Rushed and flawed
Before Thursday’s suicide bombings, President Joe Biden justified his rushed withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan by saying the United States would maintain “over the horizon” capabilities to detect and interdict terrorist activity in Afghanistan. In other words, the United States would ensure, even without a U.S. troop presence on the ground, that Afghanistan would not return to its pre-9/11 status as a terrorist safe haven.
Thursday’s deadly attacks, in which 13 U.S. service members died, laid waste to any notion of America’s ability to influence events on the ground in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence resources are gone. Forward operating bases are gone. It’s as if the United States cut off its eyes and ears to spite its own face, and now it is blind and deaf to the future threats brewing in Afghanistan.
The Taliban has invited the Haqqani network into its new hard-line Islamist government. The network has been on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations since 2012, with multimillion-dollar bounties on the heads of its top leaders. Haqqani militiamen were the Taliban’s choice to deploy outside the Kabul airport, putting them in close proximity to their sworn enemies—U.S. troops.
Somehow, this was the security formula Biden accepted in his haste to leave before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The deadline was artificially set and had zero strategic value in terms of ensuring a safe and orderly withdrawal. But Biden insisted on it.
He inherited the withdrawal framework from former President Donald Trump, who defied logic by engaging in peace talks with the Taliban while excluding the elected government in Kabul. Everything about Trump’s formula ensured a disastrous outcome, imposing minimal Taliban concessions in exchange for a full U.S. withdrawal. Taliban officials spoke as if they were doing a favor to the most powerful military in the world by agreeing not to attack U.S. forces while they were withdrawing.
By putting the Taliban and Haqqani in such an undeserved position of power over the United States, a tragic outcome was virtually assured. Sadly on Thursday, that’s what Biden got.