I started writing this piece a few weeks back following a one-off comment at a bar and in my continuing effort to not engage in political discussions as frequently I decided to focus my frustration and thoughts into my Notes app. I finished up my thoughts and they just sat here; I felt as if the re-directing of my personal thoughts had achieved the goal and there was no purpose in sharing them with a broader audience since there was an abundance of articles available if you cared to think about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But then the topic reared its head again. The same antagonist came back with the same point and after some pressing (and an intoxicated state) I decided to make my case. I felt that I was able to make the superior argument and (even if they are unwilling to admit) I actually changed their mind. So in an effort to help you constructively maneuver your next discussion about the Afghanistan withdrawal I humbly present my thoughts on pulling out.
Since 2003, Afghanistan has been a favorite of the armchair pundits’ topics. For those who lean towards isolationism the answer has long been clear, pull out. For those who supported democracy building to regional stability a surge of additional support / increased funding has been the plan.
Four administrations across two parties have had the opportunity to weigh in on the conflict that has defined the majority of my life. Each party and leading thinkers have had ampleopportunities to make their own takes.
But somehow, now that action has been taken it seems there are no shortage of takes on how Biden has bungled his pull-out game. So, in an effort to break-things down and think about this issue beyond the headlines I’m going to break down the arguments / complaints:
It seems to me from a few conversations that the complaints fall largely into one of two buckets:
I - We pulled out too late
For those who think that 2021 was too late to pull out troops, I think you would be in the majority. Since the 2008 election when the “Surge vs Pull-Out” debate was all the rage, politicians have fought to distance themselves from the middle eastern conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc..) and this is for good reason. According to Pew Research, as of 2019, ~60% of Americans did not support maintaining and ~60% of Americans said the war in Afghanistan was “not worth fighting”. These percentages have tightened in 2021 as the issue has become more politicized as action was actually taken.
But if so many people support this idea, why has it taken almost 20 years to get here? To that question I have two theories:
First, the general population (especially those of The Media) have been disconnected from the military. As of 2015 only 0.4% of the American population is active military personally, and only 7.3% of all living Americans have served at some point. And that stat skews lower-income with 83% of service members coming from households earning less than $87k a year according to the Council on Foreign Relations[1]. I think this disconnect has created a kind of second-class where those who can not afford college or see employment avenues default to the military. This dollar
TO BE CLEAR: I believe a career in the armed services is an honorable and valuable path. Each person who chooses that path is putting more on the line than I ever have, I owe them my respect and my admiration. I am merely observing the reality that many Americans are deeply disconnected from the services.
As I was saying, this disconnect has prevented outrage around extended conflicts on the scale we saw in Vietnam (when there was a draft); resulting in a half-hearted approach to conflicts and little more that intellectual outrage when it comes to bombing other countries. To make that illustration clear - when Trump was elected there was a massive March in Washington. There were no comparable demonstrations taken when troops were deployed in Syria or we continued to maintain a presence in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is not to say acts like the Women’s March aren’t worthy of a March, it just illustrates the priorities of the American populous.[2]
Secondly, pulling out ceased being partisan issue following the Bush years. There were constituencies of both the Left and the Right who wanted a continued presence and who saw it prudent to stay. Because of this is was popular to say you were going to leave, but then actually commit to stay. Both Obama and Trump used this tactic.
For every argument that “we should leave”, there was intelligence or expert advice that leaving would result in a vacuum. This view was held by both parties.
So no one actually wanted to leave because the smart money was betting that a powerful constituency would make a run for power if the US was to leave…but the politically popular thing to say was to pull out. Everyone was playing both sides of this. Let’s not pretend any party in particular get’s to raise the “W” on this one. I mean we could blame the Bush administration for getting us into this mess…but that’s for another time.
II - We pulled out too early
I think this view can be summed up by the esteemed Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell. On Biden’s decision to leave he said,
“we only had 2,500 troops there. We hadn’t lost a single American persons, military personnel in a year. The Taliban, the barbarians, were not in charge of the country…We were keeping the lid on. And al-Qaida was not there.”
I will cede that this does not incorporate every argument against leaving too early, but he addresses some main points as to why we shouldn’t leave:
We didn’t have that many troops there
We hadn’t lost any lives in a year
The Taliban wasn’t in charge
These are all reasonable points, but Senator McConnell has snuck an assumption into his statement. Mainly that these facts are constants rather than merely a recollection of historical events. I think this is where a reasonable person might start asking questions:
Why was it seemingly easy for the Taliban to undo two decades of American-supported government control? Hadn’t we spent years training the Afghan military, and weren’t there only ~2,500 troops on the ground? If we take that at face value, it seems to me that either (i) there were more than 2,500 troops holding the Taliban at bay, (ii) the Afghan military was not prepared, or (iii) for some reason the Taliban had been holding back and waiting for the U.S. to leave. I’ll trust the Senator on his estimated forces figure, and let’s table the discussion on the Afghan security forces. I want to know why after a year of no casualties, why suddenly the country was overrun.
The answer seems to lie in a February 2020 agreement between the United States and the Taliban. The agreement facilitied the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners and a slow decrease in U.S. forces (~13k —> ~9k) over a three month period and the remaining troops over the following fourteen.[3]
So what does this tell us? It tells us that the U.S. really had >10,000 troops on the ground defending a weakened Taliban which we injected with 5,000 fresh fighters. This agreement also included a clause preventing the Taliban from attacking the U.S. presence. So now we know that there were more than 2,500 troops on an average annual basis and that the Taliban was both holding back and gaining strength while the U.S. was doing the opposite.
Which leads us to a tipping point in the Afghan question: should we put more boots on the ground to maintain our position circa 2020? This is the point where the person I was discussing with backed themselves into a corner they were uncomfortable being in. At this point in the discussion the disagreement is simplified — it’s A or B. More troops, or pull out? It recognizes that there’s no maintain the status quo, put nothing at risk, everybody lives scenario that people like to conjure up. There are consequences to these actions and in the case of the withdrawal it was either all out, or more in.
So once you set that as the stage — you require people to take a stand. Fortunately, if you’re more inclined to agree with President Biden’s decision then you’re on the right side of history. The people who disagree on the right right of the political spectrum are often of the “America First” camp whether they say it explicitly or not — so making them admit that they would rather put more Americans at risk for Afghani lives is a pill they don’t necessarily like to swallow, but it’s an argument a stubborn opponent might slip into.
Some key quotes I’d recommend using / referencing when considering this:
From the West Wing:
President Jed Bartlet: Why is a Kundunese life worth less to me than an America life?
Will Bailey: I don’t know, sir, but it is.
I also like this real-life quote from President Biden:
“The choice I had to make, as your president, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season,”
“There is no good time to leave Afghanistan”
It is with those points that the discussion largely either comes to a conclusion or impasse. I think there are many branches and angles that the Afghan question raises — but at it’s core most people are mostly concerned with continuing a two-decades long occupation in a campaign that is largely believed to be a failure, and an enormously expensive one at that. It is this view, this simplified and straight forward view that will win out in the annals of history and win a debate with a Biden hater.
Re-reading through this before I post I didn’t change a lot, so apologizes for some of the confusing thoughts. Aside from the case for Afghan withdrawal, this is a good reminder that the battle of ideas is won by those who think critically and prepare. It is not solely ideological. And as good as it feels to win an argument, it feels much better to know that you are on the right side of history.
[1] The issue that only 20% of Americans even make more than $87k a year is a whole different issue for another time.
[2] This topic is more fully explored in Sebastian Jungers book Tribe if you’re interested in the downsides of a voluntary army and the upsides of mandated national service I recommend giving this a read.