On Friday afternoon, June 30, as Americans were making holiday weekend plans or traveling to be with family and friends in celebration of the Fourth of July, the US Department of State quietly released its 90-day After Action Review on Afghanistan.
When asked why it was released nearly two years after the withdrawal, and more than a year after the review's completion, and before a holiday weekend, the State Department simply replied that they would not discuss questions related to "process". Everyone knows this was done to ensure no one would read it.
They in part succeeded in that goal and will undoubtedly be bolstered by mainstream media outlets which will give it little, if any, airtime. "We're looking forward, not backward" seems to be the perpetual mantra - except for when it comes to Donald Trump - who somehow managed to also be blamed for the Biden administration's failures in this report.
The report, which is dated March 2023, includes a list of decisions by the Biden Administration and the State Department, which contributed to detrimental consequences surrounding the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021.
It also made recommendations regarding the need for additional planning surrounding crisis response and preparedness to prevent future similar situations in the future from escalating as happened in Kabul.
It was significantly more critical of the administration's response than the April White House Summary on US Withdrawal from Afghanistan which was much less self-reflective. Both reports, appropriately so, praised the brave men and women on the ground at the US Embassy and at Bagram Air Base, who did their best in an impossible situation, to implement the orders they were given.
What neither report admits though, is that all of this was a self-inflicted wound which Joe Biden personally caused. Perhaps intentionally so.
Joe Biden has tried to pass much of the blame onto his predecessor, Donald Trump, by inexplicably saying his hands were tied by decisions and agreements which President Trump had made. However, nearly every other policy decision Trump had made was overturned on Day One by President Biden.
With a stroke of a pen, under Executive Orders, Biden undid as much of the Trump Administration's actions as possible. Why should this have been any different if he truly believed Donald Trump's Afghanistan policy was wrong?
President Donald Trump chose to end endless wars. He drew down US troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500. They were to remain there as part of an international coalition which would ensure a fragile, but stable peace. He wanted to ensure a US presence provided ongoing security and stability to the nation. They weren't engaged in combat activities. They provided much-needed technical and intelligence support and were succeeding in that role.
By contrast, President Joe Biden chose to end this peace and brought death and chaos to the region by abruptly deciding to remove those final 2,500 troops for no military or strategic reason, but for a political statement.
He wanted to symbolically be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and his desire for a political stunt caused the utter collapse of Afghanistan. Biden made his decision for ultimate withdrawal against the advice of his advisors, against what was best for the American people and our brave supporters on the ground in Afghanistan.
And did so knowing it would condemn Afghan women to a life of submission and abuse under Sharia law and endanger Afghan citizens who had supported or worked with America. Joe Biden got his photo op. Everyone else had to face the catastrophic wake of those selfish and consequential decisions.
Robert Gates, the former defense secretary who served under President Obama and Vice President Biden, summed it up well when he said in a 2019 interview about Joe Biden, that he has "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
In an interview in 2021, Gates added that he believes, "Biden made a mistake in Afghanistan in the way he handled the withdrawal."
So, in essence, Biden's record is unblemished by a good decision. An unbroken streak of missteps. I hope the voters in 2024 will remember this - and the cascade of decline in America's influence on the world stage which followed this decision.
It is said that the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging the problem and accepting responsibility for it.
By continuing to blame President Trump and being unwilling to accept any responsibility for the bad decisions, detrimental policies, and tragic consequences of the ill-advised and failed Afghanistan withdrawal, it appears this report will join others on a shelf, un-read and collecting dust, never causing change in the perpetrators or the process. Political self-preservation appears to be the priority, not the priorities of the American people.
Americans deserve - and should demand - more than a scuttled report. They deserve - and should demand - accountability, consequences for inappropriate action, and for responsibility to be taken by President Biden and his administration for the failures they chose - and caused.
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