In his first speech after the Fall of Kabul, US President Joe Biden said that “War in Afghanistan was never about nation-building ”.
He said that, while the “rapid collapse” of the Afghan government “did unfold more quickly than he had anticipated,” the US mission in Afghanistan was “never supposed to be nation-building”.
His statement is contrary to facts and the Bonn International Conference and the Bonn Agreement was all about providing a new constitution and nation-building of Afghanistan.
UNSC document serial number S/2001/1154 is one of the unchangeable proof of this nation-building decision that came out of the International Bonn Conference and Bonn Agreement.
Signed by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan, the document says Afghanistan today signed in Bonn the “Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions”.
The nation-building narrative gave justification to the USA to stay in Afghanistan for 20 years till August 15, when the system formed by the Bonn Agreement collapsed in Afghanistan.
All documents available in libraries about the Bonn Conference and the Bonn Agreement of December 2001 clearly say that the Bonn Agreement provided a framework for the later constitution that was established in 2004 and the presidential and parliamentary elections that followed. It emphasized the need for strong, centralized government institutions and nation-building.
Documents also indicate the state-building roadmap that was created by the Bonn Agreement.
Biden also criticized former President Ghani and said that the political leaders of Afghanistan were unable to come together for the good of the people.
President Biden said he had no regrets in a way the USA left Afghanistan behind and stated that the choice had to be made was either to follow through on the agreement to draw down US forces or to escalate the conflict and send thousands more American troops back into combat, and lurch into the third decade of conflict.
The probability of winning the Afghan War was based on chances, built on predictions of odds being in favour at the exact time and space. The Afghan War itself was a misperceived factor and clearly relyied on uninformed variables. The proper noun for the supreme vector was chosen as “War against Terror” in 2001. The US involvement in Afghan soil looks like a “game of chance” since the first day the USA entered the “Afghan War Game”. This time the game of chance was not in favour of Washington therefore “The Gamble is Lost”
His speech was like a list of justifications a gambler can provide to his family after losing his last property in a gamble. Yes, the USA had lost the gamble because the USA was playing a gambling game from the very first day it landed in Afghanistan. The US mindset is linked with its long history of gambling and its fortune is also linked with “games of chance”. The two British-American colonies, Jamestown and Virginia, were Gambling Havens for Europeans by the 1860s, therefore we understand that American prosperity and history are strongly related with “games of chance’. Gambling, lotteries, and the Gold Rush are simple references to US history, US fortune, and mindsets.
The USA had been taking chances in Afghanistan. Chances of odds in favour or against have no logical framework because they are based on predictions driven by previous experiences. And the nominal data is in percentage, which is based on speculation, on other hand, probable factors can be much more conclusive in risk analysis. The USA from the very first day became a victim of slow and fast thinking, metaphorically they put the risk analysis on the back burner and start deciding in hurry to gain more. Apparently like gambling if chance would have favoured them, they could have achieved what they expected to, but as the very name gambling represents not putting your decisions under probability scrutiny, the likelihood of odds against the desired outcome tends to be higher instead of being in favour.
The probability of winning the Afghan War was based on chances, built on predictions of odds being in favour at the exact time and space. The Afghan War itself was a misperceived factor and clearly relyied on uninformed variables. The proper noun for the supreme vector was chosen as “War against Terror” in 2001. The US involvement in Afghan soil looks like a “game of chance” since the first day the USA entered the “Afghan War Game”. This time the game of chance was not in favour of Washington therefore “The Gamble is Lost”.
I listened to his speech in a coffee bar in Vienna where everybody around me who could understand the English language was either laughing at President Biden or passing remarks I decided to censor. For me, the Fall of Kabul is not only a gambling but also an intelligence failure of understanding the skills of the enemy— the Taliban.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
