Howdy,
Yesterday, if you were paying attention, and I don’t blame you if you weren’t considering it’s not “front page news” in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs heard testimony from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS - boom - acronym) General (ret) Mark Milley and former United States Central Command (CENTCOM - boom - double acronym) Commander General (ret) Kenneth McKenzie on our retreat from Afghanistan.
Don’t worry. The Washington Post decided that American Ice Skater Amber Glenn’s heroic decision to come out as non-binary trumped America’s lost war. That’s nice. And perfectly on brand for that paper.
C-SPAN carried the hearings. You can watch a nice rundown here. Task & Purpose did a solid job with its story.
I watched most of the hearing. I ranted throughout the entire thing — shocker, I know. Luckily, I didn’t break anything or anyone. I practiced my breathing techniques and tried my best.
Let me give you the reader’s digest version of what happened:
Mark & Kenneth (they’re retired, so let’s get informal): The Department of State really screwed the pooch. We were ready, but those damn bureaucrats screwed us over!
GOP: Biden is to blame! Only Biden! We shall not look at anything before Biden because that would put our Dear, Glorious Leader, the GOAT, the Master of Disaster, Donald Trump, in a bad light.
Dems: Trump is bad! Trump is to blame! Biden was handcuffed by a non-binding Doha Agreement that the Taliban repeatedly broke throughout his presidency! He had no choice! None. The war ended (not lost; it just ended mysteriously). And if we had broken the Doha Agreement, then we would’ve had to fight the big, bad Taliban again! Oh no! Sure, we have troops in Iraq fighting ISIS, but we cannot have them in Afghanistan helping our allies defeat a group that helped kill 3,000 Americans! No. Mumble, mumble, mumble, “People of Color” matter, except Afghans. Mumble, mumble, mumble, “Believe Women,” except those we left behind to a gender apartheid regime.
Media: Afghanistan? Huh? What’s that? Let’s focus on Kate Middleton! What’s going on with her!
The lack of accountability in Afghanistan is a betrayal of such enormous magnitude that I simply cannot understand it.
Nowhere in the testimony did Mark and Kenneth take responsibility for the military’s role in this debacle. Why did the ANDSF fall? Oh, because we built a modern Army for an impoverished nation? Because we made them addicted to ubiquitous intelligence support and air power on demand? Yep. It just happened—like some type of force of G*d. In fact, blame them!
At least, finally, they admitted that American citizens and thousands of Afghans were left behind. Oh, that is a nice piece of info. You don’t know how many American citizens were left behind? Oh, well, that’s fun! And, of course, the State Department is to blame! There are ~3,000 DoS Foreign Service Officers vs. 1 million members of the armed forces. But, whatever, they’re to blame. Got it.
Now, Mark & Kenneth are fine men. They’ve had exemplary careers. In a sense, they were the unlucky sons of bitches who got caught with a steamy bag of shit when the Titanic finally sank. It’s not fair.
Honestly, I could give a shit less. They should’ve resigned. Both of them. It’s not entirely their fault this happened. Nevertheless, they are symbols, and it would’ve been healthy for our institutions had they resigned.
Also, we finally got word that the Taliban broke the Doha agreement by attacking American forces throughout the last year, something I’ve been harping on for years! They attacked us with mortars, rockets, IEDs, and surface-to-air-fire (SAFIRE) attacks on fixed and rotary wing assets, but not to worry: nobody was killed, so it was ok. Plus, it’s hard to distinguish between who is actually Taliban and who isn’t.
Oh. I see. So if one of my friends had been killed, then they would’ve actually broken the agreement? That’s nice.
Point of Privilege: If you don’t think the military was humiliated in Afghanistan, please take a look at this.
Now, be quiet while grown folks talk.
Yesterday was a perfect microcosm for everything wrong with the American experience in this year of our Lord 2024. No accountability. Blaming others to score political points. Grandstanding. And a YUGE heaping pile of bullshit.
Again, We are all to blame for Afghanistan. You. Me. Everyone.
So, let me start by taking public accountability for my role in this disaster.
I spent 3 1/2 years in Afghanistan on four separate deployments. I should’ve done better.
While on a PRT in 2008, I didn’t do a good job empowering our local government officials. Instead, I did quick impact projects that did little to help our allies — actually, it circumvented them. I chased the quick fixes that would help my career. I should’ve done better.
2012, I spent a year in Ghorak, Kandahar, training the Afghan Local Police. I should’ve done more to expand our reach to disaffected tribes. I should’ve told the Civil Military Operations Center South (CMOC-S) that the Afghan government would never succeed in this far-off district because they didn’t have the logistical capabilities to support it. Instead, I painted a rosy scenario. It was wrong. I was wrong. I should be held accountable for it.
In 2014, I was an advisor to multiple general officers in an Afghan intelligence service. My main job was protecting them from our moronic decisions at Resolute Support Headquarters. I should’ve tried to prevent more of it from falling on them. More importantly, I should’ve written more starkly about the future of the government. It was apparent by 2014 that the entire operation was in peril. I was wrong. I should be held accountable.
In 2020, I served as a military diplomat (attaché) inside the US Embassy in Kabul. I should’ve done more. I was drunk on having influence and power. I loved meeting with senior Afghan government officials. I should’ve written my reports without any regard for my career. Instead, Resolute Support HQs ran roughshod over us. They pressured us to change our reports. They kept us from writing about casualty rates to control the narrative. It was bullshit. I should have done more to prepare our allies for the stark reality: we were abandoning them.
Since the fall of Afghanistan, I’ve spent most of my life trying to make amends for my mistakes. I’ve tried to uphold the promise to thousands of Afghans for what went wrong. It shouldn’t fall on me and my fellow veterans/civilians/concerned citizens to uphold a promise like this.
It is wrong and morally abhorrent. You can’t say you support the troops unless you’re willing to be honest with them.
Here’s the truth: We lost, and we abandoned our allies.
The first step is admitting it. Without this step, healing will never truly commence.
Our Afghan combat veterans deserve the truth. Say it. Say it out loud. It’s liberating.
And it helps heal a tormented soul.
Until Next Time.
Bingo
I really don’t understand how the generals can pin this on the state department for not evacuating in July/early August. Provisional capitals were already falling to the Taliban at that point. We didn’t want Kabul to fall too, and even if we had 2,500 boots on the deck like the generals wanted—many of whom wouldn’t be infantry or JSOC—the bulk of the “guys with guns opposing the Taliban” would have been Afghan security forces. If the state department telegraphed early that America was hitting the “abandon ship!” button, would that have incentivized the Afghan security forces to hold the line or to evacuate as well? Had the state department began evacuations early, the Afghan security forces would have seen the writing on the wall and would start taking off their uniforms and abandoning outposts—enabling the Taliban to make it to Kabul on an even faster timeline.
Will, if it’d any consolation as to your 2008 tour, remember that DOD had its hands full in Iraq from 2003-2008 and Afghanistan was severely under-resourced during those years with a footprint of only like 10,000+ Americans there versus 180k+ in Iraq during the surge years from ‘04-‘08. Even if you had done things differently, the vacuum that Iraq created was always going to give Terry the breathing room to grow its size and shadow government footprint with the lack of footprint that ISAF had in Afghanistan during those crucial years. Fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time was our version of Hitler’s mistake of invading Europe and Russia at the same time. Logistics are like gold. The further and thinner you spread it, the weaker it gets.