The Taliban also granted refuge to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, who had fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s. Bin Laden then used Afghanistan as the base of operations for his terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, setting the stage for the next Afghan War in 2001.
Real Lessons
This actual history of the Afghan conflict -- as opposed to the fictional version pushed by Gates and others -- could provide some valuable lessons, assuming policymakers in Washington would acknowledge the truth.
For one, the U.S. government could have collaborated with Soviet officials in the late 1980s to work out a cease-fire and a political settlement. The Soviet-backed regime in Kabul was even willing to have elections as part of a national reconciliation.
It was the tough-guy intransigence of the CIA and the early Bush-41 administration that prevented a possible settlement. Washington wanted a triumphal climax to its long-running covert war, even if that meant delivering the Afghan people into the hands of heavily armed religious fanatics.
Another reasonable lesson would be that it's often better to settle for a partial success than to insist on total military victory. That way all sides in a civil war have a sense that their interests are protected, rather than having one segment of the society crush another.
That lesson has resonance today as the Obama administration considers reaching out to the Taliban and trying to bring the fundamentalists into a peace process. As repugnant as it might be to deal with Taliban leader Mullah Omar -- as it would have been to negotiate with communist leader Najibullah two decades ago -- that might be necessary to achieve a lasting peace.
The recent Afghan history also could be useful as a reminder about the limits -- and the risks -- of military solutions not just for Afghanistan but for other countries, including Libya today. It can turn out to be foolhardy to spurn olive branches even if you don't like the people extending them.
But Official Washington has derived a different set of lessons based on the false narrative of what happened after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, when the U.S. government supposedly folded up its tent and headed home.
The lesson from that bogus history is that the United States should remain in Afghanistan indefinitely because to depart prematurely would invite greater danger in the future.
It may be understandable why neoconservatives would push such malarkey -- and why Defense Secretary Gates and other government hardliners would be tempted to use the made-up chronology to convince gullible journalists about the need to stay the course -- but their "history" is a fabrication (as Gates well knows ).
The simple truth is that the last end game in Afghanistan was messed up not because the United States left too soon but because it stayed too long.
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