. However, that doesn’t have to mean that I oppose everything he does – like withdrawing from wars – although Trump’s intentions are probably just self-serving. Nevertheless, if it means less killing, then I support.
We must stop supporting killings that are as old as history itself. In the name of defense and national security, military is really about killing. To kill for our own survival.
Ultimately as a person of conscience, what good is a life of unbearable guilt – of tolerating killings? Can you truly and honestly persuade your loved ones that it’s fine for the innocent people to cry in pain and die - in exchange for our own survival - as long as they don’t happen right in front of our own eyes?
Especially when our country praises our soldiers as a hero, but isn't serious at all about taking care of them after their services are done. Actions speak louder than the words.
True heroes are those who use nonviolence to change the world - like MLK. Until the military takes the vow of nonviolence, resist the flattery of a hero talk.
For several thousand years, people deliberately fought wars. Why not break away from that pattern and strive for a peaceful permanent solution? We gave War a chance – for several thousand years – and it continues to fail us. Why not give Peace a chance – for the next several thousand years?
If we say we care for our future, then let's act like we really do.
10
@BLOG joekimgroup.com - Thank you! Re: your comment, "True heroes are those who use nonviolence to change the world", I recently watched and recommend the 1982 movie "Ghandi".
It is to your credit that you own up to initially supporting the U.S. going into Afganistan, NYT, and that you now support pulling out. You also supported going in to Iraq. Millions around the world demonstrated against the latter. There is a desperate need to, as a nation, fully reconsider the "American exceptionalism" that has gotten us into not only endless wars but the "regime change" follies that seek to destabilize other nations' politics for....for the sake of U.S. corporate interests? When will we we as a nation - politicians, media, and citizens alike - come together to save our country for the majority of us? It is being hollowed out by policies as stated above, for the profit of corporations and the 1%, and the loss for all the rest of us. We need to be proud as a nation - proud morally - and take care of our own - else we have nothing.
25
It takes a strong man to go against strong current. It takes President Trump to stop the unpopular war. Thank you Mr. President.
15
"numberless more carry psychological injuries"
Why are our veterans' psychological injuries not numbered? Is it not possible or do we really not want to take care of our soldiers ?
7
The initial objective of the Afghan War, the capture of Bin Laden who was the leader of the 9/11 Attacks. May 2, 1911 Bin laden was killed. This has morphed into defeating the Taliban: we never went into Afghanistan to defeat them. After trillions of dollars of expense, 15000 Americans lives , 53000 Americans wounded very much like Vietnam we have no positive return for our efforts There are reasons which could form the basis of a rational occupation of Afghanistan: ridding the world of 95% of the illegal opium supply or profiting from Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits, immoral to be sure but at least from an economic point of view rational. Instead, the U.S. like in Vietnam has chosen to waste vast resources for no clearly defined valid end. Its time for our country to stop this self-destructive war and leave. This war makes me ashamed to be an American.
13
@Michael Cohen Maybe we should start by limiting the opium supplies that rich pharmaceutical companies seem to have no issue shoving down Americans' throats. Lot easier than sending an army across the planet. Or perhaps not.
It is indeed time to bring the soldiers home but I can't help thinking that the US is not about to turn its back on $1+ Trillion of mineral wealth, quite a bit of it in the form of the rare earths we use in all our electronic gadgets.
Anybody remember Betsy DeVos' brother Erik Prince (of Blackwater fame) and his plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan? Might there be a connection?
13
@Ray Barrett The Taliban has taken care of two superpowers. I very much doubt that a few mercenaries will be too much trouble for them.
You can hate their ideology, but let us not lose sight of the fact that their fighting record is extraordinary.
@Ray Barrett - you do realize Afghanistan is a landlocked country; surrounded by corrupt unfriendly regimes. How exactly do you plan on extracting this mineral wealth.
I agree with all points made in this editorial, but rue the absence of any significant mention of the endemic corruption of Afghan government officials, from leaders in Kabul to provincial officials and their local cronies. From the beginning, billions of dollars earmarked for infrastructure, education, healthcare and agricultural alternatives to opium have gone unaccounted for, vanished into the country's Byzantine networks of graft and thievery. All across the country, Western-financed projects stand unfinished, the funds for their completion lost to fraud, bribery, embezzlement, and outright theft. Officials like former president Hamid Karzai have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars for personal gain--in come cases flying pallets of stolen cash out of the country. This is why, after 17 years of living under a Niagara Falls of American tax dollars, Kabul still doesn't have a citywide sewer system. The sheer scope of the tragic folly of our mismanaged adventures in the Grand Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will challenge historians for decades.
40
"On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress wrote what would prove to be one of the largest blank checks in the country’s history."
Let's not forget how we got into Vietnam en masse, via the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
We should have gotten out when we failed to find bin Laden and concluded he was no longer in Afghanistan. We also should never have gone into Iraq. Much of the problems in the Middle East have been of our own making for the last sixty-plus years.
53
$5.9 Trillion and 2.7 million US lives plus counting. And when it comes to Healthcare questions are raised as to how it will be funded and it will bankrupt the country. It is time to get out and focus on the things that matter most to everyday Americans and not the big corporations that want these wars to continue, making a very few people unimaginably rich.
47
Get out this Year, or reinstate the Draft. For ALL Men and Women over 18 years old, that are able to pass the Physical and Mental evaluations. NO deferments, NO “ Bone Spurs “ excuses, NO delays. Once the children of the Rich and powerful are at risk, this will end very quickly. And could possibly lessen the rush to another “ conflict “.
Seriously.
367
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Agreed. There is no way this tragedy would have drug on as long as it has if there had a, been a draft and b, a higher death toll for the U.S. It took us a decade to lose 58,000 American lives in Vietnam. We've been in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years and lost "only" 7,000 service members (and what's truly sobering is that more contractors than service members have died--it's like Return of the Hessians). Meanwhile, Afghan deaths are in the six figures. We have, it seems, become remarkably good at starting and waging deadly wars while avoiding death ourselves, which is nothing to be proud of. That's enabled the politicians to just keep going.
28
Service to ones country is an option that must be available to every woman who so chooses but we should never move to conscript women.
2
@Phyliss Dalmatian, "U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler in 1935...
"The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get. Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and
17
Good editorial but blindly omitted Pakistan’s role. The reason for America’s failure in Afghanistan is none other than Pakistan. Pakistan has vested interests there whereas America considered it as a strategic ally, which is a huge blunder.
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@Sivaram Pochiraju:" Pakistan has vested interests there whereas America considered it as a strategic ally, which is a huge blunder. "
You're forgetting the Cold War and India's attempt at fence sitting. One day India and China will face off on the military front. Good luck with that.
3
@Sivaram Pochiraju
Mr Ram,
It is understandable why you Indians want American boys to continue sacrificing their lives in Afghanistan. India is top beneficiary of this war. You pretended to be on the US side while you were simply thrilled to be free for killing, maiming and blinding Kashmiri children with Pellet guns. Also continued lynching Muslims and Christians for eating beef. You are resisting and trying to create hurdles in the ending of Afghan war. Once you saw that you can no longer take US for a ride anymore, didn't you run and sat in Russian lap?
Pakistan has been devastated by this war.
Like Barbra Lee, Imran Khan, the current Prime Minister of Pakistan was a very junior politician then when he said that the war was counterproductive. This made India very upset even then.
After 17 years and great losses, today Imran Khan is the real player making peace possible between Warring parties and Indian Freeloader Hawks have no place to hide their faces.
Imran Wrote to Mr Trump,
1. No Pakistani was involved in 9/11 but Pak decided to participate in US War on Terror.
2. Pakistan suffered 75,000 casualties in this war & over $123 bn was lost to economy. US "aid" was a miniscule $20 bn.
3. Our tribal areas were devastated & millions of ppl uprooted from their homes. The war drastically impacted lives of ordinary Pakistanis.
4. Pak continues to provide free lines of ground & air communications(GLOCs/ALOCs).Can Mr Trump name another ally that gave such sacrifices?
@Sivaram Pochiraju Yes. We need to ask Pentagon and Dept. of State, why we have been sending boat load of money to Pakistan ? Was that for "military aid" or something else ?
Trump is totally right to cut off that funding.
For "private contractors" can we not say the word "mercenaries"? Can we not denounce at every opportunity the practice of "contracting" tasks that need to be closely controlled by government, like killing people, also imprisoning people?
139
@Thom
I concur. There is a massive amount of corporations/people that are getting rich on the backs of taxpayers as they wage ''war'' in their name. This not only has to stop, but the defense budget needs to be cut in half. (at least)
All troops need to come home from everywhere and there needs to be oversight as to who is actually shooting the bullets. (let alone oversight by Congress as to who is to wage war in the name of the country)
For too long it has been out of sight and out of mind.
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@FunkyIrishman
Logically, then, we should favor the draft, to stop "out of sight, out of mind". I would, if I thought it would give the people the power to stop foolish or selfish wars.
5
@FunkyIrishman
Obviously you do not have an invitation to the trough of tax-payer dollars that the Defense Industry has grown very fat on since WW2.
"They have the money,they own the politicians,they make our foreign policy."
Nothing will ever change that I am afraid.
4
When it comes to war, Trump has been the best president in a long while. He's not afraid to buck the military or war machine, and he's not afraid to make a tough decision. If there's no victory or end in sight, he'll get out.
This practical approach is long overdue.
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@AACNY
Unfortunately, while Trump seems "willing to buck the military or war machine" by pulling us out of foolish wars, he has no problem with upping the budget of the Military Industrial Complex, or sticking with "our friends", the Saudis, for the sake of arms sales.
5
@AACNY
What do you mean?
He is bankrupting the country's by giving even more money to the military.
He just blew up our nuclear treaty with the Russians .
9
America needs to face the reality that around the third world China is asserting its influence by building infrastructure whereas USA is asserting its misdirected authority by militarism. In the first world, America’s retreat from its democratic allies under Trump leaves it weaker and mutes the voice for freedom in favour of authoritarianism.
America can change only itself (not anyone else) and it needs massive demilitarization to stave off inevitable fiscal crisis, bankruptcy and to regain some form of global moral leadership and provide all its citizenry with health care and education equivalent to non-militarized first world countries.
77
Indeed, a large portion of the military budget needs to be redirected toward the population(s) that can best benefit from it: those going to school, those in need of medical assistance and our infrastructure at large. It is tiring and disheartening to hear about the trillions spent on what amounts to fruitless destruction.
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@Duckdodger
Indeed we need "massive demilitarization to stave off fiscal crisis". As to regaining some form of global moral leadership, we will only have this if - as you say - we take care of our own in honorable ways. Well funded schools, healthcare for all, decent jobs that support families, a roof over the head for our many de-housed people living on the streets or in cars -these are the markers of a civil society, and we have fallen way behind, with so tax dollars going to an outsized military/"defense" budget.
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@Duckdodger
The troops should be retrained in the states to work on our failing bridges and expand/update our electrical infrastructure, road ways, railways, and plenty more.
4
The US has shown that it has no interest in learning any lessons from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any of our other military adventures. Despite all the rosy talk of building a stable civil society, we do not invest the time or knowledge to actually do so. Surely we have bright people who could do better, but why don't we?
Because the real motivation for the US to go to war is for the US to be at war. Lots of people get rich when we go to war. Period. Eisenhower warned us of this. And now our war-heads want to re-ignite a nuclear arms race. We are on the wrong track, and have been for too long.
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@AG: "Because the real motivation for the US to go to war is for the US to be at war."
It may be more closely related to Woodrow Wilson's flawed idealistic notion that somehow we, the United States, can make the world safe for democracy.
15
Make the world safe for democracy?
Build a stable civil society?
What a joke.
Look at the consequences people suffer from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Americans never really take any responsibility for other countries.
They just care about themselves.
Karma won’t be far.
9
@hm1342 If that were so then we wouldn't be so ready to support military dictators. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
8
I will give credit where credit is due, the NYT has reversed itself in a startling way in the Editorial today and I commend the Editors for it. These pages have derided President Trump over his calls to withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria, particularly in the last thirty days as the President has renewed his calls to withdraw. NYT columnists and the general bent of reporting on this issue have poisoned the dialogue on the withdrawal issue, primarily by ad hominem attack on the President. Absent from your argument is the need for the political leaders to push back against the Intelligence Community and its continued calls for just a little more war. The NYT has a particular duty to reinforce the need to subordinate the Intelligence Community given the NYT recent use of the Intelligence Community’s opposition to withdrawal as a cudgel against President Trump. The Editors fanciful optimism that Congress must step in if withdrawal not complete by the end of 2019 and that a regional coalition might arise to protect women and girls is unnecessary. Withdrawal is going to be ugly in many ways, stick with the overall spirit of your Editorial and simply acknowledge the realities.
27
“Warned of another Vietnam.” No, it is another Vietnam and it also was yet another in endless illegal wars waged by the wealthy at the expense of the lives of young Americans who overwhelmingly are not wealthy.
71
These wars are making some very rich people, richer still. Ain't gonna happen.
12
@otto - Plus, our glorification of all-things-military - from TV ads to video games to the NFL to calling every grunt a "hero" supports your argument. I hope you're wrong, tho'.
Absolutely we need to leave Afghanistan. This article reminds me of the great Walter Cronkite, among the finest of journalists of the 20th Century, who decades ago informed Americans of not only the heavy price our soldiers were paying in Viet Nam but also how it will remain an unwinnable war. He was right to make that courageous decision and prediction, to tell the truth, thereby defying the Johnson administration's stand.
The fact of the matter is that the Taliban is not going to change. It is tribal and oppressive. The poppy fields remain alive and vibrant in spite of our and NATO's effort to assuage drug trafficking on the black market. We can negotiate, we should negotiate. But the Taliban is not to be trusted. Right now I see no democratic change coming to that country any time soon. But...seventeen plus years is long enough, too long. We can no longer send our military into harm's way. That in and of itself is immoral on our nation's part. As the Editorial Board points out, negotiations should include a strong reminder that "if the country is allowed to again become a base for international terrorism," the US will be back. Well said...
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@Kathy Lollock
This must be a horrifyingly tense time for Afghani women and girls.
3
A heartfelt thanks, New York Times, for this call to reassess our military/"defense" involvement around the world. Both political parties have shirked their duty to ask hard questions - last year, fewer than ten Democratic Senators voted against the budget increase for the Military Industrial Complex; fewer than forty Democratic Congressmen/women. The last time I can recall any sort of guns versus butter discussion in Congress was in 1965: Could we afford to up our military presence in the Vietnam War and still press forward on Great Society programs. Ah, if only they had voted aye for the latter and nay for the former, back then.
84
The Taliban morphed out of the mujahideen, which we supported against the Soviets. One thing we should be certain of after our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that if there is to be any reform of Islam in these countries, it has to come from within. The Taliban simply waited us out. None of these middle eastern wars are worth our while. You can't influence a religion that is rooted in the middle ages, is largely tribal and where half of the population has little or no say and are treated as chattel. Can you imagine Imagine what we could have done with 5.9 trillion dollars had we not sunk it into Afghanistan. We could have had healthcare for everyone. We could have had a generation of doctors, engineers and Phd's who could be leading us into the future. Perhaps we could have had a high speed rail system to rival Japan or China. Instead, we made a few American contractors and a few connected Afghanis rich. That's nearly 6,000,000,000,000 dollars. We spend this without batting an eyelash in another country and yet our homeless population grows, suicide is on the rise, there is an opioid epidemic and bridges crumble. We could have tackled climate change, and tightened our borders, so no future terrorist could not get in. We need to stay out of these endless wars. There will not be peace in Islamic countries, until Islam changes, and I don't see that happening soon. In the meantime it is not our business.
479
@thewriterstuff
It would require probably well over 200k troops on the ground—not simply behind the lines—to have won that country. And for how long would it be won?
The Indispensable Nation should make itself indispensable to its own nation and to the world by helping to solve three of (IMO) our most serious problems:
1) Anthropogenic Global Heating
2) Nuclear war
3)Economic injustice
40
@thewriterstuff
Your assessment "Islam has to reform from within" is totally correct, however such reforms don't happen quickly but may take decades or even centuries.
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India, a reform movement within Islam founded over 125 years ago, truly exemplifies those reforms and the fact that they don't happen through the barrel of a gun but through patience and perseverance. The grass root movement has now spread to over 200 countries with over 12 million followers.
Ahmadies have faced bitter persecution in Pakistan and many Muslim countries and but have remain steadfast to the principals of non-violence and the message of Ahmad that now is the time for "Jihad of Pen, not of sword". This message along with their banner "Love for All, Hatred for None" is more powerful than this barbaric war we have witnessed in Afghanistan.
24
@thewriterstuff
While $6 trillion is a fair amount of money, it's not nearly enough to pay for universal healthcare. The best estimates peg the cost of Medicare for everyone at $32 trillion or so over the first decade, in addition to what the federal government already is spending. That's actually a good deal in that it would be a lower percentage of GDP than what we're paying now. You'll never sell universal Medicare by arguing we should cut defense--that's a political nonstarter. The wiser course is to point out that Medicare for all would save money.
As for choo choo trains, they're both expensive and unneeded in the U.S. which already has the world's best transportation system. Six trillion would pay for tracks and then some, but subsidies in the out years would be enormously expensive. We already have all the Phd's we need, and many of them are working at Starbucks and can't pay student loans. Upkeep to infrastructure, yes, but money won't make suicide or drug addiction go away. Better mental health care would reduce homelessness and keep folks out of jail, so yes to that, too.
The problem with liberals is, they're bad at math and believe that money alone fixes problems. The best reason to end this war is that lots of people are dying for no reason. The money is an asterisk. Hate to sound like Reagan, but we'd have been better off not spending the money on anything, which would have resulted in more than $18,000 in the pockets of every man, woman and child.
10
There has been NO declaration of ''war'' - there has been only a declaration of allowing military sprawl. Since 2001, successive Congresses have shirked their duties as the sole body allowed to declare war laid out in the Constitution.
Furthermore when President Obama and Democrats went to Congress and asked for permission to wage ''war'' in Syria, they were rebuffed, but there are ''boots on the ground'' there today. There is also the same in Afghanistan, Iraq, and multiple other places around the globe. The MIC is powerful and uses up the budget overall that there is no other money for other programs.
It is not only time to bring the troops home from Afghanistan, but EVERYWHERE. The United States can no longer be the policeman to the world and no longer has the moral authority to do so. (let alone continuous loss of lives and treasure)
ALL troops must come home from everywhere (Japan, Germany and elsewhere) and the military budget needs to be cut in HALF. (at least)
All of the resources need to be immediately brought to bear to combat climate change and not each other. That is the real enemy to us all.
Give our future a chance as well as peace.
163
@FunkyIrishman
Climate change? Global heating ("warming" is too gentle for the facts)? Nah! Flex those tanks and planes! Send in the troops! Sit back and enjoy! (That's my sarcastic message to the boss class.)
14
@FunkyIrishman: "There has been NO declaration of ''war'' - there has been only a declaration of allowing military sprawl."
We haven't declared war on anyone since World War II.
"It is not only time to bring the troops home from Afghanistan, but EVERYWHERE. The United States can no longer be the policeman to the world..."
Wholeheartedly agree.
"...and the military budget needs to be cut in HALF. (at least)"
We still need strategic capability second to none because of worldwide threats posed by China and Russia. That will necessitate a bigger Navy, anti-missile defenses and long-range aircraft since all our forces will be stationed here. That will not be cheap.
7
@hm1342
The waste and fat in the military budget is substantial. The unnecessary capabilities are substantial. I think aiming for a 50% cut is not too much, especially after its expansion under Bush-Obama-Trump.
17
The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan at this point will reaffirm to the world that this country is once again unwilling to let its military do what is necessary to attain victory.
2
@Jay Orchard
A-bombs, you think? Please do be specific.
8
This country should be unwilling to let its military do what is necessary to “win” in Afghanistan.
1
@Jay Orchard
What exactly is "necessary to attain victory," Jay? And why, after 17 years, have we failed to do it?
We have been shadow boxing in Afghanistan for far too long. We have lost much and gained little. Declare victory and leave the Afghanis to make peace among themselves as best they can. They cannot compare to the worlds state sponsored terror on the one hand nor the El Chapos and the Sacklers of the world on the other.
12
Bin Laden even said that luring the US into the Graveyard of Empires was part of his plan. After sinking into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, we would collapse the same way the USSR did after being bled out in Afghanistan. Despite being told this by Bin Laden, our leaders in office and the Pentagon have walked straight into his trap. Anyone saying we should continue to waste billions of dollars in Afghanistan may as well be working for AQ directly.
101
@John Chenango John you are RIGHT! We have known what Ben Laden' plan was to destroy our economy etc. He knew the US from studying us, and knew how we would respond. This needs to be repeated for our citizens. Thank you
2
@John Chenango - "Bin Laden even said that luring the US into the Graveyard of Empires was part of his plan." Righto!
From "Al Qaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020":
1. Provoke the United States and the West into invading a Muslim country by staging a massive attack or string of attacks on US soil that results in massive civilian casualties.
2. Incite local resistance to occupying forces.
3. Expand the conflict to neighboring countries, and engage the US and its allies in a long war of attrition.
4.Convert al-Qaeda into an ideology and set of operating principles that can be loosely franchised in other countries without requiring direct command and control, and via these franchises incite attacks against the US and countries allied with the US until they withdraw from the conflict.
5. The US economy will finally collapse by the year 2020, under the strain of multiple engagements in numerous places. This will lead to a collapse in the worldwide economic system, and lead to global political instability. This will lead to a global jihad led by al-Qaeda, and a Wahhabi Caliphate will then be installed across the world.
So far we've been dancing to their tune…
2
"The Afghans are a brave, hardy, and independent race; they follow pastoral or agricultural occupations only, eschewing trade and commerce, which they contemptuously resign to Hindus, and to other inhabitants of towns. With them, war is an excitement and relief from the monotonous occupation of industrial pursuits."
Friedrich Engels, 1857
33
@Prometheus
Could be said of Americans as well.
The original U.S. mission in Afghanistan was to retaliate against al-Qaeda for the 9-11 Terror Attacks. The United States should have withdrawn its forces from Afghanistan immediately after the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. In that battle, U.S. and Afghan forces destroyed al-Qaeda's basecamp, but Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders escaped across the border into Pakistan.
The United States realized that al-Qaeda had fled Afghanistan, but instead of withdrawing, it decided to make the same mistake the Soviet Union made when it occupied Afghanistan in December 1979. The Soviet Union waged an unsuccessful nine-year war against Afghan insurgents before deciding to cut its losses and withdraw. The Soviets warned us then that we were fools to back the insurgents against them, but we armed the insurgents with arms, including Stinger missiles. Now we are fighting the same insurgents and committing the same type of folly we committed in Vietnam.
235
@William Case
I usually disagree with you but this is exactly right and very well stated, both historically and politically.
19
@William Case
I remember listening to a retired special forces officer, a US Army Ranger as I recall, interviewed on NPR shortly after the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. He said, “The day we pack up our bags and get out can’t come soon enough. There is simply no role for our military solving other people’s problems especially not in cultures we don’t understand. In fact, our presence will only delay the establishment of a lasting peace.” I’ve searched in vain for this interview and this veterans’ name. He was not a crunchy leftwinger but a senior member of our military establishment. He had simply calculated that the bloodshed caused by our packing up and leaving would be a trifle compared with that caused by our staying. How right he was! If anyone can track down this prescient discussion, I would be most grateful.
17
@William Case: " The Soviets warned us then that we were fools to back the insurgents against them, but we armed the insurgents with arms, including Stinger missiles."
Anything that hurt the Soviet military was worthwhile. They were truly an Evil Empire and Reagan was spot in his dealings with them - wound them down just right.
Unfortunately many Americans are calling for a Cold War V2.0 against Russia and Putin.
1