Nancy Pelosi had these words when talking about how prepared Joe Biden is with Russia’s imminent attack of Ukraine:
Is he though? Really?
The United States Army released a 2000 page report on the retreat of the United States and how prepared we were. Let’s compare that to the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
A Bad Look…Again
The United States Army released a 2000 page report about the abandonment from Afghanistan. Those are my words and are not from the report. I think it will shock no one if I say that the report was less than a shining example of the performance of the Biden administration. Let’s go through the report and Joe Biden’s reaction to it.
The Report
The Washington Post first reported about the report. They were not gentle. They said:
Declassified U.S. military analyses of the calamitous exit from Afghanistan detail repeated instances of friction between American troops and diplomats before and during the evacuation, concluding that indecisiveness among Biden administration officials and initial reluctance to shutter the embassy in Kabul sowed chaos and put the overall mission at “increased risk.”
Ouch!
By the way, this is not really something new. We could tell this was the issue long before this report came out. The Biden administration’s messaging was very different from that of the military, especially those on the ground. Heck, the administration dismissed a soldier who complained about the exit. The press conferences held by Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley gave very different accounts than that of the Biden administration and I have pointed that out in past podcasts.
They also said, in a separate report:
Senior White House and State Department officials failed to grasp the Taliban’s steady advance on Afghanistan’s capital and resisted efforts by U.S. military leaders to prepare the evacuation of embassy personnel and Afghan allies weeks before Kabul’s fall, placing American troops ordered to carry out the withdrawal in greater danger, according to sworn testimony from multiple commanders involved in the operation.
This is Biden’s biggest problem: he is out of touch and lives in a bubble. He cannot comprehend that there are highly motivated people out there that are under-armed but don’t care. And they never thought that the people the United States was abandoning would just not fight because they did not think this was going to go well for them.
But there’s more:
Beyond the bleak, blunt assessments of top military commanders, the documents contain previously unreported disclosures about the violence American personnel experienced, including one exchange of gunfire that left two Taliban fighters dead after they allegedly menaced a group of U.S. Marines and Afghan civilians. In a separate incident a few days later, U.S. troops killed a member of an elite Afghan strike unit that had joined the operation and wounded six others after they fired on the Americans.
In other words, Afghanistan became hostile when they found out the United States told everyone we were pulling out. And the government hid it. That’s because the Biden administration did everything they could to make this thing look like and organized, peaceful pullout.
Well, it wasn’t. We didn’t find that out until a terrorist killed 13 soldiers and 170 Afghans and people started falling off of planes as they were taking off.
Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” He did not identify any administration officials by name, but said inattention to the Taliban’s determination to complete a swift and total military takeover undermined commanders’ ability to ready their forces.
You know, we had this issue with Korea, Vietnam and both Iraq wars and that is letting politicians run military operations. It doesn’t work. The problem here is that the upper echelons of the military are becoming politicians. Why do you think no one has been fired after this mess?
The story continues:
The operation evacuated 124,000 people before concluding about midnight Aug. 31. It required U.S. commanders to strike an unusual security pact with the Taliban and rapidly deploy nearly 6,000 troops to assist a skeleton force of about 600 left behind under Vasely’s command to protect U.S. Embassy personnel. U.S. officials have lauded the effort, but critics have said that although U.S. troops performed heroically, the evacuation was flawed and incomplete, leaving behind hundreds of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans who supported the war effort and were promised a way out.
John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in response to questions about the report that while the airlift was a “historic achievement,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has acknowledged it was “not perfect.”
“We are committed to, and are intensely engaged in, an ongoing review of our efforts during the evacuation, the assessments and strategy during the conflict, and the planning in the months before the end of the war,” Kirby said. “We will take those lessons learned, and apply them, as we always do, clearly and professionally.”
Both these guys should have been fired after this mess. The problem is that they got their orders from Biden and they would not think twice about throwing the Biden administration under the bus. That’s why they continue to plod along.
The story talks about General Kenneth McKenzie:
Marine Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, chief of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview Tuesday that he was “not surprised” commanders had different opinions about how the evacuation could have gone better.
“But remember,” he said, “what did happen is we came together and executed a plan. There are profound frustrations; commanders, particularly subordinate commanders, they see very clearly the advantages of other courses of action. However, we had a decision, and we had an allocation of forces. You proceed based on that.”
There “might have been other plans that we would have preferred,” the general added, “but when the president makes a decision, it’s time for us to execute the president’s decision.”
He should have been fired too since he took direct responsibility for the terrorist attacks that killed the 13 soldiers. He remains for the same reason as the other two.
The story continues:
Military officials told investigators that although the evacuation was in many ways cobbled together on the fly, planning within the Defense Department began months earlier. Initial discussions presumed the possible use of Bagram air base, a sprawling U.S. military installation 30 miles north of Kabul, and assistance from Afghan government forces to help secure the path there, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Farrell J. Sullivan, who was involved in planning and oversaw the Marines sent into the capital, told investigators. Those plans evolved from incorporating both airfields to “just HKIA,” the Marine general said, using the military’s shorthand for Hamid Karzai International Airport.
U.S. officials have said previously that the decision to turn over Bagram to the Afghan government was made because it was deemed too far outside Kabul, where the majority of evacuees were expected to be, and because it would have required a significant number of U.S. troops.
“Everyone clearly saw some of the advantage of holding Bagram,” McKenzie said Tuesday, “but you cannot hold Bagram with the force level that was decided.”
How is no one fired over this? Even symbolically?
Then the article talks about the fighting between the military and the politicians:
Disagreement between U.S. military officials and American diplomats in Kabul about when to press forward with an evacuation appears to have gone back months. Vasely, who took command as the top officer in Afghanistan in July, said he was told by the departing four-star commander, Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, that there would be opposition among senior officials at the embassy to shrinking its footprint in Kabul.
Ross Wilson, the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was focused on maintaining a diplomatic presence there, Vasely said, and questioned how the United States was supposed to preserve its influence without an embassy, the admiral added.
Wilson did not respond to requests for comment.
Vasely told investigators that he was advised by embassy staff that he should provide those close to the acting ambassador with data illustrating the country’s rapid collapse to the Taliban, “so it could be sold as a collective approach and not a power grab by DoD.”
Wilson wanted two weeks to evacuate the embassy and leave a skeleton staff at the airport, military officials said. But by Aug. 12, three days before Kabul’s fall, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called Wilson and instructed him to move more quickly, Vasely told investigators.
We know this is true. The Defense Department admitted their was a huge push back by the diplomats to stay in Afghanistan. Of course, they were overruled. Not by the military but by the Biden administration. Mind you, we had a small presence in Afghanistan, about 2000 troops. No troop has been killed due to fighting for over 5 years.
I skip down a little in the article:
By mid-July, Sullivan, the senior Marine officer involved in planning the evacuation, wanted to stage supplies to host 5,000 evacuees at the airport, but his effort was complicated because he was not permitted to discuss the possibility of a full-scale evacuation with anyone other than British officials, he told investigators. Other U.S. military leaders, whose names were redacted from the report, said there were fears among administration officials that if the United States, by raising alarm, inspired other governments to quickly leave Afghanistan, it would accelerate the central government’s demise.
The Marine general told investigators that trying to engage the embassy in discussions about an evacuation was “like pulling teeth” until early August. “After that,” he said, “it became more collaborative.”
A spokesman for Sullivan referred questions to McKenzie.
During an Aug. 6 meeting, a National Security Council official, who is not identified in the report, appeared to lack a sense of urgency and told others involved that if the United States had to execute an evacuation, it would signal “we have failed,” Sullivan recalled. “In my opinion, the NSC was not seriously planning for an evacuation,” he said.
Did you get that? They only had the ability to evacuate 5000 people and it turned out they evacuated 126,000? Do you think there was any doubt, whatsoever, that this retreat was going to be a disaster?
National Security Council officials regularly convened meetings last summer to assess the situation in Afghanistan and prepositioned troops in the region in the event of a crisis, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday at the White House, after an early version of this story was published.
“I would just say if you look back at the specific planning steps we took, we did plan for a range of contingencies,” she said. “There wasn’t an anticipation that the Afghan National Security Forces would fall as they did, or as quickly as they did.”
At the State Department, spokeswoman Jalina Porter said that “cherry-picked comments do not reflect the months of work that were well underway, or the whole picture of what the U.S. diplomats undertook to facilitate the evacuation and relocation of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and allies.”
“Some of the claims allegedly included in the report regarding State Department personnel and plans are outright false and shamefully so,” Porter said, without elaborating.
Another senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity, defended how the State and Defense departments coordinated to execute Biden’s decisions. The State Department “steadily drew down our diplomatic presence in Kabul starting in April 2021, nearly four months before the fall of Kabul, when the Embassy went on ‘Ordered Departure’ status,” the official said.
In other words, the State Department knew the fragility of the Afghan Security Forces and the Biden administration used whatever talking point they could to further a narrative that all is good. I think there was some hope that this whole thing would just go away because, let’s face it, the media has been compliant.
The article continues talking about Afghan President Ashraf Ghaini escaping the country:
By Aug. 14, Vasely believed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government would collapse, he told investigators. The United States carried out 10 airstrikes against the Taliban that day 10 miles south of Kabul, killing about 100 fighters, but it did not halt its advance.
“We were killing them in bunches, destroying tactical vehicles, and they kept coming,” he said.
After word spread the next day that Ghani had fled the country, the airfield in Kabul descended into chaos, as thousands of desperate people sought a flight out. One medical officer interviewed by investigators compared the atmosphere that week to “Lord of the Flies,” the classic book in which teenagers stranded on an island fail to govern themselves. Several military officials recalled U.S. Marines coming under fire that night by Taliban fighters, and the Marines, in turn, killing two.
Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who arrived after the collapse and oversaw airfield security, recalled that early discussions with the Taliban were tense.
“We told them that we would control the gates and they would push people out,” said Donahue, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division. “We expressed that they will comply, because if they fight us on this we would be able to kill more of them than they would ever hope to kill of us. After that their tone changed.”
In other words, there was complete chaos. No one knew what was going on. No one knew if they were going to get out. We still don’t know. There could be anywhere between 100 and 1000 Americans still in Afghanistan. We know the Biden administration lied about the numbers because there are private rescue groups that have been pulling hundreds of Americans out of Afghanistan since the retreat.
The article is long and the Washington Post published two articles. Both articles are extremely critical of the efforts during the Afghanistan retreat. Though they do not directly blame Biden, which I thought is how they would spin it, they did criticize the whole effort.
Biden’s Response
The Biden administration thought this whole thing would just go away. After all, the Biden administration does have the entire media behind them, Afghanistan is 10,000 miles away so they probably thought they could hide a lot of it and many people were mixed about being in Afghanistan so Biden could throw out the “endless war” narrative. Heck, even I wasn’t sure getting out of Afghanistan was a terrible idea.
But Biden had some major issues that ruined his ability to hide the bad things with Afghanistan, and everything else for that matter:
- We have film of what’s going on there including some great reporting from CNN. We also have video of the desperation of the Afghan people.
- Troops have died in terrorist attacks.
- Biden’s poll numbers are in the toilet and not just because of Afghanistan.
- He does not hold press conferences and appears to be hiding.
- He has a history of messing up on foreign policy.
- The truth.
- Biden has been lying at worst and not being transparent at best.
- His lies are conflicting with others. People are not going to take a fall based on his decisions.
Biden did an interview with Lester Holt from NBC News on Super Bowl Sunday. He had this to say about the report:
Some things:
- What he was told? So is someone within his administration lying to him? Did he not know what was going on? As we will find out, he does think someone was lying to him.
- The escalation of troops in Afghanistan is an absolute lie. He did everything but blame Trump. We have had 2000 troops in Afghanistan since 2014, no one killed and they were on a support mission. They weren’t fighting.
- Finally, he doesn’t even know what country he’s talking about. Not only does this show that he’s not all there mentally but it also shows he doesn’t care. The guy is completely apathetic to what he did.
- This apathy is showing in every aspect of his Presidency. This is why he’s getting killed in the polls.
But his answer gets worse:
Notice Biden won’t say the report is not true but that he rejects the findings. In other words, he feels he’s above the report of the army. Mind you, hundreds of people were interviewed here. Most of them on the ground in Afghanistan.
This is not going to play well for him.
Media’s Response
And it doesn’t.
Jake Tapper from CNN had some things to say about the rejection by Biden to the Army’s report. I like Jake Tapper because he does let the truth out every once in a while. Here he is:
What’s interesting about Tapper’s statement is he’s pointing out what I did without actually saying it. He’s saying that people died and Biden doesn’t seem to care. That’s why he had that interview in the middle of his comments.
Joe Biden has big problems. He’s lost the media. Yes, he’ll have most of them, but there is going to be some bad light thrown at him because news agencies can’t lie to the point that no one believes them. And Afghanistan was such a disaster there’s no way to spin it.
And we still have Ukraine and Russia to deal with.
Afghanistan Part II?
Could a Russian invasion of Ukraine be the second Afghanistan for Biden. I hate to say it but it is looking that way.
- Russia is ready to attack.
- They have 170,000 troops on the Ukraine border.
- The Russian Navy is on the coast of Ukraine.
- Missile positions have been set.
- The United States expects an attack at anytime.
- The U.S. believes it will involve missiles and bombers.
- Troops may enter after softening Ukraine.
- It would take Russia 36 hours to take over Ukraine.
- The war may involve Ukrainian men, woman and children and end up a gorilla warfare scenario.
- It is going to be absolutely ugly. Expected dead could be 30,000 Russians and 100,000 Ukrainians.
- An additional 3000 troops have been sent to Poland.
- Military troops are being pulled from Ukraine.
- The embassy has been evacuated. As of now, there are only about 2 dozen people left in the embassy.
- Americans are being told to evacuate to Poland any way they can.
- By the way, those evacuees better be vaccinated or the United States will reject them. I’m not kidding.
- There will be no troop support for Americans if the Russians invade.
- Biden had an hour long conversation with Putin on Saturday. The only thing we learned from that is he threatened Putin. Not really sure how but he did.
- By the way, all that hour long conversation brought out was a paragraph long statement.
This, too, is looking like it will be a disaster that Biden is doing nothing about.
- We have thousands of Americans in Ukraine and no plans to get them out. Sound familiar?
- Those that do want to leave have to go through red tape to get out. The whole vaccine thing shows that. Does that sound familiar?
- And Biden is not being transparent about anything.
- One other thing I want to point out that Biden has done nothing to deter Putin. Nothing. Not even sanctions.
- This is a huge issue with foreign policy experts.
It’s going to be bad in eastern Europe and we still have to look forward to China invading Taiwan. You know, the Taiwan that produces 95% of our computer chips?
But, at least, we don’t see any bad tweets.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-department-proof-of-covid-19-vaccine-needed-for-americans-fleeing-ukraine-into-poland
https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-orders-u-s-military-personnel-out-of-ukraine
https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-slammed-after-attacking-credibility-of-u-s-army-report-that-blames-his-administration-for-afghanistan-disaster
https://www.dailywire.com/news/jake-tapper-levels-biden-over-outright-rejection-of-army-report-its-difficult-to-overstate-how-insulting-it-is
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/12/afghanistan-evacuation-after-action-reports/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/08/afghanistan-evacuation-investigation/