In making proposals about a power-sharing deal and interim government, the US has given the Afghan factions a new reason to approach the peace process. That may come as a cost, however, because with just a month and a half left before the May 1 withdrawal date, the US doesn’t believe it has enough time.
Rather, the Biden Administration was in the process of weaseling out of that date already, and now suggests they are just trying to “buy more time” for the peace process, trying to back their new proposal by staying in Afghanistan despite the promised pullout date.
This could be risky, of course, as the Taliban has been holding out for the pullout, and Afghan officials don’t seem at all keen on the idea of the US leaving under any circumstances. The US staying could convince the Taliban the peace isn’t tenable, and convince the government that they can keep the US occupation by just not making peace.
It’s not clear if this is an improvement, as Biden was talking postponing the pullout from the start. Now, at least, they seem to be suggesting that the goal is to make peace in the near term and then leave. At least that would keep a soft-of definitive end-date on the horizon.
The problem is many in Congress are so comfortable with the open-ended war they were already resisting the pullout, even if it was almost done. Postponing it means they’ll be ready to resist anew any time a pullout again approaches.
According to the New York Times a year ago, there are secret annexes of the US-Taliban Agreement that nobody (openly) knows about except allegedly the Taliban, and these annexes may have included allowable Taliban behavior. . .Or not.
…from NYTimes, Mar 8, 2020:
A Secret Accord With the Taliban: When and How the U.S. Would Leave Afghanistan
The Taliban have [allegedly] read the secret annexes of the recently signed peace deal. But most Americans haven’t, nor have many of their elected representatives.
Another Catastrophic Success
With their tails tucked proudly ‘tween their legs
Advancing towards the exit march the dregs
Of empire, whose retreat this question begs:
No promised omelet, just the broken eggs?
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2011
and speaking of eggs, from another of your poems Copyright 2005:
. . .no trace of the egg on our face
Hi, Don! Thanks for remembering. The line of verse you quoted comes from the first stanza of Lets Already Do It Again which I composed some time in 2007.
Let’s already do it again
Let’s write with no ink in the pen
On the paper no trace of the egg on our face
Let’s already do it again
… [which concludes with]
So let us dismiss these vile men
Now mainly less rooster than hen
Before they can blow what at sundown they crow:
“Let’s already do it again!”
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2007
Watching yet another US administration weasel out of withdrawing from yet another stupid, vainglorious imperial quagmire — Bungle in the Jungle or Debacle in the Desert — does indeed remind me of that line “Let’s Already Do It Again.” Come May 1, we will no doubt see déjà vu happen all over again, as Yogi Bera would say.
One more note on the literary inspiration for the eggs and omelets metaphor that I have tried to exploit in several anti-war poems over the past decade-and-a-half:
“There is a theory which has not yet been accurately formulated or given a name, but which is very widely accepted and is brought forward whenever it is necessary to justify some action which conflicts with the sense of decency of the average human being. It might be called, until some better name is found, the Theory of Catastrophic Gradualism…. The formula usually employed is ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’ And if one replies, ‘Yes, but where is the omelet?’ the answer is likely to be: ‘Oh, well, you can’t expect everything to happen all in a moment.'” — George Orwell, “Catastrophic Gradualism” (1946)
I managed to get in another reference to this timeless metaphor last year (2020) with Necrocide’s Restoration (after the style of John Donne’s “The Canonization”):
. . .
So grapple to the last with dread of Peace.
The ones who pay the costs, not you,
Know fake from real, and false from true.
They realize that them you plan to fleece.
Your nest, their feathers: this they see.
Their broken eggs, your omelets free.
A warfare welfare just for thee.
All else for sale or rent or lease,
Except for priceless Peace.
. . .
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2020
Peace to you and yours, friend.
It’s a side show. The Taliban can taste victory near. The USA has nothing to offer them which they cannot take by force. When the death toll rises the support for the war from Congress will wane.
Clown World trundles on with no one at the helm. A Crackup is coming.
Afghan forces can hold their own
. . .from AP, Mar 14, 2021
AP Interview: Minister says Afghan forces can hold their own
At this moment, you can be sure US is running around Afghanistan trying to bribe anyone and everyone that could possibly allow us to “officially” stay.
“In an interview with Pham Van Dong, one American asked the North
Vietnamese foreign minister how he could call the Saigon government
an ‘American puppet’ when it acted with such consistency against
American interests. ‘Ah,’ replied the minister, ‘it’s a
puppet, all right. It’s just a bad puppet.'”– Francis Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972)
So Ngo Dinh Diem, the bad puppet, was assassinated, just twenty days before Jack Kennedy was killed while he was looking for detente with the Soviets. . .hi Michael!