The Fall of Afghanistan
An embarrassment on a global scale fueled by an inept and incompetent leader displaying unmatched stupidity and naivety.
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The Taliban Take Control
I’m not quite sure how to start this newsletter. I want to convey my anger but words don’t do it justice. I want to convey my shame but there aren’t enough words in my vocabulary. I want to convey my sadness but words are limited in their capacity to communicate it. The truth is that nothing I write will change the reality on the ground for the Afghan people, Americans still in Afghanistan, or America’s Afghanistan policy from here on out. Nonetheless, I can’t be silent when so much of this was preventable if naivety and plain stupidity had been shunned instead of being allowed to fester and grow.
I started this newsletter last week as the Taliban was starting its blitzkrieg across Afghanistan. At that time, I believe the Taliban had captured all but four major cities in Afghanistan and I was already well worked up. Then, the situation just continued to get worse and worse by the hour and soon my newsletter was outdated because everything had deteriorated so quickly. Within the next 72 hours, the Taliban conquered essentially all of Afghanistan with its most important city, Kabul. This was all despite President Biden’s reassurance in July that American withdrawal would not lead to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Like I said, naivety and plain stupidity had been festering for a while.
This isn’t revisionist history with 20/20 hindsight vision either. Thomas Joscelyn wrote for The Dispatch back at the end of June that the gains made by the Taliban were substantial and being downplayed by the U. S. military. This was weeks before President Biden gave his assurances. Before that in May, Joscelyn warned that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were closing in on provincial capitals in Afghanistan. Again, this was well before President Biden gave his assurances. In February Joscelyn wrote, “If President Biden decides to complete America’s withdrawal, then the Afghan government’s weak grasp on power will become only more tenuous. The Taliban is laying the groundwork for the return of its Islamic Emirate.” Again, this was well before President Biden gave his assurances. If President Biden had read just one person’s newsletter in the form of Thomas Joscelyn in the past year alone, then he would have been able to foresee the collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban.
I simply cannot fathom how I, a history teacher in Georgia, could have a more accurate picture of the situation in Afghanistan than the freaking President of the United States. At this point, I would rather believe that President Biden was telling a bald-faced lie to the American people in July because surely not even he can be that incompetent. You know the situation is bad when a politician lying is the better option. However, I think it is clear that even the President hiding the truth from the public is wishful thinking because the current situation in Afghanistan makes it clear that President Biden actually believed what he was saying. He actually believed that it was unlikely the Taliban would not take over Afghanistan. This is in spite of a dissent memo sent from diplomates to the State Department in July that warned of a catastrophe in Afghanistan.
Current Situation
Who knows how long this current situation update will be relevant considering the situation is in a state of chaos and constant flux but I will do my best. As of this writing, the United States military has a singular secure area in the entire country, Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. By secure, I mean the Taliban do not have control over that region but please don’t think that means an orderly, controlled environment. In fact, videos began to emerge on Twitter on Monday that showed the tarmac covered in Afghans seeking and begging to leave the country. As the video below shows, people were surrounding American military planes as they took off.
At the end of the video, people can be seen clinging to the side of the plane even though the plane is taking off. Soon after, videos emerged that showed bodies following from airborne planes as people fell hundreds of feet to their death below.
Not to mention a heartbreaking scene of a baby being passed forward by a crowd of people to the airport gate in an attempt to get that baby away from the Taliban.
This is just a sneak peak of the chaos that currently exists outside of the Kabul airport as thousands of Afghans are hoping they can get on a plane out of the country. And when I say thousands, I mean thousands as can be seen in the video below.
Some of these Afghans are just civilians that are in unfortunate circumstances and are looking for better lives elsewhere. However, the New York Times reported that tens of thousands of Afghan nationals that risked their lives working with the United States and/or the Afghan government are being stranded. These are Afghans that were crucial in helping the United States run operations in the country and now they are being left to be ruled by the Taliban who will almost certainly kill them if they are found to have worked with the United States and/or Afghan government.
This has created a gut wrenching situation in which Afghans possess documents that prove their service and could be the key to leaving the country. At the same time, if these Afghans are caught with these documents by the Taliban then they would surely face some sort of repercussion and probably death. Many Afghans are choosing to destroy the evidence of their service, thus destroying any chance they have of leaving, in the hopes of saving their lives.
Clearly, the Afghan people are desperate to get out of Afghanistan because they are terrified of what Taliban rule means for them. However, it isn’t just Afghans that the American government has failed. Reports came out Tuesday that claimed Americans outside of Kabul were not going to be evacuated because they could not get past checkpoints set up by the Taliban.
Let me make amply clear what this means: there are Americans trapped behind enemy lines and the Biden administration is essentially saying “oh well.” Apparently using force to assure these Americans make it home safely isn’t the best option. Rather, the administration is working with the Taliban to ensure that these Americans can get to Kabul.
I mean, when you think about it, it really is so sweet of the Taliban to be so generous as to letting American citizens through checkpoints so that they can arrive home safely. Thank God we can trust the Taliban to keep their word. This is the moment that you should hear a narrator’s voice in your head saying “They in fact did not keep their word.” But don’t worry, evacuations of Americans will continue until “the clock runs out or we run out of capability” according to Secretary of Defense Austin. Good to know that the American government faces a time crunch that leaves the lives of these Americans in limbo. This isn’t a small number of Americans either. According to NBC News, as of Wednesday evening, there were 15,000 Americans that remained in Afghanistan.
At the very least, getting these 15,000 Americans home safely should be the utmost concern of the Biden administration. The United States should not be relying on diplomacy with the Taliban in order to ensure their safety. The United States should be letting the Taliban know that those Americans will get home safely and anything less will be met with all the force of the American military.
Biden’s Response
If the situation described isn’t enough to get someone fired up, then the response from President Biden will surely do the trick. I use the term response loosely in this instance as this has been one of the most despicable, calloused, shameful responses to a crisis that I have ever seen from a President. I think it’s just below the response when President Trump told the insurrectionists at the Capital that he “still loved them but they needed to go home now” in the worst Presidential responses of my lifetime but really not by much.
President Biden’s “response” started by just flat out refusing to be seen in public by anyone as he spent the weekend hiding out at Camp David. Fortunately, his team was gracious enough to release a written statement on Saturday that took responsibility for the situation in Afghanistan by blaming the Afghan government and Donald Trump. When President Biden returned to the White House, he finally gave a speech in which he again blamed the Afghan government and Donald Trump for what was happening. Nothing instills more confidence in a leader than one who shirks responsibility even after claiming that the buck stops with him. After his speech, President Biden then returned back to his hideout at Camp David.
On Wednesday, an interview that President Biden did with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos aired that did not make things any better. In the interview, President Biden replied “That was four days ago, five days ago” when Stephanopoulous brought up the videos of Afghans falling from planes to their death. Not only was President Biden wrong (it had only been two days), it is utterly despicable that the amount of time gone by makes those deaths okay. Should we ignore the lives lost on 9/11 just because it happened 20 years ago?
The owning of responsibility by President Biden continued when he claimed that no mistakes were made in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to him, “the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens.” Again, this is despite the reassurances he gave in July that the Taliban would not take over Afghanistan. So, according to President Biden, this chaos was inevitable even though the Taliban wouldn’t take back over? The incoherence is stunning.
The incoherence continued when Stephanopoulous pressed President Biden on whether he would commit to getting every American out of Afghanistan along with our Afghan allies. President Biden assured that they would get everyone out but was seemingly contradictory whether that meant they would keep troops past the August 31st deadline if need be.
“STEPHANOPOULOS: So Americans should understand that troops might have to be there beyond August 31st?
BIDEN: No. Americans should understand that we're gonna try to get it done before August 31st.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But if we don't, the troops will stay--
BIDEN: If -- if we don't, we'll determine at the time who's left.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And?
BIDEN: And if you're an American force -- if there's American citizens left, we're gonna stay to get them all out.”
This was an encouragement until Friday morning when the White House Communications Director seemingly reiterated August 31st as the withdrawal deadline.
All the while, this week has been full of President Biden addressing vaccinations and emphasizing his “Build Back Better” plan. I understand that Presidents can and have to focus on multiple things at once but it is clear that this is merely an attempt to divert attention away from Afghanistan. I understand that while President Biden may not have been out in front of the public many of his administration’s officials were. I don’t have the time nor the energy to describe each of the many interviews and/or statements made by those officials but needless to say they were not much better.
It’s not only the American people that President Biden was apparently out of the public eye from but other world leaders as well. For the first 36 hours of the Afghanistan debacle, England Prime Minister Boris Johnson could not reach President Biden.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I wrote all of this before President Biden’s remarks Friday afternoon. After listening to his remarks and answers to the questions this tweet basically sums up my thoughts.
Needless to say it doesn’t change my thoughts on his incompetent response.
Was this inevitable?
Now, I want to directly address President Biden’s claim that there was no other way to withdraw without this ensuing chaos. Regardless of whether one agrees with the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan or not, the idea that this level of chaos and dysfunction was inevitable no matter when or how we pulled out is patently absurd. In fact, if this was inevitable then withdrawing should not have been an option.
It is essential to remember the situation as it stands right now. There are up to 15,000 Americans that have yet to be evacuated out of Afghanistan, not to mention tens of thousands of Afghan allies. The only area in Afghanistan under American control is the Kabul airport. This means that anyone who is outside of the airport, whether immediately outside or throughout the rest of the city and/or country, is under Taliban control. According to President Biden, this borderline hostage crisis was inevitable no matter how we withdrew.
Now, I am no military strategist or military expert but I can think of at least one major thing we could have done differently. Hear me out: what if we had evacuated all Americans out earlier before American troops withdrew and the Taliban took over the entire country? This seems obvious because it is. Either President Biden is mindnumbingly stupid for not doing this or thinks that the American people are mindnumbingly stupid enough to think there was no other way.
It’s not even inevitable that the situation has to remain the way that it is at this moment. Secretary of Defense Austin said on Wednesday that the U. S. forces lacked the “capability” to bring stranded Americans in Kabul to the airport. Meanwhile, the British and French were conducting military extractions of their own citizens that were left stranded in Kabul. Is the American military so weak that it is incapable of doing exactly what Britain and France are doing? No, it almost certainly isn’t too weak, it just has a Commander-in-Chief who is.
Til Next Week
There is plenty more that I have to say about Afghanistan but it will have to wait until next week’s newsletter. Hopefully, the situation in Afghanistan improves until then, but with the inept and incompetent leadership that President Biden has displayed thus far, I am not optimistic. Until then, let’s be praying for the people of Afghanistan.
God Bless,
Hunter Burnett