The fight against the Taliban has been a process lasting almost two decades for the

United States. This process is one for the well-being of people in Afghanistan and keeping
them safe and as possibly far away from being vulnerable. This should be done without the
US spending too much on the destruction of the Taliban. In this war, there won’t be a true
success for a long time; if there ever is one. Clearly, without using hundreds of thousands
of troops, the Taliban will not be defeated. The US is a country that isn’t always regarded
as being a peaceful nation. Changing the goal of US presence from destroying the Taliban;
to keeping the Afghan people safe and in proper living conditions would change the focus
from one of destruction, to one solely of creation. From the start of the US presence in
Afghanistan around the start of the millenium, the US has been in a situation where they
have taken the responsibility to make the Afghan military into something better. The US
touched down in Afghanistan to wipe out the Taliban, and to bring the Afghan military into
a condition where they protect their country without foreign help. However, throughout
extensive efforts, the US did not achieve this goal. After deploying many troops and
spending unthinkable amounts of taxpayers’ money, the Afghan military still needs help
and the Taliban still controls over 14% of the country’s land.1 The US has placed itself in
an ongoing situation where if they were to leave, they would devastate millions of Afghan
people. This is couldn’t be called anything different than an endless war and ending it
would lead to tragedy; overall, the US can’t leave.
Retrieving all US troops and abandoning the Afghan government and people
would lead the Taliban to be incredibly capable of taking control over many more cities
and millions more people. Since the mid-2000s the US has put over $100 billion2 into
helping Afghanistan defend against the Taliban and the safety of Afghan civilians and
the loss of Taliban power hasn’t changed much. Along with defending Afghans from
the Taliban, US forces have also helped rural populations in their development.
According to the World Bank, 70% of Afghans still don’t have access to the grid3 and in
order for that problem and problems alike to be resolved then US forces must stay to
help because when money is just poured into a country, there’s no telling where it will
go. The money needs to get to specific areas of work and areas of needed support.
Throwing money into the Afghan government in a hurry has not and will not utilize the
given money to it’s best use.
A big problem here is that most people in Afghanistan are accustomed to their
backgrounds and aren’t necessarily capable of taking in the massive amounts of US aid that

1
​Afghanistan:Who Controls What​, June 24, 2019,accessed December 19, 2019.
2
​ raig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post,​ December 9, 2019,
​C
accessed December 19, 2019.
3
​ ​"Afghanistan: Connecting Afghans To Reliable Power," ​World Bank Group​, May 16,
2018, accessed December 19, 2019.
they’ve been given and the potential US aid that they should receive. What this shouldn’t
be and shouldn’t turn into is a hurry to pointlessly spend money on aid. It needs to be
something that takes time and the predicament of Afghanistan can’t be solved quickly.
With the support for the humanity of Afghan people as the purpose of aid, the humanity of
US troops must not be overlooked as well. Along with money, the amount of US troops in
Afghanistan should not ever be too high. That being said, if the US wants to rightfully
support the wellbeing of people, in this case, it’s going to be a long period of laborious
support.
Long before American impact and long before any Soviet impact, Afghanistan was
fighting off the British empire whose goal was to annex the Afghan’s land4 in hopes of
defending their Indian colony from the Russians. The Afghans fought off the British and
were an independent nation for roughly fifty years. In that time the Afghan government
allied with the Soviet Union and The Afghan Communist Party secretly formed in 1965.5
After the abolition of the monarchy and creating strong Soviet ties, conservative Islamic
groups started a guerilla movement to fight the Soviet-backed government in 1978. In 1979
the soviets then invaded Afghanistan to make the communist regime stronger.6 Out of the
rebellion against the Soviets arose the Taliban, who held a major hand in fighting the
Soviets and their defeat can easily be credited to the Taliban. After the Soviets left
Afghanistan, the Afghan government remained in power. However, the Taliban strove for
more land and more influence and power over people. Today, it could be argued that the
Taliban is why United States troops need to stay in Afghanistan. Over the years a total of
around 775,0007 US troops have been deployed in Afghanistan. These troops came from
multiple sections and many subsections of the military. When these troops were deployed,
the majority of them had a mission to fight against the Taliban, in whatever way they were
ordered. The peak number of US troops in Afghanistan was above 100,0008 ​and the goal of
completely defeating the Taliban was not met. In an interview with the Washington Post,
Jeffery Eggers, a retired Navy Seal and White House Staffer for Bush and Obama,9 ​said,
“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?”10 After the immense

4
​ ​AHistorical Timeline of Afghanistan,​ May 4, 2011, accessed December 19, 2019.
5
​A Historical Timeline of Afghanistan,​ May 4, 2011, accessed December 19, 2019.
6
​Craig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post​, December 9, 2019,
accessed December 19, 2019.
7
​How 775,000 U.S. Troops Fought in One War: Afghanistan Military Deployments by The
Numbers​, September 11, 2019, accessed December 19, 2019.
8
​Sightline Media Group, "A Timeline of U.S. Troop Levels in Afghanistan since 2001,"
Military Times, last modified July 6, 2016, accessed December 19, 2019.
9
​Craig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post​, December 9, 2019,
accessed December 19, 2019.
10
​Craig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post​, December 9, 2019,
accessed December 19, 2019.
spending and unneeded amounts of deployed troops, the US left the Taliban in possession
of 59 districts in Afghanistan. The Taliban controls 14.5% of Afghan land and 119 districts
or 29% of Afghan land is contested between the Taliban and the Afghan government.11 As
of today, nobody wants US troops to be put in an environment where they will likely be
killed or MIA and that is completely reasonable when it comes to the longevity of this
situation in Afghanistan. President Trump intends to withdraw 4,000 troops from
Afghanistan. This would leave about 8,000-9,000 troops to stay in Afghanistan. This would
protect the lives of 4,000 more troops, but it could lead to the possible withdrawal of more
troops. If the time comes where the US totally abandons the Afghan government and it’s
civilians, they would let them be much more vulnerable to the force of the Taliban.
Leaving the Afghan people to fend for themselves would not be right.
The reduction of US troops in Afghanistan that is soon to come will logically lead
to and or ensure a lack of aggressiveness of US forces on the Taliban. With the US troops
leaving Afghanistan, it has to be known that there will be a Taliban peace deal, or the US is
prioritizing the protection of Afghan people. From an article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and
Mujib Mashal of the New York Times,12 the size of US forces has dropped by roughly
2,000 troops in the last year according to Gen. Austan S. Miller, top American commander
in Afghanistan. Mashal and Gibbons wrote that the American negotiators had tried to use
the reduction of troops as a bargaining chip in their peace talks with the Taliban. Trump
aborted those talks in September 2019.13
The history of the war in Afghanistan was a major failure in terms of defeating the
Taliban and the major efforts that were made in order to achieve success in Afghanistan
were embarrassing and unneeded. The US only has about 12,000 troops present in
Afghanistan right now, and there’s no major news and no word on what is currently
happening in Afghanistan and what are the current necessities of the Afghan people.
The past failure of the war in Afghanistan involved hundreds of thousands of US troops,
civilian casualties and corruption. All the while, year by year, US generals claimed to be
on a steady road to their success of making the Afghan military into a force that could
defend the country without foreign help14 or reliance. The effort in Afghanistan went on
and even through the peak of US presence in Afghanistan, the goal was not met. An
unidentified contractor spoke to government interviews and said he had a job to allocate
$3 million daily for projects in a single Afghan county that is about the size of a US

11
​Afghanistan: Who Controls What​, June 24, 2019,accessed December 19, 2019.
12
​U.S. Is Quietly Reducing Its Troop Force In Afghanistan​, October 21, 2019, accessed
December 19, 2019.
13
​Craig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post​, December 9, 2019,
accessed December 19, 2019.
14
​Craig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post​, December 9, 2019,
accessed December 19, 2019.
county.15 It would be outrageous to spend money like this and for these terms in the US.
This pace of extensive spending or what may or may not be possible to refer to as
donating, doesn’t lead to faster outcome of development, and it most certainly does not
lead to more people getting deserved shelter and protection. It’s clear to see that the
pace of which people and money was shelled out, didn’t allow for a complete US
success, and it led to a gigantic failure and revealed the inevitability of the long amount
of time that it will be until the US succeeds in shaping the Afghan military into a force
that can protect itself.
Many US soldiers that were deployed in Afghanistan always knew their mission.
The soldiers knew their intent in Afghanistan and why they were doing their current job.
More times than not, the average US citizen doesn’t know too many specifics about the
military. Possibly the most important of which would be that when soldiers are and were
deployed, specifically into Afghanistan, they would be taught everything they needed to
know about the area they were being deployed to. Each US soldier would be an
SME(subject matter expert)16 for the area they would be deployed to. This could be taken
as an insignificant detail, or it could be taken as what it is. Well trained and well
knowledged US troops came in large numbers to Afghanistan and still resulted in failure.
Anthony McKernan, former US Army Infantry member, explained the type of effort that
was being made. McKernan showed a stand-point from 1 in the hundreds of thousands of
US troops. Everything involving the help of Afghan people sounded like it was just exactly
that. Numerous efforts and all kinds of different ways of helping the Afghan people were
being made. McKernan’s view that he expressed was one that could make someone think
that all the different donations, electricity installment, well drilling, bathroom building,
protection of people, and teaching the Afghan soldiers how defend themselves would have
been quick work. This couldn’t have taken more than a few years with all the money being
put into it. However, from a soldier’s point of view it wasn’t something that could easily
be familiarized or transformed. Mckernan also stated how the place has been filled with
war for many years, and possibly one of the biggest effects was that in some extremely
rural places the civilians had not seen any troops since the Soviets.17 There are people in
Afghanistan who might not see the US as anything different than the Soviets. To them, the
US is walking on in and attempting to change their form of military and change their way
of life. The US has planted itself into a situation where if they were to totally abandon the
Afghan people right now, then it would allow for the Taliban to have free reign over the

15
​ raig Whitlock, "At War with the Truth," ​The Washington Post​, December 9, 2019,
C
accessed December 19, 2019.
16
​Interview with Anthony McKernan​, produced by Nolan Cotlier, audio file, recorded
December 8, 2019.
17
​Interview with Anthony McKernan​, produced by Nolan Cotlier, audio file, recorded
December 8, 2019.
land. It would be an unfair fight, and if the Us were to do this, it would be shameful and
inhumane. Afghanistan is a country that is that isn’t using training wheels, but it’s on
crutches. It wouldn’t be ethically right to strip it of it’s tools, and in order for it to heal it
and impatience will not contribute to success.