Look at the statements President Biden was giving today. At one point, he said, "Nobody saw . . . wait . . . I shouldn't say nobody . . . There was consensus . . ."
And then he kept coming back to that word over and over. Consensus.
Why? Because there were reports and warnings. I'll post the article again. Emphases are mine:
WASHINGTON — Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials.
By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital. President Biden said on July 8 that the Afghan government was unlikely to fall and that there would be no chaotic evacuations of Americans similar to the end of the Vietnam War.
The drumbeat of warnings over the summer raise questions about why Biden administration officials, and military planners in Afghanistan, seemed ill-prepared to deal with the Taliban’s final push into Kabul, including a failure to ensure security at the main airport and rushing thousands more troops back to the country to protect the United States’ final exit.
One report in July — as dozens of Afghan districts were falling and Taliban fighters were laying siege to several major cities — laid out the growing risks to Kabul, noting that the Afghan government was unprepared for a Taliban assault, according to a person familiar with the intelligence.
Intelligence agencies predicted that should the Taliban seize cities, a cascading collapse could happen rapidly and the Afghan security forces were at high risk of falling apart. It is unclear whether other reports during this period presented a more optimistic picture about the ability of the Afghan military and the government in Kabul to withstand the insurgents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-biden-administration.html
It is bizarre for people to stand around going, "We had no idea this was coming!"
Well, someone did. Many someones. It should stop being said that this was all a surprise. If it was a surprise, that is a world class fuck up. You're then given a choice - ignorance or incompetence.
You don't want either in your quiver when struggling for political optics.
= new reply since forum marked as read
