Afghanistan Part I: History Repeats

On April 13, 2021, Joe Biden’s administration announced that the United States would withdraw all their forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Reactions were mixed, some believed that the conflict had dragged on far too long and was unwinnable, while some believed that America should not just allow itself to give up and give in. However, no one could dispute that the events that followed were disastrous, Biden’s plan was that the US would withdraw and that the Afghan National Army, which had received training and supplies from our government would continue to fight the Taliban and hopefully defeat them, however this is NOT what happened, the Taliban immediately pounced and began a massive offensive against the Afghan government, and without the support of America and it’s other Western allies, the country fell to the Taliban in about 3 months. And our forces didn’t leave in an orderly fashion either, we panicked and tried to leave as quickly as possible, abandoning approximately 7 billion dollars worth of vehicles and equipment, meaning that once the Taliban took over, all of that would fall into their hands. 

Now there are many reasons why this choice by President Biden was a bad one, the most obvious one is that, of course, just giving up and abandoning Afghanistan makes our country and military seem weak, a particularly bad thing for us right now, with the threat of Russia, China, and countless other enemy countries looming on the horizon, the Taliban are now again in charge of the nation and are more powerful than ever now that they have 7 billion dollars worth of American military equipment, they are also another big threat in the massive global crisis of Middle Eastern terrorism. Of course we must address the valid points made by the other side, the war had been going on for a long time and we weren’t really seeing much success, but there’s another reason I consider that this decision to leave was a particularly poor one.

The biggest reason I think the decision to leave Afghanistan was a terrible one, is because the same thing has happened before, “What do you mean?” You might ask, and to answer you, let us travel back to 1969. President Richard Nixon has just taken office, he and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger plan to begin a foreign policy of détente, which is the relaxation of hostilities, this included the Vietnam War. Nixon had been able to win the 1968 election by this promise, defeating Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President of President Lyndon Johnson who approved the decision to send American troops to Vietnam and as a result received most of the blame from the public. This policy was called “Vietnamization”, the plan was to gradually reduce American troop presence in Vietnam while at the same time expanding, equipping, and training the South Vietnamese forces. Sound familiar? Well Vietnamization was a little different, true, Nixon did plan to eventually remove American ground forces from Vietnam, however this policy did not apply to American air support and American aid to South Vietnam. Eventually, a system came into place, the South Vietnamese would fight on the ground, and would receive American air support along with training. This lasted quite a while, from 1969 to 1973. On March 29, 1973, the United States withdrew all of the forces from Vietnam after a peace agreement with North Vietnam. But the war was not over yet, South Vietnam continued to fight until 1975, when their capital fell. 

And this is the biggest flaw to Biden’s plan, that it had been done before and it didn’t work. I personally believe the statement, “If we don’t remember history, it will repeat itself” holds a lot of truth. It doesn’t make any sense! Why would Biden intentionally create a plan to leave Afghanistan that had been proven before to result in the enemy winning? But then of course, many will defend this action, saying “Well, the war had been going on for a long time, we had to admit defeat eventually”, which is of course a valid point, why then do I believe that Biden made a wrong choice? This is the question that I shall try to answer, but this blog is getting quite long, so I’ve decided to make this one a two-part series, so make sure to read next week’s post, where I shall conclude this blog.