Who's responsible for the chaos in Kabul? Joe Biden, of course. He's commander-in-chief and the buck stops with him.
Fine. But with that formality out of the way, who's really responsible? If we want to learn any lessons from this, we have to go beyond platitudes and dig a little deeper.
So then: to a first approximation, the answer is "nobody." Withdrawing from Afghanistan was always going to be a bloody, chaotic affair no matter what. That's why no one wanted to do it: It was pretty obvious how it would go down, and no one with any sense wants that as part of their presidential legacy. But the bloodshed was inevitable once the decision to leave was made.
Now dig a little deeper. Sure, withdrawal was always going to be messy, but why was it this messy? Recent reporting makes it clear that the answer is twofold. First, the military insisted on an inept training strategy that left the Afghans with a literally useless army the moment we withdrew support. Second, the Afghans themselves were far more corrupt and far more willing to accept Taliban rule than we thought.
How is it that we misunderstood these things after 20 years in country? That remains a bit of a mystery. We could use some more reporting on this.
But now dig even deeper. Even given all our mistakes, did the events of the past couple of days have to be so horrific? My answer might surprise you: they haven't been. I'm speaking relatively, of course, but the truth is that I expected worse. I wouldn't have been surprised to see something like Fallujah on steroids: bodies hanging from bridges, lines of "traitors" being shot, Taliban fighters surrounding American forces, and so forth. But so far, we haven't seen that. The Taliban takeover has been far smoother and less vicious than I expected.
I get that this is hard to accept after watching even a few minutes of CNN. And obviously things could change rapidly. But what we've seen in Kabul has been about the best outcome we could have reasonably expected. The chaos we're seeing is simply the nature of military withdrawals under pressure. For anyone who disagrees, I can only ask: What did you expect?
MSNBC host @NicolleDWallace: "95% of the American people will agree with everything [President Biden] just said. 95% of the press covering this White House will disagree." pic.twitter.com/UzLr6DPyPz
— The Recount (@therecount) August 16, 2021
Look, this is the sort of thing media and politicians dream of. They're going to be running their mouths nonstop about it through at least most of the week, they'll go over it all again on Sunday, and then they'll keep flogging it periodically. And Republicans will write into Scripture that the Democrats "lost Afghanistan" in the same way that they "lost Vietnam," even though it was a Republican president who brought down the curtain on Vietnam, and another who made the withdrawal deal with the Taliban, because Republicans are never to blame.
And ... we'll see what we see. It's August, which is Silly Season, school is starting again, and COVID is getting uglier by the day, especially in Trumpland. And unlike Vietnam, Americans these days tend -- unfortunately! -- to think of the military as some sort of contracting or outsourcing operation -- "they know what they signed up for." And as for Afghanistan, I'll bet more than 90% of them could make at best a near-guess as to where it is on a map.
If I had to guess, I'd say the story will blow over by Labor Day, except in the Republican fever swamps, where the sky is a different color.
What *I* will want to know is, will there ever be an accounting for all the rose-colored smoke that the DC-based foreign policy / military / intel community has been blowing up people's (in some cases willing) asses for all these years? In many important ways, this looks like Vietnam repeated, "the first time as tragedy." I wonder, will there be consequences for its authors?
At some point, that “they can’t even find it on a map” line does curdle into a cliche. It’s also something that can be fixed, let’s remember. “Americans inherently suck at geography so they don’t even know where they send their kids to make war” is not written on some stone tablet somewhere. If we want people to know something, we have to actually be willing to teach little kids that something.
But very much agreed that something very drastic and structural needs to be done about the entire existence of the DC natsec blob.
"something very drastic and structural needs to be done about the entire existence of the DC natsec blob"
What needs to be done about them is to ship the whole lot of them off to the Hague for a lifetime in prison. And seize all their assets for redistribution to the millions of people they have victimized around the world.
What will be done about them? They will continue to run US foreign policy for the foreseeable future and live in luxury while wreaking havoc around the world.
I want answers for the rose-colored smoke too, imagine a lot of us do That's a trillion dollars spent on a state and military that fleed or crumbled after offering little resistance.
'And Republicans will write into Scripture that the Democrats "lost Afghanistan" in the same way that they "lost Vietnam:'
It's an old play. It goes back to the "Who lost China?" line of attack that gave rise to Joe McCarthy.
GOPers smell blood in the water and they are going to exploit it for maximum effect. If the GOP takes one or both of congress next year, they'll Benghazi! the bejeezus out of it.
Why, COMINTERN Manchurian Candidate Dwight David Eisenhower lost Chona!
Quemoy and Matsu.
Wow, you must be an old codger to remember Quemoy and Matsu! Maybe even older than me.
Thank you, Kevin, that is exactly it.
Though I would say that the failure of the military to anticipate the need to take out thousands of Afghans at once is pretty epic, but at no point is that Joe Biden's fault, whatever it was wingnuts want to be able to blather about.
[. . . .whatever it is wingnuts want to be able to blather about.]
"but at no point is that Joe Biden's fault"
Biden's job was to drill down, ask the right questions, and see to it that planning made sense and contingencies were covered. As Biden said, "The buck stops with me."
A basic question to ask the military would have been: how will the Afghan forces do if we suddenly end air support, remove advisors, cut-off logistics support, and remove US contractors who did maintenance on Afghani aircraft as well as other support jobs. Perhaps Biden and the military did talk through all of this, but I'd bet, based on the results, discussions were superficial.
They had to have discussed this, not sure you have a proper understanding of how our military operates.
I’m not sure that I have a proper understanding of American military culture but, then again, I’m not sure that I don’t. There’s strong similarities with our other two major military/foreign policy disasters of Vietnam and Iraq. If we’ve learned one thing about the foreign policy establishment and the military, it’s that there’s virtually nothing that’s discussed in depth or planned for intelligently.
The problem is a lack of accountability.
Assuming the answers were "Sir, the Afghan government and army will collapse in a heap", it's not clear how it would have changed the outcome. Because the obvious next question was "How long will it take to change the situation so the Afghans can resist the Taliban without our help?" And the answer would have been "A few more years, sir, and of course it will mean breaking our agreement with the Taliban, so our troops will come under attack again. We recommend sending a minimum of 15,000 troops back to the country to ensure the security of our operations."
You don't get promoted by giving your commander the truth. You tell them that all is going well, you've hit all your (phony) metrics and it's clear sailing from here.
Heh. It's almost as if the US military's "training" programs for the Afghan army were designed to create such severe dependence on the United States that we could never leave...
This whole mess is Bush’s fault for insisting we could build stable democratic nations in Iraq and Afghanistan. His hubris, willful ignorance and stupidity was almost as mind-boggling to me as the mainstream “liberal” media’s complicity with his delusions. We should have gone in with the limited goal of getting Bin Laden then getting out but Rummy and Tommy Franks blew the chance when they refused to act when he was cornered in Tora Bora.
Too bad the media has decided to erase the Bush adminstration’s culpability for getting us into a quagmire that never had a good way to exit.
I was furious that the media kept saying Biden’s team was surprised by the speed of the collapse without pointing out that either the CIA or military told them it wouldn’t happen. Michael Morell, a former top CIA guy, says the CIA warned the military for years. The military is likely going to blame the CIA for giving them bad intelligence. Either way, the people involved were around before Biden took office and are the ones who are responsible for giving him accurate information. Today’s media is too devoted to keeping the manly men of the military and CIA on a pedestal to ever put blame on them.
Biden could have arranged for a more orderly, gradual withdrawal and evacuation of refugees (if the generals had not lied to him). But this also would have been opposed by Republicans and by the media, for somewhat different ostensible reasons but actually because that is what Republicans and the media do. the process, including the criticism, would just have been dragged out longer
There were no "refugees" until the army began to collapse, by which time it was too late. The president gave convincing reasons today why America had not begun to evacuate friendly Afghans sooner.
Jennifer Rubin reports that, in fact, the evacuation is ongoing, and that reports the US is wholesale "abandoning" its Afghan allies (and US citizens) is premature.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/17/biden-makes-his-case-lets-be-clear-it-was-always-going-be-chaotic/
I haven't been glued to CNN at all, but this takeover has seemed low in slaughter. I'm thinking, if this had stretched out for six months to a year as experts were predicting, would it not have added up to more killing?
There has been no slaughter. It seems Taliban 2.0 is smarter than 1.0. They want us out as soon as possible, along with our "quislings," and that requires it happen peacefully.
"Taliban 2.0 is smarter than 1.0"
I've been thinking the same thing. Smarter both in diplomacy and PR.
Still, they might want to hang the quislings. Thousands are stranded and can't get to the airport. It's anyone's guess what happens.
Yes, they probably will want to execute the stranded quislings, but if the Americans are going to go quietly, they have to let the quislings who are at the airport go with them.
I assume anyone who made it to the airport will get out. It's those who didn't make it who are likely in big trouble. I read the Taliban has all roads blocked to the airport.
The Kabul Derby is the is like Westham-Millwall as written by John Carpenter.
The One-eyed Man Dan Crens--... I mean, Mullah Omar got Lasik for his one good eye.
They have already murdered Afghan soldiers who surrendered & who probably didn't fight better because their government didn't reliably provide pay or food. They have already paid intimidating visits to women journalists in Kabul.
Anyone who believes any Taliban assurances is deceiving him/herself, & I doubt that any Afghans are deluded into feeling safe & secure.
It hasn't YET been as bloody as some feared, but it will be.
And some of us know exactly where the country is, having met its people here through Persian friends (& yes, mine choose not to identify as "Iranian" for political reasons).
This was supposed to be shown as a response to gyrfalcon.
Probably, and left the door open for "see, we should have stayed longer" when the Taliban took over later.
An extended withdrawal risked having a large number of Americans taken hostage by bands of hostile revolutionaries. There's no reason to think the Taliban is a single disciplined organization with strict lines of command. It's more likely to be a loose collection of zealots united by their mission to see Islamic fundamentalism restored to the country.
The Taliban as Wolverine Watchmen.
"It's more likely to be a loose collection of zealots united by their mission," etc.
That's what's been puzzling me. That "loose collection of zealots" is incompatible with the clearly coordinated advance of the Taliban. So what happened and why? How did they get themselves so organized and even disciplined?
This.
Whether you agree with Biden's decision or not, once that decision was made, there are multiple reasons why a fast withdrawal might well be significantly preferable to a slow, torturous withdrawal.
As Atrios pointed out, the alternative to the rapid collapse of the Afghan army was a slow destructive civil war with exactly the same end result.
A Controlled retreat is a very hard tactic to pull off.
Especially when civilians are getting all the face time on the news
People THINK we could just fly in 30 or so 747s to pick up 350 people each.
That's not the way this works.
That being said Biden IS the guy who's desk this fell on.
He's Commander in Chief. He will shoulder the burden and march on.
Afghan women WILL be mistreated as they are supposed to be obedient according to their Holy Books.
Remember what the Taliban IS. It is NOT a military organization. They act, and are armed like one but at their core they are civilians. They are Oath Keepers on steroids.
I am just glad no more American service men or women will come home either in part or in a box.
I'm sure someone will write a book on this years from now, but it looks like conceptually setting up, or even starting, a mass exodus of everyone who were possible retaliation candidates would have been a pretty clear signal that we knew this was going to happen.
I mean, you can have a public position that the Afghan gov might hold on, with private reservations. But you can't start pulling everyone out too soon -- its too obvious of a signal that you know all its lost.
Considering how orderly the evacuation of US forces and US people was, its actually going pretty well.
I mean, better than Dunkirk, eh?
Biden mentioned he heard as much from Afghan leadership.
For what it's worth (actually not much), NPR as Gen. Patraeus on saying it is just like Dunkirk.
A general comment here
First - Dunkirk was a military operation ONLY. They evacuated 338,000 British and French soldiers over a 9 day period.
Second - Saigon fell 2 full years after the peace deal was signed we withdrew and the S Vietnamese Army was FIGHTING The NVA and VC
We were evacuating Kabul AS WE WITHDREW OUR TROOPS
The Afghan ARMY Was nowhere to be found. Did they ever fire a shot against the Taliban? I heard of NO STORIES regarding those brave soldiers we trained over there.
Anyone who compares this to Dunkirk or Saigon needs to read a history book or three.
"Someone will write a book"
I think the Washington Post is putting out a book of the secret "Afghanistan Papers" even as we speak. Plus, they have a series of articles at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
"But what we've seen in Kabul has been about the best outcome we could have reasonably expected."
Oh, come on. Nobody expected the country to fall this fast and for people to be stranded all over the place. They can't get to the airport.
We might luck out and all those stranded Americans, foreigners, and Afghans who worked with us will get out with no violence, but the odds of that are not great. Americans and foreigners will likely get out, but many thousands of at-risk Afghans will be blocked from exiting is my guess.
Yes. Thank you. "Best outcome" my ***.
It's deluded to think America can rescue all the Afghans who backed the wrong side in a civil war. America was there to help them, not vice versa.
People fall from airplane as it takes off in Kabul,
https://old.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/p5ek9s/a_clear_video_of_men_falling_from_c17_they_were/
You really want to pin the blame for all this on the military don't you Kevin. Almost as if they were Fox News or Comey in your eyes. It couldn't possibly be successive administrations, because that won't fall neatly on one side of the aisle.
Civilian control is overall to be preferred, but the military has to be able to recognize when it is being asked to solve problems that are social and/or political, and to push back, before hostilities start and it’s too late. But the policy-makers that ask the impossible bear the responsibility for the inevitable failures.
Well said Kevin.
Don’t let Afghans into the US.
Omar Mir Seddique Mateen (born Omar Mir Seddique; November 16, 1986 – June 12, 2016) was an American mass murderer and domestic terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, before he was killed in a shootout with the local police.
Born in New York to Afghan-American parents, he later moved to Florida where he displayed an interest in violence in his childhood and had behavioral problems in school.
We have no choice. Didn't you see the latest census figures? The number of Caucasian-Americans is dropping like a rock. We need replacements!
The Hindu Kush is the homeland of the Aryan Nation.
Agreed. I'll go one further: we should never let in any immigrants from any country ever because there are bound to be examples of of people from every immigrant group who have committed crimes. I bet even Norwegian-Americans commit the odd murder.
Any chance we could deport Tomasz of Disqus Comments fame on the basis that Ted Kaczynski is also Polish?
Now do Timothy McVeigh.
"Withdrawing from Afghanistan was always going to be a bloody, chaotic affair no matter what."
Sure the ANSF have folded like Superman on laundry day, but this transition has been remarkably peaceful, actually. Some skirmishes and firefights here and there, but, afaik, no mass killings, assassinations, ethnic cleansings, or the like. It's obvious that the Afghan government basically had a plan to hand things over to the Taliban in a pretty orderly fashion. We'll see if this holds up, of course -- a nasty, nasty civil war may be around the corner for all we know -- but violent and bloody it has not been up to this point, at least.
As to how this could have been done better, in 1989, the Soviets withdrew across the bridge at the Northermn border and left behind a regime that lasted for three years.
Stupid savages recognizing themselves in stupid savages,
The Far Right Is Celebrating the Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan,
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8apw/the-far-right-is-celebrating-the-taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan
This doesn't have the same ring to it that Vietnam did
In Vietnam we'd go through villages during the day and find very few able bodied men. They would come into the villages at night to hide their arms, and stash their ammo.
In Afghanistan the Taliban was taking over whole territories within the country. In those areas there was no uprising - no resistance. That always struck me as odd. Even within Germany there those that did not believe in the Fuhrer with the adulation he wanted.
This just doesn't seem right to me. It was too easy.
Almost as if the entire population was IN on it, and just waited us out.
Will terrorism rear it's ugly head again? Who knows?
But when the Chinese announced today that they want a deeper relationship with the Taliban government - my first thought was I'm glad we got out of there
The take of one of Kevin’s former colleagues, including a pitch to subscribe to that colleague’s newsletter, which is an interesting development in its own: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/08/the-afghanistan-debacle-this-land-sneak-peek/
Another of The Guardian’s pictorial takes on the matter: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/aug/16/steve-bell-on-the-war-on-terror-cartoon
"But what we've seen in Kabul has been about the best outcome we could have reasonably expected."
There are no girls in schools or in universities, and no women on the streets and those at home are wearing burkas or hajibs. So well said, KD, best of all possible outcomes, wasn't it.
Actually NPR interviewed a Taliban expert this afternoon saying they had kept some of the schools for girls open. Not all of them, and who knows for how long, but it does appear this may not be your father's Taliban.
They were still murdering schoolgirls & teachers this year, so I don't hold out hope for continuing education or employment for females. After entering Kabul, they were already reported as iij intimidating employees women in their homes - that is telling.
Just posting to say that even though I have a shit-ton of things to say about this, I'm done with this topic and it's just best at this point to let the chips fall where they may. I'm just thankful that KD has an open, free blog and an open dialog in the comment section.
Wow. Nicole Wallace is right. The ref-worked media is bending over backwards to present, without contradiction, the Republico-rightwing point of view, because that's what "fair & balanced" means. "Flat Eartherism" is as valid an "opinion" as the stuff NASA scientists have documented. Just a few more months propping up the corrupt Afghan government will give us - us! victory. Sure.
Perhaps the US's big mistake was viewing Afghanistan as a nation. It's not. It's a region, in which warlords and charismstic religious movements vie for their chunk of territory, with the strongest and best armed men prevailing. In other words, it's a true Libertarian paradise.
And most people have never realized this fact.
That is exactly correct.
Afghanistan sounds like South Carolina or Oklahoma.
I thought Joe's speech was spot on, let's do the best we can to maneuver the next few weeks, and get as many to safety as we can.
Ben Domenech: "precision bomb the hell out of every Taliban camp on the way out the door, render every humvee unusable, burn every piece of material, and let the Afghans line up and execute every ISIS terrorist at Bagram."
That's what he claims America should have done. I'm sure the evacuations could then have proceeded in a calm, orderly manner.
Trump Republicans are responding to the culmination of their man's deal with the Taliban as might have been expected: with histrionics, lies and irrational arguments. Naturally the media is faithfully and uncritically transcribing it for them.
I'm just really glad we finally got a president courageous enough to pull us out of there. I hope we stay out and learn a lesson for the future.
> the Afghans themselves were … far more willing to accept Taliban rule than we thought.
This. Media and pundits are wringing their hands over the suffering that Afghans will endure under the Taliban. Well, the Taliban aren’t foreigners or space aliens, they are Afghans. They could not have swept into power so quickly without the support of many other Afghans, and the passivity of still more. Yes, it is tragic that many will suffer - women, journalists, artists, musicians, athletes. That was happening before the US invasion, and it will resume now that no foreign troops remain. The whole country needs deprogramming; no army can do that.
Laura Ingraham on people trying to escape Afghanistan,
https://www.rawstory.com/afghanistan-fox-news-laura-ingraham/
Her point s that they're helpless victims trying to escape their victimizers, which is something that should offend conservatives everywhere.
She'll say the same thing about anyone trying to cross the border, and about women and rape victims.
At least she's consistent.
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