"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." - Edward Gibbon.
The epic American failure in Afghanistan cannot be blamed on one president or one administration alone.
There is a lot of blame to go around, from Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan to Biden's decision to abandon it.
All the presidents made critical mistakes that led to this disaster.
There is no point in highlighting Biden's mistakes since there are many and the consequences are playing out in fast-forward speed. But there are two mistakes of his predecessors that history will not forgive.
Obama's decision to install Ghani, a fellow Ivy Leaguer, as President of the country is one of those mistakes.
What qualified him to lead Afghanistan?
At the time Afghanistan needed a warrior to lead the government against the Taliban, not an academic whose claim to fame was pushing papers at the World Bank.
Ghani was not respected or feared. He was just a talking head who couldn't even talk at the end.
The other mistake is hard to believe. Trump's decision to release 5000 Taliban prisoners, including the man who will lead the Taliban government, is one for the history books.
It was more than a mistake. It was a crime against Afghanistan. For all his tough talk on terrorism, Trump ended up being the biggest sweetheart to terrorists.
But Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush and Cheney, only share 30 percent of the blame for the tragedy in Afghanistan.
The majority of the blame belongs to the Carter and Reagan administrations, specifically arrogant men like Zbigniew Brzezinski who dismissed the historical repercussions of emboldening Islamic extremism in Afghanistan.
An excerpt from, "Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the catastrophe in Afghanistan, dead at 89" by Bill Van Auken, May 29, 2017:
"Asked specifically whether he regretted the CIA’s collaboration with and arming of Islamist extremists, including Al Qaeda, in fomenting the war in Afghanistan, Brzezinski responded contemptuously: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
In the four decades of nearly uninterrupted fighting that flowed from Brzezinski’s “excellent idea”—with nearly 9,000 US troops still on the ground and plans being set in motion to carry out another escalation—over 2 million Afghans have lost their lives and millions more have been turned into refugees."
Afghanistan was sacrificed by the United States so Central Europe can be freed. And thirty years later not one Central European country is willing to take in refugees from Afghanistan.
