The Messy Fall of Afghanistan is Entirely Trump’s Fault

Well, nearly so, anyway.

There is a clear and indisputable context we need to keep in mind in evaluating Biden’s Afghan policy:

1. Trump demanded and got the release of the leader of the political office of the Taliban, Baradar, from jail in Pakistan.
2. Baradar then led the negotiations in Qatar with the US for our withdrawal. Frankly, it was more of a surrender.
3. The Trump Admin decided to exclude the Afghan national government from that negotiation.
4. The Trump Admin decided to deadline a withdrawal of American armed forces at the beginning of May 2021.
5. Biden decided to honor Trump’s negotiated withdrawal but pushed back the date to the end of August 2021.

In the meantime, after Trump struck an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw/surrender, leaving out any partners in the Afghan government at any level, and Biden taking office, the Afghan government leaders began the negotiate piece-meal with the Taliban to surrender, often under threat of violence, bribes, and assassination. These agreements were totally outside of any process that was transparent to American diplomats or military leaders: the entire country except the very top leadership of the Afghan government had already quietly surrendered to the Taliban by the time Biden even took office. The Afghans really had no choice, without the good offices of America and the threat of our military, they really had no credible power to negotiate anything with Taliban except abject surrender.

Thank Trump’s stupidity for that.

Biden pressed the Afghan national government to begin evacuation operations once he took office in anticipation of a Taliban takeover, but the Afghani top leaders refused, not wanting to appear weak or cause a panic. So, the result was that even though our intelligence services were aware that the entire country below the very top of government had already surrendered to the Taliban, the top leaders of the Afghan government were in denial and buying time to get their assets out of the country. Our military and diplomatic leadership were largely in the dark and surprised by the swiftness of the takeover. Biden knew that things would collapse pretty quickly, but the top of the Afghan national government was in denial and would not permit evacuations to begin sooner.

Thank the corrupt and delusional Afghani leadership for that.

Given the inept and traitorous agreement Trump made with the Taliban, that totally sold out our Afghan allies and left them out of the settlement entirely, what exact advice does any critic offer for how Biden could have dealt with the situation better? Could he have insisted on commencing evacuations against the wishes of the Afghani national government leadership? Sure. Maybe he should have. But that is the only way things would have gone “better” and then he would be criticized by the Republicans in this country for “selling out” our Afghan allies and causing a panic that led to the collapse of the government. Damned if he do, damned if he don’t. The GQP has no interest in anything but cheap criticism of the Biden Admin, no matter what they do.

Screw the Republican Party for that.

IMHO, maybe Biden should have told the Afghan national government to pound sand and immediately begun evacuations of our allies and political refugees, and damn the delusional and deeply corrupt national leadership, but he’s more experienced in foreign policy than any President in the past 70 or so years: I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt that he had strategic reasons to do it the way he did.

Thank Biden for that. But ONLY that.

Arguably, Biden’s biggest mistake was accepting ANYTHING the Trump Admin agreed to as carrying the faith and credit of American prestige and honor. I’ll bet he wishes he could have repudiated the inept and unilateral withdrawal agreement by Trump and started over with Afghan governments of all levels at the table. But that ship had sailed. Afghanistan had already surrendered to the Taliban and final power dynamic was already baked in. It’s infuriating to anyone who knows shit about the situation that Trump, of all people, is now acting like ANY of this is Biden’s fault. Total bollocks to that. He should ride into the sunset and never show his stupid orange face in public again.

And screw the Republican Party for THAT, too.

The tragedy of the fall of Afghanistan is squarely on Trump, for being a chump and the worst negotiator in existence, leaving the Afghani government out of the negations, and forcing them to make a separate peace with the Taliban with absolutely no real power from which to negotiate. If he had a shred of decency, he would have ensured in the agreement with the Taliban that our allies were taken care of and safe well before the withdrawal date: but he just didn’t give a shit — and despite all the crocodile tears, his party still doesn’t actually give a shit about our Afghan allies. 16 of them just clearly communicated that by voting against expedited refugee status for them.

Screw Trump and his Republican lickspittles for that.

Secondly, the tragedy of our failed mission, and 20 wasted years, untold treasure, and American lives given to build a new Afghan state, falls soley on Bush for putting us on this path in the first place.

We should have declared victory and negotiated a settlement with the Taliban for a SOF agreement and a quick-reaction force in the country for counter-terrorism and some humanitarian guarantees. Instead, he did exactly what he said he would not do when he was running for office: engaged in hubristic “nation building” in a place that has demonstrated over and over, century after century, that they never wanted to get built into a modern nation.

Thank Bush for that.

Lastly, some blame goes to Obama for continuing and escalating the madness without a definite endgame. He should have been smarter and more decisive and taken the political heat in his second term to end the boondoggle.

Thank Obama for that.

There is blame enough for each of us, too. Some 80% of Americans now wanted this war ended. Biden did it. He’ll ultimately benefit politically for having done it, because his action is actually overwhelmingly popular. Now. It wasn’t always so.

Uniformed public opinion and unrealistic expectations kept us bogged down in a hopeless mission for a whole generation.

Thank our stupid, incompetent, corporate media for that.

Everyone who was EVER in favor of war in Afghanistan shares a little of the blame and the shame for our national folly. Myself included. I was OK with the initial invasion to capture and punish those responsible for 9/11. You probably were, too.

Thank you and me for that.

There really is only one person who can claim to be on the record as being right from the very start: Representative Barbara Lee. She’s the only one who can provide the bonafides that she was right from the very start. And she was called a traitor for her trouble. Those whom history exonerates so often are.

Thank Barbara Lee for that.