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Is President Joe Biden prepared to preside over the worst U.S. strategic defeat since the fall of Saigon in 1975?
For that may be what’s at stake if Biden follows through on the 2020 peace deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1 — just two months from now.
Consider. If the 2,500 American troops remaining in Afghanistan are pulled out, the entire 10,000-troop NATO contingent departs.
This would write an end to the Western military commitment.
And the likelihood the Kabul government could then survive the constant and increasing attacks from the Taliban, as the latter now control half of the country and many roads leading to the capital, is slim.
After all, an Afghan army that could not defeat the Taliban a decade ago, when 100,000 U.S. troops were fighting alongside it, is not going to rout the Taliban after the Americans have gone home.
In short, if Biden does not breach the terms of the deal the Taliban and U.S. signed last year and keep our troops there, he would be inviting a repeat of Saigon ’75, with all that would mean for the Afghans who cast their lot with us.
Biden knows what Saigon ’75 was like. In his first Senate term, Hanoi overran South Vietnam and Saigon, and the boat people began to flee in the thousands for their lives into the South China Sea; the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh.
And the Cambodian genocide began.
In Brussels, Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that any NATO departure from Afghanistan is “conditions based.”
What are Stoltenberg’s stated conditions?
The Taliban “has to reduce violence … negotiate in good faith and … stop supporting international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.”
Yet, the May deadline looms, and if the U.S. does not meet it, Taliban attacks on American troops in Afghanistan could start again, forcing Biden to send more troops back into the country to protect the U.S. logistics and training personnel still there.
What makes this problematic is that Biden has long been known as a supporter of a smaller U.S. footprint and a swifter U.S. pullout than were other advisers in the Obama administration.
But if we fail to meet the May deadline, what new deadline would Biden set? And what guarantee is there that we can ever, after withdrawing, avoid an outcome like South Vietnam — with the enemy overrunning the capital after the Americans have left?
If no president — Bush II, Obama, Trump, Biden — is willing to risk a strategic defeat on his watch, then when can we ever end our involvement in this longest of the long wars? If Biden cannot get our troops out of Afghanistan, when, ever, do we get our troops out of Syria and Iraq?
Given what is being said today in Washington, and in Brussels by NATO defense ministers meeting there, Biden will likely decide to follow in his predecessors’ footsteps. He will extend the May deadline for months, kick the can up the road, and leave in place enough troops to prevent a collapse of the Kabul government but not enough to reverse the inevitable outcome of this war.
Just as the Taliban are likely to achieve their goal in Afghanistan, as they persist and we withdraw, Bashar Assad appears to have prevailed in his civil war in Syria, and the Houthis have, after six years of fighting, held off the Saudi interventionists and their U.S. allies in Yemen.
A Biden decision to suspend a final pullout of U.S. forces will be well received by our foreign policy elites. But the anti-interventionist wings of the two parties are growing in strength. And “America First” retrenchment, which Donald Trump championed in 2016, but could not deliver as president, is going to be represented in both parties’ presidential primaries in 2023 and 2024.
America today is taking on more of a load than this nation can carry.
We are out to contain mighty China, a peer competitor with four times our population, across the Indo-Pacific theater, including the East China and South China seas and Taiwan Strait.
We are containing Vladimir Putin’s Russia, whose strategic arsenal is comparable to our own in Central and Eastern Europe. We are fighting a war on terror in the Middle East, supporting Sunnis against Shiites, and containing Iran in the Persian Gulf.
Our national debt is larger than our national economy. We are running deficits unseen since the late days of World War II. Our economy has sustained crippling blows from a year-long COVID-19 pandemic that has taken the lives of half a million Americans.
A migrant invasion appears to be shaping up on our 2,000-mile Southern border. Our country is as divided as it has been since the Civil War. And we seek to remain the nation that writes the rules for the world order in the 21st century.
Something’s gotta give.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”
Copyright 2021 Creators.com.
USA needs –demands —MUST have War otherwise —the 1% has no purpose and Israel will lose John Hagee and the Texas electrical grid firing up the Mexican wall. Donald Trump was indeed the best Preseident Israel ever had and Covid is just like the flu—a miracle is going to happen–ask Rush Limbaugh or read Curtis LeMay—the blue eyed Jesus will indeed walk on water –coming Duluth January —any year. It is all in the syaagogue —that special synagogue with the Master of this Planet–his name contains the very same letters as Santa–“in god we trust “–indeed. However–we want Barabbas was the chant—- the other dude was slain Friday—
Seriously, who wrote this piece? I’m skeptical that Pat Buchanan wrote this neocon lament about “losing Afghanistan” by “pulling out all the troops” comparing it to Cambodia.
There was never anything to be won in Afghanistan.
Even if you discount the Dancing Shlomos and buy that Osama did 9/11, Osama (allegedly) died in Pakistan a decade ago. And in truth the 9/11 hijackers’ Mossad landlords and handlers did more to support that operation than the Taliban ever did.
We “lost” in Afghanistan the day we showed up, If we had a half-million troops in Afghanistan until 2050, the Taliban would still take over the minute they left.
What the hell is their mission, “Pat?” What are they there to accomplish other than keeping a bleeding boot on the throat of inevitable Afghan sovereignty?
based.
White man speaks with forked tongue.
There may be 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan but there are 18,000 contractors. This hardly denotes a withdrawal.
“Is Biden Prepared to Lose Afghanistan?”
I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass. Is Biden on the take from either Afghanistan or the Taliban? No, his pecuniary interests are elsewhere and he ain’t got the time of day for those that won’t pay to play.
Losing Afghanistan? No way! And I was just starting to get attached to it. Why can’t we have nice things anymore?
Have you tried putting it on a key-chain, Pat?
When was Afghanistan ever “the United States’s” to “lose?” If Joe Biden decides to get out of this fool’s erand, I’ll give him credit for more strategic sense than the last three presidents showed!
“A migrant invasion appears to be shaping up on our 2,000-mile Southern border. Our country is as divided as it has been since the Civil War.”
Yup, that’s where the troops are needed – on our own Southern border, not in Kabul or Washington D.C.; it’s not Taliban or imaginary “insurrectionists” that we need to worry about, it’s illegal aliens. And Jose Biden is probably not the man for the job.
Take a look at a map and you will understand the real Afghanistan issue. Afghanistan has a long border with Iran. Plainly, the US has been running special forces through Afghanistan into Iraq for years. Today it goes unnoticed when a planeload of special forces operators lands in Kabul. Today it goes unnoticed when helicopters full of special operators take off from the US air base in Kabul. They have been doing that for years. Plainly if they stage from Afghanistan into Iran, the only folks who will notice are Iranian–and its not like they will take about it.
Finally, the war in Afghanistan was lost on day one. Re-read your Thucydides or about Rome’s peace with Carthage. Unless a conqueror will do what Athens promised the Melians or what Rome delivered to Carthage any peace will always be tenuous at best. With some irony the lessons for Afghanistan’s victory were laid in the American Civil War and run through Vietnam. Colonel John Mosby ran irregular cavalry operations in the rear of the Union Army in Virginia with some measure of success. Had Lee not surrendered, the South would have been quite ungovernable had the entire region took up Mosby style operations. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and General Xiap learned from Mosby and from the OSS in Europe and from various other partisan operations and developed the strategy that defeated first the French, then the United States. Recall the US went all Carthage on Japan and dropped two atomic bombs because the US feared Japan would go all Mosby should the US be forced to invade.
Today, unless the US plans to go Chinese Uighur on the Taliban, the US may as well take its defeat now.
Earth to Pat.
The U.S. in the Middle East and Afghanistan IS the War of Terror.
Wake the [email protected] Up. Back to the typewriter Beltway Pat. We both know you aren’t this brain dead.
Afghanistan, like China, Korea, Vietnam & Cuba before it, is not America’s to “lose.”
Yes, disaster is looming and that’s what you get for riding the tiger.
Soon, the tiger we ride here at home will be looking around to see what it’s carrying and whether it’s worth it.
If the 2500 troops in Afghanistan had any sense, they would abandon the place and get themselves out of there. Waiting for orders from some schmuck in DC is stupid. They are there as a trip wire and the US considers them expendable as such.
Face it, they are there for the heroine and now that Fentanyl has pretty well take over the money’s just not that great any more so ya, they’ll let er go. Even Genghis khan couldn’t hold it so why bother.
It’s long past time for US to get the hell out of Afghanistan. That country should be left alone to determine its own future.
“Contractors” is such an interesting word. Most of us associate it with the guy renovating your bathroom who won’t return your calls, but in this context a more appropriate term might be the deservedly sinister one: “Mercenary”.
Really? Last time anyone looked, the US and the Vietnamese were getting along swimmingly, despite the US attempting back then to bomb them back to the stone age, still killing numerous Viets to this day by UXOs, and defoliating vast swaths of jungle and forest, poisoning numerous Viets to this day and killing them by cancer. I believe a lot of that happened while PJB was on duty.
How about calling it what it is? The worst US national embarrassment since the fall of Saigon.
If there is any strategic value in there, it is to interrupt the commercial interests of China by military means, an act of aggression that constitutes a war crime.
As for the Taliban defeating the government in Kabul, those would be the Taliban the “Coalition” replaced with the puppet government in Kabul. You know, the Taliban who largely eradicated poppy cultivation until the Kabul government was installed so that it could once again fuel the world’s illicit drug pipelines. If anybody has a strategic interest in Afghanistan, it would be the Russians and Chinese, both of whom suffer from the flow of illicit drugs from Coalition-controlled Afghanistan.
You can’t lose what you ain’t never had.
Yes, it would be very bad for the US to lose its number one heroin supplier.
The Afghans are very proud of the fact that they resisted the British and never became subjects of the British Crown, unlike the rest of the Indian subcontinent. But look at the state of them now! Whilst India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh have made reasonable progress with halfway decent institutions and the rule of law, Afghanistan is right down there with Africa when it comes to things like the quality of life and the development of institutions that are essential to a modern economy.
The Taliban are heroes for successfully defending their land from ZOG. The problem for us is that in another year or two, the west is going to get swamped with Afghan refugees.
Biden does not want to besmirch Obama’s surge. So, the NeoConDemocrats will keep the fight going even though there is nothing to be gained.
It is too bad that the Establishment Swamp kept this going through Trump’s administration. He had no reason to prop up Obama’s failed Surge strategy. Trump withdrawing the U.S. from Afghanistan would have been a WIN.
PEACE 😇
Excellent advice for all American troops stationed in all foreign lands.
The fertility rate per female in Afghanistan (population 39 million) has fallen from around 7 children in 1971 to a still impressive 4 offspring (2018 statistic).
If the Kabul government concedes to the warlords, there will be a mass exodus of young Afghani men, mostly born during the American occupation. By plane, car, and boat, they will bypass Muslim countries and go straight for the lush borders of Europe.
Like the Vietnamese clinging to the skids of helicopters in 1975, they’ve seen Europeans have material wealth, and they will risk everything to follow them home.
The very idea that someone takes an oath to park their brain and follow orders is idiotic.
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.
General Smedley Butler (Usmc, Ret.)
I’ve never followed an order in my entire adult life. I’ve taken suggestions and even direction from people when it didn’t involve something I objected to. I’ve told employers a flat No when they wanted something I strongly disagreed with. For the 10 years I was an employee, I was never fired, but I understood I’m not the employee type and eventually went out on my own.
Any oath of allegiance or submission to any entity or authority as part of some employment or association should instantly indicate that is something an intelligent person should avoid.
Wow, this headline is kind of like asking in the Spring of 1865: Is Jeff Davis Prepared to Lose Richmond?
Yep, we beat those damn towelheads good & proper but they just won’t admit it.
PS. Which imperialist warmonger state enabled the Khmer Rouge regime to come to power, by starting a civil war to overthrow the uncooperative Cambodian royal family? Why, the good old USA. What an amazing coincidence, just like it later created the Taliban to overthrow Afghanistan’s first-ever democracy because it was (boo! hiss! how dare they!) Marxist.
I expect the Vietnamese “boat people” fled for the same reason that ten percent of the American people fled when the rebels won their war of independence. Collaborating with the enemy in wartime usually carries unfortunate consequences.
Joe doing what Trump never had the courage or fortitude to do, bringing our troops home!
The insurrectionists are future stateless re-education camp residents. The border jumpers are future American citizens. I suspect Joe Biden will not cater to the whims of the former.
…..just in time for the inevitable attack on China.
Ridiculous. Afghanistan is about those burgeoning poppy fields. Ever heard “follow the money”. The mission in Afghanistan is to keep the Taliban away from the poppy fields. Fill your pockets with narc money and pass the bill to the taxpayers.
They had a modern economy before Brzezinski sicced the Mujahideen, led by Col Tim Osman aka Osama bin Laden, on them.
The “war on domestic terrorism” is often justified by the language of analogy to foreign terrorism. Thus, if you reduce the evil and worrisome nature of foreign terrorism, you undermine the useful analogy. It is as if the evil nature of “Nazi storm troopers” had been somehow reduced by historians; the analogy of Trump border and other enforcement to storm troopers would have lost force.
I think you have that backwards. The Northern Alliance were the Warlords in charge of the poppy fields and other illegal activities within regions. They were in constant battles over turf. They also had a habit of abducting women from the street (the younger the better) for sexual emergencies. The Taliban, which as created, in part, as a response to the Warlords decapitated the leadership to gain control of the country. Their “keep women indoors” was, even if unintended, a key to keeping them from being kidnapped.
The Warlords are part and parcel of what passes for the current Afghan government. The Taliban, however imperfect, brought stability to Afghanistan. The invasion had nothing to do with Osama bin Forgotten, it had everything to do with Bridas Corp being awarded the contract, over Unocal, to build the TAP pipeline. Who was the first installed US puppet? Hamid Karzai
https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/01/10/bush-enron-unocal-and-the-taliban/
To some neocon’s it was the 3rd WW ,to the extremes among those neocons it was 4th WW. This war is proceeding quietly under the radar .No one comes out to assert “mission accomplished” as sales pitch for election . Because it doesn’t factor negatively . The brave soldiers simply finish the tour and goes back to assistance from the warrior project or redeploy or commit suicide . NATO general gives his fulsome praise TO ANY DOG TAHT BARKS TO HIS TUNE . The dog and the general become the expert on the TV. Soldiers’ family is happy and relieved to be at the good hand guiding them to somewhere- death or deployment or dole .
But the war cant continue It will slowly die from attrition or more likely from the civil war at home or from another more decisive war where the enemy is more powerful than Taliban .
China India Russia nor Pakistan or Iran are unhappy to have the man and his dog around . They have survived and prospered and done brisk business with both protagonists of the act.
Meanwhile morally Afghan cant be held responsible if they took the attack outside to the homeland of the NATO general . It is just the extension of the theater . Collateral damages whether in Afghanistan or in Germany should however be condemned .
By the way, this war was not authorized by UN . Obama might have hidden behind “good war” cant. But that is a lie wrapped in glossy hubris of freedom , revenge, rights, woman, and minority, and the protection of the goat.
Pretty sure Xi will order Xiden to tie up the Russians in Syria and Ukraine to distract them from Eastern Siberia.
That will be fine with the Harris/Biden Admin since most of those who come to our Sinking Ship of State will become loyal democrats.
I think that it’s more to protect human rights in Afghanistan, frankly.
To be fair, though, Afghanistan also had over 40 years of non-stop war. And some parts of Pakistan aren’t exactly pleasant to live in even nowadays.
Say Hello to Little Kabuls subsequently popping up throughout the US afterwards, then! Let’s just hope that we get the Good Afghans just like we previously got the Good Persians in the years and decades starting from 1979. We don’t want people such as Ahmad Khan Rahami, but we DO want people such as Ashraf Ghani! The latter is such a gentleman; the former, a simple terrorist! 🙁
Let’s play kick the bucket, they say.
Too much money at stake, we’ll stay.
You are implying that China is still an enemy of Russia, and wants to expand into Russian territory. What evidence do you have of this? Why would Xi consider such a reckless aggression since he and Putin have formed a diplomatic and economic alliance which helps both of their countries? To boot, they are on the cusp of crushing the “Great Satan” economically and militarily, although clueless Washington is doing a pretty good job of that without their help.
The broke US paper tiger, the greatest debtor nation in history, hasn’t beaten the Taliban patriots in 20 years of fruitless fighting. At least the Soviets had the good sense to pull out of the Afghan “Graveyard of Empires” when they started losing and their treasury was running dry. Washington is the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
There must be a shortage of things to worry about. This is a matter of so little consequence that I am left scratching my head. Let the Afghanis molest themselves and their neighbours in peace.
Like Vietnam (the problem wasn’t that we got out the problem was that we got in), we should never have been in Afghanistan except to go in briefly and kill a bunch of people and not get screwed by REMFs at Tora Bora.
Similarly we have no business being in Iraq.
Every U.S. soldier in Syria should be killed. That should be repeated until we stop illegally invading Syria.
I don’t think it’s possible to have “democracy” in the sense Americans have traditionally understood that word in a multi-ethnic, clannish, economically and socially primitive country like Afghanistan. And I think it’s, if anything, less possible when the government is a brutal Communist People’s State under Soviet control.
I’m all for anti-interventionism, but whitewashing the Communist tyrannies is a bad way of promoting it. It’s not just immoral and untrue, but also counter-productive. The one great strength the anti-war cause has pretty much consistently held onto (barring the incredibly dishonest Vietnam period, when unfortunately it got mixed up with the lying Communists) has been its persistent truthfulness in the face of the warmongers’ lies.
I would certainly like to hear some details about how things were when Afghanistan was under Soviet control.
Refresh my memory: when was that?
I think you’re not thinking straight. Those folks running Gitmo are concerned about human rights. Gidoutahere.
China isn’t going to expand into not-China when Taiwan’s illegitimate provincial leadership is near open revolt against the legitimate government in Beijing.
Why would Joe go to war with China when Russia, Poland, and Hungary are much more worthwhile targets?
Actually, the worst “strategic defeat” in US history is probably GW Bush’s 2003 Iraq invasion. Where are Sadam’s WMDs Pat? How many trillions spent on a war promised to “finance itself”? All for what? Give us a hint.
Rewind to Vietnam 1975. Was President Nixon (and you) prepared for “strategic defeat”? Give us a hint. Did stopping the bombing/killing hurt? Did the US survive? What’s now one of the most-favored low-cost labor venues for US outsourcing? Do American corporations now make goods (clothing, handbags, makeup, you-name-it) in Vietnam? CEO donors that gave Nixon and you money for your campaigns? Give us a hint.
58,000+ Americans died fighting for the bipartisan bullshit ‘domino’ theory in Vietnam up to 1975. ± 250,000 South Vietnamese died. 1,100,000 North Vietnamese were killed (probably many more). For what? Give us a hint.
Won’t ask you about Cambodia.
Biden and Afghanistan? 2,372 Americans have died, 20,320 were wounded in Afghanistan 2001-present [4% of the number killed in Vietnam]. 31,000+ Afghan civilians have been killed, 29,900 wounded. Wasn’t war launched to locate/kill terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda followers, as well as to punish/disable Taliban hosts?
Bin Laden is dead (thanks Obama) and so is most of his cult.
What’s the current reason for Afghan occupation/war? Tell us Pat. Something more cogent than your vacuous op-ed poly-sci chicken-little sky-is-falling “worst U.S. strategic defeat” nonsense please.
You should really concern yourself with a more threatening cult – Donald John Trump who, by some accounts after his putsch attempt 6 January, still claims to have won the election. Son Donald Jr just lambasted the ‘democrat’ Texas governor [actually Governor Greg Abbott is Republican] for the Lone-Star State freezing blackout cluster-fuck.
Good luck with that.
It’s impossible to figure Pat Buchanan, but, that aside, I’ve just discovered the slightly incredible Johnny Gat who makes vids, and he has made two that give a very quick history and analysis of the carnage in the ME that has been going on since at least Gulf War 1 …. the first ….
…
There is nothing useful in Afghanistan for US just maybe opium an territory.
Territory from where US can attack Iran, Russia and maybe even China.
In case conflict it is a very valuable place. Will be war is questionable.
I do not think that there will be war. But US military has to consider all options.
The best that even a man as stubborn as Trump could achieve was token force reductions in the ME that were then slowly rolled-back. If nothing else, Trump really demonstrated how the NeoCons can easily block any President’s firm and public policies.
According to one interpretation of Islamic eschatology, the 12th Imam, Mahdi will emerge from the borders of Afghanistan/Pakistan and then march to Jerusalem to fight the Jewish moshiach or the evil one or dajjal or anti-christ along with Jesus Christ. Very interesting.
Agreed. The title was disturbing and surprising and then much of the article turned out to be worse. This seemed to be an exercise in fence-riding. Pull the goddamned bandaid off. As for when we’ll get out of Syria, isn’t Biden pouring more troops into Syria?
We can’t lose Afghanistan because it does not belong to us. Biden lacks the courage to pull out, as Nixon did in Vietnam, albeit after a long, bloody “peace with honor” game.
I’m surprised that Pat thinks the severely demented shell of what was once Joe Biden has any agency.
The fact is that a tribal Islamic area will when left to its own devices revert to being precisely that…a tribal muslim area. If America stays 1,2,5,10 years it makes no difference. The reality will re-emerge when it can.
Armistice North Korea —Ridgway was some upset—
[]..nothing useful [] for US is the operational term.
Koh-e-Baba is the largest iron ore deposit in Asia (and the Chinese would dearly love
to give the Aussies the finger) and a land corridor to Iran would mean a pipeline.
Recent Indian inamoration with useless mountaintops aims at that line of communications –
like the so-called “Rohingya” troubles.
Russia, Poland and Hungary aren’t economic and geopolitical threats to the US. China is.
Both the Democrats and Republicans serve a foreign government, but it’s not China.
It now seems to be forgotten that the US waged a massive air war against Japan that completely destroyed the entire country well before the atomic bombings. After taking Saipan, Tinian and Guam in mid-1944, the US set up the 20th Air Force’s five B-29 bombardment wings (58, 73d, 313th, 314th, and 315th, each with four bombardment groups) on them and began bombing operations that fall. By the time of the atomic bombings there were no worthy targets left. The night firebombing raid on Tokyo on the night of March 9, 1945 killed more Japanese that either of the atomic bombings. The general in charge of the effort to develop the bombs later said he realized within two weeks of taking over the project that the real target was the USSR, to impress the Soviets with who was going to be boss in the post-war world. The two bombings, each with two different types of bombs, were simply demonstration projects.
Gar Alperovitz’s The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb is a good read.
It’s also now largely forgotten that the real reason for Japan’s defeat was the choking off this resource-poor nation’s access to natural resources, to include oil. From The First Casualty by Philip Knightly: “The success of the United States Navy in denying Japan her vital oil supplies is told in one simple table of figures. Of what was produced in the southern oil fields that Japan had conquered, the following amounts reached Japan: in 1942, 40 percent; in 1943, 15 percent; in 1944, 5 percent; in 1945, none. This was what really defeated Japan. With or without the atom bomb, the Russian entry into the Pacific war, or the great naval battles, Japan was finished, because her ships, aircraft, tanks and vehicles could not move. They had no fuel.”
Knowing its long-term situation was not sustainable, Japan had put out peace feelers through neutral countries to the US since 1943. All were ignored.
It should also be noted that the bulk of the Japanese Army was stranded in Manchuria and could not be brought back to Japan to defend the home islands, and with so many of the able-bodied males away on military service, we were killing a lot of women, children and old folks in the cities.
Also now forgotten is the fact that the war didn’t come to a sudden end with the two atomic bombings. Instead, the firebombings continued, and the largest air raid of the Pacific War, putting over 1000 US aircraft in the air, took place after the two atomic bombings. Everyone knew the war would soon be over, and in fact some of the planes in the massive raid dropped leaflets telling those on the receiving end that their leaders had surrendered. The war was, in fact, declared over even before all of the planes landed back at their airfields.
What of the Japanese Air Force? Without fuel, its remaining aircraft and inexperienced pilots (the older ones were mostly killed off) were irrelevant. Having been swept from the skies, B-29s ground crews removed the machine-guns from aircraft, ammo was no longer loaded and gunners stayed home. (This weight removal also allowed for greater range for the planes as well as loading more bombs.)
Getting back to the two atomic bombings, those cities were chosen not because of any military value, but because they were “virgin” targets that had not been already destroyed. Planners wanted to see the true extent of the damage, plus since the two bombs were two different types, they wanted to see how each one performed.
And finally, here are the words of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946:
It seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
Before 1979.
There used to be a website by an Afghan who wanted people to know that his country hadn’t always been the backward place portrayed in the West. The website included pictures of women in Kabul in western clothing, working in jobs, going about without male escorts, visiting restaurants and libraries, driving cars, etc. Indeed, it looked like a typical European city. Being under socialist control that advocated equality between the sexes, things seemed rather “normal.” (Note: I’m not a socialist or a fan of either the pre-invasion government or the USSR. I’m just pointing out that Afghanistan wasn’t always like it is today.)
Of course, this didn’t sit well with the traditionalists in the hinterlands and our own government took advantage of it for its own uses, setting back social evolution by probably 1000 years.
As for “losing” Afghanistan, no one has ever owned it. Here’s an enlightening clip from the 2005 Russian film The 9th Company about a unit of new paratroopers being sent to fight there:
The officer conducting the briefing describes the environment to which they’ll be sent, although the things he attributes to Islam are more accurately described as characteristics of a tribal society. What he says at the end of the clip, however, remains true: “In all of history, no one has ever managed to conquer Afghanistan. It’s never happened.”
I well remember when all of this was going on because I was in the military too, although thankfully not in the Soviet military. With the US pumping arms into Afghanistan, to include shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons, the Soviets were losing an average of 1.5 aircraft a day.
Returning the film, here’s another clip in which a new group of soldiers has arrived on a transport plane and their happy combat veteran counterparts have boarded the plane to return home. One of the departing veterans, having found someone from his home town, gives the new arrival a medallion that has supposedly brought him good luck and kept him alive. On its departure flight the transport is hit by a Strella:
This was all too real at the time.
Fast forward to our own quagmire, quite some time ago military leaders admitted they have no idea how to achieve “victory” or even what it’s supposed to look like. No political leader, however, wants to be in office when the entire charade collapses, so enough GIs from towns and families with no political clout whatsoever (supplemented by thousands of mercenaries that no one cares about) are fed into the meat grinder to keep it going so that the inevitable defeat happens on someone else’s watch. All along the way the taxpayers, on the hook for the expenses of a massively indebted government, continue to be bled dry.
Well said.
I’ve always said that if a conservative republican president had authorized the atomic bombing of civilians in a country trying to surrender, he would today be called a war criminal.
It is the expanded version of the Monroe Doctrine. Some segments believe it is the divine right of the United States to dictate to other nations who can and should do what.. Which in itself is just an extension of the former thinking of the British Empire…
AKA Traitors.
Casting your lot with a foreign invader usually ends in bad things happening to you and your family. The invader eventually leaves and scores are settled.
To my mind, China is a ‘threat’ to the USA only in the sense that the USA is not strong enough to push it around. If the USA does not attack China, China will not attack the USA. Being bigger than somebody else does not normally make you a ‘threat’. E.g. nearly every time I go into town I meet people who are bigger than I am. That does not make me feel threatened. What is China doing that you call it a threat to the USA?
The USA otoh has demonstrated that it is a very real threat to any other country that is not prepared to do exactly as the USA demands, even its so-called allies! It and Israel are committing war crimes and crime against humanity against foreign countries on a daily basis.
Well yes – aside from the opium flow – it is about Iran and Russia and China. Once Trump announced the draw down – Pompeo only a few months before leaving delisted the ETIM (the Uighur extremist group allied to ISIS and Al Queda) as a terror organization. I’m not sure what’s going on with the Chechens though… But it is because of both issues that once the US went into Afghanistan – Russia and China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.. The only Central Asian nation who didn’t (couldn’t) join so far is Afghanistan.
If you see in this video the portion of the clip of Col. Wilkerson… He explains it clearly and concisely:
The ultimate irony is that when the Taliban first got into power they shut down the opium trade – which raised the price of heroin.
This article and its title is indeed astonishing! IF, IF buchanan wrote this, he needs to retire to his basement or wherever as this is total garbage! Long past time to pull the plug on this disaster; the war mongers’ greed should not influence this pull out decision but it does unfortunately, say hello liz cheney/pat buchanan.
I must not be keeping up with the news. I wasn’t aware that the United States ever “owned”Afghanistan, but if we do “lose” it I can’t say I’ll miss it. I just hope the neocons and neoliberals don’t go around putting posters on telephone poles that read “Missing. Have you seen this country? Reward for return”.
Pat continues to predict things that happened 30 years ago.
Yes indeed, the US plans to one day attack China, and a few years ago Australian journalist John Pilger produced a film titled The Coming War on China about these plans. It’s well worth watching.
Nobody cares. Unsufferable Aggro-Stolti is a wheeling bureaucrat looking for a mission. Any mission at all. Except the one he should have: unravel NATO right now and let Europe think about the fact that it is Europe not the site of Russian Containment Basis #1, now morphing into China Containment Basis #2.
NATO’s expanding role hides the reality of a US empire in decline
And also:, “no Hasty Withdrawal”. No sir! Why exactly? It’s complicated.
‘There will be no full withdrawal’: Troops to remain in Afghanistan past Trump-set deadline – report
Those conditions are bogus. If anyone was serious, they would talk to Pakistan’s ISI about this.
Those are bad Afghans; meanwhile, we’re protecting the good Afghans.
Paddy really is as disconnected to reality as Resident Biden, isn’t he?
But Hillary lost!
Good post. War (illegal) corrupts.
War brutalizes.
What did German businessman (Siemans AG) and NSDAP member John Rabe see at Nanking?
The Nanking Massacre claimed up to 300,000 Chinese 13 Dec 1937-Jan 1938. Unlike wholesale aerial killing, it was up-front and personal, one by one. Japan’s war on China killed up to 22 million by 1945. Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo 18 Apr 1942 brought on Japan’s Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign to punish the Chinese; it claimed 70,000 soldiers and 250,000 civilians.
Stimson was right in 1947: “a continuance of war will in all probability end with the destruction of our civilization”.
I agree with a minor correction:
Is Biden Prepared to Lose Afghanistan?
Afghanistan was never the US’s to lose – believing that is unadulterated imperial hubris.
The US effort in Afghanistan was stillborn at it’s inception in Oct2001.
There are zero US national security interests at stake in Afghanistan – repeating the tissue paper thin mantra about eliminating terrorist training camps is hokum as terrorist training camps can (and do) exist anywhere on the globe. As a matter of fact the terrorist pilots of 11Sept2001 received their training in US commercial flight schools while planning for the attacks was done in Hamburg Germany.
Afghanistan was/is a defense (ie war) industry self-licking ice cream cone that pays out tens of billions of dollars in profit while American/Afghan lives are sacrificed for lies.
It is a complete disgrace that compromised US politicians pay no price for continuing this 20 year long murderous boondoggle. Americans citizens must be too busy shopping, practicing identity politics or cowering in fear behind a mask to demand an end (and accountability) to these crimes.
It’s heart warming to see US military flag officers place their women’s/men’s well being before their own vain-glorious rise into the stars and beyond into the boardroom.
May these self-serving department of war heel-clickers, flag-saluters and true-believers rot in hell.
The piece that’s forgotten is that the Taliban had eradicated the poppy crop prior to the invasion and the replanting was allowed (and encouraged) after the US attacks as a big Fuck-You to America.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a-success-us-aides-say.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/25/afghanistan.terrorism8
8 suffix a Grauniad feature, not mine, or as we say: Sic.
The soldiers and mercs need to come to DC to guard the frauds.
Afghanis have been at war so long they have forgotten how to farm.
American farmers bankrupted by Balony Corony can teach and earn.
Or
American farmers, Taliban, Indian farmers
can join forces in a multicultural jihad.
Sweep the billionaires from the planet.
Earth in balance and sustainable.
Just like the capitulation of Saddam before March 2003 .Neocns told “we would see them in Baghdad “
Not much different from Libya weakened by sanctions ,freezing of asset, forcing of donations ,and removal the nuclear threat.
Countries trusting USA do that at their perils . Again Israel is different – top dog – and would oneway behave to USA the way USA had to other including to Japan .Worse is after doing something like that to USA,Israel would 24/7 flood the airwaves of the entire world with footage of Hiroshima -Nagasaki bombing, pictures of Abu Ghraib, Basra ,Mosul and Aleppo ,Kandhar and the convoys of the truck stealing oil from Syria. This is the way top dog pays its bitch .
Col Wilkerson specifically predicting the Uyghur proxy strategy back in 2018.
NATO has already said that NATO troops are staying even if US pulls out. Supposing, US pulls out these troops, don’t you think there are enough mercenaries there fightimg for the US? Those mercenaries are staying. WHY? Opium is a big busines for CIA. They can’t lose that cow for it pays for their covert operations. These mercenaries are CIA employees. Bottom line: CIA is not leaving Afghanistan.
Lesson to be learned: Teach history in high school. If the US had learned from history, she would never have sent troops in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the grave yard of empires. Russians learned that lesson and were smart to pull out quickly. US (CIA) is greedy. They want the opium money.
It is odd seeing film footage of evil Afghan Communist women in the 1970s wearing blue jeans and Western styles of clothing.
Indeed, during a walk around my neighborhood a number of years ago I stopped to talk to a fellow outside his house and learned he was from Afghanistan.
After the end of the war in Vietnam this area was flooded with Vietnamese.
Koreans are also here by the tens of thousands. They start businesses, work hard, send their kids to school, etc., and in general behave themselves very well, so I don’t really mind them. They provide an example of what we used to be.
Following Reagan’s misadventures in Central America in the 1980s, this area is inundated with Central Americans. Some are hard workers while others, such as MS-13, prey upon their own people. Before they arrived we didn’t have problems such as machete attacks, headless bodies of rivals found in parks with the hearts cut out, etc., committed by teens upon other teens.
The US military went into Somalia and now we have them pouring in as well. After watching dead US soldiers being dragged through the streets and even watching the film Blackhawk Down about the whole fiasco, you’d think our political masterminds would know better than to allow a single one of them on the continent, unless their intention from the start was the destruction of everything about us.
Anyone feeling frisky who wants to get a war started with Iran should realize that we’ll end up with a million Iranians here. Come to think of it, I’ve already met some around here. Plenty more will come after the next war on behalf of Israel.
Godd Afghans being the ones who grow poppies I presume.
Poland and Hungary are rebellious Imperial satellites and the ZOG ruling class has ancestral grievances with Russia. I suspect those places are higher orders of threats to them.
I don’t even think he was predicting… He was simply speaking on what he heard when he was in the halls of power. Long term plans… That’s why the mainstream media doesn’t like him anymore… Exposing their plans
>whose strategic arsenal is comparable to our own in Central and Eastern Europe
Lolwhat? Russia can defeat all of you and your clowns in Europe conventionally, not even taking nuclear-tipped Iskander-M missiles rearranging stones in Berlin, Paris and London.
Hell, your clowns understand that perfectly, hence their shirking of blah blah 2% GDP bullshit. Why waste money by supporting US MIC for a war you have no chance in hell of winning? Hence pathetic 30k cannon fodder number your center vassal Germany says it is ready to commit “for a month”. Hence all of your advertised baltic exercises, if one generously calls it that, being about running away.
There will be no war anywhere, for you have lost it long time ago.
Biden won’t close Gitmo or shut down Afghanistan. Biden this and Biden that; crap, Biden is a place mat.
Biden is epic!
Oh yeah, and so is Hunter.
The Afghans were in a Raj buffer zone against Russia , just as Thailand was a buffer zone for the British Empire in Malaya against the French Empire’s S.E.Asian possessions..
Were it not for the Russian threat , nobody would have cared about these Afghan savages.
America should get out of Afghanistan. And many other places too.
You are right. How can we “lose” Afghanistan? It was never ours to begin with.
Leaving Vietnam in 1975 was the smartest thing the USA ever did. It should never have been there in the first place. Likewise with Afghanistan.
Who gives a $hit about Afghanistan?
I forget who the ex-CIA operative was who said this, but, when we were gearing up to invade the dung-heap, he said; “you can bomb the place 24/7 and all you’ll do is move this pile of rocks from here, to there. There’s nothing of value in Afghanistan. Spray RoundUp on the poppy fields and let’s leave it to the sub-humans who run it.
I see pulling out of Afghanistan as a win win situation. First no more Americans need die defending what my nephew who served there described as a shithole. Second the loss will be on Biden’s watch and those of us on the right can enjoy the spectacle of a Biden foreign policy failure.
Yes there is a plan but it will not be launched. The reason is that China observes what happened to Japan and Germany. They were punished for not knowing their place, but eventually were allowed to be rich and democratic. China will be happy to be rich and democratic minus the punishment. It will submit willingly. China is lucky. Ok, unfair, but still lucky.
LOL WUT? Is Afghanistan one of your states?
As for the Afghans who fought on the side of NATO, they will end up in Florida, probably shooting up nightclubs or some such thing.
Are you a time traveler living in forties and you did travel into future and giving advise to everybody?
Yes, when the US moves in and bombs a country, it’s bad for the economy. Just ask Cambodia, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq. Afghanistan has a big, fat problem: USer militants.
And as for Buchanan’s pathetic “the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh. And the Cambodian genocide began.”! As if the US had nothing to do with it. Cambodian children are still being blinded by US bombs. The US genocide in Cambodia was a war crime.
I remember when the US invaded Afghanistan. The Russians, having been down this road before, advised us not to go in there, but we refused to listen. The ease with which the US entered Kabul, while the Taliban returned to the mountains from whence they came, convinced warmongers that the US was invincible and could take on anyone, anywhere. Only later did it become apparent that this wasn’t anything like entering Berlin or Tokyo in 1945, but rather that we had jumped with both feet into the briar patch, and to top it off we were surrounded by an enemy that was not, in fact, defeated, and we controlled only the ground on which we stood. People made the fatal mistake that the US only needed to throw sufficient quantities of US soldiers, munitions and money at any problem to solve it, that it wasn’t necessary to understand the environment we were getting into. Being top dog, everyone else needed to understand us. That arrogant belief has only gotten us deeper into the briar patch, where we continue to bleed out lives and treasure indefinitely, and for what?
Yes.