Abyss of Afghanistan, Almost Classical

I supported, with deep reservations, the United States military intervention in Afghanistan.

I do believe there are “just” wars. When attacked, self-defense does seem justified. Unfortunately, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda not only coexisted, but collaborated on attacks against not only the United States but Pakistan and other nations.

President George W. Bush had the support of the nation, and our allies, when seeking to dismantle Al-Qaeda. (Notice, I’m not commenting on Iraq… a total disaster in every conceivable way.) Pres. Barack Obama defended the Afghan intervention, and he made some difficult choices with which Vice President Joe Biden disagreed.

Let us never forget, never, that the United States helped create the Taliban through our absurd anti-Soviet policies. As with so many problems in the twentieth century, obsessive opposition to “communism” led us ethically astray.

Faced with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, we needed to remove the leadership of those loosely organized ideologies.

When I read people claiming we were engaged in “nation-building” in Afghanistan and Iraq, I cringe. No, we did not try to support and build viable nations. We could have, and should have, engaged in actual nation-building. Instead, we engaged in a military occupation that fed into anti-Western sentiments.

We could have build schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. We could have focused on agricultural and industrial improvements. We could have helped the people of Afghanistan create an alternative to their drug-based economy.

We didn’t have to waste time and energy engaged in a low-intensity conflict for two decades.

Technically, we weren’t really engaged in even low-level conflict since 2013, a year in which the U.S. lost 85 people to conflict.

More Americans die of violence during a single weekend in Chicago than died in some recent years in Afghanistan. That’s a disgusting commentary on violence within our nation. It’s also a testament to have stable our presence was in Afghanistan.

Once there, we could have continued with 2500 to 3000 troops, primarily supporting Afghan military and police training. We had no reason, none at all, to continue operating or overseeing any prisons, interrogation centers, or whatever else we had been doing.

I do not support or endorse using “over the horizon” capabilities such as drones. Dropping bombs from the air and using weaponized drones are both highly inaccurate. Far more innocent lives become “collateral damage” when you fight using remote weapons and intelligence.

Exiting Afghanistan, while vowing to pursue “enemies” remotely, is a recipe for disaster. This will be a recruiting advertisement for radicals. There are no “over the horizon” capabilities. It’s total nonsense that just feels good because no American soldiers are on the ground. Sometimes, it’s good to be afraid and cautious.

War should never, never be like a video game. Drones, air attacks, and naval missiles encourage us to deny or ignore the humanitarian suffering caused by our cavalier use of arms.

Having military or law enforcement personnel stationed abroad isn’t unusual. After all, we’re still in South Korea with 29,000 military-related personnel. We’re in Japan, Germany, and the Saudi Peninsula.

Deterrence stinks, but it is a reality of geopolitics. Pragmatism requires asking when a presence helps the people of a nation, not its leaders, and if the presence helps protect other allies and our national security. It’s a messy calculation, trying to weigh the variables.

After 20 years, we have nothing to show for the Afghan people. South Korea, Japan, and Germany are stable nations that had a history of national identity. There were social institutions in place, which we simply helped defend or rebuild. Even these three examples have their unique cultural complications, but we weren’t starting from scratch after conflicts.

In Afghanistan, and to a much lesser extent Iraq, the cultural cohesion was missing. We did nothing to help create that national identity and desire for communal identity.

The classical liberal isn’t an isolationist. We believe in trade and travel. We believe in all people, everywhere, participating in a global economy of goods, services, and ideas.

Most libertarians I know and read oppose military foreign interventions. They also largely oppose financial embargoes, boycotts, and other forms of coercion to address the problems internal to another nation. The theory, widespread far beyond classical liberalism, holds that trade and travel foster better relations and, eventually, greater tolerance.

Of course, coercion remains limited to the more vulnerable nations, such as Cuba or Iran. Military interventions are limited to pariah nations with few serious alliances with global powers.

Simplistically, we hope that interactions and trade lead to liberalism in the classical sense suggested by Enlightenment notions of liberty. Trade with China, for example, was assumed the best way to change a nation so populous and dominant in a region.

I’m not an idealistic free trade or cultural exchange proponent. I don’t expect Russia or China to change through osmosis.

When one nation or group of nations decides to use military force to change the behaviors or leadership in another nation (or nations), this must be done with great caution and trepidation. It should scare us to engage in wars.

Why the News Coverage Faded

Within the United States, coverage of our military activities has faded dramatically since 2013. We’re still using drones, dropping bombs, and killing people… often the wrong people. Yet, there’s little coverage of these actions.

Why did the media stop reporting on Afghanistan after 2013? Because the US causality average dropped to less than 1 per month. We lost 2300+ lives from both military action and accidents from 2001-2012, and then… it statistically became safer than policing a large U.S. city, at least for the U.S. personnel serving in Afghanistan.

Killed in Action

During the entire Afghan operation, the United States lost 2,461 personnel. Of the lives lost, 1,928 were killed in action. (Sadly, training accidents and routine mishaps represent a significant number of lives lost globally within the U.S. military branches.)

U.S. KIA (hostile) in Afghanistan only by month
Year	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D	Total
2001	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	0	1	3	4
2002	1	0	9	4	1	3	0	1	0	0	0	1	20
2003	0	0	2	2	0	1	0	3	1	3	5	0	17
2004	0	1	2	1	6	3	0	2	3	3	3	0	24
2005	2	0	5	1	3	25	2	12	9	3	2	2	66
2006	1	6	6	1	1	14	7	8	5	9	6	1	65
2007	0	2	1	5	10	11	13	13	7	7	10	4	83
2008	7	1	6	5	14	23	16	17	26	15	1	2	133
2009	12	15	11	3	9	20	39	47	33	47	15	15	266
2010	27	30	22	14	31	49	54	54	31	48	48	32	440
2011	20	17	24	43	30	39	32	65	38	26	18	13	365
2012	15	11	12	31	34	22	37	37	17	13	12	10	246
2013	3	1	5	7	16	15	9	11	6	7	3	3	85
2014	4	3	0	3	1	11	2	3	4	0	3	3	37
2015	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	3	0	0	0	6	11
2016	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	3	3	0	8
2017	0	0	0	3	0	3	1	3	0	0	1	0	11
2018	1	0	0	1	0	0	2	1	1	1	5	0	12
2019	1	0	2	3	0	2	3	3	2	0	0	1	17
2020	2	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4
2021	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	13	–	–	–	–	13

Approximately 20,000 suffered any reported injuries, and 5,000 of those injuries are categorized as permanently disabling. Since 2013, we averaged one field casualty per month. Nine deaths in 2020, only four from active situations.

Our news media covers the suffering of Americans, rarely our global victims. We the news media do report death caused directly or indirectly by the United States, the coverage lasts a day or two. With cable news, maybe not even a full day of coverage results. Instead, a two-minute clip is repeated every two or three hours for half a news cycle.

We absolutely need to capture and try Taliban leaders who collaborated with and supported Al-Qaeda. We also needed to limit our operations to the top leadership ranks. We did not prosecute all German or Japanese soldiers after World War II. We understood that leaders are responsible for military actions. In terrorist organizations, the same is true.

The departure from Afghanistan represents a failure of 20 years, not of one president. It represents a failure to appreciate that an armed conflict must be followed by earnest attempts to help the citizens build something better.

People suffer under the rule of leaders eager for war.

I believe that true nation-building helps the United States. That’s why the Peace Corps exists. If we want a more peaceful world, a slightly better place for all humans, we should be helping with the basics: water, food, medicine, and education.

My greatest fear is that instead of a small U.S. presence helping to secure non-governmental organizations and operations such as the Peace Corps, we have left chaos.

With any U.S. presence, Afghanistan will collapse. The nation will again be a terrorists’ haven. Women and children will suffer. Freedoms, such as they were, will fade away. All we will leave behind are bitter Afghan citizens who believed we cared about them.

And then… we’ll send some drones.

That will be on President Joe Biden and his foolhardy confidence in over-the-horizon security measures.

Data Sources

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