From Air Force Times:
“White House releases after action
reviews on Afghanistan withdrawal”
The documented lessons learned from
the Afghanistan withdrawal became publicly available for the first time on
Thursday with the White House’s release of its after action reviews. The review
places significant blame on the Trump administration for its handling of the
Afghanistan war and drawdown agreement with the Taliban, which the Biden
administration ultimately decided to abide by, according to a 12-page summary
posted to the White House’s website. The complete, classified version of the
after action review was provided to lawmakers on Thursday, National Security
Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters during a briefing.
The first page of the report offers a
round up of actions taken in Afghanistan by the previous administration,
including drawing down the U.S. personnel presence from 10,000 troops to 2,500,
signing an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw by May 1, 2021, and
pressuring the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison.
“As a result, when President Biden took office on January 20, 2021, the Taliban
were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001,
controlling or contesting nearly half of the country,” according to the report.
The Biden administration announced in
April 2021 that all troops would be withdrawn from the country by that
September, having negotiated with the Taliban to hold off beyond the originally
agreed upon May 1 date. But it wasn’t until months later that a coordinated
effort began to evacuate American citizens and Afghan allies, including those
who worked in some capacity with the U.S. government and had applied for
special visas. “Ultimately, the Administration made a decision to engage in
unprecedently extensive targeted outreach to Americans and Afghan partners
about the risk of collapse,” officials wrote in the report. This effort, the
report continued, included “numerous security alerts and tens of thousands of
direct phone calls and messages to U.S. citizens in particular to leave
Afghanistan, but to not broadcast loudly and publicly about a potential
worst-case scenario unfolding in order to avoid signaling a lack of confidence
in the ANDSF or the Afghan government’s position.”
Despite their attempts to avoid
creating a panic, the Taliban’s advance on Kabul on Aug. 14 destroyed any
chance of an orderly drawdown. What happened next — during the second half of
August 2021 — cascaded into a frantic evacuation of more than 120,000 people
from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, culminating in an Aug. 25,
2021, suicide bomber attack at the airport’s main gate. The following day, an
errant U.S. strike on what was suspected to be another ISIS target killed 10
civilians, including seven children.
The Biden Administration has
acknowledged that its top intelligence officials did not correctly anticipate
how fast the Taliban would seize control of Afghanistan as U.S. troops prepared
to withdraw, nor did they realize that the Afghan National Defense and Security
Forces would crumble under Taliban pressure as quickly as they did. “I’ve yet
to see in intelligence that that ever was 110% certain about something,” Kirby
told reporters. “They’ll be the first ones if they were up here to tell you
they don’t always get it right.” Reporters from the Special Inspector General
for Afghan Reconstruction did detail the corruption and hollowness of Afghan
forces over a number of years, but the official in charge has long lamented
that the State Department and Defense Department did not take his office’s
findings to heart. “I’m not super optimistic that we are going to learn our
lessons,” he told reporters in February.
The administration has applied some
of those lessons, according to Thursday’s release, as recently as the war in
Ukraine. “In a destabilizing security environment, we now err on the side of
aggressive communication about risks. We did this in advance of Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine,” the report reads. “Months before the invasion, we
proactively released intelligence with trusted partners. That engagement
broadened — and grew louder and more public — in the weeks leading up to
Russia’s invasion.” The Biden administration took this approach despite
objections from the Ukrainian government about “sparking panic,” the report
continues. “However, our clear and unvarnished warnings enabled the United
States to take advantage of a critical window before the invasion to organize
with our allies, plan the swift execution of our response, and enable Americans
in Ukraine to depart safely,” the review noted.
Thursday’s release is part of an
ongoing review process, Kirby said. It also includes the work of the
Afghanistan War Commission, which convened for the first time earlier this year
and is expected to spend four years on its assessments. “This review was an
important step to inform future DoD decision-making, and we will continue to
support other reviews, including the Afghanistan War Commission’s efforts to
review the full 20 years of the war,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a
statement after the review’s release. “I strongly believe that a thoughtful and
comprehensive examination of the entirety of America’s longest war by the
Commission will be an important contribution to the nation.”
^ Both Trump and Biden are guilty of
this mass failure in Afghanistan.
Trump (and Zalmay Khalilzad) because
of their February 2020 Doha Agreement with the Taliban. This Agreement, which
didn't include the Afghan Government, ultimately led to the US Withdrawal from
Afghanistan and for the Taliban Takeover of the country. Trump abandoned the
Afghan Government and the Afghans who worked for the US over the past 20 years.
Biden (and Anthony Blinken) because
of their failure to listen to the Reports from both the US Military and the US
Embassy in Kabul about the rapid progress of the Taliban inside Afghanistan and
not starting the evacuation much sooner. Biden abandoned American Citizens
inside Afghanistan and the Afghans who worked for the US over the past 20 years
- there are still thousands abandoned by us and hiding from the Taliban's
bullets nearly 2 years after the Fall of Kabul.
Note: This doesn't even address the
Taliban's Discrimination of Women (they can't go to school, can't work, have to
cover-up, can't be outside without a Male Family Member, etc.)
^
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