Afghanistan (cont.)
Much of the United States has so thoroughly divided itself onto opposing teams that it has lost the ability to make even obvious criticisms of their own side/viewpoint. Team Biden is doing its able best to shift the conversation away from criticism of what has obviously been one of the great American operational failures (the pull out) to what they and much of the country believe to be one of the great American strategic failures (still being in Afghanistan after 20 years). When the colossal cluster-fuck that is the past few weeks is pointed out, the brain-dead answer in return is often “well, we couldn’t stay there forever, and it was always going to end this way. Joe Biden just had the guts to do what Obama and Trump couldn’t.”
First of all, we could indeed have stayed there forever. This is of course, what I and people like me have been saying. But, since only me and six or eight other cranks believe that this would have been the wiser choice, and because the American public has grown so weary with our activities in Afghanistan, it is clear some other path need be chosen. So, we could have stayed there long enough to cover the retreat, without shagging ass in the middle of the night and leaving a kabillion dollars worth of military equipment behind.
Second, it did NOT have to end this way. The suggestion that a more orderly and secure evacuation was not possible boggles the mind.
And finally, anyone who thinks that a re-elected Donald Trump—unfettered by the inconvenience of the two-term limit—would NOT have implemented his ridiculous deal with the Taliban paid the man no attention over the last forty years (especially the last four). This terrible choice—leaving Afghanistan—was enabled by a terrible deal brokered by the Trump team, catalyzed by a terrible decision by the Biden team to move forward with it, and executed terribly by the Biden national security team.
There is nothing good about any of this, and when international terrorism returns with the vengeance it will, and when trust and confidence in the U.S. declines even further than the depths it hit in the Trump years, we’ll look back on these days and almost certainly forget that leaving Afghanistan was a choice, a terrible choice driven by our own selfishness and immaturity.
Ida Thoughts
It is Sunday morning as I write this, and Hurricane Ida is beginning to make its presence known along the Louisiana Coast. I fear for the people living in the storm’s path, and I pray that the improvements in preparedness made over the past 16 years will pan out. My trust in the effectiveness of the Federal Government is somewhat shaken of late, so I put the chances of utter failure of these measures at 50/50.
The younger of our two daughters goes to college in New Orleans. She and I had a little chat on Friday when her school announced that Monday and Tuesday classes were already canceled, and that authorities had begun to recommend evacuation. There was no way on God’s green earth I was going to give my assent to her remaining there through the storm, but I wanted to see where the conversation would take us. When I asked her “what do your instincts tell you about staying or going?”, she said, “Go, definitely go. I’m just not sure where to go.” Well that was easy (she’s a delightfully logical, smart kid). So I said, “Ok, I agree with evacuating. Now that that’s settled, let’s talk about when you leave.” We agreed that sooner was better than later, that she has a car with her and the means to evacuate, and that Northern Florida looked pretty decent. She then confabbed with her friends (one of whose family has a house in those parts), and the four of them loaded up the vehicle and were on the road headed east by 4PM Friday.
She is anxious about New Orleans, though, and so am I. I’m anxious because of my lack of faith in the lowest bidder engineering that likely underpinned the physical measures in place there. I’m anxious because there are a lot of old, poor, and sick people there who cannot or will not evacuate. I’m anxious because vaccine resisters have clogged hospitals and ICU’s throughout the South. I’m anxious because I’ve seen this movie before—we all have—and the ending is not pretty. And I’m anxious because my little monkey has spent her college years largely under the cloud of a pandemic and may now may have to deal with the uncertainty of what comes next. I am hoping for the best—which is still pretty awful—while preparing for the worst. By the time I put the finishing touches on this Tuesday night, the storm will have rolled through and we’ll know what we’re dealing with.
It is now Wednesday morning, and while New Orleans seems to have fared much better this time than during Katrina, most of the city is without power and will be for several weeks. Dash-2 is in Florida with some friends, and it seems school will be back “online” for a few weeks beginning Monday morning.