Media glosses over military’s heroism
As disturbing scenes of chaos and misery played out in the streets of Kabul, criticism — some earned and some not, some hyperbolic and some laser-focused — rained down on a wide expanse of people, including President Joe Biden, his predecessors, generals and defense secretaries, the National Security Council and the intelligence community.
This is what losing a war looks like. The decision to end a “forever war” meant we inevitably could not rescue everyone, including all the women and girls of Afghanistan.
If we wanted to avoid the chaos and misery, including the plight of those women and girls, we should have stayed. Of course, Americans didn’t want that, either.
The story the media resisted telling was less visible and far more positive — inspiring, even. It was the story of men and women running into the fray to save as many as possible from death and misery that a lost war entails.
State Department personnel flooded a Taliban-controlled city to accelerate the identification and processing of Americans, Afghans and other nationals.
They did not create the timeline, nor did they make the decision to begin the process with such a small number of troops. Nevertheless, they worked around the clock to rescue fellow Americans and live up to this country’s obligations to Afghans at risk.
By midweek, thousands of people — mostly non-Americans — were flying out of Kabul’s airport in what is fast becoming one of the most challenging airlifts ever attempted. State Department workers at the airport, in concert with colleagues back home, were forced to use every ounce of experience, creativity and ingenuity to handle a once-in-a-career emergency for the sake of Americans and thousands of Afghans.
The accusation that we did not care about the latter is a grotesque insult to those who risked their lives to deliver Afghans to safety.
By Friday, we had evacuated 13,000 people, mostly Afghans since the airlift began. By Saturday, the number was up to 17,000.
Despite horrible scenes and a few civilian causalities inside the airport, which the military vowed to investigate, these troops restored some measure of order and began the nearly impossible mission they had been handed, acting with utmost professionalism and humanity. The photo of hundreds of Afghans crammed together on a military plane for evacuation is a testament to their skill and dedication.
The image of U.S. soldiers lifting an infant over the wall of the airport is rebuke to those who deride this generation of Americans as any less honorable than the World War II generation. They are now devising new measures to extract Americans and Afghans due to the eroding security situation.
Their work has embodied the precepts of our faith traditions and the best in America.
Back in Washington, spokespeople for the Defense and State departments faced an uber-aggressive — sometimes rude, interrupting and angry — press corps.
The spokespeople did not lose their cool. They told the truth to the best of their ability and fielded questions around the clock. As reporters pelted them with questions, they candidly admitted that in a mass evacuation of a losing war, they didn’t instantaneously have the complete, granular detail reporters wanted.
The media was quick to pronounce the evacuation “bungled” or a “failure,” but they rarely considered the alternatives. They seemed less interested in exploring how much chaos is truly avoidable in defeat. And they failed to wait for the results of the operation before concluding the administration is guilty of a host of sins.
The media overlooked the self-discipline and kindness that State and Defense personnel exhibited as they rescued colleagues under the most trying circumstances.
None of this negates the responsibility of higher-ups for the failures, large and small, of judgment and strategy. They must be held accountable for 20 years of a largely fruitless war and the decision not to bulk up forces and push out our deadline to minimize inevitable suffering.
The intelligence community’s utter failure to anticipate the speed of the Afghan government and military collapse may one day rank up their with conviction that Iraq had WMDs. But the work of Americans charged with executing the evacuation is noble patriotic.