The United States has lost its longest war. We went into Afghanistan in the Fall of 2001 and it is now almost 20 years later. It used to be that we called Vietnam our longest war but even if we dated our involvement in Vietnam combat as beginning in 1961, that would still make it only 14 years long. Unlike Vietnam which never was popular and was the subject of strong antiwar activities and controversy almost as soon as major combat operations commenced in early 1965, initially the war in Afghanistan enjoyed virtually unanimous national support. The group that organized the 9-11 terrorist attacks – Al Qaeda – was based there. The Taliban government of that country, which the United States had recognized despite their horrendous treatment of their citizens, especially women and girls, had refused to arrest and extradite Osama Bin Laden. This justified the US and NATO invasion to capture him, and destroy as much of Al Qaeda as possible.
But remember the historical context. The Cold War was over --- our side had “won.” The so-called “Vietnam syndrome” which was code for the unwillingness of the population to get involved in wars overseas had been supposedly “licked” by the success of the first Gulf War in 1991. The Soviet Union disappeared. China had not yet become the economic and therefore political powerhouse it is now. The United States was king of the hill.
In those early post-Cold War, post-Gulf War years it was easy for American leaders to think they could re-make the world in our image. In fact, there were some who criticized the first President Bush for stopping the Gulf War without “taking” Baghdad and deposing Saddam Hussein.
In the Fall of 2001, it was easy for the policy makers flush with victory in that first Gulf War and the Cold War to think that since they had to destroy the Taliban government to get at Osama Bin Laden, it would be a piece of cake to remake Afghanistan in our image.
This attitude was actually of a piece with long standing approaches of American political and economic leaders going all the way back to the 19th century. Before the 1890s, there was the idea of “manifest destiny” --- the United States was “destined” to expand through the entire continent getting rid of native American tribes, other European powers, and the government of Mexico that (temporarily) stood in its way. But beginning with the Spanish American War of 1898, our appetite became global. We took Puerto Rico, turned Cuba into a vassal state and even joined the European imperialists by taking our own colony in the Philippines.
More importantly, in the early years of the 20th century, the United States issued the Open Door Notes urging European and Japanese imperialists to respect the “territorial integrity” of China while plunging in to take advantage of investment and trade opportunities. The great historian William Appleman Williams called this approach “Imperial Anti-Colonialism” and documented how American political leaders saw this as the way to guarantee long term American economic prosperity. His book The Tragedy of American Diplomacy connected American international expansionism to a combination of perceived economic necessities and political idealism about the role of America to transform the rest of the world in the cause of democracy and free-market capitalism.
This led to numerous interventions in Latin America during the early years of this century, our joining of the allies in World War I and our joining other powers in attempting to squelch the Russian Revolution after 1918. Through it all, American leaders assured us we acted from the purest of motives.
After World War II, the same patterns emerged. The Korean War, interventions in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) were followed by the effort at “nation building” in South Vietnam. Manifest destiny was no longer the rationale. Instead, we were protecting the world from communism. No matter that we were allied with corrupt military dictators like the Shah of Iran and the various dictators of Guatemala. (This of course got us into trouble, for example, when the Iranian people finally overthrew the Shah in 1979.). It didn’t matter that the so-called leaders we supported in South Vietnam revealed themselves as so dictatorial and oppressive that the majority of the population ended up supporting the communist guerrillas.
Over 55,000 American dead and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians later, we finally gave up that fight in 1975. You would THINK our leaders would have learned their lesson but in fact all they learned was that our country could not maintain our effort to control the world with a conscript army suffering heavy casualties. So the next wars we fought we heavy on technology and low on American casualties --- and also they were fought by an all-volunteer army.
In attacking our nation’s arrogance in trying to remake Afghanistan, I in no way wish to denigrate the efforts of NGOs and volunteer organizations and even the US military to create educational opportunities for girls and cultural and political opportunities for women. Those were real achievements. It is also true that lots of modern infrastructure was built in Afghanistan over the past 20 years. Nevertheless, the original point of the invasion of Afghanistan was soon lost in arrogance. (Even more so when the George W. Bush administration pulled a “bait and switch” operation, suggesting that the way to fight terrorism was to go after the “axis of evil” in Iraq --- first --- with hopes that Iran and North Korea would be next. The opposition to the Iraq war and the failure of that effort once again revived the very rational American population’s skepticism about these foreign adventures. Even the idiot Donald Trump saw that being opposed to the war in Iraq was good politics --- and he even took steps to get out of Afghanistan.)
The pattern that emerged among Latin American dictators, the Shah of Iran, and the various “governments” in South Vietnam became apparent very quickly as the arrogant American policy-makers once again attempted “nation building” in Afghanistan. In doing so we introduced Afghan politicians to the worst of our political and economic culture of wheeling and dealing. I am talking about corruption on a scale that would make Al Capone’s Chicago look like a stereotype of genteel British politics. US intervention into Afghanistan was exemplified by stories of planeloads of newly printed hundred-dollar bills flown in to “finance” the building of a new nation. Most of that money never got to ordinary Afghans who saw their “leaders” stealing it.
And so for 20 plus years, the US and NATO allies fought a losing war of attrition with the Taliban. Exhaustion by our population has now forced a withdrawal. Once that withdrawal was announced, the Taliban made deals with local populations and in the past month or so they took most of the country without firing a shot. That should tell us something about the relationship between the general Afghan population and their so-called leaders.
I want to now focus on a major consequence of the arrogance that led American political and military leaders to think that Afghanistan would be “easy” to remake in our image --- the brutal realities that have plagued too many of the American veterans who fought this war. Because the post 1973 military has been completely professionalized, we no longer have a citizen army as in World Wars I, II, Korea and Vietnam. As a result, since 9-11, the proportion of the population in the military has fallen to one half of one percent --- the lowest since the years between World Wars I and II.
The rest of us who never served pay great lip service to those who have, but the cliché “thank you for your service” actually grates on most veterans. Meanwhile, where it counts, our nation has failed returning veterans and their families. One can look no further than the outrageous difference in suicide rates among veterans as compared to the larger population. And this is not due to personal defect --- people placed in impossible situations have understandable difficulties afterwards.
This last point is worth developing a bit. Veterans of World War II, the most popular war in American history, experienced trauma and shock as many of them experienced the true horrors of war first hand. But they always knew they were doing something that the rest of the population was fully supporting. Vietnam veterans experienced an entirely different homecoming --- mostly neglect, even embarrassment on the part of the public and large. (I don’t believe the legends that veterans were spat upon --- there is a long tortured story of some very fine reporting on this by a number of Vietnam veterans to expose the “myth of the spat upon veteran --- a useful piece of historical gas-lighting.).
In the post 9-11 era, veterans get plenty of public support. But the moral injury they experience – especially as the disconnection between members of the military and the rest of the country became more and more apparent --- becomes difficult to deal with. After World War II, Korea and Vietnam, with larger percentages of the population having service, it was more likely that veterans could find solace and camaraderie with like-minded people who had similar experiences.
What do I mean by “moral injury”? Psychiatrist Jonathan Shea developed the concept back in the 1990s. It basically refers to experiencing events that go against what one believes is “right” and even being forced by circumstance to DO THINGS that go against one’s own morality. For details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury. Committing war crimes or witnessing the commission of war crimes can produce a tremendous sense that one has betrayed one’s own morality. Witnessing the failure of moral leadership on the part of officers giving orders that go against the morality of the ordinary soldiers also creates internal conflicts. The point is, as noted above, this is not the result of mental defect on the part of our military participants --- it is actually the result of their striving to BE mentally healthy in the context of a leadership environment that orders one to do things one finds repulsive. This can gnaw at you if not properly dealt with.
On June 22, the NY Times ran an article on the subject of veterans’ suicide rates. It is available at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/911-suicide-rate-veterans.html.
Here are some important facts from it: 30,177 active duty military personnel and veterans who have served in the post 9-11 era have committed suicide, whereas only 7,057 have been killed in military operations. The suicide rate for veterans is 1.5 times as much as the rate for civilians. For veterans between 18 and 35, the rate is 2.5 times that of civilians.
In addition to the horrific destruction visited upon Afghanistan by the arrogant US civilian and military planners, the harm inflicted on our fellow citizens who answered the call after 9-11 is particularly outrageous. You know how to stop this wave of suicides? Stop trying to re-make the world in our own image. Stop intervening overseas. This is what Mark Twain said when we “took” the Philippines in 1898 and then fought a dirty war of suppression of Filipino rebels for years after that. This is what those brave souls who voted against getting into World War I said in 1917. This is what the marginalized left said about Truman’s intervention into the Korean War. And of course, this is what the much -vilified peaceniks said as early as 1963 when they (which by then included 20-year-old me!) opposed the then (covert) intervention in Vietnam. (I remember a vicious NY Daily News editorial attacking demonstrators and urging Congress to declare war so that all us peaceniks could be prosecuted as traitors!)
Before the US invaded Iraq in pursuit of non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” there were demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Americans (as well as millions more around the world) demanding “no war for oil!” Over the years, our arrogant leaders ignored the opposition when they could (the Philippine War, Korea) and when the opposition was too loud to ignore, (World War I, Vietnam, both Iraq Wars) they stigmatized them as unpatriotic.
Pete Seeger’s refrain in that wonderful song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” comes to mind: “When will we ever learn? Oh, when will we ever learn!!!”
When it comes to Afghanistan, the US could have withdrawn as soon as we knew Al Qaeda had fled the country. It is to his credit that (then) Vice President Joe Biden was the most prominent member of the Obama Administration who opposed the military surge in 2011. Once Osama Bin Laden was killed, the reason for invading Afghanistan in the first place evaporated. Think of all the lives that would have been saved had we done that ten years ago. Right now, the foreign policy establishment and most of the inside-the-beltway journalists are attacking the Biden Administration for following through on the Trump Administration’s timetable for withdrawal. (Trump may be a dumb, vicious fascist, but he knew a good issue and promise. Getting out of Afghanistan like he got out of Syria no matter how precipitously and no matter the cost in lives on the ground for people who put their faith in us --- the Kurds in Syria, our local partners in Afghanistan --- would be popular with the vast majority of Americans. Now of course he is attacking Biden for doing what he set in motion. But what else should we expect from him and his toadies in the Republican Party?). I am somewhat heartened that despite the handwringing opposition to Biden by establishment figures like Richard Haase of the Council of Foreign Relations (and many too many journalists) the American people support his decision.
I urge anybody who is even partially persuaded by intellectuals like Haase to check out various episodes of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC during the week of August 15. She meticulously demonstrates how the collapse of the Afghan resistance to the Taliban was inevitable and that that collapse’s cause has roots going all the way back to when the US leaders thought planeloads of 100-dollar bills would successfully finance a new nation. Or read this outstanding article by (retired) Major Daniel Sjursen, a veteran of both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars who has taught at West Point. “Self-Delusion Is Cruelest of All: The Collapse of Afghanistan and American Illusions.”
[For those who have an appetite for more detailed writing see Sjursen’s books A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism (2021) and Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. (2020) Sjursen is quite unusual --- see his website at https://skepticalvet.com --- but the content of what he has to say is very useful.]
FINAL THOUGHTS --- My fellow Americans --- your instincts to STOP going overseas in order to remake the world in our image is CORRECT. It is time to tell as those military and political and economic experts to get over their imperial delusions and try to help make our country a decent global citizen. Let Afghanistan and Iraq be our LAST overseas military adventure.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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