By Todd Lassa
Declare victory and withdraw. It worked for President Richard M. Nixon in January 1973 when he announced U.S. troops would leave Vietnam. Two years later, with Nixon having resigned over Watergate, the South Vietnam we fought for fell to the communist Viet Cong and it was left to Gerald Ford to order remaining personnel and diplomatic corps out of Hanoi.
The U.S. involvement in Vietnam began with “advisors” circa 1955, so there was American presence for 20 years. Our tenure in Afghanistan began under President George W. Bush, who sent troops to Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Even then, there were fair warnings about staying too long. Take care of the Taliban as quickly as possible and get out of the physically rough, mountainous Central Asian nation that had held against the Soviet invasion a decade earlier. (Some analysts credit the Soviet Union’s decade in Afghanistan for depleting its military sufficiently for it to have to concede the Cold War. It must also be said that the U.S. had had troops, currently about 23,500, in South Korea since 1957, four years after the armistice with North Korea; and has had major military presences in Japan and Germany since after World War II.)
President Biden announced plans to withdraw the remaining 2,500 American troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
The two schools of thought on this are a.) it’s way past time, as Biden’s old boss, President Barack Obama wanted the U.S. to leave and then President Trump promised withdrawal; and b.) it will leave Afghanistan’s local government exposed once again to the Taliban, waiting in the wings. Let’s try to negotiate a full peace, first.
So we have the unusual situation of Biden’s predecessor offering damning praise for the September 11 plan, while the current president’s military advisors appear to be opposed.
“Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do,” former President Trump said in a prepared statement. “I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”
Biden’s own military commanders disagree, according to The Wall Street Journal. The president’s top generals, consisting of Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, leader of NATO forces in Afghanistan and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged him to consider holding all 2,500 troops in-country while the State department tried to negotiate a peace deal, the Journal reports, quoting unnamed officials.
Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin, a retired military commander who served in the region “shared the concerns of senior officers, cautioning that withdrawing all U.S. troops” would “suspend … an insurance policy for maintaining a modicum of stability” in Afghanistan, the newspaper reported. Biden is said to have weighed the generals’ and his defense secretary’s opinions, but concluded it was time to end America’s longest war engagement.
After nearly 20 years in Afghanistan, there is no way for President Biden to satisfy both side of the argument, no way to stay long enough to cure the country’s ills and yet find a way out, and there is no way to declare victory before leaving.
UPDATE: The Taliban has withdrawn from peace talks with the Afghanistan government that were scheduled to occur in Istanbul, Turkey, NPR reports. They were said to be unhappy with President Biden's delay of a U.S. withdrawal to September 11, from former President Trump's original date of May 1.