Regular readers know that I've long been annoyed by the relentless use of the word chaotic to describe the Afghanistan withdrawal. Of course it was chaotic. It's like saying the D-Day landings were chaotic. There's no way anyone conducts an airlift of 100,000 people in a neat and orderly way from a city that's just been overthrown by the Taliban.
In any case, since it's back in the news it's worth reviewing how the Afghanistan withdrawal played out:
- In early 2020 Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban for a withdrawal date of May 1, 2021, and the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government.
- Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced the US presence to 2,500 troops.
- When Joe Biden took office, he moved the withdrawal date out to September 11. Trump criticized the change. "We can and should get out earlier," he said.
- In July Biden changed the withdrawal date to August 31. At this point, the Taliban was fighting but hadn't yet taken over a single province. The broad assumption was that when the US withdrawal eventually took place the Afghan government would still control the country. The US, naturally, was committed to protecting the government through the withdrawal.
- That changed suddenly because the Afghan army collapsed faster than anyone expected. On August 15 the Taliban took over Kabul and the president of Afghanistan fled the country. With only two weeks to go, this made a large-scale evacuation imperative.
- The withdrawal started chaotically, but within a few hours the Army restored order. Meanwhile, despite the Trump administration's longtime policy of delaying visa requests, which left a huge backlog of unprocessed applications, the State Department worked heroically to process visas for Afghans who wanted to leave the country.
- In two weeks, the Army evacuated about 90% of Americans in Afghanistan and nearly 100,000 Afghan nationals. By any kind of historical standard, this was a superb performance under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
The entire operation had only one serious failure: the death of 13 American service members (and 170 Afghans) to an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Abbey Gate. Multiple investigations by the Pentagon concluded that there wasn't really anything that could have stopped it.
Everyone processes grief differently, and I can't bring myself to reproach the families that blame Biden for the deaths of their children. But the fact remains that Biden wasn't at fault; the Army wasn't at fault; and deaths in the line of duty are a natural occurrence in war.
The withdrawal wasn't handled perfectly, but there weren't any huge mistakes. Nor was it really possible not to withdraw given the situation Biden inherited: the Taliban's takeover was inevitable as soon as Trump signed the withdrawal agreement with them. It might well have been inevitable even without that. After 20 years it was as clear as it could be that there was simply no more the US could do, and Biden showed a lot of political courage in facing up to that.
In the end, despite everything, the evacuation and airlift were considerable successes—and it's remarkable that the only serious casualties came from a single al-Qaeda suicide bomber. The blame for that rests squarely on al-Qaeda and no one else.
Thanks for this. I just wrote a newspaper column making basically the same point. It's a shame how distorted this bit of history has become.
Yes - thanks Kevin.
I love our effing media so effing much.
But the fact remains that Biden wasn't at fault; the Army wasn't at fault; and deaths in the line of duty are a natural occurrence in war
The Trump campaign is taking advantage of the public's ignorance of military history, because yes, the above sentence by Kevin's is the whole ballgame. You can't conduct complex military operations in a hostile environment with zero casualties. And if zero casualties really is the required standard, then you might as well not have a military.
Obviously every death of a US service person is a tragedy for some American family. But they died as heroes. And by the only reasonable way to judge the operation—(1) was the mission itself worth it? and (2) were casualties acceptable by the standards of other missions?—it was a rousing success. We finally got out of a disastrous, pointless quagmire and suffered less than a 0.5% rate of casualties. As the largest airborne evacuation in US history, it was a highly successful operation, and will be noted by historians as one of President Biden's greatest achievements.
Trump and his campaign managers are disgusting, amoral, treasonous ghouls.
I think a lot of people haven't really processed the fact that we lost the war.
Some pollster should ask if respondents know Trump surrendered to the Taliban in February 2020 and undertook to withdraw ALL US troops from Afghanistan by May 2021. And if they know he made the Ghani government release 5,000 prisoners, including the suicide bomber at Abbey Gate.
I expect 80-90% of Americans would admit to being entirely ignorant of these facts.
and deny the facts even if they knew.
"he made the Ghani government release 5,000 prisoners, including the suicide bomber at Abbey Gate"
This really should be hung around trump's neck by Harris allies (through social media channels rather than press release). One of trump's current major attack ads features a woman who was assaulted and badly beaten by a guy who was released from prison because of one of her policy changes, something like that.
If that makes Harris responsible for *this* assault, it also makes trump responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing.
"And if they know he made the Ghani government release 5,000 prisoners, including the suicide bomber at Abbey Gate. "
I didn't know that.
I need to correct that claim, which I have seen so often that I failed to check it before repeating it. It is not true, and I regret making it.
The truth is that the resurgent Taliban in 2021, bolstered by the 5,000 members released on Trump's insistence, freed other prisoners from Afghan jails. The suicide bomber was among them, freed from a Bagram prison in July.
My only quibble is with point 4. Independent reports from journalists in the country in 2021 made it clear that while the Ghani government might still technically have the loyalty of the army and the provincial governors, the army was reluctant to fight, there were wholesale desertions, and the Taliban controlled the countryside. Nobody travelled at night outside the fortified cities and forts.
All of which should have persuaded the powers that be in DC that a sudden collapse of governmental authority was a real possibility that they needed to plan for, along with the Afghan army melting away in the face of the insurgency. Mind you I'm not sure what sort of plan they could have come up with that would have been much use, even less than the British could have planned to avoid the chaos of Dunkirk if they'd spent more time planning out what they'd do if the French army collapsed. But it should not have taken them by surprise, as they claim it did.
What pisses me off beyond belief is the way the US media fails to highlight the lies Trump constantly tells about the fall of Afghanistan, together with the alternative history he has imaginatively created telling credulous Americans what would have happened if he'd still been in charge.
For example, every time Trump brays "We would have kept Bagram!", ethical journalists should remind readers that (a) there was nothing in Trump's surrender document to allow this; (b) Trump put no such condition on his orders to pull all troops out before he left office (which Milley basically disobeyed), and (c) trying to keep a single base open in the middle of hostile territory would have been a logistical and security nightmare, requiring thousands of troops to be stationed there supplied by air from very distant bases. But the media never mentions this. They leave Trump's bullshit lie to stand unchallenged.
Mind you I'm not sure what sort of plan they could have come up with that would have been much use, even less than the British could have planned to avoid the chaos of Dunkirk if they'd spent more time planning out what they'd do if the French army collapsed.
A more apropos British example would be the utter clusterfuck of their 1842 withdrawal from Kabul at the end of the First Afghan War. Fewer than ten of the 16,500 men and women that began the retreat made it back to India uncaptured.
Harry Flashman was damned lucky to survive.
+1
By refusing to include the Afghan government/military in his "agreement", donnie guaranteed a chaotic collapse. Even a child can see that eventuality.
The more I research what happened, the more Joe Biden and his administration come out heroes. donnie should face a firing squad just based on that.
I'd go one step further: Just look at the situation of a soldier in the Afghan army after a US withdrawal: He was practically condemned to at least in serious trouble and quite possibly in mortal danger from revenge actions by a victorious Taliban His best option was to dump the uniform ASAP and keep any connections to the US puppet regime as secret as he could. I wonder how experts in the Pentagon could miss such an obvious point. The collapse should have been expected and should not have occurred "faster than anyone expected" because it was the most likely option.
I agree with Kevin on all the other points he made.
yup. everything i read at the time insisting the afghan government would hang on for a while but eventually fall made no sense to me for this reason. if everyone knows you're eventually going to lose and the people you lose to are notorious for vicious retaliation against any opposition and their families, why would you continue fighting?
"(b) Trump put no such condition on his orders to pull all troops out before he left office (which Milley basically disobeyed)" there were no such Trump orders for Milley to disobey. Trump was completely derelict in his duties. And to expect Milley to take the imitative when he opposed the policy was unreasonable.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10/13/trump-ordered-rapid-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-after-election-loss/
I read somewhere that the sudden withdrawal was the brain child of John McEntee.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/new-book-details-chaos-trump-aide-start-afghanistan/story%3Fid%3D104765470&ved=2ahUKEwi8heWis6eIAxWIFFkFHZDHACwQFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3kHWjTqFAfiU2RqSJ-jygp
This story alone would disqualify Trump from ever being president ever again.
Good post but you're wrong on one point. Biden could have reversed the decision. The Military has the capability and the Taliban had given him enough political cover.
He must have actually wanted to get us out.
He did. He was constantly questioning the Forever Wars as VP. But Obama knew that they would be blamed for "Losing Afghanistan and Iraq" if they didn't act like Republicans.
What is wrong with forever wars?
We still have troops in South Korea. Should we pull out?
We should have reversed the decision to leave when the Afghan Army started collapsing.
1) The South Koreans have a real will to defend themselves. As the events proved, the Afghan Government had no such will. We would have just been pouring good money after bad. Prior to how quickly Afghanistan collapsed, I too thought with a little effort we might be able to maintain the regime there indefinitely, but how easily it collapsed showed that there was nothing there to support.
2) We have no vital strategic interests in Afghanistan. It is may be among the least strategic pieces of land in Eurasia. Korea is rather the opposite.
By the way, I find it irritating when people say We Must Do More To Support Women's Rights In Afghanistan. I agree it is unfortunate for the women in Afghanistan. But sorry, we just fought a war for 20 years and could not make it work. What more would these people have us do?
(And excellent points, Kevin)
3) Fuck MF and his/her/its bad faith and ignorant arguments. If Biden had stayed, MF would be bitching about the neverending cost of forever wars and/or blaming Biden for continued loss of American life over there. MF should DIAF.
No US soldier in Korea has seen combat or been in a war since 1955. That is not a forever war.
South Korea and Afghanistan are not comparable at all. That being said, you would have preferred us to stay another twenty odd years more and still end up doing exactly what we did in 2021? Racking up more dead soldiers and countless more dollars in the process for what has always been a losing proposition.
"We should have reversed the decision to leave when the Afghan Army started collapsing."
So glad to see you're willing to sacrifice the lives of U.S. soldiers for no apparent purpose. Get your butt into basic training Rambo.
Anybody who thinks the situation in Afghanistan bore the slightest resemblance to the Korean War automatically disqualifies their opinions from being taken seriously.
We should have reversed the decision to leave when the Afghan Army started collapsing.
You either have no idea how long it takes to make a major deployment, or you do know, and are just lying. The Afghan collapse, from beginning to end, took a few days. The US couldn't have move even a small fraction of the troops needed into the field before it was over.
US troops were there already.
In addition, as soon as it was clear that the US wasnt going the collapse would have stopped.
Finally, it ear very clear to the military at least that the collapse world be immediate. Those is why we pulled out at dear of night without telling or Afghan partners. Compare with South Vietnam where we knew that the government could hold out a while (and where they held out until the Democrats cut off military aid).
"In addition, as soon as it was clear that the US wasnt going the collapse would have stopped." You can't possibly know this. In reality, knowing the Americans decided to stay might have motivated a surge in violence. Trump made sure the number of soldiers left in Afghanistan would not be able to defend themselves against a resurgence neverminda defend the Afghani government. There was never going to be anything close to a win with regards to Afghanistan. Just a continuation of a failed policy of nation building in a place it wasn't welcomed. And thanks for bringing up Vietnam, another failed military endeavor we would have been entangled in for far longer if it were up to people like you.
Your sociopathic desire to get more U.S. soldiers killed for no apparent purpose is duly noted.
This is an excellent question. After all, one person's "forever war" is another person's "forever having basic rights as a woman in Afghanistan." Whether the cost of continuing the war would have been worth the net benefit to Afghan citizens is an open question, but simply labeling it a "forever" is a cop out that avoids the underlying moral question.
I couple of years back I was having a "conversation" with a friend who was running Biden into the ground (He's a FQX News type) for his horrible handling of the withdrawal (as if Biden personally did the job - not our military).
I stopped him mid-sentence and said: Wait, WHAT? President Biden got us OUT of Afghanistan? Really? Well thank Dog that somebody had the balls to finally get us out.
Now - what were you saying?
"... and it's remarkable that the only serious casualties came from a single al-Qaeda suicide bomber" sez Kevin.
I recall that an aid worker and nine members of his family - 7 of whom were children - died in a drone strike during the withdrawal. Kevin doesn't sound any more interested in bringing that one up than the U.S. military were.
If it had been Hamas that killed those 9 people, Kevin would be losing his shit over it. The only atrocities worth caring about apparently are the ones involving Israeli hostages.
One point is that when the Trump administration completed its reduction of forces to 2,500 troops in January 2021, there were still more than seven contractors for each US military service member remaining in Afghanistan, amounting to over 18,000 contractors. Contractors were maintaining equipment, for one thing.
Suddenly pulling these contractors out, which occurred by mid-2021, surely would mean the Afghan military stood no chance against the Taliban. One point I have never seen addressed is why the US military, and their hired contractors, had not spent years training the Afghans on how to maintain the equipment themselves. Was this simply not feasible because the equipment is too complex and/or due to a lack of literate Afghans? Or was this an oversight?
I’m guessing everyone just assumed we were there on “a temporary basis” so long term training of Afghanis wasn’t done. Sucks though since we were there for 20 years. In that time, the US could’ve literally educated Afghani children from K-12 then college then postgrad on how to run everything, assuming there were zero Afghanis skilled enough to do it when we first got there.
"One point I have never seen addressed is why the US military, and their hired contractors, had not spent years training the Afghans on how to maintain the equipment themselves. " They had put tremendous effort into this and thought that the Afghans would be able to do this. That is why they didn't think Afghanistan would collapse so quickly.
Then why were there 18,000 contractors still in Afghanistan in 2021? This suggests that the Afghans were still very dependent on contractors.
"Then why were there 18,000 contractors still in Afghanistan in 2021? This suggests that the Afghans were still very dependent on contractors."
It suggests that the contractors were very dependent on their contracts.
The contractors were busy maintaining equipment, not just twiddling their thumbs.
This is from told Foreign Policy magazine in 2021:
“Military analysts trying to understand the stunning collapse of the Afghan military are increasingly pointing to the departure of U.S. government contractors starting a month ago as one of the key turning points. The Afghans had relied on contractors for everything from training and gear maintenance to preparing them for intelligence gathering and close air support in their battles against Taliban fighters.”
“We built the Afghan army in our image to be an army that operates with air support and intelligence whose backbone is contractors,” David Sedney, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan.
“The contractors continued to advise Afghan troops by video, but former officials said it was no substitute for operating alongside them.”
“Contractors were essential for keeping most of the air platforms flying,” said Sean Carberry, who served in the U.S. Department of Defense’s inspector general office.
Yup. Capitalism, or I should say the pursuit of profit by privatizing portions of the functions of a military force caused this degradation.
One would think they would have still honored their contracts even if U.S. troops weren't there. They contracted to the Afghan government and military.
I can. What the Hell did they thimk their kids were signing up for? The GI Bill? That's about right for someone with a Hooverville Mind.
that's why i chose the cold war to fight in
Good to see how Democrats support our troops and their bereaved families.
You mean we should follow the example of this man:
"It's amazing, I can't even believe it. I've been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It's like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider," Trump said in the interview when Howard Stern asked how he handled making sure he wasn't contracting STDs from the women he was sleeping with.
You're weird.
We should cheer and approve of Harris if she chose to shamelessly use dead armed service personnel for political gain. At a cemetery where that sort of thing is illegal. I guess we all don't show support in the same way do we?
You want them to serve and die in Afghanistan forever MFer. Take your patriotic BS over to NewsMax.
The US military couldn't prevent this since they didn't control the city, but I wouldn't say that no one else was to blame.
The Taliban was in charge of security once they took over Kabul, and they guaranteed safe passage while the US evacuated. They failed.
But, all the chaos and the aftermath of the evacuation lies with Trump and his terrible deal with the Taliban. He gave them everything and made them promise to break ties with Al Qaeda...and years later we're still waiting.
This Trump guy is bad at negotiations. He gives everything away and forces others to clean up his mess.
"This Trump guy is bad at negotiations. He gives everything away and forces others to clean up his mess."
He always has been bad at negotiations. (How does one go bankrupt with a casino?)
You fund it with junk bonds after telling the gaming commission that you wouldn't. The only winner in his Casino endeavors was himself. Not much of a win, but he fared a lot better than everyone else.
"The Taliban was in charge of security once they took over Kabul, and they guaranteed safe passage while the US evacuated. They failed." The Taliban never guaranteed safe passage.Nor could they guarantee safe passage. The Taliban and ISIS were in a constant state of war and ISIS was regularly succeeding in suicide attacks on the Taliban. So yes, the Taliban failed, just as the US had continuously failed for 20 years with the identical mission.
He gave them everything and made them promise to break ties with Al Qaeda." That's a bald face lie. The deal required the Taliban not to directly support and work with Al Qaeda prior to the withdrawal. Something the Taliban fully adhered to.
WSJ, August 27, 2021:
"Stretched thin, American forces rely on militants they fought for 20 years to help provide security at the airport. Taliban stood guard..."
"Today, American forces, battered by one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, are relying for their own security on that same group, whose members they were trying to kill just weeks earlier."
CBS News, February 1, 2024:
"The report, compiled by the council's committee created to monitor al Qaeda, indicates that the Taliban has not honored its pledge to the U.S. – outlined in the Doha agreement – to sever ties with the terror group, and that the two organizations remain close."
I don't think the chaos and aftermath were even Trump's fault, though he made it worse. There is no way that an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, with anyone in charge, wouldn't have ended up with pretty much the same results. The instant the Afghan army knew that the US really was leaving, they would have fallen apart.
There was no chance to save a society this dysfunctional.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/02/how-chinas-internet-police-went-from-targeting-bloggers-to-their-followers
Late last month the Taliban published new restrictions aimed, it said, at combating vice and promoting virtue. The 35-article document, which includes a raft of draconian laws, deems women’s voices to be potential instruments of vice and stipulates that women must not sing or read aloud in public, nor let their voices carry beyond the walls of their homes.
This is what the Muslims want for the world. Including all you hamas lovers. And JD Vance too!
Wrong link, though that one sure is interesting… liberal bloggers beware!
Afghanistan article here.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/01/afghan-women-sing-in-defiance-of-taliban-laws-silencing-their-voices
Fuck this guy too with MF’s dick.
Wow, you really are an utterly evil monster. The Taliban do not represent any muslim other than themselves. Your claim is like saying all Christians are as evil as the criminals and con artists who run liberty university.
On one point of terminology, it was reported that the suicide bomber was acting on the orders of Islamic State, who were no longer affiliated with al-Qaeda. Also, it seems important to me that it was definitely not a Taliban-inspired attack, despite the inclination of many Americans to believe that all enemies of America in the Middle East are cooperating against the West. It's important because the American exit was negotiated with an organization that actually was willing and able to facilitate that exit. Neither Trump nor Biden should be blamed for choosing to end our war there by making and honoring a deal with the Taliban.
The problem for American neocons is that the fact of the withdrawal is a catastrophe from their perspective, regardless of how many or how few lives were lost in that process. But if you look at the fatality counts, thirteen dead in 2021 and none since then is not as many as the 46 killed in action from 2017 through 2020. The withdrawal therefore was a success. Trump could have saved more than thirteen lives if he'd ended the war on his watch.
You don't think that keeping the Taliban out of power and keeping our word to the Afghans who trusted us and fought for us was worth summer lives?
You're weird.
After twenty years, it might not have been worth continuing a costly and bad-trending military operation.
How was it bad trending? From 2015 until the bug out we were losing under 20 troops per year.
Casualties fell because the United States was no longer undertaking major military operations against the Taliban, leaving them in control of much of the countryside. In 2015 training and support for the Afghan defense forces became the larger mission, but the Afghan government did not get stronger. Taliban forces gained control of more territory every year.
How many lives do you think it would have been worth? After that numbered is reached would you be in favor of pulling out or add another unspecified amount of lives?
He doesn't care how many lives are lost as long as he can sound tough.
Agreed, to a point. Analysis of revealed preferences demonstrates that MF doesn't think it was worth his own life--just the lives of others. And I guess the tax money of others, too.
We lost over 2000 lives in the first 12 years of the war. From 2015 until the Biden Bug Out we were losing under 20 a year. I think that was an acceptable level on an ongoing basis in return for keeping the country out of the Taliban's hands and keeping our word to the Afghans who fought on our side.
Random bigot on internet insists he is also willing to kill 20 American kids per year to 'keep his word' to nobody in particular in a foreign country. Your kids are a price he is eager and willing to pay!
What a grotesquely moronic comment. Afghans didn't fight for America; Americans fought for them. I've seen better quality trolling at the New York Post.
maga and US media sure seem concerned about the 13 deaths in afghanistan under biden
the 65 deaths under trump... not so much
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan
Exactly.
US fatalities:
2017: 15
2018: 16
2019: 23
2020: 11
2021: 13
Trump total: 65
Biden total: 13
The 13 lost in August 2021 were killed in an ISIS terrorist attack at Abbey Gate outside the Kabul airport. That bombing also killed 170 Afghan civilians. Trump and Republicans, aided and abetted by compliant media, are doing their damnedest to make Abbey Gate the next Benghazi.
It's remarkable how the right-wing and media twist history to paint a highly distorted picture of which party has failed the greatest in keeping Americans safe from foreign terrorists.
Noteworthy incidents: US fatalities
1983 Beirut embassy bombing (Reagan): 17
1983 Beirut barracks bombings (Reagan): 241
1993 WTC bombing (Clinton): 6
2000 USS Cole attack (Clinton): 17
2001 9/11 attacks (Bush): 2977 (inc. non-US victims)
2014 Benghazi embassy attack (Bush): 4
2017 NYC mass murders supporting ISIS (Trump): 8
2019 Al Qaeda shooting at FL naval base (Trump): 3
2021 Abbey Gate bombing (Biden): 13
What did Reagan do? He pulled US military from Beirut.
What did Bush do? First, his response to the Cole incident, which came near the end of Clinton's presidency, was to do nothing in retaliation. Then, he ignored all warnings about the 9/11 attack and presided over the greatest failure in national defense in our history. Then, he led the US into a war in Afghanistan, which killed more than 2400 US troops and failed at its stated purposes of bringing justice to Osama bin Laden and democracy to Afghanistan, and only ended 20 years later when Biden pulled the US out at last. If that wasn't enough, he started a new war based on lies that killed more than 4400 US troops, hundreds of thousands of others, and besides being an epic tragedy was the greatest geopolitical strategic blunder in our history.
What did Trump do? He played golf. He invited the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11. He laid a wreath at a gravesite in an illegal ceremony at Arlington. He blamed Biden for a terrorist attack in Kabul against the US during an operation that he himself had negotiated.
If we want to blame presidents (or secretaries of state) when the US is attacked, we should start blaming Republicans first. Protecting the lives of the public and our troops is not really their thing.
Well said.
Absolutely right.
Blame Republicans first is, virtually every time, the right answer to any question, but Democrats have so rarely even tried.
Blame Republicans first! would be a fine bumpersticker.
FTR.
Correction: Bush was not president in 2014, of course.
President during the Benghazi embassy attack was Obama, but he wasn't running in 2016 so all the blame went to Hillary Clinton.
It also happened in 2012 when Hillary was SOS, not 2014.
Anyone remember those 4 SF soldiers killed in Niger in 2017? Funny so few do.
I don't forget nor the way Donny treated their families.
Perhaps we see a difference between 65 soldiers over five years in a mission to hold an entire country against the terrorist regime that shelters bin Laden and losing 13 men in a day while running for the exits in a chaotic unnecessary cluster fuck.
Obammmaaaa!!!
Hillllarrrryyyyy!!!
BIIIIDDDDEEENNNNNNN!!!!!
What a sad little person.
"against the terrorist regime that shelters bin Laden"
The ocean? Because (a) bin Laden was killed a put in a watery grave 13 years ago, and (b) Afganistan is landlocked.
Too bad you weren't one of the 65.
Super 7-point summary. I'd add only that if, even if were remotely possible, doing better for those on "our side" would have meant evacuating half the country. I'm sure Americans would have supported that many immigrants and the right would never dream of accusing Biden of open borders.
I might add, too, that Biden also did impressively indeed on resettlement for those who indeed were evacuated.
It's a lesson in how Democrats "lost China" long ago. The press will always report the most dishonest accusations and lament loss of those it has relied on and grown close to in reporting the war.
Why did the Afghan Army collapse so quickly? Because the Taliban had spent the previous month bribing Afghan Army officers *not* to fight.
"Here is $10,000. When we advance, you walk away. Agreed?"
That's one reason. Another is that, contra MF's claims about American casualties, the Afghan army was losing more than 10,000 soldiers and police killed, plus the wounded, each year after 2018. That was with American supporting firepower and rear echelon troops. For the regular soldiers, giving up on that fight was the obvious response.
Anyone who tells you that the Afghan army refused to fight for its freedom is peddling unadulterated bullshit.
Jasper correctly wrote, "You can't conduct complex military operations in a hostile environment with zero casualties. And if zero casualties really is the required standard, then you might as well not have a military."
However, if Trump had presided over that debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal, I would have been upset. Wars are indeed messy things. But we could have done better. We could have threatened to bomb (and followed through if necessary) some Taliban-controlled villages to keep them at bay a bit longer. Droning an innocent Afghan family was a severe consequence that Kevin forgot to mention.
The decision (made by Trump and followed through by Biden) to withdraw was a mistake. We had a limited force supporting a corrupt government, but as a result, the lives of people in the cities (especially women) were much better.
Watch the movie Osama (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368913) to get a visceral understanding of what it is like to be a woman under the Taliban.
The suicide bomber wasn’t Taliban. Taliban were supposed to be securing the area, but they aren’t exactly well-trained MPs.
You think the withdrawal was a mistake. Did you volunteer to be an occupier?
I’m sympathetic to the plight of women in Afghanistan, but Americans tried for two decades to change the situation and failed. Their fathers, brothers, husbands are the ones who could change it, but apparently they don’t want to.
"We could have threatened to bomb (and followed through if necessary) some Taliban-controlled villages to keep them at bay a bit longer." How does someone become both as stupid and evil as you. First, the Trump surrender document forbade that. Second, the Taliban did everything n their power to assist the americans in their evacuation. The Abbey gate suicide bombing was conducted by ISIS who had been battling the Taliban/Al Qaeda alliance for years by that point.
"The decision (made by Trump and followed through by Biden) to withdraw was a mistake."
No, it wasn't. The Taliban in 2020-21 were withholding attacking because they knew the U.S. was leaving. If Biden had declared the agreement null and void, U.S casualties would have skyrocketed. I'm sorry about life in Afghanistan today, but the Afghans basically chose the Taliban over the corrupt government we had propped up. And committing war crimes to scare the Taliban off sounds bad.
Over the nearly twenty years of US forces fighting in Afghanistan, under four Presidents, over 2400 US military personnel were killed. The objectives of the war, the replacement of the Taliban government with a less repressive one that would suppress terrorist activities, and the capture or killing of al Qaeda leaders, were not achieved. That is what needs most to be remembered about Afghanistan. We once again proved the folly of ‘nation-building’ when there is too little indigenous will.
Osama bin Laden was eventually killed without invading a whole nation. Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed without any risk to Americans. I doubt that Americans would have been satisfied waiting on the years-long, painstaking intelligence work to locate bin Laden and the planning of the operation to eliminate him, but that was what finally succeeded.
Our original invasion was a howl of pain and rage. There was, as I recall, no serious planning or consultation with our own area experts about what to do afterward, instead mainly reliance on exiles like Karzai (?) and others whose contacts in-country were with a very limited range of the populace and who had their own axes to grind.
As in Vietnam, we installed and propped up a government that had serious trouble maintaining popular support in the face of aggressive and ruthless pressure from groups that had arguably stronger claims to local loyalties and were willing to torture and kill systematically.
What everyone in those parts of the world knows about any modern-day invader-- even the cooperators/collaborators-- is that the invaders have a place to go back to, and eventually they will. Indigenes are already where they live. In the long run, very little else has mattered.
"were willing to torture and kill systematically. " That describes the americans and south vietnamese. It is not an appropriate description of the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese.
The VC were quite systematic in "discouraging" locals from serving with or acting for the Saigon government by singling out those who did for retribution, and they didn't shy away from inflicting severe bodily harm, much like the KKK suppressing the southern black vote to end Reconstruction in the US. That doesn't absolve us of having committed individual atrocities or systematically using napalm and Agent Orange, but it accurately describes what happened.
"The Viet Cong Committed Atrocities, Too"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/opinion/vietcong-generals-atrocities.html
The immediate and valid objective of the Afghanistan invasion was to capture Bin Laden and destroy or disable Al Qaeda, to prevent further 9/11's. Al Qaeda was eventually disabled, but it was doubtful if it had the capability to attack the US effectively anyway - 9/11 was a one-off and the further danger to the US from this kind of attack was exaggerated. Bin Laden's objective was to provoke the US into invading, which succeeded, although it didn't end the way he wanted.
I agree with Kevin.
If you could go back and time and repeat the withdrawal a thousand times, 950 of them would have gone worse.
Wikipedia puts Afghanistan US soldiers deaths at about 2,400 and US civilian contractor's deaths at around 1,800. While any service member deaths are abhorrent, and being the last 13 to die in a senseless war is even more tragic, it is of course despicable that MAGA are crying their eyes out just for these 13 deaths under Biden, and ignoring the over 4,000 US deaths that incurred in Afghanistan over 20 years under 3 other Presidents, all started by George W and Dick Cheney.
I was not surprised that the highly trained, well equipped, and numerically superior Afghan security forces simply melted away in front of the Taliban. Withdrawals are always cluster fucks, but at least we didn't evacuate people from the roof of the US Embassy, like what happened in Vietnam under President Ford.
Vietnam: April 1975 (Ford)
Gulf War: February 1991 (Bush Sr.)
Afghanistan: August 2021 (Biden)
Iraq War: December 2021 (Biden) (US retains a troop presence in Baghdad)
All one-term presidents. Has any president since Ike overseen the withdrawal of US troops deployed in war and won reelection?
That's an unfortunate lesson.
(No, we shouldn't count Grenada.)
Not sure if I agree:
My first vote was for Carter in 1976, but I really don't remember the fall of Saigon as a factor in that race (no cable TV, no social media, no Twitter, no Faux News or Murdoch in the US). Ford being treated as a buffoon on SNL and his pardon of Nixon plus Jimmy Carter's peanut farmer schtick was a factor.
Iraq 1991/92 war was a big success, and we stopped at the border of Iraq. George H lost because of economy ("it's the economy, stupid"), a charismatic opponent, and looking at his watch during a debate.
Biden would have lost because of the pandemic related inflation, and that he is 81 years old and diminishing in capabilities. They are trying to tie Harris in with Afghanistan because that Orange dick head can't yet figure out any other good way to attack her, and is fantasizing about an opponent he really would like to face, like Biden or Hillary.
I'm not saying these withdrawals were salient issues in the reelection campaigns. But there persists a strong -- even overwhelming -- institutional bias against withdrawing troops from military conflicts. It might be mere coincidence that the three presidents were not reelected, but the wisdom of the establishment seems to believe that pulling out (even if the cause is lost long before) is an admission of defeat and a political minus for the president doing it. Therefore we stay in wars we should have gotten out of years earlier.
Vietnam: They didn't call it a quagmire for nothing. No one wanted to take the L for America's first defeat ever. Nixon was elected on ending the war and never did, while tens of thousands of US troops died.
Gulf War: Bush I won praise at the time but the neocons didn't see it as a victory. They came to power under Bush II and tried to finish the job that Bush I had abandoned.
Afghanistan: The withdrawal was long overdue and bipartisan in a way (Trump and Biden had important roles), but the establishment erupted in condemnation at Biden when the last hours of a 20-year war were not as orderly and peaceful as disgruntled NYT columnists imagined it should have been while sipping martinis in their favorite bistros.
What happened at the time and what lessons people learned in retrospect are very different things.
Take August 26, 2021, e.g.:
US deaths in Abbey Gate terrorist attack: 13
US deaths from Covid: 10,483 (7-day moving average)
What we are now asked to believe is that the first item is a very BIG deal. The second, not so much.
"No one wanted to take the L for America's first defeat ever. " The war of 1812 was the US's first defeat.
A defeat which became a draw thanks to the Battle of New Orleans which took place after the Treaty of Ghent was signed.
"Nixon was elected on ending the war and never did, while tens of thousands of US troops died." Nixon signed the surrender document and withdrew all US forces. Only the embassy was left to fall on Ford's watch.
If South Vietnam had survived (along with Cambodia and Laos) and became a nation like South Korea or Taiwan, then U.S. involvement Vietnam would have been seen as worth the sacrifice to prevent Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. In fact one could say it did so as regards to Thailand and Malaysia or Indonesia as bloody as it was ion a larger Cold War. Obviously it didn't happen but South Vietnam didn't collapse right away (even the NVA was stunned their final offensive was so easy) when U.S. troops left so decisions were made on their side that led to their defeat as much as anything the U.S. did or didn't do in 1975.
The 1983 withdrawal of troops from Lebanon by Reagan. This was the right decision - the Marines were serving no purpose, but they should have been withdrawn before the bombing. The media made little of the withdrawal, since it was done by a Republican.
Also possibly because it was superseded in newspaper and TV coverage two days later by a stunning triumph of US arms, i.e. overwhelming Grenada . . .
About Eisenhower, I think it's worth underlining that he ran on an explicit pledge to wind down the fighting in Korea, so there wasn't a question of unexpectedly showing weakness or anything so namby-pamby. I basically agree with reservations about Bush I and Ford and think the root issue is being seen to "admit defeat," bugging out on a lost cause, more than simply withdrawing forces.
As far as DDE goes, there were situations where he took quite a bit of heat for not using the military, seemingly against stated policy positions and criticized as weak-kneed. But none of it would have affected his electoral chances-- the East German revolt in 1953 in the first term, and also Hungary and Suez in 1956. These last two were during his second term, but he was exempt from the 22nd amendment and might have realistically gone for a third term if he'd wanted to and if news about his heart attacks hadn't leaked.
Worse was requiring US citizen embassy employees to accept abandoment during the Saigon evacuation.
"The entire operation had only one serious failure: "
You're eliding one issue, namely what was the point of delaying the withdrawal from May 21 to anything later?
I'm not saying Trump is the hero here - as a hero he would have begun planning for the withdrawal on the day he took office.
The entire American Establishment is condemned here: it was clear by at least 2005 that NOTHING useful could be achieved by hanging around - the best that could be done was go in, punish those responsible, leave. Everything beyond that was fantasy; a different fantasy from "we will go into Iraq as heroes and turn it into a democracy", and from different people; but every bit as untethered from reality, and clearly so to everyone with a brain.
However, once a withdrawal WAS agreed, WTF was the point of delaying it by six months? In the absence of a good answer to that, I'm sympathetic to the families that want to blame Biden -- you do blame someone when they forced an apparently pointless delay that simply led to unnecessary deaths.
The delay was not 6 months. It was less than 3 months. It did not lead to greater chaos and casualties. It led almost certainly to less, because the DoD had more time to do planning that the Trump administration failed to do.
It also gave time for Congress to pass the ALLIES Act in early summer, which likely saved the lives of tens of thousands of Afghans. Otherwise, they would have been left to the mercy of the Taliban, and a terrible precedent for US military involvement would have certainly complicated any future engagements.
I can't understand why you're whining about a "pointless" delay. But thanks for saying Trump is not the hero. That's big of you.
"You're eliding one issue, namely what was the point of delaying the withdrawal from May 21[sic] to anything later?" (The Trump surrender Document required the withdraw by April 30th.) By the time Biden ordered the withraw, it was not physically possible for the US military to withdraw all of their equipment by May 1st since Trump had been derelict in his duties and not asked the US military to even begin thinking about the withdrawal. As it was, the US got all of its equipment withdrawn by mid July, leaving only the 2000 lightly armed embassy guards.
For all those whining about lack of contingency plans, if such plans were made to bug out, they would have been leaked to the media and the situation would have even been worse if that's even possible. The U.S had to keep the pretense of continuing the struggle lest it became a really ugly free-for-all. But in the end, it's not America's fault the Afghan Army refused to fight or the contractors ran away even before the Afghans did. What was their excuse?
"2. Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced the US presence to 2,500 troops."
You should add "Did absolutely nothing to prepare for the total withdrawal agreed to." and "refused to allow any of the Afghan allies to immigrate to the US."
"3. When Joe Biden took office, he moved the withdrawal date out to September 11. Trump criticized the change. "We can and should get out earlier," he said." Despite the fact that that was not physically possible, due to the lack of preparation and Trump's dereliction of duty..
"The entire operation had only one serious failure: the death of 13 American service members (and 170 Afghans) to an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Abbey Gate." It was an ISIS suicide bomber. Al Qaeda had taken the position they were willing to assist the US evacuation in an way they could in order to get rid of the americans as fast as possible.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction issued 64 quarterly reports on the war and attempts to improve conditions, with the last report issued on July 30, 2024.
Basic conclusion for me: "Nothing they tried worked. Repeatedly."
President Biden made the right call.
It is obvious that the entire Republican establishment, including conservative media, is committed to the absurd notion that the only thing that went wrong in Afghanistan was Biden's allegedly "disastrous" administration of the withdrawal planned by Trump. Their commitment to this obvious fiction is unbending, as this allows them to avoid facing questions about (1) Trump's not small role in creating this disaster, and/or (2) their support for the nation-building exercise in Afghanistan. Since avoiding (1) and (2) are essential to the Republican project, they cannot be honest about what happened in Afghanistan. It is really indefensible the way they are now trying to demonize Biden, as if Trump played no role in this.
After 20 years it was as clear as it could be that there was simply no more the US could do, and Biden showed a lot of political courage in facing up to that.
Especially when the Afghans refused to do for themselves what the U.S. was fighting for. Once again, just as in Vietnam, you can't fight someone else's war for them. You can't be more enthusiastic for conflict than the people you are helping to fight for. As awful as things are for women in Afghanistan, if the Taliban were truly that hated and given they had ruled before and were just as oppressive, there would have been more resistance to them. There wasn't outside of a brave few.
You remember those overhead projectors in schools that used to have the plastic overleaves you'd put one over the other? Well the Afghanistan conflict overleafed exactly like Vietnam and as a result the outcome was the same. We were supporting a corrupt, ineffective government that could not win the people' allegiance, we were undermined by other nations helping our enemy, in this case Pakistan with the Taliban and could not come to an arrangement which could have prevented this and no amount of "hearts and minds" efforts with the local population could overcome the fact we were foreigners (or for Muslims infidels) occupying their country and Afghans always fight against foreign invaders going back to the days of Alexander the Great(!) just as the Viet Mihn fought against the foreign French or the Chinese.
In fact, defeat was inevitable. Maybe had we killed Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden right at the beginning at Tora Bora, things might have been different. But of course, such mountains and caves are exactly like the jungle cover the VC and NVA used as well. Charlie knows his turf and that gives him a big advantage. Bottom line is unless the U.S. made Afghanistan the 51st state, withdrawl and then the eventual defeat of the puppet government that remained was the determined outcome. That 150,000 were evacuated with the loss of only 13 servicemembers, as hard as that is to their families, in any military operation is actually damn good as to what could have happened. U.S. soldiers and sailors and personnel have died in terrorist attacks around the world for many years, including nearly 300 in Lebanon, remember them? Same thing. Why should this particular event should cause this kind of reaction, is only for reason of mere politics. My God, we can't even honor the dead without politics intruding.