If you’re older than, say, 40 years old, I want you to take a short trip down memory lane. As much as possible, remember your mindset on September 12, 2001. Smoke still poured from the gaping hole in downtown Manhattan. The Pentagon still smoldered. We hadn’t yet learned the details of the passengers’ heroic sacrifice on Flight 93, and many of us were hearing the name Osama bin Laden for the first time.
If I had told you then, at that moment, that the United States was about to embark on a military response that would, over the course of the next twenty years, 1) almost immediately depose the Taliban and ultimately kill Osama bin Laden, 2) defend our nation from enduring even a single further large-scale terror attack, and 3) cost fewer American combat fatalities in Afghanistan than were lost in a single day on 9/11, would you have thought, “sounds like we lost”?
No. Of course not. Because we haven’t lost. Because we aren’t losing. Our military measures since 9/11 have accomplished their primary, fundamental goal: defending our nation from jihadist terror. In fact, our military measures are so successful that homegrown, domestic terror has cost more lives in the United States than the jihadist threat. This would be unthinkable, astonishing to your 9/12 self.
And for good reason. On 9/12 the United States faced a formidable military challenge. Acting from a safe haven in a landlocked nation halfway across the world, Al Qaeda had demonstrated remarkable striking power. It had blown up American embassies in Africa, it had nearly sunk an American warship in Yemen, and it had hit the continental United States harder than any foreign foe since the British defeated American forces outside of Washington and sacked the capital during the War of 1812.
Yet our initial triumph was remarkably, shockingly swift. And there has been no point since 9/11 when the Taliban or al Qaeda enjoyed a realistic opportunity to regain control of Afghanistan and re-establish the jihadist terror state that brought such death and pain into the heart of America’s greatest cities. Until now, that is—until President Biden decided to keep a version of Donald Trump’s promise and withdraw American soldiers from Afghanistan.
And as America withdraws and once again—as it did when Barack Obama withdrew from Iraq—opens up our allies to the prospect of a jihadist blitzkrieg, I can’t help but think that the withdrawal is due in part to a false narrative, that America was “losing” its longest war.
The truth, not just in Afghanistan but in Iraq and Syria as well, is that the United States military has time and again achieved the core and most basic objective of its military interventions. It has not achieved objectives that military arms alone cannot achieve. Let’s look back at the record.
In Iraq, the United States deposed Saddam Hussein and defeated a follow-on insurgency so thoroughly that by the end of the Surge the number of remaining al Qaeda fighters in the country likely numbered only in the hundreds. Then, after an ill-advised withdrawal, the military returned to Iraq, defeated an ISIS incursion, and destroyed its caliphate. The military accomplished this mission while suffering only a tiny fraction of the casualties it suffered during the first phases of the Iraq War.
In Afghanistan, despite facing a more challenging counterinsurgency environment than Iraq (where the Taliban enjoyed terrain advantages and safe havens in Pakistan), the military deposed the Taliban, routed al Qaeda, blocked the creation of safe havens, and helped the Afghan government retain control of key urban areas even though the American deployment ultimately shrank to a tiny fraction of its surge-level highs.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are holding on to their gains in spite of small deployments that rarely suffer combat casualties and inflict a relatively nominal cost on the American budget.
So, if this is the reality—and it is—then why do we constantly hear that America has “lost” or is “losing” its wars? Or, that America hasn’t truly won a war in a generation? We hear those words mainly because the military hasn’t accomplished a task that militaries can’t reasonably accomplish: namely, the creation and maintenance of functioning states to replace the deposed Hussein and Taliban regimes.
It is the failure to create these follow-on regimes that is the source of the American sense of failure abroad. Create those regimes, and they can fight any lingering jihadists without us. Create those regimes, and they remake that part of the world. The United States Army, however, cannot create those regimes.
I know this first-hand. When my unit, the 2d Squadron (“Sabre Squadron”), 3d Armored Cavalry Unit, flew into Forward Operating Base Caldwell on November 22, 2008, we entered a battlespace that was full of al Qaeda fighters. We controlled a fraction of the land around us. Every time you rolled outside the wire, there was at least a 25 percent chance of enemy contact.
By the time I left, we controlled the land. The chance of enemy contact in our region had dropped to one percent. The enemy retained some capacity to strike, but it was reduced to a shadow of its former self. Sadly, however, while we saw signs of civil society returning—markets re-opened, for example, and people felt free to live their lives—we knew the nation and culture had only just begun to heal and that all our gains were fragile indeed.
That’s why I was deeply opposed to Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq. That’s why I was furious when we watched ISIS rise. All the death and bloodshed that followed wasn’t just predictable, it was predicted. Fortunately, Obama had the will to return to Iraq, strike back at ISIS, and start to reverse its gains. Fortunately, Trump finished the offensive that Obama started.
But the lesson from Iraq remains: When our cultural and political leaders fixate on the failure to accomplish what we cannot achieve, we risk throwing away the victories we’ve already won.
Let’s make this as basic as possible. While we would like to see Afghanistan emerge as a functioning democratic state, full of healthy communities that organically defend themselves from jihadist ideologies, we must make sure that Afghanistan does not re-emerge as a jihadist state that once again houses terrorists who seek to strike Americans here at home.
Similarly, while we would like to see Iraq emerge as a functioning democratic state, capable of taking its place in the front rank of allied nations in the Middle East, we must make sure that jihadists do not once again carve up its territory, commit genocide, and launch a wave of terror in the great cities of Europe.
Yes, we have failed at the nearly impossible, optional tasks that would positively transform nations and cultures, but we have accomplished the necessary, mandatory tasks that keep our enemies at bay and keep Americans safe. And we’re maintaining those gains with minimal exertions of our national strength. A false narrative of military defeat has won the day. Our nation’s true victories are now in peril.
One more thing …
Have y’all heard about the insanity that is the 1904 Olympic Marathon? You haven’t? Well, speaking of obscure historical wildness, feast your eyes on this short and crazy documentary:
One last thing …
So, this happened, and it happened to my team. But it’s a remarkable shot by Luka Doncic, and—well—you just have to watch it:
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