Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The nation’s top national security officials assembled at the Pentagon early on April 24 for a secret meeting to plan the final withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. It was two weeks after President Biden had announced the exit over the objection of his generals, but now they were carrying out his orders. In a secure room in the building’s “extreme basement,” two floors below ground level, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen….

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Reuters reports: President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials. Biden and his top aides argue they are managing an evacuation mission as well as could be expected given the faster-than-anticipated takeover of the country by the Taliban, and are seeking to draw attention back to the choice to get U.S. troops out…

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The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration moved slowly for months to address the plight of vulnerable Afghans who had worked for the United States even as a deadline for U.S. military withdrawal loomed, refugee advocates said — a lull some blamed on White House concern that the influx would invite partisan political backlash amid a rush of migrants at the southern border. Afghans who served as interpreters, fixers and other staff for the U.S. military and diplomats over the…

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The Associated Press reports: As U.S. forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years, most Americans – Republicans and Democrats – think the war in Afghanistan was “not worth fighting.” The AP-NORC survey was conducted August 12 through 16, as Taliban forces quickly swept through the countryside and cities of Afghanistan. The Afghan government collapsed after the Taliban entered the capital city of Kabul on August 15. The public is closely divided over President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign…

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CNN reports: Visiting Brussels earlier this summer, President Joe Biden was single-minded in his message to American allies. “America is back,” he declared in the lobby of the European Union’s headquarters, repeating a mantra he had uttered at nearly every stop of his first trip abroad, during which leaders welcomed him as a salve to four years of Trump-era angst. “It’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America to have a great relationship with NATO and with…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: About two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Kabul sent an internal memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official last month warning of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the cable. The cable, sent via the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban…

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CNN reports: While the US State Department continues to engage in high-level diplomatic talks with the Taliban in the neutral setting of Doha, Qatar, as it has for the past year, the real negotiations have moved to the chaotic streets of Kabul in recent days, where American military commanders are in constant communication with Taliban militants over security around the airport. In an extraordinary move, the top US commander in Afghanistan, Adm. Peter Vasely, has been leading the effort to…

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On Aug. 16, 2021, thousands of Afghans trapped by the sudden Taliban takeover rushed the Kabul airport tarmac. AP Photo/Shekib Rahmani By Gordon Adams, American University School of International Service In Afghanistan, American hubris – the United States’ capacity for self-delusion and official lying – has struck once again, as it has repeatedly for the last 60 years. This weakness-masquerading-as-strength has repeatedly led the country into failed foreign interventions. The pattern first became clear to me when I learned on…

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Anatol Lieven writes: An opening move in the U.S. military high command’s campaign to deflect blame for the 20-year-long American debacle in Afghanistan has come with a Sunday article by General H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman in the Wall Street Journal, “In Afghanistan, the Tragic Toll of Washington Delusion.” The delusions have indeed been real, and now cruelly exposed. As amply documented by the reports of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko, and the The…

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The New York Times reports: Two prominent Afghans who do not recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s rightful leaders have begun issuing challenges to the militants from a small but strategic pocket of territory that the Taliban do not control, according to an Afghan diplomat and statements by the leaders. Although it is unclear how many followers are with them or how many arms they have, both men — the vice president in the toppled government and the son of a…

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  Politico reports: A Taliban spokesperson on Tuesday worked to position the group as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, pledging that the Islamic militants would not seek revenge against Afghan civil servants or those who worked with the U.S. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban, said that the group would look to establish ties with other countries and announce the formation of a new government in the near future. “Afghanistan will have an Islamic — and a strong Islamic…

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CNN reports: Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday that he was concerned that then-President Donald Trump “undermined” the US’ 2020 agreement with the Taliban by pushing for US forces to leave Afghanistan without the Taliban meeting the conditions of the deal. The Trump administration’s “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” outlined a series of commitments from the US and the Taliban related to troop levels, counterterrorism and intra-Afghan dialogue aimed at bringing about “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.” But,…

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The New York Times reports: Military and intelligence assessments predicting that the government in Kabul could hold on at least a year before a Taliban takeover were built on a premise that proved to be flawed: that the Afghan army would put up a fight. “Most of the U.S. assessments inside and outside the U.S. government had focused on how well the Afghan security forces would fare in a fight with the Taliban. In reality, they never really fought” during…

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Anatol Lieven writes: In the winter of 1989, as a journalist for the Times of London, I accompanied a group of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. At one point, a fortified military post became visible on the other side of a valley. As we got closer, the flag flying above it also became visible — the flag of the Afghan Communist state, which the mujahideen were fighting to overthrow. “Isn’t that a government post?” I asked my interpreter. “Yes,”…

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Robin Wright writes: The fall of Kabul may serve as a bookend for the era of U.S. global power. In the nineteen-forties, the United States launched the Great Rescue to help liberate Western Europe from the powerful Nazi war machine. It then used its vast land, sea, and air power to defeat the formidable Japanese empire in East Asia. Eighty years later, the U.S. is engaged in what historians may someday call a Great Retreat from a ragtag militia that…

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