Three years later, the Biden-Harris administration’s bugout from Afghanistan and the loss of thirteen service members should be front of mind for Americans.
On August 14, 2024, the Taliban held a parade through what used to be Bagram Air Base. The terrorists showed off to an audience of 10,000 the American weapons and vehicles that were abandoned in Afghanistan three years ago by the Biden-Harris administration.
It was brazen taunting that should remind all Americans what our poorly planned and executed 2021 withdrawal cost us in materiel, prestige and national security. The Biden-Harris bugout signaled to enemies and allies alike that we were more committed to ending a long war at any cost than we were to ending it safely and on our terms.
Moreover, the Taliban’s parade should remind us of the thirteen brave American service members killed at Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021. These last known American casualties of the war – the first U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan in eight months – were pulling security for the gate, where thousands of panicked Afghans had converged, desperate to somehow get a flight out before the Taliban takeover.
A suicide bomber detonated in the crowd.
We must never forget the sacrifice of the thirteen Americans who perished at Abbey Gate. But we also cannot forget the policy, or lack thereof, that led us to that point and must ensure that it does not happen again.
Those deaths were the tragic culmination of a poorly conceived, planned and executed operation.
Instead of issuing policy objectives or benchmarks, the Biden-Harris administration used the calendar instead and set a militarily arbitrary but politically significant withdrawal deadline of September 11, 2021.
The Biden-Harris administration’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan was done with one thing in mind: to keep a campaign promise. The president ordered the withdrawal to please his party’s left-wing base and to follow through on a commitment to end the “20-year war.” The administration seemingly did not care how. In fact, during the withdrawal the Biden-Harris Department of Defense was preoccupied with preparing an announcement about the release of its “Climate Adaptation Plan,” a political plan to assess climate change impacts within the department.
Unlike its climate politics, the administration had no real plan in place for withdrawal. Although State Department intelligence showed that diplomats around the world were warning of the Taliban’s territorial gains and the erosion of the Afghan Security forces, the Biden-Harris administration took no action to allay these fears. Further, when amidst surging violence the Talban offered to allow U.S. forces to secure Kabul, senior U.S. officials turned them down. This led to unfettered Taliban control of the city of Kabul and all key transportation routes in and out of the city. The U.S. controlled only the airport.
Finally, no plan was in place to move any American equipment, weapons or other U.S. military assets prior to the withdrawal. For example, the U.S. left 78 aircraft and 9,524 air-to-ground munitions, valued at $6.54 million in Afghanistan. It is one thing to decide to withdrawal from a country, but another to effectively decide to arm the enemy you have been fighting for 20 years with billions of dollars of your own equipment and munitions.
The Biden-Harris bugout was a self-inflicted defeat and demoralizing in all respects. That may be reflected in a rapid decline in the likelihood of active-duty veterans leaving the service recommending a military service life. In the 2023 “Military Family Lifestyle Survey Results Release,” the proportion of active-duty family respondents who were likely to recommend military service has dropped by nearly half from 55% in 2016 to just 32% in 2023.
The world is more dangerous than it has been in years, largely due to the disaster in Afghanistan. We need to encourage the best and brightest among us to enter the service, and then we must make sure their lives are not jeopardized for politics. The American people must demand that the civilian and military leadership deserve the young men and women they command. The lives lost at Abbey Gate, and the Gold Star Families who mourn them, show what happens when we don’t.
Michael P. McKeown is a former high-ranking official at the Department of Homeland Security, an internationally recognized anti-human trafficking expert, and a Senior Advisor to the Center to Advance Security in America.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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