Afghanistan And The Abuse Of History

From The New Ledger:

Afghanistan and the abuse of history.by Joshua Treviño




Two quotes from the past 24 hours on wars in Afghanistan:



■RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “If [President Obama is] such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right? Because everyone who’s tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”



■Dan Riehl: “History shows you can not win a ground war in Afghanistan.”



Following is a brief survey of invasions of Afghanistan “over a thousand years of history,” give or take a few centuries. Please note this is not an exhaustive list, but it is an illustrative one:



■The Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, 642–714. Outcome: Invaders win.

■The Mongol invasion of Afghanistan, 1219 to 1221AD. Outcome: Invaders win.

■Timurid conquest of Afghanistan, late 14th century. Outcome: invaders win.

■Babur’s conquest of Afghanistan, early 15th century. Outcome: invaders win.

■The First Anglo–Afghan War, 1839 to 1842. Outcome: Invaders lose.

■The Second Anglo-Afghan War, 1878 to 1880. Outcome: Invaders win.

■The Third Anglo-Afghan War, 1919. Outcome: Invaders win.

■Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. Outcome: Invaders lose.



Obviously this is incomplete, and there are multiple caveats: For example, the British “loss” in the First Anglo-Afghan War was capped with a thoroughly devastating punitive expedition that retook Kabul and generally extracted a terrible revenge for the destruction of Elphinstone’s column. Also, the Third Anglo-Afghan War saw the British getting only as far as Paktika before the Afghans caved. And one might argue that the rise of the Taliban constituted a de facto Pakistani invasion with local proxies. Et cetera.



The point, though, is that invading Afghanistan has been done, successfully, many times. If we go back past Steele’s “thousand years of history,” we even get to the very first successful invasion of that country, undertaken by Alexander the Great. Afghanistan is indeed a hard land with hard people, and there should be no understating the difficulties of fighting there. But it’s been done time and again in the past, and it will be done in the future — including by the United States, if we make it so.



If you believe we can’t win there, you’ve got a case to make. Just don’t base that case on “a thousand years of history.” Declaring that it’s ipso facto impossible to win in Afghanistan doesn’t mean you’ve read history. It means you haven’t.