We have enough problems with our politicians. Could we please stop having political flag officers, too?
Keeping some American troops in Afghanistan would have kept NATO and allied troops there, too. And that help could have gotten the Afghan security forces through the danger zone of losing our more intense level of support.
But no, we abandoned our allies and just left--losing the war and giving our enemies a win, with blowback ongoing in Ukraine as Putin assumed we'd retreat there, too; and blowback yet to be felt. How was it possible to choose defeat?
So, this is how we chose to lose the Afghanistan War?
Retired General Frank McKenzie writes in a new book, The Melting Point, that he briefed President Biden in February 2021 on four military options on Afghanistan: one that would keep about 2,500 U.S. forces in the country and maintain eight bases; one that would reduce U.S. force numbers to 1,800 and drawdown to three bases; one that took out all U.S. forces and kept the embassy in place, and one that pulled out all American forces and the U.S. embassy.
Biden picked the third option, which attempted to keep the embassy, American citizens and at-risk Afghans in the country.
“I felt that was the worst of all possible worlds to actually pick that particular approach,” McKenzie told VOA in an interview on Monday.
Ah, our civilian leadership chose that sweet spot of no American troops and plentiful American hostages waiting to be plucked. Bravo. Helluva Venn diagram, eh? I was very worried about our belated commitment of troops to a nearly indefensible airport perimeter as everything collapsed around our brilliantly executed skedaddle.
Why didn't McKenzie--the CENTCOM commander--go public with his conclusion that it was the worst possible option and accept the consequences?
Why did he just go along like it was just one of our options to draw down without losing the war?
Why didn't he publicly resign and tell the American public that this was the worst of all possible worlds?
Instead, he wrote a book about how bad the decision was. Years later. Nice that he has his priorities. Documenting failure is more important than preventing failure.
This is what I've been talking about when I've written that our Afghanistan skedaddle debacle broke my confidence in our generals and admirals. Oh, not all--probably not even most--have many substitutes for victory. But as a group, the ones who rise to the top show we are clearly doing something wrong in educating our senior military leaders.
Our political leaders are our fault--we vote for them. So there's no way CSI Kabul: This Time For Sure, will blame our senior political or military leadership for following the advice of the Fuck-Up Fairy.
But something needs to be done about our senior military leaders. We'll need political leadership willing to purge our military of our cocktail party-proficient flag officers whose junta-level of medals stretched across their chests reflect the approval of other cocktail-proficient flag officers through their climb up the officer ranks into the buttocks of approving civilian leadership.
If I sound bitter, it's only because I am. And worried. We seem to have neutered our senior officers in the post-Cold War holiday from history. And now that it's over we find we still have holiday generals still sluggish from the buffets and open bar.
But hey, good luck with that book tour.
UPDATE: Via Instapundit, an appropriate aside on business jargon infections at the Pentagon:
Was it really the system that produced our process - and not the system that selected our people - that needed to be looked at? Was it both problems, but we decided to attack the more comfortable of the two? [emphasis added]We're doing something wrong.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
