
The advocates of forever wars will never admit it, but the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 — and the consequent decision by other nations like Australia to do the same — will bring to an end a war that made the West less safe against terrorism and corroded Western military forces for an extraordinary cost that will continue to be paid for decades to come.
Along with Iraq, Afghanistan stands as one of the greatest policy failures of recent decades, with a horrific human and economic toll. This is all a result of the hysterical abandonment of reason in the wake of 9/11 by Western leaders like George W. Bush, John Howard and Tony Blair — and what they believed were the political benefits of embracing militarism.
First, the cost: 41 Australian soldiers killed and 261 Australia Defence Force personnel injured. A total financial cost of, by one estimate, $10 billion. The cost for the United States is 2218 deaths within Afghanistan and nearly 20,100 casualties. The financial cost has been just under US$1 trillion. A 2016 estimate suggested that there had been 173,000 people killed and more than 183,000 seriously wounded in Afghanistan and Pakistan.


Those are only the direct costs. The cost of treating permanently incapacitated veterans of the conflict will continue for decades to come. And, along with the Iraq conflict, the war has inflicted a grisly toll on veterans’ mental health. There have been at least 500 suicides of veterans since the beginning of the Afghanistan conflict, according to the ABC. The rate of veteran suicide is so concerning that the government is under sustained and mounting pressure to call a royal commission.
In the United States, more than 6000 veterans take their own lives every year — or more than 17 a day — and the number has risen since 2016.
The war badly corroded the military institutions tasked with fighting it. The “Afghanistan Papers” published by the Washington Post in 2019 revealed that the US military, along with civilian political leaders, persistently lied to Americans about the state of the war and the prospects for success. Data was doctored or spun from the conflict, while the US military was, in the words of one three-star general, “devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing…. We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
For Australian forces, the corrosion was far worse. The Brereton report revealed “credible information” of war crimes committed by 25 Australian soldiers involving the deaths of 39 Afghans, widespread breaches of laws and customs of war, systemic coverups and a deeply toxic culture within the SAS.
With the Taliban poised to return to power, the security gains from the conflict appear limited at best. It is more likely that the Afghanistan conflict, along with the Iraq War, has — in a view now so mainstream intelligence agency heads have long been happy to espouse it — encouraged radicalisation both in the West and in Muslim countries, and served to confirm the narrative offered by Islamist terrorists like Islamic State about Western aggression against Muslims.
To use the words of one Pentagon report in 2004, “the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.”
The US use of drone aircraft to carry out targeted — and frequently, entirely untargeted — airstrikes also played its role. As Stanley McChrystal, the general behind the US counterinsurgency plan in Afghanistan, explained in 2013: “the resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.”
But the fact that we are no safer from Islamist terrorism now than in 2001 — our threat level officially remains at “probable” — isn’t the only issue in regard to the impact of the forever wars on our security. It’s now clear that white supremacist terrorist groups in the United States — which have for several years now been formally regarded as a greater threat to US domestic security than al-Qaeda or other Islamist terrorists — seek to draw on Afghanistan and Iraq veterans and serving military personnel. A 2019 survey showed that more than a third of US military personnel respondents had encountered white supremacist or racist ideology within their ranks.
The recruitment of military veterans obviously brings military expertise to terrorist groups but, in the words of one Pentagon official, it “also brings legitimacy, in their minds, to their cause — the fact that they can say they have former military personnel that align with their extremist and violent extremist views”.
Yet national security commentators continue to insist Western military forces should remain in Afghanistan and that the US withdrawal — a delayed implementation of the agreement Donald Trump, in one of his few sensible moments, negotiated with the Taliban — will be a disaster.
“By forcing the Americans to leave and seizing Kabul, the Taliban would inspire jihadist groups elsewhere to escalate their terror campaigns… the Taliban wielding absolute power in Afghanistan would pose a greater jihadist threat to the free world than any other group, including al-Qaeda or Islamic State remnants,” wrote one just this week (it was run by Australia’s own house of neocon militarism, ASPI).
As one Biden administration official has pointed out, waiting for the right moment to leave Afghanistan will mean the West never leaves — and can never start the process of addressing the enormous, and continuing, costs of a war both epically long and an epic failure.
See how power works in this country.
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This has been ‘announced’ many times now over the past 15 years. It’s going to be believed when it’s actually happened.
Or perhaps the imperative is now to get ready for the war with China?
President Biden has already made that plain in his announcement that the forces committed to Afghanistan are required elsewhere and left little doubt that that was his Administrations commitment to confrontation with China.
The Demon Crats are War Mongers from way back — Obummer , Killery & Demented all served together when they were last in control. More Wars than ever by a Black President after being awarded Nobel Peace Prize !!! Trump started none.
The USA now has no credibilty. They’ve lost just about everywhere. Biden may pull out of Afghanistan BUT he’s taking & supporting a War with China & Russia! Ringing both countries with missiles right up to their borders. The USA Military Industrial complex need an enemy – -especially when their economy is collapsing -despite waht MSM tells you.
Exactly right and who was the cretin who down voted your comment.
Anyone who thinks calling a political party “Demon Crats” is pathetically juvenile, & who thinks James is better suited to the News Corpse sewers.
You obviously don’t read or watch much of anything other than MSM . You’d be a lot happier over at News Corp – or reading the Australian.
Demon Crats is a touch soft, I have more descriptive names for democrats and republicans.
Being correct/accurate is no guarantee of acceptance with the woke wanker brigade for whom the concept of reality has little to no value.
As Raz often notes, the greater the truth, the greater the number of down votes.
Very true. Now back to the Lucky Country, who was his target audience?
I would imagine those about to bugger orf, as Meredith Bergmann said on LNL this week, not out of adventure or even anger but boredom – Greer, Hughes, James, and Neville et al from OZ.
It was the standard text in late 60s London, to be seen on a wonky table or the greasy spoon counter, alongside Steppenwolf and worse.
I suppose the fact that these wars were started by Republican govts has no relevance.
Vietnam was a Dem idea. Iraq, unfortunately, became personal. There were aspects of Jimmy’s presidency where he just wasn’t thinking.
You’re either very young or you’ve conveniently forgotten who started the Afghanistan fiasco. REPUBLICAN George Bush lied to the world to invade, immediately supported be our very own US sycophant LIBERAL John Howard.
True, but good old Dubya did not have to overcome much Democrat opposition to get his war, did he? One vote against in the whole of Congress AFAIR.
Simply put, Rat, wars, coups, regime change ops are the most bipartisan ‘policies’ of all.
Why? Because elected leaders and legislatures in the West do NOT ‘run’ their countries, and certainly not in the interests of those who do the electing.
Old men make the wars and the young men fight in them.
Then the young die in them while those old men look on.
And those old men then profit from those wars
Both and gladly.
Just look at Tastie & B R-Smith and millions of othersdown the centuries – not only found a raison d’etre to fill the hole in the soul with all the toys that go bang but those uniforms are pretty spiffy too.
What boy could resist?
Male youths have always needed initiation rituals because otherwise they have no way of knowing when they are men.
No female needs such external affirmation – she knows when she becomes a woman.
It is such a good point Agni and its something we should discuss more to help boys (in the main) channel those natural instincts into something more productive!
Very few men require a war to be initiated, a tiny fraction in fact. You’re better than that, aren’t you Agni?
I specified “initiation rituals” – whether it’s getting puking drunk or tattooed, punch-ups or preening peacockery, young males are constantly in need of validation.
It’s no accident that many of them have to do with brutality & violence
Both Killary & Kerry used, as a part of their failed Prez campaigns, the phrase “I was a against the war before I was for it” which became the “good war” under O’Bomber.
That anyone could think such a pre-emptive grovel with tuck & triple pike was rational or sane shows the depths to which public discourse has sunk.
Or has never (re Thatcher and Reagan) risen above. The fate of Mitterrand is to be remembered too.
How many countries did Barry the Bomber destroy in his watch. 4 or 5?
“Started”??? Afghanistan has been the graveyard of conflict for centuries. Before Bush there was the Russians in 1978, and the British and French before that. And that is just the postwar 20th century!
The French?!?
The Germans, from the Kaiser to Kohl have always been welcome there but mainly coz they were good at things.
The French though?
Not so much.
I agree M. I meant the overt war Bush started. I have no doubt the US (and France, and England) was also involved in all sorts of meddling before that.
Ok -agreed – Bush was a Murdering A/hole – – who was fully supported by Australian Politicians. I never believed his BS – did you ?
However why don’t you address the shameful next President -the Black one –assisted by Killary & Biden.
There is no doubt that US President Barack Obama is a war criminal, as are his military and intelligence officials and most of the House and Senate.Obama is the first president to keep the US at war for the entirety of his eight-year regime. During 2016 alone, the US dropped 26,171 bombs on wedding parties, funerals, kid’s soccer games, hospitals, schools, people in their homes and walking their streets, and farmers tilling their fields in seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
To read the full war crimes list just Google :Obama the War Criminal, Butcherer of Women and Children
I’m pretty sure it was George W. bush who took the US into Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m also pretty sure that Bush was a republican.
Which war did Obama start, just to help my old brain?
There was considerable optimism in the Middle East when Obama assumed the Presidency. Even Kissinger cautioned him over Syria. There was no optimism anywhere at the end of two terms.
The US has had no credibility for many years, not helped by its blind support of Israel. (In Trump’s case advancing the interests of his son-in-law’s developments there). What Trump also did was to cut and run from the US allies in Syria. This was inexcusable.
Which “…US allies in Syria” did you mean?
The murderous remnants of ISIS etc?
To distract from the Iraq snafu, the Gulf autocracies were allowed/encourage to fund and provide them safe haven, armed by the US and boosted as freedom fighters by O’Bomber and the west for the last 10 years.
Dog save us from such ‘allies’.
Indeed, I have a sense of being the main character in ‘Groundhog Day’ on reading the headline yet again.
You forgot to mention the impact on Afghans. Their society has been destroyed, infrastructure in tatters, the anti-women fundamentalist Taliban probably to take power, bombs going off all the time. Afghans who have escaped and live here, curl up inside every time a bomb goes off – are my relatives OK? is their constant worry. One young woman in Melbourne has lost two close relatives in the last year and a half. And of course our government still holding up family reunion out of sheer bloody mindedness. We could at least do that right.
Ah, the Taliban- America’s gift to Afghanistan. America is responsible for creating & funding so many terrorist organisations in their early days.
I think you’ll find the Russians also had a goodly hand in creating the Taliban. To fight the mujahideen, of course.
Another – The Russians did it – -:)
Yes of course they did.
Fiendishly & cunningly, those ever resourceful kommies smuggled all that money & support into the CIA funded, maintained and serviced Afghan refugee camps through ISI dominated Pakistan.
Just so that it could reach the poverty stricken madrassas spreading the word amongst the talib (it means ‘student‘ in Urdu).
Rubbish, the Taliban were created to get rid of the Russians.
The Taliban actually came to the fore, eventually to rule, some years after the Russians who left in February 1989. The Taliban arose out of the general chaos that followed and the downfall of the Najibullah government. Both he and his brother finished up hanging from public lighting in September 1996. First came the mujahideen, then came the Taliban.
Thanks for that clarification jb.
QED.
This old photo on Flickr shows the Entrance of the Faculty of Medicine in the 1970’s.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/recuerdosdepandora/7242878690/in/photostream/
I have been desperately trying to remember the name of one of three sisters from a high ranking Afghan family who taught at the Faculty and has recently died. A true Afghan patriot in the best sense of that word. I came across her in Germany where she had fled post fall of the Najibullah Government. She was then working as a school cleaner. She went back to Afghanistan soonest when her return could be negotiated and died there, of her other sisters I think one went to the US and the other definitely came here to Oz. I’m afraid the chaos present is not going to end anytime soon, if nothing else there is 95% of the world supply of poppy opium to control and that can fund a lot of chaos in addition to external forces.
I fear we’re going to see theTaliban re-emerge, probably unopposed, to wreak idealised slaughter, destruction and havoc on any progress made to improve the lives of those they consider infidels, including education for girls and any step they consider outside their beliefs. What, in Ireland is so rightly known as a “TFD” – total ”blooming” disaster.
If anyone what further reading and analysis on the issue, I can only recommend the exceptionally written Un-American by Erik Edstom.
Amazon.com: Un-American: A Soldier’s Reckoning of Our Longest War (9781635573749): Edstrom, Erik: Books
Much better written than my gaff-ridden post.. ‘wants’
And little Johnny says he has ‘no regrets’ from his prime-ministership. Truly sociopathic.
Like Morrison he seems to think it is weak to apologise or admit you were wrong.
It’s also a characteristic of sociopathic personality disorders, who lack both empathy and conscience, but seem to do so well in politics and the corporate world.
Blair seems to be getting off lightly in the article/comments! He also has no regrets I believe. Didn’t he say God made him do it!
I think that actually he advised god that it was a sound move and thus,
it Came to Be!
The irony was, contrary to Blair, the Tb. were ant-drug (not pro as Blair claimed publicly) but with the removal of the Tb in a given region the drugs returned.
It could be called an unintended consequence but, given the exacting,scientific/medical/technical words often used to obfuscate what was going on,I’dsay the more accurate word would be iatrogenic – caused by the process meant as a cure.
Disagreement as the nature of the ‘illness’ – if any – continues.
It seems unlikely to have been an unintended consequence – given the alleged involvement of the CIA in cocaine trafficking in relation to their operations in Nicaragua
You can tell exactly what they thought of a progressive female PM .
None of the three can bring themselves to look at her.
Who would that be ? If you’re referring to Gillard she was a disgrace. Up to recently I’ve voted Labour because I saw them as more empthatic to citizens.
Gillard really disgraced Australia when she disowned our very own Julian Assange & spoke out publically against him. Why ? To appease the Yanks.
You think she was unique ?
Australia is still paying the Coral Sea bill.
We just tag along as obedient puppies.
Precisely
And then Gillard allowed the US to establish several thousand marines at a military base near Darwin. Try getting them out now…or ever.
Fleas never leave unless you powder them.
Don’t forget our esteemed leaders have also recently leased out a wharf in Darwin to the Chinese,
I’d love to set up a swingin’ hot spot for R&R in the centre between those two foreign buboes.
Think of the money and consternation about fraternisation!
One of the reasons the East India were able to take over the Indian sub continent – from the Khyber to the Coromandels – so easily, long before Raj, is their propensity for sleep-in dictionaries.
Imagine the reverse with our highly skilled hookers – so often putting themselves through uni (thanks to Jack ‘Artelss Dodger’ Dawkins & PJK HECS) on the proceeds?
Not even a new definition of sleeper agent.
Consternation about fraternisation! he he he
Yep, Labor and LNP both have blood on their hands regarding Assange. So does our media of all things, the very people who should be screaming out for his release.
Craven cowards to the last stenographer, Tony
Bang on the money, James.
Gillard described Assange as a “criminal”, and a coupla years later toddled off to work for the Clinton Foundation.
She was just following the tattered, worn out script – Biden called him a high tech terrorist who needed droning.
Gillard had many faults as our PM, but remains the best PM we’ve had since Keating. So there’s that.
‘A progressive female PM’?
Is this the same PM who staunchly declared that ‘marriage was between a man and a woman’?
The same PM who forced single parents (mostly female) onto Newstart?
The same same PM who was forced to abandon her support for Israel to avoid being rolled by her own caucus in relation to Palestine gaining a seat at the UN table?
The same PM who appointed the odious Peter Slipper to the role of Speaker to gain one extra vote on the floor?
Progressive politics? Not from where I stand….
What chance would an enemy of the Murdoch/shockjock industry have in simply survival in such an era where Abbott was apparently popular.
She was only there because of two rational country independents and on a knife edge the whole time.
The so called left has to take progress incrementally or she’s out just like Joan Kirner .
Get real or forget about winning ever again.
Or go right-wing labor NSW style, smash the trots with a great huzaar, and end up corrupt and vacuous and out of power because you deserve to be out of power because you stand for nothing.
Thank you, there seems to be a lot of naivety in thinking the prime ministership is simple. And just to add- ms Gillard did not believe in marriage, she actually changed policy so that you did not need to get married to receive equal acknowledgment under the law.
Thanks.
A necessary reminder of the difference between hype & actuality.
Oh god Slippery Pete really rather innocuous don’t you think? Hardly ranks as odious even, just a bit sad….
Barely rates in the tawdry stakes compared to an average day in parliament today.
Peter Slipper was a good speaker and if we want to talk ‘odious’ well that would be James Ashby – lying, powerhungry little sociopath.
Is he till with the PHONies as a mini-me Oldfield?
…or “…STILL with the…”.