The President's New Statement on Afghanistan

The President's speech today was (a) preposterous and (b) discouraging. It was preposterous to claim that we will now focus on the counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan, which we have just lost all capacity to perform at all. It was preposterous in the extreme to claim that "We planned for every contingency!" in the wake of the obvious failure of military planning for this retreat.

It was discouraging because the President chose not only to accept no responsibility for himself ("The buck stops here!" he said, before walking away without taking a single question). He also chose not to ask anyone on his team to accept responsibility. Every officer involved in the planning of this withdrawal should be cashiered, and some might reasonably be prosecuted. Instead, it sounds as if the President intends to push the blame as far away from his team as he can, so that no one will actually be held accountable for this massive failure. 

He was strident on the non-issue: almost everyone agrees that it was long past time to leave Afghanistan. He had nothing at all to say about the actual issue, which is a titanic failure of military order. This mismanaged retreat is an issue in and of itself. We had a perfectly good airfield at Bagram we could have used to handle the withdrawal, which is highly defensible and without a large civilian population around it. Instead we've got 6,000 Marines and Paratroopers trapped on a single runway, overrun with civilians who are trying to climb on the plane, endangering all of our forces and also all of the civilians. It's a complete military failure; again, every officer involved in the planning should be cashiered. 

Retreat is one of the most basic military maneuvers, so central to the reality of military life that it had a bugle call that everyone was once supposed to know how to fall in on when it was sounded. A strategic withdrawal is different from a tactical withdrawal in scale, but not in substance. The line of retreat is established, rear guard forces form up to defend the retreat, falling back when a new rear guard is ready to protect them as they fall back. (A sort of reverse of the bounding overwatch maneuver used to advance under fire.) We should have fallen back in stages onto Bagram, evacuating as we went until everyone was gone. The embassy could have been abandoned long ago, before the military withdrawal began. Any civilians we wanted to take out could have been taken out before we pulled support for the Afghan forces, and before we pulled out our own people. 

What I heard President Biden say today was that he was right about everything, brave to take on this difficult decision, and steadfast in the face of all criticism. What that means is that he has learned nothing, is determined to learn nothing, and insists on no one else learning anything either.

12 comments:

  1. "We did the right thing, and Trump made us do it."

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  2. Biden also was cynically duplicitous in his screed.

    He claimed to have been trapped by Trump's agreement with the Taliban regarding our departure from Afghanistan, yet he wasn't that trapped: he chose not to carry out the parts of the Trump agreement that had check points and contingencies intended to keep the Taliban at bay until we actually were gone.

    Eric Hines

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  3. Eric Blair9:00 PM

    Sound and fury, signifying nothing. This administration is the worst I've ever seen.

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  4. raven9:38 PM

    ^^ I got a 404 error on the link.

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  5. Sigh.

    It was something like:

    “So really, if you think about it, I’m the real hero here.” Joe Biden, paraphrased

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  6. Anonymous10:55 PM

    Never Trumpers, I don't want to here any of this....... so the Military is getting screwed over....... poor babies...

    It could of been avoided if you would of fought for Trump when the election was stolen and all I heard was crickets when I said it....

    Well, you know where we are at now?

    ....schadenfreude...... C'est la vie

    Greg





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  7. Anonymous11:24 PM

    we remember...


    https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/01/joint-chiefs-affirm-election-results-condemn-assault-our-constitutional-process/171362/

    Greg

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  8. I’d take care to distinguish between the upper ranks and the guys who actually fought. You’re not clear on what’s at stake. There’s a lot of blame for the political generals. I’d beware of getting in between those who bled and your politics.

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  9. This entire event has been an abortion of galactic proportions. Everyone I work with has been watching this unfold with a sense of disbelief. The nighttime evacuation of Bagram Airfield, the helter-skelter nature of the “retrograde,” the millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, arms and ammunition simply left for the Taliban. I can’t imagine a worse way to conduct the entire thing. To call it an operation would be a farce. The ramifications of this national embarrassment will be serious and far-reaching.

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  10. Biden, Harris, and the rest of their crew wanted the optics of the military force being out of Afghanistan by 9/11/2021 in the worst way. They definitely got it.

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  11. Sound and fury, signifying nothing ...

    The full quote from Macbeth is appropriate here:

    "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
    To the last syllable of recorded time;
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
    The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
    Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
    And then is heard no more. It is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Signifying nothing."

    Particularly the "tale told by an idiot" part.

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