February 29, 2020, US and Taliban sign an agreement that sets the terms for a US withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.
April 14, 2021, President Biden announced plans to pull all US Military forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.
July 8, Biden says military withdrawal from Afghanistan will conclude August 31st.
Point: None of what is currently taking place in Afghanistan was a surprise to the Biden Administration. Here is some of the dialogue that has taken place over the past six weeks:
Biden: “That is not true” he said when asked about the claim that US intelligence has concluded that the Afghan government would likely collapse.
Biden: “It was not inevitable that the Taliban will take over Afghanistan.”
When Biden was asked whether there was any comparison between his withdrawal from Afghanistan and the humiliating retreat from Vietnam, his response was: “None whatsoever. Zero.” Note: That is perhaps the most accurate statement he has made. This withdrawal is Vietnam plus Iran 1979 plus Benghazi to the tenth power.
Biden: “The pace with which the Taliban have gained ground in recent weeks has only solidified the merits of my decisions.” Would that be the “merits” of withdrawing the military before the civilians? At a later date, “I don’t think it (the withdrawal) was a failure.” Then why do we have tens of thousands of American citizens unaccounted for?
Biden and General Milley, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Afghan National Army. Biden 14 July: “I trust the capacity of the 300,000-man Afghan military.” Milley 21 July: “Afghan forces have the capacity to fight and defend their country.”
Biden: “We are assured that the Taliban will be cooperating in the effort to get American citizens out of the country over the next few weeks.” Biden: “There were no reports of people being stopped from reaching the airport by the Taliban.” Pentagon reveals Taliban beating Americans enroute to airport. Note: are we to believe that our president thinks the Taliban are trustworthy?
General Milley: “I have previously said in sworn testimony before Congress that the intelligence clearly indicated multiple scenarios were possible. One of those was an outright Taliban takeover following a rapid collapse of the Afghan security forces and the government.” Note: This would lead one to believe the Defense Department had built a plan for that contingency. However, at General Milley’s press conference after the Taliban complete takeover: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.” Oh yes there was, in July, 23 State Department staff at the Kabul embassy informed Secretary of State Blinken of exactly that…. Kabul will fall quickly to the Taliban.
Biden, 16 August address to the nation: “We are moving quickly to execute the plans we had put in place to respond to every contingency including the rapid collapse we’re seeing now.” Note: Plans in place for every contingency? I don’t think so; what about the evacuation of tens of thousands of Americans now under the complete control of Taliban fighters?
Biden, 16 August address to the nation: “Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.” Question: The safety of tens of thousands of American citizens controlled by the Taliban is not a vital national interest right now?
Biden and Sec Def Austin: Biden 16 August, “Over the coming days, we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan.” Sec Def Austin 18 August (When asked whether the U.S. has the capability to do that) “We do not have the capability to go out and gather large amounts of people.” What the Sec Def or Chairman should have said is, we have the greatest capability in the world to ensure safe passage for all Americans in Afghanistan to a departure airfield. We are awaiting approval from the president to execute. And both should have been prepared to resign over the issue.
Biden 16 August: “As we carry out this departure, we have made it clear to the Taliban: If they attack our personnel or disrupt our operation, the US presence will be swift and the response will be swift and forceful.” We will defend our people with devastating force if necessary.”
Sec Def Austin 18 August: “The US has roughly 4,500 troops on the ground at Hamid Karzai International Airport. But those forces will not be sent beyond the airfield perimeter to quell the chaos or help people pass Taliban checkpoints.” Question, which one is telling us the truth?
How many times have we heard the president tell us, “We are in discussions with the Taliban”? Is Biden so naïve that he actually believes the Taliban command and control is sufficient for their leaders to be communicating rules of engagement to the mostly-illiterate thugs who are manning the checkpoints throughout the country?
Biden apparently did not talk with key NATO allies before the Taliban took complete control of Afghanistan. While the president told us,” I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world,” the world was sounding off loud and clear. For example, German soon-to-be Chancellor Armin Laschet said, “This is the greatest debacle that NATO has seen since its foundation, and it is an epochal change that we are facing.” Also the U.K. has roundly condemned Joe Biden’s poor and unilateral decision-making, even going so far as both parties in British Parliament holding Biden “in contempt.”
The president’s mis-statement about our allies and NATO begs the questions. a) Is he just making this up as he goes along? Or b) is he deliberately lying to us believing we are too dumb to understand the truth? Or c) Biden simply doesn’t pay enough attention to the world around him to see it? Or d) His handlers are sabotaging him with false information on his teleprompter? Whichever answer is correct it is disappointing, alarming and the American people deserve better. What is equally alarming is some of the US media keeps pretending the emperor is not naked.
How many Americans must be evacuated from Afghanistan? State and Defense Department spokespersons, Price and Kirby: “I don’t know.” One might then ask, what size force do we need to safely evacuate I-don’t-know-thousand people?
How incredible is this? Is this 1821 or 2021? From personal experience with the State Department, this I-don’t-know response does not surprise me. But I do know the Defense Department does know how to plan for crisis-related evacuations, or at least did. It was 1978, the Cold War was in full swing and I was commanding a nuclear-capable artillery battalion as part of the US 3rd Infantry Division near the Czechoslovakia border, where we were staring down four Soviet tank divisions. Under that scenario, how were we going to evacuate tens of thousands of military dependents if necessary? It’s not rocket science. Part of the overall plan was that my wife had a car, she could evacuate our two small daughters, she knew the route to take to her rally location which happened to be the Frankfurt airport. My family was briefed on our evac responsibilities the day we arrived in country and were kept current for three years.
No one, not one single person during the past ten days of this crisis has ever mentioned the civilians’ evac plan. Obviously, there isn’t one. Nice going State Department.
Comment on Biden’s address to the nation Sunday the 22nd. Nice numbers about how many individuals have been flown out of Kabul, but, Mr. President, how many are still out there unaccounted for and literally under the gun of Taliban radical jihadists? And how are they going to get to the Kabul airport? That is what we-the-people tuned in to hear, not about what a great job the president believes he is doing.
Biden 22 August: “Evacuation will be hard and painful.” Note: Of course it will be painful but it didn’t have to be. Without a plan, everything is chaos.
Sunday, 22 August address to the nation the president told us everything is going well and I’m doing a great job. Note: Americans have always been great at accomplishing the nearly impossible in times of crisis, especially the military because every day they train to innovate and persevere at the point of execution.
CONCLUSIONS:
No doubt the next generation of terrorists will be superbly armed with the 600,000 small arms we could have/should have evacuated under a pre-planned deliberate process.
Administration-wide incompetence. Don’t blame the soldiers, don’t blame their junior leaders, don’t blame the Division Commanders; this is all about the Washington arrogance, stupidity and centralized control.
The US has, in just a few days’ time, become the laughing stock of the world and every time our Commander in Chief opens his mouth or reaches for another 3×5 cad, it gets worse.
The White House “handlers” have figured out that the president occasionally needs to take a few, but not many, questions from the media. It is not lost on America and the rest of the world that everything is pre-scripted on cards; who to call on, what their question will be and what the president should say. Its pathetic, its embarrassing and it should not be happening. We need to hear our Commander in Chief speak from the heart, demonstrate depth and breadth of knowledge and understanding of the problem. But no, everything we hear is from the pen of a White House handler. Who is in charge?
Some thoughts about planning; I wrote a book about it. After putting together an overall concept of what an operation will be about (a first draft dealing with the questions, who, what, when, where, why and how) there needs to be a moment when the boss gathers his planners together and asks the question, what are the keys to success? Or, stated another way, what can cause this to fail? It is not a long list, maybe two or three inviolable issues. In this circumstance a hand would have gone up and a bright guy or gal would have said; the last person on the last aircraft out of Afghanistan must be departing from Bagram Air Base. We own it, we have secured it since we got there, it has two long runways and we can safely handle thousands of evacuees. Everyone agreed.
Second hand goes up; every US civilian in country needs to have a preplanned evac plan that includes, means of transport, route and destination. Then we preplan to secure those routes. The boss says; absolutely, coordinate with the State Department and make it happen.
And so it goes; it is not rocket science, but it is the one commodity seemingly missing in Washington today, common sense.
A second comment on planning. The military lives by this thought, “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” The military mindset is that no plan is perfect and we need to think, way ahead of time, the answers to the questions, “what if….?” It is called contingency planning. Contingency planning is a parallel process that takes place before we execute.
Some example what-ifs: Since the president directed the withdrawal to commence during the Taliban fighting season, we would ask, what if they roll up control of the country faster than expected? What if the Taliban make a move to control all the major routes of egress? What if we have to prematurely evac the US embassy and lose their in-country knowledge and support? What if the Afghanistan National Army is unable or unwilling to stand against the Taliban offensive? What if the Afghan government folds up early?
Of course, many of you are saying right now, well that’s easy Monday-morning-quarterbacking. Reality is that our military leaders are trained to think worse-case-scenario and put it into a contingency plan because their lives may depend on it. With a proper planning process, they would have thought of these obvious what-ifs and probably a lot more.
There is zero indication that any of our leaders in Washington did anything like this. Instead, what we are getting is finger pointing at the intel community, and statement like, “no one expected the country to fall in 11 days.”
Was there sufficient time to do proper planning? Of course, there was a ridiculous amount of time available. Planning should have begun 18 months ago on 29 February, 2020, when the US and Taliban signed an agreement that set the terms for a US withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. Then, on 14 April, 2021 when President Biden announced plans to pull all US Military forces from Afghanistan by 9/11, 2021, all the fine-tuning and rehearsals should have begun. Words that come to mind: Dereliction of duty. High crimes and misdemeanors. Relief for cause.
The United States in two short weeks just forfeited its global leadership role and the consequences will, in all probability, be catastrophic. We could experience global open season on cyberattacks against the US; oil embargo; emboldened Putin moves on the Ukraine, Belarus, the Middle East; Russia supports Iranian hegemony in the Middle East; Russia no longer fears NATO retaliation; China invades Taiwan; China controls shipping in the South China Sea; Russia and China collusion to insure the US is cut out of initiatives in the Artic; Afghanistan terrorism, supported by Iran, regains pre-9/11 terrorist training/planning; terrorist flooding into the US across the southern border. For all practical purposes NATO becomes a paper tiger; North Korea ramps up missile testing; Iran fields a nuclear weapon; etc. etc. etc.
Why could some or all of this become a reality? Plain and simple failure by the US to lead. We have been disgraced, humiliated and placed in mortal danger by this leaderless administration. Our friends no longer respect us and our enemies no longer fear retaliation.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, a columnist for THE PILOT, a national award-winning local newspaper in Southern Pines, NC and the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.