Corruption and carnage: Why Biden is right to withdraw from Afghanistan
America’s longest war, the war in Afghanistan, is coming to an end. President Joe Biden announced that US troops would fully withdraw by August 31, almost 20 years after President George W. Bush invaded. After Biden’s announcement, the Taliban rapidly seized control of nearly every major institution and facility in the country. In the weeks since, the world has witnessed chaos unfold, particularly at the airport in Kabul as at-risk citizens, officials, and diplomats attempt to escape the incoming Taliban regime.
Democrats, Republicans, and corporate media have all criticized Biden for causing the crisis. Senator Mitch McConnell called the withdrawal, “An unmitigated disaster, a stain on the reputation of the United States of America… the defeat of the United States military by a terrorist organization in Afghanistan.” Former President Trump claimed that Biden, “Dropped to his knees and he said, ‘Come on in and take everything that we have.’” Biden’s approval rating has hit its lowest point yet.
To his credit, Biden has held to his convictions. Far from an act of surrender, Biden’s commitment to withdrawing the US from Afghanistan has demonstrated courage. He has defied every powerful political force in this country, from congressmen to corporate media to the military-industrial complex.
A graceful exit from Afghanistan was never realistic. The war was justified to begin with on the pretext that we had to find the terrorists responsible for bringing down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. But those terrorists were not, as the Bush Administration often implied, one and the same with the Afghanistan government. When Bush declared his War on Terror, he essentially announced his intention to wage war against any nation if any terrorists might be there.
Since then, US foreign policy officials have muddled the war with a swirl of disinformation. Bush even turned down an offer, with certain conditions, from the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, ostensibly the whole point of the war. Officials convinced 70 percent of the American public that Iraq President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were linked, despite no such link existing. Justifications for the war mutated, new lies came and went from the headlines, and eventually, the war became background noise in America.
The human and material costs, however, were catastrophic. The war has now spanned multiple generations. At a cost of more than $2.4 trillion, some 2,400 US servicemen have died, along with more than 230,000 Afghans, including at least 70,000 civilians. Our bombs shattered their country and despite our supposed reconstruction efforts, 70 percent of Afghans currently have no clean water, 65 percent have no electricity, and 47 percent live below the poverty line. Opium production, however, has skyrocketed, in tandem with America’s opiate crisis.
Now, our best justification for the war has shifted to women’s rights. Women in Afghanistan do face significant repression from the incoming Taliban regime. But similar repression has never prompted us to declare war on ally states like Saudi Arabia. Biden is right when he says, “The idea that we’re able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational… The way to deal with that is putting economic, diplomatic, and… international pressure on them to change their behavior.”
The only real justification is in the pocketbooks of US defense contractors. Since 2001, the stock value of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics have soared an average of 872 percent. Profits and earnings have soared, too. In 2001, the Pentagon budgeted $140 billion for military contractors. By 2019, that had increased to $370 billion. And the officially reported figures are almost certainly not accurate. The Pentagon reportedly mismanaged, shuffled, or lost some $35 trillion — with a ‘t’ — in 2019 alone.
So enormous is the scale of criminality and corruption that it’s difficult to fully grasp. Corporate media coverage of US foreign policy ranges from incomplete to purposely misleading. The experts who appear on network news are almost always current or former military officials, members of military think tanks, or representatives of defense contractors. If there is such a thing as the “deep state,” it is the network of intelligence and news agencies who keep the United States locked in perpetual war.
Mainstream coverage of the withdrawal has been almost universally negative. Polls are designed to skew public opinion against withdrawal. NBC warned that Afghanistan’s economy would collapse, as if it wasn’t already in ruins. CNN lamented the loss of “$1 trillion worth of minerals” when the Taliban takes over, as if it’s ours by right. One journalist at a press conference asked about the danger to our national security interests if we abandon the border of Tajikistan.
The presuppositions in all of this are that the US is righteous and noble and everything our military does makes the world a better place. The reality is far different. McConnell called the Taliban a terrorist organization, but the US military helped create them by arming, training, and funding extremists against the Soviets. Trump accused Biden of surrendering “everything that we have” in Afghanistan without asking why we have anything in Afghanistan, 7,000 miles away and across an ocean, in the first place.
The Taliban have one huge advantage over the US military in Afghanistan: they live there. Afghans are the only ones with any right to determine their own political future. If we hadn’t destroyed so much, perhaps a resistance to the Taliban could have formed. We can find ways to support that kind of growth without occupying the country. In 20 years, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, destroyed infrastructure, and ended hundreds of thousands of lives. Our presence hasn’t helped. We’ve done enough damage. Withdrawal isn’t defeat, it’s stopping ourselves from digging deeper.
Much about the US pullout from Afghanistan was rocky. People got hurt and killed, but that happened all war long. In the meantime, we have successfully evacuated more than 82,000 people. Those complaining about withdrawal the loudest are those who would have us remain in Afghanistan forever, who want the US military to cover the globe and fret about abandoning the border of Tajikistan. Of course they are going to portray the pullout as a disaster and goad Biden into staying. They love war.
Scenes of violence in Kabul are heartbreaking, but they are not the fault of Joe Biden. They are the inevitable consequence of Bush’s initial decision to invade in 2001 and the next two administrations deciding to stay. Strife and chaos are all that can result when a land is engulfed in war for decades. Our withdrawal is a step in the right direction for us and for Afghanistan, leaving the nation in their hands whether they ultimately form a government we like or not.
