Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy–“Pretty Please?”

Any casual observer could have anticipated the recent Afghan unraveling and the Taliban takeover.  Not since Alexander the Great in 356 BC and the Mongols in 1269 have the the Afghans ever been defeated, colonized, or ruled – not by the Persians, Mauryans, Ottomans, British, or Russians.  

In the late 1970’s the Afghan mujahedeen, a coalition of tribal and religious groups centered in Peshawar, defeated and expelled Soviet occupying forces.  This victory led to Islamic politicization of Afghanistan, the rise of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and the institution of radical Muslim fundamentalism.  

After 9/11 President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban turn over Osama bin-Laden, the mastermind of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York.  The Taliban refused, the United States invaded, and the Taliban were forced to retreat into their mountain lairs.

The next twenty years were a period of supposed democratic reforms where the rigidly-controlled, doctrinaire Islamic society imposed by the Taliban and ruled by sharia law and Koranic teaching, would give way to democracy, civil rights, and individual freedoms.  A series of puppet regimes were put in place by Washington, and while there were outward signs of democratic reform and the liberation of women, the country had changed little.  The ruling, American- backed governments colluded with the Taliban, misused and misappropriated the billions of dollars of US aid, and never gained popular support.

The United States and its government allies kept the Taliban in check, but, thanks to a policy of moderation never intended to eliminate them.  By the early 2000s, the US military had moved far from its WWII policy of victory at any price, and was restricted by a policy of minimizing civilian and US military casualties, and ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the local population.  The Taliban, given America’s history of military restraint, short-term goals, and geopolitical impatience, knew that sooner rather than later their time would come.

It came far sooner than even they thought when President Biden pulled the plug and recalled all American troops.  The Taliban had seen this coming for years, watching American enthusiasm for military engagement in a far-off, seemingly irrelevant countries (theirs in American eyes was no more than a rocky and barren tract of land in a harsh mountain landscape); and as soon as Biden gave the withdrawal order, they quickly marched into every major city and within days took Kabul.  Scenes this week were reminiscent of those in 1988 when the Taliban assumed power after the defeat of the Soviets.

No one but the idealist in the White House – the man who told the world, ‘America is back’ – was surprised.  Biden had run on a platform of geopolitical compromise, engagement, human rights, and compassion and told the world that the United States would no longer be an international bully.  In particular, he would revoke and rescind all of Donald Trump’s hostile and provocative policies.

He laughed at Trump’s unequivocal, Machiavellian principle of nationalism.  ‘America First’, Trump unapologetically said, speaking the same language as his Russian, Chinese, and Iranian adversaries.  ‘Negotiations’ with the Taliban under Trump were subject to irreversible ‘or-else’ conditions; and no space for a resurgence of Taliban-led Islamic terrorist rule was allowed.

Now Biden, seeing his anti-historical, romantic, and hopelessly Utopian vision of the world Afghan policies belied, not dismissed, and laughed at in a matter of days, retreated to the inner chambers of the White House to confer with his advisers.  ‘Now what?’, he asked.  The Taliban take-over was a fait accompli, al-Qaeda had announced their delighted return to Kabul, Iran championed the victory of righteous Islam, and every terrorist organization in the world from Hamas to Boko Haram sent words of encouragement, collaboration, and partnership to the newly-established regime.  What should be the American position?

Biden was in a quandary.  Since he had run on a platform of negotiation, respect, and compromise and had just withdrawn all American military presence from the country, he could not start saber-rattling and restart the Trump era posture of intimidation.  At the same time, thanks to the independent counsel of the American intelligence community, he realized that diplomacy would not work with the Taliban.

After twenty years of marginalization, two decades of patient but frustrated anticipation of power, years of scorn for anti-religious, corruptly secular governments, and increased popular support, the Taliban were not about to give away one parcel of land, one Islamic principle, or one rifle.  They were here to stay.

Biden's options were few and all were unappealing.  First, the US could pretend that nothing unpleasant had happened.  The troops were recalled as promised, Afghanistan was finally turned over to the Afghans, and America’s long, principled engagement would regrettably come to an and, as all things must.  

Second, the United States could coax the Taliban back to the bargaining table around which they had assembled in Oman at the invitation of Donald Trump and try to make them listen to reason.  The very obvious and impressive principle of Christianity-inspired American liberal democracy – its very rightness – could not possibly be ignored. 

Third, Biden could listen to the generals and the CIA intelligence community and finally grasp the new geopolitical calculus of the Taliban victory.  The country would quickly become a welcome haven for al-Qaeda, ISIS, and all Islamic-based terrorist groups, said the CIA and, more importantly, would be the command and control headquarters for regional terrorism.  

By changing the country’s name to ‘The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ and in so doing embracing and announcing the idea of a regional Islamic caliphate, the Taliban made clear its ambitions, purpose, and resolve. 

The only way to counter what could only be a significant threat to an already unstable region and to neutralize the more important threat to United States interests, would be to once and for all eliminate the Taliban – forget the hopelessly fanciful notions of peace and harmony, and systematically, thoroughly and absolutely destroy their every trace.

This last option was obviously not very appealing to President Biden.  ‘Victory at any price’ is not a song in his hymnal.  No military objective is worth the lives of innocent civilians.  ‘We are better than that’, Biden said to the military brass who pressed him on armed force.

The first option – doing nothing, resting on his laurels, fulfilling his promise to bring the troops home, and thus acting ‘on principle’ – was the most practical and politically sensible. Most Americans are sick and tired of hearing about a boring, meaningless, seemingly endless war in an obscure, irrelevant, unattractive place, and would be quite happy to get it off the headlines.

The second option, however – sitting down with the Taliban – was the most appealing.  Despite his political secularism, progressive idealism, and dalliance with socialism, Biden is at heart a true American exceptionalist.  The American way, despite the bumps and potholes in the road, is the best and only way.  America proudly stands for diversity, inclusivity, and the individual rights of all.  

Despite his dismissal of originalism, Jeffersonian Enlightenment, and the profoundly religious basis for the new republic, Biden still believes that whatever comes out of America is anointed, God-given, and absolute. This is the nature of 21st Century American exceptionalism.  Regardless of what political shade may color the day, America is always right; and when Americans speak, others are bound to listen.

If this sounds familiar, it is.  Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the light”, and there are few Americans who, even in these chaotic and divisive times, doubt its relevance to America.  “If we explain to them….If we reveal the mysteries of the American ethos….If we show them the way to the social, personal, and spiritual revelations of American democracy, they will see…”

Biden, a good Christian, comes by all this quite honestly.  The core principle of Christian missionary teaching is innate wisdom – once the natives hear the word of God enunciated in His book, they will be saved.  The same will be true of the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs, and Kim Jong-Un.

“Let’s give it a try”, said Biden in chambers.  The generals frowned, the CIA squirmed, and even a few of his inner circle winced; but the President, like many before him, had had an epiphany, and the true glory of America became clear.  

As much as Biden himself had chuckled at Ronald Reagan’s City on a Hill speech – the one that unashamedly spoke of America’s anointed responsibility to the world and of its innate goodness and spiritual destiny – he now wholeheartedly embraced the idea.  Of course he still had issues with Reagan’s colonial arrogance, capitalist delusions, and faux spiritualism; but the idea was still sound.  Whatever America does is ipso facto right.

Conservative pundits quickly branded Biden’s idea as ‘Pretty Please Diplomacy’, and America’s adversaries, sitting across the bargaining table, could not help be charmed and won over by the seductive combination of philosophical rectitude and respectful generosity. 

What is actually happening is that not only the Taliban but Putin, Xi, Kim, and the ayatollahs are salivating over this precipitous, hopelessly idealistic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Biden’s holy defense of it.  They, Machiavellian nationalist plotters and schemers, are delighted that America is not only a paper tiger but a fraidy cat, a regime so in love with outlandish, impossibly romantic ideas that it can only see pretty flowers and blue skies.

The Biden Administration has not of this writing (8/21) enunciated a response to the Taliban takeover let alone formulated a clear strategy to deal with it.  The President and his team are still huddled in the Situation Room, befuddled and surprised, without a clue how to proceed.  The three options are on the table, but remain unopened.  All in the room are afraid of them.  It is hard to predict the denouement of this tragedy, and the world will have to wait and see.  One thing is clear – the happy, delighted, inclusive presidency of Joe Biden is being quickly shown to be a fairy tale.

Love In The Time Of MeToo Hysteria–Prophylactic Castration In The Ivy League

Billy Barkstead, upon matriculation at a well-known Ivy League university was given, as part of his entry package, a series of forms, questionnaires, and information bulletins about proper sexual comportment on campus.  He was advised that ‘No Means No’ and that even the slightest, most innocent-appearing, seemingly innocuous sexual reference would be met with trial, judgment and penalty.  Examples were given, a checklist of what not to do in the company of women.  Under no circumstances should a male student make even the slightest reference to a woman’s looks, appearance, clothes, or demeanor; and any such untoward and unwelcome comments would be met with disapproval, censure, and dismissal.

The university had, at the request of its feminist dean of students, supported by her Board of Advisors and the President created what critics called a sexual gulag – a concentration camp within the walls of which no breach of party policy, rules, or regulations would be tolerated.  “We mean business”, Dean Bernstein said in an interview with the school newspaper, “and we will take no prisoners”. 

She meant what she said and encouraged female students to come forward at the least sign of offense.  Any male student accused of sexual impropriety would, ipso facto, be considered guilty until proven innocent and would be suspended.  Adding a series of footnotes to the official university publication on gender issues, she provided clarity to the term ‘offense’.

A look that was more than in passing or incidental could be construed as sexually invasive.  A smile of greeting would not be seen as innocent at all, but a typical male, chauvinist, ruse; a trick out of the discredited past; an obvious, transparent, rude insult. Touching with the possible exception of a brief handshake was considered a thinly-veiled male come-on.  And so on.

The introductory packet included a detailed scenario of possible dangerous sexual encounters, and gave explicit instructions how to proceed in a mutually, consensual, friendship between male and female students (gay sex was treated in a special addendum).  At every step of the way, the male was under strict obligation to ask permission to proceed.  “Is it OK if I ______’ (fill in the blanks).  

There were no instructions for women other than how to refuse male advances.  It was not expected that they would take the initiative; and given the commonly held assumptions about male sexuality – it was by nature predatory, blind, immoral, and ignorant – it would always be the man who would initiate contact.

The Board debated long and hard over the issue of female absolutism – the unequivocal, absolute, irremediable right to physical and emotional integrity  .  There were those who insisted that women were not just sexual defenders and negotiators for sexual favors.  On the contrary, they were as forward, dominant, and pursuing in seeking sexual satisfaction and fulfillment as men.  In fact, since they were considered equal if not superior to men in all respects, then perhaps this entire litany of warnings, do-nots and bewares was illogical and contradictory.  

Why should a strong woman  - “A Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, Dionyza, Laura, or Goneril”, illustrated one member of the Board – need any protection at all? And the University admitted only strong women, did it not?

Of course she was mistaken, the President averred.  “It’s not that we don’t have strong women here at the university”, she said.  “It’s just that we want to create a hostility-free, unpressured, and congenial environment for women”. In other words, there is no such thing as ‘the occasion of sin’.  A woman should be able to walk into the grossest male fraternity and never have to worry about sexual abuse.  No matter how well-known the reputation of the fraternity; and no matter how drunk or stoned she might be, she is protected.  Any male who even thinks about sex with her is liable to prosecution – a clear, undeniable de facto symbolic castration of male students.  

Without their pestering, unwelcome, puerile sexual advances, the environment for women would be ‘a rose garden without thorns’.   All women’s time could be spent on socializing, academics, and appropriate extracurricular activities.  And men, she joked behind closed doors, could resort to their Five Fingered Bride anytime they wanted.  Which is what they did all the time anyway, wasn’t it?

If the truth be known, most of the women at the university were there to hook up with boys and, if luck was with them, find a partner.  Sex was part of the deal, and nose-to-the-grindstone academics was for nerds.  Moreover, most women were as horny, sexually irresponsible, and devil-make-care as men; and, despite the demurral and outright naysaying of their feminist peers, wanted macho men, not times, ‘Is it OK if I touch you?’ little boys. 

The trick that women at the university had to learn was how to sort out the fearless from the following herd of yes-men; the men who were not afraid to appraise, admire, and respect beauty, femininity, and sexual allure.

The new rules, as much as they were devised to help and protect women, simply made sexual adventure and pursuit more difficult for them.  Since forever, women have been able to deal with sexually obtuse men.  The fragile male ego is easy prey, and a quick kick to the emotional balls was enough to dissuade all but the apes.  The decks could easily be cleared for running and only the best and brightest would be piped aboard.   Not so now when so many men hid in the shadows and looking around corners at women.

The winners were savvy men – those who understood that women wanted sex as much as they did, that a kind, respectful word was the key that opened sexual doors, and that Freud still ruled – Daddy was always in the background, and men had the psycho-social edge.

The calculus had changed to favor the sexual elite – the strong women who wanted no part of sexual formulas, behavioral guidelines, and dormitory nannies and who felt quite capable of hunting down males, capturing them, and using them for pleasure; and savvy males who understood women, their desires, their history, and their politics.

These men have always existed.  In the old days they were the football captains, swim team standouts, rowers, and sons of families from Beacon Hill and Martha’s Vineyard.  They had a sexual imprimatur of the highest, unquestioned order.  

Today’s sexual elite are the socially savvy – the men who can see through the fanfare and fol-de-rol of feminist cant and imposition, who understand the sexual nature of women, and who have learned the art of negotiation and victory in a feminist time.

They do not feel sorry for the castrated majority, the sexually beaten, the fearful. They are the new lords of the manor, seigneurs ruling hundreds of sexual serfs.

Their women, the Ladies of the Manor, are imperious and dominant.  They have no use for the faux feminism of the indoctrinated. 

So the university gulag is not entirely incarcerating.  Most of the students, men and women go along with the prison guards, the indoctrinators, and the internal enforcers.  They march when told to march, turn off their lights at lights out, act dutifully and punctually, and keep their eyes down.  The elite few, the sexual libertines, freethinkers, and new wave of sexual counter-revolutionaries hardly know they exist.  They are the hollow men, the insignificant men, the school’s detritus.

Wars Are For Winning–The Shameful Abandonment Of Afghanistan

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban evokes brutal reminders of the fall of Saigon, and the images of Afghans desperately trying to get on US transport planes are frighteningly similar to those of similarly desperate Vietnamese who clung to the ladder of the last helicopter out of Saigon.

Except for history-blind, idealist American military strategists, there could only have been few observers who felt that the Taliban could be beaten and eliminated. Afghanistan had never been conquered – not by the Persians, the Ottomans, the British, or the Soviets – and anyone who thought that the support of American troops and its political assistance to Afghan administrations the country would become democratic, secure, and strong was just whistlin' Dixie.

Even a cursory look at recent history would have shown that any armed intervention in Afghanistan would end up badly, especially when the US had no clear objectives. Was it to teach the Taliban a lesson? To annihilate them? To set the girls and women of the country free? To establish a liberal bulwark against Iran and Pakistan?

No one, except politically naïve White House planners, could have believed that American engagement in democratic reforms would eliminate the corruption that is endemic to all puppet regimes; or believed that a country unused to democracy or any semblance of it, riven by religious divisions and hostilities, and divided by persistent ethnic, tribal, and political conflict could ever be anything but a chaotic, failed state. This same hopelessly idealistic world-view led to disaster in Iraq.  

Invading (liberating) American troops which overthrew Saddam Hussein quickly retreated and ‘left democracy to the Iraqis’.  Instead of establishing a harsh, unforgiving, and punitive military rule designed to eliminate any remaining anti-democratic terrorism and anti-social movements; and offering no timelines for withdrawal, no escape clauses, no political or military openings, the United States made all the wrong assumptions about power, ethnicity, territorialism, and nationalism.

Without a clear idea of what victory was, and hamstrung by even more idealistic notions of protecting civilian lives, the US effort was doomed from the start.  The United States could have invaded, dominated, and controlled every major city in Iraq and established a brutal and uncompromising martial law; and such will would have been a complete and total defeat of Saddam Hussein, his army, and his supporters.  Looters and dissenters would have been shot.  

Merciless house-to-house searches would have been carried out. Public executions of those who violated martial law would have been common.  The American army would have been feared and respected.  Such unsparing and merciless enforcement of the occupation would have eventually led to a more stable and rehabilitated society.  The Romans came, saw, and conquered; but they stayed, and as a result half the world owes culture, administration, law, and infrastructure to them.

This same temporality and idealistic impatience has been at work in Afghanistan. The United States has been in Afghanistan for twenty years, says Biden. “Isn’t that enough?”.  Enough for what?ask historians.  There are fifty wars in world history that lasted 100 years, and the Hundred Years War in England was but one; and these wars were conflicts of constant battle and death.  The twenty years of American presence in Afghanistan was not a period of war but one of pseudo-occupation.  There were desultory civilian and deaths during that period, but nothing like the wars of Europe and Asia.

The American exceptionalism that led the US into the protracted, failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and blinded White House after White House has persisted for decades and is evident in the US approach to Iran.  The mullahs will listen to reason, American diplomats and military strategists contend, because we are right.  War, nuclearization, civil strife, territorialism, terrorism, and expansionism are not the way to world peace, to a better, more compassionate, more enduring world. Except that no mullah this side of the Caspian ever gave it a second thought.

America felt that winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese was the key to success, especially when its limited bombing of the North had little effect whatsoever. It bombed harbors, military redoubts, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but left the cities, villages, and hamlets alone.

Wars are not fought to spread democracy, to liberate women, or to depose dictators.  Nor should they be vindictive acts to wreak vengeance.  Nor should they be impressive displays of military might.  They are meant to annihilate the enemy; and the United States, despite its humiliating defeat in Vietnam, continued to hold on to its ‘hearts and minds’ strategy and its ‘no casualties’ approach to warfare.  

The Taliban were never defeated, only set back, held in check, and deferred while cosmetic changes were effected in Government-controlled cities.  Burkas came off, women walked and drove without male support, elections were held, and all looked hunky-dory – the American miracle was working.

Meanwhile the Machiavellian powers of the world pay no attention whatsoever to this self-serving, failed policy.  Goodness, kindness and ‘doing the right thing’ have no meaning whatsoever in Afghanistan, Iran, China, or Russia.  Only national interest should be at the center of foreign policy. Donald Trump understood this and was not hesitant to express his commitment to ‘America First’.  Russia, China et al see the Biden Administration’s policy of political exceptionalism, a casualty-averse military strategy, and an impossibly idealistic progressivism as weak and intellectually corrupt and to be taken advantage of.

American political and military hesitancy was not always the case. There was a purity and singularity of purpose guiding Allied armies across Europe and American forces across the Pacific.  In WWII there were no questions of geopolitical advantage, negotiation, or temporizing.  After Pearl Harbor America woke up from its military slumber and led the campaign against the Nazis and fought bloody, uncompromising, and ultimately victorious battles from Guam to Tokyo.

All resources were mobilized in World War II.  The American economy was quickly converted to a wartime machine.  American men were recruited from every class and region to fight the Germans and the Japanese.  Washington propaganda which vilified Hitler and Tojo portrayed them as evil, stoked ethnic and racial hatred, and coalesced the country into an irresistible force of might and destruction.

There was no question of bombing enemy cities.  Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were not considered off-limits and no distinction was made between combatants and civilians.  We were at war not only with Hitler, Tojo, and their armies, but with the countries of Germany and Japan themselves.  We made no distinction between the regimes who started the wars and the people who supported them.

All American wars since WWII have been lukewarm and hesitant.  The magnanimity shown by the US to both Germany and Japan in the post-war period leaked into the Pentagon, morphed into versions of American Christian exceptionalism, and led us to fight half-heartedly.  MacArthur had the vision to win conclusively and absolutely in the Korean War but was fired instead of leading his armies into China.

Escalation of the war in Vietnam and the all-out annihilation of the enemy was never a serious option.  Bombing North Vietnam ‘back to the Stone Age’ was never seriously considered.  Not only did it risk internationalizing the war and engaging a Chinese enemy who was as implacable and motivated as the North Vietnamese; but because our moral philosophy was changing. 

Winning at all costs was not an American thing to do if those costs included innocent lives.  The war in Vietnam, then, became one of American attrition.  Long before our military resources were depleted, our resolve was gone, and we were sent packing.

The war in Afghanistan reflected the same lack of clarity and singularity of purpose. For all intents and purposes the war was to wreak vengeance on the country which harbored Osama bin Laden; and once he was eliminated whatever resolve and geopolitical reasoning there was to remain in the country evaporated.

Once again, hearts and minds were foremost, and scorched earth strategies were off the table.  It would not have been inconceivable for an overwhelming American military force to take over and occupy every major city and town in the country, to rule it with relentless severity, and to neutralize the enemy.  If we had considered all this, more than likely we would not have gone to war; but if we were so determined, then the Curtis Lemay approach might have been successful.

This military indecisiveness and hamstrung operations would be bad enough; but US foreign policy designed to prevent war while securing American interests has been just as indecisive and myopic and trapped within an outmoded vision of American exceptionalism and Christian charity.  We have come a long way from the realpolitik of Henry Kissinger and even farther from his historical mentor, Machiavelli.  Even if we could be convinced to act boldly in our self-interest, the current administration cannot figure out what that self-interest is.

Finally, we are hobbled by our Christian morality.  We cannot understand how al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, or Hamas can blow up civilian busses and indiscriminately massacre children. The radical Islamic enemy is evil.

The enemy is not evil or immoral seen within their perspective.  They are simply more explicit about their goals and more determined and ruthless in their tactics.  The ends justify the means, they say; and are no different than our firebombing Dresden and Tokyo or dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We have ‘evolved’ to what we consider to be a more progressive and humane military policy and thus weakened ourselves.  They have acted no differently than the marauding armies of Genghis Khan or those of the Crusades.  Take no prisoners.

Military strategists talk of ‘asymmetrical warfare’; but they have not considered the skewed geometry of our war with radical Islam.  How can we possibly defeat an enemy if we don’t play by his rules? Enemies from the Taliban to al-Shabab know that we will always keep most of our firepower in the stockade and that we will only fight careful wars.  Not only do we not want to harm civilians, we organize our battles as much to limit American casualties as to wreak havoc on the enemy.

War is hell, and we should do our best to avoid it.  But since this is an utter impossibility, we should only fight wars that are clearly and unequivocally in our national self-interest; fight them to win; and win at all costs.