While literal heads might be rolling soon in Afghanistan, some Americans are wondering why metaphorical heads aren’t already rolling in the Pentagon, State Department, and other agencies involved in overseeing the Afghanistan catastrophe. After two decades, thousands of deaths, and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent, who will be held responsible for the stunning collapse of the American effort in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan collapses spectacularly
Former Green Beret Jim Hanson appeared on Fox News to describe the War in Afghanistan as the “most embarrassing defeat in U.S. history” and to call for anyone involved in planning the exit to be fired or court-martialed.
Hanson is undoubtedly correct in describing the Afghanistan debacle as being far more humiliating for America than the defeat in Vietnam; a twenty year conflict has ended almost overnight in a decisive victory for the other side.
The Taliban now controls more of Afghanistan than they ever did before the 2001 invasion which toppled their regime. No serious resistance to their rule remains in the country now.
While NATO troops continue to evacuate people from Hamid Karzai International Airport, it is clear that the entire chaotic operation is taking place only because the Taliban have decided to not interfere.
The militants went from city to city over the last week, conquering the entire country only a month after President Biden confidently assured Americans that there would be no rapid Taliban takeover after the withdrawal.
It would be bad enough if these confident remarks had been lies; it is even worse to know that Biden and other leaders clearly believed that what they were saying about the state of Afghanistan was true.
Dangerous incompetence
The Afghanistan disaster has revealed a stunning degree of incompetence at every level of the U.S. intelligence community and military. The world has been decisively shown that the people who are in charge of defending America are wholly incapable of doing so.
Mark Milley and other top officers who were in charge of training and equipping Afghan forces for two decades must answer for the fact that the men they trained deserted en masse against a poorly equipped enemy which they outnumbered by three to one.
Years of American airstrikes, drone strikes, and raids by ground forces have been revealed as complete wastes of lives, resources, and time. Even the least informed civilian can see now that the entire military philosophy which guided the Pentagon was deeply flawed.
Private militias and warlords operated by the CIA vanished as rapidly as the regular army, leaving nothing behind but a reputation for terrorizing civilians.
Like the Pentagon, Langley has shown itself to be disastrously ignorant of the realities in Afghanistan and the comparative capabilities of the Afghan armed forces and the Taliban.
If anything is already certain about the still developing situation in Afghanistan , it is the fact that anyone involved in crafting American foreign policy or military operations needs to be urgently removed from their position and never given an ounce of responsibility again.
