In February of last year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed an agreement with the Taliban in which the United States agreed to remove all troops within 14 months. This was basically a surrender agreement negotiated between the Trump administration and the Taliban. Taliban leaders and prisoners would all be released from custody. The US would remove all troops by May 31st, 2021. In exchange, we would get Notadam.
The government of Afghanistan (our ally) was NOT invited to take part in this agreement. At that moment, the government of Afghanistan was doomed. When your best friend starts cutting deals with your worst enemy, you are screwed.
Of course, the Afghan government was ridiculously corrupt. They richly deserved to be ousted. We should grab that president who looted the treasury and hand him over to the Taliban for trial. As bad as the Taliban is, there is no good argument in favor of supporting the awful government they’ve had during our occupation.
The surprise is that the Taliban took the entire country for the most part without firing a shot. We tend to attribute that to some lack of courage or leadership on the part of the Afghan forces. The truth is, there is no such nation as Afghanistan – at least to those who live there. It is a geographical boundary containing valleys and regions of various races, religions, and tribes, ruled by powerful families and warlords. In America, we fight for our country. In Afghanistan, where the enemy is often the people in the next valley, they do not have any sense of nationalism. There is no broad sense of being part of a nation. They don’t even have what we call patriotism.
Almost 20 years ago, I wrote and published an article recommending that we load our bombers up with bread, seeds, medical supplies, and farm tools, and drop them on the poor folks in Afghanistan. If we had done that, America would be greatly admired over there, and no troops would be needed. It also would have been a lot cheaper.
Lesson learned: You can never make friends with someone while you have a gun pointed at them.
