Are We Bugging Out of Afghanistan?

According to news reports, United States and Taliban negotiators have agreed on two key points of a settlement in Afghanistan: (i) the United States will withdraw its forces from Afghanistan; and (ii) the Taliban will ensure that no international terrorist attacks are made from Afghanistan.  U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad told local media in Afghanistan said that the U.S. and the Taliban had agreed in principle on two important points, and Taliban sources said what the points were.  Still to come, though, are the details on these two points, as well as agreements on two other issues the United States has raised: (iii) direct negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government; and (iv) a comprehensive ceasefire, neither of which the Taliban has been willing to agree to. 

Predictably, observers such as David Rohde at The New Yorker were excited.  Mr. Rohde said:

“The news sparked surprise – and applause – from American diplomats who have tried and failed to negotiate with the Taliban in the past.  ‘I think this is the beginning of a credible process for the first time in ten years,’ Dan Feldman, who served as the Obama Administration’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me.

The moment represents an opportunity for Trump to produce a breakthrough foreign-policy achievement that would both appeal to his base and achieve something that he relishes: outdoing Barack Obama and George W. Bush.”

Others were not so sure.  The Economist, for example, noted that the Taliban has been willing to promise that it would not allow attacks to be launched against other countries from Afghanistan for a decade, though Ambassador Khalilzad claims that the Taliban is now willing to provide guarantees and an enforcement mechanism, whatever that means. 

Ryan Crocker, former charge d’affairs and ambassador to Afghanistan (2002, 2011-12, respectively)¹ was very critical.  Former Ambassador Crocker sees the United States as basically just negotiating to get out.  As he said in The Washington Post, “The Taliban will offer any number of commitments, knowing that when we are gone and the Taliban is back, we will have no means of enforcing any of them.”

Ambassador Crocker continued:

“It does not have to go like this.  The United States could announce that talks won’t proceed beyond the framework, to matters of substance, without the full inclusion of the Afghan government.  Right now, the inclusion of the Afghans is only theoretical.  We could also note that unless some other solution is found, U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan as long as the current government wants them, protecting the United States’ national security interests and defending core values, such as women’s rights, that we have fostered there since 2001.”²

The problem with this idea, though, as Ambassador Crocker said to Foreign Policy, is that, while it is “doable, in theory, … I don’t think the administration is inclined in that way at all.”  I agree.  Donald Trump wants to get out of Afghanistan.  For that matter, I am not sure how much commitment any administration has had to the fight in Afghanistan.  The George W, Bush administration got distracted by Iraq.³ Barack Obama claimed, in the 2008 campaign, that Afghanistan was the good war, but the way he approached Afghanistan once he got into office made those comments sound more like campaign talk than real belief.  In fact, his attempts to leave Afghanistan before January 20, 2017, so he could claim he had ended two wars, seemed to show, like President Trump, a greater interest in getting out than in getting the job done.⁴

But I also think it is the American people who want to get out of Afghanistan.  Maybe they could be convinced to stay until we could get an agreement that is good for the United States and the Afghan people if a president really tried to explain to the American people the importance of our mission there and how it is necessary for our security.  But George W. Bush was, as I said, focused elsewhere.  Barack Obama didn’t really seem to care about Afghanistan once he was done using it as an issue in the 2008 campaign.  And Donald Trump, among other things, hasn’t got the attention span for the effort that Afghanistan would require.

As Ambassador Crocker said in Foreign Policy:

“Once again, military interventions have grave consequences.  You need to think about those before you intervene, but once you have intervened, you need to consider very carefully the consequences of withdrawal – which can be as grave or graver than those of the original intervention. That’s what we saw in Iraq [i.e., when President Obama pulled out in 2011].”

And what we could see if President Trump decides to just leave Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, given our President, almost all of the Democratic Party, and most of the American people, the odds are we will be leaving Afghanistan sometime reasonably soon in a way that could have consequences that are, in the words of Ambassador Crocker, “as grave or graver than those of the original intervention.”  And, as for anybody in Afghanistan who trusted us or worked with us or relied on us … well, it’s their own fault. 
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¹ As well as a number of other countries: Lebanon (1990-93), Kuwait (1994-97), Syria (1998-2001), Pakistan (2004-07), and Iraq (2007-09).
² One thing I have never understood is why people who are so concerned about women's rights and abuse of women in the United States have so little interest in those matters in other countries.  Obviously, there are important issues about the treatment of women in the United States, but they are minor compared to how the Taliban treated women when they ruled Afghanistan.  For example, girls were not allowed to go to school – at all.  And yet those on the left who campaign so strongly on women’s issues in the United States seem to have little to say about how women have been treated in places such as Afghanistan.
³ President Bush was perhaps understandably distracted by the possibility that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and as willing to use them.  While we know now Saddam Hussein did not have them, it was not what people thought back then, in spite of partisans like Senator Ted Kennedy, etc. (“Bush Lied, People Died”).
    Speaking of Senator Kennedy, consider the possibility that, if Uber had been around in 1969, Senator Kennedy might have become president – because Mary Jo Kopechne would not have died.  Either the Uber driver would have not driven off the bridge that night in July of 1969 or he would have called authorities about the accident while there was still time to get Ms. Kopechne out of the car alive.
     One more point re Senator Kennedy: Why do Democrats seem to think that reminding people of what happened on Chappaquiddick is somehow inappropriate, whether because it’s old or because Senator Kennedy is dead (as is Ms. Kopechne), while they are more than happy to bring up faults of Republicans they don’t like (which is pretty much any Republican who is still alive)?
⁴ Several times during the Obama administration I wrote about us leaving Afghanistan.  (See here, here, and here.)  Because that seemed like what President Obama was trying to do.  But every time, either his advisers or facts on the ground wound up getting President Obama to agree to stay.  I don’t know whether advisers or facts can change President Trump’s mind.