Our Failure in Afghanistan Isn't Military but Historical

We need to accept an uncomfortable reality. The Taliban WILL take over Afghanistan. That was always the inevitable outcome. A committed insurgency will outlast an occupying force every time. There has never been an instance in history when this wasn't true.

And of course, we all seem to have forgotten that the Taliban evolved from the same Mujahideen who defeated and ousted the mighty Soviet military in the '80s (with aid from the U.S., I might add).

When people say Afghanistan is this generation's Vietnam, it really is an excellent analogy. Just as with Vietnam, we chose to oppose a government we didn't like and install a Vichy-type regime that was friendly to us, but which was inevitably hopelessly corrupt and weak.

That once again we've proven ourselves to be incapable of learning the lessons of history is no one's fault but our own.

The Afghan regime we've propped up with our blood and treasure has proven to be utterly unwilling and/or incapable of standing up for themselves. Their military units surrender pretty much at the first sign of actually having to fight.

Whether we left 10 years ago or 10 years from now, the outcome would be the same.

So should our "mission" in Afghanistan have remained open ended? When would we decide we had accomplished what we set out to do? We're we somehow expecting the regime we installed to become capable of standing on its own? How long were we willing for that to take, and at what cost?

Some historical perspective might help:

I've seen many news reports that say we invaded Afghanistan for the purpose of ousting the Taliban, but this simply isn't true. We went into Afghanistan in October 2001 to find and capture or kill Osama Bin Laden for Al Qaeda's role in the 9/11 terrorist attack on our country. He was living and conducting his operations from within Afghanistan. The Taliban were neither supporting nor protecting him. They were merely indifferent to his presence.

We enlisted the help of what was known as the Northern Alliance - then the most active opposition to the Taliban - and provided military support for them to begin retaking parts of the country back from the Taliban, with the biggest prize, Kabul, falling in November.

By December 2001, the U.S. special forces operators and intelligence officers hunting Bin Laden had located him in a place called Tora Bora and engaged his fighters in a fierce battle. At the point where we had an advantage and could have captured him, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks, in one of the greatest blunders in military history, ordered our units to back down and let Afghan opposition units take the lead so they could be given credit for purely political reasons. This was a disastrous decision. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's entire senior leadership escaped into Pakistan.

Fearing political fallout from having interfered with a military operation, the Bush administration swiftly blamed the Taliban and shifted the mission to one of ousting their regime and turning the country over to a U.S.-friendly administration. We began pouring more military assets into the country and eventually succeeded in expelling the Taliban from power. Thus began our 20-year-long occupation of Afghanistan.

In that time, the Taliban have patiently waited - knowing the reality that we continue to fail to acknowledge - until their opportunity finally came.

Now make no mistake. The Taliban were and are evil, medieval-thinking Islamo-fascist extremists. They are as oppressive and bigoted as anyone has portrayed. But while they've certainly terrorized their fellow Afghans, they do not, nor have they ever, exported terrorism. They have never engaged in nor supported any type of such activity outside Afghanistan. When Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were residing and operating in their country, the Taliban didn't support them. They simply didn't care.

In many ways, the government of Saudi Arabia is far worse. Yet, we have never opposed them. We have in fact provided them with a large part of their wealth by buying their oil for decades, and selling them our best military hardware - not to mention basing our own military in their country with promises to protect them from any potential threat - all while they've engaged in the most heinous and oppressive behavior imaginable.

I have no easy answers for what comes next. Most Afghans are surely going to suffer terribly, and we should not treat the Taliban as anything but pariahs. They should be denied any of the benefits available from political and economic alliances unless and until they find themselves capable of behaving like decent human beings.

But stay indefinitely in Afghanistan? No. And this time, can we finally learn the most obvious lesson?