Criticisms of the Withdrawal Show Us at our Worse

Reality is not Play Station.

For most of my adult life, we have been making life easier for ourselves.  Our gadgets have more buttons, our tools are more user friendly, the processes of living more streamlined and automated. More than one generation has grown up in an environment where winning is easy (everyone can be a Tiger Woods, playing Tiger Woods Golf) where losing is only one replay away from success. 

There were benefits from this.  More leisure, perhaps more self-esteem, and there are negatives, consider the arrogance that comes from skimming victory to victory like a stone across the water, and the resultant contempt for “losers” (the ones without smooth stones and placid water).

Maybe this helps explain our condemnation of responsible leaders dealing with complex and often intractable real world problems.  The Biden team (and this includes many very experienced and talented men and women in the armed forces and civilian departments of government) has been engaged in an exceptionally difficult set of operations in Afghanistan. 

Shame on all of us who have criticized their efforts as if they were failing level one in a PlayStation game. 

They have faced many hard choices with limited information and obvious risks at every turn.  Over 100,000 people evacuated in essentially a war zone. 

And don’t be so certain, as you’d be wrong, that somehow it could have had a Hollywood ending—if we had done it sooner or in a different way, or with different leadership.  This has essentially been, from the decision to leave, a military operation and our military has been competent. 

Let’s get two things right.  First, we don’t control events with some God like powers.  Nor are Marvel’s super heroes calling the shots. We are one player, albeit powerful, in a vast chaotic drama. 

Second, reality is one-tenth knowable and nine-tenths opaque.  And the knowable is subject to doubt. 

Once we decided to exit Afghanistan, Kabul became a war zone.  There wasn’t a solution known before hand to the designer and built into the game.  We faced what reality always is (under the cover of our illusions) --potential disasters, inevitable loses and hard choices.

By the way, partisan attacks these days on the Biden team might give some of us pause to reflect.  Weren’t those of us who are now inclined to support a Democrat Party government and seem to understand the difficulties they face, somewhat less generous to a former Republican Party government?

I hope this blog is not seen as partisan. It is about reality. It is about the simplistic way that we in America understand our world. It is a call for realism and for all of us to recognize the difficulty and the cost of action. For in this, the real world, the risks of action are only exceeded by the dangers of inaction.