Biden’s psychology is to blame for his blunder in Afghanistan
Neither Joe Biden’s ongoing logistical blunders nor America’s strategic mistakes are without precedent. We have witnessed before the propensity for headstrong American leaders to withdraw troops without preparation, notably when the former president left the Kurds hanging in Northern Iraq, but the “get em’ out” argument has raged in America for years. Previously screamed in Trump’s shrill voice, it has now been augmented by a president who has a very personal investment in American grief. The result is a moment where one man’s stubbornness has precipitated chaos – and perhaps worse – for thousands trapped before the Taliban advance.
There is more, however, to America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan than the media would have us believe, with their rush to call this the “new Saigon”. While Vietnam certainly looms large in the American consciousness, Afghanistan is itself a big hostile space that has long been adapted to reflect Western fears. Go far enough back and you find a nation reduced to the barbarism that Winston Churchill described when he called them “a people, who fight without passion, and kill one another without loss of temper”. Kipling was even more blunt. “The people are utter brutes”, he wrote in the short story that John Huston would later adapt into the majestic The Man Who Would Be King in 1975. By that point, they had become a people fearful but welcoming, unruly yet prone to the rigours of spiritualism. They were the unspeaking pawns in a condemnation of Empire and human greed.
All that changed when Russia invaded in 1979. By the late 80s, James Bond landed, with the 1987 debut for Timothy Dalton, in The Living Daylights. The film portrayed the mujahideen as highly romanticised noblemen, more Persian than Pashtun, speaking Oxford English, and launching raids from their palaces. A year later, it was John Rambo’s turn to kick some Soviet ass with help from Afghan warriors. Rambo 3 was an attempt to portray the mujahideen as holy men, fearless because they “had already taken our last rites and consider ourselves dead already”.
Yet the defeat of the Soviet Empire saw the politics of Afghanistan change yet again, along with the way its people and problems were portrayed in Western culture. The mujahideen split, becoming the Taliban under Mullah Omar, opposed by the Northern Alliance, mobilised by George Bush and the CIA after 9/11. Since that “victory”, America became drawn into a ground war and with it grew questions about the nature of the conflict. Robert Redford’s 2007 film, Lions for Lambs, questioned the media’s role in shaping public opinion and thereby driving government policy. It might well have been prescient but perhaps not in the ways that Redford expected. The media were soon driving a narrative, but one about an inhospitable landscape in which young American men and women were learning the truth of existential dread. As is often the case, this higher wisdom was reflected in the lower culture. “I’m royally f***ed,” says Bill Murray as he faces the reality of the country in the comedy Rock the Kasbah in 2015. To which his hotel manager replies: “Welcome to Afghanistan”.
By 2017, it was Brad Pitt’s turn to reflect contemporary wisdom with his role in War Machine, the 2017 Netflix movie, based on the book The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan by Michael Hastings. Pitt plays Glenn McMahon, a four-star general based loosely on General Stanley McChrystal, the most high-profile tactician whose career had been broken by Afghanistan.
The film reflected the persistent sense that having American troops in Afghanistan was a meaningless adventure. “It would’ve been nice if the conversation after had been about the failure of counterinsurgency,” says Pitt in the film’s subdued closing. “Or why we seem so desperate to be at war all the time, or how maybe what we’re doing is just making more enemies all in the name of keeping America safe.”
The book – a factual account of events – puts it more prosaically. In a final chapter, ironically titled “Joe Biden is right”, the then-Vice President is heard telling Obama in no uncertain terms to get Americans out of Afghanistan. The President, however, is persuaded by his military who assured him that they had a chance to deal the Taliban a fatal blow. By the time Obama finally accepts Biden’s advice, “it only took an additional 711 American lives and 2,777 Afghan lives for the White House to arrive at this conclusion.”
This is what shouldn’t be overlooked in the rush to draw profound political conclusions from the developing situation. America has been psychologically prepared to withdraw from a nation that has hyperbolically (but not entirely wrongly) been described as “the graveyard of empires” (Biden even used the phrase in his speech on Monday night). Bad headlines will make for grim reading for Democrats, but history tells us not to expect this to impact him at the polls. With some notable exceptions, America’s domestic politics rarely reflect events beyond its borders. Arguments – sensible though they might be – about “small footprints” and “soft power” aren’t as effective as “I brought our boys and girls home”.
As to the nature of this debacle: Biden has two quite evident character flaws. One is his tendency to descend into emotive language (and tears). The other is a habitual need to express himself in absolute terms, often employing violent language. Even when campaigning, he resorted to calling one rather harmless (but questioning) member of the audience “a lying dog-faced pony solider”, challenged others to do push-ups, and once said that if he’d known Trump in his schooldays, he’d have taken him behind the gym to “beat the hell” out of him. He is a man drawn to performative actions, such as his stubborn determination to be seen running to prove his vigour.
The speed of the retreat reflects something pathological about the current President. “I’m the first president in 40 years who knows what it means to have a child serving in a war zone,” he said back in April. It might not excuse the shoddy, ill-thought-out nature of the American withdrawal, but it explains it. It will also explain the politics of the coming months when the effectiveness of Biden’s “I did what nobody else would” message will be tested from all sides.