As the United States begins another troop draw-down in the wake of Trump-brokered peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, will America’s longest war finally come to an end?
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7 replies on “Peace Be Upon the Taliban: Can America’s Longest War Actually End?”
Punitive raids. When chasing those ten aircraft carriers, you don’t plan on landing troops on them, occupying them, and trying to convert the leadership to American values. You do your best to blow them up. No matter where in the ocean they may be.
Raiding, whether by shelling from off-shore or unmanned systems, or quick insertion and removal of special operations forces. That seems to be in keeping with the spirit. Punishment. Don’t you bad guys do that again.
We don’t need to move CENTCOM Hq, the XVIII Abn Corps, and a big chunk of the Pentagon and State Department. Go in, blow things up, kill the appropriate bad guys, break things, and get the heck out.
It is almost a law that at some point in a discussion of Afghanistan in the UK someone will draw themselves up and say something along the lines of…
“Well, of course, the Americans haven’t learned our lesson from Afghanistan, we invaded them four times (or six or five, the number varies and is usually wrong) and we always got our arses kicked.”
I’m not going to do thus, because it’s not just wrong, it shows a misunderstanding of what Britain was trying to do in Afghanistan and what the US is trying to do. Although Britain was heavily involved Afghanistan on and off from 1839 to the 1930s.
There were three major campaigns in Afghanistan, 1839-1842, 1878-1880 and 1919, but there were other smaller campaigns on the Afghan border. To all intents and purposes Britain was ‘involved’ in Afghanistan from 1839 to the end of the Raj in 1947. And yes, in 1842 they handed us an appalling defeat, the worst of the 19th century Empire.
However, the image of Britain trying to add the vast, arid, useless lump of baked dust and rock to the Raj is pure 60s progressive fantasy. Britain already had more than it could deal with. Their big concern was keeping an expanding Russia out of Afghanistan or at least ensuring it remained a buffer state (1979 anyone?). The secondary motive was to keep Afghan raiding of settled Punjabi farmers to a minimum. In other words, because Afghanistan did not have the control of its own territory and people we usually expect from a sovereign state.
Today, the US has been there for pretty much the same reason. Because if the US isn’t, others will be.
We’re still there just due to the inertia of too big a government. No government program ever dies as there are too many fairy god senators and god congressmen who need that particular program to continue.
Six carriers. Six. You disappoint me Steve. Unsubscribe! 8^P
Kido Butai (officially: First Air Fleet) was made up of five carrier divisions of two carriers each. Six of what we would have called fleet carriers at the time, and four lighter carriers.
Huh. As understood it, Kido Butai referred specifically to the 6 fleet carriers. But you’re Google-fu seems better than mine.
Parallels with Vietnam come to mind. Saigon was considered the Paris of the East until the Communists invaded during the French colonial period after WWII. The government of South Vietnam was too corrupt for the US to support defend for an extended period. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan were okay places until totalitarian ideologies infected the areas, one Revolutionary and one hardline Islamic. Our fighting forces created special relationships within Vietnam with the Montagnard tribe and the Chinese Nung peoples. Afghanistan is a collection of tribes. Much like our Native American culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, the current culture in Afghanistan will not, or cannot, adapt to western ways. We are unwilling to totally destroy their culture to achieve it. The end of large numbers of troops on the ground in Afghanistan is inevitable. The only real question now is how to depart with honor. When Hong Kong was passed to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, American Green Berets went to Hong Kong and brought the Vietnamese boat people to the United States to fulfill a promise made in Vietnam to help them. Their word meant that much to them, and their action spoke well of their honor. I suspect similar measures of honor will have to be made to keep our word to the Pashtuns who helped us fight the Taliban for almost two decades. But all wars end. And 50 years or so after they do, the opponents are often friends again.