A few thoughts on our 20-year effort in Afghanistan

Well, that whole Afghanistan thing didn't go entirely as we planned it 20 years ago.

It's not clear that we've left Afghanistan any better than we found it. But neither is it clear that we've made it worse. Reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

It took us 20 years to learn what the Soviets learned in 10 and the Brits learned in 4.

Or, from a different perspective, maybe we can say that we lasted twice as long as the Soviets and five times as long as the Brits.

But no matter how you slice it, I think Afghanistan is a tough place to flex muscle, even (especially?) if you're a superpower.

So why do countries keep trying?

Well, I think we try for a couple of reasons.

First, from a purely geographic perspective, Afghanistan is a natural skirmish site for conflict centered around Russian influence.

You might remember that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 looking to expand their reach, hoping to snuggle right up next to Iran and maybe whisper sweet nothings in the Shah's ear. 

The Brits invaded several times in the 19th and early 20th centuries, largely over the same issue: Russian influence.

I think that Russian influence will always be on the agenda in that part of the world, for as long as Russia remains Russia.

The second reason why I think empires covet Afghanistan is because of the poppies. 

People say that 90% of the world's heroin and opium supply comes from Afghanistan.

The US expended trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to control the land that controls the opium, and ultimately had to come to grips with the fact that the problem is much harder than it seemed.

(BTW, we basically just printed all that money. It's one reason why a burger and fries now cost $17 where I live).

I think this parallels our experience in a similar "drug war" effort in Central and South America.

We didn't end drug use.

We didn't end the drug trade.

Instead, by declaring war on something that people really want to do, we ensured that the only people willing or able to fill this massive worldwide market demand were criminals.

Our war on drugs made kings out of the drug kingpins.

We created the conditions that not only enabled the drug cartels (and I think of the Taliban as a religion-infected drug cartel), but made their rise inevitable.

The drug cartels became the de facto governments. Those politicians they couldn't buy, they simply killed.

Similar MO over in Afghanistan, but it's even more pernicious over there, because the cartel (Taliban) has cloaked itself in religious piety. 

But all of this probably shouldn't have taken us by surprise. We learned this lesson ourselves during the Prohibition era. 

Why didn't we keep Prohibition laws?

Because they didn't work. 

People still wanted beer and liquor.

And the only people selling it were, by definition, criminals. 

We saw the deeply negative impact that criminalization had on our society, and we (quite wisely, I think, from a pragmatic perspective) decided that we would rather regulate and tax an industry that was clearly going to thrive whether we wanted it to or not.

It seemed (and still seems) vastly preferable to giving all that money and power to a band of murderous thugs. Because there will always be money and power around drugs of any kind. No two ways about it.

Prohibition in any form just doesn't seem to work.

Empires will always be built around anything that generates massive demand. And regardless of whether you believe there's a moral component to drug use (to be sure, Uncle Sam and other Western societies have gone to great lengths to associate drug use with all manner of evil), drugs will always have massive demand in human society.

And in regions where there is very little other economic opportunity, no amount of moralizing from the governments of wealthy nations will sway behavior. People's kids still need food and shelter.

At the end of the day, coca farmers in Central America and poppy farmers in Afghanistan will find a way to get their product to market.

But wait. Wasn't Afghanistan all about terrorism?

Yes, that too. It was definitely at the top of the agenda in 2001.

But a new generation of American military men and women learned the lesson our fathers learned in Vietnam:

Counter-insurgency is hard.

"Winning hearts and minds" is bloody difficult, especially when you don't speak the language, don't dig the religion, and storm around the country in armored vehicles.

I once sat for a Master's Degree in special operations and low-intensity conflict. The main thing I learned can be summed up by a Princess Bride quote:

"Never start a land war in Asia."

Truer words.

But I don't mean to be flippant. It's a somber occasion, and I feel all the mixed emotions you probably feel about those intense scenes from the Kabul airport.

One of my good friends died on his knees at the hands of an Islamist near that airport. My friend and his family deserved better.

We all do.

But at the time, we all fervently believed (perhaps because we all recited the Pledge of Allegiance a thousand times in school) that all the world needs is a good old fashioned dose of Democracy, Shining Democracy, and once that miracle cure-all drug hits the veins of any society, all their woes will vanish.

But it just ain't so.

Vietnam.

Iraq.

Afghanistan.

Zero for three.

I think there are many difficult but profound lessons to be drawn from the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan right now.

None of those lessons seem easy, simple, or terribly satisfying.

So I will refrain from throwing one more chestnut into the mix and simply say that I hope all of this makes us a little more humble, a little less convinced, and a little less willing to put our sons and daughters in harm's way on the other side of the globe. 

Because the older I get, the more I believe it's the sons and daughters -- ours and theirs -- that matter most in these scenarios.

Anyway, that’s probably not the viewpoint you might have expected a military veteran to take.

You might have expected some kind of anger toward some person or party, and you may not have been surprised if I had blamed some politician or other.

But I don’t think real life has simple answers.

And even when the answers do, on occasion, turn out to be simple ones, they’re usually not easy.

Often the simple answer is a hard truth. And it may take us weeks or months to crack that hard truth and let it teach us what we need to learn.

It will be interesting to see where we all go from here.

Until next time, let's all hope our sons and daughters make it home, and theirs too.

Lars