Quotes of the Day:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).”
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.”
- Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays
1. Review | Are the Navy SEALs actually awful at their jobs?
2. Reports: Biden to stick with Aug. 31 deadline for Afghanistan evacuations
3. Biden’s America is confused — and so is the world
4. Afghan military officers: We fought hard but Biden "abandoned" us
5. What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?
6. Fury, "disgust" in D.C. that thousands of Afghans will be left behind
7. Opinion | I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.
8. How we as a nation — and I as a military officer — failed in Afghanistan by Gen. Ben Hodges
9. How One Tech Entrepreneur Is Scaling Up Veteran-Led Evacuation Efforts
10. Two Congress members fly to Kabul, infuriate DoD, White House
11. Breaking hearts and minds: The strategy of surrender
12. Extend the Afghan mission now, before it's too late
13. Taliban transformed by haul of advanced U.S.-made weapons; lawmakers demand answers
14. The Story Of How An Afghan Interpreter And His Family Escaped Afghanistan
15. What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?
16. Biden must tell Beijing: 'War means instant independence for Taiwan'
17. Intel just signed a major chip-making deal with the Pentagon, and it could help the US solve its semiconductor problem
18. US to build military base in middle of Pacific Ocean
19. I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences
20. The Taliban Victory as a Victory of Faith
21. Act Now to Save and Learn the Lessons of the Afghan War
22. Biden pushes to complete Afghan evacuation by Aug. 31 — but orders backup plan
23. The US and Taliban are heading to a confrontation over the Kabul airport if thousands of Americans and allies don't get out in the next 7 days
24. Harris visits McCain memorial in Vietnam to mark anniversary of his death
25. ‘By Water Beneath the Walls’ Review: Precision Instruments (SEAL Book Review)
1. Review | Are the Navy SEALs actually awful at their jobs?
Eddie Gallagher does not represent the SEAL community. I have served with and know too many good and honorable SEALs. Yes there have been serious problems as there have been not only throughout the SOF community but the conventional military as well (e.g., Bowe Bergdahl, Robert Bales, Clint Lorance, etc to name a few).
I do not know if I can take the pain of reading this book. However, my guess is that it should probably be a book that leaders at all levels will need to read.
Review | Are the Navy SEALs actually awful at their jobs?
The SEALs may be the only pop-culture heroes to emerge from the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re the guys who killed Osama bin Laden. In blockbuster movies and best-selling books, such as “American Sniper” and “Lone Survivor,” they battle not only a ruthless enemy but also risk-averse generals, incompetent politicians and an indifferent citizenry. America might have lost its post-9/11 wars, but the SEALs won theirs — at least in their memoirs and at the movies.
More quietly, the conventional Army and Marine Corps units in Afghanistan and Iraq often told a different story of the SEALs’ exploits. In their version, the shadowy special operators swooped into villages at night with little warning, knocking down doors, killing civilians and creating new enemies who mounted even more furious attacks on the U.S. troops left behind to clean up their mess.
David Philipps’s “Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs” draws a bit from both of these narrative traditions. The core of Philipps’s book is Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, a senior enlisted SEAL and antihero who is portrayed as possessing almost superhuman powers. In Philipps’s telling, Gallagher is a “narcissistic sociopath” with “ice-blue eyes” who opens fire on old men and little girls. The Navy’s failed attempt to convict him of murdering a badly wounded Islamic State war prisoner during the 2017 battle for Mosul — a crime that Gallagher seemed to brag about in text messages — results in not only his acquittal but also the forced resignation of the secretary of the Navy.
A dogged researcher and gifted writer, Philipps turns the story of Gallagher’s rise, his alleged war crimes and the botched Navy prosecution into an infuriating, fast-paced thriller. In addition to that tale, Philipps tells the story that’s captured in his book’s subtitle: “the war for the soul of the Navy SEALs.” U.S. presidents as disparate as Barack Obama and Donald Trump have turned repeatedly to the SEALs to hunt down America’s most notorious enemies, free hostages and liberate cities.
But Philipps’s book raises an uncomfortable question: What if the SEALs are terrible at their jobs?
SEAL leaders chose Gallagher’s Alpha platoon for the mission to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State because they believed that the unit, and Gallagher, were among the Navy’s best. But in combat, Gallagher and Alpha platoon were a disaster. Rather than focusing on the enemy, Gallagher’s men felt obligated to fire warning shots at women and children in an attempt to keep them away from their chief, who they said tried to kill just about every civilian who wandered into his rifle sight. Philipps describes the pressure that weighed on Special Operator 1st Class Dylan Dille as he sought to protect Iraqis from his boss: “It was exhausting. The tension of being forced to fire at people to make them flee in terror without accidentally killing them left him covered in sweat.”
Gallagher also orders his men to shoot grenades into a crowded Mosul neighborhood for no discernible reason. Initially Special Operator Josh Vriens, a SEAL sniper, thought the display of firepower “looked cool,” Philipps writes, “but as they continued to launch grenades over the river it dawned on him that it was also incredibly stupid.” As Philipps puts it: “Vriens had joined the Navy to help the helpless . . . now here he was, in the thick of it, launching hundreds of grenades blindly into the city. He wondered how it had gotten to that point.”
A better question would have been: How did Vriens get to that point? It’s a question I wish the book had spent more time trying to answer. In Philipps’s telling, Gallagher is a soulless master manipulator who goads his men into committing war crimes in a devious effort to prevent them from turning on him. But in portraying Gallagher as a super-criminal Svengali, Philipps risks letting the Navy SEALs and their leadership off the hook.
Philipps, a Pulitzer Prize-winning military reporter for the New York Times, devotes a chapter to a history of the SEALs’ “pirate” culture, which produced and promoted Gallagher. Philipps’s book asks the right questions. So too do some of the Alpha platoon SEALs, such as Vriens, who turned in Gallagher at considerable risk to their careers. Despite misgivings, almost all had followed at least some of his illegal orders.
“He didn’t know if it was just Eddie that was all messed up, or if it went further,” Philipps writes of Vriens, one of many SEALs in the platoon who sought to expose Gallagher’s alleged crimes and testified against him. “Was it just one platoon or platoons all over the Teams?” Later, at Gallagher’s murder trial, a Marine combat veteran on the jury asks a similar question: “How could these screwballs have risen up through the ranks to leadership positions?”
As a reporter who spent nearly two decades covering the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, I couldn’t help but wonder: Are the SEALs really this incompetent and morally compromised?
Early in the fight for Mosul, SEAL Master Chief Brian Alazzawi watches Gallagher fire so wildly that he accidentally hits the wall of his own sniper hide, sending up a shower of concrete shards and dust. “It should have been a red flag but Alazzawi had bigger things to worry about,” Philipps writes. “He was overseeing three platoons in Iraq, and the other two teams of so-called elite commandos were barely functioning.” Unfortunately, we don’t hear much about these other platoons.
U.S. presidents, reluctant to deploy big conventional ground forces, are likely to rely even more on the SEALs in future years. These troops will need to have “a killer instinct” as well as “empathy, restraint, and the ability to stay on course in the stormy morality of combat,” Philipps writes. The inescapable conclusion from reading Philipps’s book is that the SEALs lack these critical attributes and that the blame for those shortcomings extends far beyond the moral failings of Eddie Gallagher.
Alpha
Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs
By David Philipps
Crown. 443 pp. $28.99
2. Reports: Biden to stick with Aug. 31 deadline for Afghanistan evacuations
This is going to be a tough withdrawal. If we leave anyone behind it will be mission failure.
But collapsing the perimeter around the airport until the last American soldier, sail, airmen, or Marine gets on the airplane and takes off and gets out of harm's way is going to be a dicey proposition with the vu,vulnerability increasing with each departing aircraft will military personnel aboard. I hope that we can surge AC-130 gunships to provide cover as well as other close air support assets. I expect the military will want to fire the final protective fires around the airfield as they get close to departure. I also think a nice parting gift would be a JDAM on every Taliban HQ in Kabul and throughout the country as we depart but I just do think that will be an acceptable course of action from a political perspective.
Reports: Biden to stick with Aug. 31 deadline for Afghanistan evacuations
Aug. 24 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden's administration says it doesn't plan to extend its Aug. 31 deadline for all U.S. military personnel to be out of Afghanistan despite pleas by Group of Seven countries, according to news reports Tuesday.
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Some U.S. lawmakers and Western allies have been pushing Biden to extend the deadline for all U.S. military personnel to leave the country, and Biden had previously expressed a willingness to do so.
In brief remarks before the G7 meeting, Biden cited safety for U.S. troops as a reason for leaving by the existing deadline. He said the deadline could change if the United States' relationship with the Taliban allows for it.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that the administration felt confident in the Aug. 31 deadline.
"In the days remaining, we believe we have the wherewithal to get out the American citizens who want to leave Kabul," he said during a press briefing.
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Biden was scheduled to give public remarks early Tuesday afternoon to discuss "ongoing efforts" to evacuate American citizens and Afghans.
The Taliban, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that it opposes the extension of the evacuation deadline. It also banned Afghan nationals from leaving on the flights.
"We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters.
The Americans "have the opportunity, they have all the resources, they can take all the people that belong to them but we are not going to allow Afghans to leave and we will not extend the deadline," he added.
Mujahid said the Taliban have closed the route to the airport and it's preventing a crowd from forming because there might be a dangerous stampede.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G7 wants to evacuate people from Afghanistan as long as possible but can only do so with U.S. support.
"I have to emphasize that the U.S. has the lead here," she said after the G7 meeting. "Without the U.S., we can't continue with the evacuations, this must be made clear."
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Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, criticized Biden's decision to stick to the Aug. 31 deadline.
"The world just witnessed the president of the United States take orders from a band of barbaric terrorists while ignoring the pleas of our international allies and American citizens he will leave behind," he tweeted. "Joe Biden is a coward."
Tuesday's G7 meeting, a virtual summit, followed international criticism over the way Biden handled the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Taliban militant group swiftly took over control of the country this month and the U.S. government has been working to airlift the remaining citizens and Afghan aides out of an increasingly destabilized Afghanistan.
Officials have said about 5,800 U.S. troops are on the ground in Kabul assisting with the evacuation effort. CNN reported that roughly 6,500 people were waiting for flights early Tuesday.
Baradar was the Taliban's lead negotiator in peace talks with the United States in Qatar last year that resulted in an agreement with the Trump administration to withdraw U.S. forces.
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The Group of Seven, which includes six NATO-member nations and Japan, last met for a summit in Britain in June.
3. Biden’s America is confused — and so is the world
Excerpt:
Viewed from anywhere in the US, the differences between Biden and Trump are stark. But the farther you go from America’s shores, the more they narrow. Which brings us back to “America is back”. The Democratic party is back, although for how long is an open question. Most of America’s friends strongly prefer Democrats to Trumpism. But they are still unsure what that means for America’s role in the world. The suspicion, probably a good one, is that America does not know either.
Biden’s America is confused — and so is the world
Many allied nations prefer the Democratic president to Trump but crave clarity about Washington’s world role
No, the western alliance is not about to break up. And America is not about to drift off into some isolationist reverie. Afghanistan is too peripheral to trigger such a dramatic shift. But the chaotic nature of America’s withdrawal, and the slight felt by most of its allies, have put an abrupt end to President Joe Biden’s international honeymoon. It has also left the world — and much of Washington — in confusion. What does Biden mean by “America is back”? To which America is he referring?
The answer is not obvious. Biden’s Afghan pullout fulfilled one promise, to get out of “forever wars”, and broke another, to restore the primacy of America’s alliances. The second promise was what sharply differentiated Biden from Donald Trump. Biden supposedly values allies. Europe’s chagrin is that Biden could have fulfilled both vows if he had closely consulted with them on his Afghan exit. He chose not to. The fact that Nato was there at America’s behest rubbed salt into the wound. The 9/11 attacks marked the only time Nato has invoked its Article V mutual defence clause — following an assault on America, not Europe.
Europe is accustomed to getting short shrift, sometimes deservedly, sometimes not. In 1956 Dwight Eisenhower rightly applied US economic pressure on Britain and France to force an end to their Suez Canal adventure. In 2003, George W Bush brushed aside France and Germany’s objections to his Iraq invasion plans. Lyndon Johnson might have paid more heed to Harold Wilson, who kept Britain out of the Vietnam war, the only time the UK has not stood shoulder-to-shoulder with America in a serious war. Whether they are in the right or wrong, Europeans are sufficiently committed to the US alliance to survive being treated as irritants. The transatlantic world is ultimately held together by mutual interests.
But the west cannot go on indefinitely without a strategy. The solution to that lies mostly with America. Eight months into his presidency, Biden has yet to settle on a clear foreign policy. He campaigned on slogans such as “restoring alliances”, “promoting democracy”, pursuing a “foreign policy for the middle class” and focusing on Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific. All of these, particularly ending “forever wars”, sound good to most western ears. But they do not stack up with each other. To govern is to choose and Biden is not there yet.
The tension between Biden’s aspirations come to a head on China. Much like with Afghanistan, there is little of substance on China to distinguish Biden from Trump. Biden has retained tariffs on Chinese goods. On 5G he is asking global partners to choose between Huawei and an as yet unspecified alternative. And Biden’s rationale for pulling out of Afghanistan is to focus US resources on the Indo-Pacific.
That will be news to India, which is meant to be America’s biggest counterweight to China. Pakistan, India’s eternal adversary, has just become stronger with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, which is now Islamabad’s client state. China has also received a shot in the arm, not only because Pakistan is its close ally. Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative was launched in Kazakhstan in 2013, the largest state in central Asia. Xi’s biggest missing piece in the region was Afghanistan. The signs are that the Taliban will approve Chinese infrastructure and mineral extraction investment in exchange for denying sanctuary to Uyghur separatists fighting Chinese repression in Xinjiang.
Biden has taken a big step to end America’s “forever wars”. But judging by these foreseeable consequences, how will the Afghan exit help Biden’s other goals, such as China containment and democracy promotion? The answer is murky. In the coming weeks Biden will be under pressure to justify his Afghan move by taking stronger action against China. His instinct will be to resist.
Biden’s real priority is to pass his domestic fiscal bills to juice up the US middle-class economy before next year’s midterm elections. If you drop the word “foreign”, that may be what Biden really means by a foreign policy for the middle class.
Viewed from anywhere in the US, the differences between Biden and Trump are stark. But the farther you go from America’s shores, the more they narrow. Which brings us back to “America is back”. The Democratic party is back, although for how long is an open question. Most of America’s friends strongly prefer Democrats to Trumpism. But they are still unsure what that means for America’s role in the world. The suspicion, probably a good one, is that America does not know either.
4. Afghan military officers: We fought hard but Biden "abandoned" us
Excerpt:
But the Afghan lieutenant colonel said he and his family are marooned, without options. He has worked closely with American forces, he said, and "trained with American officers at the Army Command and General Staff College" in Leavenworth, Kansas. But the U.S. embassy in Kabul denied his request to evacuate his family before diplomats fled. "I can't get asylum in the U.S. because they said that they don't have the authority to provide any asylum support to an Afghan government active-duty personnel," he told Zenger.
The corps commander is also trapped: "The Taliban is roaming here, everywhere. I am inside my house. Even I can't go outside my house because of the high level of threat which is over here. So I am very scared, you know."
Afghan military officers: We fought hard but Biden "abandoned" us
Newsweek · by Zaid Jilani · August 23, 2021
While President Joe Biden faults Afghanistan's leaders and soldiers for their own defeat, Afghan National Army officers, who vainly fought to save Kabul, say their defeat was manufactured in Washington, D.C.
As the Taliban reached Kabul's outer ring of defenses, Zenger reporters in Pakistan and India used their personal networks to conduct a series of interviews with senior Afghan military officers who were leading active fighting units. Their accounts differ sharply from the White House's published talking points.
Biden said Afghan forces were "not willing to fight for themselves" and critically noted President Ashraf Ghani's sudden departure as Taliban forces closed in. "Mr. Ghani insisted the Afghan forces would fight," Biden said, "but obviously he was wrong."
Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle along the street in Jalalabad province on August 15, 2021. AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images
These Kabul-based military officers point the finger of blame in the other direction. The U.S. made it all but impossible for the Afghans to fight, said one Afghan National Army lieutenant colonel. Zenger reporters spoke to him over a series of days as he led a portion of the defense of Kabul, then retreated with his unit into the city while fighting a series of street battles. He is now in hiding with his family.
The army officer is one of several Afghan officers interviewed by mobile phone during the siege and fall of Kabul.
He explained why he thinks the blame lies with Biden, not the Afghan president or the Afghan army. The Afghan army relied on a network of planes and helicopters to deliver food, fuel, and ammunition to outlying outposts. Helicopters were needed to ferry the wounded and deliver replacement soldiers. Even the bases on Kabul's mountainous approaches had to be supplied by helicopters.
While the Afghan Army had one of Central Asia's largest fleet of choppers, he said, virtually all the mechanics and maintenance crew were U.S. contractors, many of which were withdrawn months ago. Helicopter repair facilities and spare-parts warehouses were largely located at Bagram Air Base, which was shuttered by the U.S. military several weeks before the Taliban took control. Fuel, once delivered by the U.S., was also in short supply. "The Americans abandoned us," the 36-year-old Afghan National Army lieutenant colonel told Zenger. "The plan was not to abandon a country in a situation like this."
From Washington, the Afghan defeat is seen as a lack of willpower. Biden had "said in July that the Afghan military had the capability to fight the Taliban," he said Sunday. "But they had to demonstrate the will. Sadly, that will did not materialize." Biden's speech mirrored a talking points memo that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi distributed to fellow Democrats on Monday.
Afghan people sit as they wait to leave the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan's 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city's airport trying to flee the group's feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP) (Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images) WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images
The Afghans see their defeat as stemming from a lack of logistics, not a shortage of fighting spirit. The U.S. "did not give us the opportunity to reorganize the requirements for our defense and security forces, or to manage what we needed for this war," the Afghan lieutenant colonel said. "As you know, they only gave three months ... that's not sufficient."
The Americans were racing to leave before Biden's Aug. 31 deadline. The final scraps of U.S. military support stopped on Aug. 13, he said. The Taliban seized Kabul on Aug. 15.
Another officer, a corps commander, described a bloody fight in the corridors of his besieged headquarters in Herat, a sprawling city that sits atop a strategic and ancient trade route to Iran. Kabul, 500 miles to the east, had few working helicopters to provide relief or rescue. The Afghan soldiers had fought on longer than anyone thought they could.
Ultimately, the corps commander was forced to surrender on Aug. 12 as Herat fell. His men were captured and kept "without water, food, anything," he said. He's unsure exactly for how many days he was a prisoner.
After being beaten and humiliated, he said, he and his men were given some stale bread and well water. Their captors, who describe themselves as religious students — the literal meaning of "taliban" in Pashto — stole their money and other belongings.
The Taliban, the corps commander said, also don't differentiate between soldiers and the journalists covering them at their headquarters. "This situation which I saw with my own eyes. ... They start hitting people with the butt of weapons, and all these things," he said. "Journalists. Cameramen."
They were released, unarmed, to walk into the wild desert lands outside Herat and find what shelter they could.
While Biden has credited the Taliban with providing "safe passage" for some 15,000 American citizens and legal U.S. residents believed to be trapped behind Taliban lines, former Afghan army officers say they see little evidence of humane treatment.
The 26-year-old corps commander describes his journey from Herat back to Kabul as a tour of abuses carried out by the Taliban. He saw roving bands of Taliban beating and robbing their own countrymen. He eventually found shelter with some of his extended family and is "very scared" to go outside. Taliban patrols are banging on doors, looking for anyone linked to the defeated democratic regime, he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden gestures as he gives remarks on the worsening crisis in Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House August 16, 2021 in Washington, DC. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Given the Taliban's active hunt for Afghan National Army officers and their documented history of public executions for even minor offenses, Zenger is withholding the military officers' names. This is a departure from Zenger's policy of publishing the name of every source quoted in its stories. The lieutenant colonel told Zenger that he, his wife and their children are already in danger. "I don't want to become a prisoner for the Taliban. ... I am so worried for my family," he said.
Biden said on Aug. 19 that he had compassion for women who massed at the gates of the Kabul airport, trying to exit Afghanistan with their children. "As many as we can get out, we should," he said. "For example, I had a meeting today for a couple hours in the Situation Room just below here. There are Afghan women outside the gate. I told 'em, 'Get 'em on the planes. Get them out. Get them out. Get their families out if you can.'"
But the Afghan lieutenant colonel said he and his family are marooned, without options. He has worked closely with American forces, he said, and "trained with American officers at the Army Command and General Staff College" in Leavenworth, Kansas. But the U.S. embassy in Kabul denied his request to evacuate his family before diplomats fled. "I can't get asylum in the U.S. because they said that they don't have the authority to provide any asylum support to an Afghan government active-duty personnel," he told Zenger.
The corps commander is also trapped: "The Taliban is roaming here, everywhere. I am inside my house. Even I can't go outside my house because of the high level of threat which is over here. So I am very scared, you know."
Correction 08/23/21 10:49 p.m. ET A previous version of this story referred to President Biden's deadline as August 3. His deadline was August 30.
Correction 08/24/21 11:25 p.m. ET A previous correction on this story said Biden's deadline was August 30. It was August 31.
Newsweek · by Zaid Jilani · August 23, 2021
5. What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?
Excerpts:
The answer to the question concerning the source of these small arms is straightforward: war looting. Another and more important question needs an answer: The fate of the extensive military materiel that the U.S. left behind during its withdrawal or that which was in the hands of the Afghan forces that melted so quickly away as the Taliban advanced.
As a landlocked country, Afghanistan makes moving military materiel back to the U.S. neither an easy nor an economical endeavor. Much was removed anyway, and much handed over to Afghan government forces. What couldn’t be taken back, was left. Blowing up in situ large quantities of war materiel is cheaper than shipping it out of Afghanistan. Still, that option creates toxic legacies that would affect the local population for a long time, as happened in Iraq.
Nevertheless, lack of time and unreasonable expectations on the survivability of the Afghan security forces caught the Pentagon by surprise. According to Joshua Reno, author of “Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness,” recirculating weapons in the places a military force leaves when the battle is over will augment the risks that small arms or other weapons are going to fuel and intensify civil war or instability.
According to a top Pentagon logistics specialist, there is no clear record of the quantity and quality of military equipment left behind. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated that the Taliban probably would not give such materiel back to the U.S. at the airport, adding a note of farce to an already disastrous situation. One of the immediate conclusions drawn from the less-than-optimal U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is how the U.S. can minimize the chances of future disasters stemming out of the Taliban’s use and trade of abandoned U.S. and Afghan military materiel.
What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?
With its quick seizure of power, the Taliban also acquired U.S. military equipment left behind by the withdrawal or abandoned by Afghan forces.
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Capturing the enemy’s weapons has been a standard guerrilla tactic for centuries. The American Army could not have succeeded against King George III without seizing the king’s food and armaments. It is one thing to capture weapons and other materiel; it is another to be given the enemy’s gear on a silver platter.
In the images of the Taliban fighters flooding the streets of Kabul, one detail attracts attention: the lack of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. Few Taliban appearing now carry the signature weapon of insurgent fighters, the AK-47, and its countless variants from the handmade Pakistani versions to the updated Russian AK-19. Most of the Taliban in Kabul’s street seems to prefer American M4 carbines and M16 rifles with their many gadgets attached, from expensive optics to laser sights and flashlights, an uncommon picture in contrast to just a few weeks earlier.
The answer to the question concerning the source of these small arms is straightforward: war looting. Another and more important question needs an answer: The fate of the extensive military materiel that the U.S. left behind during its withdrawal or that which was in the hands of the Afghan forces that melted so quickly away as the Taliban advanced.
As a landlocked country, Afghanistan makes moving military materiel back to the U.S. neither an easy nor an economical endeavor. Much was removed anyway, and much handed over to Afghan government forces. What couldn’t be taken back, was left. Blowing up in situ large quantities of war materiel is cheaper than shipping it out of Afghanistan. Still, that option creates toxic legacies that would affect the local population for a long time, as happened in Iraq.
Nevertheless, lack of time and unreasonable expectations on the survivability of the Afghan security forces caught the Pentagon by surprise. According to Joshua Reno, author of “Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness,” recirculating weapons in the places a military force leaves when the battle is over will augment the risks that small arms or other weapons are going to fuel and intensify civil war or instability.
According to a top Pentagon logistics specialist, there is no clear record of the quantity and quality of military equipment left behind. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated that the Taliban probably would not give such materiel back to the U.S. at the airport, adding a note of farce to an already disastrous situation. One of the immediate conclusions drawn from the less-than-optimal U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is how the U.S. can minimize the chances of future disasters stemming out of the Taliban’s use and trade of abandoned U.S. and Afghan military materiel.
U.S. military and intelligence had already walked that path in the 1990s, after the anti-Soviet mujahedeen pushed out the Soviet Union. The task at that time was to recover Stingers, highly sophisticated portable surface to air missiles. In order to have a chance against the Soviet Union’s heavily armed attack helicopter Mil Mi-24, essentially a flying tank, the U.S. had equipped the mujahedeen with Stingers in the 1980s. As soon as the war ended with the Soviet defeat, the possibility of those Stingers being employed for terrorist attacks or falling into hostile government hands ignited a hunt to get the portable missiles back. The U.S. intelligence community scrambled to buy them back, allegedly at $100,000 per unit, or obtain the portable missiles by any means. Steve Coll in his acclaimed book “Ghost Wars,” mentioned that when the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, an estimated 600 of the 2,300 Stingers provided by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war remained unaccounted for. Tehran was competing in the same race to acquire as many of the wayward Stingers as possible.
Providentially, the threat of a terrorist using a Stinger to shoot down an American passenger plane did not materialize, nor did the Taliban develop a successful insurgent anti-aircraft campaign with the leftovers.
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And yes, history repeats itself.
Today’s quantity and quality of weapons that the Taliban are hoarding since their lightning advance will arguably have unintended negative consequences far from Afghan borders. Sales to hostile governments and on the black market may provide additional revenue to the Taliban and increase uncertainty and instability not only in Central Asia but beyond. Militant organizations such as the Haqqani network, already in Kabul, possess the capability to smuggle weapons from Afghanistan to the Middle East, the African continent, and even to Southeast Asia.
Possible scenarios range from small arms used to foster instability in the region or night vision goggles and military-grade communication equipment reaching other militant groups, including the Islamic State. More significant items now in the hands of the Taliban, such as helicopters, can neither be maintained nor flown due to a lack of Taliban pilots and trained maintenance crews. The materiel, however, could be handed over to countries interested in sensitive U.S. technology, and that list is not short. The war looting includes armored Humvees, aircraft, and attack helicopters, as well as military scout drones. Most of the Afghan Air Force’s aircraft were used by Afghan pilots to escape into neighboring Central Asian countries as Kabul fell, but the number still parked on Afghan airfields is unknown.
The fall of Kabul, predictably, has been compared with the fall of Saigon. Most of the analogies point to helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy. However, another analogy worth referencing is related to the North Vietnamese political commissars’ scrambling to reach the ARVN and South Vietnamese police’s archives to locate the list of intelligence officials and collaborators. In an era of Big Data and databases stored in the cloud, there is a sudden realization that deleting data from the servers and smashing hard drives is not a bulletproof solution. Moreover, there are severe concerns that hundreds of military biometric devices, abandoned in U.S. bases, left a digital breadcrumb trail that the Taliban will use to locate and target former security officials and government supporters. Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, in short HIIDE, devices are meant to digitally identify friends from foes via a biometric reading, against databases with fingerprints, iris scans and distinctive facial features.
Similarly, social media users in Kabul left a digital trail not only on their mobile phones but also on the internet. It’s now digital proof that can be used against them when the Taliban feels confident of their grip on power and local media control. Discounting the Taliban’s capabilities in accessing actionable digital intelligence could be a mistake. Besides the probable support that the Taliban could receive from foreign intelligence services, it is not wise to disparage the ingenuity of militant groups in harnessing low-tech schemes to counter high-tech weaponry. An example is provided by the case of pro-Iranian militants in Iraq using $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to monitor the unblinking eyes of U.S. drones.
The threat of insurgents intercepting drone video feeds has been patched with encrypted communication; however, examples of low-tech tactical efficiencies abound. Since a decade ago, the Taliban have been using off-the-shelf commercial drones to shoot propaganda films and provide aerial scouting and to guide kamikaze flying bombs. This is a playbook borrowed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The recent Taliban capture of Boeing ScanEagle drones, developed for surveillance, could add a new capability to the fighters’ growing arsenal. Also, their tactical use could evolve into alternative and deadly options.
From a propaganda perspective, the videos of Taliban fighters parading in Afghan cities with their U.S. war trophies increase the criticism of the Biden administration’s withdrawal decision. Although it remains unclear how the Taliban will govern Afghanistan, the propaganda value of their white flags waving in the wind from the top of U.S.-made Humvees inspires other jihadist and radical Islamist groups to imitate the Taliban’s actions. The perception of augmented combat capabilities provided by the war looting could also push Central Asian countries to strengthen their bilateral security ties with Moscow and Beijing, no matter what, in the face of a Taliban with modern equipment.
Sun Tzu, the revered author of the “Art of War,” quoted shoulder to shoulder with von Clausewitz in contemporary Western military PowerPoint presentations, states that the golden rule is to know your enemy. Probably 20 years were not enough.
6. Fury, "disgust" in D.C. that thousands of Afghans will be left behind
The soldier, sailors, airmen, and Marines are going to have a hard time leaving if they have not completed the evacuation. Think about their moral injuries as well as the likely torture and death of those that may be left behind. The administration needs to think twice about an order to leave that lees people behind.
Fury, "disgust" in D.C. that thousands of Afghans will be left behind
Evacuations are likely to slow greatly by Friday to give U.S. troops time to withdraw. That's not enough time to evacuate all the Afghans who helped the U.S.
NBC News · by Ken Dilanian, Courtney Kube, Julia Ainsley and Abigail Williams · August 24, 2021
WASHINGTON — With President Joe Biden intending to stick to the Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan, it's becoming clear that thousands of the Afghans who helped the U.S. won't be evacuated, a scenario that has engendered deep frustration inside U.S. national security agencies.
"People are furious and disgusted," said a former U.S. intelligence official who declined to be quoted by name. A defense official said he grew nauseated as he considered how many Afghan allies would be left behind.
At the CIA, "officers feel a real sense of obligation, moral obligation and personal obligation" to the Afghans they supported and trained, said former CIA Director John Brennan, an NBC News national security consultant.
But the precarious situation for U.S. troops on the ground left Biden with no good options to extend their presence, military officials said.
An unannounced meeting Monday in Kabul, the Afghan capital, between CIA Director William Burns and the de facto Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, appears to have helped speed evacuations, said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and other U.S. officials. But it didn't prompt a Taliban agreement to tolerate a longer stay for the 6,000 U.S. troops at the airport.
The U.S. proposed to extend the withdrawal date by four days, offering a promise to hand over a functioning airport to the Taliban after cleaning it up and leaving a Turkish staff to run it. But the Taliban refused to entertain any extension, two defense officials said.
The result, U.S. officials said, is that evacuations are likely to slow considerably by Friday to give the military enough time to effect an orderly withdrawal. That isn't nearly enough time to evacuate all the Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who helped the 20-year U.S. effort in the country, and it may not be enough time to remove every American, officials acknowledged.
Republicans expressed outrage even before Biden announced his decision.
"Damn the deadline," said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a member of the Intelligence Committee. "Americans want us to stay until we get our people out, and so do our allies. ... Mr. President, tell the Taliban we're getting our people out however long it takes and that we're perfectly willing to spill Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS blood to do it."
But defense officials painted a dire picture of how such a fight might play out. Thousands of hardened Taliban fighters surround the Kabul airport, they noted, and U.S. forces could be extremely vulnerable to attack. The U.S. could defend itself from the air, but if a fight broke out, the likelihood of civilian casualties would be high. And at that point, it would be almost impossible for Americans or Afghan allies to get to the airport.
Finger-pointing over what led up to the no-win situation was widespread this week.
Two senior Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with internal administration discussions expressed anger at the State Department for not having acted sooner to ramp up the vetting of Special Immigrant Visa applicants.
A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, which is part of DHS, said it is conducting biometric and biographical screening and vetting of Afghans in coordination with other agencies.
One of the DHS officials said their State Department counterparts didn't act sooner because they were hesitant to start a mass evacuation before the Afghan president left, worried that it would show a lack of confidence in Afghan leadership.
There has also been continued frustration that some U.S. government databases weren't immediately compatible between agencies, slowing the vetting in places like Doha, Qatar. CBP planned to increase its vetting staffing in Doha from 14 to 42 between Saturday and Tuesday, according to a document obtained by NBC News.
Meanwhile, officials at non-governmental organizations that have operated in Afghanistan, which have raised millions of dollars from Americans concerned about the fate of Afghans, are growing frustrated with the Biden administration. A leader of an NGO said: "There's been an outpouring. It's inspiring, but on the other hand, it is a damning reflection on the failure of the U.S. that private citizens are having to step in to do what the government with all its billions and trillions has failed to do."
Asked why more vulnerable Afghan citizens hadn't finished the Special Immigrant Visa process sooner, the State Department has pointed fingers at the Trump administration, noting that the agency under Biden started with a backlog of more than 17,000 applicants. State Department officials have also blamed the complex 14-step process mandated by Congress, which was only further complicated by the Covid pandemic and Covid outbreaks at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
“The Biden administration has demonstrated, in the face of significant challenges, its sacrosanct commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who have stood-by-side with the United States over the course of the past two decades," a State Department spokesperson said.
A senior administration official said Monday that efforts to get vulnerable Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan won't stop after the military departs.
"This will remain an around-the-clock, 24/7 effort, both to get those who wish to leave out of Afghanistan and then to continue processing paperwork so Afghans at risk can continue on to the U.S. and to other nations for permanent resettlement," the official said.
Military officials concurred, saying they will keep getting people out for as long as they can. U.S. forces will prioritize lives over equipment, and they will leave equipment behind and blow it up in place, the two defense officials said.
U.S. assets at the airport include artillery, mortars, anti-drone weapons and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, which will be destroyed so flights can be filled with people, the officials said.
They added that the Biden administration is considering trying to maintain an embassy presence at the airport — but that senior U.S. military officials oppose that as too difficult to defend.
Concerns mounted, meanwhile, about vetting the Afghans who may end up in the U.S.
Vetting at Hamid Karzai International Airport is complicated by the fact that biometric screening isn't available, according to an internal State Department memo obtained by NBC News. The U.S. mission team reported at least five cases of Afghans who presented U.S. passports that didn't belong to them, according to the Sunday dispatch from the Afghanistan Task Force, highlighting fraud concerns and complicating the process of screening people to enter the airport.
Some of the vetting is happening in third countries. CBP was scheduled to add 27 staff members in Doha to conduct vetting, bringing the total to 42, along with 33 in Germany and 31 in Bahrain, according to a separate internal document obtained by NBC News.
NBC News · by Ken Dilanian, Courtney Kube, Julia Ainsley and Abigail Williams · August 24, 2021
7. Opinion | I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.
Painful to read.
Excerpts:
It’s true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that’s because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr. Biden’s tone and words over the past few months. The Afghan Army is not without blame. It had its problems — cronyism, bureaucracy — but we ultimately stopped fighting because our partners already had.
It pains me to see Mr. Biden and Western officials are blaming the Afghan Army for collapsing without mentioning the underlying reasons that happened. Political divisions in Kabul and Washington strangled the army and limited our ability to do our jobs. Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years crippled us, as did a lack of clear guidance from U.S. and Afghan leadership.
I am a three-star general in the Afghan Army. For 11 months, as commander of 215 Maiwand Corps, I led 15,000 men in combat operations against the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan. I’ve lost hundreds of officers and soldiers. That’s why, as exhausted and frustrated as I am, I wanted to offer a practical perspective and defend the honor of the Afghan Army. I’m not here to absolve the Afghan Army of mistakes. But the fact is, many of us fought valiantly and honorably, only to be let down by American and Afghan leadership.
Opinion | I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.
Guest Essay
I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.
Aug. 25, 2021, 5:34 a.m. ET
By
General Sadat is a commander in the Afghan National Army.
For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted heavy casualties. Then I was called to Kabul to command Afghanistan’s special forces. But the Taliban already were entering the city; it was too late.
I am exhausted. I am frustrated. And I am angry.
It’s true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that’s because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr. Biden’s tone and words over the past few months. The Afghan Army is not without blame. It had its problems — cronyism, bureaucracy — but we ultimately stopped fighting because our partners already had.
It pains me to see Mr. Biden and Western officials are blaming the Afghan Army for collapsing without mentioning the underlying reasons that happened. Political divisions in Kabul and Washington strangled the army and limited our ability to do our jobs. Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years crippled us, as did a lack of clear guidance from U.S. and Afghan leadership.
I am a three-star general in the Afghan Army. For 11 months, as commander of 215 Maiwand Corps, I led 15,000 men in combat operations against the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan. I’ve lost hundreds of officers and soldiers. That’s why, as exhausted and frustrated as I am, I wanted to offer a practical perspective and defend the honor of the Afghan Army. I’m not here to absolve the Afghan Army of mistakes. But the fact is, many of us fought valiantly and honorably, only to be let down by American and Afghan leadership.
There is an enormous sense of betrayal here. Mr. Ghani’s hasty escape ended efforts to negotiate an interim agreement for a transition period with the Taliban that would have enabled us to hold the city and help manage evacuations. Instead, chaos ensued — resulting in the desperate scenes witnessed at Kabul airport.
It was in response to those scenes that Mr. Biden said on Aug. 16 that the Afghan forces collapsed, “sometimes without trying to fight.” But we fought, bravely, until the end. We lost 66,000 troops over the past 20 years; that’s one-fifth of our estimated fighting force.
So why did the Afghan military collapse? The answer is threefold.
First, former President Donald Trump’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Doha doomed us. It put an expiration date on American interest in the region. Second, we lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to our combat operations. Third, the corruption endemic in Mr. Ghani’s government that flowed to senior military leadership and long crippled our forces on the ground irreparably hobbled us.
The Trump-Taliban agreement shaped the circumstances for the current situation by essentially curtailing offensive combat operations for U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. air-support rules of engagement for Afghan security forces effectively changed overnight, and the Taliban were emboldened. They could sense victory and knew it was just a matter of waiting out the Americans. Before that deal, the Taliban had not won any significant battles against the Afghan Army. After the agreement? We were losing dozens of soldiers a day.
Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat commanded the Afghan National Army’s 215 Maiwand Corps in southwestern Afghanistan.
Still, we kept fighting. But then Mr. Biden confirmed in April he would stick to Mr. Trump’s plan and set the terms for the U.S. drawdown. That was when everything started to go downhill.
The Afghan forces were trained by the Americans using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes. We lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.
The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared. Real-time intelligence on targets went out the window, too.
Mr. Biden’s full and accelerated withdrawal only exacerbated the situation. It ignored conditions on the ground. The Taliban had a firm end date from the Americans and feared no military reprisal for anything they did in the interim, sensing the lack of U.S. will.
And so the Taliban kept ramping up. My soldiers and I endured up to seven Taliban car bombings daily throughout July and the first week of August in Helmand Province. Still, we stood our ground.
I cannot ignore the third factor, though. Because there was only so much the Americans could do when it came to the well-documented corruption that rotted our government and military. That really is our national tragedy. So many of our leaders — including in the military — were installed for their personal ties, not for their credentials. These appointments had a devastating impact on the national army because leaders lacked the military experience to be effective or inspire the confidence and trust of the men being asked to risk their lives. Disruptions to food rations and fuel supplies — a result of skimming and corrupt contract allocations — destroyed the morale of my troops.
The final days of fighting were surreal. We engaged in intense firefights on the ground against the Taliban as U.S. fighter jets circled overhead, effectively spectators. Our sense of abandonment and betrayal was equaled only by the frustration U.S. pilots felt and relayed to us — being forced to witness the ground war, apparently unable to help us. Overwhelmed by Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why they were not providing air support. Morale was devastated. Across Afghanistan, soldiers stopped fighting. We held Lashkar Gah in fierce battles, but as the rest of the country fell, we lacked the support to continue fighting and retreated to base. My corps, which had carried on even after I was called away to Kabul, was one of the last to give up its arms — only after the capital fell.
We were betrayed by politics and presidents.
This was not an Afghan war only; it was an international war, with many militaries involved. It would have been impossible for one army alone, ours, to take up the job and fight. This was a military defeat, but it emanated from political failure.
Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat commanded the Afghan National Army’s 215 Maiwand Corps in southwestern Afghanistan. Before that, he served as a senior director in Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency. He is a graduate of the Defense Academy of the U.K. and holds a master's degree from King’s College London.
8. How we as a nation — and I as a military officer — failed in Afghanistan by Gen. Ben Hodges
Another painful but necessary read.
Excerpts:
So how do we move forward?
The immediate priority is to get everybody out who needs or wants to get out. This is already a humanitarian disaster, and it’ll get worse if the U.S., our Allies, and the United Nations can’t prevent it. The scenes we are all seeing coming out of Afghanistan now are tragic, chaotic, frustrating, and sad. But what many may not see are the incredible efforts by soldiers and Marines on the ground, and the amazing skill and courage of airmen flying in and out of Kabul’s crowded airport. Even less visible and appreciated are the round-the clock work by commanders and staff from the Pentagon and US Central Command.
What they need is time — and the failure for the Biden administration to plan ahead means that the military must rush to hit the Aug. 31 deadline. The Taliban should never be the ones dictating our actions.
This is going to launch another refugee problem to Europe which will be destabilizing, and that can have negative consequences for the U.S. given that the European Union is our largest trading partner.
The second step is to reassess our strategy for the region. We must look at this as a regional security issue, not just an Afghan issue. The Chinese will surely move in quickly with lots of money and zero concerns for human rights or women’s safety in order to gain access to the vast amounts of precious minerals waiting to be extracted from the mountains of Afghanistan.
Finally, I think we need to do some rigorous introspection in all of our government, diplomatic, and defense/security institutions. I’ve been doing it about my own actions, but the military needs to study where things went wrong and try not to make the same mistakes again. And if we don’t learn, it will happen again.
How we as a nation — and I as a military officer — failed in Afghanistan
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what went wrong in Afghanistan, where we went failed as a nation — and where I made mistakes as an officer.
No. 1 was going to Iraq. Like many, I backed that invasion. But in retrospect, it distracted our forces for a war that had nothing to do with 9/11. We should have stayed focused on Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, one of our biggest mistakes was with the Afghan army. And I was part of the problem.
We built an army that was similar to Western armies, which are designed to employ overwhelming firepower and enjoy endless logistics and exquisite intelligence assets. When these were removed, the Afghan security forces were not able to fight as we’d expected. We should have designed them to be more in harmony with Afghan culture and society, along tribal and family lines, like the Taliban. The corruption at the highest levels of government and leadership gave those Afghan soldiers and police in many cases little reason to want to fight.
As Director of Operations in Regional Command-South, Kandahar from August 2009 to November 2010, I saw many brave, competent Afghan Officers and units. I believed it was possible that they could eventually stand on their own. I left Kandahar at the end of 2010 very optimistic about the future. But I failed to believe what I was seeing with my own eyes — that the most effective Afghan units were actually those that looked a lot like the Taliban. Those were the units led by US Green Berets, which moved with speed in pick-up trucks, wore no boots or helmets, yet knew the people and the culture. I was part of the problem.
Following my deployment to Afghanistan, I was Director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell on the Joint Staff for all of 2011. As such, I led a team of experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan that helped to develop/coordinate policy for the region and represented the Joint Staff at the weekly Deputies Meeting at the White House.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges makes a press statement on the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan in Izmir, Turkey, on March 4, 2014.Emin Menguarslan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
We thought Pakistan was an ally. They were not. We were concerned about their nuclear weapons and believed that we could spend enough money and give enough aid that they would keep control of their nukes and also deny safe haven to the Taliban and to al Qaeda. Instead, we found Osama bin Laden living in a large home down the street from the military academy of Pakistan, and the Taliban enjoyed nearly unfettered safe haven in Pakistan’s mountainous western territories. They were, in effect, an arm of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Our strategy was overly focused on Afghanistan.
We never did fully implement a strategy that included Pakistan and, by necessity, India. In retrospect, it is clear that I failed to push forcefully enough for a strategy that included Pakistan. Even worse, I failed to realize that dissenting views by Pakistan experts were suppressed or ignored.
Our government should have raised a tax specifically to pay for Afghanistan. Without such a tax, most Americans remained unaffected by our deployment to Afghanistan. Therefore, there was little pressure from the American public on Congress or any Administration to have the sense of urgency needed to review our strategy and assumptions and bring this deployment to a successful conclusion.
So how do we move forward?
The immediate priority is to get everybody out who needs or wants to get out. This is already a humanitarian disaster, and it’ll get worse if the U.S., our Allies, and the United Nations can’t prevent it. The scenes we are all seeing coming out of Afghanistan now are tragic, chaotic, frustrating, and sad. But what many may not see are the incredible efforts by soldiers and Marines on the ground, and the amazing skill and courage of airmen flying in and out of Kabul’s crowded airport. Even less visible and appreciated are the round-the clock work by commanders and staff from the Pentagon and US Central Command.
US Air Force airmen guide evacuees aboard a plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021.Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via AP
What they need is time — and the failure for the Biden administration to plan ahead means that the military must rush to hit the Aug. 31 deadline. The Taliban should never be the ones dictating our actions.
This is going to launch another refugee problem to Europe which will be destabilizing, and that can have negative consequences for the U.S. given that the European Union is our largest trading partner.
The second step is to reassess our strategy for the region. We must look at this as a regional security issue, not just an Afghan issue. The Chinese will surely move in quickly with lots of money and zero concerns for human rights or women’s safety in order to gain access to the vast amounts of precious minerals waiting to be extracted from the mountains of Afghanistan.
Finally, I think we need to do some rigorous introspection in all of our government, diplomatic, and defense/security institutions. I’ve been doing it about my own actions, but the military needs to study where things went wrong and try not to make the same mistakes again. And if we don’t learn, it will happen again.
Gen. Ben Hodges, now retired, was the former commanding general of the United States Army Europe.
9. How One Tech Entrepreneur Is Scaling Up Veteran-Led Evacuation Efforts
Former Marine Raider Worth Parker is a great American. I have been following his exploits with TF Dunkirk and he and the entire team and network have been doing great things.
How One Tech Entrepreneur Is Scaling Up Veteran-Led Evacuation Efforts
Volunteers in the U.S. are telling fleeing Afghans where Taliban traps are.
On Aug. 15, as the world learned that Kabul had been overrun by the Taliban,Worth Parker, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, got a call. One of the interpreters he had worked with in Afghanistan, who had since become a Marine reservist, needed his help.
“He said, ‘Sir, my parents and two brothers are in Kabul. My dad was a squadron commander with the [Afghan] Special Mission Wing. They’re already getting phone calls from the Taliban” urging them to turn themselves in, Worth said.
Parker started making calls but his voicemail was soon inundated with similar requests from other people who needed help. He is now part of a fledgling, veteran-led effort called Task Force Dunkirk to evacuate Afghans who have worked with the United States.
Almost immediately, Parker realized he needed help with scale. He had a handful of contacts, at the Kabul airport and elsewhere, to help Afghans obtain the paperwork they needed to get on U.S. aircraft, but things weren’t moving fast enough. The need was simply too great.
Parker reached out to Joe Saboe, the founder of Trendlines, which provides consulting and software to help develop workforces. Saboe and his team are now finding and coordinating veterans who can help identify potential evacuees and get them the information they need to get them out of the country. He calls the effort Team America.
“We basically started recruiting our friends who had combat experience,” Saboe told Defense One on Monday.
They’re up to about 150 people, mostly—like Worth—veterans of the infantry, Special Forces, or other special operations units. These volunteers become what Saboe calls “battle captains” in a virtual tactical operations center, or TOC, which they manage via a variety of apps. (For operational security, Saboe declined to name them). The battle captains have been working in shifts of three or four, 24 hours a day.
“We have evacuated about 116 people already,” Saboe said. “We have [communications] with 800 individuals right now. They’ve all passed through vetting and evaluation process so we can get them out.”
Once they identify a candidate for flight, they establish an evacuation plan for the person and possibly their family. All of the plan details are entered into a master tracker. The plans include information for getting in touch with the individuals, along with other details, such as whether they are traveling with children or elderly people, and if they are connected to special operations forces.
The group then provides the evacuees with a live, secure communication feed.
The group remains in communication throughout the process, sometimes with extended family elsewhere in the world as well.
“Typically we’re collecting from everything we hear from the families on the ground,” Saboe said. That data collection provides the group with a unique window into exactly what’s happening on the ground, which they can then share with the people they’re trying to help evacuate.
“We’re also monitoring open source information. Sometimes we are providing the families with maps of where gates are, or where we want them to go that maybe isn’t a gate, or where Taliban activity is. We’ll also talk them through the Taliban [tactics, techniques and procedures] and how to avoid them.”
The Taliban, Saboe said, have already begun phishing efforts against Afghans, looking for people who may be seeking to evacuate, by sending emails purporting to be from the United States States Department or other sources. “Often we will help verify the authenticity [or lack thereof] of certain emails,” Saboe said.
Despite White House assurances that the State Department is in contact with all U.S. citizens on the ground in Afghanistan, that hasn’t been Saboe’s experience.
“We have 11 U.S. citizens in one house right now. They have received no communication from the State Department. Zero. They called to ask if they should go to a specific location and we told them no because of intelligence we had. It was a trap,” he said.
The Taliban are also actively trying to infiltrate their operation, Saboe said. “There are active countermeasures being deployed by the Taliban to try and crack into groups like ours. We’ve gotten phishing emails.”
But Saboe’s frustration right now isn’t just for the Taliban.
“I had a U.S. senator’s office the other day, a senior staffer, tell me that they saw this an issue that’s primarily, a concern to veterans… That’s deeply concerning. Another senator asked if these people were residents of his state.”
There are currently multiple veteran-led volunteer groups working the evacuation problem, all with different capabilities.
Parker says Saboe and his team were essential in helping him and other veterans to coordinate and scale up their efforts.
“I would tell you they’re an absolutely key part of that,” he told Defense One. “We’re a bunch of old guys that know how to network and gain access to assets. These guys are making it happen.”
10. Two Congress members fly to Kabul, infuriate DoD, White House
The lengths Congress will go to perform its oversight responsibilities. Was this act responsible or irresponsible? Talk among ourselves!
Two Congress members fly to Kabul, infuriate DoD, White House
Days after the capital of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Military Times spoke to a former U.S. interpreter trapped in the city.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two members of Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and U.S. military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, U.S. officials said.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., flew in and out on charter aircraft and were on the ground at the Kabul airport for several hours. That led officials to complain that they could be taking seats that would have otherwise gone to other Americans or Afghans fleeing the country, but the congressmen said in a joint statement that they made sure to leave on a flight with empty seats.
“As Members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch,’” the two said in their statement. “We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand.”
The two lawmakers are both military veterans, with backgrounds in the region. Moulton, a Marine who has been outspoken critic of the Iraq War, served multiple tours in Iraq. Meijer was deployed as part of the Army Reserves and later worked in Afghanistan at a nongovernmental organization providing aid. Both serve on the House Armed Services Committee.
Three officials familiar with the flight said that State Department, Defense Department and White House officials were furious about the incident because it was done without coordination with diplomats or military commanders directing the evacuation.
The U.S. military found out about the visit as the legislators’ aircraft was inbound to Kabul, according to the officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing military operations.
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An Afghan translator talks about being taken captive by the Taliban.
By Safar Ali Paiam
One senior U.S. official said the administration saw the lawmakers’ visit as manifestly unhelpful and several other officials said the visit was viewed as a distraction for troops and commanders at the airport who are waging a race against time to evacuate thousands of Americans, at-risk Afghans and others as quickly as possible.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement Tuesday evening taking note of the desire of some legislators to visit Afghanistan and saying she was writing to “reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that Members not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger. Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the U.S. military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan.”
The Pentagon has repeatedly expressed concerns about security threats in Kabul, including by the Islamic State group. When members of Congress have routinely gone to war zones over the past two decades, their visits are typically long planned and coordinated with officials on the ground in order to ensure their safety.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he is sticking to his Aug. 31 deadline for completing the risky airlift as people flee Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The two congressmen said they went into their visit wanting “to push the president to extend the August 31st deadline. After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time, even by September 11.”
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
11. Breaking hearts and minds: The strategy of surrender
So many sad and tragic stories.
Excerpts:
For the past two decades, “winning hearts and minds” was the fundamental strategy of triumph in the war on terror. Today, it is clear that breaking hearts and minds is the strategy of surrender in that fight.
Mo and Hamid feel like they have been abandoned, thrown to the wolves, their harrowing experiences reflecting those of thousands of interpreters who are desperately trying to get out of Afghanistan before they end up on a Taliban hit list.
Multiply each of those terrified interpreters by the number of people in their extended family. Do the math. That is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are about to witness the U.S.turn its back on them while hiding behind neatly prepared talking points from public relations teams at the White House. I think it goes without saying that this is more than just an issue of international credibility, it is also one of national security.
When all of these abandoned people, along with their friends and families, see the American flag in the future, will they feel a fullness in their hearts…or a sickness in their stomachs? Our leaders will make that decision in the coming hours. As citizens, we must do all that we can to convince them to make the right one.
Breaking hearts and minds: The strategy of surrender
“The US have left us behind for these kinds of humans to kill one by one.”
That was a text I received last week from my friend Mo, an Afghan interpreter currently trapped in Kabul. One does not have to be a rocket scientist, or Secretary of State for that matter, to know that he is referring to the Taliban in his message. Mo is a man with whom I worked closely in 2017 when I was teaching English to the Afghan air force on the military compound attached to Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Mo, who asked that his real name be withheld out of fear of reprisal by the Taliban, was more than just a colleague; he was good friend; a young guy whose English was so good that our American team could be sarcastic and crack inside jokes with him. He just got it. He exuded that “chill” vibe you’d find in any millennial office culture stateside: he wore jeans and hoodies and rocked a head of shaggy dark hair. We couldn’t help ourselves when we fondly nicknamed him “Afghan Hipster.” His job was to act as a liaison to military commanders and aircraft mechanics with whom we were conducting Maintenance English training.
As a woman, it was not always appropriate or comfortable for me to walk into a military commander’s office alone, or teach in aircraft hangars full of men, both parts of the job on a daily basis. However, with Mo by my side, those cultural barriers were cleared which enabled me to interact with my counterparts in a way I simply could not have done on my own.
While not high stakes combat missions, his skills as an interpreter on the flight line were invaluable to the Maintenance English training, as well as the broader, long-term operability and sustainability of the AAF.
By the time we met in 2017, Mo had already worked for several years as an interpreter for US defense contractors. So, it was in 2018 that he finally met the length-of-employment criteria needed to apply for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program. Just as I completed my year-long contract and left Afghanistan, Mo started his SIV application, patiently working through the multi-year process, step by step.
At one point in 2019, Mo contacted me to ask if I would write him a letter of recommendation to support his SIV application packet. He was worried because had not heard from the State Department about his case for a while and thought an extra letter of recommendation might grease the wheels. I was happy, and honored, to write the letter even though I figured the delay was probably some run-of-the-mill bureaucratic hurdles that federal agencies often face. However, I could never have imagined how sinister the underlying issue really was.
Mo had begun his SIV application process under the Trump administration. At the time, the president was allowing his White House advisor, Stephen Miller, to heavily influence policy on the SIV program. Miller, an unelected official with a well-documented history of both anti-immigrant views and white supremacist rhetoric, intentionally stalled and all but halted thousands of SIV applications from being processed.
In fact, the applications were delayed for so long that in 2019, a federal judge found the Trump administration guilty of breaking the law, citing legislation written in 2013 which stated that SIV applications should be adjudicated within a nine-month timeframe.
When combat veteran and former CIA analyst, Matt Zeller, stated earlier this week that Miller is “as complicit” in any Afghan interpreter deaths as the Taliban, I could not have agreed more.
If these delays had not occurred, many of the SIV applicants now trapped in Kabul would already be safely resettled in the U.S., beginning a new life of freedom and opportunity. Instead, they are texting us from hiding in Kabul, frantic, and afraid for their lives.
There was a slight glimmer of hope on Tuesday night, when Mo received an email from U.S. Embassy staff that he was cleared to proceed to the airport in Kabul for an evacuation flight. He, his wife, and three small children made their way in the night, when they felt it would be safest to attempt the perilous approach.
Unfortunately, they arrived only to find that they could not get through the overwhelming masses of people clogging the areas surrounding the gates. They tried to wait it out, to see if the crowds would thin and they could make it to the front. However, the chaos, heat, and desperation were unbearable. At one point, there were bursts of dispersive gunfire that left people screaming, crying, and ducking for cover.
Afterward, many lay bruised and bloodied from getting caught beneath the stampeding crowds as they tried to flee the hail of bullets. Upon passing the body of a dead woman, her three children left milling around her lifeless body, Mo and his family could take no more. While they did not want to miss an opportunity to gain entry to the airport, they ultimately decided it would be safer to return home.
As it turns out, they made the right call. Mo’s good friend, Hamid, called later that day to report that he had actually made it through the crowds at the gate. However, when he finally reached the front, U.S. Marine guards were shouting and swearing at people; yelling at him to leave. Hamid, who also asked that his real name not be used out of fear of Taliban reprisal, said he showed them his confirmation email from the embassy. But the troops, he said, told him that anyone without a U.S. passport was not allowed inside.
It is a painful irony to us that Mo and Hamid risked their lives working on HKIA’s military base; and now they may lose their lives because they cannot gain access to it.
The president and his White House National Security Advisor may want people to believe that the traumatic scenes unfolding outside of that airfield are just part of the “inevitable chaos” of war, a talking point they continue to push in televised briefings. However, anyone with friends or family texting them from that hellscape outside of HKIA can tell you that it is, in fact, the inevitable chaos of ineptitude: the inability of, or worse, the lack of desire on the part of the administration to coordinate effectively between their own State Department and Department of Defense to successfully in-process and save these vulnerable Afghans.
The fact that this administration has had a week to develop an action plan to triage the masses of people outside HKIA but has not, reveals either a case of gross negligence, or worse, a sick calculus concerning the value of human lives beyond the airport’s concrete T-walls, where the situation continues to deteriorate into unmitigated turmoil and death.
For the past two decades, “winning hearts and minds” was the fundamental strategy of triumph in the war on terror. Today, it is clear that breaking hearts and minds is the strategy of surrender in that fight.
Mo and Hamid feel like they have been abandoned, thrown to the wolves, their harrowing experiences reflecting those of thousands of interpreters who are desperately trying to get out of Afghanistan before they end up on a Taliban hit list.
Multiply each of those terrified interpreters by the number of people in their extended family. Do the math. That is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are about to witness the U.S.turn its back on them while hiding behind neatly prepared talking points from public relations teams at the White House. I think it goes without saying that this is more than just an issue of international credibility, it is also one of national security.
When all of these abandoned people, along with their friends and families, see the American flag in the future, will they feel a fullness in their hearts…or a sickness in their stomachs? Our leaders will make that decision in the coming hours. As citizens, we must do all that we can to convince them to make the right one.
Joan Barker is a consultant whose work focuses on Defense Department contracts that support various language and cross-cultural training elements. She also teaches English to partner force military cadets. Joan has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the UAE, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Niger. She worked as a defense contractor in Kabul in 2018, where she taught English to members of the Afghan Air Force (AAF) and Special Mission Wing (SMW).
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times senior managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
12. Extend the Afghan mission now, before it's too late
I am assuming the White House is sticking to the 31 Aug deadline as a kind of OPSEC measure and will make the decision to extend the evacuation until all are evacuated at the last minute in order to minimize the possible attacks from the Taliban. This of course complicates things for evacuees and in the last days before the deadline there will likely be a massive push by at risk Afghans still trying to get out. I hope we remain committed to leaving no one behind despite Taliban threats. If we give in to Taliban threats and rhetoric and "red lines" and appear to leave with our tails between our legs it will pour salt in the open wounds of those who need to be evacuated and in the moral injury wounds of our military personnel. We must be prepared to stand and fight to get all personnel out.
Extend the Afghan mission now, before it's too late
The Hill · by Frederick Kagan, opinion contributor · August 23, 2021
The Biden administration’s rhetoric and approach to the crisis in Afghanistan betrays two fundamental problems: gradualism, and an attempt to “define down” the problem. A crisis of this magnitude demands immediate mobilization of all resources that might be required rather than the piecemeal mobilization and deployment as the situation evolves. And it also requires remaining fixed on the original task and requirements, rather than allowing the objectives to slip to those that seem achievable within our own self-imposed constraints.
President Biden needs to give orders — right now — to extend the deadline, to deploy the military and non-military assets needed for a longer-term operation, and to keep the objective of the operation as the evacuation of all Americans and all eligible Afghans.
Getting military assets mobilized and into a conflict zone is difficult and can be time-consuming. There is a tendency in a fast-moving, time-delimited crisis to focus on the immediate requirements and to put off decisions on assets that might be needed if the crisis protracts. That tendency is visible here.
After an initial surge of forces needed to secure the airport and manage the evacuation for the roughly two-week period from Aug. 14 to Aug. 31, the U.S. military does not appear to have sent forward all the additional resources that have since become clearly necessary. Crowd control, including the crowds inside the airport compound, is a function best performed by military police rather than infantry or Marines. Handling the hygienic requirements of many thousands of people is a significant task that U.S. military logistics units can address — but getting those units and resources to Kabul seems to have taken too long, and even now it is not clear that they are present in adequate strength. Helping Americans get through a city riddled with Taliban checkpoints and the general mayhem that a government collapse and insurgent takeover almost always cause clearly requires U.S. military teams ready and able to go out into the city and find and bring to the airport Americans and Afghans at risk. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other officials are only starting to suggest that they are thinking about options along those lines, the one airlift of a few hundred people from within 650 feet of the airport notwithstanding.
If the president holds to this deadline, it is already too late for many of these decisions if actions to execute them are not already underway. By the time forces can be mobilized and sent to Kabul, they will have only days to function before they have to begin packing up again. That fact is surely driving further hesitance about ordering them to go. People in crisis tend to underestimate the likelihood that they really will want even a couple of days of help from such forces, let alone the possibility that the mission will be extended. That is why the president and the defense secretary should have ordered everything that might be needed to mobilize and deploy either to forward bases or to Kabul itself at once, as soon as they got to the reported “Oh, shit” moment last weekend. And it is why they must do it now.
It also is why the president must give the order to extend the mission right now. Further delays in issuing the order to extend the mission will continue to dampen enthusiasm for getting more resources into theater. Gradualism in military affairs is usually problematic; President Johnson’s famously gradualist approach was one of the causes of the debacle in Vietnam. It has even less place in a crisis the president has decided will be over two weeks from when it started.
Taliban public rejection of an extension should not prevent the president from making this call. The Taliban have themselves violated their commitments to allow anyone who wants to leave to go, as well as their announced amnesty. Those violations should give the president and his team ample leverage with the Taliban to gain an extension — if the threat of U.S. retaliation for Taliban attacks after Aug. 31 is not enough.
Minimalism is another commonly fatal flaw in military operations. One might consider how White House determination to minimize the footprint of military forces used in the failed hostage-rescue attempt in Tehran in 1980 led Operation Eagle Claw to become the calamitous “Desert One.” President Biden could well note that he has already committed thousands more troops to this mission than President Carter did to Eagle Claw. But, then, this mission is vastly larger and more complex than that one, and the apparent determination to keep the in-country U.S. footprint minimal rhymes too closely for comfort.
Confronted with a problem that self-imposed constraints have made unsolvable, many resort to defining down the problem itself. Continued administration comments that, on the one hand, they do not know how many Americans are still in Afghanistan and, on the other, that they will evacuate all Americans who want to leave are worrisome. By what criteria will the administration determine which Americans who have not contacted them wanted to stay? There should be only one such criterion — positive statements, demonstratively uncoerced by the Taliban, of Americans in Afghanistan that they do not want to leave. All Americans from whom the State Department has not received such a clear, positive statement should be presumptively taken to want to leave. The same is true for Afghans eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) or other valid grounds for evacuation by the U.S.
This standard is very difficult to meet, as the U.S. does not know exactly who is in country in which category. But America’s leaders, from the president on down, must make clear that they will not take silence for an affirmative decision to stay but will continue the evacuation mission until they are certain they have made all possible attempts to contact those who should be evacuated, and no further attempts are possible. And Congress should require an accounting of those attempts.
This is not the time to levy criticism, evaluate the war as a whole, or score political points on either side. The emergency in Kabul and Afghanistan generally is dire. It is certainly not getting better fast enough to meet the president’s timeline, and it may be getting worse with the news that Islamic State militants are actively seeking to attack U.S. forces and the crowds.
The president must stop hesitating. He must order the mission extended — and order all additional resources that such an extended mission might require into the region and into Afghanistan right now. There is no other sound choice to make.
Frederick Kagan is the director of the Critical Threats Project and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He is the author of “Choosing Victory” and an architect of the surge military strategy in Iraq.
The Hill · by Frederick Kagan, opinion contributor · August 23, 2021
13. Taliban transformed by haul of advanced U.S.-made weapons; lawmakers demand answers
I was asked about this by a Korean journalist. WIll the Taliban sell US weapons to north Korea? It would not be practical for north Korea to buy US weapons because they would have to procure ammunition and spare parts. They do not produce the ammunition or spare parts for US weapons so it would be a logistical challenge for them if they planned to use them for warfighting on the peninsula. It is possible they could attempt to purchase them in order to resell them to other militaries and groups in conflict areas but I wonder if the profit margin would be worth it to the regime.
“We are left wondering if the Biden Administration has a plan to prevent the Taliban from using our weapons against the U.S. or its allies or selling them to foreign adversaries like China, Russia, Iran or North Korea,” wrote Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
“I don’t have any policy solutions today about how we would or could address that going forward,” Mr. Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon.
Taliban transformed by haul of advanced U.S.-made weapons; lawmakers demand answers
The Taliban were transformed from an insurgent rabble armed with castoff Soviet-era weapons into one of the most well-equipped forces in the region in the space of a few days during their lightning-fast advance across Afghanistan.
Following the complete collapse of the U.S.-equipped Afghan army, the Taliban were able to scoop up a trove of advanced military hardware: thousands of rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, artillery pieces and night-vision goggles.
The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANSDF) also left behind thousands of military vehicles from U.S. taxpayers, everything from Humvees to heavily armored Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) trucks.
And then there are the tactical aircraft now believed to be in Taliban custody: hundreds of helicopters, including top-of-the-line Blackhawks; dozens of heavy transport, reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft; and A-29 Super Tucano light attack fighters.
Biden administration officials concede they don’t know how much U.S.-supplied military hardware was lost. Last week, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said he was confident that a “fair amount” is now in the hands of the Taliban.
“I don’t have an exact inventory of what equipment the Afghans had at their disposal that might be at risk,” chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday. “We don’t want to see any weapons or systems fall into the hands of people who would use them in such a way to harm our interests or those of our partners and allies.”
President Biden and his generals assured the public that after two decades under U.S. tutelage, the Afghan army was a competent force, capable of mounting a credible campaign against the Taliban insurgency.
But that apparently wasn’t the case. U.S. officials, both military and civilian, blamed a lack of leadership for the failure.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill now want answers from the Department of Defense. On Monday, two Republican members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asking what he intends to do about the billions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons now under Taliban control.
“We are left wondering if the Biden Administration has a plan to prevent the Taliban from using our weapons against the U.S. or its allies or selling them to foreign adversaries like China, Russia, Iran or North Korea,” wrote Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
“I don’t have any policy solutions today about how we would or could address that going forward,” Mr. Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon.
The U.S. spent more than $80 billion over the past two decades to equip and train an Afghan army that in some cases surrendered to the Taliban and turned over its weapons without firing a shot.
American taxpayers also paid the salaries of the Afghan troops, which led to allegations that some commanders kept nonexistent “ghost soldiers” on the roster so they could collect their pay.
In addition to firepower and vehicles, the Taliban may have seized several aerial drones, radio monitoring technology and ground-based surveillance systems that had been handed over to the Afghan military.
Pentagon officials said there are several possible options on the table, such as launching airstrikes to destroy helicopters and other large pieces of military equipment.
Rep. Mike Garcia, California Republican, is a former Navy pilot who flew multiple combat missions in the Iraq War. He said that an enlisted soldier is severely disciplined for misplacing a single rifle, but nothing seems to happen if the government loses weapons worth billions to a terrorist organization.
“None of the guys who are accountable for this will be fired,” Mr. Garcia told The Washington Times. “There is an economic and national security impact in all of this. It’s extremely dangerous to watch.”
According to media reports, some Afghan aircraft did make it out of the country, with pilots reportedly flying dozens of them to neighboring Uzbekistan before they could be grabbed by the Taliban.
Rep. Brian Mast, Florida Republican, said the Biden administration is responsible for creating “the most well-armed and dangerous Taliban in the organization’s history” due to a lack of preparedness.
Like other lawmakers, he is calling for the Department of Defense to provide Congress with an accurate inventory of all military equipment that was abandoned during the chaos as the Afghan government fell.
“What proprietary technology do they now have access to? What plans are being made to neutralize this equipment,” Mr. Mast said. “It’s clear that without aggressive oversight from Congress, the Biden administration is not capable of cleaning up the mess they created.”
The disposition of American weapons, vehicles and equipment was a major element of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some of them were destroyed or brought back to the U.S., officials said.
“And yes, some of them were turned over to the Afghans,” Mr. Kirby said. “We’re working thoroughly right now to try and get a better sense of what it looks like.”
14. The Story Of How An Afghan Interpreter And His Family Escaped Afghanistan
Thai is what our veterans are doing for their brothers in arms, even Medal of Honor recipients.
The Story Of How An Afghan Interpreter And His Family Escaped Afghanistan
In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, families board a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday. Sgt. Samuel Ruiz/U.S. Marine Corps via AP
Reggie, an Afghan interpreter who worked with the U.S. military, watched in fear from his roof as the Taliban took over Kabul last week. He knew that he and his family were in danger of being killed by the Taliban in retaliation for his work helping the U.S.
Reggie is the nickname given to him by the Americans. For security reasons, NPR is not using his full name.
When Reggie spoke with NPR on Aug. 15, he said he couldn't sleep or relax "for a single minute" with the insurgents now in power. His family was scared too, but Reggie held on to hope that they would reach the U.S. safely.
"Because of my service, my family is suffering right now," he told Morning Edition last week. "My family, my kids is telling me that, 'Bad guy is going to come and is going to kill you, then us.' And I keep telling them, 'No, there are a lot of good friends that I have in America. I have made a lot of good friends and they're going to take us, baby, you don't have to worry about it.' "
It turned out Reggie was right.
Veterans worked to get them out
They had the help of veterans in the U.S. who haven't forgotten those who served with them in Afghanistan and are doing what they can to help.
One of them is retired Capt. Flo Groberg, a Medal of Honor recipient who lives in Washington state. He heard Reggie's story and recognized him. While serving in Afghanistan in 2012, Groberg was approached by a man wearing a suicide vest. Groberg protected other members of his unit by shoving the bomber aside, but the vest detonated and Groberg lost some of his hearing and much of the use of one leg.
The person who helped him control the bleeding was Reggie, the interpreter, even though Reggie too was injured.
Groberg has been pulling every string he can to get Afghans on planes. He called Reggie and told him to take his papers to the airport.
The U.S. has control of the Kabul airport, where it's evacuating thousands every day. But the Taliban control the rest of the city.
The situation outside the airport is dangerous and chaotic. Thousands of Afghans also hoping to flee the country have been thronging its gates in the past week. Taliban fighters have fired into the air and beaten back crowds.
Reggie tried hard to push through the crowds but was worried about the safety of his kids. He and his wife have five children, ranging in age from 3 to 13.
They got special instructions on where to go
Afghans gather on a roadside near the military part of the airport in Kabul on Friday, hoping to flee from the country after the Taliban's military takeover of Afghanistan. Reggie and his family were able to get in through a different entrance. Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images
Reggie went home and called Groberg back to tell him what happened. Groberg made another call, to a friend, and gave Reggie fresh instructions: Take your wife and kids. Hide your documents, bring no luggage and pass the Taliban checkpoints. And this time, go to a different entrance to the airport, not the one that's mobbed.
An Army sergeant will be waiting for you.
The drive there was tense. Reggie told his family to tell anyone who asked that they were bringing food to visit a sick cousin across town. His kids "were feeling they were going to die at any moment," he says. Reggie himself wasn't sure the plan would work.
But it did. The family made it through the Taliban checkpoints and to the airport, where the Army sergeant was waiting.
Once inside the airport's gates, his kids finally smiled. "I told them, 'We are safe.' And I took a very deep breath."
Sometime after midnight on Friday, a military transport took off from Kabul. Reggie, his wife and five kids were sitting with other refugees on the floor of the plane. The few windows were covered.
There was no final glimpse of their country.
They're now on a military base in Italy, waiting on visas to the U.S.
They first arrived at a base in Qatar, then two days later, boarded another transport and arrived at a military base in Italy. Since arriving in Italy he's finally been able to shower. His kids got donated toys. He's been helping interpret for other refugees.
Reggie expects to stay on the base in Italy while the visa process is completed for him and his family. His work as an interpreter with the U.S. Army gave him the option to apply for a special immigrant visa. It's a lengthy 14-step process that takes more than three years to complete. He's been trying to get a visa for over a decade but was stuck in a massive backlog.
He's hoping that once everything goes through, they can go to Texas, where he has a brother in Fort Worth.
He says he's both relaxed and excited, but for now, he waits. He's waiting for the U.S. government to get a system on the base up and running to process Afghan evacuees.
Reggie says he already has old buddies calling him asking when they can see him in America. He's looking forward to seeing his friends from the U.S. military and Afghan friends who made it to the U.S. years ago.
Reggie is also getting calls from his family still in Afghanistan. He recently spoke to his sister who is still in Kabul. She was crying.
Reggie says that somehow, he needs to get her out next.
Bo Hamby, Arezou Rezvani and Chad Campbell produced and edited the audio version of this story.
15. What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?
Excerpts:
The fall of Kabul, predictably, has been compared with the fall of Saigon. Most of the analogies point to helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy. However, another analogy worth referencing is related to the North Vietnamese political commissars’ scrambling to reach the ARVN and South Vietnamese police’s archives to locate the list of intelligence officials and collaborators. In an era of Big Data and databases stored in the cloud, there is a sudden realization that deleting data from the servers and smashing hard drives is not a bulletproof solution. Moreover, there are severe concerns that hundreds of military biometric devices, abandoned in U.S. bases, left a digital breadcrumb trail that the Taliban will use to locate and target former security officials and government supporters. Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, in short HIIDE, devices are meant to digitally identify friends from foes via a biometric reading, against databases with fingerprints, iris scans and distinctive facial features.
Similarly, social media users in Kabul left a digital trail not only on their mobile phones but also on the internet. It’s now digital proof that can be used against them when the Taliban feels confident of their grip on power and local media control. Discounting the Taliban’s capabilities in accessing actionable digital intelligence could be a mistake. Besides the probable support that the Taliban could receive from foreign intelligence services, it is not wise to disparage the ingenuity of militant groups in harnessing low-tech schemes to counter high-tech weaponry. An example is provided by the case of pro-Iranian militants in Iraq using $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to monitor the unblinking eyes of U.S. drones.
The threat of insurgents intercepting drone video feeds has been patched with encrypted communication; however, examples of low-tech tactical efficiencies abound. Since a decade ago, the Taliban have been using off-the-shelf commercial drones to shoot propaganda films and provide aerial scouting and to guide kamikaze flying bombs. This is a playbook borrowed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The recent Taliban capture of Boeing ScanEagle drones, developed for surveillance, could add a new capability to the fighters’ growing arsenal. Also, their tactical use could evolve into alternative and deadly options.
From a propaganda perspective, the videos of Taliban fighters parading in Afghan cities with their U.S. war trophies increase the criticism of the Biden administration’s withdrawal decision. Although it remains unclear how the Taliban will govern Afghanistan, the propaganda value of their white flags waving in the wind from the top of U.S.-made Humvees inspires other jihadist and radical Islamist groups to imitate the Taliban’s actions. The perception of augmented combat capabilities provided by the war looting could also push Central Asian countries to strengthen their bilateral security ties with Moscow and Beijing, no matter what, in the face of a Taliban with modern equipment.
Sun Tzu, the revered author of the “Art of War,” quoted shoulder to shoulder with von Clausewitz in contemporary Western military PowerPoint presentations, states that the golden rule is to know your enemy. Probably 20 years were not enough.
What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?
With its quick seizure of power, the Taliban also acquired U.S. military equipment left behind by the withdrawal or abandoned by Afghan forces.
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Capturing the enemy’s weapons has been a standard guerrilla tactic for centuries. The American Army could not have succeeded against King George III without seizing the king’s food and armaments. It is one thing to capture weapons and other materiel; it is another to be given the enemy’s gear on a silver platter.
In the images of the Taliban fighters flooding the streets of Kabul, one detail attracts attention: the lack of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. Few Taliban appearing now carry the signature weapon of insurgent fighters, the AK-47, and its countless variants from the handmade Pakistani versions to the updated Russian AK-19. Most of the Taliban in Kabul’s street seems to prefer American M4 carbines and M16 rifles with their many gadgets attached, from expensive optics to laser sights and flashlights, an uncommon picture in contrast to just a few weeks earlier.
The answer to the question concerning the source of these small arms is straightforward: war looting. Another and more important question needs an answer: The fate of the extensive military materiel that the U.S. left behind during its withdrawal or that which was in the hands of the Afghan forces that melted so quickly away as the Taliban advanced.
As a landlocked country, Afghanistan makes moving military materiel back to the U.S. neither an easy nor an economical endeavor. Much was removed anyway, and much handed over to Afghan government forces. What couldn’t be taken back, was left. Blowing up in situ large quantities of war materiel is cheaper than shipping it out of Afghanistan. Still, that option creates toxic legacies that would affect the local population for a long time, as happened in Iraq.
Nevertheless, lack of time and unreasonable expectations on the survivability of the Afghan security forces caught the Pentagon by surprise. According to Joshua Reno, author of “Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness,” recirculating weapons in the places a military force leaves when the battle is over will augment the risks that small arms or other weapons are going to fuel and intensify civil war or instability.
According to a top Pentagon logistics specialist, there is no clear record of the quantity and quality of military equipment left behind. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated that the Taliban probably would not give such materiel back to the U.S. at the airport, adding a note of farce to an already disastrous situation. One of the immediate conclusions drawn from the less-than-optimal U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is how the U.S. can minimize the chances of future disasters stemming out of the Taliban’s use and trade of abandoned U.S. and Afghan military materiel.
U.S. military and intelligence had already walked that path in the 1990s, after the anti-Soviet mujahedeen pushed out the Soviet Union. The task at that time was to recover Stingers, highly sophisticated portable surface to air missiles. In order to have a chance against the Soviet Union’s heavily armed attack helicopter Mil Mi-24, essentially a flying tank, the U.S. had equipped the mujahedeen with Stingers in the 1980s. As soon as the war ended with the Soviet defeat, the possibility of those Stingers being employed for terrorist attacks or falling into hostile government hands ignited a hunt to get the portable missiles back. The U.S. intelligence community scrambled to buy them back, allegedly at $100,000 per unit, or obtain the portable missiles by any means. Steve Coll in his acclaimed book “Ghost Wars,” mentioned that when the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, an estimated 600 of the 2,300 Stingers provided by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war remained unaccounted for. Tehran was competing in the same race to acquire as many of the wayward Stingers as possible.
Providentially, the threat of a terrorist using a Stinger to shoot down an American passenger plane did not materialize, nor did the Taliban develop a successful insurgent anti-aircraft campaign with the leftovers.
And yes, history repeats itself.
Today’s quantity and quality of weapons that the Taliban are hoarding since their lightning advance will arguably have unintended negative consequences far from Afghan borders. Sales to hostile governments and on the black market may provide additional revenue to the Taliban and increase uncertainty and instability not only in Central Asia but beyond. Militant organizations such as the Haqqani network, already in Kabul, possess the capability to smuggle weapons from Afghanistan to the Middle East, the African continent, and even to Southeast Asia.
Possible scenarios range from small arms used to foster instability in the region or night vision goggles and military-grade communication equipment reaching other militant groups, including the Islamic State. More significant items now in the hands of the Taliban, such as helicopters, can neither be maintained nor flown due to a lack of Taliban pilots and trained maintenance crews. The materiel, however, could be handed over to countries interested in sensitive U.S. technology, and that list is not short. The war looting includes armored Humvees, aircraft, and attack helicopters, as well as military scout drones. Most of the Afghan Air Force’s aircraft were used by Afghan pilots to escape into neighboring Central Asian countries as Kabul fell, but the number still parked on Afghan airfields is unknown.
The fall of Kabul, predictably, has been compared with the fall of Saigon. Most of the analogies point to helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy. However, another analogy worth referencing is related to the North Vietnamese political commissars’ scrambling to reach the ARVN and South Vietnamese police’s archives to locate the list of intelligence officials and collaborators. In an era of Big Data and databases stored in the cloud, there is a sudden realization that deleting data from the servers and smashing hard drives is not a bulletproof solution. Moreover, there are severe concerns that hundreds of military biometric devices, abandoned in U.S. bases, left a digital breadcrumb trail that the Taliban will use to locate and target former security officials and government supporters. Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, in short HIIDE, devices are meant to digitally identify friends from foes via a biometric reading, against databases with fingerprints, iris scans and distinctive facial features.
Similarly, social media users in Kabul left a digital trail not only on their mobile phones but also on the internet. It’s now digital proof that can be used against them when the Taliban feels confident of their grip on power and local media control. Discounting the Taliban’s capabilities in accessing actionable digital intelligence could be a mistake. Besides the probable support that the Taliban could receive from foreign intelligence services, it is not wise to disparage the ingenuity of militant groups in harnessing low-tech schemes to counter high-tech weaponry. An example is provided by the case of pro-Iranian militants in Iraq using $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to monitor the unblinking eyes of U.S. drones.
The threat of insurgents intercepting drone video feeds has been patched with encrypted communication; however, examples of low-tech tactical efficiencies abound. Since a decade ago, the Taliban have been using off-the-shelf commercial drones to shoot propaganda films and provide aerial scouting and to guide kamikaze flying bombs. This is a playbook borrowed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The recent Taliban capture of Boeing ScanEagle drones, developed for surveillance, could add a new capability to the fighters’ growing arsenal. Also, their tactical use could evolve into alternative and deadly options.
From a propaganda perspective, the videos of Taliban fighters parading in Afghan cities with their U.S. war trophies increase the criticism of the Biden administration’s withdrawal decision. Although it remains unclear how the Taliban will govern Afghanistan, the propaganda value of their white flags waving in the wind from the top of U.S.-made Humvees inspires other jihadist and radical Islamist groups to imitate the Taliban’s actions. The perception of augmented combat capabilities provided by the war looting could also push Central Asian countries to strengthen their bilateral security ties with Moscow and Beijing, no matter what, in the face of a Taliban with modern equipment.
Sun Tzu, the revered author of the “Art of War,” quoted shoulder to shoulder with von Clausewitz in contemporary Western military PowerPoint presentations, states that the golden rule is to know your enemy. Probably 20 years were not enough.
16. Biden must tell Beijing: 'War means instant independence for Taiwan'
Excerpts:
Finally, the administration should warn Beijing that any use of force against Taiwan would undermine the very premise of the U.S.-China relationship itself.
The Taiwan Relations Act clearly stated in 1979, “[T]he United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”
Beijing long has gotten away with threats of force against Taiwan through its moves short of kinetic action in the “gray zone.” Flying military aircraft over Taiwan as a direct provocation would make it a very dark gray zone and would virtually constitute an act of war. Biden needs to tell Xi that brinkmanship over Taiwan is no longer acceptable in a peaceful relationship with the United States.
Perversely, Biden’s disastrous performance on Afghanistan and the terrible price the Afghan people are paying have created both the imperative and the motivation for Washington to act responsibly on Taiwan.
Biden must tell Beijing: 'War means instant independence for Taiwan'
The Hill · by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor · August 24, 2021
The people of Afghanistan are bearing the escalating brunt of inhuman Taliban rule after President Biden’s abandonment of the country. However exasperated many Americans felt about the prolonged U.S. stay in Afghanistan, they do not like what Biden has done and said about it, and his approval ratings have justifiably fallen.
For its part, China mocks Biden personally and the United States generally as weak and untrustworthy. Driving its disdain home, it has issued a brazen new challenge, threatening military action against Taiwan if Washington merely allows President Tsai Ing-wen to participate in a remote democracy conference planned for December.
Biden announced in February that he will convene a Summit for Democracy to “bring together heads of state, civil society, philanthropy and the private sector, serving as an opportunity for world leaders to listen to one another and to their citizens.”
Taiwan’s unofficial ambassador in Washington, Hsiao Bi-khim, told administration officials that Taiwan would like to participate. She said she received “very positive feedback.”
At a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting in March, Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken if he was committed to inviting Taiwan, and he responded, “I’m absolutely committed to working on it. I share your view that Taiwan is a strong democracy, a very strong technological power and a country that can contribute to the world and not just its own people.”
That glowing commitment has been put in doubt now by a) the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, and b) China’s dire warnings against Taiwanese involvement.
Hu Xijin, editor of Beijing’s propaganda outlet Global Times, warned last week that Tsai’s participation would “gravely violate” China’s red lines on Taiwan and would present “a historic opportunity for Chinese fighter jets to fly over the island.” That would be a blatant violation of Taiwan’s sovereign airspace, and Taiwan’s military would be justified in firing warning shots.
Hu, known for fiery rhetoric unrestrained by Beijing, anticipated that possibility: “If the Taiwan military dares to open fire on the PLA fighters, the large number of missiles aimed at Taiwan’s military targets from the mainland and our bomber fleets will make a decisive answer and write history.”
The cross-Strait war would then be on, and the United States would have to discover, in extremis, whether it has the capacity mandated by the Taiwan Relations Act “to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security … of the people on Taiwan.” More critically, Washington would need to decide under desperate circumstances whether it has the will to do so.
The crisis scenario can be avoided if Biden makes clear now that the U.S. will defend Taiwan — for all the longstanding moral and geostrategic reasons, but now also to restore America’s international credibility after the horror and shame of Afghanistan. That U.S. red line more than matches Communist China’s sensibilities over whether Tsai appears on a virtual conference with scores of other democracy advocates, many of whom would not be national leaders or even government officials.
Beijing could save face by choosing to treat Tsai as representing just another nongovernmental organization, called Taiwan. Washington, of course, would simply ignore that pseudo-designation and treat Taiwan as Taiwan, not Chinese Taipei or any other demeaning alias.
While the administration said last week that invitations to the summit had not been extended yet, at least some embassies already had received theirs. Biden and/or Blinken must announce soon that Taiwan has been invited and will participate on an equal basis with all other democratic invitees.
As for China’s “unofficial” threats to violate Taiwan’s airspace and potentially provoke a military conflict, Washington should definitively declare that America will help defend Taiwan. In an ABC-TV interview last week, Biden seemed prepared to take such a stand. George Stephanopoulos challenged him with this: “You already see China telling Taiwan, ‘See? You can’t count on the Americans.’”
Biden responded emphatically, “We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan.”
Biden’s declaration of a solid security commitment to Taiwan was quickly diluted by administration explanations that “U.S. policy has not changed.” That recalled the immediate staff walk-back of President George W. Bush’s pledge to do “whatever it takes” to defend Taiwan, or the hasty reassurance of “no policy change” when then-President-elect Trump graciously accepted Tsai’s congratulatory call in 2016.
But there is also Trump’s enigmatic comment in 2020 that “China knows what I’m gonna do” if it attacks Taiwan, obliquely suggesting that Beijing was warned of military conflict with America. Biden’s far more specific security statement expands on Trump’s remark and seems to suggest that both administrations have conveyed firm U.S. intentions to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
If so, those secret warnings manifestly have not had the intended deterrent effect; China persists in both its escalating rhetoric and its provocative actions. A greater public demonstration of U.S. will is needed. Biden should repeat his statement of commitment to Taiwan — and this time, Blinken and the rest of the national security team should endorse and affirm it as a serious new policy declaration, rather than dismissing it as a typical Biden gaffe.
To further demonstrate U.S. resolve, Biden should tell Beijing that any more threats of force against Taiwan’s participation in the democracy summit will trigger immediate diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and an official statement of Washington’s new “One China, One Taiwan” policy. Beijing must understand that war would mean instant Taiwan independence.
Finally, the administration should warn Beijing that any use of force against Taiwan would undermine the very premise of the U.S.-China relationship itself.
The Taiwan Relations Act clearly stated in 1979, “[T]he United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”
Beijing long has gotten away with threats of force against Taiwan through its moves short of kinetic action in the “gray zone.” Flying military aircraft over Taiwan as a direct provocation would make it a very dark gray zone and would virtually constitute an act of war. Biden needs to tell Xi that brinkmanship over Taiwan is no longer acceptable in a peaceful relationship with the United States.
Perversely, Biden’s disastrous performance on Afghanistan and the terrible price the Afghan people are paying have created both the imperative and the motivation for Washington to act responsibly on Taiwan.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.
The Hill · by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor · August 24, 2021
17. Intel just signed a major chip-making deal with the Pentagon, and it could help the US solve its semiconductor problem
Intel just signed a major chip-making deal with the Pentagon, and it could help the US solve its semiconductor problem | ZDNet
The company will be part of an effort to build a US-based semiconductor production ecosystem.
ZDNet · by Daphne Leprince-Ringuet
The global chip crisis is shining a light on smartphones' big sustainability problem
This comes in the context of a global shortage of semiconductors, which sees a large number of industries, ranging from consumer electronics to automotive, struggling to secure key components needed to build their products.
The agreement is part of the first phase of a program launched by the National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL), called RAMP-C (Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes – Commercial), with the objective of creating a US-based ecosystem of commercial fabrication plants for semiconductors, also called foundries.
RAMP-C will ensure that the Pentagon has access to critical semiconductor technology and is also designed to strengthen overall supply chain security, keeping the US on top of the latest advances in chip design, manufacturing and packaging.
"Intel is the sole American company both designing and manufacturing logic semiconductors at the leading edge of technology," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel's CEO. "When we launched Intel Foundry Services earlier this year, we were excited to have the opportunity to make our capabilities available to a wider range of partners, including in the US government, and it is great to see that potential being fulfilled through programs like RAMP-C."
The Santa Clara firm will partner with industry leaders like IBM, Cadence and Synopsys to support the Pentagon's needs for custom integrated circuits and commercial products, with the end goal of establishing a robust semiconductor ecosystem in the US.
Currently, the supply chain for computer chips is crippled by vulnerabilities, which pose a security risk for organizations that are central to national security like the DoD and is the reason behind the launch RAMP-C.
Historically, companies have preferred to design their own semiconductors and outsource the manufacturing process to third-party foundries. Given the complexity of fabricating semiconductors, the market quickly consolidated, leaving just a handful of companies running the foundries in which most of the world's computer chip orders are placed.
At the same time, manufacturing capacity in the US has significantly declined. According to a recent report carried out by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the US held 37% of the global chip manufacturing capacity in 1990 – a number that has gone down to 12% today, mostly due to the stagnation of government subsidies to help the industry prosper.
This means that key organizations like the DoD in the US have limited access to domestic supplies of semiconductors, even for critical security systems – and there remains a question mark over the country's capacity to meet its own needs for computer chips in the long term.
The issue has come to the fore in recent months, as the Covid-19 pandemic increased the demand for products like smartphones, laptops and tablets, which has in turn placed a strain on the foundries supplying computer chips. Fabrication plants have reached the limits of their capabilities, creating a global shortage of semiconductors that is expected to last well into 2022 and is now trickling down to any industry that relies on the components.
"One of the most profound lessons of the past year is the strategic importance of semiconductors, and the value to the US of having a strong domestic semiconductor industry," said Gelsinger.
Tech giants including Amazon, Cisco, Google, Apple, Microsoft and HPE reacted by creating the Semiconductors in America Coalition (SIAC), which urged the US government to invest $50 billion to fund the expansion of the country's manufacturing capabilities.
Developing a domestic ecosystem for computer chip fabrication, however, requires more than money. The US government, in addition to RAMP-C, has therefore launched two more complementary programs, RAMP and SHIP, which are designed to ramp up national capabilities at different stages of the design and manufacturing of semiconductors.
While RAMP-C addresses the need for foundry capabilities, RAMP is concerned with the process of physical design, and SHIP looks at the packaging and testing of integrated circuits.
Intel, for its part, has separately announced an investment of $20 billion to expand US-based capacity thanks to two new foundries in Arizona.
Randhir Thakur, Intel Foundry Services president, said: "Along with our customers and ecosystem partners, including IBM, Cadence, Synopsys and others, we will help bolster the domestic semiconductor supply chain and ensure the United States maintains leadership in both R&D and advanced manufacturing."
ZDNet · by Daphne Leprince-Ringuet
18. US to build military base in middle of Pacific Ocean
US to build military base in middle of Pacific Ocean
msn.com · by Ashley Westerman 18 hrs ago
© Jonathan Ernst/AP/Pool Photo
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's plane makes its landing approach on Pohnpei International Airport in Kolonia, Federated States of Micronesia, Monday, Aug. 5, 2019.
The United States is slated to get a new military base — this time in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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Last month, during high-level talks in Honolulu, the US Indo-Pacific Command and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) agreed to build a new base in the island nation, an archipelago of more than 600 islands strewn across the Western Pacific, some 3,700 miles from Hawaii.
The move is seen as another component of the Biden administration’s continued effort to increase its footprint in Oceania.
However, details about the base, so far, are scarce, causing anxiety for some FSM citizens who are worried about disruptions to their way of life, and wary about the idea of American military expansion in the region.
Sam Illesugam, 41, has lots of questions about the new military base: How big? What kind of base?
“All of those questions are still very much up in the air for us,” Illesugam told The World.
Illesugam, who now lives and works in the US territory of Guam, still has siblings and other family back in Yap, one of the Federated States of Micronesia’s four states.
“Any time there is a sudden change to the land, you affect our identity as Native islanders..."
Sam Illesugam, from Yap, Micronesia, currently living in Guam
“Any time there is a sudden change to the land, you affect our identity as Native islanders,” he said. “This will alter the social landscape of our islands. Our islands are very, very small. Any type of changes to our lifestyle will greatly affect us.”
‘Part of the homeland’
The US military’s record in the Pacific is as checkered as it is long.
From colonization of the Philippines to nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, Washington has given locals plenty of reasons for pause.
The Federated States of Micronesia did not respond to The World’s questions about how, or if, they plan to incorporate the public. But President David W. Panuelo clearly stated that the agreement he made to build the new military base was in the interest of his people.
In particular, their security interests, which are guaranteed by a very special relationship with Washington.
Established in the 1980s, these agreements are renegotiated every few years, and through them, the three nations have received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
Satu Limaye, vice president of the East-West Center, said there's also a crucial military component to the agreements, which allows citizens to join the US military.
“The most recent version of the Compact of Free Association requires the United States to defend the FSM and gives it the right to use facilities, bases, sites."
Satu Limaye, vice president, East-Wester Center
“The most recent version of the Compact of Free Association requires the United States to defend the FSM and gives it the right to use facilities, bases, sites,” he said.
Limaye said that being legally obligated to the US military as a sole defender puts these states in a very unique position.
“FSM, like other countries in the region, is straddling or managing its relations both with China and the United States, as China is increasingly active there,” he said.
Preparing for China’s military capabilities
Beijing has had diplomatic relations with the Federated States of Micronesia for more than 30 years. So far, there’s been no real reaction about their forthcoming base. The two nations engage in millions of dollars in trade annually, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
President Panuelo told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that in managing his relationships with the US and China, FSM interests come first.
“And so, the posturing of the United States and our country is not looking for confrontation, but rather looking at deterrence and making sure peace exists in our vast Pacific Ocean,” he said.
Still, Washington is increasingly concerned about armed conflict with China, according to Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst with the RAND Corporation.
“They [China] have a growing range to deploy these capabilities against US interests in the Pacific. ... That’s ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, bombers, surface fleets, as well as submarine assets.”
Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst, RAND Corporation
“They have a growing range to deploy these capabilities against US interests in the Pacific,” Grossman said. “That’s ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, bombers, surface fleets, as well as submarine assets.”
Over the last decade or so, China has made significant inroads into the Pacific by scaling up, not just economic involvement, but also its aid, and diplomatic and commercial activity in the region.
By establishing new military sites in the Pacific, the US gains access to new locations from which to potentially engage in future armed conflict with Beijing. But the downside is that these places are much further away from the US, Grossman said.
The Federated States of Micronesia, for example, is nearly 3,700 miles from Hawaii. And this, Grossman said, will likely make it more difficult for the US to project its influence on the people in the region.
Freelance writer Alex J. Rhowuniong is an FSM-born US military veteran living in Guam. The Chuuk State, Micronesia native says he would like to see a military base built in FSM.
He can understand the hesitation, but for a military mind, “a no-active-military-presence zone is not a safe zone at all,” he wrote in an email to The World.
Rhowuniong noted that a military base in FSM would be both good for the local economy, as well as for the thousands of veterans scattered throughout the nation.
“If the US military does not establish a presence on FSM now, the enemy just might during military conflict,” he said.
msn.com · by Ashley Westerman 18 hrs ago
19. I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences
Running for the US Senate.
Brutal critique:
One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.
Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.
I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences
What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.
Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.
I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.
The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.
You probably didn’t know that. That’s the point.
And it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.
I led a team of Marines training Iraqi security forces to defend their country. When I arrived I received a “stoplight” chart on their supposed capabilities in dozens of missions and responsibilities. Green meant they were good. Yellow was needed improvement; red said they couldn’t do it at all.
I was delighted to see how far along they were on paper — until I actually began working with them. I attempted to adjust the charts to reflect reality and was quickly shut down. The ratings could not go down. That was the deal. It was the kind of lie that kept the war going.
So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.
You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.
Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened last week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?
We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.
I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.
The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.
Remember when they told us the economy was back? Another lie.
Our state of Missouri was home to the worst economic recovery from the Great Recession in this part of the country. I see the boarded-up stores and the vacant lots — one of which used to be my family’s home. When our country’s elites were preaching about how they had solved the financial crisis and the housing market was booming, I watched the house I joined the Marine Corps out of sit on the market for two years. My dad finally got $43,000 for it. He owed $78,000.
The only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:
What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.
Cole County native Lucas Kunce is a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate. He is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
20. The Taliban Victory as a Victory of Faith
A view from Israel.
Excerpt:
When President Joe Biden expressed his confidence in the stability of the regime in Afghanistan by pointing out that “the Afghan army has 300,000 well-equipped soldiers … and they also have an air force. In contrast, the Taliban has only 75,000 soldiers,” he made clear that he has no understanding of this reality. The victory of the Taliban over the US in Afghanistan is a lesson for the world on the tremendous capacity of spiritual strength and faith to win protracted conflicts against far superior enemies.
This article reminds me of these quotes:
“Guerrilla war must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 percent active in a striking force and 98 percent passively sympathetic.” T.E. Lawrence, The Science of Guerrilla Warfare
“You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tires of it” - Ho Chi Minh (1969)
“The United States has a strategy based on arithmetic. They question the computers, add and subtract, extract square roots, and then go into action. But arithmetical strategy doesn't work here. If it did, they would already have exterminated us with their airplanes.”
- Gen Vo Nguyen Giap
"An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot."
- T.E. Lawrence
T.E. Lawrence: “Irregular war was far more intellectual than a bayonet charge, far more exhausting than service in the comfortable imitative obedience of an ordered army."
The Taliban Victory as a Victory of Faith
besacenter.org · by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen · August 23, 2021
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,132, August 23, 2021
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The American defeat in Afghanistan will have a direct impact on Israel. Like the pseudo-government foisted by the Americans on Kabul, which, despite massive investment, proved a broken reed, the PA and its security mechanisms will collapse in time against its Islamist adversaries, notably Hamas. For all its overwhelming material and technological superiority, the IDF stands no chance of defeating Israel’s Islamist enemies unless its soldiers are driven by a relentless belief in the national cause.
To understand the last 40 years of the Islamic struggle in Afghanistan, it is worth looking at the legacy of Abdullah Azzam. Born in a small village near Jenin in 1941, he moved to Jordan after the fall of the West Bank during the Six-Day War. While there, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and participated in activities of Palestinian terrorist organizations against Israel. He eventually went to Afghanistan, where he was a major factor in helping the mujahideen repel the Soviets. An inspirational figure and a mentor of Osama bin Laden, Azzam would come to lead thousands of volunteers from across the Islamic world as they fought in Afghanistan, earning the title the “father of global jihad.” Azzam was assassinated with his two sons in Peshawar in November 1989.
Unlike the leaders of the pan-Arab movement, from Gamal Abdul Nasser to Hafez Assad to Saddam Hussein, who failed to unite the “Arab nation” on behalf of a common struggle, Azzam managed to bring together large numbers of Muslims from different countries, clans, and tribes to participate in a “holy war”—a jihad —for the first time in the modern era.
Azzam explained his vision in simple terms:
We will fight and defeat our enemies and establish an Islamic state on a piece of land in Afghanistan … Jihad will spread and Islam will fight elsewhere. Islam will fight the Jews in Palestine and establish an Islamic state in Palestine and elsewhere. These countries will then be united into one Islamic State.
Echoing the prophet Muhammad’s key message in his farewell address (“I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah’”), Azzam viewed the fighting in Afghanistan as the starting point for a global jihad, the ultimate goal of which was the establishment of a worldwide “Islamic Nation” (or umma). To him, the struggle in Afghanistan was a strategic opportunity for a reconnection between the religion and the military and political spheres that characterized Islam from its inception, and which were cut short with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI and the abolition of the caliphate. Azzam believed achievements on the battlefield could entice millions of believers into participation in the global jihad.
When President Joe Biden expressed his confidence in the stability of the regime in Afghanistan by pointing out that “the Afghan army has 300,000 well-equipped soldiers … and they also have an air force. In contrast, the Taliban has only 75,000 soldiers,” he made clear that he has no understanding of this reality. The victory of the Taliban over the US in Afghanistan is a lesson for the world on the tremendous capacity of spiritual strength and faith to win protracted conflicts against far superior enemies.
In the first years of the war, the Americans had overwhelming superiority over the Taliban and inflicted many severe defeats upon it. But by virtue of their religious faith, the Taliban fighters were able to withstand those defeats. They believed in what is known in the Islamic faith as the “stage of weakness” (Rahlat al-Istidaf), which requires patiently biding one’s time in anticipation of opportunities. Their faith thus served as a strategy enabling them to cope with what might be a long wait.
The Americans, on the other hand, could not bear the burden of a protracted struggle without a solution in the foreseeable future. On a deeper level, they discounted the religious roots of the conflict, which are expressed, among other things, in the rejection of the message of Western-American prosperity. As Mordechai Kedar put it, “August 15, 2021 will forever be remembered in the Islamic world as the victory of Islam over Christianity, the victory of faith over heresy, and the victory of tradition over permissiveness… These events are pumping new blood into jihad arteries and the results are being seen around the world, including in Israel.”
Indeed, the American defeat will have a direct impact on Israel. Like the pseudo-government foisted by the Americans on Afghanistan, which, despite massive investment, turned out to be useless against the forces of jihad, the PA administration and its security forces will collapse in time against its Islamist adversaries, notably Hamas. Its overwhelming material and technological superiority notwithstanding, the IDF stands no chance of defeating Israel’s Islamist enemies unless its soldiers are driven by a relentless belief in the national cause.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for 42 years. He commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges.
besacenter.org · by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen · August 23, 2021
21. Act Now to Save and Learn the Lessons of the Afghan War
Interesting perspective on the SIGAR.
Act Now to Save and Learn the Lessons of the Afghan War
Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy
csis.org · by Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy · August 23, 2021
August 24, 2021
It will be all too easy to lurch from crisis to crisis in leading with the collapse of Afghanistan and its aftermath. It will be all the more easy to fail at preserving the data and institutions necessary to learn as much from that collapse as possible. The U.S. made this mistake in dealing with its first withdrawal from Iraq. It let the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) collapse, did not create any official independent body to replace SIGIR to learn from the war, let much of the official open source data disappear from the web, and never established a process for declassifying masses of key data that would have helped analysts and historians learn the right lessons with as much information as possible.
The U.S. made equally serious mistakes in learning from the first Gulf War. It rushed out a report to Congress called the Conduct of The Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress that grossly exaggerated the level of success in using airpower, understated the problems in creating an effective coalition, did not address the serious intelligence and policy mistakes that led to premature conflict termination without the proper conditions, failed to address the legacy and relevant lessons of the Iran-Iraq War, and failed to examine the post-conflict costs of failing to have an effective plan for conflict termination. Some excellent studies have since been written by outside analysts, and separate efforts by bodies like the U.S. Air Force Studies and Analyses Agency (AFSAA) have corrected many of the mistakes in the first official report, but much of the data and facts have been lost.
The U.S. also largely failed to provide a timely analysis of the lessons of the Vietnam War, although outside historians and analysts have since written some excellent work, and the later volumes of the 33 volumes in the U.S. Army’s official history of the Vietnam War did cover many key areas in depth. Jeffrey J. Clarke’s Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965-1973 should have been required reading for every officer and official going to both Iraq and Afghanistan, although it clearly suffered from a lack of full access to sensitive data that never became public after the war.
The U.S. should not repeat these mistakes in the case of the Afghan War, and this time it maintains a body capable with all of the expertise, objectivity, and practical contacts it needs to do the job efficiently, handle sensitive and classified data securely, and take a “whole of government” approach that will ensure that there is a proper focus on both the civil and military lessons of the conflict.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has already addressed many of the lessons that should be learned from the war. It has experienced experts that have already worked in the field, and it has shown it can work well with both military personnel in the field and with think tanks in Washington. Equally important, it has demonstrated that it really is non-partisan in a Washington where partisanship is all too common and campaigning for the 2022 mid-term election has already begun.
Furthermore, SIGAR has focused on the costs of war in terms of money and casualties, not just policy and strategy in the broad sense. It has examined the problems in train and assist efforts for the Afghan military as well the problems in civil aid efforts and the impact of Afghan internal politics and corruption. It has already worked with classified data on the growth of Taliban forces down to the local level and on the full impact of the shifts and cuts in U.S. and foreign military, civilian, and contractor personnel.
This is critical in handling the level of detail necessary to fully address the practical lessons from the war. Outside experts have already issued at least two important books on the war: Carter Malkasian’s The American War in Afghanistan: A History and Craig Whitlock’s The Afghanistan Papers, and there are certain to be many more. Some of the most important lessons, however, will address individual areas of federal spending, the timing and reasons for shifts in military civilian projects and personnel, the details of the changing train and assist efforts, the need for managing the flow of aid and making it conditional, and a long list of other areas where SIGAR has already shown that a detailed analysis of lessons is necessary and where it often could not address the details because the Afghan government insisted that key data would not be made available.
Most importantly, SIGAR has also shown consistently that it has no partisan edge, no political or ideological biases, and no institutional biases or reluctance to discuss difficult decisions and bureaucratic failures. It is an organization which – unlike so many study groups and commissions – has proven its ability to be objective and deal with the uncertainty of so many aspects of complex warfighting decision-making.
To succeed, however, SIGAR’s mandate has to be extended almost immediately, along with its authority to collect key data, keep experienced personnel, and have full access on an interagency level. Congress needs to change SIGAR’s mandate, give it at least two more years to work through the lesson process, and avoid pressing it for instant answers in the many areas where data need to be verified and conflicting views need to be addressed.
Congress also needs to fully understand that the cost of learning the right lessons from this war will be negligible compared to the cost of failing to learn. Important as China and Russia may be, the U.S. will still face many more struggles against terrorism, irregular warfare, and insurgencies. It will still have to deal with a world where at least 20% of the countries are now fragile states, and where the U.S. must find the right path to a real “whole of government” approach and adequate contingency planning.
Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant on Afghanistan to the United States Department of Defense and the United States Department of State.
Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2021 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.
csis.org · by Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy · August 23, 2021
22. Biden pushes to complete Afghan evacuation by Aug. 31 — but orders backup plan
Some slightly good news. I am slightly hopeful that POTUS has ordered a backup plan.
Biden pushes to complete Afghan evacuation by Aug. 31 — but orders backup plan
President Biden on Tuesday reaffirmed his intent to complete the U.S. evacuation mission in Afghanistan by Aug. 31, but he also ordered contingency plans if that cannot be accomplished — a position that stoked a new round of outrage and confusion about the United States’ exit from a two-decade war.
The result was looming uncertainty over whether the United States would finalize its exit within a week, as Biden wants, as well as intensifying anger from would-be Afghan refugees, U.S. allies worried about getting their own personnel out of the country, and veterans concerned about the fate of those who helped the war effort.
Speaking at the White House after meeting virtually with leaders of the Group of Seven large industrialized democracies, Biden said that the United States was on pace to wrap up its efforts in Afghanistan by Aug. 31 and that any extension risked terrorist attacks.
“The sooner we can finish, the better,” Biden said. “Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”
But the president also said that meeting that deadline would require avoiding unforeseen disruptions and that it “depends upon the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport for those who we’re transporting out.” He said that he asked the Pentagon and the State Department to draft contingency plans should the U.S. government have to shift its timeline.
Reflecting the moment’s extreme delicacy, CIA Director William J. Burns held a secret meeting Monday in Kabul with the Taliban’s de facto leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. The White House declined to publicly discuss the decision to dispatch Burns.
The notion of a firm deadline was already drawing sharp criticism Tuesday, even from longtime Biden supporters. “We must extend the withdrawal deadline and work with int’l partners to ensure ALL allies find safety from the Taliban,” tweeted Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). “Arbitrary deadlines & bureaucracy are no excuse for lives lost.”
The president delivered his remarks on Afghanistan five hours behind schedule and did not take questions from reporters. West Wing officials scrambled to reschedule the day’s events, underlining how the sharply the crisis in Afghanistan has upended the White House’s daily public relations efforts.
Biden’s comments appeared designed to leave some wiggle room amid a volatile situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Yet they did little to quell the frustration of the president’s adversaries and allies, at home and abroad, about his handling of the withdrawal.
The United States has already begun reducing its military footprint at the Kabul airport, the gateway for leaving the country. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said hundreds of troops had left the airport, but he indicated that a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from the facility has not been ordered. More than 5,000 U.S. troops remain, defense officials said, down from a high of about 5,800.
And evacuations are proceeding apace, Defense Department officials said. Between U.S. military flights and those involving other aircraft, more than 21,000 people were evacuated on Monday alone, Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor told reporters at the Pentagon.
Biden argued that the delicate arrangement that is allowing a steady stream of evacuations will not last forever.
“Thus far, the Taliban have been taking steps to work with us so we can get our people out. But it’s a tenuous situation,” he said. “We’re already had some gunfighting breaking out. We run a serious risk of it breaking down as time goes on.”
Biden heard growing notes of dissent and frustration during a brief virtual meeting with leaders of other major industrialized democracies. All the G-7 nations except Japan also are members of NATO, which fought alongside the United States in Afghanistan for two decades. Several of those leaders favored extending the mission, even briefly, to help evacuate more activists, teachers, prominent women and other vulnerable people.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on record seeking more time. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said Canada is “ready to stay” in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31. French President Emmanuel Macron told Biden during a call last week that allies have a “moral responsibility” to extract vulnerable people.
European Union leaders Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen pressed Biden on the timeline at the G-7 session on Tuesday. “A lot of leaders, including Ursula and myself, have noted concerns,” Michel said after the meeting. “We’ve got the 31st as a deadline, and we want to know what’s going to happen after that.”
Meanwhile, a group of legislators from G-7 countries discouraged what they called “arbitrary dates for ending military support to the evacuation.” They were joined by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Adding their voices were veterans groups, which are focused on Afghan citizens who for years helped American service members as interpreters and in other roles, and who now face possible reprisals from the Taliban.
“If we pull out by August 31st, we are going to leave people who sacrificed their entire lives and their families to protect Americans,” said Jake Harriman, a former Marine Corps officer who has been involved in private efforts to rescue Afghans.
“This excuse that we’re at the whims of the Taliban is insane,” he added.
Paul Rieckhoff, a veterans advocate who served in the Army, voiced similar frustration.
“The level of anger and betrayal being felt across the veterans community right now is off the charts,” he tweeted. Rieckhoff cited an effort launched Monday by dozens of veterans organizations to meet with Biden officials and convey concerns that the United States would pull out before the rescue effort was complete.
In speaking to the G-7 leaders, Biden did not guarantee the mission would wrap up by months’s end, White House press secretary Psaki said, but rather explained that it would finish when the United States had achieved its objectives.
But Psaki was vague about what conditions would trigger the contingency plans Biden has ordered. She said the United States is focused on “evacuating Americans who want to come home, third-country nationals, and Afghans who were our allies during the war.”
U.S. lawmakers also urged the secretaries of state and defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the director of national intelligence to appeal to Biden to reconsider his determination to stick with his timeline. Republicans and Democrats said that if there are still American citizens left in Afghanistan trying to escape, the United States should not adhere to the deadline, regardless of the risk involved in staying.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who has been more willing than many in his party to work with the president this year, issued a statement urging Biden to “rescind the decision to end the evacuation efforts in Kabul on August 31.”
But Biden and his aides stressed that the evacuation process is unfolding with remarkable speed. Taylor said Tuesday that 32 C-17 and five C-130 military aircraft had left Kabul airport in the previous 24 hours, moving 12,700 people out of the country. Coalition and partner aircraft evacuated an additional 8,900 people, for a daily total of 21,600.
The numbers marked a daily record for the evacuation effort, and they came just days before withdrawal operations would have to wind down for the military to meet the Aug. 31 deadline. Since Aug. 14, the United States has evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of more than 70,000 people, according to a White House official.
The number of Americans is far smaller. Defense officials said in a statement Tuesday that about 4,000 “American passport-holders plus their families” had been evacuated. U.S. officials have estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 Americans were in Afghanistan when the Kabul government fell.
“We remain committed to getting any and all Americans that want to leave, to get them out,” Kirby said. “We still believe, certainly now that we have been able to increase the capacity and the flow … that we have the ability to get that done by the end of the month.”
A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the president's thinking in advance of his remarks, said the Pentagon recommended that Biden stick to the Aug. 31 deadline. Biden directed the armed forces to continue executing the mission with the expectation of meeting that goal, the official said, but ordered backup plans to be safe.
Patricia Lewis, head of international security research at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, said that if the deadline is to be met, the operation “really needs to wind up pretty soon — in other words, long before the 31st — in order to get all the gear out, all the equipment out, all the people out.”
Questions also mounted Tuesday about the administration’s strategy for future dealings with the Taliban, an oppressive group that Biden has said he does not trust. The Taliban’s decision to prevent Afghan citizens from entering the Kabul airport added to the concern.
“This country needs our doctors, engineers and those who are educated — we need these talents,” said Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman.
Biden said he and the other G-7 leaders had decided to take a unified position when it comes to a Taliban-led Afghanistan.
“We agreed the legitimacy of any future government depends on the approach it now takes to uphold international obligations,” Biden said, including its responsibility to prevent “letting Afghanistan be used as a base for terrorists.”
Reis Thebault, Karla Adam and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
23. The US and Taliban are heading to a confrontation over the Kabul airport if thousands of Americans and allies don't get out in the next 7 days
Fasten your seatbelts. This could get ugly. We had better be prepared to respond to any attack and respond hard. (I know the military is prepared but the troops need to have the right ROE and top cover from the CINC - there can be no waffling in decision making -if the Taliban strikes (or ISIS-K) we need to strike harder).
The US and Taliban are heading to a confrontation over the Kabul airport if thousands of Americans and allies don't get out in the next 7 days
As tensions in Afghanistan continue to rise, the US has until August 31 to evacuate thousands.
The G7 lobbied Biden to extend the evacuation date to get everyone out, but he's sticking to it.
The Taliban threatened "consequences" if troops aren't out on time.
As tensions continue to rise in Afghanistan, the US faces a hard deadline to evacuate all Americans and allies who wish to flee the country.
The Taliban have threatened "consequences" if President Joe Biden doesn't follow through on his promise to get troops out of Kabul by August 31. On Tuesday, a Taliban spokesman said there wouldn't be an option to extend the deadline past that date, The Associated Press reported.
Now a confrontation between the Taliban and the US looms.
There have been widespread complaints about Biden's handling of the Afghanistan crisis from Britain, France, Germany, and others in the G7, according to the AP.
If Biden cannot evacuate all Americans by the deadline, the Taliban could shut down Kabul's airport as a consequence, which would prevent people from leaving the country.
Taliban said it wouldn't allow a deadline extension, and the UN warned of 'credible' reports of executions
"We are asking the American please change your policy and don't encourage Afghans to leave," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
This came as the UN's human-rights chief warned of "credible" reports of serious violations by the Taliban, including the executions of civilians and surrendering Afghan forces.
With the Taliban tightening their grip over the country, Biden's handling of the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan has been widely criticized. But the president has fervently defended the move, saying that keeping a significant force of US troops in the country would not have fundamentally altered the situation on the ground after roughly 20 years of war.
The Taliban already controlled much of Afghanistan by the time Biden announced the US withdrawal in April, which built off a deal the Trump administration brokered in February 2020. While the US intelligence community said that the Afghan government would struggle to retain control of Afghanistan after a coalition withdrawal, Biden in July expressed confidence in the ability of Afghan forces to keep the Taliban at bay.
Within a few weeks, the Taliban had retaken the country - often capturing major cities without much of a fight. The Biden administration has acknowledged it was caught off guard by the Taliban's rapid takeover, despite prior warnings.
The US sent in about 6,000 additional troops to Afghanistan after the Taliban entered Kabul to assist with evacuations. It's unclear precisely how the Taliban will respond if the US stays in Afghanistan beyond the August 31 deadline.
The US military has evacuated nearly 60,000 people from Afghanistan since August 14, Reuters reported, citing a NATO diplomat.
24. Harris visits McCain memorial in Vietnam to mark anniversary of his death
Very interesting. I think it is a good thing the VP paid respects to Senator McCain.
But imagine what he would be saying in the Senate if he were alive today.
Harris visits McCain memorial in Vietnam to mark anniversary of his death
The Hill · by Brett Samuels · August 25, 2021
Vice President Harris on Wednesday paid tribute to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the third anniversary of his death by visiting a monument in Vietnam where his plane was shot down in 1967.
"John McCain was an extraordinary American hero," Harris said at the monument in Trúc Bạch Lake. "I was honored and privileged to serve with him for a short time in the United States Senate. John McCain, he loved our country.
"He was so courageous and really lived the life of a hero—the sacrifices he made that were on every scale imaginable, loved our country and really always fought for the best of who we are. And it turns out today is the anniversary, so there we are," Harris added as she stood in the rain.
McCain died three years ago after a long bout with brain cancer. Harris served in the Senate alongside McCain for roughly two years before his death.
On the 3-year anniversary of Senator John McCain’s death, @VP Harris visited the marker where the plane of then-Lt. Cmdr. John McCain was shot down in 1967. The monument serves as a reminder of the cost of war and a symbol of the continued growth in the U.S.-Vietnam relationship. pic.twitter.com/f1dri5Q0X5
— Rachel Palermo (@RachelPalermo46) August 25, 2021
The monument was built years after McCain was shot down over Trúc Bạch Lake in what was then North Vietnam and taken as a prisoner of war. McCain visited the monument multiple times during his roughly 25 visits to Vietnam after the war, the White House said.
Harris's visit to Vietnam comes as many experts are drawing parallels between the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War and the ongoing efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies from Kabul as the Biden administration pulls U.S. troops out of Afghanistan after its government fell to the Taliban.
The Hill · by Brett Samuels · August 25, 2021
25. ‘By Water Beneath the Walls’ Review: Precision Instruments
A positive history of our SEALs.
‘By Water Beneath the Walls’ Review: Precision Instruments
The story of how an ad hoc naval demolitions team evolved into an elite special-operations force ready for missions over sea, air and land.
WSJ · by Jonathan W. Jordan
In popular consciousness, Navy SEALs have emerged as the elite of the elite. From a campy 1990s Charlie Sheen film to blockbusters like 2013’s “Lone Survivor,” SEALs have enjoyed a reputation as America’s most lethal warriors. Entire bookshelves have been dedicated to SEAL heroics, fitness and leadership. Even SEAL dogs have spawned a line of bestsellers (“Trident K9 Warriors” and “No Ordinary Dog,” to name two).
Few books, however, have explored why a naval force dubbed SEAL fights terrorists hundreds of miles from the ocean, in dust-caked cities like Mosul or Abbottabad. Benjamin H. Milligan jumps into this breach with “By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs.”
Mr. Milligan, a decorated former SEAL himself, plumbs the origins of the fabled Sea, Air and Land force, from its proto-forms in a variety of military services to its official founding in the early 1960s and its maturity in the river deltas of Vietnam. His story begins during World War II with the Navy’s top brass wrangling over the creation of an island-raiding force for harassing Japanese troops in the Pacific. Marine raiders fought at Tulagi, then at Makin Atoll and Saipan. In North Africa and in China, Navy frogmen working in “underwater demolition teams” (UDTs) reconnoitered invasion beaches in the dark, blasted obstacles blocking invading troops, and trained guerrillas to fight.
These teams were often the first to draw enemy fire. Aboard an “ungainly vessel, with nerves cinched tight with tension, was a second-class gunner’s mate from Chicago named Bill Freeman,” Mr. Milligan writes of a demolitions man motoring up to the Moroccan coast in 1942. Freeman’s team had been sent to help secure Port Lyautey and its airfield, an anchor to the Allied supply lines for armies fighting Rommel in the Tunisian desert. “After a moment’s rush, comically zigzagging to ditch the spotlight,” the men found themselves under attack. Suddenly “machine gun bullets ripped into one of the rubber boats stacked atop the engine housing, deflating it with a hiss along with any bravado the men had unconsciously brought.”
The Navy virtually disbanded its UDTs at the end of World War II, but the frogmen were recalled for the Korean War. A high point came when their landing-site reconnaissance supported Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious attack at Inchon in September 1950.
Korea also marked the end of the Navy’s impromptu approach to special forces. “For the Navy’s ability to land Marines, to bombard from afar, to sit off the coast in international waters and thus avoid a ‘direct foreign commitment,’ ” Mr. Milligan tells us, “it was not long before naval planners had started promoting their service as the natural leader for such conflicts.”
The Bay of Pigs fiasco, in 1961, in which old UDT hands trained and led Cuban invaders, further persuaded naval brass that they could no longer improvise a commando force for every new war. Imagining a new unit that “could coordinate and ‘cross-pollinate’ with the CIA and the Navy’s sister services,” Vice Adm. William Gentner, the Navy’s director of strategic plans, suggested that “training for this unit could include elements from the Army’s Special Forces and the Navy’s UDTs,” Mr. Milligan explains. Hence the SEALs were officially born. “Ultimately, the unit would serve as a ‘focal point’ to ‘channel’ the Navy’s guerrilla and counterguerrilla warfare efforts; a unit able to flex from limited war to the actual thing.”
Next came Vietnam, the apogee of the book’s arc. While SEAL Teams One and Two were being inaugurated, the Army’s elite Green Berets were deeply enmeshed in training and ambush operations in South Vietnam. When the Green Berets found themselves stretched thin along the Cambodian and Laotian frontiers, the Navy saw an opportunity to test its SEALs along the rivers and marshes of the Mekong Delta.
From 1964 to 1970, SEALs set ambushes along river banks, attacked sampans carrying weapons to the Viet Cong, and defended the city of My Tho during the 1968 Tet Offensive. One SEAL platoon at My Tho was “tested by the Viet Cong’s scout-snipers, each of which was quickly answered by one of the rooftop SEALs,” who had so thoroughly transformed their hotel-cum-headquarters “into a citadel that a large-scale attacknever followed,” Mr. Milligan writes. “Realizing the strength of his position,” Lt. Robert Peterson “took to dispatching his SEALs throughout the city to scout the enemy’s positions.”
As elite forces proliferated, the SEALs, “like all successful entrepreneurs,” found new markets for their services. When the Army’s Delta Force failed to rescue the American hostages in Iran in 1980, the SEALs formed “Team Six,” a counterterrorism unit. With “two decades of direct-action raids into the deserts, towns, and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan,” the SEALs shed their ties to the oceans.
“By Water Beneath the Walls” is, at heart, the story of a concept, not a single unit or a larger-than-life character. It is not a traditional battle narrative in the style of Adam Makos or James Hornfischer, and its prose sometimes lacks the refined elegance of Alex Kershaw or Patrick K. O’Donnell. It is an operational history, a well-documented chronicle of the two-steps-forward, one-step-back evolution of the SEALs over 60 years of war. A labor of love, Mr. Milligan’s work elevates comprehensiveness over story. Heroes move in and out of the plotline, and many battles yield ambiguous, un-Hollywood results. But it stands as a finely researched, highly satisfying read for anyone interested in the long gestation of America’s elite warriors.
Mr. Jordan is the author of “American Warlords: How Roosevelt’s High Command Led America to Victory in World War II.”
WSJ · by Jonathan W. Jordan
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
