War Is Over

Today would have been Gary Webb's birthday, but the forces of control caught up with him and shot him twice in the head.

Webb was a Southern California investigative journalist, best known for his Dark Alliance reporting. The Dark Alliance series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the CIA. The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges.

Webb also investigated racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol and racial profiling in traffic stops. He also investigated charges that the Oracle Corporation had received a no-bid contract award of $95 million in 2001.

Webb was found dead in his home on December 10, 2004 with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner's office, but how the hell does one shoot himself in the head twice? Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons confirmed Webb had died by suicide, and said. "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." 

One year ago today, NY Mets pitching great Tom Seaver died as a result of the covids and complications from dementia.  Twenty-four years ago today, Princess Diana died in a car crash while trying to flee paparazzi.

The war in Afghanistan ended yesterday at 3:29 pm. Today is the first day in 19 years, 10 months, and 24 days that the United States hasn't been at war in Afghanistan.  It was the longest war in American history, far longer than the protracted defeat in Vietnam or the stalemate in Korea.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States and its allies needed less than four years to defeat fascism on three continents. After the secession of Southern states in 1860 and 1861, the U.S. spent slightly more than four years putting down the rebellion. After the first battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the colonies needed about eight years to beat the British and create a new nation.

Despite two decades of work and a couple of trillion dollars spent, the Afghan government collapsed in a matter of days. The regime was evidently no more enduring than it had been five years ago, 10 years ago, or back on Dec. 22, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first post-9/11 leader.

Across the span of American history, it’s hard to think of another failed project that lasted so long or cost so much. There have been worse injustices and tragedies in this country, but they were usually deliberate. The U.S. has been attempting to win in Afghanistan for nearly the entire 21st century.

In the last 3 weeks, U.S. troops evacuated some 123,000 Americans, Afghans and other civilians in the largest airlift in world history. But refugee groups say hundreds, and possibly thousands, of green-card holders have been left behind. The State Department says remaining Americans remaining in Afghanistan are primarily Afghan-Americans who have been unsure on whether they wanted to leave family behind or not. The administration has been in contact with most of them and promises it will continue to work to evacuate them should they choose to leave.  Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post pointed out that the U.S. evacuated no Americans from the civil war in Yemen in 2015, and only about 167 from Libya in 2011.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson points out that the U.S. withdrawal from its 20 years in Afghanistan began in February 2020, when the Trump administration cut a deal with the Taliban agreeing to release 5,000 imprisoned Taliban fighters and to leave the country by May 1, 2021, so long as the Taliban did not kill any more Americans. The negotiations did not include the U.S.-backed Afghan government. By the time Biden took office, the U.S. had withdrawn all but 2,500 troops from the country. 

That left Biden with the option of either going back on Trump’s agreement or following through with his deal. To ignore the agreement would mean the Taliban would begin attacking Americans again, and the U.S. would both have to deploy a significant numbers of new troops and sustain additional casualties. 

Biden himself wanted out of what had become a meandering, expensive, unpopular war, and on April 14, 2021, three months after taking office, he announced that he would honor the agreement he had inherited from Trump. “It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself,” he said, “but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something.” He said that the original U.S. mission had been to stop Afghanistan from becoming a staging ground for terrorists and to destroy those who had attacked the U.S. on 9/11, and both of those goals had been accomplished. Now, he said, “our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear.”

Biden said he would begin, not end, the troop withdrawal on May 1 (prompting Trump to complain that it should be done sooner), getting everyone out by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks that got us there in the first place. He later adjusted that date to August 31.  He promised to evacuate the country “responsibly, deliberately, and safely” and assured Americans that the U.S. had “trained and equipped a standing force of over 300,000 Afghan personnel” and that “they’ll continue to fight valiantly, on behalf of the Afghans, at great cost.”

Instead, the Afghan army crumbled as the U.S began to pull its remaining troops out in July. By mid-August, the Taliban had taken control of the capital, Kabul, after taking all the regional capitals in a little over a week. It turned out that when the Trump administration cut the Afghan government out of negotiations with the Taliban, Afghan soldiers recognized that they would soon be on their own and arranged “cease-fire” agreements, enabling the Taliban to take control with very little fighting.  It wouldn't have made any difference, at least with regard to the Afghan collapse, if Biden had waited until the winter, after the Taliban "fighting season" had ended, to withdraw the American troops as there was already an agreed-upon Afghan surrender.

Just before the Taliban took Kabul, the leaders of the Afghan government fled the country, abandoning the country to chaos. People rushed to the airport to escape, although the Taliban tried to reassure them that their domestic enemies would be given amnesty. In those chaotic early hours, seven Afghans died at the airport, either crushed in the crowds or killed when they fell from planes to which they had clung in hopes of getting out. 

President Biden certainly could have overseen a more successful exit than he did, especially if he had taken the possibility of a rapid Taliban takeover more seriously.  While critics have suggested that America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan will hurt American credibility abroad, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have called for combatting terrorism through financial sanctions, bombing, drone strikes, and by strengthening democracy at home. The administration is shifting its focus from unilateral military might to multilateral alliances to deal with common problems. 

In the past, when American troops were targeted by terrorists, Americans came together to condemn those attackers. Apparently, that's no longer the case.  While world leaders—including even those of the Taliban—condemned the attacks on U.S. troops, Republican leaders attacked President Biden instead. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy blamed Biden for the recent suicide bomber attack and insisted that troops should have remained in Afghanistan under congressional control until all Americans were safely out. Representative Elise Stefanik of NY, who replaced Liz Cheney as the third-ranking Republican in the House when Cheney refused to line up behind Trump, tweeted, "Joe Biden has blood on his hands . . . This horrific national security and humanitarian disaster is solely the result of Joe Biden's weak and incompetent leadership. He is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.”

Although President Biden took full responsibility for his decisions and insisted that "the buck stops here," Tucker Carlson told his Fox News audience that no leader had apologized for “these terrible decisions” in Afghanistan. “This can’t go on,” he said. “When leaders refuse to hold themselves accountable, over time, people revolt . . . We need to change course immediately . . . or else the consequences will be awful.”  The images on the screen behind Carlson were of Biden, Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley. 

For better and worse, America’s longest foreign war is finally over.  Republicans seem intent of bringing it home.