August 16, 2021– I will need to rework this piece later but it’s necessary to get something up right away. Some colleagues, including some who should know better, are trumpeting the failure of President Joseph Biden amid the ruins of the American war in Afghanistan. For some of them this is about nailing Biden for anything they can get him on, for others it is about guilt that America did not long ago start to do better for its local helpers and indigenous allies. The fall of Kabul, complete with helicopter scenes identical to the last days of Saigon in 1975, should be an object lesson for us all–but not in the way that these pundits try to put it.
Longtime readers of this space will know that now many years ago I posted on the reasons America had lost its Afghan war. And you didn’t need to read me to learn that–American presidents since Barack Obama have already conceded as much. This defeat didn’t happen on Joe Biden’s watch. Indeed, Donald J. Trump promised the very withdrawal Biden has been carrying out. The generals dissuaded Trump, and they tried to back Biden down also. The Taliban watched it all, while the military balance shifted such that they were gaining ground even with American forces still in-country. That’s when the war was finally lost, and it was during the Trump presidency.
Trump’s fierce disdain for immigration was also where the kibosh was put on the evacuation of the Afghans who had helped American soldiers in the war. The obstacles, red tape, deliberate slow walking of paperwork, and all the rest started then, not now. Joe Biden had nothing to do with it. In fact he was not even in government then.
Trump did something else too–agree a diplomatic arrangement that enthralled the Taliban while cutting out the U.S. Afghan allies. That had the purpose of assisting the U.S. withdrawal that Trump intended but never completed. The boost the Taliban got from that helped them in the final round of fighting. The demoralization of the Ghani government did nothing to enthuse the defense of the state that has just collapsed.
The time is past to take a much harder look at America’s military and intelligence services. They have been the ones saying, for years now, that we were winning the war, that stabilization had come and the Afghan military and security forces were up to the job, that the defense could hold, even, most recently, that Kabul had months or more than a year still ahead of it. The swan songs were garbage. The only question is whether the generals and spooks knew they were weaving a tapestry, and how soon. We have a overpriced, overbearing, overswearing, underperforming and misunderstanding national security apparatus that is willing to lie to get its way. That has to change, the sooner the better.