The amount of intellectual dishonesty by suregeaholics and others is disturbing, to say the least. And the tragic events that occurred on Thursday morning are sad and will be so for a long time. However, probably the most frustrating thing of the last couple of days is to see how quickly a convenient, yet totally unproven narrative was formed. And how quickly Americans are willing to shift blame from themselves to anyone else. There is only one party to blame for the tragic loss of life this week in Afghanistan, and that is the terrorists who perpetrated it.
Getting out of Afghanistan is still the right thing for the United States to do – regardless of what tragedies may occur in the days to come. Because being there has not been in the interest of the United States for a long, long time – and the job of the President of the United States is to advance US interests first.
And to all those posting those disgusting Biden stickers with the red bloodstain on the letters, there is really only one greeting for them:
Drop Dead!
The overall wisdom of leaving has not changed – in the end, Biden was right to do so. His decision to leave Afghanistan is the right one, and it is what the American people want. Plenty of documentation of my advocacy on this position going all the way back to 2010. Just look through the archives here.
And if you need a more convincing argument, here is one for you to look at:
These criticisms ignore the developments of the past decade and downplay the impact of last May’s announcement. Even the Biden administration’s harshest detractors mostly concede that the United States would eventually have had to withdraw from Afghanistan. According to the U.S. military, the Taliban was stronger this year than it had been since 2001, while the Afghan defense forces were suffering from high rates of attrition. At some point, the attack on the Afghan government would have come, and U.S. troops would have been caught in the middle—leaving the U.S. to decide between surging thousands of troops or withdrawal.
It is fundamentally wrong to confuse the tactical with the strategic, and until I know EXACTLY what assumptions and COA’s the CENTCOM planners worked under – and what interactions they had with the JCS and WH, I think it is really wrong and premature to make a judgment. People are not going to want to hear that. I don’t care – it’s right.
And finally, I will refer you to the following Twitter thread from David Rothkopf:
He’s right, and thanks to the folks over at Balloon Juice, we are able to see the rest of the thread transcribed.
Every one of the cheerleaders who think they know how to do it better should read it:
That’s not to say some critiques are not warranted. They certainly are. But, some of the arguments being used are so indefensible they require us to question the critics’ motives or expertise. Here are some of the worst ones.
1. Biden owns this. (No. The authors of 20 yrs of war own this. The corrupt Afghan govt & the Afghan military who stood down own this. The Trump Admin that set the deadlines, drew down the troops, left behind the materiel & released 5000 Taliban own this.)
2. Well, at least he owns the chaos surrounding our exit. (No. There’s no way that the Taliban regaining control would not have led to chaos w/many thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the rule of a thug regime. Whenever we started airlifting folks out, it would’ve started.)
3. Well, at least he should have been better prepared for the chaos. (Ok. I’m gonna give you this one. But having said that, efforts to prepare were rebuffed. The Afghan gov’t did not want the US beginning mass evacuations for the reasons cited above.)
4. The US could have given those in jeopardy more warning. (No. We began discussing leaving seriously 12 yrs ago. Trump announced he wanted out when he ran & signed a deal w/an earlier deadline last yr. Biden ran saying he would leave. State warned people to leave in April.)
5. The US abandoned our allies. (No. Some of those allies left before we did. Others were well aware of US discussions re: departure, knew of the Trump deal. And there has been close coordination with allies throughout this evacuation process.)
6. The evacuation was bungled. (No. It started off badly. But it is still underway. It is currently one of the biggest airlifts in human history and within hours we will pass 100,000 safely flown out of Kabul. Actually, it has turned out to be a masterful logistical feat.)
7. Taliban control of Afg will make it a potential breeding ground for terror again. (There was no scenario in which they didn’t gain control. The US has many means to respond to terror threats. Despite US military presence in Afg. the Taliban steadily gained ground for years.)
8. People will be left behind. (It is wildly unrealistic to think the US could remove everyone at risk from Afg. What’s being done is above and beyond expectations. Other forms of political, diplomatic & economic pressure must be used to promote human rights in Afghanistan.)
9. We could easily have left troops there indefinitely. (No. There was a cost to that and a risk. The risk grew as the Taliban grew in strength. Trump accelerated that with the release of prisoners and his announced departure. Staying would have required a bigger investment.)
10. But we have left troops in Germany and Korea. (Not comparable. Those are allied nations facing real imminent threats from major enemies who pose a strategic risk to the United States. We have no similar on-going interest in Afghanistan.)
11. But the troops could have protected women and girls. (First, as noted, the Taliban was gaining strength for years–despite the presence of the troops. Second, troops are not the means we advance such interests anywhere else. It is not a sustainable or effective approach.)
12. But Biden says human rights are at the center of our foreign policy. (That can be true without deploying troops to confront all threats to rights. It must be. Because we’ll never do that. Are critics suggesting deployments now to Ethiopia? Myanmar? To protect women elsewhere?)
13. It’s not about getting out of Afghanistan. That’s a distraction from the issue at hand. (No. It is about getting out of Afghanistan. It is about ending a 20 yr war. It is about acknowledging a massive US foreign policy failure & shifting to new priorities. That’s the point.)
14. Biden was part of the problem, he’s known about this all along. (No. Biden has been arguing to wind this down for 12 years. His view was over-ruled by President Obama. And after 9/11 almost everyone supported going in after Al Qaeda. For good reason.)
15. But…but…it’s messy and painful. (As @stephenwertheim
has pointed out. You can’t lose a war and make it look like you’ve won. Getting out was right. Some chaos was inevitable. The airlift is a major logistical achievement.)