(Dobbs) We Did The Right Thing The Wrong Way
We're past the point of debating "stay or leave" Afghanistan. It's how we left that's bad.
“After two decades of war with American-led forces, the Taliban’s conquest of the country is all but complete.”
That was the horrifying headline in a mid-day news alert yesterday from The New York Times. This morning it’s no better. On CNN: “Taliban Take Afghanistan.” On Fox: “Afghans Clinging to American Aircraft Leaving Kabul Airport.” Thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and that’s how it ends.
We’re all distressed, whether we thought that it was critical to stay in Afghanistan and protect citizens sure to be oppressed by the Taliban, or that it was time to get out.
The issue now is, how we’re getting out. It’s a fiasco.
I’ve written about the U.S. withdrawal three times in just the past month and I’ll stick to my guns: we had to leave. Not because it was the “right” thing to do, but because there was no right thing to do. Having first seen these tough Taliban combatants more than 40 years ago when I covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan— then, they were the Mujahideen, fighting and beating the Soviet superpower with U.S. support— I believe it was inevitable that the war would end this way. I’m convinced, we couldn’t have stopped what’s happening now.
So when it came to getting out, there was no good choice. If we stayed, then the toll of American casualties was destined to rise, and we would have poured more money down what still might have turned out to be a bottomless hole. If we left, as we’re doing, we’d end up with this.
All accounts of Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw, announced back in mid-April, are that he kept asking his generals, if Afghanistan isn’t in a position to fight off the Taliban now, after the 80-plus billion dollars we’ve spent propping up its military, when will it be? “Just one more year of fighting in Afghanistan,” the president argued in July, “is not a solution but a recipe for being there indefinitely.”
Few of us want that.
But how we’ve pulled out is a different matter. We left badly.
First, because we broadcast our departure for heaven’s sake, and basically told the enemy when we’d abandon the war.
Second, because we did it with such stunning speed that it surprised even the Afghan government, and stranded thousands of Afghans who worked with the United States through 20 years of war. Now, if the Taliban target those who helped us as they probably will, many, especially those stuck far from any relief flights they might catch in Kabul, have to fend for themselves to stay alive.
And third, because we pretty clearly lacked something that strategists assert any country needs when it goes to war: an exit strategy. Retired general Douglas Lute, who served on the National Security Council under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, asks a simple question: “If everyone knew we were headed for the exits, why did we not have a plan over the past two years for making this work?” As Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute put it, “A responsible withdrawal needed more time and better preparation.”
This might explain why an orderly withdrawal has turned into a disorderly debacle.
Joe Biden should have known better. He has lived through too many wars where we got it wrong. Wars where we overestimated our power and underestimated the enemy’s. What’s more, his assurance in June that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely” was naive. Not to mention politically foolish. No politician should make an unequivocal statement that can so easily be proved wrong.
That’s why another headline yesterday, with political implications, also had to horrify Biden. Axios summed it up in two words: “Biden Stain.”
In the president’s defense though, three points.
First, our intelligence agencies, on which every president depends, were disastrously off the mark. They projected months, some saying even more than a year, before the Taliban would overrun the country. Shades of intel’s inept assessments of WMDs in Iraq.
Second, Biden is justified in saying his hands were tied and he had no choice but to pull out, thanks to his predecessor’s originally secret departure deal with the Taliban. Had he reneged on that, it’s pretty certain that the Taliban would have pulled off the gloves and gone into full-war mode with the United States.
Third, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said late yesterday during a virtual briefing with Congress of the precipitous collapse of Afghanistan’s U.S.-trained army, “You can’t buy willpower.” One can argue quite simply that when we see the speed at which the army crumbled— deprived of pay, food, and ammunition by its own corrupt government— Biden was right to give up the ghost.
But that doesn’t mean he gave it up the right way. He didn’t. Because he acted abruptly, and because an exit strategy evidently was only an illusion, he let the Taliban run us out of town.
Pity the poor people who can’t get out of town with us.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Greg, thank you again for your astute comments on a very difficult situation. I often lean to the old school thought of "withdraw into our own borders" and let everyone hash it out. I know that is not realistic, but I'm not sure what is. Ken A
Greg you missed one positive point, during our stay in Afghanistan to my knowledge there have been no terrorists attacks on the homeland. As I recall that was one of the USA'S primary missions. On the negative side you also missed the incompetence of our leader, the President, he is AWOL and his lack of candor and ability to tell the story will have many repercussion with our Allies. Just check the Australian press and TV.
What must Taiwan be thinking on our ability to assist them when the inevitable happens?
I agree that our intelligence is lacking and you are spot on that we did not belong there and once again lacked an exit strategy. The majority of our politicians lack the fundamental understanding and common sense to be interfering in other nations civil wars. That cannot even control what goes on at home!!!!