Thread by @RichardHanania

There needs to be a thread on the Afghanistan withdrawal. People who support withdrawal but don't like how it's done have no better option, and it's this attitude that leads to forever war. They expect competence when the entire lesson of the war is the US is not competent! 1/n

Some background: the US as of 2018 could not even secure the two-mile road between the embassy and the airport. They had to travel by helicopter. This is not like Vietnam, where the major cities at least were pacified. 2/n ndisc.nd.edu/assets/320266/…

Any withdrawal was going to end up with a lot of Afghans wanting to leave. Even if the US took 100% of those who helped it, many more would have tried to come. The last days of the regime were going to be ugly, no matter how long you waited or what you planned. 3/n

So the argument has to be the US, who literally can't do anything in Afghanistan in 20 years, was suddenly going to competently run the Kabul airport, which they can't get to but by helicopter, under the most desperate conditions possible. If they only had a few more months 4/n

And all this was before the Afghan government had fallen apart. As soon as withdrawal was certain and US airpower stopped, the Afghan army collapsed. The US was supposed to become super competent in a few months without any partner on the ground. 5/n

Go look at the Afghanistan papers! If the US tried to open a Pizza Hut in Afghanistan, it'd cost billions, they'd spend all their time on women in management, it'd be infested with rats and generals would say it was a 5-Star restaurant the whole time. 6/n

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1204166495074304000

Biden had already delayed withdrawal. The original Trump deal was supposed to have everyone out by May 1. Biden delayed it by months for logistical reasons, arguing the previous administration had no plan. The whole point of the last few months was to prepare. 7/n

Could they have better used those few months? Maybe. But the problem runs deep, it's the US system, which has screwed this up forever, not with the Biden Administration. The Afghan papers cover the Bush and Obama years, read them and say they would've done better. 8/n

It's also important to realize how complaining about conditions for withdrawal is a way for the pro-war crowd to stay forever. Here's Pompeo now saying the Trump deal was "conditions based." People have said this for years. Conditions are never good. 9/n

https://twitter.com/mikepompeo/status/1427064583798337536

We cannot do anything well in Afghanistan. Obama surged, violence got worse. Trump increased the bombing campaign and casualties, the Taliban kept gaining.

But then instead of massive incompetence being a reason to leave, it's an excuse to stay. "Give us a few months." 10/n

Throughout the war, generals and the Afghan gov have gone out of their way to make leaving as difficult as possible. It's strategic. Ghani refused to negotiate with the Taliban the whole time. According to the WSJ, the Afghans refused to believe the US was leaving and adjust 11/n

Here's a previous thread on how Obama was manipulated by generals, who were largely responsible for the surge in his first administration. The memoirs of officials show them very bitter about this. 12/n

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1219326021490462720

When Trump came into office, the generals did a victory lap because they not only got him to surge, he didn't even set a date for withdrawal like Obama did (of course, Obama ended up finding it too hard to leave anyway so it didn't matter). 13/n

After Trump's Taliban deal, they were hard at work sabotaging him. This meant contradicting the administration in public, leaking unflattering stories to the press, etc. This is the strategy that has worked for 20 years. Were they suddenly going to cooperate with Biden? 14/n

There's nothing new about the arguments made by the pro-war crowd or their tactics, the only thing changing was conditions kept getting worse, which was a further excuse to stay.

As ugly as it looks, an administration finally ended the cycle of failure and lies. 15/n

Biden now says the Afghan government would not negotiate with the Taliban in July, stood in the way of organizing flights before the government fell because they did not want to trigger a crisis of confidence. Basically, they needed to collapse before anything could begin. 16/n