Ross: Afghanistan withdrawal mission was doomed from the start

On this botched Afghanistan withdrawal, we are hearing a lot about bad decisions.

That includes:

• President Biden believing the more optimistic predictions he got from the military, which was a mistake.
• President Trump signing a deal with the Taliban in February of 2020, to be out by May of 2021, but then never preparing a withdrawal plan — kind of an oversight.

Then what about the evacuees themselves? Americans in Afghanistan have known for a least a year and a half that the U.S. military was leaving. Just to make sure, the State Department sent out a notice last April 27 advising all Americans to get out. I realize that many Americans in Afghanistan were doing noble work and felt morally compelled to stay, but they knew the risks.

Then there’s Congress. I see a lot of members of Congress suddenly eager to evacuate Afghans, and yet it’s Congress that has created a bureaucratic process that can keep our Afghan allies waiting over a year for their papers.

Why? Because a lot of members of Congress are worried about taking in too many refugees from Afghanistan, just as they’re worried about taking in too many refugees from Central America.

But the biggest factor being glossed over here is that the mission was doomed from the start.

The Afghan Army fought well while the United States was there – 60,000 Afghan security force members gave their lives. But too many of the soldiers were uneducated and too many of their commanders were in it for the U.S. dollars.

The Afghan Papers published in the Washington Post revealed that commanders created “ghost soldiers” to pad their payrolls and skimmed the paychecks of the real ones. We never really knew how many actual soldiers there were. The idea of an Afghan Army that would fight on its own was a mirage. To see the country’s president take the first flight out of town tells me the Afghan government knew it.

So, yeah, shame on us for being so naïve and falling for a bunch of empty uniforms, and shame on us again for thinking we could change a population that’s more loyal to clan than country. But, at the same time, shame on an Afghan government that deliberately decided to string us along, apparently hoping we would bail them out forever.

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