It’s interesting, thinking about the last 20 years. Where were you when the planes hit the towers? I woke up that morning, and got to school late. I snuck in to Mr. Belinsky’s computer lab, which my school was very proud of, and was relieved when I didn’t immediately hear his booming voice call me out. Then I realized everyone was staring at the 26” TV on a shelf in the corner of the room. One of the towers was on fire, and I saw in real time the second tower get hit. “This is going to be bad” Mr. Belinsky said, before walking out of the classroom, my tardiness completely ignored. He came back into the classroom, holding a page he’d printed which had a quote attributed to Nostradamus:
“In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures,
the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning”
Was that an actual quote? No. A student named Neil Marshall wrote an essay on Nostradamus in 1997 and made that up as an example of something that could sound Nostradamus-y. But the reason I bring that up is because Mr. Belinsky was a smart man, and it jarred 16 year old me to hear such a rock-solid, down to Earth man spout crackery. I don’t blame him, everyone was shook. But I remember that clearly.
Doomscrolling is when you use your mousetrack to scroll up and down your social media feeds looking for shitty news. For the rest of that semester, I banged out my projects in record time during Belinsky’s class so I could take part in the original doomscrolling. We didn’t have social media. I was on CBC’s website constantly hitting the refresh button looking for new stories. Looking at the interactive maps of what got bombed in the middle east that day. Reading the casualty numbers. Listening to clips, reporters unsure of how exactly to pronounce “Al Qaeda”. This:
20 years later, I knew that America was still in Afghanistan, but I can’t think of the last time I’d actually bothered to think about it. Now, we’re kind of forced to.
It’s not America’s job to prop up the Afghani government in perpetuity, and it was about to get worse. The Taliban was on the rise, and the cost of staying in Afghanistan was about to ramp up. Part of the reason the last year was so low-cost for America was Trump’s promise to leave Afghanistan; The Taliban’s calculus was that waiting the year and steamrolling the Afghanis was probably better for them than immediately fighting a war with the Afghanis having American backup, particularly because America was able (regardless of whether you think they were willing) to continue dumping troops in. Trump gave them a win condition. They took it. And frankly, I’m not convinced that leaving was the wrong thing to do. Really… What was the alternative? Once the Taliban resumed hostilities, what was the American interest in continuing to send young American men into a meatgrinder? Some kind of cold war implications? Oil? Nation Building? From a completely cold and calculating place: I don’t think the cost/benefit analysis favored continued presence. I also think that out of an abundance of fairness, I should point out that the sunk costs were sunk, that there was never going to be a good time to leave, and that it was invariable that leaving would have *some* amount of negative implications for America.
That said… And in saying this, I’m aware that we all have that friend that watches TV and sees someone do something mindboggling and goes: “I could do that” like the moron they are. I’m not that guy. I’m the guy that makes fun of that guy. But there’s no doubt in my mind that even I could have managed that withdrawal better, and there are a whole lot of more experienced and (begrudgingly) better minds a whole lot closer to the situation. While some amount of death and chaos was inevitable, this…. Insane situation was not necessary. It was an unforced error. America is once again stabbing local support directly in the back. This isn’t partisan. This isn’t good policy.
It’s all come full circle. I’m Doomscrolling again, modern style. I don’t think I’ve ever been so… I don’t even know the word… Tired? Pessimistic? Frustrated? Regardless what you feel about the Afghani government, or their armed forces, those people are people… And what they’re going through… And those kids. Those poor fuckin’ kids. This:
What I haven’t seen anyone observe yet is how monumental a failure it was that the Taliban persisted. We talk about the culture war here in the West. They fought a much more literal culture war in Afghanistan. And the good guys lost.
My youngest sister was born this side of the start of the Afghanistan war, and she’s currently in college. That’s how old that generation is. The Taliban was decimated following 9-11; They were sapped of people, materiel, and infrastructure. Their leadership was decapitated, sometimes literally, multiple times. And now Biden says they’re at their strongest place militarily since 2001. I believe him, but that means that the current iteration of the Taliban was for the most part less than 10 when the war started. A good chunk weren’t even born. They grew up in a Democratic, coalition led, American-backed Afghanistan and still took up arms in their civil war.
I don’t understand that journey. I don’t live in the area. But something drove a generation of Afghanistan’s young, male population directly into a meatgrinder of extremism, and I don’t think a complete conversation can be had without trying to come to terms with that.