Botched Afghanistan withdrawal self-inflicted

I totally agree with contributor Doreen Sadler’s point that it was definitely time for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan. However, to gloss-over the stunningly poor execution of that withdrawal and the perverse political dynamics that drove it is a huge disservice to all Americans, particularly those of us who are Afghan war veterans and those who lost loved ones there.

In a 27-year career as a pilot in the Air Force Special Operations community I spent a lot of time fighting in Afghanistan, as well as leading organizations that sent a lot of young Americans there to do the same. The bravery, skill, dedication and pure excellence exhibited by our armed forces throughout their decades in Afghanistan is something all Americans should take immense pride in.

Despite all our best efforts, it appears the collapse of the Afghan government was inevitable. However, the botched American withdrawal and all its future negative ramifications was not. In fact, evidence tells me that it was totally self-inflicted because our senior political and military leaders actively chose to subjugate the evolving reality on the ground to a public relations-driven political narrative anchored to a self-imposed deadline for withdrawal.

Our president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of U.S. Central Command said as much during their 23 July phone calls with the Afghan president. They were more concerned with manipulating the news cycle “whether it is true or not” than they were with taking swift, concrete actions to address the unfortunate reality on the ground. As a result our military forces, rather than proactively controlling conditions on the ground as they had for the past 20 years, were left to simply react to the unfolding chaos as best they could.

Absent politics and emotion, the pure military problem we faced was a very simple one that our armed forces could have easily conquered: Employ enough force over enough time to decisively secure the evacuation and extract and/or destroy weapons and military equipment.

But these days it seems absolutely nothing can transcend politics and emotion. And to take these prudent military steps would have been an overt admission of the ugly reality that was competing with our leaders’ preferred “all is well” narrative. Now all of us and 13 new Gold-Star families are left to deal with the long-term consequences.

Regardless of your political affiliation, please do not shy away from expecting and demanding basic competence from our senior political and military leaders. We the People are the only ones that can ensure these leaders are worthy of all of us they purport to serve.

John Cline

Shelter Bay

Cline retired from the Air Force in 2017. He flew and led combat missions in Afghanistan.