A Reckoning for Biden in Afghanistan - Rob Horowitz

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

 

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President Joe Biden PHOTO: White House

“I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that's happened of late,” said President Biden, as he somberly answered questions from the media in the wake of an explosion triggered by a suicide bomber, killing 13 American soldiers and nearly 200 others at the Kabul Airport.

Facing the first crisis of his administration, Joe Biden is appropriately owning up to the hard reality that the disturbing images that mirror a difficult situation on the ground in Afghanistan are a consequence of his decisions-- the ultimate wisdom of which are likely to be difficult to discern until we see how the situation unfolds over several years.
As Biden has correctly pointed out, he did inherit from his predecessor an agreement with the Taliban committing us to withdraw this past May and a related sharp troop decrease from 13,000 troops to 3,500-an insufficient number to maintain the status quo. The president, however, still retained the option of changing course as he has done in many other areas at home and abroad.

His responsibility began with his decision to stay on the course set by Donald Trump and completely withdraw American forces. As Gallup President Frank Newport writes in a recent summary of national polling on the topic, this decision is still supported by the majority of the American people, despite the sudden collapse of the Afghan government and the difficult and messy evacuation.

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Biden has framed the choice he made as either withdrawing or putting thousands more American troops in, arguing probably correctly that the Taliban was not going to wait indefinitely before launching an all-out attack to gain control of the nation and more American troops would be needed to hold them off.  But, as reported by Peter Baker in Sunday’s New York Times, at least some military experts, including current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley and former head of forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, thought with a modest increase in the number of troops, coupled with stepped up air support and use of drones, we could keep the Taliban at bay. “There was an alternative that could have prevented further erosion and likely enabled us to roll back some of the Taliban gains in recent years,” Petraeus told Baker.

It is also undeniable that as the president asserts we were never going to succeed in our nation-building project in Afghanistan, turning it into a democracy or even a well-functioning modern nation and that our stay there would likely have had to been indefinite.  Still, a messy, unsatisfactory and imperfect status quo, if it could have been pulled off with only a few thousand more troops, is arguably preferable to the takeover of a regime that is sympathetic to the goals of Jihadists and could once again provide a safe harbor for terrorists whose goal is to hurt us at home and abroad. And this is before you even factor in the consequences for the Afghan people, including the reversals in rights and opportunities for women and the severe curbing of freedoms that come along with Taliban rule.  Time will determine whether the president is right that we can effectively combat any threats that do emerge through drone strikes and the other techniques we use in other terror hot spots and whether our withdrawal leaves us strategically better positioned as a whole.
 
Of course, most of the criticism of  Biden is not of the decision to leave Afghanistan itself, but of his handling of the evacuation.  While many mistakes have been made, including the failure to adequately plan for the immediate collapse of the Afghan government, which was always a distinct possibility, a good portion of the difficulties we have faced are inherent in our decision to leave.  Beginning to evacuate Afghans or even Americans in large numbers before the Taliban’s victory would have undermined the government that we wanted to give at least a fighting chance to succeed.

After some shaky initial performances in the wake of the Taliban takeover, President Biden has recovered his presidential voice, balancing publicly shouldering his ownership of the problems with an effective defense of the rescue efforts, and of his initial decision. Additionally, the fact that more than 120,000 people have been evacuated, including nearly all of the Americans in Afghanistan that want to leave, is beginning to change public perceptions.  As a result, Biden’s approval rating on his handling with the withdrawal has moved up from about 25% of the electorate to 38% as recorded in the new ABC News/IPSOS poll.  Whether these numbers continue to move up will depend in large measure on what happens on the ground in the aftermath of our complete withdrawal. Do the Taliban keep their word at least in the short-term that any remaining Americans and a certain number of Afghans are able to leave undisturbed or do they violently crack down?

Another important test for the Biden Administration and our nation—a test we seem poised to pass-- is whether or not we welcome Afghan refugees that backed our efforts to the United States and work to fully incorporate them into our nation. Despite the anti-immigrant, scaremongering by Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the hard-core Trump-backing nativists with their crabbed blood and soil vision of the United States, most Americans, including many prominent Republican-elected officials, understand that it is our moral obligation to do so. Also, as with so many immigrants before them, these courageous Afghans will enrich us, bringing new energy and talents that are needed on the home front.  An overwhelming majority of registered voters support these efforts, disagreeing with Tucker Carlson when he says, “So first we invade, and then we are invaded.” And then warns that “Afghan refugees are coming to your neighborhood” as if that is something of which to be afraid.

The ultimate substantive and political impacts of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and the related evacuation difficulties are still unknown. With the passage of time, the heat of the moment loud commentary on all sides will become to paraphrase the Bard, mainly, “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” We are closer to the beginning of the story than the end.  What unfolds over the next year or so, and how well the Biden team manages it will be determinative.


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Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

 

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