Debunking The Myths The Military-Industrial Complex Uses To Keep Us In Afghanistan
They’re trying to prevent us from leaving, again
On September 11th, 2021 the United States and NATO will have been in Afghanistan for twenty years. Two decades. The US entered the country as a response to the awful 9/11 terror attacks. In that time period, there has been an estimated 212,000+ people killed including over 45,000 civilians. The US and NATO spent billions of dollars fighting an enemy that most average people know little to nothing about. I think it is safe to say that we paid the terrorists back in full, with interest.
Despite that, every time there is even a whisper of the United States leaving the war-torn country for good, the media and their allies rise up and berate us for even thinking about such a thing. We can’t leave Afghanistan. We just can’t. They say that and then they try and rope us back in with emotional news stories and terrible predictions for the nation. Here are some of the myths that the media and the military-industrial complex use to keep us in Afghanistan, debunked.
1. There will be instability
If the US leaves Afghanistan, the country will fall to pieces. That is what they always tell us. At the risk of sounding crass, my response is, so what? There are unstable countries all over the world that the United States, and the American people, don’t give two cow craps about. Colombia has been facing an internal insurgency for decades. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been in a state of flux since the end of African colonialism post-WWII. Libya received the full benefit of US bombs and no benefit of US attention following their 2011 “revolution” which has left the country in the hands of militias backed by powerful regional governments rather than the people themselves.
No one is advocating for the United States to have a permanent mission in the DRC, Colombia, or Libya. The US simply cannot invade a country every time they are at risk of becoming unstable.
But, what about everything we have already done in Afghanistan? Lives have been lost. Blood and treasure were shed. Are we expected to simply walk away from that?
2. Sunk cost fallacy
Since we have spent so much time, so much money, so much effort, and so many lives in Afghanistan people immediately want to say that we have to continue investing despite the lack of returns. This is known as sunk cost fallacy. We cannot get our money back, we cannot recoup our time and, unfortunately, we cannot get those souls who died lives back. Those things are gone. The situation on the ground right now has to be viewed independently of the cost we already put in.
Despite that, the media will bombard us with stories of young men lost, of Afghan families living in fear, and of all of the money already spent as if those things make a compelling case for remaining in the country. They don’t.
Continuing to fund an aimless war in Afghanistan is no different than someone sitting down again and again at the blackjack table even though they’ve been gambling on credit for a long time. They lose, over and over again, wrack up more debt, and never see any returns on their gambling habit. But they’ve already invested this much, someday, it has to pay off. Guess what we would tell that person if we knew them personally? That they have a problem and need to stop.
3. The mission isn’t over
When we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 it was in response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In the two decades since then we radically decreased al-Qaeda’s global influence, we killed Osama bin Laden, killed thousands of so-called “terrorists” all over the Middle East, and established a democratic government in Afghanistan. That was the mission. It is over. We achieved our goals.
Fighting the Taliban, spreading democracy to an entire region, and policing a mountainous country prone to insurgency was not and should not be our mission in Afghanistan.
Our original intent for invading Afghanistan has been achieved, saying otherwise is an expansion of that original mandate. If we keep expanding the mandate, the generals and bomb salesmen will continue to find a reason for us to stay, and spend more money. Guaranteed.
4. The terrorists are still out there
There are always going to be whackjobs, extremists, and violent terrorists. There always have been and there always will be. The reforms and the expensive war that we waged following September 2001 have made it much harder for terrorists to live and operate in the world. We created an advanced surveillance state aimed at finding people prone to terroristic tendencies. China has an advanced surveillance state they built for themselves. England is one of the most surveilled places in the world. The terrorists are probably still out there but they are never going to be as efficient as they once were. Governments worldwide made sure of that.
More importantly, there are no longer dozens of highly trained and funded terrorists operating in Afghanistan with the express purpose of attacking high-value targets in the United States like there once were. Today, the terrorist threat is largely domestic, coming from radicalized lone wolves that never travel abroad. Anyone that says that Afghanistan is still a hotbed for global terrorism is kidding themselves, and you.
Stay alert
Currently, President Joe Biden is planning to extract the last remaining US forces from Afghanistan by the twenty-year anniversary of 9/11. That is in a few short months. I can guarantee you during that time you are going to hear all of these myths and pleas from the military, from the media, and from powerful lobbying groups. Do not fall for it. No president has been able to end the war in Afghanistan yet and it remains America’s longest war to date. It is because of myths like these that we continue to wage an endless war. Do not let it happen anymore.
It is time for us to leave Afghanistan once and for all. We achieved our mission. 9/11 was repaid.
The Soviets couldn’t make their invasion of Afghanistan stick and it looks like we won’t make ours stick either. Afghanistan seems to be a country resistant to invasion. So let us leave Afghanistan for the Afghan people. After four decades of war, I think they deserve it.
