Don't Send the Afghanistan Withdrawal Down the Memory Hole

[pjhawk]

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:

1. 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.
2. Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced troop levels to 2,500.
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.
4. In July Biden moved 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Don’t send the Afghanistan withdrawal down the memory hole - Kevin Drum

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...

jabberwocking.com

 

[Chishawk1425]

 

[DirtyJohns97]

 

[TheCainer]

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:

1. 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.
2. Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced troop levels to 2,500.
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.
4. In July Biden moved 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Don’t send the Afghanistan withdrawal down the memory hole - Kevin Drum

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...

jabberwocking.com

This is the closest to the truth of any narrative that has been presented, especially of any narrative put out by Trump and his psychophants.

They have an agenda which they have been pushing for political purposes, and it is full of holes from what they are trying to push.

If you doubt this, just look at what John Bolton has put out stating the failures of the Trump administration. Please explain how the 5000 Taliban POWs being released before Biden even took office couldn't have affected the results we saw. The Afghanistan Government was abandoned by Trump during the Afghanistan withdrawal in favor of the Taliban, which Trump wanted to invite to the White House on the anniverssry of 9/11. Check it out.

What became of the Afghan withdrawal was so much smoother than what we saw during the Vietnam withdrawal. We saw helicopters being pushed overboard from the flight decks of American naval ships to make room for more aerial retrieval operations to rescue Americans and loyal Vietnamese who were being evacuated from Vietnam under enemy fire.

Trump's MAGAts are simply FOS if they try to compare the 2 operations, especially given that the Trump administration sabotaged the US evacuation from Afghanistan from the beginning.

 

[DirtyJohns97]

This is the closest to the truth of any narrative that has been presented, especially of any narrative put out by Trump and his psychophants.

They have an agenda which they have been pushing for political purposes, and it is full of holes from what they are trying to push.

If you doubt this, just look at what John Bolton has put out stating the failures of the Trump administration. Please explain how the 5000 Taliban POWs being released before Biden even took office couldn't have affected the results we saw. The Afghanistan Government was abandoned by Trump during the Afghanistan withdrawal in favor of the Taliban, which Trump wanted to invite to the White House on the anniverssry of 9/11. Check it out.

What became of the Afghan withdrawal was so much smoother than what we saw during the Vietnam withdrawal. We saw helicopters being pushed overboard from the flight decks of American naval ships to make room for more aerial retrieval operations to rescue Americans and loyal Vietnamese who were being evacuated from Vietnam under enemy fire.

Trump's MAGAts are simply FOS if they try to compare the 2 operations, especially given that the Trump administration sabotaged the US evacuation from Afghanistan from the beginning.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

How does the abandonment of all of our military equipment square with the above narrative? What were the plans for getting that out of there, if indeed there were any plans?

Were we planning on gifting it to the Taliban right along?
..............

As the date came closer, it seemed that the Taliban was on the move all across Afghanistan and in the general direction of Kabul. It honestly appeared that they had us on the run.

 

[DirtyJohns97]

How does the abandonment of all of our military equipment square with the above narrative? What were the plans for getting that out of there, if indeed there were any plans?

Were we planning on gifting it to the Taliban right along?

 

[GOHOX69]

Do people on here actually know grammar and word usage? Don't sent? What in the actual fk?

 

[TheCainer]

How does the abandonment of all of our military equipment square with the above narrative? What were the plans for getting that out of there, if indeed there were any plans?

Were we planning on gifting it to the Taliban right along?
..............

As the date came closer, it seemed that the Taliban was on the move all across Afghanistan and in the general direction of Kabul. It honestly appeared that they had us on the run.

With all due respect, your questions call into question what Trump had intended.

The military equipment was originally intended to be given to the new Afghan government for their use and control of the nation.

However, Trump let the 5,000 or so Taliban POWs released to sidetrack the Afghanistan government, and they in turn, undermined the Afghanistan government which was supposed to take control of the nation, but were cut off by the same release of the Taliban POW's. The Afghanistan government military basically gave away control of the nation to the Taliban POWs, which were a lot stronger than the Afghanistan government at the time of the release of the Taliban POWs.

It was a very simple operation gone amuck. Instead of the Afghan government taking control of the country, it was the Taliban which took control after the Taliban was released from prison.

And, here we are today. The Taliban controls Afghanistan even after all of the years we (the US) controlled the country.

That was Putin's (Trump's) intention all along.

 

[pjhawk]

Do people on here actually know grammar and word usage? Don't sent? What in the actual fk?

Fixed. I typed out the blog post title instead of cutting/pasting it, hit the wrong letter.

Oh yeah, f$%k you Grammar/Spelling Police Guy!

 

[DooBi]

So what you're saying is that if we would have withdrawn in May like planned, the Afghan army would have been in control still and the plan would have worked fine. The decision to move the date was the problem.

 

[MichaelKeller99]

Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Israel…

It’s almost like our cluster**** of a foreign policy is trying to tell us something. Probably the s

 

[MichaelKeller99]

…the same thing George Washington tried to tell us. 🤷‍♂️

 

[mnole03]

They were killed by the same ISIS Donald Trump claims he eliminated.

 

[sober_teacher]

How does the abandonment of all of our military equipment square with the above narrative? What were the plans for getting that out of there, if indeed there were any plans?

Were we planning on gifting it to the Taliban right along?
..............

As the date came closer, it seemed that the Taliban was on the move all across Afghanistan and in the general direction of Kabul. It honestly appeared that they had us on the run.

The loss of the equipment to the Taliban was a foregone conclusion once the afghan military collapsed as quickly as it did, nor was it logistically possible to get our stuff out, just not enough people on the ground; even if the initial plan was to leave it to the Afghan government.

So what you're saying is that if we would have withdrawn in May like planned, the Afghan army would have been in control still and the plan would have worked fine. The decision to move the date was the problem.

Except we weren’t ready to be out by then, the official handover to the afghans wasn’t, etc.

Looking back in hindsight, knowing now how truly frail and dependent on the USA that the Afghan military/government was…there’s no universe they could have stood up on their own in the end. Only other option would have been to send more troops back in to stabilize the situation on the ground and tear up that peace agreement; and that wasn’t politically possible here.

 

[Chishawk1425]

So what you're saying is that if we would have withdrawn in May like planned, the Afghan army would have been in control still and the plan would have worked fine. The decision to move the date was the problem.

Umm no, absolutely not. Lol

 

[Chishawk1425]

View embedded media

So very simply the above events, the Taliban was then emboldened by Trump, literally supplied by Trump with him releasing the leader and their fighters. The Taliban promises to not attack us if we withdrew but they were attacking and taking over territory from our ally the Afghanistan govt we installed. We were sitting in the middle of a Civil War. If we sent in reinforcements that ended the truce with the Taliban. Also the suicide bomber who killed our troops wasn't a Taliban member they were ISIS. There was no possible way to get the equipment out after Biden took office those plans should have happened during Trump administration as explained above. He was too busy claiming the election was stolen and setting up the attack on our Capitol. Then days before he left office he lowered our troops to 2500 handing Biden an impossible situation

 

[billanole]

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:

1. 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.
2. Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced troop levels to 2,500.
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.
4. In July Biden moved 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Don’t send the Afghanistan withdrawal down the memory hole - Kevin Drum

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...

jabberwocking.com

Well presented.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

So what you're saying is that if we would have withdrawn in May like planned, the Afghan army would have been in control still and the plan would have worked fine. The decision to move the date was the problem.

Who was the Secretary of Defense when that decision was made to move the date out?

And who was Secretary of Defense when everything collapsed without an additional rollout of the date followed by the reintroduction of U.S. troops? He/she should have been court marshalled.

At some point, a grown up should have seen what was about to take place, raised his/her hand and screamed "STOP!" ... and the President should have reversed course completely.

I do remember that the Taliban very quickly resumed murdering girls who could read. Education for girls was a huge part of the "Success in Afghanistan" narrative. (and now a large number of those girls have been murdered by their government. They put their faith in the U.S. government, and it failed them.

... and about those 5000 POW's: were they held together with their officers and NCO's ... their fighting units intact for the duration of their captivity? WTF; they were up and running in no time after their release.

It really appears to me that the Biden administration had ample warning and figured that they could blame President Trump in the event of a negative outcome. They definitely did not regard Afghanistan as their issue or anything to be taken seriously. ... They did not care about the hubris from 9-11. War hubris typically takes 50-100 years to dissipate, and one does not really have the option of short-circuiting it.

 

[sober_teacher]

Who was the Secretary of Defense when that decision was made to move the date out?

And who was Secretary of Defense when everything collapsed without an additional rollout of the date followed by the reintroduction of U.S. troops? He/she should have been court marshalled.

At some point, a grown up should have seen what was about to take place, raised his/her hand and screamed "STOP!" ... and the President should have reversed course completely.

I do remember that the Taliban very quickly resumed murdering girls who could read. Education for girls was a huge part of the "Success in Afghanistan" narrative. (and now a large number of those girls have been murdered by their government. They put their faith in the U.S. government, and it failed them.

... and about those 5000 POW's: were they held together with their officers and NCO's ... their fighting units intact for the duration of their captivity? WTF; they were up and running in no time after their release.

It really appears to me that the Biden administration had ample warning and figured that they could blame President Trump in the event of a negative outcome. They definitely did not regard Afghanistan as their issue or anything to be taken seriously. ... They did not care about the hubris from 9-11. War hubris typically takes 50-100 years to dissipate, and one does not really have the option of short-circuiting it.

The counterpoint to the argument about reversing course once in office; to say nothing of trying to do so in the midst of a pandemic, there was zero appetite domestically to do anything but pull out.

And I firmly believe the same thing, perhaps worse would have happened had Trump been in office. Main difference is Trump wouldn’t have tried hard to evacuate afghan civilians when the shit hit the fan imo.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

The counterpoint to the argument about reversing course once in office; to say nothing of trying to do so in the midst of a pandemic, there was zero appetite domestically to do anything but pull out.

And I firmly believe the same thing, perhaps worse would have happened had Trump been in office. Main difference is Trump wouldn’t have tried hard to evacuate Afghan civilians when the shit hit the fan imo.

" ... there was zero appetite domestically to do anything but pull out."

Presidents are elected to provide long term leadership, and to do what is best for the nation ... not to take the measure of that big, discombobulated thing called Public Opinion and to always act on that.

Public opinion got us into Afghanistan and the game plan was to stay until the job was finished ... not to leave whenever the notion arose. Two different collective public opinions? Which do we follow?

Wars do not fit nicely into the value system of Western-Style democracies. We do not get to unilaterally change our war objectives and come home after overseeing the "lay-to-waste" policies associated with war. We either win or we lose. We do not simply call it off and leave. The Taliban does not consider it as finished business; we shouldn't either.

 

[pjhawk]

Who was the Secretary of Defense when that decision was made to move the date out?

And who was Secretary of Defense when everything collapsed without an additional rollout of the date followed by the reintroduction of U.S. troops? He/she should have been court marshalled.

At some point, a grown up should have seen what was about to take place, raised his/her hand and screamed "STOP!" ... and the President should have reversed course completely.

I do remember that the Taliban very quickly resumed murdering girls who could read. Education for girls was a huge part of the "Success in Afghanistan" narrative. (and now a large number of those girls have been murdered by their government. They put their faith in the U.S. government, and it failed them.

... and about those 5000 POW's: were they held together with their officers and NCO's ... their fighting units intact for the duration of their captivity? WTF; they were up and running in no time after their release.

It really appears to me that the Biden administration had ample warning and figured that they could blame President Trump in the event of a negative outcome. They definitely did not regard Afghanistan as their issue or anything to be taken seriously. ... They did not care about the hubris from 9-11. War hubris typically takes 50-100 years to dissipate, and one does not really have the option of short-circuiting it.

Oh sweet, so we just stay in Afghanistan forever then huh? You're just repeating back the same lines that resulted in the US staying there for 20 years. At some point we just had to get out, there was never going to be any kind of ideal scenario in executing the pull-out.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

Oh sweet, so we just stay in Afghanistan forever then huh? You're just repeating back the same lines that resulted in the US staying there for 20 years. At some point we just had to get out, there was never going to be any kind of ideal scenario in executing the pull-out.

We stayed in the Philippine's for 100 years ... We have been in Germany for 80 ... England finally followed your strategy about 80 years into a 100 year treaty with Hong Kong. (Hong Kong appears to be subject to imposed Chinese backtracking. England has failed to step in and is in the process of losing all of their gains after 100 plus years of involvement.)

You talk as if 20 years is a long time. Democracy has been under seige since Sparta beat the crap out of Athens. It is ongoing.

... and yes, we should maintain a base there for the foreseeable future.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

Do people on here actually know grammar and word usage? Don't sent? What in the actual fk?

I find this stuff annoying as well, but let me alert you to something I have run into:

I use Microsoft Outlook for email and blogging. Microsoft has been undergoing a (forced upon their customers) upgrade to Outlook and their spellchecking has become sloppy.

I am attempting to go along but there are glitches ... such as replacing words like "send" with "sent" and "done" with "don't." I find I have to glance back over every Internet post and email before hitting send, but I miss a lot of these sorts of things and have to edit posts frequently.

Incidentally are we supposed to continue to always capitalize "Internet?" I did so here and no correction popped up.

 

[DooBi]

Who was the Secretary of Defense when that decision was made to move the date out?

And who was Secretary of Defense when everything collapsed without an additional rollout of the date followed by the reintroduction of U.S. troops? He/she should have been court marshalled.

At some point, a grown up should have seen what was about to take place, raised his/her hand and screamed "STOP!" ... and the President should have reversed course completely.

I do remember that the Taliban very quickly resumed murdering girls who could read. Education for girls was a huge part of the "Success in Afghanistan" narrative. (and now a large number of those girls have been murdered by their government. They put their faith in the U.S. government, and it failed them.

... and about those 5000 POW's: were they held together with their officers and NCO's ... their fighting units intact for the duration of their captivity? WTF; they were up and running in no time after their release.

It really appears to me that the Biden administration had ample warning and figured that they could blame President Trump in the event of a negative outcome. They definitely did not regard Afghanistan as their issue or anything to be taken seriously. ... They did not care about the hubris from 9-11. War hubris typically takes 50-100 years to dissipate, and one does not really have the option of short-circuiting it.

Idk. Says in the op that Biden made the decision.

 

[sober_teacher]

" ... there was zero appetite domestically to do anything but pull out."

Presidents are elected to provide long term leadership, and to do what is best for the nation ... not to take the measure of that big, discombobulated thing called Public Opinion and to always act on that.

Public opinion got us into Afghanistan and the game plan was to stay until the job was finished ... not to leave whenever the notion arose. Two different collective public opinions? Which do we follow?

Wars do not fit nicely into the value system of Western-Style democracies. We do not get to unilaterally change our war objectives and come home after overseeing the "lay-to-waste" policies associated with war. We either win or we lose. We do not simply call it off and leave. The Taliban does not consider it as finished business; we shouldn't either.

Presidents can only do what is possible. Tearing up the peace agreement and sending thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars back into Afghanistan - in the midst of a pandemic to boot, wasn’t on that list.