There's chaos and risk in Afghanistan exit, but Biden critics are getting it mostly wrong

[babylonsister]

OPINION
There's chaos and risk in Afghanistan exit, but Biden critics are getting it mostly wrong
We have no ongoing security interest in Afghanistan, and we don't send troops everywhere to protect women and human rights. We do that in other ways.
David Rothkopf
Opinion columnist


The intellectual dishonesty in critiques of how President Joe Biden is handling the U.S. departure from Afghanistan has been off the charts. That's not to say some of them are not warranted. They certainly are. The swift fall of Kabul to the Taliban was predictable, and there is a case that we should have been better prepared for it. And there is no doubt that the risks we faced were great, as shown by the Kabul airport attack last week that claimed the lives of at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops.

But some of the arguments we are hearing are indefensible. Among the worst:

1. Biden owns this.

No. The authors of 20 years of war own this. The corrupt Afghan government and the Afghan military who stood down own this. The Trump administration that set the deadlines, drew down the troops, left behind the materiel and released up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners owns 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 with many thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the rule of a thug regime. Whenever we began to airlift folks out, it would have started.

3. Well, at least he should have been better prepared for the chaos.

I'm going to give you this one, but it should be noted that efforts to prepare were rebuffed. The Afghan government did not want the United States beginning mass evacuations for the reasons cited in No. 2.

more...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/08/29/afghanistan-war-exit-joe-biden-critics-wrong/5639051001/

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. Would those who are saying that we need to stay in Afghanistan...

Think that our soldiers should be under the control of the taliban?

Because that is how any scenario of us staying would play out. I, for one, find this outcome to be unacceptable.

I’m with President Biden on this one.

[karynnj]

2. Good article , but it deals with just the rational arguments

The Trump aligned arguments are spurious making the argument that Biden failed to do what Trump set out in the manner Trump would have done , which would have led to no chaos and a unified government. In fact, the Afghani argument had not been included in the deal with the Taliban and they stopped processing the SIV visas over a year before he would have withdrawn per his agreement had he left. You can't ever know what would have happened on the branch of history not taken, but it is clear he was not planning to evacuate Afghanis.

It is interesting to compare the reaction of media and Americans to Trump's decision to pull out of the area where we were backing the Kurds fighting ISIS. Even this week, Turkey is attacking our allies there. Trump did not worry about any of our allies -- though he did worry about the oil there! The media was initially both stunned and furious, but then it became an "old story". One observation - Trump's deserting the Kurds was not given even a millisecond during the elections.

One thought I have from the various MSM accounts is that their view is somewhat shaped by their deep disappointment that a very expensive - in terms of lives and treasure - that they supported with pride obviously failed completely. For many especially on the left, the idea that we were still there to fight for human rights and bettering the lives of Afghans, Afghanistan became connected to their values. Making the failure about how the withdrawal of the coalition was done means they can avoid self examination of whether what they supported failed - and it probably did fail. What is happening now is a fight to control who gets blamed - an issue I would argue that Democrats are most sensitive to. (Consider many blame "losing" Vietnam on the Democrats even though Nixon and then Ford were in office.)

We know from Congressional hearings in the Senate and House that Afghanistan's various governments were for the most part corrupt and I am shocked that "their elections" were cited in some articles as accomplishments. It took extraordinary US propping up to even have the pretense of elected government. Even South Vietnam was more functional - and they were pretty bad!

Twenty years is nearly a generation. If the values spoken of (women's rights and education for girls) really took hold, society would have changed. This would mean that all the people 20 - 30 would have spent the time since they were at most 10 living under western values. You would think that that age group would include a significant part of those in Afghanistan who would push for change - maybe later at a more auspicious time. (Yes, I am doing exactly what I just said the liberal MSM is doing - lookingfor a silver lining that could ultimately give value to those 20 years.)

It will be a long time before historians not personally tied to this will access the value of being there ... and the consequences of leaving.