{"id":1778283,"date":"2022-12-17T06:30:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T11:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778283"},"modified":"2022-12-17T06:33:22","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T11:33:22","slug":"the-20-year-descent-to-the-predictably-ugly-afghanistan-withdrawal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-20-year-descent-to-the-predictably-ugly-afghanistan-withdrawal\/","title":{"rendered":"The 20-Year Descent to the Predictably Ugly Afghanistan Withdrawal"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-20-year-descent-to-the-predictably-ugly-afghanistan-withdrawal%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778283&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/US_10th_Mountain_Division_soldiers_in_Afghanistan.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>As incoming Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Rep. James Comer <a href=\"https:\/\/republicans-oversight.house.gov\/release\/comer-biden-administration-will-be-held-accountable-for-botched-afghanistan-withdrawal\/\">said last week<\/a> he intends on holding hearings in 2023 to examine the Administration\u2019s \u201cbotched Afghanistan withdrawal\u201d and vowed to provide the American people \u201canswers, transparency, and accountability.\u201d America\u2019s failure in Afghanistan was a two-decades-in-the-making process, however, and any effort to provide answers and accountability must include an exposure of the core problems over that timeframe and not simply how the final exit was executed.\n<\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<\/p>\n<p>First, it is crucial to recognize up front that the collapse that happened in August 2021 didn\u2019t come as a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention to the war. Major errors were detected early and a number of analysts warned the war was unwinnable early. In April 2009, just three months into Obama\u2019s first term, I wrote in the <a href=\"http:\/\/armedforcesjournal.com\/the-afghan-mistake\/\">Armed Forces Journal<\/a> that unless the president was ready to wage a large-scale \u201cexistential battle to exterminate the Taliban from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, adding another 12,000 or 30,000 troops will amount to trying to put out a house fire with a garden hose.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>As it was, I continued, the United States was \u201cfighting against the Taliban, against remnants of al-Qaida, against provincial warlords, against drug kingpins, against common thugs, against Afghan culture and against history.\u201d Trying to surge a relatively small number of troops to obtain the political outcome of turning Afghanistan into a stable democracy committed the U.S. to \u201ca fight we can\u2019t win.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>In September of that year, an infamously leaked classified assessment of then-commander GEN Stanley McChrystal claimed that unless Obama sent an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan \u2013 on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-afghan-troops\/obama-orders-17000-u-s-troops-to-afghanistan-idUSTRE51G6F920090217\">top of the 17,000<\/a> Obama had sent in February \u2013 the US risked \u201closing the war.\u201d One month later, I wrote a 40-page analysis that argued surging more troops would likely fail, arguing instead for the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. and NATO troops, transitioning to a small counter-terror operation.\n<\/p>\n<p>Pointedly, I wrote that it would \u201cbe a tragedy of historic proportions if the United States expended the enormous resources in time, money, and human life currently being contemplated, but proved unable to succeed and were later forced to withdraw in a Saigon-esque humiliating retreat.\u201d As we know, of course, the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021 was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/asia\/south-asia\/us-embassy-saigon-kabul-taliban-b1903225.html\">eerily similar<\/a> to the fall of Saigon. I was far from the only person warning of looming failure, however.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2009, a senior State Department official and decorated combat veteran from the Iraq war, Matthew Hoh, publicly resigned his position in Afghanistan in protest to the Obama Administration\u2019s conduct of a war that could not be won. In his resignation letter, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2009\/10\/why-matthew-hoh-resigned-from-afghanistan\/347756\/\">Hoh wrote<\/a> that the United States was little more than a \u201csupporting actor,\u201d in a tragedy of a then-35 year civil war \u201cthat not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah\u2019s reign [in 1973], has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>In an assessment published last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Hoh\u2019s warnings proved prescient. The November <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sigar.mil\/pdf\/evaluations\/SIGAR-23-05-IP.pdf\">SIGAR report<\/a> explaining why the Afghan government and military fell apart in August 2021, the authors noted that, \u201cthe Afghan government\u2019s high level of centralization, endemic corruption, and struggle to attain legitimacy were long-term contributors to its eventual collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2002\/12\/05\/afghanistans-bonn-agreement-one-year-later\">2001 Bonn Conference<\/a>, the United States and allies brokered a new constitution for Afghanistan that featured a US-style presidential system. But owing to Afghanistan\u2019s history and culture, the implementation of the system \u201craised the stakes for political competition and reignited long-running tensions between an urban elite eager to modernize and conservative rural populations distrustful of central governance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Every presidential election was, predictably, characterized by massive voter fraud, which served to undermine confidence in the government. By the time of the final presidential election in 2019, the population\u2019s confidence in its government was so poor that \u201cvoter turnout was estimated at only 10 percent.\u201d While there is much to find fault with the Biden Administration\u2019s handling of the 2021 withdrawal, the reality is that failure had been baked in by that point and there was no \u201cgood\u201d solution or clean withdrawal to be had. The one chance Washington had to end the mission in some order was lost in 2010.\n<\/p>\n<p>When Obama took office, the Taliban had an estimated 25,000 fighters and control of only a small number of local districts and no provinces. Had Obama ordered a phased withdrawal over an 18 month period, the Afghan government would have had time to get its house in order while still under the security umbrella of the U.S. and NATO, and in all likelihood, both the government and the Afghan military would have still been effective upon our final exit, which itself would have been conducted in a professional and orderly manner.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the government would have eventually fallen, maybe it wouldn\u2019t have. But the egregious failure of both the Bush and Obama Administrations to end the war ensured that the U.S. would never win militarily and that whenever the end finally did come, it would be ugly and humiliating. That Biden took the political heat in ordering the withdrawal that Trump had set in motion at least confers some credit to them both. The most crucial lesson that America\u00a0needs to take from the fiasco of our August withdrawal: don\u2019t fight wars we can\u2019t win and don\u2019t need to fight.\n<\/p>\n<p><em>Also a 1945 Contributing Editor,\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensepriorities.org\/media\/profile\/daniel-davis\"><em>Daniel L. Davis<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of \u201c<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B08KHGDQRK\"><em>The Eleventh Hour<\/em><\/a><em> in 2020 America.\u201d Follow him @DanielLDavis.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As incoming Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Rep. James Comer said last week he intends on holding hearings in 2023 to examine the Administration\u2019s \u201cbotched<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1778286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[9824,7228,5458,9825,9823,3819,9797,8050],"class_list":["post-1778283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-20-year","tag-afghanistan","tag-bongino","tag-descent","tag-predictably","tag-report","tag-ugly","tag-withdrawal"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1778286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}