Nexus of Thought: Who is principally to blame for the Afghanistan disaster?

(My answer on Quora)

For the disaster as it stands right now it is Joe Biden. The mess occurred on his watch. He is the face of the United States. Admittingly there are complexities but in virtually every facet of the practical his administration handled this situation poorly. Biden needs to own it. His honeymoon is over.

The advance of the Taliban source: BBC

Having said that though there is plenty of additional blame to go around. Lets look at the legacy of the other Presidents with regard to Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton – Clinton reluctantly welcomed the Taliban into power in the 90s as he believed that they would bring about a necessary stability in the country following the turbulent times that had inflicted Afghanistan in the 15+ years prior. It was also under the Administration of Clinton that Al Qaeda grew into a potent force for Global Jihad.

George W. Bush – After 911 Bush was correct in going after the Taliban for their support and harboring of Al Qaeda terrorists including at one time Osama Bin Laden. He erred by transforming the original mission of ousting Al Qaeda and punishing the Taliban for their intransigence, into an era of nation building. The US was not equipped to do so. Oddly enough Bush campaigned in 2000 against nation building.

While the intent of many Americans to do ‘good’ in the aftermath of the Taliban barbarism is commendable, the reality is that this was a political minefield from the get go that was destined to sacrifice such admirable intent on an altar sustained by mixed loyalties and inept local leadership.

It didn’t help as well that the US lost primary focus in Afghanistan by turning their attention to a second front in Iraq. The Good War festered as a result.

Barack Obama - Seeking to rectify the situation US troop numbers increased in Afghanistan during the first of Obama’s terms going from a level of about 35K to 100K. A great deal of this surge was intended to train and bolster the Afghan forces preparing them for the eventuality of a US withdrawal in the future. By the end of Obama’s second term the number fell drastically to 8400. The intention was to drop the number further to 5500 but Taliban resistance was proving to be more resilient than expected. Obama had slowed down the march towards an intended withdrawal having seen the consequences of his rash actions elsewhere in Iraq with the subsequent growth of Daesh.

When he left office US forces had been in Afghanistan for fifteen years. Had the situation improved? Not really. The Taliban still enjoyed support in their strongholds and the popular wisdom was that without US backing the Afghan government would be hard pressed to prevent them from making gains. Afghanistan was becoming a money pit swallowing in excess of $100 billion US dollars per year. Was there an end in sight? It didn’t look like it. Obama’s focus anyway was on Syria and his Iranian Deal. He did start peace talks secretly with the Taliban. More was to follow.

Donald Trump – Trump made eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan a priority especially after ISIS had been rolled back in Iraq/Syria. The Doha Agreement reached in February 2020 with the Taliban was a step in the right direction but there should have been more direct involvement by the Afghan government at the time. This did occur later but the stress placed on the Afghan government to agree to prisoner swaps placed undue pressure on the Ghani Presidency. In addition a timetable of May 1st for full withdrawal was overly ambitious. The deal though was conditional on the Taliban meeting obligations. This was not to be.

Who else deserves blame?

Ashraf Ghani - He was President of Afghanistan from 2014 to 2021. Ghani could never shake the fact that he was too much of an academic and not enough of a pragmatist. The Taliban viewed him as a US pawn and he certainly reinforced that belief by the amount of time he spent lobbying American Congressmen on behalf of his Administration. Unlike his predecessor Hamad Karzai he lacked the street smarts necessary in dealing with the Taliban. His decision to vacate the Presidential Palace on August 15th is widely regard as an act of cowardice that helped expedite the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and further weaken the Afghan government leading to the inevitable. To many Ghani was seen as an illegitimate President considering the cloud that existed over his Presidential win against Abdullah Abdullah. This did not serve him well in his hour of need.

Ashraf Ghani source: NDTV

Hamid Karzai – Karzai is/was a wheeler dealer and that helped him to some extent in his relationship with the Taliban. However his Presidency of Afghanistan (2001-2014) was fraught with corruption. He regularly undermined NATO and the US and at times looked to be more of a problem than the solution. None of this helped during the perilous period of nation building. To his credit he has remained in Kabul after its fall. Who knows what his fate will be? I would not be surprised if the Taliban include him somewhere in their government to create the illusion that they have somehow moderated.

Hamid Karzai source: Brooking Institution

US Military and Afghan Military Leadership – The US forces did a stellar job in defeating the Taliban in 2001. They are not by definition a police force but the regular troops did well under these difficult circumstances following a change in the the initial mandate. However the same cannot be said for the high ranking military brass who had twenty years to train an Afghan fighting force and prepare the country for eventual US troop withdrawal. The Afghan forces were well supplied but at the end of the day appeared to lack the leadership to fight against the Taliban.

Why were some of the basic mistakes from Vietnam repeated? Why were the Afghan forces so inept? Even Joe Biden was shocked. How did the intelligence for both fail so badly when the 11th hour came? These are the big questions that need answers. With over 2448 dead US servicemen and women over the course of the campaign the Pentagon must deliver them.

Billions spent on Afghan army ultimately benefited Taliban

WASHINGTON (AP) — Built and trained at a two-decade cost of $83 billion, Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly and completely — in some cases without a shot fired — that the ultimate beneficiary of the American investment turned out to be the Taliban.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba2944eb43392a0ad8ffffb25f

So why is it ultimately Joe Biden’s fault?

As mentioned it is his grandiose SNAFU, as the disaster occurred on his watch. The buck stops somewhere and this falls under the responsibility of the holder of the Oval Office. Biden made several key mistakes that reflect negatively on his competency.

1. He withdrew air support at a critical time that was necessary to assist the Afghan forces in the face of the Taliban advance. Air support has always been part of US military dogma and it certainly framed the training that the Afghan forces had received. In the hour of greatest needed it was lacking.

2. The Biden Administration should have earlier on punished the Taliban for their flagrant aggression of agreements well prior to the due date for withdrawal. A Taliban upsurge against Afghani troops should never have been tolerated. A failure to do so further emboldened the Taliban.

3. A detailed contingency plan for the withdrawal of those Afghans who had assisted the US should have been made clear. This carried it with it a moral obligation. A great deal of the chaos that is currently unfolding could have been avoided.

Situations like this could have been mitigated for and avoided Source: Markets Insider

4. Biden showed poor leadership and a lack of understanding of his own intelligence reports. He greatly overestimated the Afghan Army and underestimated the Taliban drive. His comments in this regard dating back to July are both comical and tragic.

5. He clearly seemed out of touch with the reality of the situation, delayed communication until absolutely necessary and seemed to be issuing paper threats to the Taliban. His spokespeople, asking the Taliban to cooperate to avoid International repercussions should they act inappropriately, represents a disturbing pathos.

Since Biden has no means to enforce such action after withdrawal, it makes the US look weak. At times it looked as though he was literally begging the Taliban to let the US evacuate in peace. It is no wonder that the Chinese propaganda are having such a field day in depicting the US as an unreliable ally and a paper tiger.

Now Biden did use the excuse that Trump left him with the poisoned chalice of withdrawal that he had to solve, thus apparently absolving him of fault. His apologists have repeated this ad nauseum.

However this argument is beyond pathetic and ignores the lead up toward the withdrawal situation. For one he clearly owns points 1-5 above. In addition Biden has always been hawkish about leaving Afghanistan. Well before Trump in fact. He actually butted heads with Obama on this issue during his tenure as VP.

If Biden truly opposed the withdrawal he could have always cancelled the Agreement citing Taliban violations. There was a contingency built into the agreement to do just that and Biden could have acted. Besides which even if there wasn’t such a loophole Biden has had no problems reversing Trump era policy elsewhere. If he really wanted to he could have nixed Doha as well. He didn’t as he himself favored withdrawal. In fact he saw it a positive as the majority of Americans idea with the idea.

The decision to withdraw was the correct one. The manner in which it was carried out was was a tragedy of errors. It will take some time before American credibility is restored. Excuses for an awful carry through won’t suffice. This was incompetency at its finest made worse by the way he threw regular Afghan troops under the bus.

Sources:

The Bin Laden Attack That Two Presidents Failed to Answer

Al Qaeda killed 17 U.S. sailors in its October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, but neither the outgoing Clinton administration nor the incoming Bush administration retaliated.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bin-laden-attack-that-the-u-s-failed-to-answer-11547139147

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/11/05/how-afghanistan-went-unlisted-as-terrorist-sponsor/903bfb89-5877-4e48-87c6-4d76d906fbac/

Mullah Omar Called Washington in 1998, New Documents Show

Washington, August 18, 2005 - UPDATE - The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan told a top Taliban official in September 2000 that the U.S. "was not out to destroy the Taliban," but the "UBL [Osama bin Laden] issue is supremely important," according to declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, show how years of U.S. diplomacy with the Taliban, combined with pressure on Pakistan, and attempts to employ Saudi cooperation still failed to compel the Taliban to expel bin Laden. Harboring bin Laden, but hesitant to sever diplomatic ties with the U.S. completely, the Taliban claimed there was insufficient evidence to convict bin Laden of terrorism, going so far as to say that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The newly declassified documents also show that State Department officials rejected Taliban claims that the U.S. supported bin Laden during the Soviet occupation. U.S. officials clarify that, although Osama bin Laden may have fought with other U.S.-funded anti-Soviet resistance groups in Afghanistan, " we had never heard his name during that period and did not support him at that time. " Washington, September 11, 2004 - Mullah Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, initiated a phone call to Washington - his only known direct contact with U.S. officials - two days after President Clinton sent cruise missiles to destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998, according to newly-obtained documents posted on the Web by the National Security Archive. According to the documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Omar denied knowing of any "evidence that bin Laden had engaged in or planned any terrorist acts while on Afghan soil." [ Doc 2 ]. The U.S. State Department responded by providing evidence of bin Laden's terrorist activities in one of ultimately thirty-three contacts with the Taliban , thirty by the Clinton administration and three by the Bush administration before 9/11. All diplomatic attempts to get the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden ultimately failed. In a January 2004 interview with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the 9/11 commission asked "why the State Department had so long pursu

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB134/index.htm

CHART: How The U.S. Troop Levels In Afghanistan Have Changed Under Obama

Once upon a time, President Obama said he wanted to pull almost all troops out of Afghanistan. That has proved way harder than he thought.

https://www.npr.org/2016/07/06/484979294/chart-how-the-u-s-troop-levels-in-afghanistan-have-changed-under-obama

Peace talks with US started secretly under Obama: Taliban spokesperson