Afghanistan
This is the first and probably last I’ll ever write about Afghanistan. As I type that out, I fear those word may haunt me some day. History seems to suggest no one is done with Afghanistan, a place I know almost nothing about.
I was only ten years old on 9/11, though in my memories I feel older than that, and it was surely in the subsequent days and weeks that I first became aware of this place called Afghanistan. This was also likely true for most Americans. The initial war on terror was swift and widely regarded as just in the western sphere. I need not detail the obvious decay and failure in the nearly two decades since, but what has happened in the last two weeks is utterly remarkable.
When we are teens they teach us that pulling out doesn’t work. If only the adults had remembered that lesson. Afghanistan has humbled us.
I’m not sure where we go from here. Many Americans felt humiliated by President Trump. Surely, all of the rest feel humiliated now. We Americans share the collective burden of the egregious failures and incompetence of our leaders. If we purport to be a democracy, the buck stops not with the President, but with us: we, the people. Rather than pointing fingers, we must take responsibility for the failures of our leaders.
First, we must apologize to the people Afghanistan. Second, we must thank the people of Afghanistan. I hope at the very least we have learned an important lesson, though it will always be tragic that is was at the expense of so many, including our own.
We allowed the military-industrial complex to take over a mission that had failed before it began. Moderates turned a blind-eye to the appointment of the most problematic member of the Biden administration, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, the diplomat equivalent of Chesa Boudin. I must say publicly what I have long said in private — put simply, Tony Blinken is and always has been unfit for the job, and it should be no surprise that he has just overseen one of the most egregious blunders in American foreign policy history.
No matter your political persuasion, we must open our eyes together. The American government is the last stand for political liberty, and it is undoubtedly stumbling. We must no longer accept the status quo. For my part, I will minimize my critiques of elected leaders, for whom we should mostly blame ourselves (clown people deserve clown things), and maximize my thinking around how I can help. To the extent that I have any ability to effect solution, I can no longer stand by idly and watch as our world collapses. I suppose Afghanistan has converted into an activist.
