The End of an Era

A U. S. Marine grieves at the memorial of a comrade killed in Afghanistan, 2012

Ben Rhodes, an American political commentator and former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, writes in the Guardian:

Most importantly, the abandonment of Afghans to the Taliban, and Biden’s occasionally callous rhetoric laying the blame on Afghan security forces, who had fought on the frontlines for years, evoked a sense of national shame – even if that emotion should apply to the entirety of the war, and not simply its end. Indeed, in the chaotic days of withdrawal, the predominant concerns in US politics often had little to do with Afghans. The evacuation of Americans, the danger of Islamic State Khorasan Province, and the loss of US service members eclipsed the gargantuan Afghan suffering. Overwhelming public support for Biden’s decision, though undercut by dissatisfaction with the process of withdrawal, confirmed Biden’s core instinct: the thing most Americans agree upon is that we went to Afghanistan to take out the people who did 9/11 and prevent further attacks, and it was past time to abandon the broader aims of post-9/11 foreign policy, no matter the subsequent humanitarian cost.

In short, Biden’s decision exposed the cavernous gap between the national security establishment and the public, and forced a recognition that there is going to be no victory in a “war on terror” too infused with the trauma and triumphalism of the immediate post-9/11 moment. Like many Americans, I found myself simultaneously supporting the core decision to withdraw and shuddering at its execution and consequences. As someone who worked in national security, I have to recognise the limits of how the US can shape other countries through military intervention. As someone who has participated in American politics, I have to acknowledge that a country confronting virulent ethno-nationalism at home is ill-suited to build nations abroad. But as a human being, I have to confront how we let the Afghan people down, and how allies like Britain, who stood by us after 9/11, must feel in seeing how it all ended.

It is a cruel irony that this is the second time the US has lost interest in Afghanistan. The first time was in the 1990s, after much of the mujahideen we supported to defeat the Soviets evolved into dangerous extremists, plunged the country into civil war, and led to Taliban rule.

The final verdict on Biden’s decision will depend on whether the US can truly end the era that began with 9/11 – including the mindset that measures our credibility through the use of military force and pursues security through partnerships with autocrats. Can we learn from our history and forge a new approach to the rest of the world – one that is sustainable, consistent, and responsive to the people we set out to help; that prioritises existential issues like the fight against the climate crisis and genuine advocacy for the universal values America claims to support?

What I Say:  The twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, following close on the heels of the Afghanistan withdrawal, certainly does mark the end of an era - a nice, neat convenience for future history teachers - and the way forward is not at all clear.  The political divisions in this country have reached a horrendous frenzy now, exacerbated by the covid pandemic, that will not easily be tamped down.  There is a level of savagery and hysteria, not to mention widespread ignorance, arrogance, and sheer gullible superstition, on the tribal extremes of both the left and the right.

Before you start to contradict that last statement - was the anarchy at the Capitol on January 6th any more brutal than the nationwide anarchy that occurred last summer?  If you condemn the one, you must condemn the other.  In my view, both are equally nauseating and frightening, symptomatic of a dangerous, possibly fatal illness in the American body politic.  As Mr. Lincoln said - A house divided against itself cannot stand.  We have been warned.

As to foreign affairs, I hope all my truckbuddies will recall that the whole Afghan mess was the creation of the Bush-Cheney administration - and that Democrats criticized it from the very start, along with the shameful, senseless, needless war in Iraq that was based on Bush-Cheney's lies about non-existent "weapons of mass destruction."  It was necessary, and right by all standards of earthly justice, to hit back against the evil men who attacked our cities and mercilessly killed three thousand of our citizens on 9/11.  But it was not at all necessary to destroy two governments and colonize a Little America in the most inaccessible, inhospitable region on the other side of the world, at the cost of so many lives, so many dollars, and the respect and goodwill of nearly all the world.

Biden is responsible, as he himself has said repeatedly, for last month's frantic, shameful evacuation from Kabul - but we must remember that it was Bush-Cheney who dug us into that hole in the first place, against all reason and history and common sense, with glib Madison Avenue phrases like "regime change" and "nation building" - which are simply code for invasion, occupation, and control by a puppet government.  This has always been clear to those of us who had eyes to see it for what it was - Vietnam 2.0.  It was never about giving the Afghans what they wanted - it was all about giving them what we wanted for them.  And a cash cow beyond the wildest dreams of the military-industrial complex.

Continued after the jump . . .

And I hope my overseas truckbuddies will believe me when I say that the vast majority of ordinary Americans never wanted to take over Afghanistan or get bogged down in somebody else's civil war.  Certainly nobody in Washington ever wrote or called me to ask how I felt about it.  Nor did ordinary Americans ever have a vote on whether or not to get bogged down in Vietnam, either.  That's just not how it works in this or any other country that I know of.  

Our first President, George Washington, in his famous Farewell Address of 1796, warned our young republic against the dangers of "foreign entanglements" - and that warning was the core of American foreign policy for 150 years or so, until World War II completely rewrote the whole scheme of international relations.  Speaking in general terms, Americans historically were content to leave the rest of the world alone, as long as they left us alone.  Separated from the rest of the world by two great oceans, by the time of the centennial of 1876, we had a great big country of our own to develop, chock full of natural resources, bountiful farms, and humming factories of all kinds - we neither needed nor wanted to take over anyone else's territory.  (The unjust treatment of the Indians who were here first being the dark flip side to that happy story.)  And though we ended up being the world's policeman by default after 1945, not all of us ordinary Americans have been happy with that role, either - necessary though it was to keep the peace.  

What good reason is there, ever, to wrench American soldiers from their homes and families to go bleed and die for some other country's benefit?  That is the question that will always arise in the minds of most ordinary Americans, by which I mean, not blustering politicians or fanatical warmongers.  What good reason is there, ever, to send any country's youths into the slaughterhouse of war?  It may be that sometimes in the long history of the world, there is indeed a very good reason to sacrifice one's sons and daughters for some high and urgent necessity that benefits the world beyond our shores - but too often in the last 75 years, there has not been.  And now, I am very ashamed to say, America has made the same mistake twice, at dreadful cost.  Thrice, if you count Korea, which is still an open sore.  Sober reflection and reappraisal are now in order, if any can be found in this tweet-brained modern world.

President Kennedy's Inaugural Address in 1961 was a masterpiece of rhetoric on the classical model that held aloft the banner of America's highest hopes and ideals at the dawn of the Space Age:  

We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom -- symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning -- signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Those beautiful phrases, those noble thoughts are the ideals for which Americans have worked and fought and bled and died ever since 1776.  They express the essence of what we have tried to be as a nation, of what we have wanted to be, a force for good in the world, leading the way for others to follow.  And many times, in many places, we have done that, and done it well.  And yet, and yet - how very different the future has turned out, these last sixty years, from that pictured in Kennedy's inspiring vision.  Before he had slept a year beneath the eternal flame at Arlington, the lies and corruption of the Vietnam adventure had begun to insinuate themselves into the folds of America's garments - and the rest is history, a very shameful history.  Fifty thousand names on a black wall bear silent testimony to the truth.  Does anyone now dare to assert that we will pay any price, bear any burden - for what?

Washington's address is a monument of English prose, an elegantly reasoned, heartfelt plea and warning to his countrymen of the time.  It repays a careful reading if you can manage it.  But of course, farsighted though his counsels were, Washington could not know how very much the world would change in two centuries - change beyond all recognition for a man of the 18th century who never even saw a postage stamp, a kerosene lamp, or a railroad train.  Much less a telegraph, a telephone, an electric light, a motorcar, or an aeroplane, not to mention the great forces of social change such as movies, radio, television, and the Internet with all its ceaseless, insanely babbling social media that may very well be the death of us.

 Like technology and society, the political world has changed vastly too, at home and abroad.  Washington's great fear was that European governments would try to subvert or overthrow American democracy.  The rest of the world gets no mention in his address - no doubt because all other nations outside of Europe were too far away, too poor, and too weak militarily to be a threat to us.  But now in the age of rocketry, satellites, drones, and Twitter, any determined, hostile nation, or even an organized group of fanatics on the other side of the world can potentially do great harm to us with just the push of a button or two; the vast oceans are no defense from foreign attack today.  Of course, we are not entirely defenseless; but it seems that our continued existence depends upon constant and careful surveillance of all who might even think about doing a dirty deed - a Sisyphean task.

And all this has come about at the same time that our own social fabric is tearing to shreds, and Americans are at each other's throats, divided and hostile - if you watch the evening news.  And it seems that even the physical world is falling apart, no longer a friendly, nurturing, endlessly forgiving Mother Nature - to hear the scientists tell it.  What a frightful time to be living in!  If this were a movie scenario you were reading, how do you think the plot would go from here?  

Well, there is no telling until you pays your money and sees the show.  In six thousand years of recorded history, the world has lurched and stumbled along from one crisis of civilization to another, like a drunk wobbling from one street lamp to the next, but somehow the human race has never quite reached The End yet.  I don't know what the next era is going to bring - things might get better or might not.  I only know that today was another quiet, humdrum day in our little bungalow, and we had a small but delicious dinner of dirty rice and cauliflower casserole while watching an old movie via the Internet.  Outside, M.P.'s prized chrysanthemum bushes are blooming in a rainbow of colors, and the grass and the trees are still summer-green.  Despite all the horrors you see in the news, everyday life continues for the moment to be peaceful, banal, and mercifully uneventful, which is just what these two old men like.  At this age, one realizes what a great blessing is even a "nothing" kind of day, something to be grateful for.

As to the state of the nation and the world, I have no answers to give.  I only believe that if there is a good way forward, it will be through honesty and humility, not deceit and hubris.  Defense is necessary, but offense rarely is.  I pray daily for peace here and all around the world, and I try - sometimes faltering and failing - to live peaceably and humbly, as the prayer says at the top of my blog.  That's all I can do, and all I know to do, as we drift into yet another new era, uncharted and unknowable.

God help us all, and deliver us from evil.  Amen.

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