Joe Biden has come under lacerating criticism for his implementation of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. This has no doubt been exacerbated by the swift takeover of the country by the Taliban and the images of the chaotic and heart-wrenching scenes from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the withdrawal. The sense of empathy and solidarity with the Afghans whose lives and fates now hang in the balance under the rule of the Taliban has overwhelmed any objective analysis of the situation and the reactions have been motivated more by emotions than reason. America was expected to continue to keep the peace and protect vulnerable Afghans from the wrath of the Taliban and Biden was never to betray this faith in its might and generosity. But this expectation is nothing but idealism in its purest form. It does not accord with reality. It is an expectation that springs from confusion in the motivations that dictated the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the objectives of that invasion.
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America’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was never dictated by a quest for proselytization of democratic ideals and protection of human rights. America embarked on this war for national security reasons after 9/11. Afghanistan was the operational base of al-Qaeda from which the 9/11 attack was plotted and executed. Afghanistan was the cradle of al-Qaeda which was formed after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in 1989 and the Taliban provided cover for Osama Bin Laden to undertake his atrocious activities. Reason therefore dictated that except the Taliban was overthrown and al-Qaeda routed from their safe haven, defeating them would have been herculean. The invasion and occupation were therefore to prevent Bin Laden from launching another attack on the US and to defeat al-Qaeda. This much was acknowledged by Condoleezza Rice (who was the National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush in 2001) in her Memoirs, No Higher Honour when she wrote on page 96 that:
“Finally, with the planning done, the President went before the American people on October 7, 2001, to announce what had long been expected: the United States of America was declaring war on the Taliban because it had refused to meet our demands to surrender al-Qaeda’s leaders and close terrorist training camps.”
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The aim of the invasion was thus the defeat of al-Qaeda. The protection of human rights was a secondary consideration that was only incorporated into the war strategy to give the invasion a popular appeal. It was not the lives and livelihoods of Afghans that underpinned the invasion, but national security and the US has long achieved the objective of the invasion. The Taliban was quickly overthrown, and al-Qaeda was routed from their sanctuary and decimated. And the coordinated and sustained efforts of the US delivered the ultimate victory against al-Qaeda with the killing of Bin Laden in 2011.
With the defeat of al-Qaeda, the US could have immediately withdrawn. But an immediate withdrawal was made impracticable by the Taliban who waged a war of attrition against the US in their sustained bid to regain control of the country. There are no easy wars and war takes a life of its own once commenced. So it happened that the US, like the Soviets, was bled into exhaustion. Hoping to keep the Taliban at bay after a withdrawal, the US had pumped trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into Afghanistan to strengthen the Afghan government, and train and equip the Afghan military. The US has also lost thousands of servicemen and women in the war. These are grave costs that do not appear to hold or yield commensurate benefits to the US. The continued stay in Afghanistan was therefore not advancing the national interest of the US. In this circumstance, withdrawal, and not troop surge was the most prudent option. Joe Biden recognized this realityearly enough and expressed his misgivings about the war as Vice President, when the Obama administration was faced with a request from the Pentagon to send in more troops to Afghanistan. Barack Obama testified to Biden’s reservations about a long drawn war in Afghanistan on page 318 of his Memoirs, A Promised Land when he recorded that:
“Among the principals, only Joe Biden voiced his misgivings. He had travelled to Kabul on my behalf during the transition and what he saw and heard on the trip – particularly during a contentious meeting with Karzai – had convinced him that we needed to rethink our entire approach to Afghanistan. Whatever the mix of reasons, he saw Afghanistan as a dangerous quagmire ..”
The deployment of additional troops was approved by the Obama administration in 2009. But there was no doubt that an indefinite war in Afghanistan was not sustainable, and withdrawal was accepted as the best option by both Democrats and Republicans. The question was when?
Obama had reeled out a withdrawal plan, but implementation was delayed and consequently shelved. The argument against withdrawal then, as it is now, was that the timing was wrong. In order to implement the US withdrawal, Donald Trump did not only strike the Doha agreement with the Taliban with clear commitments for withdrawal but had also answered the “when question” by pegging the withdrawal date as 1 May 2021. This framework aligned with Biden’s long known desire to end the war in Afghanistan and had strengthened his hand to bring America’s longest war to an end.
To underline the bipartisan consensus on the withdrawal, Trump described Biden’s decision as “a wonderful and positive thing to do”. Trump’s only grouse with the decision was the timeline of 11 September 2021 that had been announced by Biden. He wished “. . . Joe Biden wouldn’t use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons.” Because “first, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long.” Obama equally supported Biden’s decision.
The position of most of the critics, as I see it, is not on the propriety of the withdrawal, but on the timing. But the Afghanistan situation shows that there is no perfect time. Perfect time in this case would have meant eternity because there is no certainty that a withdrawal in the next 5, 10, 20 or 50 years would have produced a better outcome. Neither the extremism nor the resolve of the Taliban would have ebbed with a further delay in withdrawal. There was also no guarantee that the Afghan government would have become more effective in governing the country. There was, indeed, no assurance that the unpleasantness of the outcome would have changed with the passage of time. Perhaps, the situation would have unravelled even faster with more malignant consequences with a further delay. It is also possible that the consequences would have been benign with a further delay. But that is the contingency of history. No one can tell for sure how a delay would have caused or aggravated the outcome. The only thing that is certain with a further delay is the further loss of US lives and dollars. That is not a situation to be encouraged or perpetuated.
The other argument from the critics is that Biden handed over American military hardware to the Taliban. Biden is therefore being accused of arming an extremist group with the potential to cause havoc in the Middle East and beyond with American weapons. This argument does not also stand scrutiny. The argument begs the question whether Biden was expected to strip the Afghan military of American military hardware and place them completely at the mercy of the Taliban. Would the criticism not have been sharper if the victory of the Taliban had resulted from such weakening of the Afghan military? With the level of training and equipment of the Afghan military, could it have been reasonably expected that the military would fall so easy? In any event, why would anyone reasonably expect the US to keep fighting for Afghans when their own government and military will not? While I appreciate the arguments about protection of human rights and transformation of the country to become a more stable society, I know that these are altruistic goals that do not constitute the bedrock of foreign policy. The overarching underpinning of foreign policy is national interest and not altruism. Human rights and nation building are peripheral issues that only burnish foreign policy. Besides, the US did not invade Afghanistan to make it a perfect society by removing all threats or vestiges of instability and Obama was honest enough to admit this when he said in 2014 that “we have to recognize that Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one. The future of Afghanistan must be decided by Afghans.”
I agree that Afghans needed to decide the fate and future of their country and America needed to steal the courage to hand the country back to the Afghans. The withdrawal was always going to be a controversial andthorny affair and the procrastination of implementation attests to this fact. No one could have anticipated and provided for all the possible scenarios. But a decision had to be made one way or the other, and there was no easy or neat way out. The backlash from an unpalatable outcome was also glaring and the decision required courage – courage that has been demonstrated by Biden. Biden could have buckled under the weight of uncertainty and the possible dent a catastrophic outcome would cause his political career and delayed the doomsday, or even passed the buck to his successor. But he chose the part of bravery by standing by his conviction to end the war and to honour the commitment of his predecessor in this respect under the Doha agreement.
Politicians and humans in general are wont of avoiding tough and unpopular decisions. As expected, the unpopularity of the withdrawal has garnered a load of negative commentary from politicians and pundits. But the solidarity of the majority against the withdrawal does not make it wrong or inopportune. And the critics are yet to provide a prescription on the opportune time to withdraw.
Joe Biden did the right thing and should be applauded for his bravery and decisiveness, not vilified.
