Why did the U.S. Exit Go So Wrong?
When we first saw the horrifying images coming out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took Kabul, our initial thought was that the Biden administration was caught flatfooted, completely unprepared for what was an easily predicable event. Now that time has passed, it’s clear that it’s far worse than being unprepared, it’s total incompetence.
The defensive, accusatory and angry reaction of Joe Biden and his administration made them look far worse, and their theme of “no one could have seen this coming” is downright absurd.
Joe Biden, July 2, 2021, when asked about Afghanistan at a White House Press Briefing, where he called the journalists questions “negative”: “I want to talk about happy things, man. Look, it’s Fourth of July. I’m concerned that you’re asking me questions that I will answer next week, but it’s the holiday weekend. I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening.”
Joe Biden, August 16, 2021: “The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”
General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”
Joe Biden, August 22, 2021: “Let me be clear: The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful no matter when it started or when we began. It would have been true if we started a month ago or a month from now. There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss — of heartbreaking images you see on television.”
What? No, seriously, what? Forget classified briefings and tactical strategy reports, does anyone in the White House even bother to read a newspaper?
It brings us no pleasure to say this, but if Joe Biden really believes that the only way to evacuate Afghanistan was through complete chaos and inflicting unavoidable “pain and loss,” he should not be our Commander in Chief.
Watching and/or reading media coverage alone provided all the knowledge necessary to figure out that the Taliban had zero intention of playing it straight and never did. These terrorists have been on a murderous warpath through Afghanistan for months — capturing government military bases and entire command centers — and it’s not like they were trying to keep it a secret.
Following his playbook of passing the buck, Biden essentially blamed his senior military advisors for the mess, saying “no one” that he “can recall” advised him to keep at least some troops in Afghanistan until all Americans were evacuated. This is just more insulting spin. In April 2021, The New York Times reported that, after Biden announced to his advisors that he wanted all U.S. troops to be out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, this happened:
“Over two decades of war that spanned four presidents, the Pentagon had always managed to fend off the political instincts of elected leaders frustrated with the grind of Afghanistan, as commanders repeatedly requested more time and more troops. The current military leadership < Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff > hoped it, too, could convince a new president to maintain at least a modest troop presence, trying to talk Mr. Biden into keeping a residual force and setting conditions on any withdrawal. But Mr. Biden refused to be persuaded.
There would be no conditions put on the withdrawal, Mr. Biden told the men, cutting off the last thread — one that had worked with Mr. Trump — and that Mr. Austin and General Milley hoped could stave off a full drawdown.”
Four months later, The Wall Street Journal recounted the same scene, saying that, according to several administration and defense officials, Biden’s decision to bring home U.S. troops was “made against the recommendations of his top military generals and many diplomats, who warned that a hasty withdrawal would undermine security in Afghanistan.”
The article continued:
“The president’s top generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who previously served as a military commander in the region, said a full withdrawal wouldn’t provide any insurance against instability.
In a series of meetings leading up to his decision, military and intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that security was deteriorating in Afghanistan, and they expressed concerns both about the capabilities of the Afghan military and the Taliban’s likely ability to take over major Afghan cities.
Other advisers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, raised the possibility of Taliban attacks on U.S. forces and diplomats as well as the Afghans who for two decades worked alongside them. Ultimately, neither disagreed with the president, knowing where he stood.”
The Wall Street Journal also reports that, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document, a July 2021 internal State Department memo, sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Director of Policy Planning Salman Ahmed “warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan.”
The memo also “warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation.”
On August 18, 2021, The New York Times revealed that there were “drumbeats of warnings” over the summer: “Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials.”
The article continues, “By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul.”
In yet another piece of outstanding journalism, The New York Times reported that:
“In early May, a Taliban commander telephoned Muhammad Jallal, a tribal elder in Baghlan Province in northern Afghanistan, and asked him to deliver a message to Afghan government troops at several bases in his district. ‘If they do not surrender, we will kill them,’ Mr. Jallal said he was told.”
In the article, Antonio Giustozzi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London who has written multiple books about Afghanistan, explained the Taliban’s strategy: “They contacted everyone and offered the chance to surrender or switch sides, with incentives, including money and rewarding people with appointments afterward. A lot of money changed hands.”
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Jallal and the other tribal elders ultimately complied, and the Taliban moved on to capture the next district, all the while gobbling up more weapons, ammunition, food and fuel. By the way, the Taliban was doing this with volunteer and financial support from Pakistan, Russia and Iran…which is just perfect, isn’t it?
The result, The New York Times explains, was a “lopsided fight between an adaptable and highly mobile insurgent juggernaut, and a demoralized government force that had been abandoned by its leaders and cut off from help. Once the first provincial capital city surrendered this month, the big collapses came as fast as the Taliban could travel.”
Even if the Biden administration didn’t fully grasp the totality of the destruction happening in Afghanistan — which, after what we just covered is in and of itself disqualifying — there was certainly enough evidence to know that troops had to stay until, at a bare minimum, we had a solid plan for the evacuation of American citizens and our Afghan allies; keep Bagram air base open until everyone was out; make sure humanitarian efforts were coordinated between the U.S. and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and make sure the CIA had time to plan for new ways to gather intelligence and initiate counterterrorism strikes.