I have enough posts on Afghanistan to write a book. But I thought it may be a good thing to give some closing thoughts on a failed campaign.
From the beginning of the George W. Bush era, the notion had been that people love liberty and will always side with it. This is a demonstrably stupid assumption, disproven merely by looking at the medical yoke of tyranny Americans seem to love at the moment.
The important facet of human belief systems Bush failed to take into account was religion. Islam isn’t built for liberty, and liberty isn’t compatible with Islam. When David Kilcullen wrote his doctoral thesis on counterinsurgency, he learned all the wrong lessons. He mistakenly believed that hearts can be won, and that the measure of doing that is a function of the degree to which they all share in the wealth, prosperity, political theater, and health of a nation or people. It’s the sociologist’s dream – couple human terrain with force from guns, and any culture can be transitioned into something that it is not.
David Petraeus learned all the wrong lessons from Kilcullen. Stanley McChrystal attempted to cut off the head of the snake with direct action operations using SpecOps, falsely believing that without the head, the snake would perish. Islam isn’t a snake, but rather, a world and life view (a false one) that regenerates. The HVT campaign was bound to fail.
On top of that, following the mantra to win hearts and minds, a set of ROE was put into place that made it impossible for the U.S. warrior to win. He had to fight the battles of lawfare as much as enemy combatants. Finally, the campaign in Afghanistan was marked by micromanagement and extraordinary ignorance and stupidity.
Gen. David Rodriguez made it difficult for Marines in Helmand and during the initial parts of the larger campaign for Helmand he issued an order that every use of artillery receive his approval. The ignorance of U.S. brass taking Viagra to the tribal chieftains so that could continue their abuse of little boys is so repugnant that it’s amazing the enlisted men didn’t turn their weapons on their own command.
Tim Lynch (who has spent longer time in Afghanistan that any English speaking man alive today, nearly ten years) told me personally that the DoD had thousands of hours of video footage of Afghan boys engaged in sexual activity with animals. Against this backdrop, Islamist militants only became more incensed and enraged.
From the beginning I favored sending the Rangers and Marines to the border with Pakistan so that AQ could be killed in the caves of Tora Bora rather than escaping to live and fight again. Chase the Taliban, kill them, and then there would be no Quetta Shura. And then leave. But we had to play armed social worker, and now here we are.
The final exit is a debacle of mammoth proportions, Americans will be left in Afghanistan to be beheaded, and Bagram Air Base (the best and brightest hope for a smooth withdrawal) was shut down. And they are proud of it. Meanwhile, twelve Marines perished today. It is a dark day.
I asked my friend John Bernard (former Marine Corps First Sergeant) – who lost his own son in Afghanistan – for his thoughts today. He sent me this, but as I see, he also posted it to his blog. Give it a visit. Here are his thoughts.
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So after several years of listening to the faint of heart and the lowly in character sob over the use of wrong pronouns, the meritless claims of institutional racism, continual cries of inequity, inequality, privilege and oh yeah, mean tweets, we arrive at today’s latest fruit of globalist clap-trap; 12 dead American Service members and another 15 wounded by some as yet unnamed cabal of Satan worshipping cretins in Kabul.
This follows a week of watching one of the most disgraceful egress operations in the annals of Military History. And it as an easily foretold ending to an historically ill-advised military doctrine which supplanted the hunt-kill strategy in place in Afghanistan until June of 2009. I “predicted” this that same fateful month and reiterated over the following decade.
I will remind those who forgot and the rest who have been too self-absorbed to know, that in June of 2009 Stanley McChrystal brought to light the fruit of a year of positing, posturing, submitting and frankly, undermining the probability of any kind of favorable outcome in what has been called, the Graveyard of Empires. Make no mistake, the genesis of this horrific turn in Afghanistan rests with the then newly Minted/Corronated/Sainted, Barrack Hussein Obama 6 months earlier. Obama had been very clear in his narcissistic “memoir”, Audacity of Hope, pg 261 …” I will stand with them [Muslims] should the political winds shift in an ugly direction…”
He backed those words with his Commander’s Intent statement regarding Afghanistan by voicing concern for the safety of the average Afghan; supplanting his sworn duty and associated responsibility for the Constitution, National Security and his War Fighters. His voiced concern instructed his bevy of Leftist Politruk and the machinery of Leftist Bureaucrats at the Pentagon who felt legitimized in dragging down the sullied book, from the dusty shelf in the Library of Horrible Ideas and one more time decided to apply the doctrine of the Counter Insurgency with its impossible ROE, to Afghanistan.
Given COIN’s 76 year history of 100% abysmal failure, it was nothing short of malfeasance and even justifying a charge of Negligent Homicide for those who recommended COIN with the same charge placed against the one man who chose to secure security for a foreign people over the security of the Nation and its War Fighters he was Oathbound to Defend.
Given the catastrophic endings for the Brits in Malay, the French in Indochina, the US in Vietnam, Somalia and the questionable conditions in Iraq; the predictable consequences in the entire Middle East from 2010-2012 including the attack on the CIA safe house in Benghazi where four Americans were killed and no rescue mission was launched, it was not only predictable that ANY egress from Afghanistan would be catastrophic, but in fact, a given!
With this history as backdrop, we can now discuss Biden’s Saigon or potential Dien Bien Phu through the lens of historical accuracy understanding that COIN in Afghanistan was doomed to fail even before McChrystal opened his mouth publicly in June of 2009.
What makes what we are witnessing in real time all the more frustrating is knowing his not too bright advisors had at least, warned him of the probability of failure a full 6 months before they pulled the metaphorical trigger on the egress.
It is also appalling and frustrating to have to listen to Biden and his underlings parade out rhetorical effort after lie after garbled statement in an effort to put a smiley face – even to take credit for some kind of tactical mastery in this entirely preventable episode.
Again, predictably, the White House Press Corps seems incapable or unwilling to ask the most obvious questions;
“Why didn’t you keep Bagram open until every single American Citizen and Afghan Collaborator were safe”…
“Why didn’t you secure the several billion dollars in US War Materiel and Weaponry before pulling out the last of the troops and contractors?”
“Why didn’t you immediately launch a massive extraction effort to safeguard and remove American citizens when it became undeniably apparent on August 14th?”
“Why in the name of all that is right and just did you give any sway to the Terrorists “Teachers” known as the Taliban?
Instead we have been treated to that age old political witchcraft, enjoined by both politician, bureaucrat politruk and media entertainer alike; the effort to polish a turd. Somewhere along the line it became knee-jerk to spin a story, create a tale, redirect the public gaze and basically, lie, rather than own up to the mistake.
Unfortunately, a full 50% of this population is more than happy to play along and even gleeful at the prospect of actively participating as long as it props up their questionable selection for the Presidency.
Obama may have started us down this path
Obama’s Politruk may have sullied themselves in the name of relevancy.
But it is Biden and his corral of miscreants who own this astoundingly shameful excuse for an egress.
And now he can add the names of at least 27 American War Fighters; dead and wounded who were tasked with nothing short of a cleanup operation in a vain attempt to help a feckless “president” save face.
Democrats and their legion of facilitators would do well to learn at least one lesson;
Sometimes, a Turd is simply a Turd.
I pray for the families of those 12 War Fighters whose lives were sacrificed for the sake of politics. It is doubly infuriating for our family being as this debacle began to take shape on the Anniversary of our Son’s death in Afghanistan 08/14/2009.
I pray for the families of the thousands whose lives were sacrificed for the misplaced interest of a president who sullied his oath, 12 years ago.
I hope although very likely in vain, that those who selected the current figurehead will see the fruit of that ill-conceived choice even if it required the unnecessary deaths of yet more American Service members, this day, 26 August 2021.
Semper Fidelis
John Bernard
UPDATE from HPS: I cannot help but append this post with another observation.
They were never serious. I knew they weren’t serious when I watched and analyzed the logistics operations taking place a decade ago.
General David Rodriguez boldly and baldly stated over TV that the Taliban were on their heels. They were reeling from the pounding the U.S. troops had given them. For that reason, there would be no spring offensive.
I said that there would be, and I explained in many posts exactly what the strategy would be. The Taliban would attacks the lines of logistics at two points: (1) The port city of Lahore to Chaman (the Southern route), and (2) The port city of Lahore to The Khyber Pass through the Torkham Crossing (the Northern route). There are two main [guarded] border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This isn’t difficult. This Khyber Pass route is particularly treacherous, with one blown up truck blocking the single roadway for hours or even days. I’ve still got the pictures of what they did to the trucks. The Southern route relied on “Jingle Trucks” of the locals. It was a pittance compared to the Northern route.
The Taliban did exactly what I said they would do. There was a spring offensive, and it attacked both points of ingress of supply into Afghanistan.
After this, flights kicked up at Donaldson AFB in Greenville, S.C., 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. It was all air after that.
And David Rodriguez is an idiot and the DoD should hire me as their logistics analyst. They don’t care enough to do that.
