Intelligence Warned of Afghan Military Collapse, Despite Biden’s Assurances
Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials.
By July, many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital. President Biden said on July 8 that the Afghan government was unlikely to fall and that there would be no chaotic evacuations of Americans similar to the end of the Vietnam War.
The drumbeat of warnings over the summer raise questions about why Biden administration officials, and military planners in Afghanistan, seemed ill-prepared to deal with the Taliban’s final push into Kabul, including a failure to ensure security at the main airport and rushing thousands more troops back to the country to protect the United States’ final exit.
It is unclear whether other reports during this period presented a more optimistic picture about the ability of the Afghan military and the government in Kabul to withstand the insurgents.
But key American decisions were made long before July, when the consensus among intelligence agencies was that the Afghan government could hang on for as long as two years, which would have left ample time for an orderly exit. On April 27, when the State Department ordered the departure of nonessential personnel from the embassy in Kabul, the overall intelligence assessment was still that a Taliban takeover was at least 18 months away, according to administration officials.
One senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified intelligence reports, said that even by July, as the situation grew more volatile, intelligence agencies never offered a clear prediction of an imminent Taliban takeover. The official said their assessments were also not given a “high confidence” judgment, the agencies’ highest level of certainty.
Okay, the latter (after my facepalm) are, to a degree, mitigating, but clearly Biden should not have made his sunny statement on July 8. There is cherry-picking here by whomever leaked these (to whom we give thanks!, not blame!), the reporters write that it is "unclear" if there were "other" more positive (and in the end inaccurate) intel reports at the same time as those chosen for leaking.
We understand from the cherry-picking of 9/11 memos and emails and reports that there are always going to be some that in hindsight look like smoking guns but at the time looked like needles in haystacks. As importantly, we understand that there are confidence assessments. None of the grimly accurate reports on Afghanistan were of "high confidence" (but we have only the word of "one senior administration official" on that). My concern with those confidence levels has always been 1) they are vague 2) they are subjective 3) they discourage full consideration of all but the most confident. That last, I, of course, do not know for sure but I know human nature, I have some idea of the blizzard of documents that a president may review if he chooses and I think it's common sense that you would disregard or skim the least confident and read the most confident.
The second-mentioned concern, their subjectivity, has always seemed to me not the place of the intel agencies to make. (I can understand it being useful to a president.) It should be the president alone, in my view, who makes the subjective judgment. The fucking weekend before the bin Laden operation--the SEAL's were already in Jalalabad--the CIA director and his second brought Obama another assessment on whether "the Pacer" in Abbottabad was OBL. Prior to, CIA had assessed with 60%-80% confidence that it was bin Laden. To me that was pretty good, quite a range, would have really liked a coalescence around 80, but pretty good. This new guy they brought to Obama assessed 40%-60%. I tell you if I had been Obama I would have first strangled Panetta and Morell and then called McRaven and told him the mission was off. Obama: "It's a fifty-fifty call, let's move on." You make judgments you take your chances.
Those tangents aside, it seems to me that this article provides yet another bit of evidence that President Biden’s decision-making is too concrete. Biden has thought for years that we should withdraw from Afghanistan; I, most of the public, and most policy makers and politicians think so too. The issue here is not with substance, it's with Biden's rigidity. Everybody knows about the goddamned fog of war, everybody knows the maxim that military intelligence is an oxymoron, the commander in chief therefore should remain flexible in his or her thinking, game-plan, war-plan, think through consequences--and be willing and able to adjust to new realities. With Biden on the vaccines and here on Afghanistan he makes the decision: Plan A, B, Z vaccines; Afganistan: "I'm withdrawing by Sept. 11, damn the torpedoes."
There has always been an issue of time, and of timing, with Joe Biden, also. He's always late; damn if he wasn't several minutes late for his address to the nation yesterday. Pet peeve, okay fine. Biden was critical of Obama for taking sooo long to decide. With Biden it seems once he makes a decision that's it, onto the next decision. He's impervious to new info after D-day. Put differently Biden takes tooo much time to adjust to new info, when he does at all.. I don't know what it's going to take to get it through the heads of CDC and Biden that time is our fucking mortal enemy on COVID. They were unconscionably slow to adjust to Delta. They are too concrete in their thinking to realize that there's a problem with their holy grail vaccines.
Biden apparently is fond of numerology, symbolic dates and the like. "70% vaxed by July 4!" "Withdrawal from Afghanistan by 9/11!" The former he set on May 4, the latter on April 14. Setting dates for task completion concentrates the mind wonderfully, igetitigetitigetit. But when you choose an arbitrary, yet specific date, especially one laden with symbolism, psychologically you get locked in, your ability to adapt is constricted, and, I would think, your mind is more closed to change. The president and his people went to embarrassing lengths--free beer, free lottery tix, free tix to sporting events--to meet his goal by the arbitrary but symbolic July 4 date. He still missed by a month. Listening to, and reading a transcript of, his speech yesterday, he repeated like a mantra that he would not revisit his decision--the right thing to do!--but it's gotta happen by Sept. 11, too. Why, exactly? What's the diff if it happens on Sept. 12? When the "war changes", to use Dr. Walensky's words, you have to be agile enough to change your mind and your plans. Obviously, Biden did not change with the "summer" assessments and you can envision his reaction, "Give me a break", and so he went ahead with his rosy July 8 statement.. Not good, not good 't'all.
