The Afghanistan evacuation decision tree

The New Neo Posted on by

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan is riddled with bad decisions. Whether they were intentionally bad and designed to harm the US I do not know, but in this post I’ll assume for the sake of argument that that was not the case and that they were simply very very bad decisions. Once that assumption is made, it seems to me that all of those bad decisions flowed from two initial and basic bad decisions, both set by Joe Biden (and/or some of his aides) and adhered to with great stubbornness and a total lack of flexible response to changing conditions.

The first terrible decision was to set a rigid date for withdrawal no matter what happened – a date chosen not for strategic reasons but for Biden’s idea of good PR. The Taliban insisted on the date as well after Biden had announced it. Since they realized that Biden was 100% committed to a total withdrawal on that date, he had no leverage with them to exercise even if he was capable of and willing to exercise it.

The second terrible decision by Biden was that he refused to order enough troops to manage the evacuation safely or smoothly. I’m no fan of the generals here, but he was asking them to do impossible things and as a result they had to make some choices that were going to be difficult.

Neither the hard deadline – without conditions – nor the low number of troops even for the transition made any sense, except perhaps in Biden’s mind and maybe the minds of a few other aides.

The otherwise totally inexplicable and bizarre decision to leave Bagram stemmed from these two unwavering decisions. If there wasn’t enough military personnel to defend both Bagram and the Kabul airport, and they didn’t think the Taliban would take over until after we had evacuated most or all of the Americans, then the Kabul airport seemed more convenient. A fatal choice. But again, one that stemmed from the original two decisions.

And so later, when the Taliban were entering Kabul and gave the US the choice of controlling either the Kabul airport or the city, I think the general in charge figured he had to surrender the city to the Taliban because in order to get people out the US had to control the airport.

That put the US in the truly awful position of allowing the Taliban to control the streets of Kabul, and to be able to let certain people get to the airport and detain or beat or even kill others. Instead of depending, like Blanche Dubois, on the kindness of strangers, the US had to depend on the kindness of terrorists. An absurd position to be sure, but flowing from the lack of troops and Biden’s refusal to order enough troops to make it possible to continue to be in charge of both the city and the airport.

Then, because the Taliban controlled the city, the US had to give the Taliban the names of the Afghans who had helped them and who wanted safe passage through Taliban checkpoints. It is absurd and actually seems insane and evil to have done that, but they were in a situation in which all choices were very very bad. And again, it all stemmed from those first two choices of Biden’s and his determination to stick with them and make everyone else stick with them.

This entire sequence and many many others seems nonsensical, illogical, and in violation of every rule of successful evacuation. But it has its own internal “logic” because each decision flows from those first two terrible ones.

[NOTE: The generals had their own decisions to make – obey or refuse to obey by resigning. They apparently chose the first.]

Another news day, another roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) The government is denying that they left the military dogs behind in Afghanistan. Of course, they lie all the time. But it’s certainly at least possible that they’re telling the truth this time.

(2) Lara Logan emphasizes the Pakistan angle, and also adds some chilling facts about cell phone tracing in Afghanistan:

(3) The stranded? No biggee [emphasis mine]:

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby acknowledged Tuesday that Americans were “stranded” in Afghanistan…

“Right now I think the tools we have available to us and that we’re going to use as a U.S. government is going to be more in the diplomatic, economic lanes, and we don’t really see a military role right now,” Kirby told host Willie Geist after he asked if the military would have a role in rescuing those Americans…

Geist inquired as to how diplomacy was going to get those Americans out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

“It’s not completely unlike the way we do it elsewhere around the world. We have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time and we do everything we can to try to facilitate safe passage,” Kirby said, contradicting Psaki.

“We have made it very clear what our expectations are to the Taliban, and if the Taliban want to govern, and they say they do … obviously we’re going to hold them to their deeds, not just those words,” Kirby added. “And so there are leverage tools we have available to us to hold them to account.

Yes – people stranded all the time, like when their money and credit cards are stolen.

And “leverage tools” – do tell what you think they are at this point, Kirby. At the moment, the Taliban seem to have all the weaponry and money they need, and then some. What else are you going to do, say we’re sending troops back to Afghanistan? That’s a real knee-slapper.

(4) Australia seems to be loosening – or planning to loosen – its COVID restrictions:

Australia is set to end its “covid zero” policy after Prime Minister Scott Morrison determined that the country’s approach is not “sustainable” in the face of the more infectious COVID-19 delta variant.

Australia has maintained a strict policy of restrictions and lockdowns to stamp out any outbreak, but the government over the weekend laid out a new plan that marks a sharp change in policy.

The government will drop most restrictions once 80% of adults are vaccinated, which the government believes could happen by the end of the year.

But its policy was always “unsustainable”, and that was true way before the Delta variant came into existence.

(5) Dennis Prager writes (hat tip: “AesopFan”):

I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly [complete withdrawal] benefits America.

“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.

It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.

The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21 and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.

So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.

The damage to the reputation of America — as an ally and as a strong country — is not easily overstated.
…
On the other hand, [the question of who benefits] has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.

The last American military forces have left Afghanistan

The New Neo Posted on by

Biden has met his sacred withdrawal deadline:

The U.S. military has confirmed that all U.S. forces have left Afghanistan. It is now August 31st in Kabul, which had long been the scheduled date of the final American withdrawal from the country after nearly two decades of a U.S. military presence there in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks…

There are also photos and videos indicating that the Taliban have moved in and are now in complete control of the airport. Previous pictures and video had already indicated that the American military presence there was already rapidly shrinking.

I think Biden and the Democrats believe this will now fade from the consciousness of the American public, and they can move on to their destructive domestic agenda. I hope they live in infamy instead, and the American people reject them so soundly it will be definitive. But that remains to be seen.

The surrender of Afghanistan [Part I]: Biden to Taliban: Here, take Kabul, we don’t need it anymore.

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a certain very bitter humor in contemplating what the Democrats impeached Trump for compared to their failure to do so for Biden’s enormously greater “high crimes and misdemeanors” – such as, for example, this recent sequence of events in Washington DC and Afghanistan (the article appears to not be behind the usual WaPo paywall, so I conclude that the editors seem to want to encourage more people than usual to read it) [emphasis mine]:

…Within hours [of their arrival in Kabul], long-haired Taliban fighters had seized those checkpoints. The president had fled, not bothering to tell U.S. officials or even many of his own top lieutenants on his way out the palace door.

That outcome stunned top U.S. officials, several of whom had been on vacation when the weekend began, having expected the pro-Western government to hang on for weeks, if not months or even years longer. Afghans were no less astonished by the speed with which their government crumbled. Even the Taliban was surprised.

The article goes on to talk about how oblivious Ghani was when the Taliban came to the city, but adds that the US officials were no better:

American officials may have been urging Ghani to show greater urgency. But their own actions suggested no immediate cause for alarm, with officials surrendering to the customary rhythms of Washington in August.

On the Friday afternoon before Kabul fell, the White House was starting to empty out, as many of the senior staff prepared to take their first vacations of Biden’s young presidency. Earlier in the day, Biden had arrived at Camp David, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was already in the Hamptons.

I imagine if Trump had been doing this, the WaPo‘s relatively calm tone would have been remarkably different. But at least they’re reporting this.

There’s no way to tell what’s true and what’s false in this next part. Certainly the Taliban’s version isn’t one I would trust. But here’s a story of why and how Ghani left:

Around midday, much of the staff had been dismissed for lunch. While they were gone, according to officials, a top adviser informed the president that militants had entered the palace and were going room to room looking for him.

That does not appear to have been true. The Taliban had announced that while its fighters were at the edges of Kabul, having entered through the city’s main checkpoints after security forces withdrew, it did not intend to take over violently. There was an agreement in place for a peaceful transition, and the group intended to honor it.

Yet that wasn’t the message that was being delivered to Ghani. The president was told by his closest aides that he needed to get out — fast…

Mindful of the last time the Taliban had conquered Kabul — in 1996, when victorious fighters sought out the former Soviet-backed president, disemboweled him and hung his body from a traffic light — Ghani agreed to go.

It was the Taliban who had done that twenty-five years ago as they took over the first time, and even if they said they were intending to honor the “peaceful transition” this time, I cannot imagine why anyone would trust them. I especially cannot imagine why anyone would think such an agreement for non-violence would continue to be honored once we and the Afghan government were gone.

The article goes on to add that the president left (with his wife and some aides) without even taking time to go home to get any belongings and without informing anyone, including the US officials. Many of his closest aides felt betrayed and wholly demoralized.

And then this happened:

In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha — including McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command — spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.

“We have a problem,” Baradar said, according to the U.S. official. “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”

Let’s pause here for a moment to emphasize what comes next – the US turned Kabul over to the Taliban even though a great many US citizens remained there – because Biden refused to do anything to stop them [emphasis mine]:

Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind.

McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.

On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.

Thus we became dependent on the Taliban for security while we tried to get our people out. And the commitment to the August 31 withdrawal date became even more rigid (if such a thing was possible), because after that the Taliban would not be holding back.

Complete capitulation and abject weakness on our part.

And this was a typical response from the Afghans interviewed for the article:

“I just sat there thinking, ‘I lost my country today,’” said Nadery, 40, who had been head of the country’s national civil service agency. “I saw everything I had fought for, for so many years, crumbling before my eyes.”

The article’s concluding paragraphs:

But some had already given up hope that they would ever get out. That night, instead of going home, the senior Kabul security official went to a friend’s house. He has been hiding there ever since but is resigned to the fact that, sooner or later, the Taliban will probably find him.

His fate was sealed, he said, when Afghanistan’s president decided to save himself.

“From that moment, everything was smashed,” he said. “I’ve killed hundreds of Taliban. So for sure they will kill me.”

No, sir; that’s not when your fate was sealed. Your fate was sealed – as was ours – when President Biden decided to retreat by a certain date no matter what, and he announced it to the world. No more conditions needing to be met, no more time, no change of that plan whatever might happen – not even to facilitate the evacuation of our people and those who had helped us.

And yes, I believe that Biden was the major decision-maker in this horrific set of circumstances, although he wasn’t alone. As I said early on, it bears his fingerprints. Incredibly arrogant, stubborn, ignorant, stupid, corrupt, ambitious, mendacious, and short-sighted, he is now also suffering from some degree of dementia which seems to have heightened all of his most terrible characteristics. And although some people apparently did disagree with him and saw disaster coming, no one could or would stop him, and no one resigned.

NOTE: This is going to be a two-parter. Part II will deal with some people in the Biden administration who perceived well in advance that a huge problem was looming with this pullout if it was approached the way Biden wanted it handled. I plan to discuss what they were saying about it even prior to the Taliban’s advance, and speculate on why they nevertheless may have been unable or unwilling to prevent the debacle.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Once again, we’re dealing with so much news at once – mostly terrible news, at that – that I’ve decided to do another roundup for some of it:

(1) Stuart Scheller strikes back. I wish him well.

(2) Dan Crenshaw and Lara Logan report on some troubling news:

Both Logan and Crenshaw are independently reporting that Americans have been turned away from safety at that airport over the past couple of days.

(3) I’m in agreement with Jonathan Turley on the Lester Holt interview with Capitol Police Officer Byrd, the shooter of Ashli Babbitt. In a previous post, I discussed his self-puffery and the admissions he made. Turley has a lot more to say in that vein.

(4) Here are Frei and Barnes on the same topic:

(5) We seem to have no idea what is truth and what is lies concerning the most recent drone attack in Afghanistan. But I think it’s a good bet that those in charge of this F-ed up in some way. In another portion of that Frei and Barnes discussion, Frei refers to the number of screwups by the Biden team in Afghanistan as “fractal incompetence.” I think that’s a good description of that fact that the errors there were and are so pervasive that they seem to be part of every aspect of the withdrawal, both small and large. Frei reluctantly concludes (as I have) that this indicates that the seeming errors may be the result of plan rather than sheer incompetence of such depth and breadth. I’m about 50/50 on that right now, because there’s so much malevolence and so much incompetence that it’s hard to choose.

(6) It turns out that ballot integrity was violated for a large number of drop box ballots in Georgia. Fancy that:

To preserve the integrity of ballots cast in an election, Georgia Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14 dictated that absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar and processed and stored in the same manner as absentee ballots returned by mail are processed and stored,”…

43,907 of the 61,731 absentee ballots that were put in dropboxes by voters, a whopping 72 percent, violated this rule.

Based on their analysis, 28,194 absentee ballots (46 percent) “were not documented as being received by the elections registrar or the director’s designee until the day after they were collected from the drop box.”

Another 15,713 ballots (26 percent) had “no receipt time recorded at all by the elections office.”

All 43,907 of these ballots “were counted in the certified results of the November 3, 2020 election despite being delivered to the registrar’s office in clear violation of the chain of custody documentation of the Georgia State Election Board’s July 2020 rule,” explains the Georgia Star News.

This is far greater than the margin of Biden’s win in Georgia.

This book title…

The New Neo Posted on by

…didn’t age well: The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama.

Then again, part of Obama’s “legacy” is the presidency of Joe Biden. Not only are quite a few of Biden’s advisors Obama administration retreads, but if Obama hadn’t chosen Biden as his VP, Biden would probably either be retired now or still employed as the Permanent Senator from Delaware – where he could do nowhere near as much damage as he’s done as president, no matter how hard he tried.

Open thread 8/30/21

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s one of the greatest dance competitions in films. Bob Fosse is already the stylized, slouchy Bob Fosse who later became famous. The very strong Tommy Rall can do anything, anything at all, including ballet. Note that even in the first dance move in the clip – jumping over the scarf – Rall exhibits the “ballon” of a ballet dancer. Ballon is the ability to appear to hover for a split second in the air. Later, Fosse adds some ballon of his own – but not in the opening scarf sequence.

ADDENDUM: A few years ago I wrote a lengthier post about Rall.

Cave paintings as prehistoric flip art

The New Neo Posted on by

I find this wondrous:

Reconstructions of the original grease lamps produce a circle of light about 10 feet in diameter, which is not much larger than many images in the cave. Geneste believes that early artists used this small area of light as a story-telling device. “It is very important: the presence of the darkness, the spot of yellow light, and inside it one, two, three animals, no more,” Geneste says. “That’s a tool in a narrative structure,” he explains…

What’s more, a flickering flame in the cave may have conjured impressions of motion like a strobe light in a dark club. In low light, human vision degrades, and that can lead to the perception of movement even when all is still, says Susana Martinez-Conde, the director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Ariz. The trick may occur at two levels; one when the eye processes a dimly lit scene, and the second when the brain makes sense of that limited, flickering information…

… The end result for early humans who viewed cave paintings by firelight might have been that a deer with multiple heads, for example, resembled a single, animated beast. A few rather sophisticated artistic techniques enhance that impression…

…igh on the Nave’s right wall, an early artist had used charcoal to draw a row of five deer heads. The images are almost identical, but each is positioned at a slightly different angle. Viewed one at a time with a small circle of light moving right to left, the images seem to illustrate a single deer raising and lowering its head as in a short flipbook animation.

Marc Azéma, a Paleolithic researcher and filmmaker at the University of Toulouse in France, has studied dozens of examples of ancient images that were meant to imply motion and has found two primary techniques that Paleolithic artists used to do this. The first is juxtaposition of successive images—the technique used for the deer head—and the second is called superimposition. Rather than appearing in sequence, variations of an image pile on top of one another in superimposition to lend a sense of motion. Superimposition can be seen in caves across France and Spain, but some of the oldest examples come from Chauvet cave in France’s Ardèche region. Burned wood and charcoal streaks along Chauvet’s walls indicate that campfires and pine torches lit the cave.

The deer heads:

The Afghanistan bugout: the GOP “hawks” called this one

The New Neo Posted on by

When you look back at the reactions to Biden’s fateful April 14, 2021 announcement of a plan to pull out of Afghanistan by 9/11, you will find that almost the only people criticizing it at the time (the article appeared the day after) were those much-excoriated neocons:

[Lindsey] Graham is among the most passionate deniers of Biden’s decision for troop withdrawal, calling it “dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous.”

President Biden will have, in essence, canceled an insurance policy against another 9/11,” Graham said in a statement reported by The Hill.

He went on to say that a residual counterterrorism force would essentially be the US’s insurance policy against the rise of radical Islam in Afghanistan. This insurance, if taken away, he said, could pave the way for “another attack against our homeland or our allies.”

Graham continued to repeat claims that a US withdrawal from Afghanistan would spark another 9/11 in a Fox News interview, telling Sean Hannity that Afghanistan will “disintegrate into civil war.”…

Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell said: “The administration decided to abandon U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, which have helped keep radical Islamic terrorism in check. And bizarrely, they’ve decided to do so by September the 11th.”

“Apparently, we’re to help our adversaries ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by gift-wrapping the country and handing it right back to them,” he added.”

He went on to call the withdrawal of US forces a “retreat in the face of an enemy that has not yet been vanquished, and an abdication of American leadership.”

Well, they get to say “I told you so.” That’s scant comfort, though.

There are others in that article, too: Liz Cheney of course, and Jim Inhofe (“No one wants a forever war, but I’ve consistently said any withdrawal must be conditions-based”). At least one Democrat, military veteran Tammy Duckworth, protested as well: “You don’t tell your enemy what your actions are going to be that’s just common sense.” And Mitt Romney, with whom I have disagreed over so many things ever since he entered the Senate, was right about this one:

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney opposes President Joe Biden’s plan to pull American troops from Afghanistan, putting him at odds with other GOP members of Utah’s congressional delegation…

…Romney said the president’s decision to withdraw all troops by September is an error that could have serious consequences for U.S. national security interests.

“The U.S. and our allies maintain a small number of troops with an outsized ability to prevent the Taliban from providing terrorist groups like al-Qaida and ISIS the ability to train and flourish,” Romney said in a statement.

I didn’t write anything in reaction to Biden’s April speech, but my viewpoint on withdrawing from Afghanistan was similar to that expressed in all these quotes, and it was summarized in this post from four years ago and never substantially changed.

On leaving Bagram, on leaving Afghanistan

The New Neo Posted on by

If the whole thing was really motivated by a conspiratorial desire to undermine America, then the decision to leave Bagram prematurely doesn’t need explaining. It explains itself.

But let’s work on the other theory that remains plausible: incompetence and misjudgment. Even if one assumes those twin flaws, the military’s actions in Bagram were so obviously stupid, so egregiously over-the-top FUBAR, that they warrant some sort of attempt at explanation. Some thought process, however deeply erroneous, must have been going on.

Here’s my attempt at reconstructing the basic elements of that thought process, in particular the assumptions and goals. In it, I’m going to assume that Biden himself was a major player in these decisions, although I’m well aware that he might not have been. But to me, the process bears the stamp of his mind.

It may have gone like this:

(1) Joe Biden, who is commander-in-chief and has the final say, wanted out as soon as possible. He had wanted out even in 2009 as VP, and they didn’t do what he said. He waited twelve long years for this and he wasn’t going to wait any longer. One of his top priorities was leaving by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and being able to brag about what he’d done – something that no one, not even Obama the Great, had been able to accomplish.

(2) The military leaders had poor intelligence, both in the usual sense of the word (not intelligent) and the military sense (information on enemy movements, goals, and the like). Therefore they were initially unaware of the strength of the Taliban, or of their newer methods such as the propaganda the Taliban successfully spread throughout the entire country with the innovative use of Facebook and WhatsApp.

(3) Because of #2, the military planners actually became convinced that the Taliban were not going to take over and certainly wouldn’t be doing it soon, and that the US military would have plenty of time to rescue people beforehand. This was obviously short-sighted and just plain wrong, and a quick Taliban takeover should have been planned for anyway to maintain some flexibility of action in case it started to happen. But this was not done.

(4) It was May of 2021 when the Taliban began to take territory in earnest – which it did shortly after Biden’s April 14, 2021 announcement that troops would be out by September 11, 2021. In my opinion, the timing was no accident, and should have triggered an announcement by the Biden camp that the Taliban had violated the conditions of the agreement and the agreement was moot. It should also have triggered a reevaluation of the Taliban’s chances of achievhing a total takeover, and much quicker than expected. But it seems to have done neither – probably because the Biden administration was completely focused on getting out before the 9/11 anniversary and had basically washed its hands entirely of Afghanistan. Whether or not Biden actually said “f-k that” in 2010, as reported, when “asked if the US had an obligation to protect Afghans from the Taliban,” he certainly acted in accord with that sentiment.

(5) With the push for a drawdown, and a very quick one at that, the generals felt they didn’t have the resources to defend both Bagram and the airport in Kabul. They opted for the defense of the latter, which makes no sense in terms of holding off the onslaught. But if you consider that they stupidly ignored the signs that the takeover was imminent, it begins to make a bit more sense. They “reasoned” (I use that term advisedly) that the Afghans could hold Bagram for at least as long as it took for all the Americans to depart (a literally fatal miscalculation). After that? – well, f-k ’em. The fact that it would not only hurt the Afghans if the Taliban took control, but that it would hurt us (and the western world) as well, didn’t seem to enter into the picture because they had tunnel vision: get out, and fast. The Kabul airport was easier to get to – Bagram being somewhat distant from the city – and if the goal was to defend the embassy and evacuate people, the Kabul airport seemed to make sense to them.

(6) So, despite the terrible risks that were made obvious by the Taliban advance since May, Biden did nothing to stop them and the military did nothing. Did they want to, and did he block them? I don’t know, because at that point I think the flawed reasoning was shared: the sooner we go the better, and the Taliban won’t take over before we get out. Those were the guiding assumptions, and they had no backup plan, so arrogant were they about their correctness.

If that’s the way it went down, it at least partially explains why they didn’t destroy the weapons and didn’t worry about the prisoners. The Afghan military would hold for a while – I think the original estimates were at least a year – and after that it would be Afghanistan’s problem, and we washed our hands of that.

Let me add that I was not in favor of a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, nor was I in favor of nation-building. But I was in favor of a non-trivial presence there to deter a takeover that would once again promote the growth of radical Islamic terrorism. I wrote this post presenting my views on the subject almost exactly four years ago, and I believe they are a pretty good description of my views right along. It was interesting to look back and read the whole thing in light of what’s happened since. Here’s an excerpt:

Afghanistan has presented a knotty problem for several previous administrations. It’s dangerous to not be there, it’s dangerous and frustrating to be there. Once there, pulling out is a terrible option. How important is Afghanistan to the fight against Islamic terror, and how far should we go to secure it or to attempt to change it? Is it possible to fight terrorists there (and/or prevent more of them finding a haven there, as they did before 9/11) without some sort of “nation-building”? And what is “nation-building” anyway

As Paul Mirengoff points out, “it has been a while since we have done any serious nation-building in Afghanistan.” I would go even further and say that while I think we engaged in “serious,” or at least semi-serious, nation-building in Iraq,…our nation-building in Afghanistan was never as intense. And neither effort involved anything like the commitment of a full-scale occupation (which I’m not recommending, by the way)…

I’ve long thought that it is wishful thinking to believe we can disengage from these places at this point or in the near future. However, that sort of wishful thinking is indulged in by most liberals and by some in the isolationist wing of the right. It is an attractive but unrealistic and impossible suggestion, and we saw the consequences of such withdrawal when Obama left an Iraq that was substantially pacified but which required an American presence to sustain that state. What followed was a disaster for Iraq and also for the world, including the Western world and Europe in particular.

Wishful thinking is not a recipe for good military planning and execution.

[NOTE: I plan to follow this post up with one about the GOP reaction to Biden’s April 14 announcement about the pullout by 9/11.]

Open thread 8/28/21

The New Neo Posted on by

I took this photo recently. The boat looked like it was on fire, but it was just the reflection of the setting sun. The picture doesn’t really do the moment justice; the fire illusion was much brighter in real life: