The Taliban's Self-Interest

If you caught even the briefest glimpse of President Biden’s presser of last Thursday, you probably noted that he said that we were trusting the Taliban to act in their own self-interest. 

Houston, we have reached terminal stupid.

To my mind we were witnessing a man who had been fed a clever-sounding phrase by one of his aides. And we were hearing it bounce around, even echo through the empty caverns of his skull. Clearly, he had no idea of what he was saying. He had no idea of what he was doing. But, he was signing on to the policy of providing the Taliban with the names of our allies, because he trusted terrorists to act in their self-interest. To Biden’s feeble mind these medieval killers would naturally embrace civilized morality because it is in their self-interest. He did not consider that they might believe it to be in their self-interest to punish those who had betrayed their cause.

So, after twenty years of war, we are being told that we can trust the Taliban. Roger Kimball got it exactly right in a recent column:

Did you know that the United States is soon to be home to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, many—if not most of them—Islamic fundamentalists? Did you know that, in its partnership with the Taliban (sounds odd doesn’t it?), the Biden Administration actually gave the Taliban the names of Americans and our Afghan allies. Yes, you read that right. “In a move no one can grasp,” Politico reported, “U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies, believing the Taliban would allow them to enter the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport. Lawmakers and military officials are outraged.” 

How about you? 

Why would the United States do that? No, it’s not that the people we elected to govern us trust the Taliban. Joe Biden made that clear. He doesn’t think the Taliban are nice people. But he is appealing to their “self-interest,” you see. We’ll partner with them, we’ll ask them to set up and man the checkpoints on the roads coming into the airport, and we feel confident in doing so because, after all, it is in their interest to play fair. They will do what they say they are going to do—and, more to the point, they won’t do what we fear they might do, things like attack Americans—and we will do what they want, i.e., leave Afghanistan. 

Of course, it might be in the interest of the Taliban to get along with Pakistan and even with China and Russia. How, exactly, would that be in the American national interest. As you noticed, Biden said nothing about America’s national interest, perhaps because he does not believe in our national interest. 

After all, when you are surrendering to terrorism you are not showing very much concern for the national interest.

Kimball regales us with a text by Dostoyevsky-- of all people-- on the subject of self-interest:

In Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky treated this liberalizing naïveté to some portion of the contempt it deserves. “Oh, tell me,” Dostoevsky wrote, 

. . .  who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else. . . . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!

So, it isn’t just about self-interest. It’s about showing that everyone has the same self-interest, to live in peace and harmony with one’s fellows. And then, what about those who believe it in their self-interest to take what you have earned, even to confiscate billions of dollars in American military equipment. Joe Biden has chosen to leave it all behind. What does he imagine the Taliban will do with it? 

Kimball continues:

No wonder the Taliban are busy trolling the Biden Administration, posing with ice-cream cones, re-enacting the iconic flag-raising at Iwo Jima in American uniforms but with a Taliban flag, vowing to battle “climate change” and ensure women’s rights “under Islamic law.” Ha ha ha. That’s the playful side of an ideology whose dark purpose was summed up by an Islamic radical in the aftermath of 9/11. “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something,” he said. “We are fighting to eliminate you.” 

Of course, anyone whose brain has more substance than Biden’s-- that would be just about everyone-- understands that in our civilizational clash with radical Islam, we just lost a very large battle. Islam is at war with the West, and Joe Biden just handed it a victory.

Accordingly, the proper response to this ideology is not to offer it partnerships in the hope that you can make a mutually satisfying deal that caters to everyone’s “self-interest.” On the contrary, the proper response is to understand, as Benjamin Netanyahu put it, that we are dealing here with “a war to reverse the triumph of the West.”