GETTING INTO AND OUT OF AFGHANISTAN PART II: WAS THERE A BETTER WAY?

                 

As the headlines screamed the story of

America’s messy exit from Afghanistan, we decided we should focus on how the United States got involved there in the first place. What lessons can we learn from two decades there and the ultimate failure that precipitated the sloppy exit?

Our last post began that examination when we looked at the legal mechanisms for committing the United States to war and the history of skirting them. We noted that Congress doesn’t declare war anymore, even though the constitution gives it, and it alone, that power. We looked at the 1973 War Powers Act and its purpose in reigning in executive

power to make war without legislative authority. We observed how it’s been ineffective in preventing presidents from starting and

waging wars on their own.  We closed by suggesting Afghanistan perhaps demonstrated how presidents have violated the constitution and that statue.

War Fever

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terror

attacks on New York and Washington, Americans were angry.  They wanted retaliation against those responsible. U.S. intelligence quickly pinned

the blame on Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda terrorists operating from safe havens provided by the Taliban in Afghanistan. President George W. Bush decided the U.S. would launch military operations against that regime.

Bush didn’t seek a declaration of war against Afghanistan. He asked for, and got, a resolution from Congress called an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). It targeted anybody and everybody responsible for September 11. It passed Congress with one dissenting vote, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

That AUMF imposed no time or geographic limits. It’s still in effect. It’s been used to justify military action in all kinds of places. A lot happened that was never contemplated in either the language or the intent of that AUMF. We ask now if Bush violated the constitution and/or the War Powers Act in starting and prosecuting the Afghanistan war. What about the two presidents – Barack Obama and Donald Trump – who followed him and continued the war?

The Start

Bush and the legislators who supported the AUMF didn’t say much about how the president could use it, except that it provided the tools for avenging the deaths of the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on September 11. The public, as measured by polls, overwhelmingly supported use of military force in Afghanistan. Hardly anyone said anything except, “Go for it!”

The War Powers Act never entered into the discussion because of the AUMF. Even if Congress hadn’t declared war, even if Bush didn’t stop military action after 60 days, the AUMF seemingly gave him authority for whatever he thought necessary. The problem was that the war dragged on and on and the issues of why we went there and remained there became embroiled in the deadly combination of politics and patriotism.

Nation Building

After a while, some political leaders

questioned what the United States was doing in Afghanistan and how long we should stay. Joe Biden, as Obama’s vice president, argued that once the United States captured and killed Bin Laden, no reason existed for a continued American presence.  Among

Obama’s senior advisors, only Biden took that position. The rest either thought American interests, or Obama’s political fortunes, or both required staying. Let no president, especially a Democratic one, stand accused of being unpatriotic about U.S. military involvement in a war.

It became obvious the U.S. role was no longer avenging the September 11 attacks, or even deterring future attacks, given how the American military degraded Al Qaeda’s terrorism capacity. No, the United States became engaged in a massive nation building exercise. We tried making Afghanistan, a backward, tribal county with no history of a stable, central government, into a western-style democracy. For some Americans the war became a crusade for Afghan women and shielding them from the Taliban’s brutal interpretation of Islamic law.

It Wasn't Working

Gradually American public opinion soured on

the Afghanistan war – indeed on foreign interventions generally. Donald Trump got elected president – unexpectedly – for many reasons. One was that he pledged he’d end what he called “stupid wars” that were really about nation building. Some feared Hillary Clinton wasn’t on board with that. It may have been another of the factors that sealed her fate.

As Trump’s term wore on, he became increasingly determined to end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. He too likely had concerns about the political price of an exit that might look very ugly. Trump, therefore, may simply have preferred leaving the departure to his second term, or his successor if he lost in 2020. Regardless, the public wanted out. Biden ran for president as the anti-Trump, but the two agreed the time for ending American presence in Afghanistan had come.

The way the U.S. got into Afghanistan played a role in how the country came to see the war. We got in amidst the fever generated by September 11. We accomplished the things Americans saw as reasonable objectives – catching Bin Laden and preventing Afghanistan from being used as a staging ground for attacks on the American homeland. With those done, it was time to go.

                                                      

Neither the AUMF nor the common understanding of American purpose in Afghanistan included nation building. We never debated that in the halls of Congress or on cable television, the place these things play out now. Because there was no such debate,many Americans finally saw little or no point in the war. Perhaps if we’d set limited objectives and stuck to them, we could have had a better entry and a better exit.   

 

THE BIDEN-HARRIS WIN: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD

 

Joe Biden has won the 2020 presidential

election. With the declaration Friday, November 6, three days after the election, that Biden won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes the toxic Donald Trump presidency finally ends. The victory of Biden and his running mate, California Senator

Kamala Harris, means for the first time the United States has elected a woman to one of its two highest offices. Those are the facts, but hardly the whole story.

For all the encouragement we take from the fact Trump is on his way out, we recognize

Trumpism likely isn’t dead. He won over 70,000,000 votes with the counting continuing, and his party may control the senate, depending on what happens in the Georgia Senate runoff elections. Republicans unexpectedly picked up seats in the House. In the immediate aftermath of the election, Trump fired off a long list of false claims some broadcast networks wouldn’t air.

His team launched a plethora of lawsuits that appear meritless. In short, he’s up to all his old tricks. The full-throated rejection of Trump and his enablers we’d hoped for didn’t happen.

The nation may face four years of divided government in which gridlock appears the

most likely characteristic of life in Washington. The fact Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell know each other well offered a glimmer of hope for deal making, but McConnell’s inherent capacity for

obstructionism left most saying, “Don’t hold your breath.”  Whatever lies ahead, the election results left a bitter aftertaste that requires addressing on several fronts.

 

The White Folks Problem

We don’t have all the numbers yet, so precisely analyzing the demographic aspects of the 2020 election must wait.  What we know is that Trump again won a strong majority of white voters, 57% in one set of exit polls. In 2016, we gave these voters a pass since few

knew what Trump was, the Democratic candidate was the roundly unpopular Hillary Clinton, and Trump had no meaningful public record. We can’t give them such a pass in 2020.

Since 2016, Trump has revealed himself for what he is – a racist, white nationalist who disdains the brown nation the United States increasingly becomes each day.  Trump’s opponent this time went into the election with a positive favorability rating. He’s assembled a record as president littered with racist acts and statements no one can credibly claim they don’t understand. Given that, we must ask, what are the white people who supported Trump voting for?

The answer, we’re afraid, lies in a hateful impulse against demographic change. Given Trump’s record, statements, and approach, we assume white people who voted for him, at the very least, prefer arresting the progress of the last fifty or so years toward a just, equal society. This not-so-charitable view of white Trump voters will no doubt earn us blowback. But what other conclusion can we draw? Do we completely disbelieve our eyes and ears?  We choose not to do that.  Sometimes life requires harsh judgments.      

 

The Black Men Problem

Many have been disappointed that Trump

increased his share of the African-American vote, almost entirely due to support he got from black men.  Again, the numbers aren’t conclusive yet, but one exit poll suggested Trump received as much as 20% of the black male vote. African-American women remained the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituent group, voting for Biden around 92%. Of course, some people are asking why so many black men voted for Trump.

 

The benign, respectable explanations center on (1) Trump‘s attacks on Biden’s support for the 1994 crime bill that resulted in mass incarceration of black men for minor drug offenses; (2) Biden’s selection of a former prosecutor as his running mate; and (3) Trump’s supposed expertise in business and entrepreneurship. This line of reasoning makes a credible argument for those wishing not to state cruder explanations. Woodson finds these explanations credible and feels that it is asking a lot to expect Black men to support any candidate at a margin greater than 82 percent. In Woodson’s view, it is entirely

credible for Black men to require Biden to prove to them that his support for the 1994 crime bill was a “mistake” as he has claimed. Rob feels no compulsion to avoid harsher judgements. He thinks that some African-American men find appealing Trump’s bullying,

misogynistic style, with its underlying philosophy grounded in patriarchy and homophobia. He doesn’t enjoy saying that, but thinks it may be true based on anecdotal evidence we’ve each collected in barbershops and on ball fields. Henry believes both explanations bear further consideration. For him, the interplay between the two may be more complex and he does not wish to draw a

conclusion now. There’s been a lot of talk about how America needs racial healing. And we agree that it does. But, according to Rob, the male vote suggests black America, too, has some internal work it must do on itself.

The Latino Problem

Biden may have lost Florida and Texas because of his under-performance among

Hispanic voters. He got a lot fewer votes in Miami-Dade County, Florida than Hillary Clinton did.  He also got a lot fewer votes in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas than Clinton did. Biden’s aides pointed out his success with Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada.  Fair enough, but the weakness in Florida and Texas illustrated that he didn’t invest in a comprehensive strategy that took into consideration all aspects of the Hispanic vote.

The notion of demographic change fueling a permanent Democratic majority in presidential elections has always rested on the party’s nominee getting a huge share of the Latino vote. The 2020 election demonstrated Democrats don’t fully understand all the nuance involved in courting the Hispanic electorate. That must get fixed – and soon.       

We had hoped the 2020 results would produce euphoria. The elongated count, the pandemic, and apparently not winning the U.S. Senate prevented that. But, getting rid of Trump is no small feat, especially given the demographic factors we’ve laid out here. After the last four years, let us not take our blessings lightly.