We Were Always Just Lying There

We have now officially declared that we are getting out of Afghanistan, and we are actually doing it. People are asking what took us so long. Meanwhile, crowds of Afghans are desperately trying to get out with us. People might also ask, what took them so long?

During the past twenty-years while we were wasting money and lives, Afghans had a much better chance of leaving.  But they stayed. Why? Was it for the food? Seems like they could have found samosas and falafel somewhere else. 

Did they stay because of the thriving economy? No. After all the moolah we’ve been funneling to them rather than spending it on people who need it right here in the good old USA, Afghanistan’s GDP ranks a sterling 119^th in the world. That’s eleven spots below Uganda. But, if it is any consolation, it is one spot above Botswana. So, that couldn’t be why they stayed.

Was it because they felt an affinity to their homeland? Maybe. Considerations of culture and history and family are always magnetic. But Afghanistan has only been a country since 1880. That was the year that Ron DeSantis still thinks it is. Before that, Alexander the Great showed up and took them over in 330 BCE (the year that Wayne LaPierre wants it to be). Alexander was following a bunch of prior Persian Emperors. Then, after Big Al left, a slew of other conquering emperors followed.  I looked up the list and I stopped counting at thirteen. So, what Afghanization history are they wedded to?

There is only one major reason why the Afghans who now clamor to get out didn’t see the writing on the wall before now.  It’s because we were the ones who were doing the writing. And we were writing lies. We were saying that everything was going to be all right; that freedom and democracy were just around the corner. We neglected to confide in them that Afghanistan has no corners. It is cyclical. Its invaders come and go. From Persian Emperors to Alexander the Great to a multitude of conquerors, including the Russians.  Afghanistan, it is often said, is where empires go to die. 

So, we lied again. Not sure where this lie ranks among our long litany of lies about why we kill people, but it’s right up there. 

Now we’re afraid that the Taliban will take retribution against those who helped us.  And they most likely will. But retribution by the victors over the vanquished is nothing new. According to two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Alan Taylor, such was also the case in our American Revolution. He describes how a band led by Patriots in 1782 went searching for Indians who had helped the British.  When they couldn’t find any, they attacked the first Tribe they found, a Tribe, it turned out, that had not been Loyalists. The Patriots proceeded to butcher 96 of them, including 39 children, by smashing their skulls with wooden mallets before scalping them for trophies. I offer this not as any defense of the Taliban, only as another of the inevitable parade of the horribles that our lies about Afghanistan have now reaped.

What should we have done instead? With the necessary qualification that I am just another gasbag spouting out uninformed opinions, here’s my suggestion – maybe we shouldn’t have gone there at all.  

I guess after 9/11, the public mood was so bellicose that a limited mission to undermine those who attacked us was justifiable.  After that, though, the rest was tragic garbage. The rest was just an exercise in satisfying the xenophobes, and the professional killers who call themselves, “Generals”, and the greedy and mercenary profit mongers who call themselves “defense contractors.” 

What’s going to happen now? We may actually have an historical model. I’m talking, as many others have, about Vietnam. You’ll remember that we wasted tens of thousands of lives and billions in treasure there for decades, all in the name of halting the onward march of God-less Communists. Then, when it was clear that our goal was unattainable, we high-tailed it out.  Chaos ensued. And then chaos stopped. Today, Vietnam is a popular tourist destination. And oh, by the way, it is governed by those same God-less Communists.

This does not mean that the Taliban will ultimately be in charge of Disneyland – Kabul. It is to say that we were very wrong about Vietnam and that we have been similarly wrong about Afghanistan.  

So, are those who said we screwed it up this time right? Yes, of course they are. The question though is this – how many more times will our belief in our un-assailable righteousness and our willingness to lie about it screw us up again?