America's failure in Afghanistan is going to be worse than Vietnam
Trump is absolutely right to be furious over America's losing war effort
President Trump is furious about Afghanistan. You should be too — not that it will make much of a difference.
Without a major, top-down change in policy — the kind that can't be brought about by slathering on a fresh coat of public outrage — America's war in Afghanistan is going to wind up worse than Vietnam. But rather than just Vietnam's costly loss and fallen domino, our failure in Afghanistan will leave behind a geopolitical cesspool for the ages.
Some Trump critics fret that the president is handing too much power to a veritable shadow-junta of generals. But in the White House, the president is chewing them out for offering little more in the way of strategy than warmed over Obamaisms. Trump sent National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and his not-so-populist staff "back to the drawing board on the Afghan plan and parts of the still-evolving Iran plan," as The Daily Beast reported, "griping in essence that doing the same thing as before and expecting a different result is the platitudinal definition of insanity." No matter how unhinged some Americans consider Trump himself to be (or how unable to actually use a word like "platitudinal"), his judgment on this count is tough to question.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Worse, the Pentagon all but concedes that there just aren't any good ideas anymore on how to escape from Afghanistan with anything resembling a win. "Trump pointed to maps showing the Taliban gaining ground," NBC News reported, citing a senior administration official. Defense Secretary James Mattis "responded to the president by saying the U.S. is losing because it doesn't have the strategy it needs." If it was up to Trump personally to prepare himself for the peril of trying to govern with neither party establishment behind him, how could any president prepare for an institutional failure so grand in scope?
Truth be told, Afghanistan has become a veritable beacon for zombie institutions and schools of thought. Our military planners aren't the only ones reduced to shambling weakly ahead into the fog. Semi-embattled nationalist adviser Stephen Bannon wants Trump to give a hearing to Erik Prince, whose concept for breaking the Afghan curse involves removing U.S. troops and replacing them with privately contracted soldiers and airmen. But the merits of such a "mercenary" plan, whatever they are, will probably never be tested. While the generals, and a big chunk of voters, see it as an intolerable challenge to the turf and the honor of the U.S. military, neither the brass nor the electorate will allow themselves to imagine that the luxury of choice is far in the rear-view.
The result is a fatally imbalanced application of force around the world, with special forces bearing an unsustainable burden and no domestic constituency willing to do the grim or unnerving things it would take in Afghanistan to win. This shambolic way of war "is not just exhausting America's special operators," as Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Micah Zenko recently noted; "it is wholly insufficient to comprehensively confront the underlying causes of militancy and terrorism."
Unfortunately, that grand objective is even further out of reach in Afghanistan than a mere military victory.
What would it take to win in Afghanistan? At this point, probably a risky and alien combination of private contractors, colonial-style civic occupation and institution-building, and a huge surge of drones backed with occasional heavy bomber support. But without some wild change in D.C. and across America, there is simply no way this will happen.
President Trump is nearly alone in his fury over the fate of the Afghan war, which so many are passively setting in stone. Unchanged, our seemingly open-ended grind will finally cease in a collapse of voter support — and the enemy's imposition of a U.S. exit strategy all its own.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
James Poulos is a contributing editor at National Affairs and the author of The Art of Being Free, out January 17 from St. Martin's Press. He has written on freedom and the politics of the future for publications ranging from The Federalist to Foreign Policy and from Good to Vice. He fronts the band Night Years in Los Angeles, where he lives with his son.
-
'Horror stories of women having to carry nonviable fetuses'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
Haiti interim council, prime minister sworn in
Speed Read Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns amid surging gang violence
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Today's political cartoons - April 26, 2024
Cartoons Friday's cartoons - teleprompter troubles, presidential immunity, and more
By The Week US Published
-
Haiti interim council, prime minister sworn in
Speed Read Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns amid surging gang violence
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Myanmar: the Spring Revolution and the downfall of the generals
Talking Point An armed protest movement has swept across the country since the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown in 2021
By The Week Staff Published
-
Israel hits Iran with retaliatory airstrike
Speed Read The attack comes after Iran's drone and missile barrage last weekend
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Is there a peaceful way forward for Israel and Iran?
Today's Big Question Tehran has initially sought to downplay the latest Israeli missile strike on its territory
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Sudan on brink of collapse after a year of war
Speed Read 18 million people face famine as the country continues its bloody downward spiral
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
How powerful is Iran?
Today's big question Islamic republic is facing domestic dissent and 'economic peril' but has a vast military, dangerous allies and a nuclear threat
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
US, Israel brace for Iran retaliatory strikes
Speed Read An Iranian attack on Israel is believed to be imminent
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
How green onions could swing South Korea's election
The Explainer Country's president has fallen foul of the oldest trick in the campaign book, not knowing the price of groceries
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published