And stop blaming Joe Biden for Trump’s policy blunders and crimes.
The words we use matter. Words have meaning, and when we use words incorrectly or carelessly, we misinform our readers and/or listeners. Whether it is mental laziness or benign ignorance, just mindlessly repeating the same ideas and phrases used by your colleagues is a disservice to the public.
Yes, Kabul happened. We’ll get to that.
On Monday August 1st, Kristen Welker on MSNBC broke the news of the killing of Ayman Zawahari by a CIA drone attack. Welker discussed the attack in the context of unfounded Republican criticisms of the Biden administration’s decision to remove all American combat troops from Afghanistan. Briefly put, the Biden Administration said the US could use “over the horizon” technology to monitor terror threats and eliminate them.
During the discussion, Welker admitted that the killing of Zawahari validated the Biden policy, this she said, despite the Biden administration’s “botched withdrawal” from Afghanistan, a phrase which to many people at this point in time, needs no explanation, because the fact that the“withdrawal” was “botched” is self evident.
In a followup discussion about Afghanistan at a later hour, host Kate Boldoun used the more common phrase. “chaotic withdrawal” to describe the situation during the last days of the US presence in Afghanistan.
The problem is that the mindless or lazy use of these particular terms, phrases or words are an inaccurate description of those final days.That is important because incorrect assumptions and conclusions creates a false impression in the minds of citizens and as a result, people end up believing facts about national security that are not true. People vote based on what they believe to be true. But what if it’s not true.
In an era when the mission statement of certain media outlets is to lie shamelessly, it is important that the legitimate media needs to strive to maintain the highest level of professionalism and responsibility.
Before discussing Kabul, which everyone had the opportunity to witness on TV, it is important to understand that two separate activities happened in the last days of the American involvement in Afghanistan.
The first activity was the ongoing military operation in which American combat forces were withdrawn based on a cease fire agreement negotiated with the Taliban by the Trump administration. Official negotiations between the US and the Taliban began in late 2018. The first draft stipulated that the Taliban would “agree to stop targeting US forces as they withdrew, including the special operations and intelligence operatives,” according to Time Magazine, Dec. 18,2018.
Not surprisingly, Trump inexplicably blew up that agreement in September 2019 when he insisted on leaving a “small number of troops there indefinitely.”
According to Time, the Taliban would not stop shooting at Americans until a complete withdrawal was negotiated. According to Taliban negotiator,Suhail Shaheen, “The cease fire will start only after the signing of the peace agreement.”
The negotiations with the Taliban eventually led to a peace treaty. the Doha Agreement, which was signed on behalf of the United States by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. All US troops were to be removed by the spring of 2021.
Naturally, both civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, as well as politicians such as Lindsey Graham, slow walked the process as much as possible, but when Trump lost the election, the responsibility fell to the newly elected Joe Biden.
Thanks to the Trump administration’s sabotage of the transition process and various other acts of corruption, the Biden administration had to negotiate an extension with the Taliban for a new date for the completion of the withdrawal.
Not surprisingly, the Biden Department of Defense completed the mission of withdrawing the remaining troops without a hitch. In fact, the job was done so methodically, professionally and systematically that the process went like clockwork.
In fact, the mission was completed so smoothly that most of the American public didn’t even notice that every one of the US combat forces had been withdrawn from Afghanistan. The withdrawal process was so skillfully and efficiently carried out by some many competent Army and Air Force personnel they weren’t enough medals in the Pentagon supply closet to award one to all the deserving individuals.
Certainly the media only gave a passing glance, if that, to the successful troop withdrawal, so much so that when Kabul happened, the correspondents on the ground and the news show hosts in their studios confused an admittedly chaotic American civilian and Afghan refugee evacuation, with the just successfully completed US troop withdrawal.
So, yes, there was in Kabul a chaotic “evacuation” but there was not a chaotic or botched “withdrawal.”
The difference between a “civilian evacuation” and a “troop withdrawal” is the difference between panic and discipline.
But first, no one anticipated the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and army. Obviously, some one in the State or Defense departments should have.
The Taliban were faithfully observing their agreement to not fire on Americans leaving the country. Under those conditions, evacuating American civilians from Afghanistan could and should have been done in an orderly manner, just as the evacuation of the remaining US combat troops had been done.
As for our Afghan allies who were in danger of suffering reprisals from the Taliban, they also needed to be evacuated. Years before the Obama administration had created a thorough but admittedly cumbersome process whereby eligible Afghans could be vetted and if eligible, be granted asylum in the US. The process only needed to be accelerated due to the present and looming emergency situation on the ground.
However, no one anticipated the immense number of refugees who were determined to flee the Taliban.
But still, the Biden administration made a series of serious mistakes which led to the confusion and also ultimately the tragedy of the evacuation of Kabul.
In the ever expanding emergency, the Biden administration tried to follow the applicable refugee, asylum and immigration laws and use the Afghan refugee procedure created by the Obama administration.
Unfortunately, for the previous four years, a lawless president and his criminal administration had made a mockery of numerous legal processes as well as blatantly violating traditional constitutional norms.
As a result, while the Biden administration determined to scrupulously follow the applicable laws concerning refugees and asylum seekers, things were not working as planned.
The Biden administration did not realize or could not comprehend the extent that the Trump administration had gutted the relevant immigration laws to the point of meaninglessness, or how White House chief fascist Steven Miller had completely eviscerated the Obama Afghan refugee process.
During the four years of the Trump administration, qualified Afghan asylum seekers applications were essentially trashed.
At this time, the Afghan army and government had collapsed. Since all American combat troops had been successfully evacuated previously, the Pentagon announced that 5000-7000 combat troops were being flown into Kabul to handle the immense flood of refugees overrunning the airport, as well as to guard the airport perimeter from possible terrorist attacks.
US combat soldiers, armed with automatic weapons and a clipboard containing five year old, expired lists of Obama era Afghan asylum seekers, struggled to create and maintain an orderly evacuation.
Under the circumstances, it was an impossible task.
The evacuation could have been conducted more systematically had even more combat troops been flown into Kabul. These troops could have been deployed at the cities perimeter defenses, which had been abandoned by the Afghan army.
This would have prevented the Taliban from simply rambling into the city and driving up to the gates of the airport, which accelerated the already existing sense of panic and doom among the Afghan citizens.
Fortunately, the Taliban continued to faithfully abide by the terms of the Trump Administration’s Doha Peace Agreement, and the cease fire was maintained.
Yet still, the Taliban was insistent that the US comply with the Trump and Taliban Peace Agreement’s fast approaching deadline to evacuate Afghanistan completely on a date certain.
Another possible benefit of having US combat troops manning the entrances to the city was that it might have been possible to prevent the terrorist bombing outside the airport, which took so many innocent lives including American soldiers.
The decision to deploy the fewest forces thought necessary was unfortunate and helped to create the atmosphere of chaos that the media and Republicans delight in celebrating at the Biden administration’s expense.
Such chaos was all but inevitable considering the Trump administration’s eleventh hour sabotage of the Defense Department and Intelligence agencies. After losing the election and during the lame duck period of his administration, Trump fired the competent top leadership of the Defense Department, and appointed Trump stooges Christopher Miller as Secretary of Defense, Kash Patel as chief deputy, and Mike McCarthy as Secretary of the Army.
Decapitating the departments and agencies of the government most responsible for US security and appointing unqualified and unpatriotic sycophants in their place crippled those agencies going forward into the new administration.
It’s a testament to the resilience of the institutions of our nation that there are competent individuals in the pipeline so to speak who can step forward in moments of crisis and deal with problems, seen and unforeseen, successfully.
Considering all of the unforeseen but inevitable crisis’s and problems that were escalating beyond control, the Biden administration made the only possible decision. To hell with the legal processes, the forms and check lists and regulations and rules and red tape and directives and restrictions and exclusions and prohibitions and instructions and caveats and mandates and rulings and executive orders and wise counsel and cautious advice and recommendations and suggestions and admonishments and standing orders and passenger limits and weight restrictions and just cram them on the planes and fly them out of there. So that’s what they did.
The difference between using the words “withdrawal” and “evacuation” in this context to describe the events in Kabul may not seem important but it’s the difference between history and fiction.