COMMENTARY: Report on chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan misses mark by wide margin

By Berl Falbaum

It is painful, sad, and troubling to analyze the Biden administration’s public explanation of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

But one thing is very clear: It lacks transparency and candor.

The administration recently released a 12-page unclassified report on the withdrawal along with a briefing for the White House press corps by John F. Kirby,
the coordinator of communications for the National Security Council.

No one will ever forget the scene at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul where Afghans held on to a moving military C-17 cargo plane as it took off, some hanging on until the plane was airborne and then falling to their deaths. In addition, 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghan people were killed during the withdrawal by a suicide bomber.

The scene was reminiscent of the evacuation in Vietnam in 1975 when the Vietnamese clung on to helicopters taking off from a building’s rooftop.  Indeed, President Biden promised a month earlier that the nation would not witness a Vietnam-type withdrawal.

The report contains lots of finger pointing while Kirby said the administration was “proud” of the mission.

Overall, it blames former President Trump for adopting policies that gave his successor, Joe Biden, little, if any, room for flexibility. The report and Kirby said Biden’s hands were tied.

Let us assume that Biden is correct, that Trump’s policies handcuffed the president.  That does not excuse the president.

Many public officials—from the local level to the White House—take office inheriting flawed policies. It is their duty, as it was Biden’s, to take that in consideration and adopt new ones that correct mistakes and work to make sure that they don’t pour proverbial fuel on the fire. In that, Biden failed and failed miserably.

It was clear that the withdrawal was pursued on faulty intelligence that had predicted the Taliban would not assume control of the country for at least a year. As we know, the Taliban took over almost immediately.

Moreover, the timing was skewed; Biden should have proceeded much sooner, and the report hints—just hints—at this failure.

Not only did Kirby express “pride” in the mission, but he would not even acknowledge the utter chaos at the airport which the entire world witnessed.

“For all the talk of chaos,” said Kirby, “I just didn’t see it from my perch…So, I’m sorry.   I just don’t buy the whole argument of chaos.”

He must have been sitting on the same perch as Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde who, commenting on the January 6 insurrection, told us, “You know,
if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

What’s more, thousands of Afghans, who assisted the U.S. in the war, are still waiting to be evacuated.

But the most indicting misrepresentation comes from omission, what is not discussed or covered in the report. It does not address the fact that Biden ignored recommendations from his top military advisors that the U.S. should have left a force of at least 2,500 troops in the country.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley and General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, testified at a September Senate hearing that the president was advised to keep a small force in Afghanistan.

Biden continually denied that his military made any such recommendation.

He was pressed on this issue by ABC News Anchor-Commentator George Stephanopoulos, who asked him several times about the advice from the military, and Biden continually repeated that “it wasn’t true” that the generals recommended keeping some troops in Afghanistan.

After the question was posed by Stephanopoulos a third time, Biden finally said, “No, no one said that to me that I can recall.”

Now, the denial was tempered by possible memory issues. This is a timeworn legal strategy suggested by lawyers who advise clients to plead forgetfulness rather than lie when they are faced with “sensitive” questions which they don’t want to or should not answer.

In Biden’s case, it doesn’t work. If he “did not recall,” all he had to do was check extensive notes taken at all meetings with the president.

What should settle this dispute comes from testimony by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a House hearing. Asked whether Biden’s denial about the advice he received was true, Austin replied:

“First of all, I know the president to be an honest and forthright man.” Then he confirmed what Milley and McKenzie had recommended, adding that it [the advice] “was received by the president and considered by the president, for sure.”

Kirby, in his briefing, made a point of stressing that the report was not intended to address “accountability.”

In that, it succeeded.
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Berl Falbaum is a veteran political reporter and author of 12 books.