Why we failed in Afghanistan – it’s about worldview, stupid

Loading

by STEVE DEACE

History doesn’t just repeat, it also rhymes.
 
Thus, it’s purely poetic that Joe Biden had just been elected to his first of too many terms as a U.S. senator when Saigon fell 46 years ago. Just as he had been elected to his first of too many terms as president of these United States, when the country suffered its most embarrassing foreign policy defeat in Afghanistan since Saigon in Vietnam.
 
The rice paddy delta may not have much in common with the Bedouin poppy fields, and the Satanic verses memorized by the likes of the Taliban are much older than the demonic ravings of Marx that devilishly inspired Ho Chi Minh. Yet despite the circumstantial differences of these two events, and the time elapsed between them, their failures are strikingly similar.
 
And that’s because the same counterculture with the same terrible ideas was responsible for both of them.
 
Vietnam was the big bang — quite literally if you’re old enough to remember what “free love” really meant — of the counterculture. The cataclysmic event that gave birth to a new form of existence. One that felt it could exist without acknowledging any of the fundamentals of existence previous generations had to learn the hard way.
 
If America was founded by a generation that looked to the past to find answers for their present challenges and were inspired by centuries of Western and biblical thought to rediscover “self-evident truth” as a pathway to liberty, it sadly may be tossed on the ash heap of history by a counterculture generation that believes it can “your truth” its way to an earthly utopia. Which, of course, only proves the counterculture had ignored history at its own peril. For every attempt at utopia ends in some form of tyranny.
 
Eventually the utopians have to confront the truth about human nature, as the Rolling Stones discovered 50 years ago at Altamonte. Where they attempted a free concert with Hell’s Angels providing security (metaphor alert!) that ended in murder and mayhem, while a wimpy and effeminate Mick Jagger ridiculously strutted on stage begging everyone to stop fighting and just love each other.
 
If the Greatest Generation had a singular failure, it was failing to pass on why it rode the boats to Normandy and island hopped the Pacific to their progeny. After battling through a Great Depression and World War II, they were rightfully anxious to return to normalcy and enjoy the fruits of Americana once again. Unfortunately, their children, the Baby Boomers, were given an inordinate amount of comfort and wealth as a result. None of which they had to sacrifice for. To put it another way, the Greatest Generation raised too many spoiled brats.
 
Thus, when life is easy, it only makes sense you think the cost of that life is easy, too. That we can make love, not war, on our own as a species if we just try harder. I mean, why hadn’t any of the previous seven thousand years of recorded human history thought of that? Maybe, man, if Atilla the Hun had hashish or colored construction paper on the tip of his tongue, he could turn on, tune in, and drop out and he wouldn’t have done all that conquest stuff? That we can smile on our brother without any divine prompting, and everybody can just get together and try to love one another right now if the right album is on. What’s the point of dying at the hands of the Viet Cong, when I can kill a few brain cells and morsels of my soul here at home just fine?
 



 
Throw in a bloated military-industrial complex that mastered the art of mission creep, and the justification for flower power as a replacement for American Exceptionalism as a powerful hedge against global oppression was born.
 
We have never recovered as a civilization.
 
The counterculture was the tipping point of American Exceptionalism. There was American Exceptionalism prior, and what has become of it ever since. Yes, there have been brief periods when traditional Americana has risen up to try and restore some sanity. But for all his success toppling what was left of the Soviet Union’s papier-mache evil empire and restoring American confidence, Ronald Reagan also left office with the term “deficit spending” now a default setting. The Contract with America was the last time the Congress has worked on behalf of traditional America’s interests regardless of who holds the majority, and that was a quarter-century ago. Donald Trump did almost everything he could via executive power, but failed to drain the swamp in his own executive branch and was overwhelmed by COVID hysteria.
 
And that’s been it.
 
Ever since Richard Nixon historically trounced George McGovern, the counterculture’s first attempt at political ascendancy, the worldview that propelled McGovern’s run has been on a winning run ever since. And while our consultants and think tanks carefully crafted the conservative case for open borders and government mandates at the behest of ambitious corporatist Republicans and the corporations that control them, the counterculture was completing the long march through the institutions.
 
We offered tax cuts, they offered existential purpose and meaning. Granted, it was from below and not above, but the God-shaped hole in all of our hearts will be filled by something bad rather than nothing at all. You aren’t going to beat political correctness with political grift. Nor does Forever War stand a chance against White Fragility. Cancel Culture will prevail against no cultural heritage whatsoever. We are going to be inspired by something, it’s just a matter of whether it’s good or bad.
 
Which brings us to Afghanistan, which was always doomed to fail.
 
For years now people like me have asked over and over again, what is the mission there? What does victory look like? We were told it was “to fight the terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
 
Except with our open borders and attempts to erase our heritage at the societal level and calling it “college” we are fighting them here. Being in Afghanistan didn’t save us from fighting Islamo-fascism here whatsoever. Since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, there have been at least 30 attempted or successful terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from those driven by Islamic radicalism.
 

 
We thought our way of life was a plug-and-play system. We had abandoned things like God-given rights (which means we first have to acknowledge who actually is God) that were our cornerstones and replaced them with democracy as mere process. A process that we could just export, fill in the blanks with native tongue, and the natives would then take it from there. The Judeo-Christian theologies have long wrestled with the extents of free will.
 
Meanwhile, Islam is unsure of whether free will exists at all. So how were we going to give freedom to a culture that is unsure it has any free will? Unfortunately, asking such questions requires us to critically assess the advantages and disadvantages of different beliefs and customs, and that’s icky according to our elites so we passed.
 
Therefore, we blindly continued on with what George W. Bush said at his second inauguration, “The call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul.”
 
Except, if that were true, how do we explain the last seven thousand years of recorded human history that is simply an ebb and flow of empires, and different strands of humanity attempting to impose their will on others? If that were true, why is this still fledgling country, that hasn’t even reached its 300th birthday, the longest successful attempt at human freedom this fallen world has ever seen?
 
See, we no longer believe in such things as a “fallen world.” We’ve evolved beyond that. We’re more enlightened than that. We know better than that.
 
Just like we knew better than that when we created a welfare state. Just like we knew better than that when we decided the nuclear family wasn’t worth preserving. Just like we knew better than that when we determined our Constitution is a “living, breathing document.”
 
Just as a generation of young men decided fighting STDs during “free love” was their personal Vietnam at the time, the young men of Afghanistan couldn’t bring themselves to fight either. At least the counterculture didn’t have the Viet Cong literally at their house, so they were permitted some level of delusion. The Taliban was going to door-to-door in Kabul as these young men fled, presumably many with wives and children left behind, in a vain attempt to get onboard the last remaining American aircraft evacuating the city.

Read more
 

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
8 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Reports are coming out of Taiwan that the red Chinese are threatening them with words like this:
Once war breaks out with Taiwan, the US will abandon it.

Sounds about right.
Whenever Joe has a choice that he can make that benefits red China, he takes it.

Even our top Pentagon leaders (who are Joe’s allies) are running war games against Red States, not against Islamic or commie armies.

biden will do nothing as China over runs Taiwan. China bought and paid for biden. biden owes much to the CCP.

Do you think we would have more response options open to counter China if we keep squandering money, resources, and lives in the Middle East for another 10 or 20 years? Or have you not thought about that at all?

Still making arguments that don’t apply, just like Biden. He blew the implementation, not the philosophy, wake up. Meanwhile, when you’ve lost Leon Panetta…

“Leon Panetta calls Afghanistan a ‘Bay of Pigs’ moment for Biden: ‘Our credibility right now is in question'”

I guess greggie that you didn’t get much of a foreign policy education peeling potatoes way behind the lines in Vietnam. I guess giving trillions of dollars to allow people to not work doesn’t count. Now because Biden has greatly increased the transportation costs which has increased food costs, the Biden answer is to increase food stamps. Biden also finally sees his ignorance has increased fuel costs so he is asking OPEC to increase production while he cuts that of the US. I guess Biden thinks that environmental issues in OPEC countries doesn’t affect environmental quality in the World. I guess he also believes that fossil fuels in other counties does not affect global worming either! Your ignorance continues to amaze us here. Not sure why you must continue to waste electrons.

Have you supported the Biden spendapaloza? 1.9 trillion, then 1 trillion and next up 3.5 trillion. All in in his first year. Talk about squander. You at one time railed against debt now you embrace it.
Have another slice of hypocrisy.

I guess it’s hard for most of us to understand that some people have no concept of what freedom is. In fact, many living right here seem to take freedom for granted and have no idea what it really is vis a vie a totalitarian police state.

Freedom may be a God-given right but it doesn’t seem Allah hands that kind of stuff out.

Joe’s team is making noises that prove they have zero understanding of the mind of the Taliban.
State Dept. spokesman Ned Price, was in agreement with the United Nations Security Council’s official statement on Afghanistan which, in part, called on the new government (which they didn’t expressly refer to by name) to be an “inclusive” one where women got a seat at the table.

Women?!
At the ruling table under the Taliban?
That’s a laugh.

Nancy P was worse.
“The Taliban must know that the world is watching its actions. We are deeply concerned about reports regarding the Taliban’s brutal treatment of all Afghans, especially women and girls.
Any political settlement that the Afghans pursue to avert bloodshed must include having women at the table.
As we strive to assist women, we must recognize that their voices are important, and all must listen to them for solutions, respectful of their culture.”

Might as well be Michelle Obama standing like a dork, holding a sign that reads, “Bring back our girls.”
Yeah and those Muslim fundamentalists, Boko Haram, got right on that for her, didn’t they?
No, actually it took force, lots of force.
And now we’ve just ceded even the idea of force, haven’t we?