Musings of a West Michigan Farmer
8 min readAug 19, 2021

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The United States was Destined to Fail in Afghanistan, Is A Cop Out.

Putting aside the political blame/scoring game, a common theme in the opinion pages is that the effort in Afghanistan was always destined for failure. This is a cop out. Do not let the failed leadership of multiple American administrations, the bureaucratic state, NATO and military leadership off so easily. Comparisons to Vietnam are inevitable, but they aren’t necessarily comparing apples to apples, but rather a continuing trend of poor intelligence, diplomacy, politics and sloppy global strategy that has been going on since the end of the Second World War.

Was Afghanistan destined to fail? With the unfolding of recent events it has become obvious that it was destined to fail because it has. But it didn’t have to be this way.

Since the Second World War the United States is 1–2–1 with the outcome in Iraq still in flux. Prior to Korea the United States fought total war. War across the entire spectrum, military and non-military means, a clear objective and a strategy utilizing the entire strength of the country to crush military resistance on the battlefield and the will to continue.

In Korea we did not have a clear strategy, generally the goal was to prevent the conquest of South Korea, unifying the peninsula was never explicitly communicated. Douglas McArthur assumed this mission on his own, with the acquiescence of the Commander in Chief. Hindsight is 20–20, but it is reasonable to assume that if UN forces had stopped at P’yongyang and Hungnam instead of pushing to the Yalu China may not have entered into the war. China clearly communicated that American troops on their border was unacceptable. Had we stopped we would have taken over most of the valuable land in North Korea and could have ended the war on more favorable terms, and possibly strangled the Kim Il-sung dynasty in its crib. Stalin did not support Il-sungs desire to unite the peninsula until US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, inexplicably left the peninsula as well as Taiwan out of the, all-important “defense perimeter” of the United States. Ultimately, the US and its allies fought a conventional war that reestablished the post WW 2 partition, thus restoring the status-quo, essentially a tie. The failures briefly that led to this were unclear diplomacy that did not state our vital interests. Failure to gather or properly analyze the available intelligence, and inadequate national strategy in terms of military readiness.

Vietnam was our first clear loss. Had we supported a “bad guy” in Diem, arguably the only indigenous leader with skill or credibility, much as we had in Korea with Syngman Rhee in South Korea, Vietnam may have turned out much like the Republic of Korea with time to develop into a strong nation. Instead, we tried to Americanize the culture of South Vietnam with a western style liberal democracy. However, the country had no tradition with this, instead it was a feudal country where “might” had more legitimacy than openness, which was perceived as weakness. This is a similar mistake to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another myth since Vietnam is that these types of insurgencies cannot be defeated militarily. A caveat is that military execution does have to be coupled with diplomacy and other non-military strategies. Vietnam was not lost to an insurgency. The insurgency by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (VC) was essentially destroyed after TET. The Vietnam War was lost to a well-trained, well-armed, motivated modern army, supported by two super-powers. The military strategy executed by the United States violated every prior American principle of war. We did not have the will to go into North Vietnam and Laos and fight a total war. There were legitimate concerns that widening the war could bring direct conflict with China and/or the USSR. In retrospect it was unlikely that either China or the USSR would have had the stomach to intervene directly. Again this is a failure similar to Afghanistan, where a massive world class intelligence apparatus could not present a clear picture of most likely course of action. Rather it defaulted to most dangerous course of action. The evidence was in plain sight that although many Vietnamese resented colonialism and exploitation of their country there was no love lost between Vietnam and China or the USSR. That China and the USSR were unlikely to have an appetite for direct conflict with the US.

Vietnam seared into the consciousness of a whole generation of military and civilian leaders who rose to prominence with the advent of the Reagan administration. The country focused on winning the Cold War and developing a military with the tactics, techniques, doctrine and equipment to bring overwhelming force to bear on our enemies. The victory in Desert Storm was shocking, not just to the Russians and Chinese but the world at large and was even surprising to America. This was a war with a clear mission, a clear statement of success, the deft diplomacy to gain broad support in the world community, and then it was executed with remorseless efficiency. This is our one clear win since 1945. However, this created an impression amongst the public that war could now be bloodless for us, but more damaging the leaders that followed thought that war could be antiseptic.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan initially were remarkable successes. Both efforts started with a clear objective and the right capabilities to accomplish the mission. initially there was broad support for our effort in Afghanistan and a recognition of the threat of global Islamic terrorism. An example of the broad support was Russia allowing us to use their air bases to insert our Special Forces and through which a lot of logistics support flowed. But instead of sustaining this relationship we began to undermine Russian national priorities in eastern Europe and began admitting former eastern bloc countries into NATO against Russia’s stated objections. Another intelligence and diplomatic failure. If nation building was now the strategy it was never really put to the public for approval. In fact the goal of the United States in Afghanistan was under constant metamorphosis from killing Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to nation building. There was progress in Afghanistan and the quality of life for much of the country was significantly improved as well as public safety. Infrastructure was restored, education for women and others, representative government, etc… But in the US the full nation was not mobilized behind the war, it only affected the children of the peasants, aka American citizens mostly from suburban and rural America.

Afghanistan in contrast to Vietnam is being taken over by a force less capable than the NLF. Certainly, they are not the North Vietnamese Army. They aren’t armed with modern SAM’s, MIG fighters, artillery or tanks. Unlike North Vietnam they have no industrial base. Their only agricultural base is what they can steal from the Afghans unfortunate enough to be under their thumb. They have no super-power backers. They do not have broad support of the population. At best they have safe havens in Pakistan, a supposed US ally. It is unlikely, that every hateful Jihadist could have been eliminated, but it doesn’t seem like anything was done to truly punish them by going into the tribal areas and killing them. It seems we just chased them around the country for twenty years. Went after ISIS and Al Qaeda whenever they popped up.

We have invested approximately $1T, thousands of deaths and casualties and we couldn’t even defeat essentially a stone aged un-trained mob. There was infrastructure built, many lives were enhanced, but after twenty years we did not create the conditions for Afghanistan to succeed. We didn’t cripple the Taliban to the extent that they couldn’t quickly go on the offense and take over the country. Not only wasn’t there a broad inspiration within the United States or our allies that rallied the populations to this mission. We apparently couldn’t even motivate the Afghan people to care.

At the end of the day the Afghan people must have the will and desire to be free and independent. Apparently, they do not. The Taliban is about 75,000 strong, the Afghan military is about 300,000 strong. The Taliban is currently taking over Kabul, a city of 4.6 million. How do 4.6 million people willingly go into slavery? As an American it is incomprehensible. As a father I would never allow my daughter to be subjected to slavery without fighting to the death.

This is obviously a failure of Afghan culture. Even in Iraq, when confronted with the Jihadists in Al Qeada and ISIS the Iraqi people fought back. It is still to be determined if Iraq will end up in the Iran sphere of influence or our sphere of influence, but when confronted with slavery they fought back. They refused to accept barbarism as their fate.

Most importantly for us as a country and as citizens this is a failure of American culture. We used to fight wars using the Sherman principle, scorched earth total war until victory was achieved the enemy was crushed and his will to resist extinguished. We no longer have the stomach for that. We no longer have the stomach for a lot of things.

Since the end of the Cold War the United States has obviously gotten out of the “Big Things” business. This is a symptom of our disease, a disease exemplified by our current politics of suicide. In 1969 we put a man on the moon. 52 years later we have nibbled at space. Conducting necessary experiments to prepare for deeper space travel, but we should have been on Mars by now. We’ve created cool phones, TV’s, and other neat toys, but no real progress. The country was united to defeat the USSR in the Cold War, since the USSR collapsed, we have lost our way. We now squabble about who has something I don’t have, and the government needs to give it to me. We revel in stupid things like what color is my skin and where did my grand parents come from. This loss of focus has been driven by the poor leadership we elect. This leadership is our reflection. Many leaders hold the citizenry in contempt and many citizens accept that. We just elected a man of questionable capability because another man said mean things to people who deserved to have mean things said about them.

When my father was a boy in Arkansas in the 1940’s he would go to town with his father who was an uneducated share-cropper, he and the other uneducated share croppers would discuss politics. They would have in-depth discussions about the policies of the day. Not a one of them ever voted, because of poll taxes they couldn’t afford to vote. But they were informed, they understood the issues and how policies would affect them and their community. Are we informed today? I would submit that we aren’t. Even educated people who should understand the ramifications of things like not confronting terrorists, or printing money/taking on massive debt, they can’t seem to connect the dots of how these things will not only affect them but of the generations to follow.

I don’t know what all the right answers in Afghanistan were. Its obvious what they weren’t. However, to say we were destined to fail is to excuse the actual leaders who failed. But again, this is a reflection of who we are in this year 2021. This is our character failure as a nation. This is who we are! Hopefully this leads to a resurgence in our national character much as Vietnam and its aftermath did with a robust rebound in American strength, motivation, and unity during the decades of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Musings of a West Michigan Farmer

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