Blog No. 299. The Afghanistan Debacle: The Hard Questions

The Afghanistan debacle may or may not prove to be the defining event of Joe Biden’s presidency. Much will depend on how horrific the news and images from that desperate land continue to be over the coming weeks and months. Although the American people may have no longer felt heavily invested in the success of our mission there, and many indeed wished for its end, they may not find it easy to stomach not only a humiliating exit, but the grim events that may unfold in coming weeks and months. Even if all or most Americans succeed in escaping before our military presence evaporates, reports of a brutal Taliban rule are all but certain to follow. Moreover, the continuing threats to our national security will remain. Altogether, we will not have the luxury of forgetting about Afghanistan any time soon.

For Biden politically, much may also depend on other developments: whether the his administration is able to regain control of the pandemic (over the mindless and often venomous opposition of anti-vaxxers and the anti-mask crowd); whether Democrats can succeed in passing Biden’s “transformational” agenda; whether some sort of order can be restored at our southern border; and whether foreign adversaries—such as China, Russia, North Korea or Iran—choose to create new crises. In any case, however, the frantic departure from Kabul is likely be a lasting stain on Biden’s legacy and on our national honor.

Readers will by now have been exposed to a surfeit of news and analyses and more will follow as events continue to develop. We will doubtless struggle to understand how we got to where we are and what may lie ahead. Theoretically, a bipartisan commission, along the lines of the 9/11 Commission might seem to be appropriate, but for a variety of reasons that will not happen. There will, of course be investigations by Congressional committees and books enough to fill several shelves will emerge. At this point, however, there are more questions than there are answers in which many of us can be confident. Under the circumstances, it may be helpful simply to list some of the most important questions and issues that need to be addressed. An attempt to do so follows.

I. Our Mission in Afghanistan

Our mission in Afghanistan came to have three principal elements: defeating the Taliban militarily, establishing and supporting a democratic government (which would, along the way, protect the rights of women and girls), and training and equipping Afghan military and police forces.

1. Was the mission feasible? Some believe that our mission in Afghanistan was doomed from the start. It is generally not clear how those of that view (apparently including President Biden)think we should have responded to 9/11.

a. Should we have responded only by bombing the al Qaeda facility? Is there any reason to believe that would have had a significant and lasting effect?

b. Or should we have sent in a military force, but then withdrawn it after the initial rout of the Taliban? Or kept one or more isolated bases? Would either course have prevented the Taliban from returning and seizing power and again becoming a haven for al Qaeda?

c. On the other hand, was it reasonable to believe that the best defense against Afghanistan as base for al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists would be to help Afghanistan become a stable and productive democracy? Or was that an ill-conceived attempt at much decried “nation building”?

2. Why did the mission fail?

Although our mission in Afghanistan kept us safe from any attack for that quarter for 20 years, it has now failed. Could it have succeeded?

a. Did we err in installing Hamid Karzai as Afghan President too quickly and with inadequate controls.

b. Corruption has long been reported to be endemic within the Afghan government. Were we not, as Afghanistan’s principal lifeline, in a position to insist on effective anti-corruption measures?

c. Did our own military fail in supervising of the Afghanistan military and police forces that we not only financed but trained? Corruption here, as in the wider government, appears to have been a major problem.  Were we ignorant of the extent of that and other problems, such as low morale, or choose to turn a blind eye to them? (See the Report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.) and Craig Whitlock in the Washington Post, “At War With The Truth.”

d. To what extent was the resurgence of the Taliban enabled by crucial support from our ostensible ally, Pakistan? Did we have no means of curtailing that support?

e. To what extent were our own military efforts undermined by lack of a consistent strategy (and reliance on imposing multiple tours of duty on many of our service personnel). Was it true that, as Lt. General Douglas Lute put it, ““We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Was that true?

II. The Chaotic Withdrawal

1. Was Biden compelled to honor Trump’s withdrawal agreement?

The agreement with the Taliban negotiated under the Trump administration was an exceptionally bad deal under which we gained relatively little for our promised withdrawal. See Blog No. 250. “Afghanistan: Not a Deal But a Fig Leaf.”

On July 8, President Biden defended the withdrawal by referring to the Trump agreement:

It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something. 

Many could argue that the Taliban had failed to meet even its flabby commitments under the agreement by failing to cut its ties to al Qaeda and by failing to negotiate with the Afghan government. But what had been Trump’s fig leaf for withdrawal now became Biden’s.

2. Was the withdrawal a military necessity?

President Biden has insisted that, given the gains of the Taliban, it was necessary either to withdraw or to substantially increase the existing force (which had been reduced to approximately 2,500, in addition to forces of approximately 7,500 from other NATO countries ).Yet media reports indicated the Pentagon’s senior leaders, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs’ Chairman, Mark Milley, opposed the withdrawal and had recommended retaining a relatively small force on the ground. If that is correct, were their judgments wrong?

3. What caused the sudden collapse of Afghan security forces?  Was it foreseeable?

a. President Biden has attributed the collapse of the Afghanistan security forces to a lack of will. As suggested above, low morale was apparently longstanding problem. But what brought it to a climax?

— Did the lack of will result from the agreement for U.S. withdrawal agreed to by President Trump in 2020 and confirmed by President Biden in April 2021? Did the Afghan military recognize that our withdrawal would mean the loss of not only the vitally important U.S. air support, but also contractor support, crippling  Afghanistan’s own Air Force?

–How was the impact of those losses assessed at the Pentagon and the White House?  Did any of our training of the Afghan military prepare them for functioning without air support?

b. Did the collapse of Afghan forces in provincial capitals, result from the Taliban’s well-organized campaign of bribery of Afghan leaders in each capitol, carried out over many months. (See the Washington Post, “Afghanistan’s military collapse: illicit deals and mass desertions.”) Were senior U.S. intelligence and military officials unaware of that campaign? If they were aware of it why did they apparently take no action to combat it?

c. Could better planning and less hurried execution have avoided the loss to the Taliban of tens of billions of dollars of military equipment? (The Taliban never had an air force, but will they have one now?)

3. Should the evacuation have begun much sooner and been better planned? Many, including RINOcracy.com (Blog No. 293, “Afghanistan: Have We No Shame?”) were demanding an evacuation long before it gained Biden’s approval.

a. President Biden has indicated that he deferred steps to begin an evacuation in deference to the Afghan government’s urging that evacuations would undermine confidence in the Afghan government. Accepting that as a legitimate concern, should it have been dispositive and should it have prevailed as long as it did?

b. In any case, could there not have at least been better planning on where Afghan evacuees would be taken? (It is still unclear how many relocation sites there are and the capacity of each to house and process evacuees.)

c. Could the notoriously slow processing of Afghan Special Immigration Visas (SIVs) not be expedited?

 d. Was the evacuation delayed in part because, as the Washington Post reported, the White House feared that relocating Afghans to the United States would be conflated by right-wing critics with the immigration crisis at our southern border? (The Washington Post reported that Trump’s personal immigration guru, the bitterly nativist Steven Miller, put roadblocks in the SIV process in order to discourage Afghan relocation to the United States).

e. What plans were made to how both Americans and our Afghan allies could get to the airport?  What plans were there for how and by whom eligibility for admission into the airport would be determined?  What plans were drawn for evacuations from cities other than Kabul? Do we know how many potentially eligible evacuees are locate outside Kabul?

4. To what extent was the decision to withdrawal made in consultation with our NATO allies and with their agreement? Consultation appears to have been minimal, and although President Biden has indicated that they agreed with his decision, there are numerous media reports to the contrary.

III. The Consequences of Withdrawal

President Biden has minimized the national security risk of an Afghanistan under Taliban rule and asserted that the withdrawal will permit the more effective deployment of resources elsewhere. Yet the potential for negative consequences is significant.

1. How great will the risk of attack be from Islamic extremists, al Qaeda, ISIS or others, based in Afghanistan?

President Biden asserted on Friday that al Qaeda was “gone” from Afghanistan, but later that day the Pentagon confirmed the continuing presence of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Biden has offered assurances that we can deal with any terrorist organizations operating out of Afghanistan through “over-the-horizon capability.” Are those assurances realistic, given the lack of local intelligence we will have, Afghanistan’s challenging landscape, and the distances involved? We do not know what those capabilities will consist of and where they will be deployed.

2. What impact will the withdrawal, and the manner of its execution, have on America’s allies and adversaries?

a. In the case of our allies, Biden insisted that Afghanistan presented a fundamentally different situation from that of Taiwan, South Korea and NATO. While that is clearly so, there are nevertheless indications of concern among those allies as to America’s resolve, reliability and competence. Attitudes in European countries will become sharply more negative if they are inundated by a flood of Afghan refugees. Whether and to what extent this tragic episode diminishes our leadership role remains to be seen.

b. Our principal adversaries, China and Russia, have shown undisguised pleasure at America’s humiliation in Afghanistan and the postures of both countries in Central Asia have been strengthened. An even more crucial question may be whether either or both are encouraged to take aggressive actions elsewhere.

The questions posed above are far from exhaustive and the related comments are by no means definitive. Perhaps, however, they may serve as a rough and partial road map for following the coming inquiries and debates.