The Biden Afghanistan Disaster’s Bitter Legacy
Biden ordered a withdrawal based on the calendar and not on battlefield conditions.
The end of August 2026 marks the fifth anniversary of this century’s biggest American foreign policy disaster: The Biden Afghanistan Bugout of 2021.
Via satellite video, a global audience watched in real time the unfolding catastrophe at Kabul’s Karzai International Airport.
What should have been an orderly withdrawal conducted by the U.S. military, the world leader in organized, systematic, non-combatant evacuations (NEO in Pentagon lingo), was anything but.
The world saw chaos and panic. Thousands of Afghani evacuees (many unvetted) packed the runways and flight lines as civilian jets and U.S. Air Force C-17 transports landed, loaded and took off.
Beyond the gates, tens of thousands more would-be refugees swarmed the streets, the most frantic confronting U.S. military personnel and the handful of Afghani national police who defended the airport perimeter.
On Aug. 26, 2021, blood spilled. A terrorist triggered a suicide bomb at the airport’s Abbey Gate. The bomb killed 13 U.S. military personnel and 160 Afghanis. 45 U.S. service members and 143 Afghanis were wounded.
The horrifying goodbye: a man clings to the side of a C-17 rolling down the runway. The plane takes off and he falls to his death.
As conducted, America’s 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal was a self-inflicted disaster. The Trump administration planned to withdraw, but in order to support the pro-U.S. Afghan government, the U.S. would keep the huge Bagram airbase as a logistical hub and intelligence post. Bagram was defensible terrain. Moreover, Trump’s February 2020 Afghanistan withdrawal deal put strict conditions on the Taliban. Denying Afghanistan to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) were explicit conditions.
President Joe Biden nixed Bagram and decided to withdraw via Kabul’s inadequate airport.
Why did Biden do this? Ineptitude? Dementia? Political optics? Biden ordered a withdrawal based on the calendar and not on battlefield conditions. “Completely out by 9/11” is a sound bite, a political bumper sticker. It isn’t clear-headed senior leader strategic guidance for a military withdrawal from a complex war zone.
We continue to suffer from the Biden Bugout. Power abhors a vacuum, and autocratic states and tyrannies like Communist China rush to fill power vacuums. In early October 2021, 56 mainland Chinese combat aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait and illegally penetrated sovereign Taiwanese airspace. The aerial “show of force” rated as the largest Chinese airspace violation since 1949. I wrote a column about show of force, asking if Beijing saw the Afghan debacle as an opportunity to make the point the U.S. abandons allies.
The situation was similar to the Carter administration abandoning the Shah of Iran in January 1979. Carter abandoned an ally. Ayatollah Khomeini-inspired Iranian Islamic radicals seized America’s Tehran embassy in November 1979. In December 1979, Russia (in guise of Soviet Union) invaded Afghanistan. Moscow saw a weak and incompetent U.S. president.
In February 2022, Vladimir Putin’s Russia — as a revived imperial dictatorship — invaded Ukraine.
Huge spikes in energy prices fueled Putin’s aggression. High oil prices always give the Kremlin money to spend on war.
The single largest error in judgment contributing to the price surge? Biden’s decision to stifle U.S. oil fracking and kill the Keystone pipeline. At the strategic level, Putin made the war a direct challenge to the NATO alliance. For Putin, the Afghan debacle confirmed he faced a weak U.S. president. Recall Biden urged Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to flee.
The Afghanistan disaster also emboldened Iran’s terrorist regime. Oct. 7, 2023: Iranian proxy Hamas launched its rape, atrocity and hostage war against Israel. Media remember that horror. Forgotten attacks: That same month, Iranian proxies attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea. Iranian sponsored attacks continued through the rest of the year.
I am certain the debacle damaged military recruiting. The Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco was a failure in leadership by President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Deep into 2024, the Pentagon missed recruiting goals. The armed services got an undeserved black eye, but the chaos at Kabul International left the world with the impression U.S. forces are not thoroughly prepared for complex operations.
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