“WE PULLED THE PLUG, AND THEY COLLAPSED.” So says Ret. Army General Jack Keane, a retired American four-star general, former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. (Look him up: He’s a genuine badass).
The statement was made in a column published today by Judith Miller, a veteran correspondent with highly specialized expertise and experience in the Middle East. The takeaway from that column? “President Joe Biden spent much of his speech Monday blaming everyone else but himself and his administration for the foreign policy catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan” says Miller:
“Biden blamed the debacle on Barack Obama for having surged U.S. forces in Afghanistan to fend off the Taliban, Donald Trump for having negotiated a terrible deal with the Taliban committing American forces to leave precipitously by May 1—and, most egregiously, Afghans themselves for supposedly being unwilling to fend off the Taliban’s horrifying advance. Only a month ago, Biden justified his decision to abandon the Afghanistan effort by arguing that two decades of American military training and over $1 trillion in economic and military support had left the Afghan government and its military more than capable of defending their country; yesterday, he castigated Afghans for not being able to do so.”
Miller seems to be saying, like the rest of the nation except for a few sycophants, that Biden should have seen this coming. Using strategic analysis as a basis for her view, Miller continued:
“[T]he Afghan forces did not collapse on their own. Prior to President Trump’s strategically flawed deal with the Taliban, Afghan security forces and the Taliban had fought to a virtual military stalemate […] Neither could defeat the other. But the withdrawal of American air support and intelligence information regarding the disposition and strength of Taliban forces had severely affected the Afghan military, depressing Afghan capabilities and morale. So, too, did Biden’s closure of seven military bases in the height of the fighting season. “We pulled the plug and they collapsed,” said General Keane.”
It’s also worth noting that the sycophants trying to sell the “Trump’s fault” line glibly elide the fact that Biden has reversed dozens of Trump policies, from abortion to education to policing to oil pipelines. Yet this one just kind of slipped by him. And his defenders.