Reflections on a disaster

As we mark the 23rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, a new congressional report on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan strikes an especially ominous note.

The 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda had their origin in the safe-haven of a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Twenty-plus years on, after a vast expenditure of blood and treasure, the Taliban controls Afghanistan again, and that troubled land once again offers safe haven to fanatics who still will our destruction.

The report, titled “Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chaos that Followed,” is the result of a three-year investigation led by Representative Michael McCaul, Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It is damning, a litany of miscalculation, failed intelligence, bad judgement, and an overriding concern for perception over reality.

Of course, in an election year, the report is being dismissed by Democrats as partisan. And it is, in the sense that it focuses on the failures of the Biden Administration in the weeks leading up to the chaotic and bloody final departure of Americans from Afghanistan in August 2021. The report elides the Trump Administration’s Doha Agreement that cut the Afghanistan national government out of the equation, and set the table for the Taliban surge that overwhelmed the country.

But the facts revealed in the report cannot really be disputed. The Biden Administration botched the withdrawal, and has never held itself accountable for it. Biden even bizarrely claimed that no American service members died on his watch — after 13 American service members and 170 Afghans died in a suicide bombing attack during the evacuation at the Kabul airport.

I guess you can write that off to cognitive decline, but that raises other questions. After all, Joe Biden is still the Commander in Chief.

The report indicates that Biden was hell-bent on immediate complete evacuation of Afghanistan, regardless of red flags raised by military and staff, despite Taliban violations of Doha, and regardless of the swiftly deteriorating conditions. His actions show clearly a Commander in Chief far more concerned about perceptions than about reality on the ground. Witness his final phone call with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in July 2021, a month before his government was overthrown:

“Hey look, I want to make it clear that I am not a military man any more than you are, but I have been meeting with our Pentagon folks, and our national security people, as you have with ours and yours, and as you know and I need not tell you, the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban…

“But I really think, I don’t know whether you’re aware, just how much the perception around the world is that this is looking like a losing proposition, which it is not, not that it necessarily is that, but so the conclusion I’m asking you to consider is to bring together everyone from (former Vice President Abdul Rashid) Dostum, to (former President Hamid) Karzai and in between, if they stand there and say they back the strategy you put together, and put a warrior in charge, you know a military man, (Defense Minister Bismillah) Khan in charge of executing that strategy, and that will change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think.”

Don’t address the dire situation on the ground — fix the perception.

Perception battles are still being waged: Don’t take accountability, blame everybody else. Claim that the chaos we saw wasn’t really chaos, that everything went fine, all things considered.

This shameful episode, which dishonors the blood, sweat, and tears so many honorable Americans spilled in good faith in Afghanistan, is made all the worse by the effort to shove it down a memory hole.

And, by the way, the U.S. has provided millions of dollars to the Taliban since the withdrawal.

If we, as a nation, close our eyes to this, we will open them again to see our adversaries and enemies emboldened by our failure.

And we can only pray that our fecklessness does not bring us another round of terror.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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