Biden’s Appalling Trust in the Taliban By Andrew C. McCarthy
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/bidens-appalling-trust-in-the-taliban/
The president has been resigned for years to the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.
I t is becoming increasingly difficult to draw any conclusion other than that President Biden knowingly and willfully surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban.
To be clear, this is different from concluding that Biden committed to a recklessly premature date for withdrawing all U.S. forces (which, practically speaking, would necessitate NATO’s departure, too) while being aware that the Taliban were capturing territory and that the Afghan security forces might be unable to hold them off over the ensuing months.
That would be bad, but not as damning as what I am deducing.
I now believe Biden long ago reasoned that the Taliban were going to take over the country inevitably and decided to treat them as the de facto government. Consistent with this — and with the progressive Democratic orientation that American military power is needlessly provocative, and that concessions are the preferred way to inspire rogues into good behavior — Biden determined back in the spring that he would set a firm deadline to pull our forces out, and then demonstrate to the Taliban that the deadline was real.
This, he calculated, would accomplish two things. First, on the domestic political front, the president could claim he was “ending America’s longest war.” Second, Biden could assure the Taliban that he was irreversibly committed to military withdrawal, even though he was extending the Trump administration’s irresponsible May 1 deadline (negotiated with the Taliban in an agreement that cut out, and thus nullified, the ostensibly U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul, releasing 5,000 prisoners at the Taliban’s demand).
Biden saw the Taliban as the regime in waiting, with whom his administration was energetically negotiating. If he proved to the Taliban that the U.S. really was leaving no matter what, then he figured the Taliban would allow — even facilitate — the evacuation of thousands of American civilian workers, contractors, and diplomatic personnel. Biden would pull out American troops and trust the Taliban, thus appeased, with the fate of the remaining Americans.
This is mind-boggling, but not the half of it. Biden was also effectively administering the coup de grâce to the Afghan government, and not only by elevating the Taliban to the sole Afghan party with which his administration would negotiate the terms of the U.S. departure. Biden would also pull out in a manner that undermined the Afghan security forces’ capacity to fight the Taliban. After all, if U.S. troops and contractors continued providing technical and logistical support to the Afghan ground and air forces, the Taliban might interpret that as an American commitment to continue the war. Biden would make sure the jihadists had no cause for doubt.
In this, Biden had to know he would be leaving to the Taliban the fate of tens of thousands of Afghans who supported American combat, intelligence, training, and nation-building efforts over the last 20 years. Though many government officials, members of Congress, and influential commentators pleaded with the Biden administration to fast-track the visa process and evacuate the Afghans while American forces were still in control, Biden plainly rationalized that this could provoke the Taliban into retaliatory measures — potentially against Americans — that would put public pressure on him to maintain U.S. forces in the country. Biden’s priority was to withdraw them. Ergo, the Taliban — yes, that Taliban — would be trusted to deal benignly with America’s Afghan allies
What leads me to these conclusions? The following ten points.
- As vice president, Biden was an active participant in Obama’s foreign-policy decisions. It was the Obama/Biden administration that aided and abetted the Taliban’s leadership in establishing in Doha, Qatar, a diplomatic presence for the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — which, as I have explained, is the highly meaningful name the Taliban adopted for their regime in waiting. While not formal U.S. government recognition, this was de facto recognition of the Taliban — de facto recognition in which the Trump administration persisted.
- The Obama/Biden administration’s key role in establishing the Taliban’s formal diplomatic presence in Doha in 2013 was expressly intended to signal the need for Taliban participation in the Afghan government once Obama ended U.S. combat operations in 2014 — a step the Obama/Biden administration irrationally believed would “end the war” and usher in a political settlement, even though the Taliban were never going to accept an Afghan republic (they have always been determined to rule an unabashedly sharia-based emirate).
- Notwithstanding the Taliban’s enduring alliances with virulently anti-American jihadist organizations (e.g., al-Qaeda, the Haqqani group, and the supposedly separate Pakistani Taliban), and the Taliban’s manifest intention to persevere in combat operations against Afghan government forces (along with their American trainers and technicians), the Obama/Biden administration agreed to release five Taliban commanders who had long been in American custody. The administration tried to camouflage the dereliction as a routine prisoner exchange. The prisoner, you’ll recall, was the deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Ironically in light of Biden’s apparent abandonment of Americans to the tender mercies of the Taliban, the Obama/Biden administration portrayed the swap for Bergdahl (who was later convicted in a court martial) as an instance of the time-honored U.S. commitment to leave no American behind. (Susan Rice, a top adviser to Obama and Biden, claimed that Bergdahl had “served with honor and distinction.”) In reality, the Obama/Biden administration knowingly fortified the Taliban when it was undeniable that the Taliban would continue fighting to take over the country as the U.S. drew down its forces.
- In April 2021, American military commanders pleaded with President Biden to maintain a modest military presence of about 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in order to maintain stability while the U.S.-backed Afghan government attempted to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban. Obviously, such pleas would have been unnecessary if the American officials believed the Afghan security forces — designed, trained, and supported by the U.S. military — were capable of holding off the Taliban offensive. Biden rebuffed the U.S. commanders because he was hell-bent on “ending” the war by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Given that Biden knew the Taliban were committed to persisting in the fight, the only way the war could have ended by September 11 was if the Taliban had already won.
- As the Wall Street Journal has reported, “In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.” With the Biden administration having assured the Taliban that the U.S. was vacating the country by September 11, and with the Taliban actively executing an offensive in which they captured district after district, Biden had to have known that depriving the Afghan armed forces of the basics they needed to operate would mean the Taliban would rapidly roll over the Afghan government — just as the U.S. commanders had warned Biden the Taliban would do.
- The hub of the U.S. military enterprise in Afghanistan since 2002 has been sprawling Bagram air base. In early July, the Biden administration had the dwindling U.S. forces evacuate Bagram in the dead of night, giving no notice to the Afghan security forces to whom the base should have been formally transferred — thus enabling looters to scavenge the compound for hours before the Afghan forces could get there. There was a bounty for the looters because, in their haste to bug out, the U.S. forces had left millions of dollars of materiel behind, including thousands of vehicles and rounds of ammunition (alarming but just a fraction of the U.S. arsenal now in Taliban hands). Rather than alert the Afghan troops with whom they had partnered for years, the U.S. forces cut the electricity as they abandoned the compound — all the signal the looters needed to descend. The message was clear: The Afghan forces would not be capable of holding and exploiting Bagram. Biden had resigned himself to an inevitable Taliban takeover.
- The Bagram bug-out was not merely a shameful episode; it was for Biden a tactical retreat. The Taliban were surging, the Afghan military forces were collapsing, and Biden knew that U.S. commanders wanted to keep a force presence and continue supporting the Afghan government. If there were to be any thought of reversing course, maintaining control of Bagram would have been essential. By not just slashing the in-country troop presence but surrendering Bagram — and in a consciously chaotic and sneaky way that deprived the Afghan forces an orderly transfer at a time when they were under siege and steadily losing their U.S.-dependent capacity to function — the Biden administration guaranteed that there would be no turning back from the decision to pull out. No matter how bad things got, U.S. commanders would have no military options. Besides having surrendered their fortress, they would be down to just 600 troops — not even enough to secure the airport in Kabul and U.S. diplomatic personnel in a real crisis.
- The Wall Street Journal reports that on July 13, in a secret State Department cable, 23 American diplomats in Afghanistan warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden policy-planning director Salman Ahmed that the Afghan government could not hold Kabul, and it would fall to the Taliban. The diplomats exhorted the Biden administration to accelerate the process of registering Afghans who qualified for U.S. visas due to the assistance they’d provided our government. Many of these Afghans were trapped, or in imminent danger of being trapped, in districts that the Taliban were seizing. The Journal adds that diplomats “also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban.”
- This highlights the sheer mendacity of claims by the president and his top advisers that no one could have anticipated that the Afghan government would collapse as rapidly as it did. The administration was repeatedly advised by knowledgeable officials that this was the likelihood unless Biden changed course. The president did not just ignore these admonitions; he affirmatively cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and armed forces. Furthermore, the calls for condemnation of the Taliban fell on deaf ears, as the Biden administration continued negotiations with their representatives in Doha. And the administration dragged its feet on evacuating our Afghan allies out of the country — an initiative to which the Taliban would have objected strenuously at a time when the administration had so reduced U.S. force levels that it was clearly going to be difficult, if not impossible, to get the thousands of Americans out. (Jim Geraghty observed on Monday that, as they consolidate control of the country, the Taliban are actively hunting down Afghan contractors who cooperated with U.S. and Coalition forces.)
- Rich Lowry points out in his column on Monday that President Biden has steadfastly refrained from criticizing the Taliban, even as he hammers American detractors of the catastrophe he has made of Afghanistan. Biden unabashedly touts his administration’s close and constant contacts with Taliban leadership in Kabul and Doha. And he makes blatantly false representations about the Taliban’s good faith. Astoundingly, the president seems to believe the public will be mollified by his confidence in his “agreement with the — with the Taliban” to allow Americans throughout the country to get to the airport in Kabul — notwithstanding that a) his assurances have been contradicted by U.S. officials and media reporting on the ground, and b) well, we’re talking about the Taliban.
To sum up, Biden perseveres in the illusion that the Taliban crave international “legitimacy,” and that they will need it to “maintain” that country. I have no doubt that the president is fearful of offending the Taliban, which is in a position to take American hostages (if they have not already done so). That would make the ongoing debacle an even worse crisis. Indeed, the Taliban haughtily announced on Monday that Biden’s promise of an August 31 final departure of U.S. forces is a “red line” for them, warning that there will be a “reaction” if Biden tries to extend the deadline (as British prime minister Boris Johnson is reportedly urging him to do). It will be interesting to see what “reaction” there is from a president of the United States to a blunt threat from jihadists.
All that said, I do not believe Biden bumbled into this disaster.
The president has been resolved for years to allow the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. He hoped that, when the inevitable happened, the Taliban would crave international legitimacy — the transnational-progressive gold standard — and thus that they would behave (relatively speaking) upon seizing control. In the interim, when it was in his power to do so, Biden undertook to win the Taliban over with shocking concessions and accommodations, including sabotaging the Afghan government and security forces, which eased the Taliban’s path to Kabul — in the end, they barely had to fire a shot in taking over.
Sticking to the Obama/Biden script, the president discounted the sharia-supremacist loathing of the United States. He rationalized that his appeasement would buy Taliban goodwill at least regarding the evacuation of American civilians. Meanwhile, he calculated that, once he pulled U.S. troops out and “ended the war,” Americans would not care that he’d ensured the Taliban’s victory with no practical means of preventing them from giving sanctuary to such anti-American jihadists as al-Qaeda, whose presence in Afghanistan Biden has falsely denied.
This was not negligence. It was willful presidential action “in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘forever wars’” (to quote Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair), undertaken by a man who, through 50 years in politics, has made the “imbecilic” his constant companion.
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