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Notations On Our World (Special Editionj: #Afghanistan

 

President Biden on the End of the War in Afghanistan

 

  Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan — the longest war in American history. 

We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety.  That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible.  No nation — no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history.  Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.

The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery, and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals. 

For weeks, they risked their lives to get American citizens, Afghans who helped us, citizens of our Allies and partners, and others onboard planes and out of the country.  And they did it facing a crush of enormous crowds seeking to leave the country.  And they did it knowing ISIS-K terrorists — sworn enemies of the Taliban — were lurking in the midst of those crowds. 

And still, the men and women of the United States military, our diplomatic corps, and intelligence professionals did their job and did it well, risking their lives not for professional gains but to serve others; not in a mission of war but in a mission of mercy.  Twenty servicemembers were wounded in the service of this mission.  Thirteen heroes gave their lives.

I was just at Dover Air Force Base for the dignified transfer.  We owe them and their families a debt of gratitude we can never repay but we should never, ever, ever forget.

In April, I made the decision to end this war.  As part of that decision, we set the date of August 31st for American troops to withdraw.  The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban.

That assumption — that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown — turned out not to be accurate.

But I still instructed our national security team to prepare for every eventuality — even that one.  And that’s what we did. 

So, we were ready when the Afghan Security Forces — after two decades of fighting for their country and losing thousands of their own — did not hold on as long as anyone expected. 

We were ready when they and the people of Afghanistan watched their own government collapse and their president flee amid the corruption and malfeasance, handing over the country to their enemy, the Taliban, and significantly increasing the risk to U.S. personnel and our Allies.

As a result, to safely extract American citizens before August 31st — as well as embassy personnel, Allies and partners, and those Afghans who had worked with us and fought alongside of us for 20 years — I had authorized 6,000 troops — American troops — to Kabul to help secure the airport.

As General McKenzie said, this is the way the mission was designed.  It was designed to operate under severe stress and attack.  And that’s what it did.

Since March, we reached out 19 times to Americans in Afghanistan, with multiple warnings and offers to help them leave Afghanistan — all the way back as far as March.  After we started the evacuation 17 days ago, we did initial outreach and analysis and identified around 5,000 Americans who had decided earlier to stay in Afghanistan but now wanted to leave.

Our Operation Allied Rescue [Allies Refuge] ended up getting more than 5,500 Americans out.  We got out thousands of citizens and diplomats from those countries that went into Afghanistan with us to get bin Laden.  We got out locally employed staff of the United States Embassy and their families, totaling roughly 2,500 people.  We got thousands of Afghan translators and interpreters and others, who supported the United States, out as well.

Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave.  Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan.

The bottom line: Ninety [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.

And for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline.  We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.  Secretary of State Blinken is leading the continued diplomatic efforts to ensure a safe passage for any American, Afghan partner, or foreign national who wants to leave Afghanistan.

In fact, just yesterday, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that sent a clear message about what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward, notably freedom of travel, freedom to leave.  And together, we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments.

It will include ongoing efforts in Afghanistan to reopen the airport, as well as overland routes, allowing for continued departure to those who want to leave and delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has made public commitments, broadcast on television and radio across Afghanistan, on safe passage for anyone wanting to leave, including those who worked alongside Americans.  We don’t take them by their word alone but by their actions, and we have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.

Let me be clear: Leaving August the 31st is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives.

My predecessor, the former President, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May the 1st, just months after I was inaugurated.  It included no requirement that the Taliban work out a cooperative governing arrangement with the Afghan government, but it did authorize the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan.

And by the time I came to office, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.

The previous administration’s agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack any American forces, but if we stayed, all bets were off.

So we were left with a simple decision: Either follow through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan, or say we weren’t leaving and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war.

That was the choice — the real choice — between leaving or escalating.

I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.  The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors — the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the service chiefs, and the commanders in the field.

Their recommendation was that the safest way to secure the passage of the remaining Americans and others out of the country was not to continue with 6,000 troops on the ground in harm’s way in Kabul, but rather to get them out through non-military means.

In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave.  Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport. 

Again, more than 5,500 Americans were airlifted out.  And for those who remain, we will make arrangements to get them out if they so choose.

As for the Afghans, we and our partners have airlifted 100,000 of them.  No country in history has done more to airlift out the residents of another country than we have done.  We will continue to work to help more people leave the country who are at risk.  And we’re far from done.

For now, I urge all Americans to join me in grateful prayer for our troops and diplomats and intelligence officers who carried out this mission of mercy in Kabul and at tremendous risk with such unparalleled results: an airma- — an airlift that evacuated tens of thousands to a network of volunteers and veterans who helped identifies [identify] those needing evacuation, guide them to the airport, and provided them for their support along the way.

We’re going to continue to need their help.  We need your help.  And I’m looking forward to meeting with you. 

And to everyone who is now offering or who will offer to welcome Afghan allies to their homes around the world, including in America: We thank you.

I take responsibility for the decision.  Now, some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and “Couldn’t this have be done — have been done in a more orderly manner?”  I respectfully disagree.

Imagine if we had begun evacuations in June or July, bringing in thousands of American troops and evacuating more than 120,000 people in the middle of a civil war.  There still would have been a rush to the airport, a breakdown in confidence and control of the government, and it still would have been a very difficult and dangerous mission.

The bottom line is: There is no evacuatio- — evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, and threats we faced.  None.

There are those who would say we should have stayed indefinitely for years on end.  They ask, “Why don’t we just keep doing what we were doing?  Why did we have to change anything?” 

The fact is: Everything had changed.  My predecessor had made a deal with the Taliban.  When I came into office, we faced a deadline — May 1.  The Taliban onslaught was coming.

We faced one of two choices: Follow the agreement of the previous administration and extend it to have — or extend to more time for people to get out; or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war.

To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask: What is the vital national interest?  In my view, we only have one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.

Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place?  Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda on September 11th, 2001, and they were based in Afghanistan.

We delivered justice to bin Laden on May 2nd, 2011 — over a decade ago.  Al Qaeda was decimated.

I respectfully suggest you ask yourself this question: If we had been attacked on September 11, 2001, from Yemen instead of Afghanistan, would we have ever gone to war in Afghanistan — even though the Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 2001?  I believe the honest answer is “no.”  That’s because we had no vital national interest in Afghanistan other than to prevent an attack on America’s homeland and their fr- — our friends.  And that’s true today.

We succeeded in what we set out to do in Afghanistan over a decade ago.  Then we stayed for another decade.  It was time to end this war. 

This is a new world.  The terror threat has metastasized across the world, well beyond Afghanistan.  We face threats from al-Shabaab in Somalia; al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and the Arabian Peninsula; and ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and establishing affiliates across Africa and Asia. 

The fundamental obligation of a President, in my opinion, is to defend and protect America — not against threats of 2001, but against the threats of 2021 and tomorrow. 

That is the guiding principle behind my decisions about Afghanistan.  I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars a year in Afghanistan. 

But I also know that the threat from terrorism continues in its pernicious and evil nature.  But it’s changed, expanded to other countries.  Our strategy has to change too.

We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries.  We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.  We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed.

We’ve shown that capacity just in the last week.  We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our servicemembers and dozens of innocent Afghans. 

And to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet. 

As Commander-in-Chief, I firmly believe the best path to guard our safety and our security lies in a tough, unforgiving, targeted, precise strategy that goes after terror where it is today, not where it was two decades ago.  That’s what’s in our national interest. 

And here’s a critical thing to understand: The world is changing.  We’re engaged in a serious competition with China.  We’re dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia.  We’re confronted with cyberattacks and nuclear proliferation. 

We have to shore up America’s competitive[ness] to meet these new challenges in the competition for the 21st century.  And we can do both: fight terrorism and take on new threats that are here now and will continue to be here in the future. 

And there’s nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan.

As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nat- — our nation the last two decades, we’ve got to learn from our mistakes.

To me, there are two that are paramount.  First, we must set missions with clear, achievable goals — not ones we’ll never reach.  And second, we must stay clearly focused on the fundamental national security interest of the United States of America.

This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan.  It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries. 

We saw a mission of counterterrorism in Afghanistan — getting the terrorists and stopping attacks — morph into a counterinsurgency, nation building — trying to create a democratic, cohesive, and unified Afghanistan -– something that has never been done over the many centuries of Afghans’ [Afghanistan’s] history. 

Moving on from that mindset and those kind of large-scale troop deployments will make us stronger and more effective and safer at home. 

And for anyone who gets the wrong idea, let me say it clearly.  To those who wish America harm, to those that engage in terrorism against us and our allies, know this: The United States will never rest.  We will not forgive.  We will not forget.  We will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, and we will — you will pay the ultimate price.

And let me be clear: We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence, and humanitarian aid.  We’ll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability.  We’ll continue to speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls, as we speak out for women and girls all around the globe.  And I’ve been clear that human rights will be the center of our foreign policy. 

But the way to do that is not through endless military deployments, but through diplomacy, economic tools, and rallying the rest of the world for support.

My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over.  I’m the fourth President who has faced the issue of whether and when to end this war.  When I was running for President, I made a commitment to the American people that I would end this war.  And today, I’ve honored that commitment.  It was time to be honest with the American people again.  We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan. 

After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, I refused to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago. 

After more than $2 trillion spent in Afghanistan — a cost that researchers at Brown University estimated would be over $300 million a day for 20 years in Afghanistan — for two decades — yes, the American people should hear this: $300 million a day for two decades.

If you take the number of $1 trillion, as many say, that’s still $150 million a day for two decades.  And what have we lost as a consequence in terms of opportunities?  I refused to continue in a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people. 

And most of all, after 800,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan — I’ve traveled that whole country — brave and honorable service; after 20,744 American servicemen and women injured, and the loss of 2,461 American personnel, including 13 lives lost just this week, I refused to open another decade of warfare in Afghanistan. 

We’ve been a nation too long at war.  If you’re 20 years old today, you have never known an America at peace. 

So, when I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan, at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1 percent of this country who put that uniform on, who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation. 

Maybe it’s because my deceased son, Beau, served in Iraq for a full year, before that.  Well, maybe it’s because of what I’ve seen over the years as senator, vice president, and president traveling these countries.

A lot of our veterans and their families have gone through hell — deployment after deployment, months and years away from their families; missed birthdays, anniversaries; empty chairs at holidays; financial struggles; divorces; loss of limbs; traumatic brain injury; posttraumatic stress. 

We see it in the struggles many have when they come home.  We see it in the strain on their families and caregivers.  We see it in the strain of their families when they’re not there.  We see it in the grief borne by their survivors.  The cost of war they will carry with them their whole lives.

Most tragically, we see it in the shocking and stunning statistic that should give pause to anyone who thinks war can ever be low-grade, low-risk, or low-cost: 18 veterans, on average, who die by suicide every single day in America — not in a far-off place, but right here in America. 

There’s nothing low-grade or low-risk or low-cost about any war.  It’s time to end the war in Afghanistan. 

As we close 20 years of war and strife and pain and sacrifice, it’s time to look to the future, not the past — to a future that’s safer, to a future that’s more secure, to a future that honors those who served and all those who gave what President Lincoln called their “last full measure of devotion.”

I give you my word: With all of my heart, I believe this is the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America.

Thank you.  Thank you.  And may God bless you all.  And may God protect our troops.  

Notations On Our World (Month-End Edition): On the Week & Month That Was

 

 

We present our final "Outsider Wall" for the month of the week that was as we gear up for a very busy September as we remember and honor the fallen and their families.    

Afghanistan has been in the headlines as the Untied States and other countries have rushed to evacuate their nationals and vulnerable Afghans.   Yesterday, the body of the 13 Americans killed was returned to the United States and received by President Biden.  Over 100,000 Afghans have been evacuated and as we went to press, we saw reports about assurances by the Taliban that they would guarantee all who wish to leave Afghanistan will be allowed to leave.    We have also saw reports of two leading political figures inside Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai & Abdullah Abdullah, have been placed under house arrest.   It was also of interest to note how The Taliban have told Afghan Farmers to stop planting opium.  

Our team has been assessing the situation out of Iran as Iranian Children go back to school.   There is an estimated 15 Million Children and over 100,000 school facilities that the Government seems not to have the capability to avoid the spread of COVID as the fifth wave continues to cause hundreds of deaths daily.   This is as inflation continues to rage on,   An estimated 60 million Iranians are estimated to be below the official poverty line.   Corruption continues to rage on and accepted by the current Government.    There was also the Baghdad conference that caused a diplomatic row when the newly confirmed Iranian Foreign Minister, Amir Abdullahian, violated protocol standing next to the Emir of Dubai that caused him to leave.    

Beyond the hotspots of the World, the Environment continues to be of profound concern underscored by the immense floods in Europe, the fires in Turkey, Greece, and our home state of California.    As we also went to press, we were assessing the situation in our home state of California as the State's Governor, Gavin Newsom, was facing a recall slated for September 14 and our team will continue to assess it.   

We look forward to the continued privilege to serve as we present the following courtesy the Financial Times, The Economist of London, The Bulwark, Haaretz and other leading publications we engage with daily: 

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Enduring Courage

Making sense of tragedy and disaster

Charlie Sykes Aug 27

. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

This is a hard newsletter to write, because there is no sugar-coating it. Yesterday was the worst day of the Biden presidency, but that’s not really the point, is it? Or, at least it shouldn’t be. The bombing in Kabul was a national and a human tragedy and some of you may actually be old enough to remember when the shock of losing the lives of 13 American servicemen would have brought us together, if only briefly, as a nation.

No longer.

ian bremmer @ianbremmer

After 9/11, the United States came together—at home and with all allies—to defeat a common enemy. Today, the country and the alliance is more divided than at any point in our lifetimes.

August 26th 2021

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As far as I can remember, Democrats did not demand GW’s resignation (or impeachment) after 9/11. Nor was there a clamor for Reagan’s head the day that 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon. There was fierce criticism, but no one discussed the 25th Amendment. The Bay of Pigs was an epic disaster, but Republicans did not (as far as I remember) immediately call for JFK’s resignation.

But here we are. Via Politico’s Playbook:

Some [Republicans] called on Biden to resign as president in the wake of the attack — and not just conservative darlings like Sens. JOSH HAWLEY (R-Mo.) and MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-Tenn.), but also Rep. TOM RICE (R-S.C.), one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach DONALD TRUMP. Sen. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.) has floated invoking the 25th Amendment, which won’t happen. There’s already talk about impeaching Biden over the ordeal if, as many expect, the GOP flips the House.

It all signals Republicans’ eagerness to capitalize on this crisis and potentially hammer it into a Benghazi-style scandal. On a House GOP conference call Thursday night, the ranking members of several committees — who could wield gavels and subpoena power in 2023 — said they’ve already sent document preservation requests to the administration.

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A brief thought about the tragedy and the mission.

Perhaps it’s simply a sign of getting older that these deaths seem to hit harder every year. Maybe it’s knowing how much pain there is, and the hole it leaves. The reality of tragedy is not like movies where everyone moves on and the endings are usually happy and uplifting. Real tragedies cut deep and linger for years, even lifetimes. And, as you get older, you realize how much is lost when a young life is cut short.

But, let’s also take a moment to talk about courage and meaning.

Aaron Astor @AstorAaron

It's hard to comprehend the bravery of the US Marines who gave their lives in Kabul today. They were told days ago that they'd be targeted by ISIS-K bombers. They knew that. And, yet, they went ahead and did their duty, processing evacuations and winding down this terrible war.

August 26th 2021

3,504 Retweets21,306 Likes

We will continue to debate the wisdom of the 20-year war, and we are likely to remember the retreat from Afghanistan as a fiasco. We’ll continue to ask “was it worth it?”

But no one will doubt the courage of the servicemembers who were in Kabul yesterday. They knew what this particular mission was. They understood the risks. And they gave their lives to save the lives of untold thousands of Americans, Afghans, and coalition partners. Since last month, 110,600 people have been evacuated, many of them saved from almost certain death.

Whatever we think of the war or the withdrawal, this mission in Kabul was not futile and their deaths were not meaningless. None of their families should wonder whether they died in vain.

Whole worlds have been rescued because of their courage. Generations unborn will live in freedom and safety because of their sacrifices.

If only we could take a moment from the finger-pointing to honor them.

Sgt. Isaiah Campbell / Reuters

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Don’t miss this amazing story. Via ABC: “US special operations vets carry out daring mission to save Afghan allies.”

With the Taliban growing more violent and adding checkpoints near Kabul's airport, an all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a final daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the "Pineapple Express" to shepherd hundreds of at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety, members of the group told ABC News.

Moving after nightfall in near-pitch black darkness and extremely dangerous conditions, the group said it worked unofficially in tandem with the United States military and U.S. embassy to move people, sometimes one person at a time, or in pairs, but rarely more than a small bunch, inside the wire of the U.S. military-controlled side of Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The Pineapple Express' mission was underway Thursday when the attack occurred in Kabul. Two suicide bombers believed to have been ISIS fighters killed at least 13 U.S. service members -- 10 U.S. Marines, a Navy corpsman and an Army soldier and one to be determined -- and wounded 15 other service members, according to U.S. officials.

There were wounded among the Pineapple Express travelers from the blast, and members of the group said they were assessing whether unaccounted-for Afghans they were helping had been killed.

As of Thursday morning, the group said it had brought as many as 500 Afghan special operators, assets and enablers and their families into the airport in Kabul overnight, handing them each over to the protective custody of the U.S. military.

That number added to more than 130 others over the past 10 days who had been smuggled into the airport encircled by Taliban fighters since the capital fell to the extremists on Aug. 16 by Task Force Pineapple, an ad hoc groups of current and former U.S. special operators, aid workers, intelligence officers and others with experience in Afghanistan who banded together to save as many Afghan allies as they could.

Heroes.

Slaughter in Kabul Suicide bombings hit Kabul as America scrambles to leave Islamic State has inflicted the worst loss on American forces in a decade

Related   → Blasts at Kabul airport make the Afghan evacuation grimmer still → America’s flight from Afghanistan will embolden jihadists around the world → After Afghanistan, where next for global jihad?

The Powell punt Despite his shortcomings, Jerome Powell should be reappointed Fed chairman It would be a bad time to cast any doubt on the Fed’s independence

Gone today, here tomorrow India’s government wants to monetise state-owned assets Or does it?

Saxon Switzerland A visit to a stronghold of the AfD, Germany’s far-right party Its candidate is a cop suspended for protesting against covid lockdowns

Chaguan China would rather be feared than defied Nationalist outrage has often served China well over the years, but that may be changing

August 23-24

By Marc Cooper

Eight days after the fall of Kabul these are this Monday morning’s headlines from Google News:

As a journalist for last 50 years, I reject out of hand any and all conspiracy theories about the media. They are false. That in no way means the media is always telling you the straight story. It does not conspire as much as it panders to false patriotism.

So here’s a little quiz for those of you who are news hounds and have been following this closely. What major salient fact is missing from all these headlines, and frankly, from all these stories?

Here’s the answer, written in headline form:

EIGHT DAYS AFTER FALL OF KABUL U.S. FORCES EVACUATE 38,000 AMERICANS AND AFGHANS.

(Update: that figure on Tues morn is now 48,000.)

Yet, turn on the noise machine known as broadcast news and the coverage becomes even more errant with the now ritualized script of Biden failing to “get everybody out” while “chaos” ensues around the Kabul Airport.

Who does that mean when people say everybody?

A handful of weeks ago, the number being floated of Afghan allies who would eventually need to leave was 40,000. That number, including something like 10-15,00 American “civilians,” has subsequently grown to 80-100,000. If the high figure is accurate and if the current figure of 10,000 a day are being rescued continues, simple math tells you that by August 31, the U.S. will have evacuated something like a remarkable 100,000 from Afghanistan, a figure for which we should feel some pride, rather than disgust.

We continue to be shown the images of anxious and desperate crowds pressing up against the airport perimeter while anchors and reporters suggest these are the masses we are leaving behind that should instead be boarded onto US planes.

I have reported from around the globe for decades and in many hot spots like this. Let me make it easy. Open up a US base with an ongoing airlift to the United States anywhere in the undeveloped world and you will instantly have tens of thousands of desperate locals trying to get on board. Try it in Mexico City or Tegucigalpa and watch what kind of “chaos” and “tragedy” ensue.

One issue that the media itself has not bothered to clarify —mostly because they could not be bothered to find out— is just who exactly we should be morally bound to extricate.

Biden has said “any American who wants to get out we will get out.” When asked about the Afghan allies, he said, the same applies. That second promise might be generous but perhaps not operationally feasible. There’s a reason why everybody made such a big deal a few days ago when a couple of American choppers ventured a grand total of 500 yards to rescue some people. Hey, gronk it. The US Army is a politically if not militarily defeated force penned up and surrounded in the airport.

The media’s conflation of the crowds in front of the airport and who knows who else into “everybody” who wants to get out, would probably total in the millions. In any war, the civilians who backed a losing side wind up in very deplorable conditions with few options.

Meanwhile, we have Boris Johnson and a battalion of American talking heads demanding that Biden extend the U.S. mission past August 31, the date the US agreed to leave. As if this was Biden’s decision alone. As if the U.S. forces could just leave the airport and wade into a sea of armed Taliban without provoking a fresh outbreak of total war. As if it is a detail that we would probably have to deploy yet another 5,000-10,000 troops to Kabul to move that perimeter a few hundred yards. To paraphrase Barack Obama when asked if he would go with Mitch McConnell to have a beer, I say to Boris Johnson, why don’t YOU put on a flack jacket and YOU can go and extend the deadline and the airport perimeter, and while you are at it, Boris, please evacuate the 19 million Afghan women threatened by the Taliban. Ditto Bush poodle and multi millionaire former PM Tony Blair who was also beating war drums again this week. We had already forgotten about you, Tony. Please go away again. This denialist line was also taken by the myriad American TV talking heads, many of them on the dole of military contractors and deep state think tanks.

What world are these jokers living in? Why such a disconnect between elite opinion and the ground reality?

I think we are experiencing the pain and chaos of withdrawal…not withdrawal of the troops. But withdrawal from the toxic, decades-long fantasy, that the U.S. is invincible, that it is all-powerful, that we are the Indispensable Nation and that, as much as a burden as it might be, we are, indeed, the Cops of the World.

It’s hard for anybody to accept their personal shortcomings. Just ask me. Much harder for an entire nation. Nobody likes to lose. But the U.S. is showing the enormous capacity to keep losing while trying hard to learn nothing.

Twenty years after the commencement of the Global War on Terror, the U.S. has gone 0-for-2 in its major wars. And Jihadist groups, like the Taliban seem to remain fairly healthy. And 62% or more of Americans have rightly concluded the Afghan war was not worth it. For that matter, they are sort of finished with the moral panic of the Global War on Terror.

The good news is that the American people by a decisive 2 to 1 margin are finished with these miserable and useless and bloody imperial adventures. A bipartisan truth, if you will.

The bad news is that American political and media elites remain wholly addicted to the fantasy that America can do anything it wants anywhere always and you are a quitter and perhaps a traitor if you are not on board. And that there is always a solution at hand when we send in the troops.

The thrashing pain, the howls, the cries, the supplications staged by reps of the national security blob and their hallelujah choir in the media this past week, is the same sort of panic, despair and denial you can hear any day of the week inside any drug rehab center when the addict begins to understand there just might be no more dope.

Cautious kudos then to General Mike Mullen (Ret) who commanded US troops in Afghanistan under Bush and Obama and who on Monday became the first and only senior American military official to admit that he, and everybody else, was WRONG about the war. I repeat, he is the only one. Sort of amazing, no?

“It’s hard to deny the evidence in front of you,” he told Slate in a phone interview this Monday.

“Mullen acknowledged that, back in 2009, he and all the other top officers and officials advised Obama to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan and to adopt a nation-building strategy. Biden was alone in calling for merely an extra 10,000 troops and to restrict their activities to training the Afghan army and fighting terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistani border. “He got it right,” Mullen said of Biden. “It would be hard to argue that [Biden’s proposal] wasn’t the right way to go,” he said. In the conversation with Slate, Mullen referred to the rest of his fellow senior officers during the Afghan period as “the silent crew.”

Good for Mullen. Read the Slate piece for more detail.

The other egregious element missing from this blanket coverage can be hinted at in the demand that we get everybody out, not bring everybody home.

Republicans, aided by a whole lot of Democrats, have taken a position saying bring them all out but please don’t bring any of those raggedy-ass towel-heads here. This is now a given, reflected in U.S. policy itself. Look at the acrobatics that Biden has gone through to get third countries to allow the dumping and processing of refugees on their lands.

If you want to demand something of Biden in this crisis, demand that refugees be brought directly to the U.S. where they will be processed and quickly settled. Expedited, please.

Not gonna happen. Biden knows very well that this is a political third rail because so many Americans, just like what is happening this week in the EU, do not want refugees to enter the U.S. (If you are old enough you will remember the fierce hostility with which Vietnamese refugees —*boat people* as they were branded- were met in the US forty years ago).

Leading the anti-refugee charge, are, of course, Biden’s most vocal critics on the withdrawal. Enter Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, the pro-fascist agitators on Fox News. Said Carlson a few days ago:

“If history is any guide, and it’s always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions,” Carlson said. “So first we invade, and then we are invaded.”

These are the same assholes who a couple of weeks ago were claiming, with a straight face, that the current COVID wave of Delta infections was caused by diseased illegal aliens crossing the southern border.

I don’t say this glibly or recklessly, but this perfectly mirrors Nazi propaganda about dirty Jews in the 1930’s.

One area where U.S. policy makers did succeed in Afghanistan was in persuading a swath of public opinion that the invasion and occupation was staged, in great part, to liberate Afghan women. A very clever ploy by those world-class feminists George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and then, sadly, endorsed by Barack Obama along with legions of comfortable Democratic women who knew nothing about ground realities.

As I remember it, Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban govt that sheltered them. After less than 2 months, at the end of 2001, the Taliban offered to surrender. Bush said no, the occupation began in serious, and so our fate was sealed. Once again we plunged neck deep into a foreign land where we didn’t speak the language and where we understood even less.

That a small percentage of mostly urban professional women did, in fact, see their positions improve with the Taliban gone is a fact. But that was a by-product of the invasion, hardly its goal. And yet, what an absurd wash of news stories over the last 20 years with media using a telephoto lens to zoom in on this or that new beauty shop or other woman-run business in Kabul, creating the illusion that the U.S. had turned Afghanistan, or at least Kabul, into a massive Berkeley-esque women’s resource center and bookstore.

Only the most delusional can believe that the US Army spent its time opening abortion clinics, founding women’s CR groups, and “bombing” villages with thousands of translated copies of Our Bodies Our Selves. Even most of the schools opened US occupation were found abandoned and run down several years ago by correspondents.

The reality is quite different than the cheery propaganda. U.S. forces spent years sweeping through remote villages, kicking in doors and rousting and terrifying rural families (men and women) in the middle of the night. Women stood by after being shoved to the floor and watched their husbands, sons and brothers carted off blindfolded by American troops. And God Forbid if any of these villagers retaliated by shooting at American troops. That would only produce more aggressive action by the occupiers. Like massive and indiscriminate bombing.

Meanwhile, the systematic torture and renditions conducted at the American-run Bagram base and other U.S. sites were a secret to nobody (except the U.S. congress of course). Indeed, that U.S. base became known by Afghans as their own local version of Guantanamo.

The obsessive, heavy use of American air power (to spare American lives on the ground) wiped out countless families and ordinary Afghans wondered when the next drone strike would blow apart their village or home. The drones. Drones and more Drones. None of them were painted pink. None of them knew who they were killing. Nobody looked to find out.

As late as 2019, the U.S. dropped more bombs (7500 of them) on Afghanistan than in any other year since tracking began in 2006. Where did they fall? Who did they kill? Is it possible that some liberated Afghan women were also scared stiff by this death from the air? Or did they stand and cheer the bombing holding up their hands in the shape of a uterus? Somehow, I don’t think so.

The American war caused the displacement or exile of more than 6 million Afghans…something that has little to do with rescuing women and girls unless you define liberation as barely surviving in a freezing tent in a Pakistani camp.

You can look at any source that pleases you because nobody really knows the real civilian death count. The U.S. pointedly kept no reliable tally of this “collateral damage.” And what does that tell you?

Most reliable sources estimate that about 250,000 Afghans were killed during the war. Just who was a “civilian” and who was a “terrorist” remains as blurred and dubious as in Vietnam. The most conservative estimates say that “innocent” civilian deaths at the hands and bombs of US forces is about 100,000. This also assumes that a passive villager who might express some sort of sympathy for the Taliban was taken out as a presumed “terrorist.”

In a country eight times as populous as Afghanistan we are still mourning the 55,000 soldiers lost in Vietnam 50 years ago and the 3,000 civilians on 9/11/. Draw your own conclusions.

Just what political impact has mass death in Afghanistan affected the local consciousness. We will never know because, remember, we don’t even speak or understand their language!

The mythology that the U.S. occupation saved and liberated Afghan women over the last 20 years has turned out to be, well, mythology. Time magazine dispatched that fantasy back in 2018 with a couple of short paragraphs highlighting a miserable situation persisting after 17 years of U.S. occupation and one that nobody would argue has improved since.

I am one hundred percent in favor of rescuing and improving the lives of the 20 million Afghan women and their children and maybe even their husbands and brothers. But OK let’s stick with just women for the moment.

I am also in favor of liberating the women of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (who both supported the Taliban) and let’s throw in Mynamar. While we are at it, how about the million or so uighur women currently in Chinese prison camps? Oops, I almost forgot the several hundred million rural Chinese women who have been forced into hunger and homelessness that nobody reports on.

Do we have any room left on the plane for, say, Indian women who suffer extreme sexual harassment and rape? Yeah, why not. Maybe, Boris Johnson can provide the planes for that one after he’s done expanding our Afghan airlift. After all, India is a sad reminder of British colonialism rather than US imperialism.

Look. I am not being sarcastic or snide. I do care about all those folks and a lot more. Just as any other decent human would. It’s just that at age 70 I have firmly concluded that for better or worse, the exercise and deployment of hard U.S. military power is NOT the solution to any of these frightful issues. I don’t blame you for yearning otherwise, let’s just not continue more warfare on that mistaken notion.

OK, if you have read this far you might be snickering that I am a devious and clever guy by avoiding the Big Question of whether or not Biden screwed this up and if he could have done more earlier on to make this a much cleaner exit.

It’s a legit if secondary question and one that nobody can really answer, sorry. I maintain my view that once it is was clear the US was *really* leaving, this sort of ending was inevitable.

The paltry number of troops still in Afghanistan when Biden came to office was hardly enough to hold a country of 40 million, where the Taliban already had a massive footprint and where the population was sick of endless war.

The only mistake Biden made was to trust the “consensus view” of the national security and Pentagon blob that he probably had 2 or 3 or maybe 6 months of margin before the Afghan government fell and the Taliban took over. On that latter point of inevitable Taliban rule, everybody knew it was a certainty. Just like Kissinger and Nixon knew in 1973 that they were making way for the insurgents to take power.

I think Ryan Grim of The Intercept has summed up this “tragedy” as well as anybody:

“The only way for there to have been an orderly transfer of power in the wake of the U.S. departure was for the process to have been negotiated as a transfer of power. And to negotiate a transfer of power requires acknowledging — and here’s the hard part for the U.S. — that power is transferring.

“Therein lies the contradiction: An orderly exit required admitting defeat and negotiating the unutterable: surrender to the Taliban.”

“Instead, the U.S. preferred to maintain the fiction that it was handing over power to the Afghan government, whatever that was, and to former President Ashraf Ghani. We would rather risk the chaos we’re now witnessing than admit defeat. After all, it’s mostly not our lives on the line anymore, but rather the lives of Afghans who helped us over the past 20 years.”

“And no amount of time and preparation would have fully resolved that problem, because the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, in league with the State Department’s special visa program, is not designed to work. It can take an average of 800 days for an application to process, by which time Biden may no longer even be president. And those are the successful applications. We are not a country that places any value on helping desperate people migrate to our shores, and to paraphrase Rumsfeld again, you retreat from war as the country you are, not as the one you might wish to be.”

Joe Biden is catching hell over this politically and that might increase the already excellent chance of the Trumplicans taking back the House next year. So it goes in the politics of empire. Sad.

I, for one, am pleased that Joe Biden of all people took the enormous risk of ending this war. I am also proud of the ongoing airlift that has rescued tens of thousands with more to come.

In the meantime, welcome to Withdrawal. It’s a tough time but you eventually ride it out and get past it. +

The Final Retrograde from Afghanistan Has Officially Begun
By Tara Copp

The U.S. military has begun the process of withdrawing from Hamid Karzai International Airport but pledged to continue to evacuate people despite threats to the dwindling force and its outbound aircraft, the Pentagon said Saturday.  

Read more »

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