There’s no good way to lose a war

At least 12 U.S. service members reportedly are dead due to the explosions at the Kabul airport. The final death count is not yet in, but it will likely exceed 12.

In all of 2020, there were nine U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan. The average yearly number from 2015-2020 was 16. There had been none in 2021.

Andy McCarthy filed this column about the explosions. Although ISIS is thought to have set them off, Andy suggests that it might have been the Taliban. He writes:

The Taliban is controlling Kabul and the airport perimeter through the Haqqani organization, a significant ally of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. With President Biden doubling down on our shameful bug-out by next Tuesday — leaving even though we know Americans will be left behind — the Taliban has every incentive to double down on its objective to project the image of a surrendering superpower skulking out of Afghanistan with its tail between its legs. The Haqqani are very capable when it comes to attacks of this kind, and they have the best intelligence and maneuverability in the environs of the airport. . . .

It is a tenet of jihadist lore that the anti-Soviet mujahideen, out of which al-Qaeda and the Taliban emerged, ground the Red Army into dust. They believe the jihad — not President Reagan, not the U.S. defense build-up, not the CIA’s arming of the mujahideen, not the internal rot of the U.S.S.R. — is responsible for the collapse of the Soviet empire. The Soviet military retreat from Afghanistan is a defining moment for them. For years, it drove terrorist recruitment, terrorist fundraising, and the ascendance of terrorist organizations as a global security threat. . . .

For the jihadists, the American surrender is a rerun of the Soviet surrender of 1989. It will be as iconic for them as 9/11.

(Emphasis added)

McCarthy’s analysis raises a point I think many are missing when they argue that the U.S. could have avoided disaster by evacuating all civilians before withdrawing our troops. That might well have been the better course, but it would have run the risk of incurring a significant number of U.S. deaths.

It’s hard to imagine the Afghan army standing up to the Taliban once America started a mass evacuation of civilians. Why risk one’s life fighting the Taliban, even with U.S. air support, when one knows for certain that the U.S. is just about to pull out and then will offer no support at all? Better to fade away before the military pullout occurs, if one is sure that it will.

That would have left around American 3,000 troops to defend against the Taliban more or less on their own. And this would have created a great opportunity for the Taliban to rout American forces in combat — something it hasn’t done and something that, per McCarthy, would be the stuff of legend.

Maybe the Taliban would have passed on this opportunity, waited for the evacuation and the military pullout to be complete, and then taken over the entire country. But it seems as likely that the Taliban would have attacked while our troops were still there so as to claim a famous military victory.

In this scenario, U.S. forces would likely have suffered significant loss of life. Perhaps a rout could have been prevented, but only, I believe, if we had brought in a large number of additional forces, with a corresponding increase in American casualties.

I’m not saying with any certainty that this scenario would have occurred. Nor am I saying that evacuating civilians before pulling the military out would have been inferior to Biden’s approach as a way to lose this war.

I’m just saying that both approaches to losing carried major risks. In the case of Biden’s approach, the risk was that the Taliban would get to Kabul before the end of August. In the case of the alternative approach, the risk was that the Taliban would attack U.S. forces and that we would be largely on our own in resisting.

I’m also saying that there’s no good way to lose a war, and that losing this war might end up costing as many American lives as several years of maintaining the stalemate.