Emotion-Driven Policy: Lessons from Afghanistan
We’ve all heard about the events in Afghanistan from the past week: the Taliban has retaken Afghanistan, they are capturing 12-year-old girls to be their sex slaves, they are going door-to-door searching for Christians and for anyone who helped the United States or our allies in order to kill them, Al-Qaeda has already begun returning to Afghanistan to set up their bases for terrorist operations, ISIS has been emboldened to make a strong comeback, and both leaders and laymen alike have concluded that the United States cannot be trusted to keep our promises.
Additionally, the U.S. withdrawal has empowered China on the world stage, as the West has proven itself weak and unwilling to fight for our way of life. According to Lord Blencathra of the British Parliament, “Biden may have condemned the world to Chinese domination in future and the end of western liberal democracy.”
Was this decision simply a mistake that could not have been foreseen? How could this have happened? And what can we learn from it?
The consequences we’ve seen this week were a known outcome of which Biden had been warned, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Biden’s “top generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability.”
Even if Biden was not warned (as he has claimed), it didn’t take any special insight to know what would happen if the Taliban regained control. Most of us were alive when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, and when they opened their doors to Al-Caeda and made possible the 9/11 attacks. Additionally, it wasn’t that long ago that we all witnessed a massive international crisis when President Obama withdrew American troops from Iraq, resulting in the quick rise of ISIS and the systematic torture, rape, enslavement, beheading, and crucifixion of thousands of Christians throughout the Middle East. This led to the displacement of more than 700,000 Christians from Syria alone and a worldwide refugee crisis that has ravaged Europe and led to an increase in the persecution of Christians worldwide.
So why was this decision made? Did our leaders calculate the cost of American lives being lost and decide that it just wasn’t worth it? Did they make the very difficult decision to turn our backs on our allies, abandon 15,000 American citizens in Afghanistan, allow women to be raped and killed, leave Christians to be beheaded and crucified, and permit the rise of terror cells because preventing all of that just wasn’t worth the massive numbers of American lives that were being lost daily in the war in Afghanistan? No! There had not been a single American casualty in Afghanistan in 18 months!! The cost in U.S. lives was down to zero! The huge price had already been paid and now our volunteer-registration military were maintaining a small presence of about 2500 soldiers to keep from losing all that had been gained by the tremendous sacrifice of Americans over the past two decades, both in lives lost and in trillions of dollars spent since September 11, 2001. There was no war, in the traditional sense. There was a small, strategic presence, and it was working magnificently.
The reality is that this decision was made because it’s what the American people demanded. As of April of this year, 69% of Americans wanted a full withdrawal from Afghanistan. And why did Americans think that was a good idea? Because short, catchy, popular phrases that make us look good to others are in, and thoughtful, well-researched, informed positions that go against the tides of culture are out.
We want to be on the side of “Black Lives Matter”, even though the policies of this organization overtly destroy black families and black lives. We want to be on the side of “Science is real”, even though this slogan is used to cover for a definition of science that excludes the supernatural, rejects objective morality, and, well...denies scientific facts. And we buy into foolishness like, “No more endless wars”, when the reality is that our way of life must be defended against the evil that seeks to destroy us.
We have been so dumb for so long, watching trash on television instead of reading great books, receiving our “education” from a government-run system that has rejected the principles upon which this country was built in order to fulfill a demonic agenda, and surrounding ourselves with people who are just as dumb, that we have lost our ability to think critically and to act morally. The drive to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan was no exception.
As Dan Crenshaw, member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a former Navy SEAL who lost his eye during combat in Afghanistan, has said, the argument for bringing home the troops was purely an emotional one. It was not an informed, fact-based decision in which voters and the leaders who represent them weighed the pros and cons and came to a sensible conclusion. Rather, like so many people’s policy positions today, it was driven by an emotion-driven slogan that sounds nice but doesn’t work in the real world. In this case, that slogan was “No more endless wars!”
It sounds great, doesn’t it? After all, endless wars sound bad. And ending what is bad sounds good. And supporting what sounds good makes us feel good. And feeling good is what life is all about for so many Americans today. Never mind that a little research often reveals that what sounds good in memorable little mantras is not always what really is good. There’s no place for research when our desire is a quick and easy way to feel good about ourselves and win approval from other uninformed, emotion-driven, slogan-repeating friends. And we fall for such foolishness all the time!
So how might a thoughtful and informed person think about “the endless war” in Afghanistan?
As I’ve said for more than twenty years, it is not our responsibility, nor do I believe it is even possible, for the United States to turn tribal, Muslim nations into thriving, Constitution-based democracies. It will never happen. It is a waste of time to try.
As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Muslim cultures are built on values that are incompatible with freedom, righteousness, and personal responsibility. Rather, power-grabbing, rape, murder, crucifixion, beheading, lying, deception, multiple wives, pedophilia, sex slaves...these are the practices commanded by Islam’s most trusted sources and modeled by Islam’s perfect pattern of conduct. Providing Muslims with the right to vote and a Western-style constitution will not change that. Until Islam is rejected and Christianity is embraced, the possibilities for transformation of such societies is extremely limited. We should not be attempting to nation-build in places like Afghanistan.
But as Crenshaw points out, “there are many options between nation building and giving up, and we had found a good one in Afghanistan before President Biden abandoned it.”
Second, because Islam demands the violent subjugation of the entire world under its rule, as well as the torture and death of those who refuse to convert to Islam or subjugate themselves and their belongings to the caliphate, those who enjoy Western civilization are at war and will always be at war, whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not.
If we want to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today for the next generation, if we want a country so prosperous and generous that we are able to reduce the percentage of humanity living in extreme poverty by 80% in just 50 years, as we have done since 1970, if we want to maintain the United States as a safe haven for Christian refugees who are being persecuted around the world, then we must be willing to defend it. These luxuries are not free. They come with a cost. And that cost is, first and foremost, the willingness to defend our way of life against those who would have us tortured and destroyed.
Keeping 2500 soldiers in Afghanistan to maintain a strategic presence there – even if it lasts forever – is well worth the benefits of maintaining our way of life and making the world a better place for all nations, and all the more so when those American soldiers are voluntarily signing up to serve as heroes to defend the freedoms we all enjoy.
It’s ironic that those who want to bring home every last soldier are usually the very same people advocating for the well-being of refugees because bringing home the soldiers who voluntarily signed up to be the peace keepers of Western civilization is exactly what causes refugee crises. This is a predictable result of the mindless repetition of mantras like “no more endless wars.” And it indicative that we are living in a dream world in which we believe we can enjoy all the benefits of Western civilization without any risks, without any costs, and without any danger.
It’s time to stop forming our policies by surface-level, emotion-driven, feel-good slogans that are not rooted in reality. The reality is that we live in a fallen world. People are evil by nature. And good men and women are needed to defend what is good and hold back the tide of evil.
One day, Christ will return and all will be made right. Soldiers will no longer be needed and wars will cease. But until then, let’s dig a little deeper than mean tweets versus happy slogans and think about the results of the policies we support. Otherwise, the consequences are on us.
