{"id":662591,"date":"2021-08-19T16:06:48","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T20:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=662591"},"modified":"2021-08-19T16:06:54","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T20:06:54","slug":"knowles-america-didnt-lose-the-war-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/knowles-america-didnt-lose-the-war-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"KNOWLES: America Didn\u2019t Lose The War In Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fknowles-america-didnt-lose-the-war-in-afghanistan%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=662591&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/GettyImages-483252999-scaled-1.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>It is wrong to say that America lost the Afghan War. Failure entails having had something that we intended to achieve. In Afghanistan, the United States set several, shifting, competing goals before the twenty-year campaign collapsed under the weight of its own illogic. Ultimately, the decision to leave Afghanistan came down to the fundamental factor in our democracy: the American <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thechicagocouncil.org\/commentary-and-analysis\/blogs\/us-public-supports-withdrawal-afghanistan\">people<\/a> didn\u2019t want to stay.<\/p>\n<p>Americans have feared \u201cforever wars\u201d from our earliest days. \u201cOf all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Madison\/01-15-02-0423#:~:text=No%20nation%20could%20preserve%20its%20freedom%20in%20the%20midst%20of%20continual%20warfare.&amp;text=They%20not%20only%20considered%20the,obtaining%20our%20objects%20without%20war\">warned<\/a>&nbsp;James Madison. \u201cNo nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.\u201d Worse still, in the view of the Founders, was interference in the domestic affairs of foreign nations. \u201cThe great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/kr.usembassy.gov\/education-culture\/infopedia-usa\/living-documents-american-history-democracy\/george-washington-farewell-address-1796\/\">explained<\/a> George Washington, \u201cis in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.\u201d Invoking Washington\u2019s farewell address and admonition, Thomas Jefferson <a href=\"https:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/19th_century\/jefinau1.asp\">called<\/a> at his inauguration for \u201cpeace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations\u2014entangling alliances with none.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the ensuing centuries, America expanded. Jefferson himself doubled the size of the nation through the Louisiana Purchase. Some new lands entered the union as states. Others remained imperial territories governed as the spoils of war, often to be discarded. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson \u2014 our nation\u2019s most consciously progressive president \u2014 pushed America into the First World War to \u201cmake the world safe for democracy.\u201d After the Second World War, the United States took an even more active role in world affairs to deter the expansion of Soviet communism. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire removed the primary justification for America\u2019s seven decades of perpetual, albeit sometimes proxy, war. But the military interventions continued \u2014 first in Iraq, then Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, and once again Iraq. No longer able to claim \u201ccontainment\u201d as its grand strategy, the United States justified these military campaigns by appealing to \u201chuman rights\u201d and other vague slogans.<\/p>\n<p>After the September 11<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;terror attacks, America\u2019s foreign policy became even less clear. The group that perpetrated the attacks transcended national borders, and so President George W. Bush declared that the American military response would span multiple nations as well. \u201cToday, we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader,\u201d Bush announced. \u201cEvery nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even this ambitious vow to attack any nation that supported America\u2019s enemies rested upon the perfectly ordinary demand to bring criminals to justice. But in 2005, Bush redefined the mission in Afghanistan and indeed the entire \u201cWar on Terror\u201d from a limited demand for justice into a utopian crusade for liberty. At his second presidential inauguration, Bush proclaimed, \u201cThe survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"16\">\n<p>The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America\u2019s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation\u2019s security, and the calling of our time. So, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Bush intended not merely to track down the bad guys who toppled the towers but to oust every single government that did not sufficiently reflect Madisonian democracy in order that he might abolish tyranny on earth. Bush justified his messianic campaign on the dubious premise that all autocrats, down to the tiniest tin-pot dictatorship in the farthest-flung region, pose an existential threat to the American homeland. The claim appeared particularly preposterous in light of the historical circumstance that America had not only tolerated but even installed authoritarian regimes around the world that never threatened our nation with so much as an insult.<\/p>\n<p>Bush\u2019s national policy of global regime change promised truly perpetual war; so long as a tyrant breathed, the United States would seek his defeat with the force of the world\u2019s most powerful military. But the American people soon returned to the wisdom of the Founders, and by 2016 both major political parties in the United States campaigned on an end to the \u201cforever war\u201d in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Desperate to remain in Afghanistan, proponents of the occupation began to change their arguments for staying. If the United States left, they argued, Afghan women would suffer. But women suffer in many nations on earth. Must the United States invade and govern them all? If America withdrew, the defenders of occupation insisted, \u201cLGBT rights\u201d would no longer be protected. But many if not most nations do not recognize \u201cLGBT rights.\u201d Has the rainbow replaced the stars and stripes as the symbol of our national allegiance? If the U.S. left Afghanistan, the occupiers argued, it would constitute a betrayal of the Afghan people. This final justification seemed least persuasive of all. After two decades, two trillion dollars, and 2,448 Americans dead, the United States had given the Afghan people plenty.<\/p>\n<p>Had our ruling class defined the Afghan War in realistic terms as a mission to conquer and hold in perpetuity an imperial territory for the purpose of killing terrorists and checking the ambitions of enemy nations such as Russia and China, the American people might have seen some value in staying. But our political leaders, aware perhaps of our national aversion to continual warfare, failed to make the honest case. Instead, they pretended to build stable institutions and instill a democratic spirit in a godforsaken tribal land\u2014a process that would require centuries of work if it is even possible. They relied on our sympathy for the plight of Afghan women and enthusiasm at the prospect of Pride parades in Kandahar, neither of which will persuade Americans to spend another penny or spill another drop of blood.<\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan has rightly startled our nation. More disconcerting than our loss is our inability to say what it would have meant to win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is wrong to say that America lost the Afghan War. Failure entails having had something that we intended to achieve. In Afghanistan, the United States set several, shifting, competing &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}