excalibur
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2015
- 22,765
- 44,343
- 2,290
It was horrible then, a giant failure by Biden.
Today, a year later, it looks even worse.
Today, Biden is hiding away saying nothing about the 1-year anniversary of his failure.
www.cnn.com
Today, a year later, it looks even worse.
Today, Biden is hiding away saying nothing about the 1-year anniversary of his failure.
...
Why Biden went through with the withdrawal plan that he had inherited from Trump is still something of a puzzle since there was no large, vocal constituency in the Democratic Party that was demanding a total US pullout from Afghanistan, and Biden's top military advisers had clearly warned him of the risks of doing so.
In public testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and US CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, said they had advised the Biden administration that unless the US kept around 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan military would collapse. Collapse it did.
This was a classic case of mirror imaging; the belief that the Taliban would do the rational things some gullible Americans expected them to do, as opposed to implementing the quasi-mediaeval ideology that has been at the core of their armed movement since they first emerged almost three decades ago. It was like imagining the Khmer Rouge would "mature" once they had taken power in Cambodia.
...
When Biden spoke to the American people on Aug. 31, 2021, as the last US soldiers departed Afghanistan, he framed the withdrawal as a way of positioning the US to compete better against great-power rivals, saying, "We're engaged in a serious competition with China. We're dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia...And there's nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan."
This was an absurd rationale: For years both China and Russia had hoped to push American forces out of Afghanistan because the country borders both China and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Russia had covertly supported the Taliban, according to the US military, while the Chinese had drawn closer to the Taliban in recent years.
...
Compounding Biden's disastrous policy decision to completely pull out of Afghanistan was the botched handling of the withdrawal. According to a report about that withdrawal released in February by Republican senators sitting on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the first White House meeting to discuss evacuating Americans and Afghans from Afghanistan took place on Aug. 14, only one day before the Taliban seized Kabul and five months after Biden had first publicly announced the total US withdrawal from the country.
Biden patted himself on the back that the US military subsequently extracted 124,000 Afghans from Afghanistan, calling the operation an "extraordinary success," which was like an arsonist praising himself for helping to try to put out a fire that he had started.
But even accepting the most self-congratulatory view of the Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal, the vast majority of the Afghans who had worked with the US were abandoned. The Association of Wartime Allies, an advocacy group for Afghans who had worked for the US, estimated in March that only about 3% of the 81,000 Afghans who had worked for the US government and had applied for special visas had made it out of Afghanistan, leaving 78,000 behind.
...
Why Biden went through with the withdrawal plan that he had inherited from Trump is still something of a puzzle since there was no large, vocal constituency in the Democratic Party that was demanding a total US pullout from Afghanistan, and Biden's top military advisers had clearly warned him of the risks of doing so.
In public testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and US CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, said they had advised the Biden administration that unless the US kept around 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan military would collapse. Collapse it did.
The "Taliban 2.0" delusion
The publication of Haqqani's op-ed in The New York Times was emblematic of the wishful thinking about the Taliban in the US that had persisted for years. In this view the Taliban were just a bunch of misunderstood backwoodsmen who would eventually do what was only sensible: break with al Qaeda and abandon much of their misogynistic ideology as a quid pro quo for their recognition on the world stage.This was a classic case of mirror imaging; the belief that the Taliban would do the rational things some gullible Americans expected them to do, as opposed to implementing the quasi-mediaeval ideology that has been at the core of their armed movement since they first emerged almost three decades ago. It was like imagining the Khmer Rouge would "mature" once they had taken power in Cambodia.
...
Signaling weakness to Russia and China
When Biden spoke to the American people on Aug. 31, 2021, as the last US soldiers departed Afghanistan, he framed the withdrawal as a way of positioning the US to compete better against great-power rivals, saying, "We're engaged in a serious competition with China. We're dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia...And there's nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan."
This was an absurd rationale: For years both China and Russia had hoped to push American forces out of Afghanistan because the country borders both China and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Russia had covertly supported the Taliban, according to the US military, while the Chinese had drawn closer to the Taliban in recent years.
...
Compounding Biden's disastrous policy decision to completely pull out of Afghanistan was the botched handling of the withdrawal. According to a report about that withdrawal released in February by Republican senators sitting on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the first White House meeting to discuss evacuating Americans and Afghans from Afghanistan took place on Aug. 14, only one day before the Taliban seized Kabul and five months after Biden had first publicly announced the total US withdrawal from the country.
Biden patted himself on the back that the US military subsequently extracted 124,000 Afghans from Afghanistan, calling the operation an "extraordinary success," which was like an arsonist praising himself for helping to try to put out a fire that he had started.
But even accepting the most self-congratulatory view of the Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal, the vast majority of the Afghans who had worked with the US were abandoned. The Association of Wartime Allies, an advocacy group for Afghans who had worked for the US, estimated in March that only about 3% of the 81,000 Afghans who had worked for the US government and had applied for special visas had made it out of Afghanistan, leaving 78,000 behind.
...
Opinion: Biden's Afghanistan exit decision looks even worse a year later | CNN
Peter Bergen writes that the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will long be seen as a defeat rather than a victory. The Biden administration now faces a policy dilemma in working to support Afghans without propping up the Taliban.
www.cnn.com
