Max Boot
Veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Gulf War got victory parades. What do the 800,000 veterans of the Afghanistan war get?
They fought with awe-inspiring dedication and great sacrifice across nearly two decades, but in the end could not establish a sustainable status quo. The government of Afghanistan disintegrated in just a matter of days in August. The Taliban — the violent extremists that U.S. troops had been fighting for nearly 20 years — are now in control of the entire country. Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with U.S. forces have been evacuated, but the majority of those who applied for “Special Immigrant Visas” have been left behind.
The acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is a “specially designated global terrorist” with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. The Kabul province’s governor, known as Qari Baryal, is an associate of al-Qaeda who used to carry out deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers and civilians in the capital. There is no way to sugarcoat it: This is what defeat looks like.
It is perfectly understandable for those who served in Afghanistan to wonder on this Veterans Day: Was it worth the lives of 2,352 U.S. service members and the wounding of nearly 21,000 more — to say nothing of the psychological traumas that afflict so many of those who serve in any war? There is no good answer to that question. If it offers any solace to those who served, however, this is not a new dilemma.
Some version of these same agonizing questions was asked by veterans of the Korean War, which ended in an unsatisfying stalemate, and the Vietnam War, the only previous war that the United States lost.
Even veterans of the Great War, despite their ostensible victory in 1918, came to question their sacrifice after it became clear that U.S. involvement had neither made the world safe for democracy nor ended all wars. Instead, World War I sowed the seeds of another, even larger conflict just 21 years later. Adding insult to injury, destitute veterans who marched on Washington in 1932, demanding early payment of a bonus they had been promised, were rebuffed by Congress and violently routed by Army troops.
We like to imagine that when U.S. troops go into battle, the inevitable result is total victory, but reality has always been messier. Yes, federal forces won the Civil War, but they lost the peace. After the end of Reconstruction, Southern Whites were able to subjugate African Americans with Jim Crow laws. Yes, U.S. forces won World War II, but they could not prevent all of Eastern Europe from falling under the iron grip of Joseph Stalin, a tyrant whose evil arguably rivaled Adolf Hitler’s, and the outbreak of a Cold War that threatened nuclear annihilation.
No defeat was as traumatizing as the one in Vietnam. I wrote a book about Edward Lansdale, the legendary covert operative who helped to create the state of South Vietnam — and who was anguished to see its collapse in 1975. He expressed “a deep-seated feeling of grief over my failure to accomplish enough in my 1965-1968 service in Vietnam to have helped the people there prevent the tragedy which eventually overcame them.”
No doubt, many veterans who fought in Afghanistan feel the same way today.
There are many failures in Afghanistan that need to be judged before the court of history. These include President George W. Bush’s decision to shift resources to an unnecessary war in Iraq; President Barack Obama’s decision to mount an ill-fated, time-limited troop surge; President Donald Trump’s decision to conclude a terrible, one-sided deal with the Taliban; and, finally, President Biden’s decision to pull all U.S. forces out despite widespread predictions of the disaster that would follow.
America’s generals also need to be held to account for their Pollyanna-ish assessments of the war effort and the state of the Afghan security forces, the many offensives they ordered that incurred great costs for only transitory gains, and all of the corrosive effects of too much U.S. money (which fueled corruption) and too much U.S. firepower (which caused needless deaths and created new enemies).
But none of those failures should detract from the heroism and dedication of the ordinary Americans who served on the front lines. On numerous visits to Afghanistan from 2008 to 2017, I often came away uncertain whether we were winning but certain that the U.S. troops I met were a credit to their country. They were, in fact, the best of us. The same was true of the diplomats, aid workers, intelligence officers and other unsung heroes who served alongside the men and women in uniform.
There were no battles in Afghanistan as decisive as Gettysburg, Midway or D-Day, but those who fought displayed just as much valor and commitment. Even though the war was lost, those who served should forever remain proud of their service — and those of us who did not serve should spend this Veterans Day, and every day, honoring those who did. Maybe they should get a parade after all.
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