War is hell.
On Wednesday, officials from western nations began warning citizens stranded in Afghanistan to stay away from Kabul’s international airport, especially the gates, where thousands of desperate locals are still clamoring for spots on the last flights out of the country. Although the advisories offered little in the way of specifics, they were emphatic. The intelligence was credible. An attack was imminent.
Less than 24 hours later, a pair of explosions rocked the capital, one at an airport gate and another at a nearby hotel. The Pentagon swiftly confirmed both blasts. “The explosion at the Abbey Gate was the result of a complex attack that resulted in a number of US and civilian casualties,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said. “We can also confirm at least one other explosion at or near the Baron Hotel.” As Politico noted, British troops were using the hotel as a base for evacuating UK personnel. There were no reported UK military or government casualties.
Social media was alive with purported videos of the attacks and their aftermath. Two ISIS suicide bombers were responsible, according to initial reports.
Later, the Pentagon convened a press conference. A dozen US servicemembers were killed, 11 Marines and a Navy medic. The military was expecting to be attacked and said ISIS has taken shots at US planes, without effect. There are ongoing threats against the airfield in Kabul. For their part, the Taliban said at least 13 Afghans were killed and dozens were wounded. “The casualties could increase,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said.
Despite pleas from allies, Joe Biden this week refused to extend an August 31 deadline for completing the haphazard evacuation at the airport, where the death toll was already mounting prior to Thursday’s bombings. Although the State Department sought to reassure Afghans and stranded US citizens that there was no deadline on efforts to locate and extract them, the pledge fell on deaf ears.
Over the past week, The New York Times, among other outlets, cited dozens of conversations with Afghans who, although technically eligible for some type of asylum for their assistance in America’s two-decade war, had given up hope. Some said reaching the airport was too dangerous. Others said that after witnessing the chaos firsthand, they feared their children would be trampled in stampedes blamed for the death of at least one toddler.
At the same time, US officials admitted that thousands of emails and text messages to trapped Americans and locals have gone unanswered. Although the Taliban swore off reprisals, reports from around the country told of door-to-door searches for US and allied collaborators, while women said enforcement of the kinds of restrictions on movement in place during the Taliban’s last stint in power varied by locale. No one seemed keen to take any chances, although scattered protests and at least one armed resistance movement suggest civil war is more likely than the “inclusive” government the Taliban leadership pledged to create after taking control of Kabul without a fight earlier this month.
It’s unlikely the Taliban played a direct role in Thursday’s attacks. In fact, the Taliban may well have been the source for the intelligence which prompted Wednesday’s warnings. CIA Director William Burns met with Abdul Ghani Baradar earlier this week. (Baradar was, of course, Mullah Omar’s friend and deputy.) On Tuesday, the day after that meeting, US lawmakers were briefed on a threat targeting airport gates as well as military and commercial aircraft working on the evacuation. The Taliban condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.” At its afternoon press briefing, the Pentagon confirmed that the US and the Taliban are sharing intelligence.
In a separate press conference Thursday, Biden said America remains committed to completing the mission, but indicated the US would pursue the ISIS commanders responsible. Additional attacks are expected between now and the end of the month. He reminded the press that the dearth of US casualties over the past year was in part due to Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban. Implicit was the notion that had he gone back on Trump’s deal, US forces would now be engaged in regular combat with Taliban fighters, instead of being blown up at the airport by ISIS militants.
Biden was probably correct to assert, earlier this month, that chaos was unavoidable no matter when (or how) the US decided to pull up stakes. And the sheer number of people evacuated over the past week is astounding. But there’s no utility in spinning the situation as anything other than the complete disaster that it is.
For this White House, it represents a catastrophic failure of planning and intelligence. For the US, it’s yet another lesson in the perils of imperialism and nation-building.
Osama Bin Laden famously viewed the Battle of Mogadishu (depicted in the film “Black Hawk Down”) as evidence that asymmetric warfare was the key to prevailing in a military struggle with the US. It wasn’t a particularly novel observation. Vietnam was a proof of concept and so, ironically, was the Soviets’ ill-fated foray in Afghanistan.
“Black Hawk Down” opens with a misattributed quote. Plato didn’t say “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” But it’s no less true just because it came from a lesser historical figure.
“War is hell.” A commonly expressed sentiment. To me, from my life and from all the history I have read, war is just plain stupid. It’s the dumbest thing man does. And what makes it more shameful is that it’s a con game, perpetrated on the less fortunate in our society by those with positions of wealth and power who need others to protect them and do their dirty work. Soldiers of whatever stripe are asked to risk the thing most precious to them, their life, in exchange for meager pay, to make the lives of people they don’t know safer and easier while they toil in the trenches. This has been going on for thousands of years. Our latest one was dangerous, nasty, and extremely expensive, not only for what it cost us but for what it denied to us, more than $2 trillion that should have been spent renewing our nation … you know the one we were supposedly protecting.
The US is largely a Judeo-Christian country. In the tradition of both religions is the belief that on one occasion our shared God spoke to a prophet named Moses up on a mountain and gave him ten commandments (not optional flexible ideas — COMMANDMENTS). One of those I personally respect a good deal says: Thou Shall Not Kill. Period. Not unless it seems like a good idea. Not if you feel like it. Not to protect your goods or money. Not at all, period. Those who violate this rule and the other nine will be judged and punished in the afterlife by our God. At least that is what we say we believe. We aren’t supposed to do the judging and punishing, God does that as in: “Judge not lest thee be judged.” To justify this con game, and supposedly to stop evil, we make up many reasons we have to go to war and kill each other — both sides do this of course. Aristophanes, the Greek playwright, proposed an interesting solution to war in his play Lysistrata. All the women in the world get together and decide that if men want a booty call ever again, they need to lay down your arms, end war and come home to momma. A common myth we have shared for centuries is that men are the rational gender and women are ditzy, irrational, and unable to make sensible decisions. Wrong, backwards. It’s the silly men who will drop their work and their responsibilities to their families and rush off to war while leaving the responsibility for maintaining our way of life to the women who stay behind. Whoops. War has always been a disaster and just plain stupid.
Sadly, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is a mistranslation of the original – “Thou Shalt Not Murder.” So war is just fine, as long as you don’t kill your neighbor whose wife you covet. Which makes the rest of the Old Testament make at least some sense, I guess.
H-Man, it was an orderly evacuation and now it is disorderly. Let us hope and pray “disorderly” does not turn into a catastrophe.