America’s Missed Chance in Afghanistan
For many Americans, the dominant image of the United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan came at the very end: terrified Afghans storming the Kabul airport, clinging to departing planes, some falling to their deaths, desperately trying to flee the country as Taliban insurgents closed in on the capital. Three years ago this month, the longest and most expensive war in U.S. history, a conflict that resulted in 2,459 dead American soldiers and 20,000 more wounded, had ended in spectacular failure.
Although accusations of American incompetence in Afghanistan now focus on those last days in August 2021, the real error was made long before, at the moment of the United States’ greatest victory there: the fall of the Taliban in December 2001. Flush with success, hungry for vengeance, and confident of the Taliban’s complete defeat, the United States sought neither reconciliation nor compromise with Afghanistan’s former leaders. Instead, it sought to make an example of them. In doing so, the George W. Bush administration planted the seeds for the Taliban insurgency that would emerge and eventually wipe away two decades of sacrifice in Afghanistan.
Understanding what happened in Afghanistan in 2001—and how the United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory—helps explain why the war lasted so long and ended so badly. But it also offers a broader lesson about war, one that applies universally: total military victory is an illusory, dangerous goal. To be sure, there will always be groups that are truly irreconcilable and with whom negotiation or political compromise is impossible. But such examples are the exception, not the rule. More often than not, victory in war is achieved at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield—and demonstrating empathy toward a political adversary pays more dividends than recalcitrance.
An Early Win
Many forget it now, but the initial U.S. victory in Afghanistan was quick and overwhelming. The United States went to war on October 7, 2001, less than a month after al Qaeda terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people on September 11. By December, the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban militia, had chased al Qaeda from its safe haven and routed the Taliban government, with the essential support of U.S. airpower and a few hundred U.S. special operators.