Biden Echoes the Past Twenty Years of Failures in Afghanistan

Biden Echoes the Past Twenty Years of Failures in Afghanistan. Source: Via Pexels.

The United States has consistently intervened in violent conflict overseas for decades now, from the Vietnam War to Iraq. The most prominent war in recent memory took place in Afghanistan, where, under George W. Bush, the U.S. invaded the country to depose the Taliban in 2001, following the September 11 attacks. The terrorist group had previously ruled the country under strict sharia law, an approach to government that often enforces fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. 

As a country, the U.S. consistently aims to help countries around the world. This is not a trait exclusive to the Americans, but as a world power, our country has a unique ability to extend our resources to anywhere in the world. This may seem like the perfect opportunity to do a lot of good, but it opens countless doors for corruption, failure and death. The U.S. involvement in wars cost trillions of dollars, take thousands of lives and mainly benefit those with a vested interest in costly contracts.

On Aug. 31, Joe Biden’s administration withdrew from the twenty year-long War on Terror in Afghanistan, following his campaign promise to do so. Unfortunately, the withdrawal is fundamentally gilded. Putting an end to the longest war in U.S. history is a positive development, and the fact it is over should be celebrated. However, these decisions do not exist in a vacuum. The actions the Biden administration took and the rhetoric they used to justify them reflect a clear 20-year long pattern of incompetence, death and disastrous lies.

The Afghanistan Papers are a collection of documents obtained by the Washington Post published along with investigatory analysis in December 2019. The collection reveals a well-worn trail of dangerous actions committed by the U.S. during the Afghanistan War, including irresponsible bombings and White House and military officials lying to the American public in order to cover their tracks, according to the Washington Post. Even when their crimes are uncovered, they make speeches and release statements professing regret over their actions, and promising to reverse those decisions. Despite this, each has directly contradicted their on-ground actions when speaking publicly. The Biden administration continued many of these failures, and espoused rhetoric that echoed those leaders that came before. 

The administration fell into several traps. It put too much faith into an Afghan army it knew was incapable, and ignored its own intelligence. The New York Times reported in August that intelligence had warned of “the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and ... the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly.” As a result of the administration’s ignorance, a drastic situation emerged when the Taliban invaded Kabul in mere weeks. 

This habit of saying one thing and then doing another was common among Biden's predecessors. In White House remarks given by Barack Obama in March 2009, he said,  “Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course. Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable.” The Obama administration would continue such actions, including wasting money on fruitless nation-building and destructive drone bombings in the region. 

One of Donald Trump’s primary campaign promises and so-called priorities during his presidency was his claims to finally right the wrongs of past presidents and leave the “useless war.” He would instead maintain the war, eventually involving the U.S. in a partially-failed negotiation with the Taliban to leave. Both presidents gave numerous false assurances of reconciliation to the American public. Biden would later mirror this tendency with the assurance to Americans that the U.S. has trained a large force of Afghan soldiers prepared to prevent the Taliban from taking power, despite internal documents and the intelligence community proving otherwise.

“We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely,” Biden said.

This statement aged poorly, and the Taliban’s rapid takeover put the administration in a precarious situation where it would fumble its responsibilities to protect the rights and lives of its citizens. It began to remove troops, leaving billions of dollars in American equipment in Afghanistan that the Taliban would quickly take for itself. 

U.S. officials created no plan to evacuate its own citizens, instead mirroring its direct predecessor and engaging in questionable negotiations with the group to evacuate Americans and refugees. In another despicable mistake, the U.S. provided the Taliban with a list of Americans and Afghans “to evacuate,” according to Politico. One defense official said that this gave the group what is essentially a “kill list”, adding that “it’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

In all the chaos, a local Islamic State group known as ISIS-K took the opportunity to carry out coordinated bombings at the Kabul airport, killing 92 people and at least 13 U.S. service members. An American Reaper drone would take the lives of another 10 Afghan civilians, including several children, in a tragic lesson about the costs of retaliation. U.S. officials still have not acknowledged their fatal mistake in public, instead continuing to claim they killed an ISIS-K member, despite the clear evidence to the contrary. 

The Biden administration then resorted to putting up a front of undeserved celebration, just as their predecessors have. Biden called the mission an “extraordinary success,” eerily reminiscent of the now infamous ironic declaration of “mission accomplished,” by George W. Bush after he first deposed the Taliban 20 years ago. No single individual is to blame for the countless failures cultivated by four consecutive administrations at war with the truth. Everyone who contributed to the many lives lost and trillions of dollars wasted is responsible; the Biden administration’s actions only echoed the failures of the past. We cannot make up for these losses of life, but we can work toward a better future by taking real action against those who only call for war and point fingers when those calls cause bloodshed.