Jason,Criss Howk

14 August 2021

Today President Biden secured his place on the list of world leaders that chose to do the immoral thing when so many are telling him to do the right thing.

Biden has chosen to go against the military advice, and humanitarian advice of so many experts to abandon a steadfast American partner…the Afghan people.

Biden and his team clearly still do not understand what is happening in Afghanistan and what his decisions have unleashed due to that ignorance. The ugly American attitude that Biden displayed as a Senator and then VP when interacting with Afghans has come to its conclusion now that he is President. He has somehow appeared more cold and less empathetic than Putin and Trump.

Today Biden chose again to trash America’s honor. His team had already convinced NATO to abandon their honor and abandon Afghanistan. This is the first time in my life I have ever felt ashamed of my country. 

Right now, the Pakistani Army is spearheading an invasion of Afghanistan to install a Pakistan-pliant government. After failing to install Hekmatyar in the 1990s, and after failing to get UN legitimacy of Taliban 1.0 in the 1990s, Pakistan is installing the Taliban2.0/AQ network as their 3^rd regime changing team. This time they don’t seem to care about getting any international recognition for the regime, they just want power over the Afghan people.

The US and NATO, and the UN have refused to #sanctionPakistan for orchestrating this invasion, that so closely resembles the Russian theft of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.

Let’s look at Biden’s statement today from DC about what he is going to do about Afghanistan in the face of a terrorist army taking over the nation with the assistance of Pakistan.

Biden: “Second, I have ordered our armed forces and our intelligence community to ensure that we will maintain the capability and the vigilance to address future terrorist threats from Afghanistan.”

With Pakistan continuing to harbor and support terrorists controlling so much of the land and air corridors into Afghanistan, how can he seriously think the US stand any chance of combatting the terrorists that are now gathering in Afghanistan. Without ISR, HUMINT etc. how will the US respond swiftly? He is admitting that there is a terrorist threat in Afghanistan and at the same time leaving a demoralized Afghan military to confront it for the entire world.

Biden: “Third, I have directed the Secretary of State to support President Ghani and other Afghan leaders as they seek to prevent further bloodshed and pursue a political settlement. Secretary Blinken will also engage with key regional stakeholders.”

While Biden is engaged in a political settlement, his opponents have engaged in a military settlement and overrun all the Afghan nation. Biden like Trump stuck to the diplomatic path after the Taliban had already proven they were not interested in it. Instead of talking and fighting, and ramping up the pressure on Pakistan to stop the taliban, Biden just kept letting leverage slip away. It seems clear he only kept on the untrusted Khalilzad to have a Trump appointed scape-goat for his State Department when the peace process failed. This diplomatic action needs military support to be anything other than a capitulation. This is an action that puts 20 million Afghan women into their homes to live like prisoners of the Pakistani proxy terrorist regime.

Biden: “When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on US forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew US forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500. Therefore, when I became President, I faced a choice—follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.” 

This is the cheapest of weak-leader techniques. Blaming your predecessor’s poor behavior for your current poor behavior.

The Taliban never came to America, and almost every military general and expert agrees that a 2,500-member military presence was sustainable, low-risk, and cost less than 10yrs ago. There was no antiwar movement, calling for our mentors to come home. The US KIA rate was the lowest since 2014 way before the 2020 Taliban negotiations started.

Since 2016, the US was not in a combat role, but in a train, equip, and support role. That is a role we are in around the globe. This was sustainable.

When the US signed its deal with the Taliban in February 2020, demoralization set in among Afghans and the Coalition. Yet the ANDSF did not crumble, in fact they improved and started to prepare for the future with a belief that the US and NATO would surely leave a partner force behind. 

This Spring Biden defied best military advice and chose to call for a full withdrawal instead of throwing away the Doha deal that the Taliban chose to break every day since they signed it. Sanctioning Pakistan should have been the next step but your administration chose to ignore the obvious villain in South Asia and then abandon Afghans to fight a terrorist army for the entire world.

Biden ordered the removal of all of the contractors who provided the core support that enabled the Afghans forces to fight the way we taught them. It was clear to the Afghans the you were abandoning them and that the end was coming. 

ISI meanwhile was putting their 20-year plan into motion when they saw you were abandoning Afghans to fight on their own. They inserted a radicalized fascist terrorist army into Afghanistan and used the side-deals they had been cutting for many years to help them take territory without having to fight the ANDSF. Where the ANDSF was able to fight the Taliban, their forces did well in many cases. In other cases, the ANDSF was sold out by traitors or had to evacuate or surrender for lack of resources.

Afghans are only human, when abandoned to fight alone – many Afghans, like most human beings, chose to try to save their lives and families. This is not an issue of the failure of the Afghan forces, as much as a political failure by the United States, and military success by the Taliban. The political will to fight and the power of information operations are two things no military can overcome if the policymakers don’t understand them. Those two issues plagued every moment of the war but it was never existential until the US poorly executed our diplomacy and chose to stay in the Doha deal after the Taliban left it.

When you listen to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby, and Department of State spokesman Ned Price, you get the feeling that they are living in an alternative reality. Their rhetoric is very Lord Chamberlain-like as Peter Bergen described in his recent essay – “it is the Afghans duty to fight and we don’t have to” — “Not our mess.” Oh, indeed it is our mess, and it is a global and regional mess. 

BIDEN: “I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”

What is Biden passing on instead? A lost war, a terrorist safe haven and a US reputation for abandoning friends. Some legacy…

This will be exponentially worse than the early Iraq withdrawal which Biden also messed up beyond belief. President Obama called ISIS the JV team — the Taliban/Pakistan terror network have proven themselves to be a Varsity team. They will only grow more evil in our absence.

Your reckless decision squandered Afghan, US, and Coalition military and civil society gains in Afghanistan overnight, compromised global security, the defense of our nation, and weakened our alliance. The UK MOD as recently as today is blaming the US for the fate of the millions of innocent Afghans at risk and for reinspiring violent terrorist movements. 

Afghans worked hard for what they had in Afghanistan and it was secured with only the assistance of 2,500 military partners, until we pulled the rug under everybody’s feet. Seemingly for domestic political points.

There is still time to fix this.

·       Rally NATO to uphold their honor and recommit training and assistance forces

·       Rally the UN to declare a humanitarian intervention to save Afghan lives

·       Blacklist the taliban terrorist network for the terrorists they are

·       Sanction the military leaders in Pakistan for supporting terrorists and keep ramping up sanctions until they dismantle their entire terrorist training and support network

·       Send in a UN peacekeeping force to make a ring around Kabul 

·       Send in a counter-terrorism task force to aid the ANASOC to eradicate the Taliban and AQ members inside Afghanistan

·       Commit to keeping a small force in Afghanistan for as long as it takes for Afghans to rebuild their society and government. 

·       Close the Doha outpost and deliver those Taliban leaders to a European prison to await trial

 

If America chooses to further dishonor itself by helping terrorists retake Afghanistan, we deserve to lose our seat at the table of serious foreign affairs leaders. NATO is also at risk of irrelevancy, as is the UN.

Act now or pay later. Stop this unfolding humanitarian disaster.