The Afghanistan Withdrawal

The poorly planned deal made with terrorists and the chaos of getting Americans home alive.

The marines in the guard tower thought they saw someone in the crowd who matched the description of a suspected suicide bomber. No go. Too many civilians nearby to risk taking a shot. The suspect disappeared into the crowd.

Hours later an explosion detonated outside Abbey Gate. 13 Americans and 170 Afghans were killed. An additional 45 American service members were injured. Many lost limbs and required extensive surgery to remove shrapnel.

The worst nightmare of military parents was realized; the day they would get the call that their son or daughter would never come home again.

Afghanistan was the longest war in US history. A stark contrast to the American blitzkriegs of the Iraq wars. Wars where American might and power were on full display with a quickly proclaimed victory, even though the fighting continued on for years longer. 

Afghanistan feels more akin to the wars Americans prefer to forget. The wars that Americans never fully understood the purpose of, and the wars we never won: Korea and Vietnam.

There was wide American support for removing troops from Afghanistan. And while America feels the withdrawal could have gone better, people largely want to put the war behind us. They want to move on. 

The war will be examined in every possible way over time. Books will be written, documentaries made. Previous administrations will get rated on every move they made over the span of 4 or 8 years.

Biden, on the other hand, will mainly be mentioned as the President who finished bringing the troops home. Biden finished a process that was already underway and that was intended to be finished five months into his presidency. 

In the final days of the withdrawal of troops, a suicide bomber attacked Abbey Gate, one of the entrances to Kabul airport that served as the final stronghold for Americans. A tragic moment. A needless loss of life. The heightened anxiety of more attacks led to a drone strike by the US three days later which killed 11 civilians. A strike that was intended to stop another potential suicide bomber.

The lives lost in war weigh on every President. As Commander in Chief, the decisions of war rest on their shoulders. These losses should also weigh on the members of Congress, as they are the ones who decide to go to war, not the President.

Those who have suffered the ultimate sacrifice for America deserve the utmost respect from our government. Politicians who ask the youth of our nation to sign up to serve America’s needs, ask them to go to foreign lands and fight our enemies, to die for our causes.

The fallen deserve to be remembered and to be honored. What they don’t deserve is to be used in a misinformation campaign for a political party to gain power or to win an election. That is the ultimate disrespect for such a sacrifice.

• A war that spanned twenty years

• started by a Republican President

• Fought through 4 Presidencies, 10 Congresses

• over 2400 US service member casualties

• over 1800 civilian contractor casualties

• An extraction plan put in motion by the previous administration

And yet those 13 casualties are being called out as the unacceptable aspect of the decades long war. Those 13 casualties are being used as propaganda to suggest that Biden isn’t fit to be Commander in Chief.

Congress is typically supportive of an ongoing war. Unity in the face of an outside enemy. But the war is over now. The troops are home. That is when the search for blame and mistakes begins.

The situation Biden inherited was a mess, and a precarious one at that. There was no plan in place for how to finish the withdrawal. No procedures for getting the troops out on time. And it had been thought that the Afghanistan forces were ready to hold back the Taliban on their own, an assessment that couldn’t have been more wrong.

The previous administration made a deal directly with the Taliban, without including the Afghan government or any of our other allies who had troops fighting the war. President Trump had publicly said he was even considering inviting a terrorist organization to Camp David to make a deal on America leaving Afghanistan.

That isn’t even the worst of it.

Trump pressured the Afghanistan government to release 5000 Taliban prisoners as part of our evacuation deal. Yet Trump didn’t secure the release of the only American hostage known to be held by the Taliban.

The President of the United States gave up on an American held hostage by a terrorist group while giving the terrorists every single thing they wanted.

When Biden took office, the 80,000 Taliban troops had seized control of half of Afghanistan. The US was down to just 2,500 troops and then there were the Afghanistan citizens whose lives were now at risk for opposing the Taliban. 

Our troops were in harm’s way. We needed to be out of the country by May or the Taliban would resume attacks on American forces, and there was no plan on how to get our troops out.

It had been expected that the Afghan forces, 300,000 in number with jets and armored vehicles, would be able to hold back the Taliban and maintain control of their capital, Kabul. To everyone’s surprise, including the Taliban, the Afghan forces were woefully underprepared.

As the Afghan situation deteriorated, it became clear that US troops would not be out by the deadline. Sending in more troops was considered too great of a risk. More lives would be endangered and the evacuation wouldn’t go any faster. Instead, the additional troops were positioned outside the border, ready and waiting should they be needed.

By August, the situation was dire. It was now or never. On August 14th the additional forces were called in. Within 72 hours they had secured the Hamid Karzai International Airport, now the final stronghold of US and coalition forces and the avenue of getting troops out of the country. 

The Afghan government collapsed on August 15th. 

The Taliban had drawn a line. They weren’t directly attacking the airport, but they were beating and executing Afghans just outside the gates and fences. The US did not fire on the attackers, fearing a reignition of the war they were trying to escape.

The situation changed when a suicide bomber detonated by the Abbey Gate on Aug 26th. The Taliban was no longer holding off from directly attacking US forces. The decision was made that the evacuation would end on Aug 31st. 

23 sorties were flown every day, airlifting people out of the combat zone. US forces worked 24 hours a day vetting, searching, and preparing Afghans for transport. 123,000 people composed of American troops, allied troops, and Afghan supporters were flown out from the airport in total.

The final days were reminiscent of the end of the Vietnam war. Back then, people were clinging to the helicopters taking off, desperately trying to escape the violence closing in on them. In Afghanistan, it was people climbing on top of cargo transport planes. Tragically some attempted to hold on during takeoff, only to fall to their death shortly thereafter.

It was a time of utter desperation. Anyone left behind knew the Taliban would be merciless, and they were. They executed hundreds of people as they took Afghanistan. Anyone who helped the United States or NATO was top of their target list.

No amount of looking back on war can match the challenge of making decisions in the midst of the chaos. Intelligence was incomplete and ever changing. Hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake. And decisions had to be made right then, right there.

Those who lost their lives deserve the respect of having America understand the nightmare of the final days in Afghanistan. They deserve to be remembered for the sacrifices they made and the lives they saved. They deserve to have America learn from this moment, to understand the cost of war.

Even after the final withdrawal, there were still American citizens and Afghan allies in Afghanistan. The US continued to work to get more people out and over time hundreds of additional Americans were evacuated from the country.