Pretty interesting take, a recent TOLO news Op-ed by an Afghan that used to be a "Senior Cultural Affairs Advisor" for the State Dept. Kabul.
..."As I argued in another op-ed here in TOLOnews, the Afghan politicians, who primarily benefited via corruption from the American presence in the past two decades, failed to build a strategic partnership with the United States and missed the changing American policy in South Asia. From the Afghan media landscape, it seems that not only Afghan politicians misinterpreted the primarily goal of the American presence in Afghanistan, but the Afghan civil society, the women's rights organizations, and the well-educated Afghans misjudged the goal as well. These individuals and groups saw America as primarily liberators who would promote democracy. It seems that many of them became fully immersed in this false narrative, and now they can hardly believe that Americans are leaving them without finishing those tasks.
Working closely with both the Afghan and American government, I can say that from the American perspective, all three administrations, including the Obama administration--where Joe Biden served as vice president—clearly articulated why Americans went to Afghanistan. In all those years, the White House and Pentagon spokespersons openly communicated that the main reason to engage in Afghanistan is to protect the United States from international terrorism.
It's also not a secret that the United States used the international development aid budget primarily as a counterinsurgency tool to win the foreign nation's 'hearts and minds' in order to protect US security interests. Therefore, the USAID funding to promote democracy or women's rights in Afghanistan—and everywhere else in the world--always has been an integral part of the US national security policy.
This false narrative--that American troops came to Afghanistan to promote women's rights or build girls' schools--has been largely promoted in the past two decades by Western NGOs, DC/London/Brussel/Dubai consulting firms, opportunistic Afghan diaspora, corrupt Kabul elites and indirectly by policymakers in Europe. I mention Europe because it was the European leaders who had difficulty at home explaining why EU troops needed to be deployed to Afghanistan. After the mismanaged conflict in the Balkans, the EU leaders--who were reluctant to send their forces outside the European wall--chose to use the cause of women's rights and the building of girls' schools as a means to cover their military participation in the 'big brother' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, both wars have already ended for the United States and its allies, and now they are committed to leave Afghanistan. In addition, as Obama's deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes wrote in The Atlantic, "the 9/11 era is over" and the idea that every day could be September 12 is over. The coronavirus and new American challenges in Asia, where assertive China and revanchist Russia are each trying to become the dominant player in the region, are more substantial problems than the Taliban.
Also, within the United States, the narrative of the War on Terror is outdated. The current generation of Americans, as Mr. Rhodes describes, are now more worried about climate change, student loans, economic and social inequality, than the threats from a group of few hundred disillusioned radical al-Qaida or ISIS-K fighters in the mountains of the AFPAK region. This is not only the mindset of young Democrats or Republicans who are voting for former VP Joe Biden or President Trump but it is also widely shared by members of American think tanks and academia, policymakers, and among diplomats and military officers here in Washington. The majority of former State Department, DoD, or White House advisers who previously thought differently about the Taliban are today in agreement that the United States needs to end this war and leave an unsuccessful Afghanistan chapter behind in US foreign policy.
Therefore, in terms of Afghanistan's fate, it doesn't matter who gets re-elected in the US in November. The next president of the United States--in January 2021--will primarily be busy with internal affairs or much bigger problems in the world, rather than thinking about new Afghanistan policy.
The fact that some Kabul elites believe that presidential candidate Joe Biden will change the current US Afghanistan policy and keep pouring USAID funding into their corrupt system, proves that Afghan politicians lack the capacity to understand why Americans originally came to Afghanistan in the first place, and why they are leaving now."
About the author: Arash Yaqin worked previously as a communication adviser for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies, and as Senior Cultural Affairs Adviser for the US Department of State within the US Embassy Kabul. Currently, he is an M.A. candidate for National Security Affairs at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.
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I find it interesting. This is how some think of us after all those years trying to secure and build up their country... All the blood and treasure in the past 18+ years and this guy makes it sound like we're selfish for trying to build infrastructure and support democracy etc. for our own national security.
TL;DR America is leaving Afghanistan no matter who takes office in 2021, Afghan politicians were wrong to think we'd be here forever and are trying to drag out the "peace" process with the Taliban hoping Ol' Joe will take over and change course and keep us here.
