Washington – In making peace with the Taliban, the United States is movingto end its longest-ever war and also signalling a major shift: After twodecades, an era of global US military interventionism is winding down.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks killed 3,000 people and traumatizedthe American psyche, the debate in Washington has been not whether but howto wage a worldwide “war on terror.”
The 2003 invasion of Iraq set off worldwide protests but Afghanistan hadbeen cast in Washington as “the good war” with Presidents Barack Obama andDonald Trump both reluctantly ramping up troop levels.
Under an agreement set to be signed Saturday in Qatar, Trump is expected tostart pulling out troops and leave the future of Afghanistan tonegotiations between the Islamist militants and the internationallyrecognized government in Kabul.
Adam Wunische, an Afghanistan expert at the Quincy Institute forResponsible Statecraft, a new Washington think tank that promotes militaryrestraint, said that a “responsible withdrawal” from Afghanistan had beenthe major taboo in Washington.
“There are some places where we accept the higher risk of terrorism, butpoliticians are terrified of the prospect of a terrorist attack originatingfrom Afghanistan and then having to explain it to their constituents. Andthat’s because of the memory and scar of 9/11,” he said.
“I think the election of Trump was not necessarily a shift in itself but itwas an indication that the shift had occurred — that someone could run onending endless war and win.”
Wunische doubted that the United States could turn back to a pre-Trumppolicy, with even critics advocating a “more nuanced” interventionismrather than pushing for a return to massive military deployments.
All Democrats seeking to replace Trump have supported some form ofwithdrawal from Afghanistan, with none facing the political pressures ofObama who toured Afghanistan and Iraq in the midst of his 2008 campaign.
Representative Ro Khanna, a prominent supporter of Democratic presidentialfront-runner Bernie Sanders, pointed to Al-Qaeda’s expansion around theworld and the Taliban’s dominant position in swathes of Afghanistan despitenearly 19 years of war.
“Thinking we are going to bomb our way out of terrorism has just provenfalse,” Khanna said.
“There was a very broad consensus that the initial strikes on Afghanistanwere justified. But 20 years later? No one said that we were trying toreshape Afghanistan society.”
– Selective war –
Despite Trump’s campaign vows to finish “endless wars,” the United Statesstill stations more than 200,000 troops overseas — and he has rushed20,000 additional troops into the Middle East over the past year.
The Trump administration, while saying its broader goals are to counterChina and Russia, has engaged in rising confrontation with Iran, in Januarykilling the clerical state’s most prominent general in a drone strike as hevisited Iraq.
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A senior diplomat from a US ally saw a change in Washington but said it wasa mistake to believe Trump was fully retreating from military involvement.
“Trump isn’t an isolationist, he’s a selectionist. He wants to pick andchoose where the US will be active,” the diplomat said.
“That sounds fine until there is a vacuum and it gets filled by other, muchmore problematic powers like Russia.”
Russia has deployed in force into Syria, where both Obama and Trumpresisted calls for greater intervention to try to stop President Basharal-Assad’s brutal crushing of opposition.
Trump was criticized across the political spectrum last year for how heabruptly pulled US forces from northern Syria, allowing Turkey to attackUS-allied Kurds, but he faced few calls at home for an extended militarydeployment.
– Weary public –
Since September 11, US-led wars have led directly to the deaths of morethan 800,000 people and cost the United States some $6.4 trillion whenincluding the future costs of care for veterans, according to BrownUniversity’s Costs of Wars Project.
Lawmakers have increasingly spoken of revising a vast war authorization –approved by Congress days after September 11 with only one dissenting vote– that last year was used to justify US deployments or military action in15 countries.
Support for military action has waned sharply since the Iraq debacle. In aSeptember 2019 Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans said the Afghanistanwar was a mistake from the start.
But the mood may be more weariness than anger. Unlike during the VietnamWar, for which Americans were drafted, there are few major protestsdemanding a withdrawal from Afghanistan, where 22 US service members diedlast year.
Retired general David Petraeus, who commanded troops in both Iraq andAfghanistan, said the United States can sustain support for long-termdeployments if it keeps down “the cost in blood and treasure” — pointingto the seven-decade presence in Europe, South Korea and Japan.
The last two decades show that “ungoverned or even inadequately governedspaces in the Muslim world, particularly in the greater Middle East, willbe exploited by Islamist extremists,” he told an unreceptive audience atthe Quincy Institute.
“You cannot watch this problem until it goes away. Because Las Vegas rulesdo not apply in these places — what happens there doesn’t stay there.” -APP/AFP
