The more we learn about the administration’s withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic.
The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic.
A s the Biden administration’s chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in August 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American servicemembers, and at least 170 Afghans, at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was one of the deadliest attacks on our troops in our 20 years in that nation.
“Know this,” Biden said after the bombing. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” This turned out to be face-saving political theater. Three days later, an air strike killed ten Afghans, seven of them children. Not one of the dead, as far as we know, was an “ISIS facilitator,” as the administration had alleged.
In fact, the Pentagon now says that the bombing was the work of a lone terrorist rather than a “complex” network, as the Biden administration had initially maintained. At the time, General Mark Milley not only referred to the strike as “valid” and “righteous” — let’s concede for a moment that he was basing this on the best available information — but went further to describe a “secondary explosion” and a supposed plethora of evidence justifying the bombing. None of that, it seems, was true. It seems increasingly likely that Biden was going to blow someone up to project his toughness.
The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic. Here, for example, is a snippet from ProPublica’s recent investigation into the Kabul suicide bombing:
Days before the final withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, thousands of desperate Americans and Afghan allies seeking to flee the country were using unguarded routes across open fields and through narrow alleys to reach one of the few gates providing access to the Kabul airfield.
Despite intelligence warning of terrorist attacks, U.S. military commanders encouraged use of the routes. Some U.S. officials even provided maps to evacuees trying to bypass Taliban fighters stationed at a checkpoint outside the airport.
The fact that the murderer of 13 Americans “likely” gained access to troops via a path that U.S. officials were encouraging people to use seems quite noteworthy. As does the fact that we were helping evacuees circumvent the Taliban even as the Biden administration was assuring the public that the Islamic militants were facilitating the extraction of Americans.
These are the same Taliban with whom the Biden administration had reportedly shared a list of “American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies.” When defending his reliance on the militants, the president claimed that, “to the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints — they are letting through people showing American passports.” In September, the administration declared that the Taliban had “shown flexibility” and were comporting themselves in a “businesslike and professional” manner.
You will recall, as well, White House press secretary Jen Psaki risibly contending that no Americans had been “stranded” in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would later say that there were “under 200” Americans remaining in Afghanistan who “want to leave.” A new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report from ranking member Jim Risch (R., Idaho), contends that State Department officials estimated that on August 17 there were 10,000–15,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan. Over the subsequent two weeks, as the Afghan forces the United States had trained and funded for 20 years disintegrated, 6,000 Americans were able to escape. I’m not a math whiz, but that leaves a lot more than zero, or even 200, stranded. How many of those American citizens, green-card holders, or Afghan allies had their names handed to the Taliban? Were the interpreters on that list being hunted down or beheaded by Islamists?
The Pentagon investigation into the bombing — relying on hundreds of witness interviews, drone footage, and reports by medical examiners — also concluded that the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate was “not preventable,” words that recurred in headlines atop reports by the Associated Press and other outlets.
In truth, the attack became unpreventable only after the Biden administration evacuated secure positions without having extracted those who wanted to leave. When George Stephanopoulos asked Biden whether he was warned that adhering to the Taliban’s timeline would put lives in danger, Biden answered: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”
This was surely a lie. As the New York Times reported, American intelligence had warned Biden that Afghan security forces would not resist the Taliban for long, and that the American-allied government would not hold Kabul. Anonymous Defense Department officials told the Wall Street Journal that neither Secretary Lloyd Austin nor General Milley had much confidence in “over-the-horizon” counterterror strategy and that both had warned Biden to keep 2,500 troops to cover the withdrawal.
A recently declassified report by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, which was submitted to the Department of Defense in January 2021, also warned the administration that the Afghan air force would quickly collapse. Yet, when asked in July 2021 if a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable, the president scoffed at the notion, arguing that “Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.” What with the U.S. military equipment now in the Taliban’s possession, I guess that makes the Taliban as well-equipped as any army in the world.
A yet fuller picture emerges from another Army investigation, released to the Washington Post this week through a Freedom of Information Act:
Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” He did not identify any administration officials by name, but said inattention to the Taliban’s determination to complete a swift and total military takeover undermined commanders’ ability to ready their forces.
So, apparently, the only branch of the armed services that didn’t warn the administration was the Coast Guard. Yet none of this advice stopped the president from abandoning the Bagram air base. Nor did it prompt him to set up military safe zones to retrieve stranded Americans or Afghan allies before retreating. His failure to do so caused a bottleneck at the Kabul airport that put troops and civilians in needless danger. Biden maintained that chaos was inevitable even as he promised a “safe and orderly” withdrawal when making his announcement.
Biden was wedded to the Taliban’s timeline. Given that he’s shown reliably disastrous foreign-policy instincts over 50 years in public life, this isn’t exactly surprising. It’s also increasingly clear that the administration ignored warnings because it believed leaving Afghanistan, which was quite popular in polls, would be a political slam dunk early in his term.
That was Biden’s prerogative. The president has no obligation to follow the advice of his generals. Undoubtedly, many of them would have advocated a U.S. presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity. As a policy matter, Biden’s botching of the evacuation is a separate issue from whether the United States should have withdrawn. However, once Biden decided to embrace what the Trump administration had begun, the responsibility to protect American lives was his. There are numerous questions yet to be answered on why he failed to do so.