The U.S. response to 9/11 evolved from a campaign to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban into a doomed project in nation-building. But complete withdrawal is no solution.

By Bing West, The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2021

On Sept. 11, 2001, Islamist terrorists murdered 3,000 civilians in New York. A month later, the U.S. and allies invaded Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. Two years into the conflict, President George W. Bush declared, “We will not fail.” In 2009, President Barack Obama said, “You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

It turns out that both presidents were wrong. In Afghanistan, we have failed and we have been outlasted. The enemy is still advancing on the battlefield, and President Biden has designated the upcoming 9/11—a jarring and discordant symbol—as the final withdrawal date for our remaining troops.

After American troops left South Vietnam in 1972, three years passed before Saigon fell. It won’t be three years before Kabul falls. “I never thought we were there to somehow unify Afghanistan,” President Biden said in his announcement. “We went for two reasons—to get rid of bin Laden and to end the safe haven.”

But we shouldn’t delude ourselves. The Taliban have deep ties with other, more virulent terror groups, and once Kabul falls, Afghanistan will again be a terrorist safe haven. Worse, our departure will send signals to our allies and our own military that we can ill afford.

Within four months of the U.S. invasion in October 2001, CIA operatives and Special Forces had trapped al Qaeda’s core leadership in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. To the disappointment and disbelief of a nation eager to avenge 9/11, faulty U.S. military decisions allowed bin Laden to escape into Pakistan. The Taliban also scattered.

Looking back, no U.S. military commander would repeat the clear-hold-build strategy.

President Bush responded to this setback by pivoting from a modest military campaign to a herculean effort to transform Afghanistan’s tribal society into a democracy. “We should not just simply leave after a military objective has been achieved,” he said.

There was a total mismatch, however, between that policy goal and the manpower the U.S. deployed. In 2002, there were only 10,000 American and allied troops in a country of 39 million. The next year, the Bush administration, with the consent of Congress, invaded Iraq, resulting in a further neglect of resources for Afghanistan. Over the next several years, more insurgent bands re-emerged, uncontested by dispirited Afghan soldiers and local police.

To counter the insurgents, generals stressed that American soldiers were not just warriors but nation-builders. The mantra was “Clear, Hold, Build”: American troops would clear villages of the Taliban and then Afghan soldiers would come in to hold the areas and to build infrastructure, thus supposedly winning the allegiance of locals.

President George W. Bush thanks military members at Bagram Airfield, December 2008. PHOTO: SAMUEL MORSE/U.S. AIR FORCE

By 2008, 50,000 American and allied soldiers were spread thin in outposts stretching a thousand miles from north to south. They sweated buckets in summer and shivered through the winters, eating plastic-wrapped MREs. In the mountainous northeast province of Kunar, they lived without heat or running water.

“In 2008, I flew to the Kunar Valley,” President Biden said in his recent announcement. “What I saw reinforced my conviction that more and endless American military force could not create or sustain a durable Afghan government.”

Why was then-Sen. Biden convinced 13 years ago that failure was inevitable? As he doubtless saw, our soldiers were fighting insurgents who were indistinguishable from the villagers. “My platoon was responsible for 17 villages,” Lt. Jake Miraldi told me at the time. “We made one visit to a village every two weeks. How much difference could we make?” Plainly put, there were no objective measures of progress.

In 2010, in frustration, our generals pulled our soldiers out of most outposts in Kunar. But they remained firm believers in the clear-hold-build strategy. “The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy,” said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan. U.S. generals convinced a skeptical President Obama to increase the force to more than 100,000 U.S. and allied troops.

Generals clung irrationally to a nation-building strategy whose costs far exceeded America’s security needs.

Pacifying southeastern Afghanistan became the focus, and the pattern seen in Kunar province was repeated. Marines and soldiers patrolled from village to village, forever on the move. The Marines launched an operation to clear Marjah district, a stronghold for the Taliban and drug lords. After heavy fighting, a coterie of Afghan officials were helicoptered in. Called “government in a box,” this effort to expand Kabul’s writ promptly collapsed. The officials refused to leave their fortified compound.

The Marines slogged on. In 2010, they seized Sangin district in a fight so bloody that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates considered pulling them out entirely. But after visiting Sangin and other outposts, he said, “Frankly, progress has exceeded my expectations.”

Any such progress was ephemeral. When he sent more troops, President Obama had said, “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.” But by 2014, Afghan security forces were retreating, the Taliban had expanded their control and American and allied troop strength was ebbing.

In over a decade of reporting on the war in Afghanistan, I embedded with soldiers from Kunar to Marjah to Sangin and a dozen battlefields in between. They did clear areas, but holding and building required dedicated Afghan soldiers, police and local officials. Soldiers from Tajik tribes were sent into Pashtun provinces to fight Pashtun Taliban. These Afghan soldiers lacked the motivation to patrol and to risk being blown up, while the government in Kabul failed to curb corruption or inject a sense of national commitment into an overwhelmingly tribal culture.

During the Vietnam War, presidents and civilian policy makers dominated military strategy and decision-making. In contrast, during the Afghanistan war, our generals held the strategic power; civilian policy makers deferred to their judgment. But the generals clung irrationally to a nation-building strategy whose costs far exceeded America’s security needs. They failed to adapt, set new objectives and lower the human and financial costs of the war. Looking back, no U.S. military commander would repeat the clear-hold-build strategy. But to its detriment at times, our military’s ethos is to accentuate the positive and to never, never quit.

Since 2018, Gen. Scott Miller, the current commander in Afghanistan, has orchestrated an effective campaign, with few forces, to keep control of Afghanistan’s cities and key districts. There are now just 2,500 American troops in country, and the last U.S. combat death occurred in February 2020.

Our military should have instituted this small-scale, low-key approach a decade earlier. A few weeks ago, the generals recommended to President Biden that he continue with Gen. Miller’s strategy. Instead, the president chose the high-risk course of a total withdrawal. By sticking with a failed strategy for so long, our generals had exhausted their political credibility. 

U.S. soldiers greet their Afghan police counterparts near Jalalabad, December 2014. PHOTO: LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

But Afghanistan will not go gentle into that good night. After Saigon fell in 1975, over 200,000 Vietnamese fled by sea, with more than 100,000 resettled in the U.S. A discomfited American public will now watch a similar exodus from Afghanistan. In light of his withdrawal decision, President Biden has incurred the obligation to provide for the exit of the thousands of Afghans who loyally served alongside our soldiers and diplomats. If he does not act swiftly, a great many of them will certainly be murdered by the Taliban.

In response to 9/11, troops from 50 NATO and other nations went to war alongside us. Many leaders among our loyal allies lost their reputations or re-elections as the war dragged on. Over and over again, American leaders assured them that the U.S. was determined to succeed. Now that we have quit, our allies will be reluctant to follow our lead in the next military crisis.

Abandoning Afghanistan does not presage attacks against American cities; our post-9/11 defenses are formidable. But it will encourage our adversaries to test us. After Saigon fell, Russia and Cuba supported proxy wars in Latin America and Africa, while Iranian radicals seized our embassy in Tehran. The Biden administration will face similar provocations. Already, China is threatening Taiwan, Russia is massing troops on the Ukraine border and Iran is increasing its enrichment of uranium.

Islamist terror groups now prowl the hinterlands of a dozen countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific. Pakistan harbors some of the most virulent. Nowhere, however, do they control a capital, and everywhere they risk attack by American Special Forces, drones or aircraft.

President Biden set no conditions when he announced that the U.S. was pulling out of Afghanistan. Angry voices are sure to be raised in Congress when the most vicious terrorist groups, such as the Haqqani network, appear in Afghanistan. The White House would be wise to set a red line for Afghanistan, guaranteeing continued operations against terrorists who seek to attack the West.

The U.S. military is a family business. About 80% of service members have a relative who also served. The Afghanistan war spanned an entire generation. What the troops experienced and took away from the era has been communicated from father to son, from aunt to niece. The 1% of American youths who volunteer to serve are heavily influenced by their families. The U.S. can ill afford to further alienate this small warrior class by continuing to venture out into the world with dreams of nation-building. That’s not a proper job for the U.S. military.

—Mr. West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, has written 10 books about America’s wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. His latest is “The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War.”

Appeared in the April 24, 2021, print edition as 'A Dangerous Surrender in A Misconceived War.'

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