Long Gone Summer: Afghanistan and the Fall

School started this week for kids in my area.

No matter how long I’ve been out of high school I still relish thoughts of summers gone by. It’s not just the vacations and lack of school, it’s the easy pace and freedom and long days spent outdoors.

 The season is as short as I remember it even though I’m not in school anymore. It’s odd that even now my giddy, carefree feeling in June is replaced by morose resignation in mid-August.

I think America is going through such a time. Our summer of fun and freedom is giving way to serious reflection--maybe it's just me.

Since the end of World War II the liberal order has been governed by the allies that remade it in their image. It’s mostly been a positive for economics, trade, international law and scientific development. With peace comes prosperity; the world leaders recognized this and set up institutions (like coal unions in Germany and France) to alleviate some of the conflicts that led to wars.

 World War II (and even World War I) destroyed Europe so completely that no one wanted a whiff of conflict after that.

This was the founding theory of international cooperation for what it’s worth. The modern European Union, the Marshall Plan, NATO and countless trade deals are examples of this.

 Less than a week ago the US military beat a hasty retreat out of Afghanistan. What’s frustrating is how ill prepared the whole operation was. I know that Trump was going to do the same thing eventually. He left our allies, the Kurds, in Syria to fend for themselves after ISIS had been routed. I can’t imagine him leaving so many Americans stranded though, or handing over our weapons to the Taliban.

I watched Laura Logan on Tucker’s plaid shirt show. She’s convinced the US didn’t want to mess up our influence in Pakistan. So we let Afghanistan die on the vine by not grabbing Pakistan by the throat. Their intelligence (ISI) funds the Taliban after all. We could have at least made threats to bomb them if they kill civilians. Or cut off their funding. These groups are nothing without access to money.

 As awful as it looks in Kabul it’s the purposeful choice we made to leave in such a reckless manner.

I’m of two minds on the whole thing. We were never going to improve conditions in that country long term. Whether because of our lack of will (as Logan seems to think) or lack of their will (the Afghani’s indifference) it wasn’t going to happen. Twenty years of supporting them was like trying to get water from a rock.

But it’s always been a thornier problem then Logan makes it sound.

It isn’t as complicated as the think tanks in Washington would have you believe either.

 They need to justify their existence by writing lengthy papers and giving talks at Universities. I don’t begrudge them their opinions on what, where, when and how’s of war planning. But it’s amazing how quick problems get solved when the US really wants to. We stopped wanting to in Afghanistan. There was nothing more to gain or hope for. The best we could do was hold off the attacks as long as possible.

But even by putting pressure on Pakistan and their intelligence services, how long could this really go on? I do wonder when we finally concluded this whole charade was going to collapse. I guess the Pentagon figured messing up our relationships in Pakistan wasn’t worth it. But everything is about will and we just lost ours.

You think you know what happening in the world and it changes all at once. But did it really change or was everything we ‘knew’ about that country a lie? I’m guessing most of what we think we know about the world is a lie. The position of the United States and our currency and our influence is about to change. China is on the rise and although I doubt they can manage global affairs they’re certainly going to try.

Communist leaders are already looking to get into Afghanistan for mining purposes. They won’t fuss about women in school either. The Chinese are cold realists and they don’t care what international institutions think of them either. The Bretton Woods vision where the US and its allies get to set the rules for the liberal order is dead. It died because it got lazy. It became obsessed with climate change and multicultural nonsense. It thought it a good idea to import the world’s Muslim population to historically Christian cultures.

We turned our attention to critical race theory for toddlers and 'health care' for preteens who want to transition.

Maybe our summer lasted a little too long. We forgot that real threats like communism and authoritarianism presented a real problem to our way of life.

In America we stopped defending our own greatness; “American Exceptionalism” became a byword for racism and exploitation. No wonder we stopped paying attention in Afghanistan; how can anything done by the Americans be worthwhile?

Our giddy reckless feelings about the long summer are turning to regret for the good ol days. Our role now will be significantly reduced without a serious turn around. Whatever lies ahead for us this fall will be very different from the carefree summers of our youth.