When I began this blog it very quickly found its way into political matters. Maybe it was the path of least resistance or the topic that most “needed” my opinion. It led to my first book, Waiting for Someone To Explain It; The Rise of Contempt and the Decline of Sense. Although I had to explain the mysterious title (Eugene Ionesco once wrote “as the world is incomprehensible to me, I am waiting for someone to explain it”), the subtitle, chosen during the reign of Trump, is self explanatory.
Over the years, my writing interests changed and, in fact, I became downright cynical trying to write about our increasingly fractious body politic and as divisive voices swelled I mostly withdrew from the conversation. Also, writing in the COVID era became oppressive. All the theatre and live music we loved disappeared, and these acrid politics leaked into public health, one exacerbating the other.
Still there are topics I just cannot ignore and although I know little about Afghanistan, I know who to turn to and that is Heather Cox Richardson, a historian who set out, in a way like I did, to write a “journal.” There are vast differences, though. She approaches each topic in a scholarly fashion, documenting her opinions, and is extremely disciplined, writing each day on Substack in the form of an email to her subscribers. It’s free unless you want to post comments. I’ve come to rely on her analyses as a source of the facts behind the events.
Richardson’ posting about August 26 (see the entire entry by subscribing with your email address) is a fully understandable discussion, to the point, of the quagmire called Afghanistan. Here is the essence of her argument as she puts it:
I confess to being knocked off-keel by the Republican reaction to the Kabul bombing.
The roots of the U.S. withdrawal from its 20 years in Afghanistan were planted in February 2020, when the Trump administration cut a deal with the Taliban agreeing to release 5000 imprisoned Taliban fighters and to leave the country by May 1, 2021, so long as the Taliban did not kill any more Americans. The negotiations did not include the U.S.-backed Afghan government. By the time Biden took office, the U.S. had withdrawn all but 2500 troops from the country.
That left Biden with the option either to go back on Trump’s agreement or to follow through. To ignore the agreement would mean the Taliban would again begin attacking U.S. service people and the U.S. would both have to pour in significant numbers of troops and sustain casualties. And Biden himself wanted out of what had become a meandering, expensive, unpopular war. Letters From An American © 2021 Heather Cox Richardson
The devil is in the details so best that it be read in its entirety.
Meanwhile, I fear that the self righteous Republicans, who only recently were criticizing Biden for not withdrawing from Afghanistan sooner, will gleefully use this as a fulcrum to “steal” the Midterm elections. On the surface it is a blunder of major proportions, not to mention the cost to innocent lives and more of our troops. But as all things historical, retrospect with a political motive is a different lens than clearly seeing events as they unfold. No doubt they (especially the Trumpublicans) will make hay while the sun is shining on their hypocritical countenance. As usual, nothing tells it as succinctly and dramatically as a political cartoon, this one from the Palm Beach Post August 27.
