Getting back to the heart of Pres. Biden's Afghanistan exit

[bigtree]

David Rothkopf @djrothkopf
Pointing a camera at a story, even a dramatic one, is not enough. Writing commentary while caught up in the emotion of a moment is often a mistake. Something much bigger was happening w/our withdrawal from Afghanistan than made it into most coverage.

Link to tweet

from DB:

Biden Insiders: Our Afghanistan Exit Is a Part of a Much Bigger Reset
Biden and his team have clearer memories of the long litany of egregious and crippling missteps America’s leaders made during the first years of this century than do their critics.

excerpt:

...even as the talking heads and the Twitterverse and the editorial writers and the political opportunists were decrying the process by which the decision to leave was made, questioning the judgment of Biden and his team, the departure from Afghanistan, even if it unfolded badly, was actually the product of a laser-like focus on the big picture and the long-term interests of the United States on the part of the president and his top advisers.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the administration’s reasoning to me as follows, “The investment we made in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years was enormous. Two decades, one trillion dollars, 2,300 lives lost, thousands more with visible and invisible wounds. It’s no secret that our strategic competitors would like nothing more than for America to be bogged down in conflict for another two years—or two decades. The only element that rivaled the cost of this conflict was the opportunity cost. The president concluded it was time for us to end this war.”

A senior White House aide put it this way: “The president firmly believes that leaving Afghanistan improves our ability to be a stronger world leader, more engaged with allies, and more effective internationally.” The aide went on to echo Blinken, thus underscoring the centrality of the idea of returning our focus to great power competition for Biden and his team, saying, “As the president has said repeatedly, there is nothing that Russia or China would like to see more than the U.S. tied down in an endless war in Afghanistan. This is especially true as the terrorist threat grows in other places, and the geopolitical challenges elsewhere mount.”

Senior aides to the president repeatedly stressed to me that the actions in Afghanistan are all part of a much broader, carefully considered strategic shift for the United States. It will mean nothing less than finally bringing an end to the post-9/11 era. It will close the books on the recklessness and excesses of the war on terror, an end to the dangerous delusions of American exceptionalism and hubris-infused unilateralism.

read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-insiders-our-afghanistan-exit-is-a-part-of-a-much-bigger-reset/body

...that's what I got from the President's address:

[raging moderate]

1. Plus, so many Afghani lives were lost.

How can we ever live that down? So many of these deaths seem to me to have been preventable. How can we ever make it up to them? Joe Biden is right to get us out of there ASAP. I remember, in the early days, some TV newsman interviewed an Afghani man who asked US viewers, "Can't you see the difference between me and the Taliban men?' and it suddenly hit me, No, oh no, God forgive me, I really fear that I cannot, not reliably, and I doubt that many US citizens could, and maybe we should not be doing this.

[Hoyt]

2. Agree we need to leave, vast majority believe that. Just do it right.

[bigtree]

3. when I hear that, all I can think of is the notion of American exceptionalism that kept us there

Last edited Sat Aug 21, 2021, 01:47 AM - Edit history (1)

...occupation completely counter to what our nation's defenses are designed for.

We have plenty of humanitarian missions the military is pursuing, have pursued in the past. Shouldn't be news that it was images of Afghani women subject to various abuses by the Taliban that the CIA used in the early days of the invasion to draw up the narrative to remain.

What we're seeing after 20 years is the product of generations of Afghanistan's inhabitants and residents subject to a violently oppressive occupation - not in the interest of the safety of Afghanis, but in the interest of our military's national security directives.

That's what you get when you superimpose a humanitarian pursuit (however valid) on top of a military mission. In our case, even in full occupation mode, we couldn't keep Afghanis from death and destruction; either at the hands of the Taliban, or at the receiving end of our carpet bombs, indefinite detentions, or extraordinary renditions.

So, here we are, ending the cycle of an increase in support for the Taliban in direct proportion to our own presence there - something our collective intelligence agencies warned us about all those years ago. Look how far we've inflated the Taliban, and look how fast our Potemkin of a government collapsed when we let go.

We're either occupying, or letting go. No one there has much interest in what's in the U.S. interest. Not much consideration of the implications of American troops reengaging outside the green zone. They're either engaged in occupying, or they're letting go. Neither choice allows the other much room to operate safely, and our troops aren't in force to do more than they have.

We need to focus more on the consequences of remaining. The withdrawal has been mostly peaceful, and that's as much a priority as anything else, because if the area lights up with conflict and combat, no one gets out easily.

Biden's got this.

[Hoyt]

4. OK, leave Americans and allies there. Don't think that will go over well

next November. Another cost of screwing it up.

[bigtree]

5. of course that's not happening

...nor are all of the folks on those planes 'allies.'

We got the embassy folks and I doubt most support personnel were left unawares. Americans have been advised for a decade or more that their safety can't be guaranteed by the US military outside of the green zone. Were talking contractors, folks on humanitarian missions, all well aware of the risks involved in an occupation zone.

If you know someone, you'll likely lose sleep over them. I won't, but I'm sure many of our troops will and put themselves in harms way to evacuate people. I'm already turning away, and I don't feel our military has an indefinite role to play in that effort, although I suppose the president will see it through as far as he's able.