I am driven to write today....after listening to comments made by some of our so called political”leaders” and those in the politicized and propagandizing media. One is the upcoming twenty year “anniversary” of the war in Afghanistan and the other the barely “history” really—the disaster unfolding at the southern border. In one place , our border recent history is being ignored—in the other history of two decades old is expunged
The lack of historical context in these two divergent stories drove me here to my typewriter—where I must write to remind my readers of the oft re-quoted aphorism of George Santayana, who added a warning at the close of his 1905 book: “Reason in Common Sense”:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat if.”
The 20th anniversary of our War in Afghanistan is coming up in a few months. The anniversary has some of our talking heads on the right complaining of the ongoing withdrawal of the USA troops from its two decade long war in Afghanistan.
Again, we have too often been condemned to repeat the past not only because we “cannot remember” it but because our compliant propagandizing media and the government conspire to distort or ignore history. Their lack of respect for the past condemns us all to repeat the most egregious foreign policy and economic blunders in world history—such as the invasion of Afghanistan after 9-11.
President George Bush’s (junior’s) ignorant plan to invade Afghanistan was a classic case of ignoring and repeating the mistakes of history. Bush did not heed the warnings of past Afghan wars.
So just let me restate here a brief history of that awful twenty years of stupidity, so perhaps you—my readers —remember and may in future help to avoid being doomed to repeat such awful stupidity.
President George Bush used the September 11 attack as an excuse and a red herring to launch an attack on defenseless Afghanistan ((most 9-11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia). Bush one of our most historically ignorant presidents, blissfully unaware and thus doomed to repeat past mistakes ignored (Santayana’s dictum) and the history of former wars in Afghanistan where every invading foreign power ( most recently the USSR) was defeated by the war lords, the tough, tenacious fighters, the mountainous terrane, the isolation and the intractable nature of that nation, so that and each invader of the.past eventually withdrew in defeat often with their “tails between their legs” as the USA is now doing. .
The Bush War in Afghanistan must be remembered as our longest war in US history. It cost nearly three trillion dollars in direct costs. Since all the money was borrowed, we are still paying off the interest on this “on the cuff” war. (So far we have paid out an annual rate of @ $500 billion dollars in interest and that will remain a steady drain on our economy for years to come) Oh and just in pursuit of the truth —it wasn't Joe Biden who initiated the troops withdrawal as some of our commentators are claiming—but former President Trump who made that decision...Biden only followed through on the original directive.
In terms of loss of life, up to April of this year 50,000 Afghan civilians died as a direct effect of the war. It also cost the lives of 72 journalists, 444 “workers”, and 70,000 Afghan troops . During the conflict three million Afghans fled the country to Europe, or the Middle East, while another 4 million remain displaced in that nation. (See AP report 4-30-21) Our troop losses included 2,400 of our finest troops dead, while almost 10times that number (21,000) came home badly wounded. The war also saddled us with $300 billion dollars in medical expenses and continued care for these wounded heroes and deserving veterans who gave their all for their nation. We also lost almost 4,000 “private security contractors” or mercenaries who are sadly often ignored and go uncounted in our war dead . While our NATO allies lost another 1,144 of their troops,
Actual direct costs of fighting the Taliban incurred nearly $1 trillion dollars—in bullets, planes, bombs, humvees, fuel, food, replacemnts, tanks and transports, etc. etc. etc.
After about two years of fighting, when it became apparent to our leaders that actually winning the war was not likely, the Bush Administration pivoted to a “nation building” plan. Thus, while the near trillion dollars of war/fighting costs continued unabated, new costs and investments were added to the mounting taxpayer’s bill. These new “nation building” costs were devoted to building military bases and infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals, schools, canals, dams, water treatment plants. Even agricultural projects were funded. These were aimed at reducing Afghan farmer’s dependence on growing poppies for heroin production. This last effort failed as well.
It is noteworthy to remark here that such infrastructure investments were.desperately needed even more at home. But the Administration used taxpayers dollars abroad where they were in the end wasted there.
Great efforts and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment were made to increase “women’s rights” in backward Afghanistan . This effort can be seen as a paradigm of the entire foolishness and impracticality of the entire Afghan “nation building” plan. The Bush Administration supported costly efforts to increase female entry into schools, jobs, and entrance into professions, etc. This was a futile and unprecedented attempt by the US military (an invading foreign force, with no experience in such matters) into an effort to change family structure, ancient Afghan mores, a male dominated society and the culture of a nation which had endured decades of Soviet and US invasion and had evolved into a determined and intransigent population. The US government involved itself in costly “social engineering” as it attempted to impose on a unique Afghani male-dominated culture, a foreign and alien western culture and highly unpopular value system. Such efforts were doomed to failure. Perhaps this exercise in social engineering was more useful to the Bush government as a smoke screen to help bolster waning domestic support for the huge war costs. It remained a weak justification for our massive war expenditures—-to claim that “even though we are killing so many Afghanis and to do so is so costly, we are still “doing some good” —-for Afghan women!”.
Most of this Afghan nation-building and infrastructure investment went like desert rain water, seeping into the gravel gullies of dry Afghan hills and never to hydrate a blade of grass —and to waste. The cultural changes and investment in social and cultural engineereing by an invading power such as in women’s issues” were resented and for the most part did not take hold. Hospitals and schools remained empty and fell into disrepair. Canals and dams were not maintained. Vast sums of money spent there was misused and led to government corruption and undermined government legitimacy. With all the US cash spent on welfare and infrastructure the poverty rate in 2020 rose to 50% (climbing from 36% in 2007). After the billions of US dollars spent on training and rearming Afghan government forces the Taliban now control more territory than they had at the beginning of the l decade.
So let us not forget this sad history, lest we, as Santayana warns, will be doomed to repeat it.
*See much of the data on Afghanistan taken from “Counting the costs of US 20 year war in Afghanistan”. By Isabel Dupre APNews 4-30-21
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