I am a lifelong fan of NPR because it often sounded like a voice of reason and not a voice of getting me emotional.
But today I was coming back from a meeting with a client and listening to Here and Now, a favorite of mine. The host was interviewing Congressman Seth Moulton, a Democratic representative and officer who did 4 tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was there to explain how even Democrats thought Biden screwed up on the evacuation. There was no counter argument. Sure they could have done the normal both siderism with a GQP rep saying Biden stabbed the Afghanis in the back, but this time they found a Democrat who would make the GQP argument without the need. They went right to the attack and eliminated the middleman.
Two things about this interview stuck out to me. First, was the assumption that the evacuation was not only a fiasco, but an avoidable one. Second was interviewing a congressman without ever interviewing anyone involved in the evacuation or the Biden government. It was like their only goal was to find someone from the Democratic Party to say what a GQP congressman would say, but with less crazy.
Like the great talking heads of diplomacy and war of the past 40 years, Moulton was there to describe exactly how a perfectly orderly withdrawal would look like. Just like the neocons who described how a perfectly organized nation building would look like in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Osama Bin Laden said his ultimate goal was to goad the US to invade Afghanistan and fail undermining our standing in the world and collapsing like the USSR. The U.S. said “hold my beer” and invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq and now Seth Moulton says we have lost our standing in the world. Point for Osama.
But let us talk about how such imaginary orderly withdrawal would have worked.
1) Biden is told the government and army are supported and strong enough to last 6 months to a year.
Response: Pulling out our civilian contractors and offering our Afghani to come to the airport and only up at 200 hundred a day would have sent a clear message to out allies we had no faith in the government or the Afghani military and chaos would have ensued. I’m sure with that message a lot more Afghanis would have showed up at the airport.
2) Biden, implored by the Afghan government not to announce a pullout decides to keep its mouth shut and start pulling out US civilians and certain Afghani personal.
Response: Every U.S. worker is integrated with Afghani personal. The minute the Afghanis see them packing their bags and heading to the airport they will be calling their families and telling them to head to the Kabul airport. It would have been chaos.
Worse, it would have spread panic in both the Afghani government and the military, which is why Ghani emplored the US not to begin evacuations early so as not to spook anyone. .
3) Biden tells both the U.S. personnel and Afghanis that, despite the peace agreement and promises of the Taliban, we will start evacuating all Afghanis who helped us in the past 20 years because we think they are going to win with in days, you should not support your loser government or its failed army and the best thing you can do for yourself and family is to line up at the airport for a ride out. We will start, as Moulton proposes, with only 200 of you a day and I am sure you would agree and wait patiently, just like the patient people buying Springsteen tickets when they go on sale.
Such an announcement would not have changed what we have witnessed, but it would have changed the message of the chattering media class. Moulton would be on Here and Now attacking the President for panicking the Afghani people by showing no support for the Afghani government and its military and basically undermining any ability to fight the Taliban.
I’m sure Biden considered all these possibilities when he decided “Screw this. We end it now.”
Also, understand that his son fought in Afghanistan. If you think he didn’t consider what Beau would have said, you don’t know Joe Biden.