波尔曼：阿富汗的事情总是会以这种方式结束
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/08/17/polman-it-was-always-going-to-end-this-way-in-afghanistan/
作者：迪克·波尔曼 2021 年 8 月 17 日
任何声称对塔利班在阿富汗的胜利感到震惊的人都没有注意到。
这总是必然发生的。 它之所以被推迟，只是因为山姆大叔把他那万亿美元的手指放在堤坝上20年了。 我们是否注定要永远留在这片对英国人、俄国人和亚历山大大帝来说已经极其不适宜居住的土地上？
失败的预兆早已显而易见，但大多数因战争而麻木的美国人早已不再关注。 2019年，有消息称，负责支持阿富汗政权的美国官员对自己的门徒感到厌恶，他们在备忘录和私人采访中表示，“经过华盛顿近二十年的帮助，阿富汗军队和警察仍然太弱，无法抵御”。 摆脱塔利班。”
他们之所以软弱，很大程度上是因为他们腐败严重。 用前美国大使瑞安·克罗克(Ryan Crocker)私下的话来说，“他们作为一支安全部队毫无用处，因为他们的腐败程度连巡逻队的级别都不如。” 然而，正如另一位美国官员 2015 年向政府采访者承认的那样，“他们表现得越少，我们向他们投入的钱就越多。”
不管公平与否，拜登总统都会承认撤退的耻辱形象——但事实上，阿富汗的灾难是美国两党总统一手造成的。 我们现在看到的是两党的混乱。
它是由乔治·W·布什发起的，他让我们承担了国家建设这一不可能完成的任务。 （在他 2005 年的就职演说中：“美国的政策是寻求和支持每个国家和文化中民主运动和民主制度的发展，”尽管他承认，“我们的国家已经承担了难以履行的义务”。 实现。”）
它得到了巴拉克·奥巴马的支持，他在 2009 年批准了增兵，其军事发言人不断表示隧道尽头出现了曙光（詹姆斯·马蒂斯将军 2010 年向国会表示：“我们现在正走在正确的轨道上。” ）。
它落在了唐纳德·特朗普的宽阔腿上，他决定是时候离开了，他在 2019 年邀请塔利班来到戴维营（“我们与塔利班相处得非常非常好”），并设定了 5 月的目标。 美军撤军截止日期为 2021 年 1 月 1 日。
尽管如此，共和党人不出所料地攻击了拜登，他们很容易忘记了反战情绪在他们自己的队伍中长期以来一直很猖獗。 2012 年共和党总统候选人米特·罗姆尼 (Mitt Romney) 在 2011 年谈到阿富汗时表示：“我们已经了解到，我们的军队不应该试图为另一个国家打独立战争。”
就在去年四月，特朗普还支持拜登宣布的撤军意向：“撤出阿富汗是一件美妙而积极的事情。 我计划在 5 月 1 日退出，我们应该尽可能遵守这个时间表。”
历史学家、资深保守派评论员丹尼尔·拉里森（Daniel Larison）写道：“拜登明白，他的选择是要么退出，要么陷入看不到尽头的困境，他正确地判断，前者对美国更好。” “阿富汗政府如此迅速地失去如此多的阵地这一事实证明，美国未能建立一个能够自力更生的运转良好的国家……这远非表明拜登决定的愚蠢，而是证实了其决定的智慧。 像这个国家这样摇摇欲坠、无法保护自己的国家，再推迟几个月甚至几年的撤军是无法挽救的。”
正如拜登周六所说，“如果阿富汗军队不能或不愿保住自己的国家，美国的军事存在再多一年或五年也不会产生什么影响。 美国无休止地卷入另一个国家的内战对我来说是无法接受的。”
这种观点也符合大多数美国人的情绪。 短期内，他可能会受到打击，因为投降的形象在全球范围内引起共鸣——尽管这类似于指责杰拉尔德·福特总统导致我们 1975 年最终从越南混乱的撤离——但事实仍然是，目前的撤军得到了 70% 的支持 的美国人，其中包括 56% 的共和党人。
大多数美国人似乎都明白——即使他们大多不关注战争——离开阿富汗基本上是最不坏的选择。 仅仅为了继续满足精神错乱的定义，即为了期望不同的结果而被迫一遍又一遍地做同样的事情，投资更多万亿美元和更多的美国机构是没有意义的。 面对现实需要智慧和政治勇气。
迪克·波尔曼 (Dick Polman) 是一位驻费城的资深国家政治专栏作家，也是宾夕法尼亚大学的驻校作家，在 DickPolman.net 上撰稿。 给他发电子邮件：dickpolman7@gmail.com
Polman: It was always going to end this way in Afghanistan
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/08/17/polman-it-was-always-going-to-end-this-way-in-afghanistan/
BY DICK POLMAN August 17, 2021
Anyone who professes to be shocked by the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has not been paying attention.
It was always bound to happen. It was merely delayed because Uncle Sam kept his trillion-dollar finger in the dike for 20 years. Were we fated to remain forever, in a land that had already proved fatally inhospitable to the British and the Russians and Alexander the Great?
The harbingers of failure had long been obvious, but most Americans, benumbed by the war, had long ago stopped paying attention. In 2019, word leaked that the U.S. officials entrusted with propping up the Afghan regime were disgusted with their proteges, saying in memos and private interviews that “after almost two decades of help from Washington, the Afghan army and police are still too weak to fend off the Taliban.”
They were weak largely because they were deeply corrupt. In the private words of Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador, “they’re useless as a security force because they are corrupt down to the patrol level.” Nevertheless, as another U.S. official admitted to government interviewers in 2015, “The less they behaved, the more money we threw at them.”
Fairly or not, President Biden will own the humiliating images of retreat – but, in reality, the Afghanistan debacle was authored by American presidents from both political parties. What we’re seeing now is a bipartisan clustermuck.
It was launched by George W. Bush, who committed us to the impossible task of nation-building. (From his 2005 Inaugural address: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,” even though, he admitted, “our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill.”)
It was sustained by Barack Obama, who approved a troop surge in 2009 and whose military spokesmen kept saying there was light at the end of the tunnel (Gen. James Mattis to Congress in 2010: “We’re on the right track now.”).
It landed in the capacious lap of Donald Trump, who decided it was time to get out, who invited the Taliban to Camp David in 2019 (“We’re getting along very, very well with the Taliban”), and who set a May 1, 2021 withdrawal deadline for U.S. forces.
Nevertheless, Republicans are predictably hammering Biden, conveniently forgetting that antiwar sentiment has long been rampant in their own ranks. Mitt Romney, the Republican’s presidential nominee in 2012, said of Afghanistan in 2011: “We’ve learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation.”
As recently as last April, Trump endorsed Biden’s announced intention to withdraw the troops: “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”
“Biden understood that the choice was between getting out or being stuck there with no end in sight, and he rightly judged that the former was better for the United States,” wrote historian and veteran conservative commentator Daniel Larison. “The fact that the Afghan government has lost so much ground so quickly proves that the U.S. failed in building a functioning state that could fend for itself… Far from showing the folly of Biden’s decision, it confirms the wisdom of it. A state as rickety and incapable of protecting itself as this one would not have been saved by delaying withdrawal a few more months or even years.”
As Biden said on Saturday, “One more year or five more years of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”
That view also jibes with the sentiments of the most Americans. He’ll likely take a hit in the short run as the images of surrender resonate globally – although that’s akin to blaming President Gerald Ford for our chaotic final departure from Vietnam in 1975 – but the fact remains that the current withdrawal is supported by 70 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of Republicans.
What most Americans appear to understand – even while mostly tuning out the war – is that leaving Afghanistan is basically the least bad option. There’s no point in investing a few more trillion dollars and more American bodies just to keep meeting the definition of insanity, the compulsion to do the same thing over and over again in expectation of a different result. It takes wisdom and political courage to face reality.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com
