The Wells Brothers' Wartime Assesment: Twenty years after September 11
by David R. Wells and Lawrence H. Wells
11 Sep 2021
In September 2001 we wrote:
“What does it all mean?
It means we are at war. We did not choose war, but it has been forced upon us. Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect in Tuesday's attacks, has repeatedly declared war on the United States and its citizens everywhere. It is now clear that he is deadly serious. We can either hide our heads in the sand, or we can fight back. Our adversary will see restraint as a sign of weakness, and an invitation to further attacks. We must fight back.
We must harbor no illusions about what war means. … Military force is not a scalpel; it is a very large axe. War is brutal and ugly. People will be killed, and some of them will be innocent bystanders. War is inherently evil.
That said, sometimes war is a necessary evil, in order to stop a greater evil.
This is one of those times.”
In January 2002 we wrote:
“To an extent, the war is going well.
The Taliban have been removed from power.
Osama bin Laden is on the run.
A new government, which seems to have popular support has been put in place.
The new Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, seems to be a reasonable man, and is respected by most Afghans.
At least some Taliban and al Qaeda leaders have been captured.
US casualties have been light.
Afghan civilian casualties have been relatively light, although we must still regard each civilian casualty as a loss.
A major famine has been averted.
“… That said, the war is
not over by any means. In Afghanistan, there is still work to be
done. …”
In January 2003 we wrote:
“Afghanistan is now in a
‘Nation Building’
phase. The US military is now engaged in such tasks as building roads
and schools. This too is good, but perhaps not good enough. We must
ensure that the Afghan government is able to stand on its own and
address the needs of all its people. This may not be easy and it may
not be inexpensive, but if we fail to do this we risk ending up with
a weak nation that could again become a puppet of terrorist
organizations.”
On 31 August 2021 President Joe Biden declared
“The war in Afghanistan is now over.”
If the war is over, the United States lost badly.
After twenty years of effort the the Taliban are again in control of Afghanistan. Afghanistan seems certain to become exactly what we feared in 2003: A a weak nation and a puppet of terrorist organizations. In effect we've reset the situation to what it was in between 1996 and 2001.
In case you've forgotten, the Taliban are the ones who provided a safe haven for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The September 11 attacks on the United States were planned in Taliban controlled Afghanistan, and executed from Taliban controlled Afghanistan. Following the attacks the Taliban refused to eject al Qaeda from Afghanistan, or extradite Osama bin Laden.
In public the Taliban claim to have changed since 2001, but their actions indicate that they have not changed at all.
They have not broken their contacts with al Qaeda, or even denounced al Qaeda.
They have not agreed to prevent Afghanistan from be used as a safe haven for terrorists.
They have given only the vaguest "assurances" that they will prevent terrorist groups from launching attacks against the United States or other nations. Their record of honoring their "assurances" is not good.
Despite assurances of amnesty, they are targeting Afghans who supported the United States, former members of the Afghan military, officials of the previous Afghan government, and even journalists who report the truth about the Taliban for assassination. This assassination campaign started well before they regained power, even while they were still negotiating with the United States.
Despite assurances that they would now respect the rights of Afghan women, they have taken steps to reimpose their previous repressive policies.
Despite assurances that their new government would be "inclusive", its "interim" cabinet includes only long time Taliban leaders. It includes only ethnic Pashtuns, and no members of of any of the other ethnic groups who make up 58% of Afghanistan's population. It includes no members of other Islamic sects, let alone members of other religions. It includes no women. Who does it include?
Mullah Hassan Akhund, who, headed the pre-2002 Taliban government in Kabul during its final years. This government was notorious for its brutal repression of ordinary Afghans. As previously noted it also hosted al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden while he planned and executed the September 11 attacks, and continued to support him after the attacks.
Sirajuddin Haqqani , head of the notorious terrorist group Haqqani Network.
We can only describe this as an unmitigated disaster. We expect that sooner or later a terrorist group will use its safe haven in Afghanistan to launch attacks against the United States. It probably won't happen this year. It might not happen next year, or the year after that; but it will eventually happen.
When the attack eventually comes, our shameful treatment of our Afghan allies will deter Afghans from assisting us in the future. It's also likely to undermine local support for US anti-terrorism efforts elsewhere in the world.
One high-ranking veteran of our acquaintance has written:
“The repercussions from this
mess will be felt in our national security for a long long time …
unfortunately this has not played out fully with so many hostages to
be taken. Hope our national security can recover.”
We agree with his assessment.
There is plenty of blame go go around. The U.S. government in general deserves criticism for failing to make any effort to sustain public support for our efforts in Afghanistan. At the start of the war the government's message to the public was essentially “carry on as normal.” This wasn't completely irrational; following the 11 September attack, an economic panic based on fear could have done more long term damage to the country than the attack itself. But it also disengaged the public from the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. Congress in particular deserves criticism for failing to formally declare war. This fed the impression that Afghanistan wasn't really critical to U.S. security. Is it any wonder public support eroded over time?
The administrations of several U.S. presidents deserve large portions of blame.
This might seem like a stretch, but the roots of the disaster might extend all the way back to the first Bush administration. His first mistake was not forcing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, either by direct military attack or by supporting the Iraqi uprising that followed the war. This seemingly unrelated event led the U.S. to keep military forces in Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda used the the presence of U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia as its excuse for its terrorist attacks against the United States, including the September 11 attack.
A second mistake was not actively supporting Afghanistan following the Soviet Union's 1989 withdrawal. The first post-Soviet government soon came under attack from militias backed by Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, among others. It collapsed in early 1992. Its successor lasted barely three months before disintegrating into openly warring factions. Subsequent attempts to form a unity government fared no better. The civil war paved the way for the Taliban takeover. We must admit that it would have been difficult for the U.S. to effectively support any of the weak Afghan governments of the period, and even with our support they might have failed anyway. But not trying guaranteed failure.
The Clinton administration essentially continued its predecessor's neglect of Afghanistan. The Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan by the end of 1996. Clinton's options were admittedly quite limited, but at a minimum he could have exposed Pakistan's direct support of the Taliban.
George W. Bush and his administration made several critical mistakes.
The first mistake was trying to conduct the initial invasion of Afghanistan "on the cheap" instead of applying overwhelming force. While the invasion did succeed in removing the Taliban from power and driving al Qaeda from Afghanistan, it wasn't able to destroy either group. A golden opportunity to do this at the Battle of Tora Bora was lost in part because there were not enough U.S. forces to keep Taliban and al Qaeda fighters from escaping into Pakistan.
A second serious mistake was launching an unneccessary invasion of Iraq before defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This further diluted U.S. power in Afghanistan.
Another major error was the Bush Administration's treatment of prisoners. The use of torture and extraordinary rendition certainly hurt the American cause. Abandoning the moral high ground quickly eroded support for the USA around the world, which immediately after September 11 was virtually universal. To make matters worse, it was worse than useless. One of the worst U.S. intelligence failures of the period was the false report that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posessed chemical and biological weapons, and had an active nuclear weapons program. It led directly to the unnecessary invasion of Iraq mentioned above. This report was obtained from a prisoner who was tortured. In order to stop the torture, he simply told his interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear.
The detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay also may have been counterproductive. Its dubious legal basis certainly hampered efforts to put any prisoners on trial. To this day, there has not been a single military trial, much less a conviction.
Perhaps the most significant mistake was underestimating the amount of effort needed build an Afghan government that could stand on its own. While the notion of "nation building" has since fallen into disfavor, it actually was vital. We must admit that the Bush Administration actually did make progress on this front between 2002 and 2005, but that progress was eroded by problems that could have been foreseen.
The Obama administration correctly recognized that corruption within the US backed Afghan government was a serious problem that threatened to undermine our efforts to make Afghanistan self-supporting. But it then scuttled the first US attempt to expose a corrupt Afghan government official at the first sign of push-back from Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and made no other attempts. (The Afghan official in question was an ally of Karzai.) Official corruption ultimately became a major factor in the August 2021 collapse of the Afghan government.
The Obama administration also erred by announcing a withdrawal timetable in 2014. Our Taliban and al Qaeda opponents then knew that they could simply wait us out, and then attack the Afghan government after the US withdrawal. That said the Obama administration does deserve some credit for modifying their withdrawal timetable as conditions in Afghanistan changed. When the situation demanded, Obama was even willing to abandon his long stated goal of removing all US forces from Afghanistan by the end of his second term. This was no doubt a bitter pill politically, but it was the correct decision.
The Trump administration inherited a manageable problem in Afghanistan. It then pursued policies that made disaster inevitable.
The Trump administration made an absolutely horrible deal with the Taliban. It basically agreed to surrender and remove all US forces on a specific date regardless of conditions, while getting almost nothing tangible in return. The Taliban explicitly refused to sever links with al Qaeda. Even worse, Trump tacitly accepted the Taliban's refusal to negotiate with the elected Afghan government. This severely undercut the Afghan government's position. The Taliban's only concession was agreeing to not attack U.S. forces while they withdrew.
Among the problemetic U.S. concessions was the agreement to release thousands of Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government, which for all practical purposes was not even party to the negotiations. Many of those released rejoined the Taliban fighting forces. Some of these former prisoners became important Taliban military leaders.
As we see it, our self-proclaimed expert dealmaker was played like a proverbial fiddle by chief Taliban negotiator Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
If all this were not bad enough, just weeks after the 2020 presidential election the Trump administration announced that US forces in Afghanistan would be cut to just 2,500 by 15 Jan 2021 - just days before Joseph Biden's inauguration. To us this looks like a cynical effort to tie Biden to a Trump policy that it knew was doomed to failure.
The Biden administration's predecessor left it a very weak hand to play. It played it badly. Not only did it continue Trump's stupid policy of removing all US forces on an announced date regardless of conditions, it also continued to undercut the elected government of Afghanistan. One example is the 5 July 2021 withdrawal from Bagram airbase. The withdrawal was literally done in the dead of night, without even notifying the base's Afghan commander.
Even worse, the Biden administration also also withdrew the US contractors who were maintaining the Afghan air force's aircraft. Without the ability to maintain their aircraft, the Afghan air force quickly lost the ability to support the Afghan army. Lacking air support, the Afghan army quickly lost its will to fight. (Would you fight a difficult battle when there is no prospect of supporting air strikes, or even air evacuation if things go wrong? Especially when it's obvious that your main ally has written you off?)
The Biden administration obviously completely failed to foresee that undercutting the elected Afghan government and the Afghan military insured that they would quickly collapse.
Having failed to forsee a possible rapid collapse of the Afghan government, it failed to plan for its consequences. The chaotic evacuation from Kabul between 15 August and 31 August was the result.
To make matters still worse, the Biden administration took a "bureacracy as usual" approach to evacuating Afghans who supported the US government and military over the last 20 years. It apparently expected normal passport/visa procedures to be followed even though the evacuation of the US embassy and the collapse of the Afghan government obviously made this impossible. The predictable result was many were not evacuated.
Biden argued that the Trump administration's agreement with the Taliban meant that the "status quo" of keeping a small US military force in Afghanistan to support the Afghan army that was doing most of the fighting "was not an option." But Biden was under no obligation to honor an agreement negotiated by his predecessor, especially when the Taliban were not upholding their end of the agreement.
The Afghan government undermined itself by failing to control corruption within its ranks, particularly among the politically powerful. Corruption cost the government public support, and also weakened the Afghan security forces by siphoning badly needed resources. Indeed, corruption seems to have been present even at the very highest levels of the Afghan government.
The Pakistani government is responsible for supporting the Taliban through much of the war. There is considerable evidence that the Taliban were founded in the 1990s by Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence agency. The ISI also supported the Haqqani terrorist network. During much of the war, the Taliban met in and was organized from Quetta, Pakistan. Indeed, Osama bin Laden himself was discovered hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a military garrison town.
While the failings of the Biden administration are serious, The Trump wing of the Republican party has no standing to criticize it. Biden's Afghanistan policy is essentially the same as Trump's. Prominent Trump supporters are even less willing to help our Afghan allies escape, preferring to play the xenophobic "stop immigration" card. Former president Donald Trump and House Republican Party leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy are among those on our Wall of Shame for this particular piece of political cynicism.
The parallels between the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan and its defeat in Vietnam nearly half a century ago are all too obvious. The South Vietnamese government was riddled with corruption that ultimately undermined its ability to defend the country; so was Afghanistan's. The U.S. was either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. While the Army of the Republic of Vietnam often fought well against the North Vietnamese army, its effectiveness was steadily eroded by government corruption that siphoned vital resources. Much the same is true of the Afghan army. The fall of Vietnam was followed by a hasty and rather chaotic evacuation of (mostly) Americans; many of our former South Vietnamese allies were mostly left to fend for themselves. Some escaped, but many were left behind. The fall of Afghanistan was followed by a hasty and chaotic evacuation. We did at least evacuate significant numbers of our Afghan allies, but many more were left behind.
If anything the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan is worse than its defeat in Vietnam.
South Vietnam stood more or less on its own for nearly two years after U.S. combat forces left. During 1973 its army showed that it could effectively defend the country. South Vietnam only fell following a direct invasion by a well organized, well equipped North Vietnamese army that had the open support of a superpower.
Afghanistan did not even last until the completion of the U.S. withdrawal. It fell to a terrorist militia that was only covertly supported by Pakistan's intelligence service.
Perhaps worst of all, the U.S. really did have a vital national interest in maintaining a stable Afghanistan that did not harbor hostile terrorist groups whose goal is to attack the United States. One can plausibly argue that there was no comparable national interest in Vietnam.
The Afghans were unwilling to fight.
In reality the Afghan military did the bulk of the fighting between 2015 and August 2021. This is reflected in the casualty figures: Total US fatalities in Afghanistan were 2448 over 20 years. The Afghan security forces suffered approximately 69,000 fatalities.
Pakistan was our ally.
In reality, Pakistan was at best a duplicitous ally, and more likely an active supporter of the Taliban.
We should also note that Pakistan has a long-standing military alliance with China. Unlike their “alliance” with the US, Pakistan has never betrayed its alliance with China.
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