Senator Dick Durbin recently wrote an opinion piece about Afghanistan in USA Today. In it he argues that America lost its longest war because Afghans refused to “bend to reason or force” and could not accept “outsiders.” I completely disagree with his analysis.
We lost because we repeatedly shot ourselves in the foot in the following ways:
- We never provided enough troops to properly secure the country once we routed the Taliban.
- We outsourced security responsibilities to warlords that used their power to enrich themselves through corruption, theft, and drug trafficking while they violently abused the people they ruled over.
- We wasted far too many resources trying to build a Western style military that Afghanistan could not afford or use properly.
- We did not adequately manage or control how the vast sums of money we poured into the country were spent. As a result, at least 90% of the nearly $148 billion dollars we provided was either stolen or completely wasted on useless projects or military spending.
- We never developed a mechanism to integrate those Taliban that tried to surrender back into society, giving many Pashtuns no choice but to support the insurgency.
As he noted in his piece, a lot of people died because of this war. As such, I think it is extremely important that we objectively analyze why we lost instead of relying on simplistic explanations or superficial stereotypes about the Afghan people. We had a small window of opportunity to do something good in Afghanistan and we blew it. That is why we lost.
Senator Durbin’s piece references Afghanistan’s history of violently ejecting invaders. I believe our history at the end of WWII is more instructive. We occupied Germany and Japan for ten and seven years after WWII. The policies implemented to secure both countries turned Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan into two of our closest allies. My point is, we have taken on bigger challenges than the Taliban and resoundingly won.
What is particularly concerning is that, despite fielding the most powerful military the world has ever known, America has forgotten how to win wars. The poor decision making that led to our defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq were remarkably like the mistakes made in Vietnam. Since the end of WW2 America has lost three of the five major military conflicts it has engaged in. This speaks to a troubling pattern that can only be explained by structural issues regarding our policy formulation process when it comes to matters of war and national security.
I realize the Senator’s letter was probably not intended to provide an in-depth explanation, but I still felt obligated to write this because the justifications in his piece are eerily similar to those used to create the unbelievably bad policies that led to our defeat. Until our leaders take the time to seriously reflect on why we lost in Afghanistan, and how this our loss fits within the larger context of the pattern of defeats referenced above, we will continue to waste lives and treasure losing wars that we should have won.
For a more in-depth discussion of these issues please see here.