The Washington Post reports that a few members of the military are unhappy with the way the White House handled the Afghanistan withdrawal:
Senior White House and State Department officials failed to grasp the Taliban’s steady advance on Afghanistan’s capital and resisted efforts by U.S. military leaders to prepare the evacuation of embassy personnel and Afghan allies weeks before Kabul’s fall, placing American troops ordered to carry out the withdrawal in greater danger, according to sworn testimony from multiple commanders involved in the operation.
....Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” He did not identify any administration officials by name, but said inattention to the Taliban’s determination to complete a swift and total military takeover undermined commanders’ ability to ready their forces.
First off, this is part of a 2,000-page report, and I'm surprised this is the worst anyone can say. There are no specifics, and no names named, just a few commanders who think we should have started the withdrawal earlier.
If I were in the Army, that's exactly what I would think too. But the White House and the State Department didn't have it that easy. On the one hand, yes, it was pretty obvious what was happening. Operationally, there's no question that we should have allowed things to begin earlier
On the other hand, doing so would have been tantamount to giving up. We had promised President Ashraf Ghani that we would back him to the end, and beginning evacuations earlier would have undermined that. It would have made it obvious that we had no faith in either him or Afghan troops.
In other words, this was not an easy choice. Do we do what's in our best interest or do we live up to our promises? Does it make a difference that Ghani had pretty obviously not lived up to his? Do we evacuate embassy personnel for their own safety, or do we keep them in country because they're needed to do the very thing the Army wants: continue work on emergency visas for Afghan allies?
This was pretty obviously a no-win situation. It's easy to criticize the decisions the White House eventually settled on because we know how they turned out. But what if we'd done what some of those military commanders wanted? I suspect that things would have turned out even worse, but that's just speculation. We'll never know.
In any case, out of 2,000 pages I sure hope there's more dirt than this. If not, this was a pretty spectacularly successful operation.
The former guy had already given up, running U.S. troop levels down to a few thousand. This ensured that the U.S. would have to insert more troops in an emergency effort once the final stage of the collapse began.
Not just "given up" but inked a deal with the Taliban. Delaying the pullout would have been justifiably construed by the Taliban as breaking the agreement, which would almost certainly have precipitated an offensive on their part, thus triggering an increase in US troop numbers (and an increase in US casualties).
In other words, this was not an easy choice. Do we do what's in our best interest or do we live up to our promises?
Agreed. It was a classic damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't scenario. At least you could say we gave the government a shot at standing up against the Taliban long enough for an orderly withdrawal. It couldn't. It's easy for the critics to point and say it was all done wrong, but when you ask them what they would have done different that would have made a difference, they don't have much of an answer. And "occupy Afghanistan forever" was not on the table.
Who besides Alexander the Great and the Taliban has ever been successful in Afgahnistan.
Genghis Khan?
The Prophet.
Paul Atreides, also known as Muad'Dib.
Yeah, the folks pushing the "disastrous" line never have an answer about how the U.S. could have abandoned Afghanistan earlier without causing the a mad rush to the exits.
Well, that former guy (the two-time LOSER) had a simple solution: carpet-nuke the entire country, reducing it to a smooth, glassy surface. Problem solved! Permanently!
Not that this would be acceptable under any conditions. Ever.
Ashraf Ghani I believe you mean, not Karzai.
Can't wait for the madlibs to start (no, not mad libs!)...
No matter what "good" you attempt to do, there are always going to be whiners.
Considering much of the military sold us on the idea that just a few more troops...a bit more time for 20 years and this is what we got, I don't give a damn what such a commander says.
For the umpteenth time, no "evacuation" could have started until the fall of Kabul triggered a mad panic to get out. Prior to that, people could leave by ordinary commercial flights. Something they were advised to do in April 2021, and again, repeatedly and with increasing urgency, from May to August. Or to put it another way, the administration started the withdrawal in timely fashion. It only turned into an evacuation after the sudden collapse of the Afghan military and the Ghani government.
The critics who keep bellowing that tens of thousands of "Afghan allies" should have been brought out sooner ignore the reality that (a) lots of them didn't want to leave until the crisis was upon them, and (b) there was nowhere to take them anyway. There have been millions of Afghan refugees looking for a home since the Russian occupation. Nobody was about to agree to accept 100,000 more.
+1
Also, in sheer political terms, we can't visit the parallel universe where Biden A) obeyed The Blob, and, B) fighting thus intensified, and, C) the US even now was still taking casualties (probably a sizeable increase), and D) Republicans are excoriating war-monger Joe for wasting US lives and treasure. This last part would've been an absolute guarantee, probably aided by David Brooks and Maureen Dowd.
Not just GQP, unless you are agreeing that Glemm Greemwald, Michael Tracey, the Parkland Gang of Idiots*, Katie Halper & Matt Taibbi ("the Useful Idiots"), the Sunrise Movement, & Democrat Socialists of America, etc. al., are Republiqans. (Full disclosure: they are.)
*Can't wait til this time next year when Cameron Kasky is a fully-strapped Proud Boi marching with the Boogaloo at January 6th, Part Deux.
In other words, this was not an easy choice. Do we do what's in our best interest or do we live up to our promises? Does it make a difference that Karzai had pretty obviously not lived up to his? Do we evacuate embassy personnel for their own safety, or do we keep them in country because they're needed to do the very thing the Army wants: continue work on emergency visas for Afghan allies?
Oh, but according to George Packer and David von Drehle even though the U.S. was able to evacuate 150,000 perople in incredibly dangerous circumstances, that's less 10 percent of the number of people who eligible for evacuation from Afghanistan.
Do you how many people that is? It's like 13.2 million! How in the hell is the military and the State Department supposed to get that many people into the U.S just like that? All carefully vetted with their i's dotted and t's crossed on their visa applications, hmmm?
Even if one of these Afghan refugees turned out to be a terrorist who left a bomb at the Freedom Tower after being let in, the Biden Administration would be run out of D.C. on a rail. yes, there is a vetting process for a reason and the Taliban takeover obviously didn't leave a lot of time for it to take place smoothly.
It pisses me off to see people whose only care about Afghanistan is they can no longer go out into the Afghan countryside with their cabana boys (oh excuse me, translators) looking for exotic interesting things. All it was to them was a tourist destination, not a place where real people lived and died during the conflict. The obsession of certain media members about the country, especially Packer (which saddens me because I think he's a good writer) is ridiculous. The only "betrayal" was the Afghan government to its own people.
I understand certain people (we'll call them "elites") upset about leaving people behind and honor and all that but just remember 13 U.S. soldiers died in carrying out an airlift that at least got some people out, so any talk about "honor" is just bullshit. Bottom line is there is no "clean" end to empire and the actions taken by the Administration were reasonable given the circumstances on the ground as the policy makers knew them at the time. The idea that any planned mass evacuation of U.S and of Afghan personnel without anybody knowing about it and leaking it to the press before the Taliban takeover would have been just as much a debacle and abandonment if not even worse than what took place. The site of fleeing Afghan government soldiers using their guns to commandeer aircraft to get out of Kabul ala Saigon '75 would not have been "optically" better than what took place.
The bottom line is the Biden Administration bit the bullet and did what cowardly Trump Administration would not do even though it had arranged for the U.S.'s exit. And do you think Stephen Miller would have let all those Afghans into the country? Hmm, Do you? What would you have said about him, hmm, par for the course? We can't expect to be let down by rotten people to begin with? Sheesh!