The Saigon Moment Was Inevitable

After an incredible weekend in the mountains of Idaho with my wife and thousands of Red Dirt music fans, we settled in for the long drive and started catching up on what was happening out in the real world. While the events that I read about were certainly infuriating, they were far from surprising. The Taliban was at the outskirts of Kabul and the current Afghan president had fled the country. The Saigon moment of 1975, with local allies desparately clinging to the skids of US helicopters as American embassy personnel were evacuated before Vietcong and NVA troops overtook the city was upon us once again, despite the assurances from the Biden administration that this would probably never happen. Footage shows choppers airlifting US Embassy personnel to the Kabul airport and still more Afghans clinging to C130 aircraft taking off in hopeless attempts to escape their fate at the hands of the rapidly approaching Taliban advance.

PARTISAN MUDSLINGING/WAR MONGERING

Tribalism is a helluva drug, as the late, great Rick James once said…probably. The fiery outbursts across all media platforms was predictable. Republicans (who just a few months ago bashed Biden for extending the withdrawal deadline of May 1 that Trump had set), now feign outrage at that we didn’t do enough to secure Afghanistan.

We are the laughingstock of the world, they cry! How can we abandon the mission so soon??

Democrats (who bashed Trump for a premature exit from Afghanistan), also predictably, have praised President Biden for his unflappable courage in the face of hypocritical Republican outrage and withering media scrutiny, or whatever other boogeyman that exists in their reality.

Joe Biden has stayed the course and made the best out of an impossible situation that Donald Trump is solely responsible for!

SOCIAL JUSTICE WAR HAWKS

While it comes as no surprise that the military industrial complex will not let a good crisis go to waste, with the rise of “woke” corporatism, the reasons behind their war profiteering have shifted to mirror our current political climate. The specter of radical Islamic terrorism still remains at the forefront of their explanations, but the jihadist’s targets have shifted from US citizens, to Afghan women and girls. Yes, the same people who will drone bomb an entire wedding party in order to get one bad guy, collateral damage be damned, now wish that we would only think of those poor Afghan girls! Never mind the fact that multiple US administrations and Allied commands helped prop up various warlords who routinely raped young boys, with no repercussions from the top, while at the same time, prosecuting US ground troops who had the nerve to protect these innocent youth. All the progress we made in the name of the Raytheon/Lockheed-Martin/General Dynamic/Boeing/Halliburton Center For Girls Who Just Want To Read Good So That We Can Continue To Fleece The American Taxpayer Under The Guise Of Spreading Democracy will be lost in the wake of the Taliban blitzkrieg! Oh the loss of profits, I mean the humanity!!! How will we ever save face? Progress halted in the name of…never mind that, just think of those girls!

THE INEVITABLE MOMENT WAS INEVITABLY INEVITABLE

The sad reality of this whole situation is something that we should have known this whole time…it was always going to end with a 1975 Saigon type of moment. Despite the assurances from Donald Trump that things would have been different if the Dems just hadn’t stole the damn election, or the promise from President Biden that the 300,000 man Afghan national army would prevent the Taliban from running roughshod over the country after our US air strikes and ground forces ceased to keep them at bay, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and Taliban leaders declared the war over. In less than a month, the Taliban forces overtook all of the main provincial capitals, Bagram Airbase, Kandahar and the capital city of Kabul. One month is all we got for our 20 years, thousands of soldier’s lives and trillions of dollars spent spreading democracy and winning hearts and minds.

What started as a special operations/intelligence community mission to kill Osama Bin Laden and destroy Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan, quickly turned into a full on invasion, occupation and nation building quagmire. The hands of our Special Forces troops were tied, but the hands of the defense contractors were filled with cold, hard, taxpayer cash.

Members of Congress, Senators and Presidents from both sides of the aisle kept the gravy train chugging along, needlessly endangering American troops and Afghan civilians alike. Morale dipped and faith in the mission was lost, as it became increasingly apparent that nobody at the top had a clear vision of what victory even looked like, let alone a coherent strategy to achieve victory. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, nearly ten years after 9/11, yet the self-licking ice cream cone remained in that desolate corner of Asia. Most Americans could not pick out Afghanistan on a map, and while most Afghans probably couldn’t either, they have a long history of expelling foreign invaders and no plans of western democracy.

Many veterans of the Afghan war are understandably conflicted by the tragic events that have taken place over the weekend. Feeling a range emotions, from relief that we’re finally leaving, concern for those trying to get out, sadness for their brothers in arms that will surely face a hell that most cannot imagine, should they fall captive to the new Taliban government (many still willing to take up arms in their defense), and perhaps most of all, rage at the continued incompetence and blatant corruption of our domestic and military leaders over the past two decades, who placed profit above human life, corporate stock above honor, and abused the most elite fighting force that world has ever seen.

Ponzi schemes always crash in a spectacular fashion, as they require an increasing amount of suckers to buy in to maintain the racket, and Afghanistan proves this to be the case once again. “Americans have all the watches, but Afghans have all the time" is a phrase that has popped up repeatedly over the years. It rings loud and clear as chopper after chopper evacuate the US Embassy in Kabul, while Taliban leadership pose in the presidential palace. As renowned libertarian and anti-war activist, Scott Horton so aptly named his 2017 book, the whole debacle was A Fool’s Errand. There was no other way that it could possibly end, given the mission and the leadership.

Let’s hope that the lessons to be learned from the 1975 Saigon moment will finally be learned after the 2021 Kabul moment. The men and women our elected officials send into combat are the most patriotic people among us, willing to sacrifice life and limb in defense of this great country. We have a duty to use them only when all peaceful alternatives have been exhausted. Those who would knowingly squander the willful sacrifice of our Patriots, to line the pockets of a handful of powerful corporate entities deserve to be tried and convicted of war crimes. (Cough) Looking at you, George W, Barak Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden!

The tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan will be a stain on the American legacy for generations to come, just like the Vietnam War before it. Each president that held office during this disaster also held the power to end it, and despite all the empty campaign promises, only Joe Biden (despite his laundry list of blunders) was willing to make the truly tough decision to get out. Twenty years was more than enough time to prove that we don’t belong there, regardless of the disingenuous outcries of the military industrial complex and their lackeys in DC. To quote Saagar Enjeti, host of the podcast, Breaking Points, “The people who want to stay in Afghanistan should be honest about they want: 20 year old Americans getting blown to bits by a suicide bomb, for a government that has no interest in governing and an army that has no interest in fighting.”

Hats off to the 6,000 troops deployed to help secure the evacuation of those still stuck in yet another failed experiment in nation building, and prayers for their safe return. To my friends and all those that served in that hell hole, hold your heads high. None of the blame rests with you, it sits squarely on the shoulders of those who sent you. Goodbye and good riddance to Afghanistan, let’s stay out for good this time.