What To Say About Afghanistan In the Aftermath

Me, I'm just a lowly blogger with no direct military, national intelligence, or foreign policy creds.

But I read a number of people on the Intertubes who ARE well-credentialed, and sometimes it's best to just link straight to them to get an idea of 1) what might have happened that led to Afghanistan's government swift fall to the Taliban, and 2) who's accountable for what happened in Afghanistan.

I've quote Adam L. Silverman here before, with his intel analysis and experience that he posts at Balloon Juice, and here he is going into detail about what led up to this past weekend's collapse:

...The agreement negotiated by Ambassador Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghan Reconstruction working under the direction of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the direct orders of then President Trump makes the Treaty of Versailles look like strategic genius.

The abject surrender is in part one and sections 2 and 3 of part 3. Part 2, which is the Taliban’s responsibilities as a result of the agreement, are not enforceable by the US once the US and its Coalition allies complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan and because of what the US agreed to in part 1: to never again threaten to use force, use force, or interfere in any way in Afghanistan.

What did the US agree to:

1. Release of Taliban prisoners,

2. Lifting of all sanctions,

3. Complete withdrawal from Afghanistan,

4. To never again threaten to use force, use force, or interfere in any way in Afghanistan

5. To seek positive relations with the Taliban

6. To establish economic reconciliation with the new post occupation Islamic government of Afghanistan...

Essentially, the great deal-maker donald trump traded away an entire pro football roster for the sake of getting a Third Round draft pick to snag the best-available college punter. 

Back to Silverman, who noted that the Afghan President Ghani issued a stand-down order that basically made the nation's military surrender, and also noted strong evidence that the manpower of the Afghan military and police were overstated with no-shows and payroll grifts:

We have four documentable, verifiable reasons for why the Taliban were able to so quickly and easily retake Afghanistan and not a single one of them was the result of something the Biden administration did...

Which leads to the second part of what we need to discuss, and I'd like to link to Stonekettle - whose bio has him with an extensive military background - at his blog Stonekettle Station to quote a few words from his article "Bitter Pill" (you should follow the link to read the article in full. It is bitter and brutal and honest and factual about all the follies our nation's done from Vietnam to now in the name of war):

The ragged American forces left in-country are in full retreat, falling back and back to the airplanes that will maybe get them out of the carnage. No time to destroy their equipment. No time to destroy classified materials. No time to save our allies. No time left but to run. And it's the fall of Saigon all over again. All it needs is a sad Billy Joel ballad and some helicopters being pushed into the sea on the Six-O-Clock news. If Joel was still writing ballads and we still had such a thing as the evening news anyway. 

And it's all Joe Biden's fault.

Yes it is. 

But that's not surprising, is it?

No, that's not surprising at all. 

Because that was the plan...

It enraged Trump that the military experts and the diplomats wouldn't kiss his ass like the rest of his cabinet. Wouldn't do what he wanted, just get out of Afghanistan, quit the war and bring the troops home. You're so smart, Sir! So handsome and brilliant! 

No, instead the military experts told Trump what would happen if we just pulled out. They told him how it would go, just like it's going right now. He didn't care ...until his handlers, Bannon, Miller, maybe Ivanka, told him how it would look. 

It would be a disaster, it would be Saigon, and it would be all on him.

He couldn't keep his promise. 

Now, all presidents learn this. 

All presidents discover pretty quickly that they aren't going to be able to keep their campaign promises. 

It happened to Obama. He promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He couldn't. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, wouldn't let him. He had to eat it and he did. Obama learned, like the presidents before him, that the political realities of the office are vastly different when you're actually sitting behind the Resolute Desk. 

But not Trump...

But then, Trump lost the election.

Joe Biden won.

Trump lost the White House and Republicans lost the Senate. 

And that's when Donald Trump could finally make good on his promise. 

As soon as it became certain that he would have to leave office, Trump ordered American forces out of Afghanistan. Trump and Pompeo invited the Taliban to Camp David -- not the actual government of Afghanistan and our alleged allies, but the Taliban. And he turned thousands of Taliban prisoners loose, one of which is now the de facto president of Afghanistan...

And now, Joe Biden owns this disaster. 

Because that's how it works. 

I didn't say it was right. I didn't say it was fair, because it most assuredly is not.  I said that's how it is. That's how public perception and politics work. The buck stops at the Resolute Desk and America will remember this as Joe Biden's disaster. 

Trump, with the support of the most radical elements of the Republican party, finally made good on his promise and left Joe Biden holding the bag. 

That was the plan...

If everyone in the mainstream media is mad at Biden (and a lot of them are), that's by their own design. Many pundits do not care for the history or causes of why our foreign invasions/occupations seem to collapse upon themselves, they only care to defend their own world-views ("Here's how I'm right and everyone else is wrong") and place blame on those leaders who fail in their (flawed and partisan) judgment.

If the Republicans are mad at Biden - and that's a fucking given thanks to their decades-long partisan rancor and obstructionism - it's a means to deflect the blame for Afghanistan's failures away from the bastards and warhawks who drove us into that nation in the first place after 9/11: The Republicans don't want the pundits or historians to remember that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld sent in our armed forces without a realistic Exit Strategy; and then fucked up the end game even more by dividing our focus and military strength into a needless occupation of Iraq.

The Republicans are desperate to blame anyone else in order to avoid the blame they truly deserve.

And so here's Joe Biden, who has been tossed this hot potato, this live grenade of an ongoing Afghanistan occupation for the United States closing in on twenty goddamned years, all because NOBODY ELSE sitting in the White House - Bush the Lesser, Obama, trump - wanted to fall on that grenade and end the war, because they all knew it would end like Vietnam with the local bad guys in control and American prestige in tatters (although thanks to that prolonged indecision, our prestige already suffered).

And yet Biden has the courage to fall on that grenade. We ought to recognize that.

In Biden's own words, he did not want to pass this burden onto another generation of men and women in a military already fatigued by decades of fighting. In other moments he's quoted saying "I know my decision will be criticized. But I would rather take that criticism than pass this on to a fifth president," said Biden. “I am the president of the United States, the buck stops with me."

With that, Biden defers to Harry S Truman, a President who made hard choices and stuck by them, even as the public opinion soured and when history proved he made the best possible moves.

These are the things we need to remember when we talk now about Afghanistan.

We also need to act and do what our nation can do to provide sanctuary for the thousands of Afghani civilians and government officials who aided the United States in their desire to rebuild a nation that is no longer safe for them.

The Occupation of Afghanistan is over. The fight to save people is still ongoing.