“Failed mission. The defeat of the West in Afghanistan “(by military historian Gastone Breccia, Il Mulino 2020) is not an instant book but is, so to speak, a pre-book, published last year when people started talking about withdrawal of America from that country and it was already easy to imagine how it would end. Now many say that the lesson of history is: no more wars, not even those well-intentioned to export democracy and defend human rights, we hope that Washington has understood this. Yet there are also those who say: it was wrong to withdraw, it would have been better to stay in Afghanistan to defend women’s rights; and it may happen that the same people who condemned the Bush invasion in 2001 say it.
After all, years after the Western intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq with neo-conservative motivations, the intervention of Obama and Hillary Clinton was made in Libya with democratic motivations and with equally negative results (indeed, more serious for Italy) but with the aggravating circumstance of hindsight. It’s not as easy as it seems to draw lessons, and pointing the finger at who’s wrong isn’t obvious. And even to deduce that you should never help anyone with weapons (not in Bosnia, not in Rwanda?) Is perhaps a bit too demanding.
But a further problem arises. We can say “Mission failed”, it is very true, if the aim of the Western war had been to bring about democracy, human rights and (in particular) the rights of women. But are we sure that this is the right thing in Washington? Bush gave this motivation, and also obtained a certain broad consensus in some sectors of democratic and progressive interventionism (the same one we have seen at work in Libya): Senator Clinton voted in favor of both of Bush’s wars, the one in Afghanistan and the one in Iraq. But was that really the purpose?
In reality, the American people, who do not think like Italians or other Europeans, would have reacted to the Twin Towers by asking not for peace, not justice, but revenge, pure and simple revenge, and the pressure from below on the president, on any president. , not only Bush but also Clinton, had it been Al Gore, had it even been John Kennedy, it would have been irrepressible; an American president who did not react with arms would lose the respect of his people, would not be re-elected, and would bring his party to ruin. It will be objected: and who cares? He (or she) and his parents would have cared about it.
As for Joe Biden, as vice president he would have liked to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately after the killing of Osama bin Laden, believing that America had fulfilled its mission (which according to him was not to bring democracy); these days he has fulfilled his purpose as president. Probably the Americans who matter, those in power, despite not having won the war as they hoped, believe that they have still sent the hostile world the strong message they wanted: to those who attacked us in 2001 we made war until 2021; try someone to attack us in 2021 and we will make war on them until 2041. Maybe then you will win, but we will make war on you for twenty years. This leads Biden and his people to believe that the Taliban can be trusted when they promise not to return to host terrorists, in twenty years they will have learned their lesson, they hope to Washington; and if the Taliban returned to strike America instead, America would strike them again, and the president would do so with the support of his people. The accounts would add up for him, for humanity no, for world peace no, but for the White House, for the Pentagon and for the State Department, yes.
A side issue: why the 300,000 regular Afghan soldiers, trained and armed by the West for twenty years, have not fired a single shot against the 75,000 Telebans? An answer can be found in another kind of pre-book, “American sniper” (Mondadori, most recent edition 2019): the author Chris Kyle recounts his experience as a veteran of the Iraq war, in which too many times he has seen one party threatens arrests and legal procedures, and the other party promises to behead all family members of soldiers or policemen or judges within hours; they always ended up giving up.
One more note. George Kennan, the prince of American diplomats, warned that Americans can help defend themselves only to peoples who are still determined to defend themselves. If his analysis is correct, there is a way to discern possible and unworkable humanitarian interventions, and Afghanistan is of the second kind.
And finally a personal memory. In a report from Somalia at war (early 90s) I found myself talking to an Italian colonel who told me: “In that area we gathered the chieftains and agreed on a truce which we Italians would be the guarantors of. All the leaders pretended to be recalcitrant, but in reality they all cooperated, they were happy that someone came from outside to stop them from shooting each other. It seemed done. But then an old man raised his hand and said: what happens if someone steals a goat? ”. The colonel replied: “We Italians will act as police”. “Good! And what punishment do you give him? ”. “I don’t know, you propose”. “Shooting!” They all shouted in unison, enthusiastic. “Eh no, eh no, we cannot shoot anyone …” said the colonel, who saw instantly all traces of consent diminish. The Italians were not very serious. Any hypothesis of inter-tribal accirdo vanished.
Here, the colonel told me this episode laughing, as if it were a comedy of the absurd, but in reality the episode revealed the impossibility of exporting democracy and human rights when the cognitive universes are too distant. The Italian colonel would have achieved the same result if he had tried to convert Somali Islamic pastors to LGBT + ideology, gay marriage or stepchild adoption.