Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post in this article praises some unrecognized heroes of the State Department, and pushes back against the prevailing hyperbolic narrative.
And an article in The Week by Ryan Cooper takes the press to task.
"As disturbing scenes of chaos and misery played out in the streets of Kabul, criticism — some earned and some not, some hyperbolic and some laser-focused — rained down on a wide expanse of people, including President Biden, his predecessors, generals and defense secretaries, the National Security Council and the intelligence community."
"....But the story that the media resisted telling was less visible and far more positive — inspiring, even. It was the story of men and women running into the fray to save as many as possible from death and misery that a lost war entails."
"State Department personnel flooded a Taliban-controlled city to accelerate the identification and processing of Americans, Afghans and other nationals. They did not create the timeline, nor did they make the decision to begin the process with such a small number of troops. Nevertheless, they worked around the clock to rescue fellow Americans and live up to this country’s obligations to Afghans at risk."
By midweek, thousands of people — mostly non-Americans — were flying out of Kabul's airport in what is fast becoming one of the most challenging airlifts ever attempted. State Department workers at the airport, in concert with colleagues back home and around the world, were forced to use every ounce of experience, creativity and ingenuity to handle a once-in-a-career emergency for the sake of Americans and thousands of Afghans. The accusation that we did not care about the latter is a grotesque insult to those who risked their lives to deliver Afghans to safety. By Friday, we had evacuated 13,000 people, mostly Afghans since the airlift began. By Saturday the number was up to 17,000. (The story of how the Trump administration decimated the visa system to rescue Afghans is now coming to light.)
"Meanwhile, additional troops were belatedly inserted into a dangerous situation and expected to deal with crowds of desperate people, Taliban bullies and a host of logistical issues. Despite horrible scenes and a few civilian causalities inside the airport (which the military vowed to investigate), these troops restored some measure of order and began the nearly impossible mission they had been handed, acting with utmost professionalism and humanity. The photo of hundreds of Afghans crammed together on a military plane for evacuation is a testament to their skill and dedication. The image of U.S. soldiers lifting an infant over the wall of the airport is rebuke to those who deride this generation of Americans as any less honorable than the World War II generation. They are now devising new measures to extract Americans and Afghans due to the eroding security situation."
"...Back in Washington, spokespeople for the Defense and State departments faced an uber-aggressive — sometimes rude, interrupting and angry — press corps. The spokespeople did not loose their cool. They told the truth to the best of their ability and fielded questions around the clock. As reporters pelted them with questions, they candidly admitted that in a mass evacuation of a losing war, they didn’t instantaneously have the complete, granular detail reporters wanted."
"...None of this negates the responsibility of higher-ups for the failures, large and small, of judgment and strategy. They must be held accountable for 20 years of a largely fruitless war....But the work of Americans charged with executing the evacuation is noble, selfless and deeply patriotic. Often reviled by an ignorant public, smeared as the “deep state” by right-wing conspiracy theorists and ignored by an arrogant media, these public servants saved untold lives and alleviated a good deal of human suffering last week."
The press has not exactly covered themselves in glory. From this article in The Week: "...It seems the media thinks it's fine to flush trillions of dollars down the toilet and get hundreds of thousands of people killed in a spectacularly doomed occupation, so long as the brutality is relatively easy to ignore. It's not immediately obvious what explains a bias that is this extreme and widespread. Probably a number of factors are to blame. There is typical imperial chauvinism — the belief in American exceptionalism not only in thinking it is best country on Earth, but also that it has the right and ability to meddle in other countries' affairs whenever it wants."
Trump, the ultimate welcher, would have done nothing for the Afghans. Maybe we postponed the decision to leave Afghanistan for so long because we knew this would happen, like pulling off a bandaid. Sending troops back in to help the evacuees is the right thing to do.
ReplyDeleteDid you see the link where a Pence aid blamed Stephen Miller for screwing up the special immigrant visa system, which would have gotten a lot of the Afghans who helped our military out sooner? Doesn't surprise me a bit if that is true, or that Miller was involved with it.
DeleteYes, Katherine. Actually saw a recording of Miller arrogantly stating that the US never promised to a accept Afghan collaborators. Disgusting man. I think these refugees will do better under the Biden administration than the Trump one. If necessary to send back troops and establish a safe zone for a while, we should do it.
DeleteI am very skeptical about this whole story.
ReplyDeleteFirst, of all the media is doing its usual great job of hyping any story. They will keep doing this until the public becomes bored then they find another story to hype.
Second I am suspicious of all the commentary by various politicians, pundits, etc. This was a disaster two decades in the making. People were dying, money was being wasted, and nothing was being accomplished. Yet we continued to be unconcerned. Why are we suddenly concerned now?
Personally I blame the military industrial complex. They were delighted to continue spending a huge amount of military might essentially accomplishing nothing. And now they want to be sure that no president ever pulls the plug on any of their other boondoggles.
Time to look at defunding the military. Self defense is a lot cheaper than world control. I worked for the Army my whole career and think I did a good job overall for the taxpayer. But my first vote was for McGovern. It always seemed to me as if we were expecting too much from military might and overextended our empire (not land but economic hegemony). How much those trillions could have done for the home front and the citizenry. With no loss of security.
DeleteI don't think Jennifer Rubin is painting the right picture.
ReplyDeleteWhether the Afghanistan invasion is a "lost war" is something that historians can debate over the next decades. In my view, it's not a lost war. We weren't driven out by enemy combatants. It's an operation which could have gone on indefinitely, but which we unilaterally gave up on. Why? Because both the Trump and Biden administrations viewed it as politically expedient for us to give up and leave (apparently, to leave in the most irresponsible, chaotic and tragic way possible).
Whether we have an obligation to Afghan women and girls is an important moral question which the Trump and Biden administrations apparently already have answered in the negative. But Rubin is wrong that what will happen to those women and girls is inevitable. It's only inevitable because we ceded the country to the Taliban.
I am sure Rubin is right that various State Department people are acting heroically on the ground. But she wrongly implies that that's all that's possible. British and French troops are going out into Kabul to rescue their people. Why are our troops hunkered behind an airport wall and allowing the Taliban to control all the points of ingress? Why did we abandon our military's own airfield?
We could be doing much, much more than we are to save those to whom we have a moral obligation, beginning with Americans and Afghans who were there because they were working for our government. That we are leaving them to somehow run a gauntlet of Taliban checkpoints to get inside the airport is mind-boggling. It's the kind of abdication of fundamental responsibility one would expect of President Trump. That it's President Biden who is "leading" this "operation" is beyond disappointing. I'm ashamed, and angry as hell.
At the risk of channeling Squealer the Pig in Animal Farm ("Jones will come back!"): Biden is going to lose a lot of independents if he leaves Americans in Afghanistan to their fate without even trying to protect them. Donald Trump, whatever else he is, is a master of sticking his finger in the air to determine which way the wind is blowing, and then adjusting his rhetoric accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI am recalling what Colin Powell said about "Pottery Barn rules"; you broke it, you bought it. He said it about Iraq, but the same could have applied to Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the alternative to the present situation would be to stay there and maintain the status quo, similar to Korea. And a lot of people are saying now that that is what we should have done. But I didn't hear or read any support for that prior to the pull-out. Hind sight is 20 20, I guess. Of course an orderly pull-out without the Taliban swarming in would have been preferable, however that was going to happen. Especially since Taliban members were already present in Kabul, from what I am reading.
Here is one suggestion - this is from Jim Geraghty at National Review:
Delete"Brad Taylor — whom you may know for his thriller novels, but who was also a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Infantry and served for more than 21 years, retiring as a Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel — pointed out this weekend that the U.S. military trains and prepares for “NEOs” (Noncombatant Evacuation Operations) — all the time. There is a playbook for this type of dangerous situation that, for some not-yet-explained reason, has not been used. Taylor concludes that, “We should not be asking the Taliban for clear passage to the airport and then telling [American citizens] in Kabul to make their own way. We should be executing a forcible entry into the city and evacuating every last [American citizen]. The message should be clear: We aren’t hostile to you, unless you’re hostile to us, but we’re establishing corridors of evacuation, and if you attempt to stop us, you will die. And then back up that threat with firepower.”"
Looks like they are belatedly starting to do that. I don't know why that wouldn't have been "Plan A" in the first place.
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