Biden's Afghanistan Pull-Out is Dead Wrong

In 2004, as Assistant Secretary of State to Colin Powell, my charge included setting up police training in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In Afghanistan, dead Soviet equipment littered the airport.  In both places, cultural discord was everywhere.  Biden’s desire to get out of Afghanistan is understandable.  It is also wrong.  If we want to avoid another 9/11, we must secure peace.

Back in 2003, 2004, and 2005, some things were already clear.  Stability would come by inches, not leaps.  This was not post-Cold War Europe, not even post-WWII Europe.  These were riven countries, Iraq more educated, both tribal, troubled, struggling.  On the first meeting with President Karzai, I recall thinking his palace was the first with bullet holes in windows.  This was going to be a long engagement. 

Oddly enough, then-Senator Biden would call Secretary Powell, Deputy Secretary Armitage, and get patched through to me.  He asked endless questions on metrics, how many police we had trained, to what level, with what endgame, at what cost, and were we winning?  The last question always stuck in my craw.  Winning is often hard to define. 

Winning compared to what?  Where we started, halting power projection, stopping spread of terrorism, responding to 9/11, reducing heroin flow, creating self-reliance, angling for peace?  Compared to how we stabilized Europe against the Soviets, the Philippines against communist insurgency, Japan, South Korea, all after WWII?  We were still in those places – and, for the cost, we got returns.   

But Afghanistan?  We kept putting points on the board, trained, deployed, confronted, tried to dismantle corruption, built roads, academies, legitimate economy.  We taught democracy, sought understanding, disincentivized trafficking in drugs and people, tried to ride the tribal tide, and yet – it was a slow process.  Were we winning?  Yes, by some measures, no by others.   

And now, twenty years after the event that led us there, the same Joe Biden – aged and weary, no longer taking a long view, wants out.  One wonders if post-WWI diplomats imagined that isolating Germany – out of sight, out of mind – ended their worries?  Or if post-WWII diplomats thought staying in two dozen outposts was worth the cost?  Or whether anyone remembers a precipitous pullout not so long ago, from Iraq in 2011.  Where did that lead?

Allied indifference – even anger – at post-WWI Germany precipitated WWII.  WWII’s devastation triggered 70 years of continued military presence, tripwires, intelligence, and engagement in former battlespaces.  The 2011 Iraq pullout triggered an upsurge of terror, rise of ISIS, demise of peace, return of US troops.  Now, we come to Afghanistan.

After Trump’s January 2021 drawdown, US troop strength is roughly 2500 – tripwire strength, confirming our commitment, keeping faith with those who served and did not come home.  The goal – stated by Trump, military leaders, diplomats – was to hold the line, forcing Taliban, Afghan Government representatives, and US negotiators to secure a final peace.  The goal is worthy, numbers right, work arduous, outcome worth the final push.  But now we leave?

Suddenly, against history's hard-learned lessons and better instincts of Biden’s senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence corps, a weary Biden pulls the plug.  The man who used to worry about outcomes, trajectories, and history – is tired.  His horizon in near, energy dear, focus on that peace accord – measure of when to withdraw – takes time too.  Pull the ripcord, be done.

Here is the problem.  Peace – in places from Germany and Japan to Kosovo, Iraq, and Colombia – only comes with teeth-grinding patience, not giving up, understanding tripwire presence, timelines conditioned on benchmarks, written assurances, crosschecks, and mutual commitments are needed. 

What Biden has just done is a double error.  He not only imperils a formal peace, which with effort could have come but replays the historic post-war invitation to instability.  What can we expect?  Increased sectarian, tribal, drug lord, and terror group violence, first within and then without the borders of a fragile state.  What else?  The return of mortars, dead equipment, and bullet holes.  Keeping faith in the future – would have taken so little and may yet cost us more than we know.  Biden’s interest in a sudden, full retreat is understandable.  It is also dead wrong. 

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, a former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, a ten-year naval intelligence officer, author of “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is the National Spokesman for the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) a 2.3 million-strong, non-partisan group for Americans 50+.