Twisted logic about the Afghanistan withdrawal

Will Biden respect US credibility and keep the Taliban peace deal intact by withdrawing from Afghanistan as agreed?

During slavery in America, white slave owners had invented ways to entertain themselves. One was to have two black men fight each other to death. The victorious would earn something as petty as a cigarette pack or a beer bottle while the other would lose his life. It didn’t matter to the white spectator as to who emerged victorious. His life didn’t depend on it. But for the black men fighting, it was their very lives at stake. In Afghanistan, tables have turned. The spectators pay with their lives.

President Trump has announced that US troops from Afghanistan would be reduced from 4,500 to 2,500. The traditional school, which includes most politicians including from Trump’s own party and the generals, is opposed to what it terms as a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Let me clarify at the outset that all parties involved in this game are doing everything for their own selfish reasons. Trump wants to withdraw from Afghanistan because ending wars is what he had promised and pursued. And he is doing it now as a lame duck president because, as many believe, he might be planning for a second run in 2024. Rumour has it he might start his own broadcast channel to bark venomous propaganda from. Now would be a good time to get into fact-checking business.

The traditional wired-for-war-and-deployment class wants to remain in Afghanistan so they can keep tabs on China, Russia, and keep consuming and selling American-made arms. I can bet they are tired of not having some distant land invaded in the name of Responsibility to Protect and other such legal myths. With Biden, those demons would be resurrected soon.

Kabul is opposed to the withdrawal. Firstly, because it depends on American military hardware and air support; and secondly, an American withdrawal means the Taliban marching triumphantly toward Kabul. And that is tantamount to death for Ashraf Ghani and Amrullah Saleh. In all this, the Afghan people have to watch and pray for Trump to win the battle for withdrawal because their interests align with that. They are the spectators who watch yet would pay with their lives if the wrong side emerged victorious.

One of the traditional school’s American politicians, Senator Mitch McConnell said, “The consequences of a premature American exit would likely be even worse than president Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq back in 2011, which fueled the rise of ISIS and a new round of global terrorism.” That is a quintessential American way of twisting logic around where cause and effect make no sense. Because the reality is that ISIS didn’t rise because America left Iraq, ISIS was created because America went to Iraq.

The mindset is that withdrawal from an occupied land causes problems instead of occupying someone else’s land by force. He also said, “A rapid withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan now would hurt our allies and delight the people who wish us harm.” Those “allies” include India who wouldn’t be able to make Pakistan vulnerable from its west after an American withdrawal. And that Indian inability is what McConnell means by “hurt”. Also, notice there is no mention of the people whose land remains occupied. It’s all about American allies and enemies.

Here is something for us to ask: when Trump ripped apart the Iran nuclear deal and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, Biden criticised arguing that America’s credibility in respecting agreements is at stake. Will Biden respect America’s credibility and keep the Taliban peace deal intact by withdrawing from Afghanistan as agreed? And if he does not honour the peace deal with the Taliban, will the American media have the audacity and character to hold him accountable with the same brutality they held Trump? Will Biden continue to claim to be different than Trump?

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2020.

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