US Republicans blame Biden in Afghanistan withdrawal report

I will speak to one of the elements that jumped out at me. Yes, Trump absolutely negotiated a bad deal and what few people know is that he even ordered the execution of the plan. However, literally on the eve of executing the plan, his military advisors convinced him to rescind the order. This is a common theme throughout all of the 20 years in Afghanistan. I am becoming less and less confident we will ever finish a conflict convincingly in the future because of politics. By that I don't mean foreign policy, but the scabbling between our parties.

When OEF started President Bush had a resounding 90%+ approval rating and full support for going into Afghanistan to take care of business. Many of us could argue whether OIF was necessary, but the fact is, it gave Democrats (despite the fact most of them voted to authorize it) the means to pick at Bush's approval ratings. One of the more significant applications of pressure was centered on the numbers of troops in Afghanistan vs Iraq. The accusation was that we were not focusing enough on Afghanistan and that the troop levels were decreasing as a result. It wasn't true, but Bush gave into the political pressure and started surging our forces in Afghanistan. This moved from supporting Northern Alliance forces with primarily SOF and Air to a full up nation build of the country from government to national police, to their military. We could air chair this decision, but the fact remains, we made a commitment to which most Americans on both sides agreed to.

That commitment had to navigate the ebb and flows of a very third world nation, with a low literacy rate, and build it to be a peaceful and self-sustaining nation. However, one of the key issues in that build up was using advanced concepts, technology, and military doctrine. The Afghans were getting fire hosed, and they could not keep up with it. For many years we had to adjust to their level, and this took time. On top of that, we had to deal with the rampant corruption and Soviet taught way of doing things. Again, time was required to train up the youth into prominent leadership roles and cut the cord from those older and more corrupt members of the police, military, and government. Now, I might sound optimistic, but I fully believe we were on the right track and that given time, the Afghans would fully be able to fend for themselves.

Unfortunately, the Obama admin wanted to deliver on a promise to pull us out. A promise centered on polls that Americans wanted us out (yes eventually, but not necessarily during his term). So, despite recommendations from his top military general over all NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, he started to deliver on that promise, pulling out roughly 95% of the military advisors. This essentially ended the efforts to train a proper and effective Afghan Air Force (among other things). This was key to the Taliban taking control in 2021 so easily as the Afghan military depended on US/Coalition air support since we first stepped into the country. They were not ready for full scale air combat operations, specifically close air support. Our military advisors hammered this point throughout 3 presidential terms and were ignored.

In comes Trump, who also wanted to deliver on the promise to pull our troops out. Trump negotiated with the Taiban and the current Afghan government with a tunnel view on getting our troops out, without thinking about the big picture. Things like the strategic nature of Afghanistan, it's progress both in as a country and its ability to sustain themselves, and the fact the Taliban could see we were losing our resolve. That loss of resolve came primarily from our politicians and until we find a way to address it, the US will never be able to effectively end conflicts without giving back the successes made by our military back to the enemy. Our politicians are more interested in modifying the sentiment of the American people with the intent of hurting their opponents.

We went into Afghanistan with noble and justified reasons. And while we could have left it with the intent to seek those responsible and move on, we made a commitment to the Afghan people. Trump almost became the President who betrayed that commitment. Sure, he had a hand in getting it staged and yes, one could say Biden was handed that deal coming into office, but it was exactly what he wanted in the first place. And like Trump did at the very last second, halting the execution of the pull out, Biden had that opportunity to do the same. This would have been justified in the fact that the Taliban were already not living up to the deal they agreed to at Doha. He also could have listened to the military advisors in that the ANA/AAF were not up to the task of retaining control if we left. There's no excuse for what Biden did and I certainly do not appreciate Trump's role in it either (or Obama's for the matter). In the end, we went from overwhelming support, to political posturing to hurt Bush's popularity, to Bush giving into that pressure, to Obama minimizing our role there and starting the pull out of critical roles, to Trump negotiating an ill-advised withdraw, to Biden executing the withdraw. What do we have to show for it? Sure, we got UBL and many of the ringleaders, but the Taliban have regained control, they still hate us, Afghanistan will continue to provide a safe haven for more would-be terrorists, thousands of Americans died to help this country maintain peace, and the Afghans who started to prosper and see a possible peace in their country, were ultimately betrayed. While each of the President's along the way made rash or grand decisions in the name of politics vs doing the right thing, Biden's by far was the worst of all.