Sunny In Kabul

Improvised explosive devices are among the deadliest weapons in modern warfare. More than 3,000 individuals were killed or injured by IEDs in just three months in Afghanistan last year, according to Foreign Policy.

IEDs kill people. This much we know. We also know that the nature of asymmetric warfare means we’ve spent billions with a “b” trying to find ways to counter them.

Our salvation is nigh, it seems.

In one of the latest attempts to protect the military from IEDs, researchers at the University of Delaware are working with the Army Research Lab to build an augmented reality system that combines traditional cameras, thermal infrared sensing and ground penetrating radar to find and classify potentially dangerous objects from up to 30 meters away.

Holy. Shit. That’s amazing.

Can’t see the flaw.

The system’s radar uses radio waves to probe the surrounding environment, spotting objects buried up to three to five inches.

So it works if you’re dealing with the slacker variety of insurgents.

The winning is exhausting.

"Sawzall."

"Check."

"Circular saw."

"Check."

"Ammo."

Afghanistan is America's longest war, and since successfully completing the original mission, arguably its most pointless.

Today’s episode of “It’s An American World After All” is brought to us by Bonnie Kristian, conflating an American withdrawal with an end to a war. Because if the Noble Order of White Helpfulness packs its COINerific bags up and gets out of the pool, then naturally the Taliban and the Islamic State and Al Qaeda will follow suit, and all the killing of the Afghans will come to a halt.

Welcome to Afghanistan, the graveyard of defensible analysis.

Kristian’s ode to His Trumpfness and the world’s first sentient orange advocates for and end to the war in Afghanistan. Which, while this war is America’s longest, it hasn’t been all that short for Afghans, either.

And with the combat mission the way it is now, the only people who are in direct contact with the enemy on a regular basis from the American side are Special Forces and the air force. Both of which are engaged in mostly counter-terror missions, and are not (for the most part) fighting the Taliban.

The rest of the 10,000 troops and the fuck ton of supporting contractors are there in an advisory capacity and to provide support for the SF and the airpower. Which doesn’t mean “out of harm’s way.” But it does mean that they’re there helping hold their finger in an ever more fragile dike.

If the Americans leave, the war doesn’t end.

Because it’s that air force and those Special Forces troops that are working overtime to help Afghan forces fight the fight. And an American withdrawal today on the level Kristian is suggesting means that Kabul falls tomorrow.

American presence and cash are holding those Afghan forces together, and making the difference on more than a few occasions in some bleak encounters between the Afghans and the Taliban. But, fuck it, keeping the Taliban from gaining even more ground than they already have? That’s downright un-American.

Kristian cites an op-ed from Andrew Bacevich, who asserts:

Protecting Americans from the relatively modest threat posed by the Taliban or Al Qaeda or Islamic State — or all three combined for that matter — does not require the permanent stationing of U.S. forces in the Islamic world, especially given the evidence that the presence of American troops there serves less to pacify than to provoke.

Because there’s no return on investment in trying to counter groups that continue to attack civilians, including this week’s attack on a Shia mosque in Kabul. There’s no cost savings in ensuring that a country the US helped free from the Taliban stays that way. And in Trumperica there’s no room for brown people.

What Kristian and Bacevich miss is the fact that a stable Afghanistan is good for a lot of things. This isn’t just about protecting the homeland, it’s about a strategic nation that its neighbors very much want to settle the fuck down.

And American, Afghan, Pakistani, Indian, Iranian, and Russian interests are served by a continued US presence. A presence that enables a more stable Afghanistan. A stable country means a stable region.

Sure, he could end American involvement in Afghanistan. But unless The Donald’s got a huge peace deal somewhere, he can’t end this war.