Source: Yangguang Military, People's Liberation Army News and Communication Center Rong Media Author: Zhou Yuting
Recently, the situation in Afghanistan has undergone a sudden change, which has aroused widespread concern in the international community. Beginning with the capture of the first provincial capital on August 6, in just 10 days, the Afghan Taliban attacked the city, entered the capital Kabul on August 15, and announced the establishment of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" on August 19. Afghan media reported on August 24 that the Afghan Taliban has appointed a new minister of finance, acting minister of the interior and director of the National Security Bureau. In the midst of the extreme turmoil in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden claimed that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is expected to be completed on schedule by August 31, and it is risky to stay one more day.
So why did the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan, which the United States and its NATO allies fought, end in a major rout? For Afghanistan, is this war in the name of counter-terrorism a rescue or an invasion? Please pay attention to the Voice of China National Defense Time and Space "Yinan Military Forum".
Zhou Yuting: On August 15, with the defeat of the U.S. government forces that have been "carefully cultivated" in Afghanistan, Afghan President Ghani agreed to resign as president. That night, the Afghan Taliban entered the Afghan capital, Kabul, almost bloodlessly, and took control of the presidential palace. While the turmoil in Afghanistan has intensified, U.S. Embassy personnel in Afghanistan and U.S. troops in Afghanistan have been evacuated in a hurry, and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken has even publicly stated that the top priority is to get all Americans out of Afghanistan safely. Professor Yinan, what do you think of the great U.S. rout in Afghanistan?
Kim Yinan: Recently, many people have compared the great Rout of the United States in Afghanistan with the rout of the United States in the Vietnam War nearly half a century ago. I think, judging by the current situation, the U.S. rout in Afghanistan is worse than the rout in Vietnam.
Recently, Biden gave two consecutive speeches in the US media on the situation in Afghanistan. What did he say? The main thing is to wash away their responsibilities: one is to push the responsibility for the early agreement between the United States and the Afghan Taliban on his predecessor Trump; the other is to say that the United States has invested a lot of money in the Afghan government forces, reaching more than two trillion US dollars, the salaries of the Afghan government troops are issued by the United States, the equipment is all American, and the equipment level is even better than the equipment of some NATO countries' armies, and they should have resisted the attack of the Afghan Taliban.
People can see from Biden's speech that Biden believes that as long as he masters high-tech means, including reconnaissance means and strike methods, he can achieve precise destruction, he can eliminate this today and that tomorrow, and American money, weapons and equipment, and science and technology can destroy everything. As a result, Biden did not expect that the United States had intelligence errors, high-tech failures, and financial failures in Afghanistan.
Of course, another reason why the Biden administration is desperately trying to wash away responsibility today is that he is the least willing to compare the U.S. rout in Afghanistan today with the U.S. rout in Vietnam half a century ago. Biden said that this time the United States has achieved the goal of counter-terrorism in Afghanistan, and he did not mention that Bush Jr. originally launched the War in Afghanistan to transform Afghanistan and to establish a model of democracy in the Middle East in Afghanistan and Iraq. The current U.S. political purpose in Afghanistan has not been achieved, and he has not mentioned it.
Moreover, it is also important to note that the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan is not the same as vietnam's victory on the battlefield in Vietnam in 1975. The U.S. rout in Vietnam more than half a century ago can be said to be a Cold War-style rout. According to Western countries, the United States had no way to take Vietnam at that time, because China and the Soviet Union continuously provided Vietnam with combat materials, equipment, funds and strength. It was precisely because of the support of the two great powers of China and the Soviet Union that the Vietnamese people won the victory in the War to Resist US Aggression and Save the Country. But unlike the Afghan Taliban, who alone fought the U.S. invasion for 20 years, the Taliban won the war on its own without the support of any of its neighboring powers.
So, is this U.S. rout in Kabul, in Afghanistan, just reflected in the chaos at the airport? We see that many people are desperately rushing to the plane to escape, what does this appearance reflect? What reflects is the United States' vision of the world and the major mistakes of the United States' national strategy. It will take a long time for the United States to wake up to this, and it cannot wake up today. I reckon that it will take at least three or five years, seven or eight years for the United States to have a relatively objective picture of its rout in Afghanistan.
Afghan security forces patrol outside the attacked German consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, on November 11, 2016 (Xinhua/AFP)
Zhou Yuting: Previously, in Western media reports, Afghanistan has been touted as a place where the United States has won "flowers and applause." However, facts speak louder than words, according to The University of Brown in the United States, since the United States launched war in the Middle East and Afghanistan in 2001, it has caused 480,000 deaths, and Afghanistan alone has killed 157,000 people, tens of thousands of whom are civilians. Years of war and turmoil have dealt a devastating blow to the Afghan economy, and economic and social development has basically stagnated. The average life expectancy of Afghans is about 45 years, and nearly half of all children are malnourished. It can be said that this war that the United States fought for 20 years and finally ended in a great rout has brought deep disasters to the Afghan people.
Kim Yinan: This U.S. retreat in Afghanistan is not only a military rout, but also a collapse of the entire moral image of the United States. The United States has always preached the need to bring freedom and democracy to the Afghan people and to bring a model of democracy to Afghan society. But has the U.S. killing in Afghanistan, the disaster that the United States brought to Afghanistan, been counted? There are no statistics. Because the propaganda media in Western countries are all speaking out in the United States.
Of course, as time goes on, this thing may become clearer and clearer. Just as when US Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi not long ago, Foreign Minister Wang Yi made it very clear that what the changes in Afghanistan today prove is that if a country does not respect the local culture, history, and political power, does not respect the political choices of the local people, and imposes its own choices on the other side, it will bring no gospel but disaster. Moreover, this catastrophe will not only be brought to the United States itself, but will also extend to its allies, and all the allies pulled by the UNITED Military in Afghanistan will be implicated.
Today, not only the Americans themselves cannot withdraw from Afghanistan in time, the Germans cannot withdraw in time, the British, the French, the Australians, and many of the people who follow the United States in Afghanistan to carry out "counter-terrorism" cannot withdraw in time. This was NATO's largest military operation since its inception, and it resulted in the greatest rout. This moral collapse of the United States is not only evident in Afghanistan, but it has caused huge losses to human rights, lives and property on the ground, and the allies who followed it have also been dragged down. All the countries that followed the United States into the war in Afghanistan on a large scale have a bad debt that has been very costly today, and this bad debt continues to this day.
Infographic: US President Biden (Global Network)
Zhou Yuting:
Yes, the United States has recently begun to enter "throwing the pot" into "who is responsible for the situation in Afghanistan". On August 16, US President Joe Biden gave a speech trying to attribute the "great rout" of the United States to the inadequacy of Afghan government forces. In addition, the irresponsible withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has also attracted complaints from NATO allies: German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas accused the United States of prioritizing the entry of American citizens into kabul airports; CNN commented that "Biden had promised allies 'America is back', but the chaotic withdrawal made allies worry that 'America first' still exists." As some netizens said, after Afghanistan "changed the sky," the United States once again exposed the hypocrisy of its "throwing the pot" and the true face of disregarding morality and selfishness with practical actions.
Jin Yinan: Yes. As Elwood, a member of the British Conservative Party, said, the U.S. rout in Afghanistan was a complete humiliation of Western society. Elwood said they formed the world's most incredible and technologically advanced coalition, but were defeated by a group of "rebels" armed only with guns AK-47s and bazookas. He said it would be the biggest "oolong ball" scored by a "Western team" in this century. Chengzaisi said that the collapse of the United States in Afghanistan has brought about not only the collapse of the so-called "democratic model" of the United States, but also the sharp decline in the trust of his allies in the "boss" of the United States.
The United States, known as a global superpower, withdrew from the defeat of Vietnam nearly half a century ago, and now has to withdraw from the defeat of Afghanistan again, and the rout it suffered will have a major impact on the world's geopolitics, military, economy, state relations, and regional security. The impact would have been disastrous for Biden. Americans have said that no U.S. president who has failed to withdraw his troops from a country can run for re-election. Therefore, Biden's mood of "throwing the pot" is too strong and urgent, and he is now looking for "scapegoats" everywhere, and in the case of this rout, he is still showing strength and deliberately showing strength, which is a last resort for him, because he has no other way now.
Kabul Airport on August 24 (World Wide Web)
Some commentators believe that although the US military will withdraw from Afghanistan, the US government will not easily give up meddling in Afghan affairs. The United States has also stated that it will use naval and air forces to maintain deterrence against Afghanistan. Some American scholars said that in the eyes of people who only have a "hammer" in their hands, everything is like a "nail", and the "hammer" in the hands of the United States has never stopped beating. So why has the United States "hit the nail" again and again without any reflection? What are the ultimate consequences of doing so?
Jin Yinan: Speaking of consequences, I think that if the United States cannot clearly consider what kind of role it should play in the world, it will insist on playing the role of "world boss" in the future, and it will be arrogant everywhere, believing that all the rules are set by the United States, and the words spoken by the United States are international public opinion, and continuing to maintain this "super boss" mentality will not only bring disasters to the world, but also bring disasters to the United States itself. I believe that in the face of the great defeat in the War in Afghanistan, the United States should rethink. Thinking about what? Think about what exactly your role in the world is. At this time, the United States should really examine its own position, to recognize the multipolar world, to recognize the choice of multipolarity, to recognize that every country and the people of each country have the right to choose their own path, their own development model, their own political system.
In the case of being forced to be helpless, Biden seems to have seen this recently. He said that the U.S. armed forces could not be forced to change the Afghan people, who had the freedom to choose their own path and their own regime. Why didn't he say that earlier? If the United States had said this sooner, the war might have ended long ago. Now, although Biden is desperately trying to "throw the pot", some politicians in the United States are still soberly aware that the United States must reflect deeply, and also feel that the United States cannot completely influence the world, and the world can neither evolve in the direction that the United States wants, let alone live according to the American model. The world is colorful, and the world should be multipolar. What is true democracy in the world? True democracy should be based on the charter of the United Nations, in which each country chooses its own path, sets its own rules, and then carries out effective international cooperation in accordance with the principle of sovereign independence. This is the right way to solve the world's problems, not to unilaterally use force and money to subdue other countries.
(Produced by the Central Broadcasting Military and People's Liberation Army News and Communication Center)