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Generational Dynamics World View
*** 15-Apr-21 World View -- High farce and tragedy continue in Afghanistan, as Biden announces Sept 11 troop withdrawal

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
  • High farce and tragedy continue in Afghanistan, as Biden announces Sept 11 troop withdrawal
  • CNN: Biden guided by 'magical thinking' in Afghanistan
  • Generational Dynamics analysis of the war in Afghanistan

****
**** High farce and tragedy continue in Afghanistan, as Biden announces Sept 11 troop withdrawal
****


[Image: g210414b.jpg]
Girls in Afghanistan will no longer be in school if the US withdraws and the Taliban takes over (NY Times)

President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that all American troops
would be withdrawn by September 11 of this year, the 20th anniversary
of the 9/11/2001 attacks, and that Nato troops would be withdrawn at
the same time. This would be farcical if it weren't so tragic.

How many times have we been here? The President announces a new
policy -- "surge" into Afghanistan, a "victory" in Afghanistan, or a
"peace with honor" in Afghanistan. I write an article explaining why
all of those are impossible, based on a Generational Dynamics
summarized later in this article. The new policy fails, exactly as I
predicted. But nobody every learns.

So last year, Donald Trump made a farcical agreement with the Taliban
that if the changed their behavior, then the US would withdraw its
troops by May 1 of this year. Trump's reason was that Americans are
tired of "endless wars." (A bit of irony: Biden's announcement was
described by the fawning mainstream media as "historic," but Trump's
similar announcement was not.)

So now Joe Biden is president, and he made a farcical announcement
that the troops will be removed by September 11 of this year -- the
20th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attack. I always accuse the Biden
administration of having no clue what's going on in the world, but
this takes the cake. We can expect the Taliban to engineer a major
terrorist attack on September 11 to celebrate their victory over the
Americans, having achieved their objective of forcing the Americans to
withdraw.

In his speech, Biden said:

<QUOTE>"I believed that our presence in Afghanistan should be
focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure
Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our
homeland again. We did that. We accomplished that objective.

I said, among — with others, we’d follow Osama bin Laden to the
gates of hell if need be. That’s exactly what we did, and we got
him. It took us close to 10 years to put President Obama’s
commitment to — into form. And that’s exactly what happened;
Osama bin Laden was gone.

That was 10 years ago. Think about that. We delivered justice to
bin Laden a decade ago, and we’ve stayed in Afghanistan for a
decade since. Since then, our reasons for remaining in
Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear, even as the
terrorist threat that we went to fight evolved."<END QUOTE>


So Biden's argument is that America went into Afghanistan to
defeat al-Qaeda, but now that al-Qaeda has been defeated, there's
no need for American troops to remain.

There was one difference between the terms of the Trump and Biden
announcements. Trump's May 1 deadline was "condition based," meaning
that if the Taliban didn't behave, then Trump might extend the
deadline. This was explained by Biden's press spokesman,
Jen Psaki:

<QUOTE>"[Question: And could his deadline extend, or could he
change his mind if you do see the situation in Afghanistan just
decline?]

Psaki: Well, I will say that the president made this decision
after close consultations and a close discussion and taking into
account all the difficult factors I should say around that
decision. So no, he remains committed to the timeline that he
intends to set out in his speech. ...

[Question: I don’t think I’ve heard in the answers so far, what
the Taliban is supposed to think about this. I mean, if I was
them, I think I’d want to take the summer off and wait until
September 11th. And why go ahead and negotiate an agreement that
would limit them if the U.S. is going to leave anyway?]

Jen Psaki: Well, first I would say that we have an expectation
that the Taliban is going to abide by their commitments and that
they are not going to allow Afghanistan to become a pariah
state. That’s our view. That’s also in their interest, in our
view. ...

And his view is that, when you talk about a conditions-based
withdrawal, it punts it down the road, “We will never leave. What
conditions would we be required to leave? By how long? What does
that mean? What’s the additional cost?” These are all the factors
in his mind."<END QUOTE>


First off, the "expectation that the Taliban is going to abide by
their commitments" is totally delusional.

This answer illustrates the conundrum that Biden and Psaki did not
unravel.

On the one hand, if the withdrawal date is unconditional, then the
Taliban will have every reason to continue terrorist acts. In fact,
the Taliban have announced that they won't attend an Afghanistan peace
conference being hosted by Turkey. Why should they?

On the other hand, if the withdrawal date is conditional then, as
Psaki says, the date will just be kicked down the road again.

So the question is this: Will Biden go ahead with the withdrawal as
announced, and hand the Taliban a victory? Or will he be forced to
reconsider the withdrawal decision?

****
**** CNN: Biden guided by 'magical thinking' in Afghanistan
****


A number of analysts have ridiculed Biden's withdrawal announcement
and the delusions behind it. One of them is Peter Bergen, the
National Security Analysts for CNN, the network that fawns over Biden
so much they've turned into a sewer. So Peter Bergen's analysis
cannot readily be rejected as the opinnion of a "white supremacist,"
or whatever CNN calls anyone who disagrees with them.

According to Bergen:

<QUOTE>"President Biden's decision to announce a date for
pulling all US troops out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary
of 9/11 sets the stage for a predictable disaster. ...

There has to be some magical thinking going on for the Biden White
House to expect that there will be a different outcome in
Afghanistan [than in the President Obama's precipitous withdrawal
from Iraq].

Yes, al Qaeda is a mere shadow of what it was on 9/11. That's
because for the past two decades, the US and its allies have
prevented Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda and
allied groups.

It's a policy that has worked.

Now, that sound policy is being abandoned. Once the US leaves
Afghanistan, America's NATO allies, who have 7,000 soldiers on the
ground, will leave as well, since they rely on an American
security umbrella. President Biden confirmed this in his speech to
the nation Wednesday afternoon.

The pullout of US and NATO troops will likely enable the Taliban
to take over much of the country."<END QUOTE>


Bergen explains that the Taliban have remained in close contact with
al-Qaeda, and they've guaranteed that they "would honor their
historical ties" with al-Qaeda. Furthermore, ISIS retains a foothold
in Afghanistan.

As Bergen pointed out, the US and Nato have prevented Afghanistan from
becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda and allied groups. Once the allied
forces pull out, Afghanistan will once again become a safe haven for
both al-Qaeda and ISIS, just as Osama bin Laden used Afghanistan as a
safe haven to launch the original 9/11/2001 attacks.

It's not just Peter Bergen who is alarmed at the withdrawal decision.
The New York Times, who always fawningly slobber over Biden,
is worried for the girls of Afghanistan. According to the Times:

<QUOTE>"“I am so worried about my future. It seems so
murky. If the Taliban take over, I lose my identity,” said Wahida
Sadeqi, 17, an 11th grader at Pardis High School in Kabul. “It is
about my existence.” ...

For two decades, American leaders have pledged peace, prosperity,
democracy, the end of terrorism and rights for women. Few of those
promises have materialized in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now
even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear
that everything will be lost when the Americans leave. ...

Over two decades, the American mission evolved from hunting
terrorists to helping the government build the institutions of a
functioning government, dismantle the Taliban and empower
women. But the U.S. and Afghan militaries were never able to
effectively destroy the Taliban, allowing the insurgents to stage
a comeback. ...

Women would be most at risk under Taliban rule. When the group
controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it banned women from
taking most jobs or receiving educations and practically made them
prisoners in their own homes."<END QUOTE>


Biden administration officials might be thinking to paraphrase Walter
Cronkite from 53 years ago, "If we've lost the NY Times, then we've
lost America."

The interesting thing about the NY Times article is that it
seems to reject the delusional Biden administration claim that
the Afghan democracy will continue. The article simply assumes
that the Taliban will take over, and will impose the same
dictatorial government they had in 2001, when they sponsored
Osama bin Laden's attack on America.

Analysts who favor continuing leaving a small number (3,500)
of American troops in Afghanistan point out that these can
prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda and ISIS, and can also provide
a listening post and forward military base to counter
Chinese military activity in Central Asia.

****
**** Generational Dynamics analysis of the war in Afghanistan
****


I began writing about the impossibility of winning in Afghanistan
shortly after President Obama announced his plan to "surge" troops
into Afghanistan.

President Bush had used a successful "surge" counter-insurgency
strategy in Iraq in 2007, with the result that al-Qaeda was driven out
of Iraq, and the objectives were met. But al-Qaeda in Iraq were
mostly not Iraqis. They were jihadists that al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi had imported from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Iraqis
themselves, even the Sunnis, mostly hated al-Qaeda, as I described in
a lengthy analysis, "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq,".

But the Taliban could be defeated in a similar way in Afghanistan,
because the Taliban are radicalized ethnic Pashtuns, and most of the
population of Afghanistan are Pashtuns.

In an article earlier this year, I was able to extend this original
analysis, based on research that I had done for my book, "Vietnam,
Buddhism and the Vietnam War." In that book, I compared the
counter-insurgency strategies used by British in the Boer War
(1899-1902) and the Malay Emergency (1948-55), and how they contrasted
to similar counter-insurgency strategies used by the Americans in
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. (See "18-Jan-21 World View -- Chaos grows in Afghanistan as American troops leave in hope of delusional peace plan"
)

But the extended analysis is based on the same reasoning: In Iraq,
the civilians and jihadists looked different and spoke differently.
In Afghanistan, the civilians and jihadists were the same Pashtun
people.

Let's face it, most politicians and journalists are ignorant and dumb.
They have no knowledge of Afghanistan's last generational crisis war,
an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96, that defines
Afghan society today. The war was a civil war, fought between the
Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of
Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are
radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters,
then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.

Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan
are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have
scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the
Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have
fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings,
dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side
performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they
have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill
each other.

So what is Biden going to do? If he goes ahead with the withdrawal,
then it's 100% certain that Afghanistan will collapse into chaos,
and it's likely that the Taliban will take control of the government,
and everything that America's sacrifices brought to Afghanistan
-- democracy, women's rights, relative peace -- will be lost
within a few months.

Sources:

Related Articles:



KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Afghanistan, Taliban,
CNN, Peter Bergen, Iraq, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Walter Cronkite,
Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Northern Alliance,
Vietnam, Buddhism, Vietnam War

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John J. Xenakis
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