Honour Bound in Afghanistan
I heard National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan answer many of the bedevilling questions around the chaotic U.S. withdrawal of troops and allies from Afghanistan, and the problem of how pulling out thousands of U.S. sympathizers, allies or social progress workers in advance of the mass troop withdrawal would have signalled the country of their abandonment in a pronounced way and demoralized both the government in Kabul and the soldiers left behind, on the ground. This might trigger the fall of the government and the surrender of the rank and file — which happened anyway, at lightning speed.
I guess my problem with all of this is that the Executive should have known this was likely and not so staunchly maintain, as he did publicly, that this could never happen, “300,000 well equipped well trained troops, Taliban small force, ill-equipped” etc. He was so wrong, and he should have known better. The White House was warned by the CIA; their intelligence assessments predicted Afghanistan’s rapid collapse to Taliban forces. But, in the U.S., the fact that the president is also the Commander-in-Chief, to whom and to whose judgment all ranking officers, military experts and command posts must defer, is problematic when the president is a political expert only and is not trained in military thinking and strategizing.
I knew he was wrong, even while he was saying it, and cringed from its arrogance and naiveté. The mass evacuations of allies, translators, cultural advisors and consultants and their families, as well as those made socially vulnerable by following U.S. policies like education for girls, should have been conducted right alongside the evacuations of enlisted personnel to ensure their safety.
The hopelessly sluggish and labyrinthine refugee and immigration bureaucratic red-tape and roadblocks instituted post- 9–11 should have been circumvented under the Emergency Measures Act or by Executive Order. Biden could have pioneered international efforts to protect those vulnerable to Taliban reprisals, or spearheaded Human Rights initiatives on behalf of women and girls under U.N. guidelines and agreements with little or no resistance from at least 70% of the American electorate, most of the military, concerned and involved governments, NATO allies, democratic actors and Human Rights advocates around the world. It wouldn’t have mattered what kind of idiotic ‘deals’ Trump and Pompeo struck with the terroristic regime and its newly-released-from-jail (and thereby publicly exonerated) leaders.
A proactive international approach to preserving the rights and lives of vulnerable Afghans would have put a universal focus upon the Taliban and their performance in the global community, and pressured them to avoid the mass atrocities and wholesale humanitarian crisis (to add to the ones in Yemen, Syria, Palestine and Eastern Turkey) that is now expected to occur.
He could have so easily done any or all of this, and the taking of such a course was so very, urgently justified. He could have saved tens of thousands of lives, defended the sanctity of universal Human Rights, and championed proactive efforts to give safe passage to those desperate to escape the Taliban ‘punishments.’ He could have received the approbation of the just, instead of the opprobrium of international witnesses to this debacle, and the endless, confused, unanswered questions of the thousands of abandoned and confused Afghans, who had been assured of security.
He was warned and provided with safe draw down plans and exigency strategies for months on how to avoid this preventable humanitarian crisis. Refugee advocacy groups, women’s groups, Afghan war vets and veteran agencies, combat advisors, military leaders and Human Rights groups were pleading with him to consider their expertise — their viable plans and practical, strategic frameworks. He never did. He refused to even hear them. He was cautioned and advised by all of the top-ranking military brass. He ignored them. There were NO evacuation plans and no executive orders to bypass the hopeless red tape and endless hoops around refugees and visas. It’s like he got all bloody-minded all of a sudden, with no thought for military, social, educational, cultural allies, Western-style journalists working with the democratic principle of a free press, or vulnerable women and girls.
I hesitate to even consider the shape the world would be in had he not been elected. But I’m bewildered by this apparent neural cutout. He was never in the military — five draft deferments from the Vietnam draft during his university and graduate student years due to asthma. And thank the gods! But it’s as if that alienation disabled his ability to think compassionately about military scenarios. Also, no warrioristic strategic instincts — why was he telegraphing his intentions, dates, times, places etc., with the abrupt withdrawal? Not something you do with a known enemy, as Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a U.S. Air Force veteran, pointed out. She’s bewildered also, despite that she’s a Democrat and Biden is her president of ardent choice. There should have been a whole lot more practical and protective stealth.
Trump’s stunt with inviting the Taliban to Camp David and negotiating this ‘peace agreement’ with them — all for photo-ops and headlines — without the involvement of the Afghan government or even their knowledge, then formulating no draw-down plan at all for the withdrawal is, obviously, a spate of cluster-fucks so far beyond anything Biden could do, in any universe, in terms of disastrous, purely political decisions. There’s no comparison. Yet that inextricable mess is what Biden was given to work with.
I just wish Biden had not been so bloody-minded in his erroneous take on the conditions in the field, on the nature of the theatre of war — that he had felt more honour-bound to consider and to protect those impacted by the actions of his country — even those initiated by his demented predecessor, because — there as well — Trump was the Commander-in-Chief everyone bowed to, at least overtly, and was ‘the country’ for all wartime intents and purposes, and, as such, had incurred these obligations — all these souls.
