How Not to Leave Afghanistan
Published at 08:31 on 8 July 2021
I wrote a few months ago how leaving Afghanistan in defeat is basically a foregone conclusion, and thanks to the malfeasance of the ruling class that ordered the invasion, has been a foregone conclusion for nearly two decades and counting.
As such, there really are only two fundamental choices: leave in defeat now, or continue squandering lives and resources and leave in defeat later.
At best, there is some sort of weak argument for leaving not quite now, so the departure can be done in a somewhat more orderly fashion, with a somewhat more hopeful future prognosis. The risk in this is that when “not quite now” comes around, there will be a strong temptation to come up with a new “not quite now,” just a little bit further in the future, and so on, until significant delay has transpired, with the associated waste in lives and resources. In fact, much of the duration of the Western presence in Afghanistan can be accurately characterized as precisely this process.
Eventually, the bitter reality of defeat must be accepted by the ruling class. Of this, there is no alternative.
All that said, however, there are still better and worse ways to leave in defeat. One huge question is the one of what happens to the Afghans who chose to throw their lot in with the Western invaders. If they are not given asylum in the West, it is crystal clear what will happen to them, and as of this stage it is unclear if they will be given asylum.
Mind you, this is a ruling class we are talking about, so such rank callousness over the lives of others just comes with the territory. It would be entirely in character for those Afghans to be abandoned. History is replete with such examples. So they may well be abandoned. That much is as clear as the inevitability of the US defeat in Afghanistan has long been.
However, it would be, in addition to inhumane, highly unstrategic. It would say to future potential allies that being an ally of the West is a stupid exercise that will likely lead to one being abandoned later. This has the obvious consequence of making it more difficult to secure allies in the future.
The question is whether the ruling class is capable of realizing this. They really do believe they are superior human beings whose lives matter more than others; one cannot easily rule over others without believing such claptrap. And, of course, the lives that matter least of all are the lives of those least like the ruling elite, those whom: do not have much money to their name, do not have white skin, do not have a Western culture and traditions, etc. The Afghan people fit these characteristics to an absolute “T.”
Nothing is inevitable, however, and it is also possible that political realities can be created which make it the path of least resistance for the ruling class to give those vulnerable Afghans asylum. However, such realities must be created, i.e. there must be organized pressure in favor of giving our Afghan allies asylum. So far, there has not been a great deal of such pressure, but it is possible to change that, and the real question is whether or not sufficient pressure can be created.
If this does not happen (and it is at this time an open question whether or not it will), then we will soon see another moral outrage added to the long list of such outrages committed by Western imperialism.