Ignoring any sense of sanity, it seems every major policy wonk, from elected officials to partisan talking heads on major networks, is calling for President Biden to extend the US presence in Afghanistan.
Their reasons are infinite, but it is important to highlight an aspect of this that is oft ignored by those talking heads.
When President Obama ran in 2008, he and failed candidate John McCain raced one another to advocate for massive domestic intervention. They were both pushing for massive government bailouts while the sitting President, George W. Bush, was also sending initial bailouts to save his legacy. It can easily be argued that what really changed the election of 2008, was their stance on foreign policy.
The public had tired of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which already had the makings for endless conflicts and without any sense of what victory would even look like. McCain was a war hawk, constantly advocating for conflict around the world, and using rhetoric like nation-building as common parlance. Obama was more temperate, and presented a more rational campaign suggesting that ending those wars was the correct path. He correctly campaigned against questionable actions on the part of our own government in detaining people indefinitely and the practiced torture that the intelligence community referred to as enhanced interrogation.
Obama won.
Over the ensuing 8 years, he was heralded in the media which couldn’t stop fawning over his ability to shoot a basketball or pick a tournament bracket. Meanwhile, his actual foreign policy was terrible. He involved the nation in several more conflicts, and ramped up the effort in Afghanistan. It was all blamed on the Arab Spring, but the entry into Libya, Syria, backing Saudi Arabia in Yemen and many smaller skirmishes through Northern Africa were still Obama’s choices. This served as cover for his only highlight which was actually scaling back the effort in Iraq. The problem is this coincided with his move to support ISIS in Syria, also known as the Free Syrian Army, which blew back into Iraq and was really just ISIS all along.
It’s almost like the really smart basketball president didn’t own a map.
The reactionary world that is politics brought us Trump. The major party opposition to Trump was Hillary Clinton. In terms of actual differences, there really weren’t many. Clinton is perhaps the least palatable candidate to ever grace politics, but as a woman, and with her overwhelming power in political circles, she had sort of been groomed for that role and was inevitably the DNC’s choice, which they made clear by snubbing Bernie Sanders.
While her party and supporters tried to define the Trump candidacy as one of racist misogyny, she was herself guilty of all sorts of civil rights atrocities. Ultimately, she was the female version of Trump, only with a tangible history, a decades-long record, of being terrible in politics. Their only major separation point on policies is that he stated the endless wars were terrible, and she had supported and advocated for them. She also tried to work away from them, but she couldn’t detach herself from her previous blunders.
Hard to watch her response to the death of Muammar Gaddafi and not see a creep. Still, she was clearly the media darling which is why they fed her the questions, but they still didn’t like her. Nobody liked her.
If there is one thing you can practically guarantee, it is that the corporate media will excuse any foreign policy atrocities as long as they are truly immoral tragedies.
The only moment the corporate media sang praises for President Trump was when he was blowing up structures and acting violently against Iran. He was “presidential” when dropping bombs and taking out high-ranking Iranian military officials. If he suggested leaving one of the endless wars, he was maligned for every potential moral character flaw we’ve ever dreamed an elected leader could own.
Public focus is almost inherently on those superficial concerns, though.
President Trump worked out a cease fire deal with the Taliban and then set a date to leave Afghanistan by May 1st of 2021. Conveniently, like most spineless politicians, that was after the election. It was clearly a political calculation, but we can still applaud the fact that a date was set for withdraw. He may not have believed he was going to lose and still would have had to deal with the outcome.
After the election was over, President Biden quickly gained approval from the corporate media by extending that deadline for withdraw. Clearly, the most efficient and most expensive military in the world was unable to work out the logistical issues with going home with an entire year to plan that mission. I joke, of course, because they had plenty of time.
President Biden extended it because the officials wanted it, and for the wrong reasons, also because he couldn’t let it be Trump’s withdraw. Such is politics.
In Biden’s defense, he has stood firm so far on holding to the withdraw of the military by August 31st. That has taken some political backbone in light of the absolute media slaughter of which he has become victim.
It should have been expected, though, because challenging the idea of endless conflict and continual deaths of American boys and girls in wars that predated their births is the greatest sin in American politics.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the military industrial complex essentially owning the entire corporate media, or the propaganda arms of the US security state trying to validate their excessive salaries by planting talking heads at these corporate media outlets as foreign policy experts.
Don’t believe any of it.
The US military had plenty of time to coordinate their exit. The Afghan military had plenty of time to train up and be ready to fight. The American citizens had nearing 18 months to coordinate their respective exits. The very real tragedies that are following in the wake of US departures are still no worse than the nearly daily tragedies at the receiving end of numerous drone strikes.
There are simply no excuses to remain there, and the blowhards pushing for it need a crash course in common sense, and especially moral virtue.
Do not back down. Unless they are strapping on their own military uniforms and enlisting for the mission, their opinions are worthless.
Everyone thinks they can talk tough about foreign policy from behind a keyboard or a podium. They are the least qualified to discuss the matter.
Scott Horton has been all over this stuff the entire time and his book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism outlines the numerous and endless conflicts with great detail.
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