Jake Auchincloss
Before serving in Congress, I was an infantry platoon commander in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. In the summer of 2012, we patrolled three Taliban-contested villages on the Helmand River. On each patrol I would visit a tribal elder. They would serve me hot, sweet goat-milk tea. I would sip it in the 100-degree heat and smile politely. They would listen to me talk about the American mission and smile politely. Neither side could stomach it.
These Pashtun elders, veterans of the Soviet invasion and the civil war, were in a familiar bind. Taliban to their south, Americans to their north. Taliban conscripting their sons to plant IEDs; Americans demanding to know who planted them. My platoon and I were there for a summer, but the villagers would live with their decisions. One elder conveyed their wariness in an often-used expression: “You have the watches, but they have the time.” The Taliban could not outfight Americans, but it could outlast us, because we had no political endgame.
Counterinsurgencies are a political initiative with a military component. They require the regime in power to counter the insurgents with better governance. The Western-backed government in Kabul offered corruption and incompetence instead.
In situation room after situation room, the U.S. national security establishment made decisions based on sunk cost bias, not clear-eyed assessments of the national interest. For nearly two decades, the refrain was “more time, more troops, more treasure.” But they always knew better. The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction was blunt: “The American people have constantly been lied to” about Afghanistan.
What began as a counterterrorism mission — to bring to justice the architects of 9/11 and deny terrorists a base of operations in Afghanistan — mutated under President George W. Bush into a counterinsurgency and a boondoggle. By the time the two-trillion-dollar effort reached President Biden’s desk, he faced a stark choice: go big or go home. He could surge U.S. troops ahead of the summer fighting season or he could fully hand over Afghanistan to the Afghans.
The status quo of a small military footprint was not an option. Leaving a couple thousand troops would break President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban. The troops would require substantial reinforcements to battle the Taliban, which was at peak post-9/11 strength. The United States would be starting a third decade of warfare, still with no political endgame.
Biden made the right decision. There’s no glory in it, but there is integrity. He saw above the politics in Washington, beyond the news cycle, through the challenges of the withdrawal. Biden looked, instead, to the national interest. The United States must focus its foreign policy on countering the Chinese Communist Party and on leading coalitions to address the climate and pandemic emergencies.
The national interest will also be served by an after-action review of the withdrawal. Exiting a country long nicknamed the “graveyard of empires” was never going to be easy, but we should not have been caught flat-footed by the speed of the Taliban takeover or the collapse of Afghan willpower. There should be special focus on the U.S. transfer of Bagram air base to the Afghans, a key counterterrorism installation now in Taliban hands.
Congress must exercise oversight, too. We must investigate, in a bipartisan manner, the entirety of Operation Enduring Freedom. We should declassify the decision-making. We should look at the good: the Afghan people’s gains in education, electrification and equality. The bad: the corruption of Afghan central governance. And the ugly: the years of lies from Washington about the war.
My generation, which fought this conflict, must now learn its lessons. And be ready to prevent another endless war.
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