The difference between good journalism and tabloid sensationalism is how the facts of an event or incident are observed and laid out in context. Facts are essential to the interpretation of any historical event and they have a very clear context for interpreting them. In his evaluation of the Biden administration's policy regarding the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Rothman ignores both facts and context to jump to his conclusions, taking statements from administration officials out of context to support his pressupositions and his opinion. The placement of the piece on the MSNBC website, the mis-matched link headline with the actual conclusions drawn in the piece and the way my attention was drawn to it lead me to conclude that it's more the latter than the former.
A Few Relevant Facts in Their Context
Setting timetables are an effective means of accomplishing goals. Trump fussed and puttered about a lot of things he wanted to do, brought them up in rallies to get cheers from the crowds half-filling the seats, but they just never got done and when the press pointed this out, his press secretaries screeched and whined about media bias and not understanding or comprehending what he really meant by what he said.
Trump was "firm" according to his apologists, about wanting to get the United States out of Afghanistan, and he had some timetables in place as well. But like everything else he did, his own political preservation, not the best interests of the country or its military, was the motivation behind his decisions. Dates set to happen after an election and inauguration so that he couldn't be held accountable were deliberately self-serving. But Rothman ignores that fact.
The fact that the Biden administration's preparation on vaccinations made it possible for them to project July 4th as the date when the country would hit a 70% vaccination rate is a testimony to their effectiveness of their planning and the efficiency of their plan. It's not support for Rothman's contention that the Biden administration is "obsessed with deadlines." It could easily have been achieved had it not been for the self-serving resistance of some Republican governors who want to play politics. Let's note one thing here for the record--It's unfortunate that not all of them will pay a political price for this, but a lot of them will, along with other politicians in the Republican party. They got on the wrong side of this and you can mark my words and take this to the bank, it is going to cost them dearly in 2022.
Rothman looks to support his thesis by quoting the Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov, "In the wake of President Biden's withdrawal decision, the US pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan's planes and helicopters, that meant the Afghan military simply couldn't operate any more."
But the United States has been operating in Afghanistan for over 20 years. How is it that Biden, who had only been in office eight months when Rothman wrote his op-ed piece, is the only one responsible for providing the Afghan military, whom the US has been helping all of that time, with support, intelligence and contractors servicing the planes and helicopters? Why were they not provided with the ability to do this for themselves during the twenty years that our mlitary occupied the country and spend $6 trillion on the military?
Why didn't Trump, who started muttering about getting us out of Afghanistan before he was elected, take steps to make sure that the Afghan army had everything it needed? Why didn't he insist on accountability and cleaning up the corrupt mess in the Afghan government instead of undermining the democracy by his attempted secret negotiations with the Taliban, which legitimized their insurgency? The stage was set for Afghanistan's collapse because of Trump administration policy, Mr. Rothman. It was one of many messes his incompetence left behind for Biden to clean up, including the vaccine distribution.
If providing Afghanistan with a "democratically elected government" was a conservative political priority, then the conservative presidential administrations who pushed that narrative, Bush and Trump, should be the ones held accountable for that abysmal failure. Those two administrations were responsible for spending 80% of the trillions spent in Afghanistan (so much for conservative government, huh?) and a lot of their contributor friends made fortunes off of it. The fact that the Afghan military was so ill-trained and equipped and that it fell apart when the US announced its withdraway is a failure of Bush-Cheney and subsequently Trump. At least, it is if you believe the conservative narrative.
Withdrawal Means Leaving, Not Surging
Let's be honest here. The only Americans who would want to consider living in a primitive, backward, war-torn and devastated fundamentalist Islamic country are either humanitarian workers and Christian missionaries who saw a window of opportunity to help, and those who were employed by the military industrial complex in a six trillion dollar government expenditure, fishing in that revenue stream. It can be gathered from the record of media reports that the American Embassy, surprised as it was at the rapid collapse of the counrty, did its job in informing Americans of the ungency and importance of taking advantage of the means they were given to leave the country as quickly as possible.
Getting out successfully meant no hesitation. It meant planning to leave and executing those plans without delay. We know this because journalists, who take bigger risks than most of the rest of us in situations like this, have told us that was the case. And as an American, if you choose to live in a country like Afghanistan, it is prudent to have a quick exit plan in the event of something just like this. So the words of an American journalist describing his exit from Afghanistan, who doesn't use terms like "chaotic" or "botched," but describes a fast but orderly process organized by embassy staff under embassy policy carries more credibility than the opinionated criciticms of a journalist writing from the comfort of his own American office.
And as many embassy officials, military officials and journalists who were there have said, ten more days or ten more weeks wouldn't have made much of a difference in how many Americans remained behind. It's the same thing that happens when a hurricane is about to hit the coast and a general evacuation is announced well ahead of the disaster. Those who are smart enough to plan ahead and are already prepared leave. But there are those who, in spite of being warned that there will be no one around to help them if they get in trouble, don't heed the warning and stay.
Some of those journalists are among those who confirm the administration's assessment of the situation in stating that those Americans who didn't get out made a personal choice to stay. I also don't doubt that there have been some Americans who wanted to go but were prevented from doing so by Taliban roadblocks. That's the risk involved when the choice is made to live in a place as unstable as Afghanistan. The state department has warned Americans about travel there for decades and those who were there knew the potential for danger. Living and working in a war zone has its risks, and in every sense of the word, Afghanistan was an occupied country. Isn't it a conservative political byline that people must be accountable for their own actions and stop depending on the government to bail them out every time they make a bad decision? Our military personnel, embassy staff and everyone for whom the goverrnment was directly responsible all got out.
"Shoddy planning" doesn't get more than 120,000 people out of a collapsing country in a short period of time through a single runway airport.
Twenty Years Weighed Against Eight Months in Office
Afghanistan was most definitely a botch, a colossal military and political mistake that never should have been made. That's on Bush, Cheney and their military advisors who wanted to cash in on the political popularity of the WTC attacks and help some of their major contributors make huge profits. There were plenty of mistakes made along the way and lots of blame to be shared by leaders but those who were involved in the original decision to expand the mission beyond its original objective are the ones who must bear the responsibility and blame for it.
Getting us out of Iraq was a priority for the Obama administration. Iraq was a needless war in the wake of 9-11 based on the false claim that Al Qaida was operating from there and they had "weapons of mass destruction." Neither of those claims was true. They decided to give Afghanistan more time to develop, and had to hold off a Taliban insurgency, or they might have exited there as well.
Rothman, as a conservative, somehow managed to miss Trump's obsession with deadlines. Afghanistan was one of them and in fact, the mess that he passed along to Biden was a result of his setting deadlines deliberately into what he thought would be his next terrm in order to avoid the certain political liability that would go along with it. This was one of many promises Trump made that he did not fulfilll. He had four years, why didn't he work on Afghan self-sufficiency in order for the US to withdraw?
By the time Biden reached the Vice-Presidency, he was solidly in favor of a withdrawal. He was one of the advocates for it during the Obama administration. Getting out was a campaign promise, just like his pandemic recovery plan. Deadlines get those things done and at the rate that money was pouring in without getting any results, the sooner the better. It was a courageous decision, a commitment to keep a promise and the evacuation was nothing short of remarkable. And as I write this, we are out.
I don't think public opinion has been as negative as reported. It may be anecdotal, but the people who I am around every day and the social circles in which I move are not made up of hard core Democrats. Far from it, many of my friends and associates are Evangelical Christians, most are Republicans some are Democrats, few were opposed to the withdrawal and aside from those who only listen to certain newscasts, most would not call the evacuation a "calamity." MSNBC and their "opinion columnist" missed the boat on this one.
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