Why Biden was so set on withdrawing from Afghanistan

[babylonsister]

Why Biden was so set on withdrawing from Afghanistan
Even in 2009, he didn’t believe the military had a strategy for victory.
By Andrew [e-mail] Aug 18, 2021, 8:00am EDT


To understand President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan against the advice of the US military establishment, you need to go back to a debate that played out more than a decade ago, during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

In 2009, the new Obama administration debated whether to “surge” troop levels in Afghanistan after nearly eight years of war had failed to quell the insurgency from the overthrown Taliban forces. Top generals asked early that year for 17,000 more US troops and then, having gotten those, asked for an additional 40,000 to try to weaken the Taliban and strengthen the Afghan government.

Then-Vice President Biden was consistently one of the biggest skeptics of the military’s recommendations. Throughout months of debate, he repeatedly raised the inconvenient point that the generals’ preferred strategy seemed extremely unlikely to lead to actual victory. “We have not thought through our strategic goals!” he shouted during the Obama administration’s first meeting on the war in Afghanistan.

All this was documented at the time in Bob Woodward’s deeply reported 2010 book Obama’s Wars. Biden did not actually support withdrawal at the time — he pushed for a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, accompanied by a smaller troop surge than the military wanted.

But his dark view of the long-term picture was clearly vindicated in the decade since. Now that Biden is president and has actually withdrawn from the war — leading to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — it’s worth revisiting that past debate, as outlined in Woodward’s book, to understand why his mind was so firmly made up.

more...

https://www.vox.com/2021/8/18/22629135/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-reasons

[OnDoutside]

1. I suspect that the tight timeline was to reduce the chance of the

hawks getting him to change his mind.

[2naSalit]

8. Or...

Rather make it impossible to exit at this time. There's been a lot of that taxpayer funding going into their pockets, hard to give up that invisible cash flow.

[samsingh]

16. i think this was a blunder and a lot of people have died who didn't need to

just because they are in Afghanistan doesn't mean they don't count.

[maxsolomon]

18. Leave now or leave later; the outcome would be the same.

And people were dying all along from Taliban terror.

[dalton99a]

2. It is in the personal financial interests of the generals to continue the bullshit war

There is a lucrative corporate job waiting when they finish their gig

[multigraincracker]

5. The generals did a terrible job of

supplying and training for 20 years to have their military fold in less than a week. I don't want their advice now.

[Happy Hoosier]

22. You can't give people the will to fight.

Training and equipment can only take you so far. In the end, the will to fight and persevere is what matters most. The Afghan Army was never committed to the mission.

[haele]

6. General Patreaus was called General Betray-us by many of the troops -

For his strategic stupidity in not having clear goals and shifting tactics to court public opinion and congressional attaboys. Troops had to deal with mission change and mission creep all the time...and in my military experience, that's demoralizing as hell. If there's not a clear strategic goal, time, resources, and manpower are wasted on reactionary tactics and constant mission changes.
Troops are not fungible. Infantry are not Engineers, or NGO management specialists, or Intelligence operatives - but they were constantly asked to do those jobs. And told "just another two/three more months..." after deadlines came and passed...

The Generals were really busy dealing with Contractors and PR people...

Haele

[dalton99a]

9. But he's the second coming of Ulysses Grant/John Pershing/George Marshall/Dwight Eisenhower

Petraeus retired from the U.S. Army on August 31, 2011. His retirement ceremony was held at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall.[181] During this ceremony, he was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal by Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn.[182] During the ceremony, Lynn noted that Petraeus had played an important role as both a combat leader and strategist in the post-9/11 world. Lynn also cited General Petraeus's efforts in current counter insurgency strategy.[183] Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his remarks compared General Petraeus to Ulysses S. Grant, John J. Pershing, George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower as one of the great battle captains of American history.[184] With his four-star rank, Petraeus receives an annual pension of about $220,000.[185]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus

[Greybnk48]

3. Almost all of the troops were already pulled out by the Slobfather last year.

Biden chose to pull out a remaining 2500 or less. Probably a good idea, given Trump had already orchestrated a surrender to the Taliban.

[former9thward]

7. How long did you want us to remain there?

Since you equate withdrawal with surrender.

[peppertree]

11. +1

It was all both hopeless and pointless.

Except, of course, for the miscreants with cost-plus contracts and/or with their greasy fingers on the opium trade.

Made a lot sense for them.

[peppertree]

10. "We have not thought through our strategic goals!"

Because, my good man, it was never about those.

Only about the money. Money from padded contracts, money from opium - but always the money.

Quite a few oceanfront mansions must have been built or bought with Afghan War loot.

[bucolic_frolic]

13. That's it, in a nutshell

And MSM is giving him grief because they're in on it, they are the megaphone for this system.

I want to know who put together this system of evacuation. It seems so poorly planned as to intend little other than grief.

[peppertree]

15. Thanks. It is what it is.

As for the fraught evacuation, I'm sure it didn't help we have no ambassador there at the moment - because CANCUN RAFAEL is holding them all up.

And this is exactly why he does it: the fat bastard holds them up because it makes any crisis in said country harder for Biden to navigate, should one happen.

This is like Christmas in August for the Cuban coward.

[crickets]

19. +1

[calimary]

12. Bookmarking this. A good historical review - and refresher course.

[totodeinhere]

14. The generals always want more troops.

The same thing happened during the Viet Nam era when LBJ's generals convinced him against his better judgement that what we needed was more troops in order to win that war. And of course the same thing happened then that is happening now. More troops is not always the answer.

[Martin Eden]

17. The generals are experts on HOW to FIGHT a war

Not WHETHER we SHOULD.

[crickets]

20. Great article, babylonsister.

It clearly lays out Biden's reasoning. Unlike the generals, Biden learned the lesson about nation building in Afghanistan. He knew what they did not want to admit: that we were wasting our time, resources, and personnel. It was time to go. Good for him for standing firm and getting us out of there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal.html

There would be no conditions put on the withdrawal, Mr. Biden told the men, cutting off the last thread — one that had worked with Mr. Trump — and that Mr. Austin and General Milley hoped could stave off a full drawdown.

They were told, Zero meant zero.

In that moment, the war — which had been debated across four presidents, prosecuted with thousands of commando raids, cost 2,400 American fatalities and 20,000 injured, with progress never quite being made — began its final chapter. It will be over, Mr. Biden has promised, by the 20th anniversary of the attacks that stunned the world and led to more than 13,000 airstrikes.

How this last chapter of the American adventure in Afghanistan will end is a story that remains to be written.

Apologies that this article is behind a paywall. It also does an excellent job in laying out Biden's reasons for leaving.

As for the chaos over the past weekend, indications are that those who say they didn't know should have had an inkling that there would be no 'decent interval' with Afghanistan.

See the Afghanistan Papers:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/

That said, even those who knew the Taliban would take over soon were caught flat-footed by how quickly the army and the government melted away. Ghani's own people were taken by surprise that he fled so quickly. Shame and blame for that is on Ghani, and no fault of Biden at all.

[Polybius]

21. Biden and Hillary had starkly different opinions on the surge

Obama was torn, taking advice from his top cabinet. Unfortunately, he listened to Clinton instead of Biden.