The advocates of forever wars will never admit it, but the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 — and the consequent decision by other nations like Australia to do the same — will bring to an end a war that made the West less safe against terrorism and corroded Western military forces for an extraordinary cost that will continue to be paid for decades to come.
Along with Iraq, Afghanistan stands as one of the greatest policy failures of recent decades, with a horrific human and economic toll. This is all a result of the hysterical abandonment of reason in the wake of 9/11 by Western leaders like George W. Bush, John Howard and Tony Blair — and what they believed were the political benefits of embracing militarism.
First, the cost: 41 Australian soldiers killed and 261 Australia Defence Force personnel injured. A total financial cost of, by one estimate, $10 billion. The cost for the United States is 2218 deaths within Afghanistan and nearly 20,100 casualties. The financial cost has been just under US$1 trillion. A 2016 estimate suggested that there had been 173,000 people killed and more than 183,000 seriously wounded in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Those are only the direct costs. The cost of treating permanently incapacitated veterans of the conflict will continue for decades to come. And, along with the Iraq conflict, the war has inflicted a grisly toll on veterans’ mental health. There have been at least 500 suicides of veterans since the beginning of the Afghanistan conflict, according to the ABC. The rate of veteran suicide is so concerning that the government is under sustained and mounting pressure to call a royal commission.
In the United States, more than 6000 veterans take their own lives every year — or more than 17 a day — and the number has risen since 2016.
The war badly corroded the military institutions tasked with fighting it. The “Afghanistan Papers” published by the Washington Post in 2019 revealed that the US military, along with civilian political leaders, persistently lied to Americans about the state of the war and the prospects for success. Data was doctored or spun from the conflict, while the US military was, in the words of one three-star general, “devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing…. We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
For Australian forces, the corrosion was far worse. The Brereton report revealed “credible information” of war crimes committed by 25 Australian soldiers involving the deaths of 39 Afghans, widespread breaches of laws and customs of war, systemic coverups and a deeply toxic culture within the SAS.
With the Taliban poised to return to power, the security gains from the conflict appear limited at best. It is more likely that the Afghanistan conflict, along with the Iraq War, has — in a view now so mainstream intelligence agency heads have long been happy to espouse it — encouraged radicalisation both in the West and in Muslim countries, and served to confirm the narrative offered by Islamist terrorists like Islamic State about Western aggression against Muslims.
To use the words of one Pentagon report in 2004, “the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.”
The US use of drone aircraft to carry out targeted — and frequently, entirely untargeted — airstrikes also played its role. As Stanley McChrystal, the general behind the US counterinsurgency plan in Afghanistan, explained in 2013: “the resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.”
But the fact that we are no safer from Islamist terrorism now than in 2001 — our threat level officially remains at “probable” — isn’t the only issue in regard to the impact of the forever wars on our security. It’s now clear that white supremacist terrorist groups in the United States — which have for several years now been formally regarded as a greater threat to US domestic security than al-Qaeda or other Islamist terrorists — seek to draw on Afghanistan and Iraq veterans and serving military personnel. A 2019 survey showed that more than a third of US military personnel respondents had encountered white supremacist or racist ideology within their ranks.
The recruitment of military veterans obviously brings military expertise to terrorist groups but, in the words of one Pentagon official, it “also brings legitimacy, in their minds, to their cause — the fact that they can say they have former military personnel that align with their extremist and violent extremist views”.
Yet national security commentators continue to insist Western military forces should remain in Afghanistan and that the US withdrawal — a delayed implementation of the agreement Donald Trump, in one of his few sensible moments, negotiated with the Taliban — will be a disaster.
“By forcing the Americans to leave and seizing Kabul, the Taliban would inspire jihadist groups elsewhere to escalate their terror campaigns… the Taliban wielding absolute power in Afghanistan would pose a greater jihadist threat to the free world than any other group, including al-Qaeda or Islamic State remnants,” wrote one just this week (it was run by Australia’s own house of neocon militarism, ASPI).
As one Biden administration official has pointed out, waiting for the right moment to leave Afghanistan will mean the West never leaves — and can never start the process of addressing the enormous, and continuing, costs of a war both epically long and an epic failure.
And little Johnny says he has ‘no regrets’ from his prime-ministership. Truly sociopathic.
Like Morrison he seems to think it is weak to apologise or admit you were wrong.
It’s also a characteristic of sociopathic personality disorders, who lack both empathy and conscience, but seem to do so well in politics and the corporate world.
Blair seems to be getting off lightly in the article/comments! He also has no regrets I believe. Didn’t he say God made him do it!
I think that actually he advised god that it was a sound move and thus,
it Came to Be!
The irony was, contrary to Blair, the Tb. were ant-drug (not pro as Blair claimed publicly) but with the removal of the Tb in a given region the drugs returned.
It could be called an unintended consequence but, given the exacting,scientific/medical/technical words often used to obfuscate what was going on,I’dsay the more accurate word would be iatrogenic – caused by the process meant as a cure.
Disagreement as the nature of the ‘illness’ – if any – continues.
It seems unlikely to have been an unintended consequence – given the alleged involvement of the CIA in cocaine trafficking in relation to their operations in Nicaragua
You forgot to mention the impact on Afghans. Their society has been destroyed, infrastructure in tatters, the anti-women fundamentalist Taliban probably to take power, bombs going off all the time. Afghans who have escaped and live here, curl up inside every time a bomb goes off – are my relatives OK? is their constant worry. One young woman in Melbourne has lost two close relatives in the last year and a half. And of course our government still holding up family reunion out of sheer bloody mindedness. We could at least do that right.
Ah, the Taliban- America’s gift to Afghanistan. America is responsible for creating & funding so many terrorist organisations in their early days.
I think you’ll find the Russians also had a goodly hand in creating the Taliban. To fight the mujahideen, of course.
Another – The Russians did it – -:)
Yes of course they did.
Fiendishly & cunningly, those ever resourceful kommies smuggled all that money & support into the CIA funded, maintained and serviced Afghan refugee camps through ISI dominated Pakistan.
Just so that it could reach the poverty stricken madrassas spreading the word amongst the talib (it means ‘student‘ in Urdu).
Rubbish, the Taliban were created to get rid of the Russians.
The Taliban actually came to the fore, eventually to rule, some years after the Russians who left in February 1989. The Taliban arose out of the general chaos that followed and the downfall of the Najibullah government. Both he and his brother finished up hanging from public lighting in September 1996. First came the mujahideen, then came the Taliban.
Thanks for that clarification jb.
QED.
This old photo on Flickr shows the Entrance of the Faculty of Medicine in the 1970’s.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/recuerdosdepandora/7242878690/in/photostream/
I have been desperately trying to remember the name of one of three sisters from a high ranking Afghan family who taught at the Faculty and has recently died. A true Afghan patriot in the best sense of that word. I came across her in Germany where she had fled post fall of the Najibullah Government. She was then working as a school cleaner. She went back to Afghanistan soonest when her return could be negotiated and died there, of her other sisters I think one went to the US and the other definitely came here to Oz. I’m afraid the chaos present is not going to end anytime soon, if nothing else there is 95% of the world supply of poppy opium to control and that can fund a lot of chaos in addition to external forces.
I fear we’re going to see theTaliban re-emerge, probably unopposed, to wreak idealised slaughter, destruction and havoc on any progress made to improve the lives of those they consider infidels, including education for girls and any step they consider outside their beliefs. What, in Ireland is so rightly known as a “TFD” – total ”blooming” disaster.
Stuff the Americans -they’ve been destroying & killing innocents for the past 70+ years. They will get their just deserts hopefully soon as their economy implodes. They can’t push Russia & China around any longer & they’re losing their place in the World.
The real disgrace is that Australia -urged on by our own War mongers have followed the USA into just about every bloodthirsty & cowardly invasion. The USA respects NO one & especially little lap dogs looking for a bone. We had NO hero’s in any of America’s Invasions. (Hard to call them wars when it was only weak Countries being invaded for no good reason)
The USA is guilty of massive War Crimes & our Australian Politicians are Guilty of joining in & using the victims for target practice. We should be properly ashamed — I am !
Yep. 3 to 5 million deaths in Indo-China, 2 to 4 million in Iraq, to name just two of the dozens of theatres the US (and we) have brought the ‘rules-based international order’ to. It’d be called a holocaust if anybody else had done it.
Kristus! I thought the godless commies were the bad guys.
“destroying & killing innocents for the past 70+ years.” The USA was at it more or less from the start, so no need to draw the line around 70 years ago. Examples:
Indeed. Once they killed all the indigenes, they turned on each other. Unfortunately, advances in transportation allowed them to spread their poison across the world. It’ll be a red letter day when their empire of hypocrisy filanny collapses.
Unfortunately the third of your three points applies equally to us here in Australia. Thirty years on from the Deaths in Custody Royal Commission the Aboriginal people of Australia are the most incarcerated people in the world. And we still arrest people for “obscene language” but not for rorting millions of dollars.
They Stole the whole of Califoria !
You are misleading the subscribers James.
California (the location) was claimed for Spain in 1542 but it was 60 years later that the missionaries introduced the original inhabitants to western life and, of course, the Bible.
Overt cronyism occurred when Mexico obtained independence in 1821 but the Bear Flag Revolt provided the USA with possession of (modern) California.
Anyone been across the border? My first time was in the mid 70s and, let me tell you, it was different. The last was only a few years ago and the infrastructure is no better to say nothing of the civic services; arguably worse. Was not the Bear Flag Revolt fortunate for California?
That’s because the bits the US stole from Mexico had all the sealed roads, sewers, and railways.
At least that’s what PJ O’Rourke said.
The same amount of time has elapsed for Mexico and California since 1849 so how come poor Donald, in desperation, had to suggest a fence?
Hard to believe but perhaps there are differences between the two places, not so much in ethnicity, but in administrative competence and corruption.
Maybe economic imperialism might have something to do with it.
The typical but fallacious response, beginning as we do, mid last century. Both countries experienced a form of imperialism but decisions as to the application of capital differed considerably; particularly post WW1.
Commencing a century later (within a decade), when Singapore was indistinguishable from Malaysia, such was not the case by the early 70s and the gap has only increased.
Ah, then it must be due to the innate superiority of the white man, eh Rassie? And would this be the same mentality that says it was/is ethically justifiable that the superior white man steals the homeland of the primitive black/brown/red/yellow man because the coloured people weren’t putting the land to its most commercially-profitable use?
This is the sort of racist rubbish we were fed in primary school in the 1950’s, when our teachers and curriculum developers were still catching up with the fact that the grand British empire was no more.
And the superiority at capital accumulation of the West in general and the USA in particular would have nothing to do with stealing human capital from Africa, unfair terms of trade between empire and colony, big exploiting small, the huge economic and political advantage of the $US functioning as the world’s reserve currency, stealing other people’s oil and natural resources, control of the World Bank and IMF, invading or putting crippling sanctions on any nation that dares to close its economy to the exploitation of American capital?
The USA has experienced imperialism? Really? The US is invariably used as an example of what can be achieved by throwing off the yoke of imperialism (vs eg a nation like Egypt, that also had cotton and oil, but not independence).
Maybe you need to read more widely, Rassie. May I suggest Naomi Klein’s excellent little book, ‘The Shock Doctrine’, which gives a good account of economic imperialism by the West since WW2.
No imperial cards to play here Peter and thus no “must be … ”
The PRC retained their instructions under Deng but Gorby, assuming that everyone was as smart as he and his wife, dissolved the institutions to be supplanted by a mafia that exists today.
Xi’s claim to fame is his assault on corruption and less so for his projects. Similarly, more or less for Singapore.
The tax structure of Scandinavia, collectively, enabled venture CAPITAL (unlike Australia). The place was more or less rural until after WW2 but before long many of its companies were recognised globally.
Klein’s view cannot explain Taiwan overtakeing the Philippines or South Korea verses Thailand from the 60s Until 1947 the better part of India was contemporary Pakistan. As to infrastructure, by 1960 Pakistan and India were chalk and Chinese.
I have the highest regard for Andre Gunder Franck (or, anglo, Frank) who exposed the multi-nationals and later foreign direct investment although there are some success cases regarding FDI.
I’m happy to continue and provide academic references. Let me know. We can examine specific circumstances for African States. Venezuela is a good example of the theme, over the past half century, too
I have just seen the first evidence that empathy classes might be doing something for Morrison. He has now been taught to cry on cue. He tried it out today talking about Afghanistan. Not sure how much it cost the tax payer for him to learn this trick. But thats all it is. A trick.
It proves one can teach an old dog a new trick.
I’m guessing Morrison wasn’t shedding tears of shame. Exactly what was he crying about – futility?
Was he holding a cut onion?
Was he eating a whole onion?!
I sometimes wonder if the war in Iraq effectively screwed up any possible gains (ignoring for the moment the extraordinary costs, waste of resources, loss of post-9/11 goodwill, and complete waste of human life) in Afghanistan. It seems it’s the forgotten war because of the FUBAR situation the US and Allies made for itself by setting militarism as the path to the New American Century with the Iraq invasion.
Maybe the US was always destined to mess up Afghanistan no matter its overreach elsewhere, but I can’t help but feel the Afghani citizens were poorly served by the Iraq invasion.
So it goes.
Yes, the Iraq adventure was at least as disastrous as Afghanistan and even less justified. The above article quotes one three-star general saying the West was, “devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing…. We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.” It’s equally true of Iraq. Thomas E Rick’s book Fiasco, published in 2006, described it all in detail. He quotes one American, posted to the administration in Baghdad not long after it was occupied, describing their job as “glueing together feathers and hoping for a duck.”
For me, the Iraq war was the rallying cry of terrorists that America had a special interest in the Middle East that went beyond the protection of the nation (Afghanistan at least had the pretence that it was about protecting itself from the terrorist threat that the Taliban inculcated and protected). There was no real grounds for the Iraq war – Bush’s gut instinct and Blair’s prayers to God notwithstanding – and that was a call to arms all over the Muslim world. Can’t imagine something like ISIS getting off the ground without that Iraq overreach.