Obama and Afghanistan

[MagSeven]

You'd think that a trained 300,000 man army would be able to hold up for a few months at least. How could anyone not have seen this result coming? Trump's agreement with the Taliban never included the Afghan government and did nothing to bar the Taliban from fighting Afghan government troops or from capturing Afghan provinces on its own. Back in April, Trump lauded Biden for following through.

[In the Corn]

It does amaze me how everyone is laying this at Biden's feet as his failure. There is little doubt this would have happened at any point in the past 20 years. Trump started this plan, and amazingly Republicans have forgot that Trump started this.

Adam Kinzinger is the only Republican I can respect with his comments about this.

[chancellor]

It's days like these where I really miss Bob Kohm. So, alas, I'll try the Kohmian imitation, sans soju.

Both the Trump administrations and Biden administrations were right about one thing: we had to get out. That put both of them ahead of the Bush and Obama administrations, which for seven and eight years respectively, were too ignorant and/or stubborn to pull the plug on the poorly thought out Powell doctrine, which essentially summed up to "you break it, you fix it".

And, puh-leeez, stop the whining about how the Biden administration was handed a Charlie-Foxtrot on this by the Trump administration. One of the main reasons Biden was elected was, presumably, that his administration would be professional and handle major issues like this, well, professionally. The failure to execute ran through four key branches of the Biden administration: Intelligence, Military, State and PR. So let's start at the top.

The intelligence failures on this mission should result in ends of careers, though it's doubtful it will. The CIA has been bleating for years about lack of HumInt resources; if they were not fully loaded in Afghanistan, it's certainly not due to lack of funding nor should it have been inability to provide a better alternative. TechInt has made huge jumps in the twenty years we were in Afghanistan. Once again the CIA analysts failed to sort the signal from the noise; the only question that really remains is how strong the signal was. But the CIA failed at every level - politically, in understanding how quickly the Taliban could manipulate and turn leaders, militarily, in understanding the capabilities of both the Taliban and the Afghan army, and in counter-intelligence, where the Taliban had all of our systems thoroughly penetrated. It's difficult for me to even comprehend the scope of the failure here, but it's vast. The president has been very poorly served by his NSA, which is not entirely surprising given he lacks both military and intelligence background.

This isn't merely a CIA failure; the military intelligence failures run the gamut of every branch, though most concentrated in the Army. It's patently clear the training failed to produce troops that were ready for field action; it's also patently clear this message was not either understood or transmitted to leadership. The speed at which the Taliban forces could move and take locations with little armor and no air support was also grossly underestimated. Even our capability to defend Kabul was overstated and under implemented.

This rolled into the military failures. No plan was in place for an extended defense of Bagram AFB; the situation was so bad that the Air Force had to create and ready to implement a plan to put B-52s in the air with a goal of destroying the jets on the ground so they would not fall into the hands of the Taliban. That also means there was no plan for evacuation, including proper logistical support. As a result, we've landing troops in a city that's already partially to mostly overrun, to get people out via an airport that has had its own security forces abandon their posts, with a run between the embassy and airport that could at least partly be in enemy hands. Did the military not realize that Black Hawk Down was not written as a How To manual? The training failure extends for years, and through four administrations. Planning, training, execution...all complete and total failures.

Nor has State shined in their execution, though their failure level is different than Intelligence and Military. They certainly contributed nothing to counteract the missed information and misinformation coming from Intelligence. They failed in having an embassy ready to evacuate in 48 hours, a requirement since the debacle in Iran in 1979. They failed to leverage early work by Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration to improve relations with neighboring countries. It's possible SecState Blinken has given the president better advice about the speed at which Afghanistan would deteriorate, but if so, he was drowned out, which is a different kind of failure.

And PR....geez, what a catastrophe.

[GwynnInTheHall]

It's days like these where I really miss Bob Kohm. So, alas, I'll try the Kohmian imitation, sans soju.

Both the Trump administrations and Biden administrations were right about one thing: we had to get out. That put both of them ahead of the Bush and Obama administrations, which for seven and eight years respectively, were too ignorant and/or stubborn to pull the plug on the poorly thought out Powell doctrine, which essentially summed up to "you break it, you fix it".

And, puh-leeez, stop the whining about how the Biden administration was handed a Charlie-Foxtrot on this by the Trump administration. One of the main reasons Biden was elected was, presumably, that his administration would be professional and handle major issues like this, well, professionally. The failure to execute ran through four key branches of the Biden administration: Intelligence, Military, State and PR. So let's start at the top.

The intelligence failures on this mission should result in ends of careers, though it's doubtful it will. The CIA has been bleating for years about lack of HumInt resources; if they were not fully loaded in Afghanistan, it's certainly not due to lack of funding nor should it have been inability to provide a better alternative. TechInt has made huge jumps in the twenty years we were in Afghanistan. Once again the CIA analysts failed to sort the signal from the noise; the only question that really remains is how strong the signal was. But the CIA failed at every level - politically, in understanding how quickly the Taliban could manipulate and turn leaders, militarily, in understanding the capabilities of both the Taliban and the Afghan army, and in counter-intelligence, where the Taliban had all of our systems thoroughly penetrated. It's difficult for me to even comprehend the scope of the failure here, but it's vast. The president has been very poorly served by his NSA, which is not entirely surprising given he lacks both military and intelligence background.

This isn't merely a CIA failure; the military intelligence failures run the gamut of every branch, though most concentrated in the Army. It's patently clear the training failed to produce troops that were ready for field action; it's also patently clear this message was not either understood or transmitted to leadership. The speed at which the Taliban forces could move and take locations with little armor and no air support was also grossly underestimated. Even our capability to defend Kabul was overstated and under implemented.

This rolled into the military failures. No plan was in place for an extended defense of Bagram AFB; the situation was so bad that the Air Force had to create and ready to implement a plan to put B-52s in the air with a goal of destroying the jets on the ground so they would not fall into the hands of the Taliban. That also means there was no plan for evacuation, including proper logistical support. As a result, we've landing troops in a city that's already partially to mostly overrun, to get people out via an airport that has had its own security forces abandon their posts, with a run between the embassy and airport that could at least partly be in enemy hands. Did the military not realize that Black Hawk Down was not written as a How To manual? The training failure extends for years, and through four administrations. Planning, training, execution...all complete and total failures.

Nor has State shined in their execution, though their failure level is different than Intelligence and Military. They certainly contributed nothing to counteract the missed information and misinformation coming from Intelligence. They failed in having an embassy ready to evacuate in 48 hours, a requirement since the debacle in Iran in 1979. They failed to leverage early work by Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration to improve relations with neighboring countries. It's possible SecState Blinken has given the president better advice about the speed at which Afghanistan would deteriorate, but if so, he was drowned out, which is a different kind of failure.

And PR....geez, what a catastrophe.

Couple of questions.

#1 What, in your opinion, could have been done differently during the withdrawal to prevent it from being a failure?

#2 Why are ANY Govt. agencies abroad still using analog files? From my perspective, the only reason would to assure that our own citizens can never access certain information that might be looked upon unfavorably--but that's just a guess. Shredding documents in 2021? So very Falcon and the Snowman.

#3 Again, it's 2021, how can we NOT be designing Kill switches and fail-safes that destroy critical tech into every device used in combat, national security etc. Specifically for cases such as these where it falls into enemy hands?

as to the PR thing, that's not even a thing anymore. We all know who Biden is and even if he'd pulled this off without a hitch, he'd have taken a hit in the Media from the right as they are want to do nowadays. Could this have been handled better--sure--but when in the past 40 years has ANY US Military campaign, operation not ended in a cluster fuck?

[Bene Futuis]

Trump started this plan, and amazingly Republicans have forgot that Trump started this.

They didn't forget - they are actively whitewashing the past. The RNC website touted former guy's amazing skills with negotiating with the Taliban but have scrubbed their website of the same - there is now some snarky 404 error message referring to Biden or some other immature nonsense. Trump and his people let 5,000 Taliban fighters out of prison, one of whom is now leading the Afghani caliphate - nice pictures in the Oval Office of Mike Pompeo grinning with this dude across from him. This catastrophe is an indictment on nation building by the US but of course the GOP is trying to use it as political ammunition because they are unmoored and rudderless, standing for nothing and falling for everything.

[chancellor]

Couple of questions.

#1 What, in your opinion, could have been done differently during the withdrawal to prevent it from being a failure?

#2 Why are ANY Govt. agencies abroad still using analog files? From my perspective, the only reason would to assure that our own citizens can never access certain information that might be looked upon unfavorably--but that's just a guess. Shredding documents in 2021? So very Falcon and the Snowman.

#3 Again, it's 2021, how can we NOT be designing Kill switches and fail-safes that destroy critical tech into every device used in combat, national security etc. Specifically for cases such as these where it falls into enemy hands?

as to the PR thing, that's not even a thing anymore. We all know who Biden is and even if he'd pulled this off without a hitch, he'd have taken a hit in the Media from the right as they are want to do nowadays. Could this have been handled better--sure--but when in the past 40 years has ANY US Military campaign, operation not ended in a cluster fuck?

#1 - Clearly, at least to me, is the dismal planning that was done. There's simply no excuse for the failure in this area. If there wasn't adequate time since the plan to evacuate was announced, there's little reason that the evacuation/departure could have been delayed a reasonable period of time (say, another 90 days) to accomplish that planning. It's possible better plans were presented and rejected. But to not be ready at all for a much rapid takeover by the Taliban is a great failure. In addition, to not prepare for a defense in depth of the Kabul area from the embassy through the airport was another planning failure - or, worse yet, a failure of will, which would frighten me even more if true.

Tied directly to this is the institutional lack of acceptance/awareness of the dismal state of the Afghan army. Given how staggeringly badly this has gone, I sincerely expect at least some, and more likely many, NCOs and lower-level officers were warning their superiors that the Afghan army would perform poorly, and it was a message at some level that no one wanted to hear - and was likely not forwarded up the chain of command. Or if it was, it was dismissed as a minor risk.

I wish I could point to a specific area in intelligence that could have been fixed, but that's not even possible. The intelligence systems were proven to be gravely flawed back in the second Bush administration, never fixed there; nor fixed during the Obama or Trump administrations.

#2 - You could be right, at least in part. Another reason, I suspect, is the challenges faced with digital infrastructure in Afghanistan. But I also suspect State failed to adequately plan based on their belief they'd have a lot more advance notice before a collapse.

#3 - I suspect the counter argument to that is anything we program into a system can be hacked and used against us. Mind you, I agree with you at least in part on this topic, but the IT guys on the board can comment on that better than I. I haven't hacked for a very, very long time.

#4 - The TV part, again I agree in part. No GOP member will ever be right on CNN or MSNBC, and no Dem will ever be right on Fox; it's similar on major websites/aggregators out there, too. However, the Biden administration isn't just taking it on the chin from Fox. Jake Tapper absolutely demolished the SecState on CNN, and MSNBC had a group discussing the "Failure In Afghanistan". They've had some self-owns that are simply inexcusable. They're getting killed by Dems in the House, ex-Obama administration flaks (admittedly, this is rich since they did nothing to fix it either...), and even Debby Dingall said "It does feel like the fall of Saigon today, I'm not going to lie”.

[The Feral Slasher]

#1 - Clearly, at least to me, is the dismal planning that was done. There's simply no excuse for the failure in this area. If there wasn't adequate time since the plan to evacuate was announced, there's little reason that the evacuation/departure could have been delayed a reasonable period of time (say, another 90 days) to accomplish that planning. It's possible better plans were presented and rejected. But to not be ready at all for a much rapid takeover by the Taliban is a great failure. In addition, to not prepare for a defense in depth of the Kabul area from the embassy through the airport was another planning failure - or, worse yet, a failure of will, which would frighten me even more if true.

Tied directly to this is the institutional lack of acceptance/awareness of the dismal state of the Afghan army. Given how staggeringly badly this has gone, I sincerely expect at least some, and more likely many, NCOs and lower-level officers were warning their superiors that the Afghan army would perform poorly, and it was a message at some level that no one wanted to hear - and was likely not forwarded up the chain of command. Or if it was, it was dismissed as a minor risk.

I wish I could point to a specific area in intelligence that could have been fixed, but that's not even possible. The intelligence systems were proven to be gravely flawed back in the second Bush administration, never fixed there; nor fixed during the Obama or Trump administrations.

#2 - You could be right, at least in part. Another reason, I suspect, is the challenges faced with digital infrastructure in Afghanistan. But I also suspect State failed to adequately plan based on their belief they'd have a lot more advance notice before a collapse.

#3 - I suspect the counter argument to that is anything we program into a system can be hacked and used against us. Mind you, I agree with you at least in part on this topic, but the IT guys on the board can comment on that better than I. I haven't hacked for a very, very long time.

#4 - The TV part, again I agree in part. No GOP member will ever be right on CNN or MSNBC, and no Dem will ever be right on Fox; it's similar on major websites/aggregators out there, too. However, the Biden administration isn't just taking it on the chin from Fox. Jake Tapper absolutely demolished the SecState on CNN, and MSNBC had a group discussing the "Failure In Afghanistan". They've had some self-owns that are simply inexcusable. They're getting killed by Dems in the House, ex-Obama administration flaks (admittedly, this is rich since they did nothing to fix it either...), and even Debby Dingall said "It does feel like the fall of Saigon today, I'm not going to lie”.

I haven't really been following the details of the collapse, in the big picture getting out of there is the right choice, and long overdue. Any crappy planning/execution of the exit pales in comparison I suspect. EDIT: The incredible collapse of the Afghan government just confirms how this mission was doomed from the start and a complete fairy tale.

Regarding your comments on point 1 and the awareness of the dismal state of Afghan forces....the whole war has been based on people choosing to believe lies and deny reality, or being incentivized to play along. Everyone should have known this was going to happen.

[DMT]

Plenty of people did know this was going to happen, but unfortunately they get ignored in favor of the pro-war class.

[The Feral Slasher]

Plenty of people did know this was going to happen, but unfortunately they get ignored in favor of the pro-war class.

The pro-war class knew it too. They just wanted to keep make money/power by continuing the fight. We could have stayed another 20 years and delayed the inevitable, but it would have ended the same. The whole point of continuing a presence in Afghanistan was so people could make money off of it.

Maybe Chance can give us a Bob Kohm response. If only we wouldn't have gotten involved in Iraq, and just focused on Afghanistan we would have won this war, lol.

[umjewman]

The pro-war class knew it too. They just wanted to keep make money/power by continuing the fight. We could have stayed another 20 years and delayed the inevitable, but it would have ended the same. The whole point of continuing a presence in Afghanistan was so people could make money off of it.

Maybe Chance can give us a Bob Kohm response. If only we wouldn't have gotten involved in Iraq, and just focused on Afghanistan we would have won this war, lol.

Reminds me of a history class I took in college. The professor was recalling a lecture he had in college and General Westmoreland came as a guest speaker. They asked what was the plan for Vietnam had we stayed and his response was more or less: if we continued the air campaign, we would have won eventually.

[chancellor]

Plenty of people did know this was going to happen, but unfortunately they get ignored in favor of the pro-war class.

In part, I agree with you. The part about the Afghan army holding out against the Taliban indefinitely was fantasy. I will admit that I did expect a 300,000 strong army that was trained to last longer against the Taliban than the Egyptian army did against Israel in 1967.

[The Feral Slasher]

Reminds me of a history class I took in college. The professor was recalling a lecture he had in college and General Westmoreland came as a guest speaker. They asked what was the plan for Vietnam had we stayed and his response was more or less: if we continued the air campaign, we would have won eventually.

it's true, if you spend enough money to bomb and kill everyone you will "win"

[rhd]

It's days like these where I really miss Bob Kohm. So, alas, I'll try the Kohmian imitation, sans soju.

Both the Trump administrations and Biden administrations were right about one thing: we had to get out. That put both of them ahead of the Bush and Obama administrations, which for seven and eight years respectively, were too ignorant and/or stubborn to pull the plug on the poorly thought out Powell doctrine, which essentially summed up to "you break it, you fix it".

And, puh-leeez, stop the whining about how the Biden administration was handed a Charlie-Foxtrot on this by the Trump administration. One of the main reasons Biden was elected was, presumably, that his administration would be professional and handle major issues like this, well, professionally. The failure to execute ran through four key branches of the Biden administration: Intelligence, Military, State and PR. So let's start at the top.

The intelligence failures on this mission should result in ends of careers, though it's doubtful it will. The CIA has been bleating for years about lack of HumInt resources; if they were not fully loaded in Afghanistan, it's certainly not due to lack of funding nor should it have been inability to provide a better alternative. TechInt has made huge jumps in the twenty years we were in Afghanistan. Once again the CIA analysts failed to sort the signal from the noise; the only question that really remains is how strong the signal was. But the CIA failed at every level - politically, in understanding how quickly the Taliban could manipulate and turn leaders, militarily, in understanding the capabilities of both the Taliban and the Afghan army, and in counter-intelligence, where the Taliban had all of our systems thoroughly penetrated. It's difficult for me to even comprehend the scope of the failure here, but it's vast. The president has been very poorly served by his NSA, which is not entirely surprising given he lacks both military and intelligence background.

This isn't merely a CIA failure; the military intelligence failures run the gamut of every branch, though most concentrated in the Army. It's patently clear the training failed to produce troops that were ready for field action; it's also patently clear this message was not either understood or transmitted to leadership. The speed at which the Taliban forces could move and take locations with little armor and no air support was also grossly underestimated. Even our capability to defend Kabul was overstated and under implemented.

This rolled into the military failures. No plan was in place for an extended defense of Bagram AFB; the situation was so bad that the Air Force had to create and ready to implement a plan to put B-52s in the air with a goal of destroying the jets on the ground so they would not fall into the hands of the Taliban. That also means there was no plan for evacuation, including proper logistical support. As a result, we've landing troops in a city that's already partially to mostly overrun, to get people out via an airport that has had its own security forces abandon their posts, with a run between the embassy and airport that could at least partly be in enemy hands. Did the military not realize that Black Hawk Down was not written as a How To manual? The training failure extends for years, and through four administrations. Planning, training, execution...all complete and total failures.

Nor has State shined in their execution, though their failure level is different than Intelligence and Military. They certainly contributed nothing to counteract the missed information and misinformation coming from Intelligence. They failed in having an embassy ready to evacuate in 48 hours, a requirement since the debacle in Iran in 1979. They failed to leverage early work by Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration to improve relations with neighboring countries. It's possible SecState Blinken has given the president better advice about the speed at which Afghanistan would deteriorate, but if so, he was drowned out, which is a different kind of failure.

And PR....geez, what a catastrophe.

Very well stated.

[The Feral Slasher]

Very well stated.

I disagree.



Maybe I misinterpret Chance's post, but I just don't see how a botched exit from Afghanistan compares to the apparently non newsworthy choice of continuing our operations there. Would anyone at this point prefer we stay for another decade ?


Edit: not saying the execution. Of our withdrawal was well done....but the important thing was to get out.

[GwynnInTheHall]

I disagree.



Maybe I misinterpret Chance's post, but I just don't see how a botched exit from Afghanistan compares to the apparently non newsworthy choice of continuing our operations there. Would anyone at this point prefer we stay for another decade ?


Edit: not saying the execution. Of our withdrawal was well done....but the important thing was to get out.

Exactly, get out, prevent any more American loss of life--who cares about how it looks, if they underestimated the Taliban or overestimated the Afghan army--loss of Military equipment or embassy. None of those things are of any consequence other than to lob at Biden in an effort to make him look bad (as if public speaking didn't do the job already)

It was a shit situation with no good ending.

Blame enough to go around all the way back to Operation Cyclone.

We're out, everyone's alive--let's focus on not doing this shit ever again.