Biden’s Afghanistan retreat
I think for the most part we already knew much of what’s reported here, at least those who were paying attention:
A 2,000-page Army investigation found that senior military officials were frustrated by the inability of the White House and State Department to recognize the imminent security threat that led to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The investigation, first obtained by the Washington Post Tuesday through a Freedom of Information Act request, was launched in response to the deadly events of Aug. 26, when 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians were killed by a suicide bomb attack…
he top U.S commander on the ground during the evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, told Army investigators that service members would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.”…
The State Department, DOD and National Security Council (NSC) began planning for a potential mass evacuation that summer but did not predict Kabul would fall as fast as it did. The U.S. military had complained privately for months that the State Department and U.S. Embassy were not moving fast enough to approve Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and begin evacuating Afghan allies.
What was happening on the ground was obvious. The need to keep Bagram open was also obvious. But the administration insisted that military personnel be reduced to a number that necessitated closing it prematurely.
The State Department comes out especially badly in this report, but they say the military is just passing the buck to them. Who knows? I think there’s more than enough blame to go around, but I place it primarily on State and the Biden administration. However, long before this report, I felt the military had better plans that were overruled by Biden and company.
The Afghanistan withdrawal was a turning point for the Biden administration in terms of public perception. This report won’t help, but I imagine most people aren’t paying too much attention at this point. It’s over. But I think the damage has been done – to the administration, to Afghanistan, and to the United States.
The State Department comes out especially badly in this report, but they say the military is just passing the buck to them.
After Milley admitted insubordination to the previous Commander and Chief, I really can’t excuse the military leadership for going along with a plan that resulted in predictable catastrophic results. Milley will tip off Xi, but he won’t tip off the American people. We know where his loyalty lies.
I imagine most people aren’t paying too much attention at this point.
I think a lot of people are paying attention, but the only way their voice gets heard is in polls. It will take time to write the books on what happened, but those books will mark the legacy of Biden’s retreat. And those books won’t just be from the American point of view. The damage to relationship with strategic allies is obvious as the “Ukranian Crisis” plays out. US leadership in diplomacy is dead, and Biden killed it.
“The Afghanistan withdrawal was a turning point for the Biden administration in terms of public perception.”
As the old saying goes “Experience is a dear school but the fool will learn in no other.” Of course, there are plenty of fools who will no even learn from experience.
From the upcoming chapbook. Thank you for your indulgence.
THE DAY THE PRESS STOOD UP
One fine summer day in the capital
Jeff Bezos instructed his reporters
at the Washington Post (Democracy
Dies in Darkness™) to lob some sharp questions
for once at the Commander in Chief as
that babbling kleptocrat deliquesced in
the hot mess he’d made of Afghanistan,
so the pack of plucky stenographers
stood right up on their hind legs and barked through
their baby-blue three-ply surgical masks,
but to no avail, since the President
turned his back and left them holding the bag
of spew brewed up by his true-blue mouthpiece,
and the Fourth Estate’s investigations
quickly settled back down into features
about riojas and bluetooth speakers,
though all was not lost, for the cameras
built into civilian smartphones made by
Chinese slave labor had captured photos
of the goings-on at the airport in
faraway Kabul, photos of Afghan
mothers passing or hurling their babies
over barbed wire to waiting British troops,
and those photos, repeatedly tweeted,
scooped the Post but nevertheless gladdened
its reporters, who recognized those coils
as the same concertina wire lately
rolled out in the streets of their capital
and saw that the wire had been recycled and
all was well in the heart of God’s green world.
MollyG,
“deliquesced”
I learned a new word! I can’t wait to work it into a conversation.
I’m willing to believe State really screwed this up, based on my limited experiences with State as an expat. Pompeo’s tenure wasn’t nearly long enough to fix it. But I also agree with Leland. Top military leadership has not paid attention to the job at hand and is way too busy with “woke” initiatives.
Rufus T. (4:45 pm), might I suspect that before very long, it shall have deliquesced into your already-ample vocabulary memory bank?
Reporter Jack Posobiec strongly asserts that Biden had a speech to deliver, wanted to announce we were out of A’stan and required all govt bodies to deliver that date.
CaliforniaRebelBase.com interview.
Episode 68
The following NY Post article on the Bowe Bergdahl swap is worth reading. Much of it may be familiar, but the article focuses on the roles of Biden and Blinken and provides some context I had not seen before:
https://nypost.com/2022/02/07/how-obama-and-biden-laid-groundwork-for-afghanistan-disaster/
Tony Blinken + Justin Trudeau = 1/4 of a man.
“The State Department, DOD and National Security Council (NSC) began planning for a potential mass evacuation that summer but did not predict Kabul would fall as fast as it did.”
Trump made the deal to get out of Afghanistan in February 2020. The out day was May 2021 and Biden didn’t push that back until, I believe, several months after he was “elected.”
So…what “summer” is being referenced in the above quote? Summer 2020 or Summer 2021? I’m not trying to make excuses for or deny the obvious incompetence of Biden and company but if the military knew in February 2020 that we were getting out in May 2021 and that deadline wasn’t pushed back until the start of 2021…what the heck were they doing all that time?
Again, I’m sure Biden’s incompetence made everything worse, but it continues to look like to me like the fundamental problem was our military/foreign policy establishment simply refused to plan for a withdrawal from Afghanistan. They thought they were going to get Biden to change his mind and when they finally realized he wouldn’t, they panicked and slapped together the most half-assed plan possible.
Mike
MollyG:
Nice.
Colonel Schiller’s You Tube video explains the confusion in the command chain at the time of the evacuation.
Worth watching and hard to find.
How many military brass resigned before the pull out in objection to the Administration’s “plan”? Same number as resigned after (Zero if memory serves).
A Hot Mess! The Military has a word for this, that I can’t say here, but contains “Cluster”.
Too beat a Dead Horse, but can you imagine that if this had happened under Trump even Rep would have stood up to Impeach him, as they should.
The 2,000-page Army investigation report is a coverup of the military’s deriliction of duty.
The upper echelons knew full well and in detail what was happening on the ground. They knew full well of the absolute necessity of keeping Bagram open.
It’s true that the administration overruled them but their obligation to follow orders is simply an excuse for they had an absolute and far superior moral obligation to threaten to resign en mass if the administration did not retreat and follow their military expertise.
The current US Military’s upper echelon’s responsibility is even greater than the administration’s because they could have stopped it by making the administration’s order politically untenable.
@ShireHome:
Wait until the Jolly Green Break Stuff Machine Does Mongolia 🙂
SHIREHOME,
I don’t recall, how many Congressional Republicans called for Biden’s impeachment, if he didn’t immediately resign?
In spite of the certainty that the dems would block it, every republican should have done so, to put on the record that Biden had committed an impeachable offense. And that in blocking Biden’s impeachment, the dems had engaged in obstruction of justice.
Air power was the secret sauce that allowed the U.S. and our Afghan allies to keep the Taliban at bay for 20 years. When the contractors who were maintaining the Afghan forces airplanes and Bagram was abandoned, the Afghan forces knew they couldn’t stand up to the Taliban. So, they folded like a cheap suit. Our military must have advised Biden of this, but he didn’t understand or didn’t care. Sending in air power at that point was a logistic nightmare. As was the eventual evacuation.
Had we held onto Bagram, air assets could have been deployed to slow or stop the Taliban advance, while the evacuation proceeded in an orderly fashion. It would also have allowed them to destroy the military equipment they decided to leave behind. The brass claim it was cheaper to leave it there than re-deploy it. Now it’s an asset to the Taliban and all our adversaries who are able to purchase what is there. Another huge mistake.
Water under the bridge now, but a military operation that will be studied and taught in the War Colleges as how not to do things. The military is under the C-in-C, but some flag officers need to have the backbone to stand in the breach when the C-in-C is screwing up. Unfortunately, Obama got rid of them and Trump wasn’t able to shake things up.
It’s only really over, like JFK’s assassination (??), when people stop talking about it. The Stupid Party, for one, might well refuse to bring it up – but bloggers and honest media should.
(Mainstream media versus honest media).
All the generals who failed to convince the politicians to avoid losing, should be fired. Any of them could have been honorable and both resigned AND gone to the press with the stupid orders and an analysis of what the stupid order results would be. Generals without such honor aren’t worth having as generals – which is why the US lost.
Again.
The military is under the C-in-C, but some flag officers need to have the backbone to stand in the breach when the C-in-C is screwing up.
These things get forgotten but there was a US General who stood up to Obama when the military was ordered to leave the CIA agents in Benghazi to their fate.
AFRICOM commander, Carter Ham, decided to ignore the Obama admin decision to leave Benghazi alone for political reasons. He was instantly relieved of command and retired. To preserve his pension, no doubt , he has been quiet about what happened. Except this
The Obama regime initially had attempted to portray the attack, which killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, as a “spontaneous demonstration” against an obscure internet video created by a man with reported multiple aliases and a criminal record.
On Thursday, Rep. Frank Wolf stated on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that survivors of the attack, who have not been made available to congressional investigators or members of the press, were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements about what they witnessed that night.
Other witnesses such as U.S. charge d’affaires Gregory Hicks and Lt. Col. Steve Gibson have provided conflicting statements on whether or not a “stand-down” order was issued through the U.S. military’s chain of command, which begins with the White House, to stop contingency plans from being carried out in the aftermath of the attack.
Mike K:
Thanks for bringing up Benghazi. That was when I realized in full that numerous Fixes Were In and almost no one with power would protect America.
Were In and almost no one with power would protect America.
It certainly brought the generals to heel.
All those responsible for the withdrawal– pentagon to the white house to judicial to K street– all of them need to be air dropped into a Taliban goat herd during mating season.
“All those responsible for the withdrawal– pentagon to the white house to judicial to K street– all of them need to be air dropped into a Taliban goat herd during mating season.”
Wrong timing.
Best air drop them when the Afghans are being cold shouldered and frustrated by their goats.
All for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Max Blumenthal–journalist (www.thegrayzone.com), reasonably honest man of the Left, and son of Sidney Blumenthal (Max surely knows where all the Democratic Party bodies are buried)–was interviewed recently by Trish Wood for her excellent Trish Wood Is Critical podcast.
During the interview, Max B. said matter-of-factly that Obama is the person pulling Puppet Biden’s strings, and that the “Biden” administration is in fact Obama’s third term.
He also said that the Obama faction of the party, which overlaps with the Hillary Clinton faction, is made up of people who “hate America,” meaning the broad majority of Americans who are not elite and/or woke.
I believe we all knew these things, but it’s interesting to hear them from someone whose Leftist credentials were impeccable until he told the truth and offered it for general consumption.
It’s also true that the mess in Afghanistan is basically what would be expected from Obama and his minions (“basically” because of the added dollop of Biden’s trademark incompetence).
“Water under the bridge now, but a military operation that will be studied and taught in the War Colleges as how not to do things.” J.J.
As long as the upper echelons of the military are supporters of the left, as long as american voters vote for enough congressional democrats… that will not happen.
The disastrous, treacherous, treasonous Afghan pull out will be memory holed.
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” George Orwell, 1984
Not sure this is relevant. Ike said plans are irrelevant but planning is critical.
Far as I can figure this out, “planning” means getting a handle on pretty much everything–men, transport, air power, intel, and so forth. It’s put into a “plan”. But if the plan is rejected by the command, you still have the pieces.
The planning is done by a planning staff which are not people out there on the ground trying to put together a plan after dinner. It’s their job and they have the resources.
I”ve heard from several sources that, during WW II, we had staff planning for the invasion of Spain should Franco have thrown in with Hitler or the Germans invade and set up in Spain. Always changing it depending on what is available which varies by what’s come from the US, what’s been too beat u to be switched, so forth.
So I’m guessing somebody, some place, had a Plan. We have guys to do that, down to the last bullet. But some level of command didn’t want to do it, had orders not to do it.
Two possibilities occur to me. One is that it might require additional resources and that would be a bad look or something. Both Les Absent, who was SecDef at the time, and Colin Powell used that reason not to send more armor to Mogadishu. But we got a nice movie out of it. We don’t want to look as if we’re going in when we’re really getting out.
The other is more Bidenesque: “You’re not the boss of me.”
Secondly, even if State is not on the other side, they’re generally incompetent beyond a rational person’s ability to anticipate. So to the extent they had anything to do with this, it could be expected to be a catastrophe.
Pivoting to Benghazi, you keep hearing “There was no stand down order.” Okay. What I want to know is where was the stand up order and if there was none, why the hell not?
MollyG: Trish Wood podcast is excellent – including the Max Blumenthal interview. Slightly different perspective. Thanks.
@ MollyG > “THE DAY THE PRESS STOOD UP”
The picture evoked by “deliquesced” is spot on.
The final stanza was brilliant.
I was about to say “final sentence,” but, on re-reading, realized there was only one, which was perfect in its grammar; although, as a comma fan, I would probably have used a couple more.
Bravo.
“The brass claim it was cheaper to leave it there than re-deploy it.”(!)
…said the administration that is hell-bent on bankrupting the country…(pledging to go through hell and high water to ensure the country’s destruction—sorry, “transformation”).
Heckuva pathetic excuse, though, but entirely characteristic of the truth-challenged moral perverts who are in charge…and an apt metaphor for the even greater disasters to come, if those peerless perps get their way.
Though they, inexplicably, missed an opportunity to blame Trump (again)…unless I missed something or didn’t read the fine print.
So to me the primary question is whether the Republicans will have the cojones to impeach Biden over Afghanistan when they take the House in November. Since impeachment is now a normal partisan action, why not?
Can we please stop with all the impeachments. It’s a huge waste of money that accomplishes nothing. Throwing money away is already our government’s favorite pastime. Let’s not encourage it. There are no do overs when it comes to Presidents. #1 priority should be tamper proof elections.
One more reason why the NY Post has supplanted both the NYT and WaPo as the paper of record…
(Well, after the Bee, of course)…:
“Why everyone should ‘doubt the information’ from Joe Biden’s government”—
https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/why-everyone-should-doubt-the-information-from-joe-bidens-government/
And right on cue (as she is most every day), here’s True Jen Psaki with another masterful piece of performance art—to confirm the headline above…:
“They Did It Again, White House Jen Psaki Proactively Frames Media for Tomorrow Inflation Data”—
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/09/they-did-it-again-white-house-jen-psaki-proactively-frames-media-for-tomorrow-inflation-data/#more-227245
Whoa…and whaddayaknow (re-posted)!!
‘COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Have Now Magically Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/natural-immunity-and-other-conspiracy-theories-have-magically-become-fact-checked
+ special Psaki Bonus
What we need is a name change! (Yep, “rebranding” will do the trick!!…since Manchin and Sinema are SUCKERS for new names!):
“Broken Build Back Better needs a fix and new name, Psaki says…in bid to kickstart stalled agenda”—
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10495655/Broken-Build-Better-needs-fix-new-Psaki-says.html
I believe we all knew these things, but it’s interesting to hear them from someone whose Leftist credentials were impeccable until he told the truth and offered it for general consumption.
Not buying.
Precisely so. Max Blumenthal—“Hillary’s ‘mensch'”—is a proven partisan creep.
And yet, and yet…maybe he’s grown up a bit? Been reborn (as it were)? It CAN happen…
(Truth is I haven’t kept up with him.)
That is, maybe he’s not one to jettison his skepticism—and intelligence, or whatever—depending on which party’s in power (such as the insufferable Paul Krugman) ?
Or maybe he’s just a stopped clock….
After all, look at what’s happened to Glenn Greenwald—though I recognize that there’s a huge difference between them…since GG was always a fiercely contrarian journalist, no matter what one thought of his views or his logic, and Blumenthal was for so long an immature, toxic, obnoxious hack…
…but, once again, maybe he’s grown up…and has fundamentally TRANSFORMED!
(Still, it has got to make one wonder.)
In any event, thanks Molly G. for the most interesting link (though I think “reasonably honest man of the Left” may be pushing it just a bit…Would be nice if I’m wrong!).
Barry Meislin: Max Blumenthal is Sidney Blumenthal’s son. He’s as much a leftist as his dad and wrote a very nasty book about Republicans (from what I can gather from the Amazon reviews). His ties to the left give him insights into the workings of the Biden administration.
Indeed…
But I am mistaken, after all:
Actually, Hillary didn’t call Max B. “a mensch” but “a Mitzvah” (i.e., one of God’s commandments)—saying with his esteemed, dirtball father (and Clinton enforcer): “Your Max is a Mitzvah”; which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but sort of—possibly—was intended to convey something like “mensch”. (Sort of.)
https://tinyurl.com/4kfkrj6p (see page 20)
And so I should have written that Max is ‘…Hillary’s “mitzvah”(sic)…’
…if, perhaps, ‘A “mitzvah” too far’….
“Max Blumenthal Slams Elie Wiesel Hours After Death — Draws Rebuke From Hillary Clinton”—
https://forward.com/news/344431/max-blumenthal-slams-elie-wiesel-hours-after-death-draws-rebuke-from-hillar/ )
But maybe, just maybe…he has grown up a bit.
(OTOH, maybe not.)
Oops!
“…saying with…” should be:
“…saying to…”
Hillary meant that Max was Sidney’s “good deed” and that’s a beautiful sentiment. Unfortunately, Max shares his dad’s political views. Fortunately, he is unwise enough to share them publicly.
You mean (SHE means?) in a kind of “Go forth and multiply” kind of way? Interesting idea.
Or because Max just happens to be such a gem, such a sweetie, such a miracle?
(Wonder if she feels the same way about DJT and DJTJR…or even Barron? On the other hand, What difference does it make?….)
News Flash!
“Biden Addresses Soaring Inflation, Blames Pandemic, Lies About Wages”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-addresses-soaring-inflation-blames-pandemic-lies-about-wages
“…The problem is—that it’s a lie…”
Once again, “Biden” does not fail (to disappoint):Key graf:
“During the interview, Max B. said matter-of-factly that Obama is the person pulling Puppet Biden’s strings, and that the “Biden” administration is in fact Obama’s third term.
He also said that the Obama faction of the party, which overlaps with the Hillary Clinton faction, is made up of people who “hate America,” meaning the broad majority of Americans who are not elite and/or woke.”
per MollyG at 8:42 – The Afghanistan Skeddle was no monumental screw-up as seen by so many Americans. It all came off according to plan, it just depends whose side you’re on.
thats not surprising at all, look at all the horsemen, that have put in place,
sids spawn, has been right about Russia, and not much else, his father a Soviet bootlicker from as far back as the 70s, see government by gunplay,