Current Affairs

After an investment of 20 years, 2.2 trillion USD, and the loss of 2,400+ American lives (with thousands more injured) President Biden announced the U.S. is finally getting shed of Afghanistan. At slingthought here, we award the President high marks for his knowledge of foreign affairs and courageous leadership (characteristics missing from the Office of the President for years now); however, like most, we were appalled to watch both the Afghan government and the army disintegrate inside of week, causing an uncoordinated mad scramble for the exits by Westerners and Afghanis alike (in just days we went from recalling some 3,000 troops home to sending 5,000 more back in). The scenes from Kabul and its airport are appalling, causing an inevitable comparison from some of us old-timers to the fall of Saigon in 1975 (the optics, as they say, were not good either time).

The similarities do not end there— the Vietnam War and the Afghan war have in common that both were recognized to be stupid and wasteful even while they were going on— in each, the cost of blood and treasure was immense (we lost 50,000+ troops in Vietnam). And in both wars the case to be made for them was based on lies. In Vietnam, it was a snowballing litany of military and political lies; but in the case of Afghanistan, it has not been so much a lie of commission as a lie of omission. There is a truth about Afghanistan that has gone unmentioned to Americans for 20 years, and it is this: no one gives a damn about Afghanistan and no one ever has.

In kindest possible terms, Afghanistan is a god-forsaken piece of dirt populated by tribal peoples who stopped evolving around the 7th century. We’re told it contains a wealth of minerals and natural resources but the country is landlocked and the minerals are buried under some of the harshest terrain in the world. After 20 years of American occupation (well, sort of) it was demonstrated to us that it has no functioning government or army. The country is now (again) ruled by religious extremists called Taliban. The Taliban impose extreme Islamic law on the populace (who apparently don’t seem to mind) and despise culture, art, and learning— in fact, all modernity (not too dissimilar to the Republican Party here in the U.S.). They beat and rape their girls and women. And for all the money and lives wasted in Afghanistan we have nothing to show for it.

That’s because our government (including now Mr. Biden) has never told us the truth about our mission there and its extreme importance. And when the truth becomes alternative thinking, slingthought owes its readers both.

Afghanistan (alas) has only one thing going for it (to put it into those kinds of terms): it shares a 1,600 mile border with Pakistan. And while Afghanistan and Pakistan share other similarities, Pakistan has something Afghanistan does not: about 160 nuclear weapons. Pakistan also has an extremely fragile and corrupt national government and a national intelligence service which are both highly infiltrated with religious extremists. The idea that Pakistan could lose control over a nuclear weapon (or a few) is not too trying on the imagination. And an unsecured nuclear weapon up for grabs in that part of the world would be… worrisome.

Which is why the U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attack— it was never about finding and fighting terrorists there (a couple satellite fly overs can identify any possible terrorist training camps and they can be destroyed by missile) (and even more importantly: six Saudis sitting in an apartment in Berlin plotting an attack on our country presents more threat to us than all of Afghanistan). We’re neck deep in terrorists all over the world— what makes Afghanistan special is its geographical location. We went to Afghanistan to install a rapid reaction force of highly trained Special Operations troops and contractors able to deploy into Pakistan on a moment’s notice (we can have Special Ops forces on the ground in Pakistan within two hours) with the mission to lead the recovery of any… misplaced… nuclear weapons.

We must tell our readers here that slingthought has received no confirmation that this U.S. (and allies’) force exists but we can say: 1) we do calculate the rapid response force in Afghanistan to be between 3,000 and 5,000 Special Ops troops and 2) if the U.S. hasn’t maintained the force described here in Afghanistan for substantially most of the last 20 years, it would have been one of the greatest instances of military malpractice ever.  Upon reflection, however, perhaps this shouldn’t be unconsidered, either.

Again, we’re highly optimistic regarding the Presidency of Joe Biden— but let’s all start out on the right foot. There’s no truth the American people can’t face— we just want to know where we’re at, what we’re doing, and why.