The Arguments They Keep Making

Former U. S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann makes his pitch for the U. S. military remaining in Afghanistan forever in an op-ed in the Washington Post. He emphasizes the risks of leaving:

Since they had no warning of the direction Biden would choose, neither the U.S. military staff on the ground nor their colleagues in the Pentagon had plans ready to replace the contractors or lessen the impact of their speedy and unexpected departure. Some contractors say they asked after Biden’s decision was announced whether they should prepare to manage operations from locations outside Afghanistan, but were told no.

Some of the gap might be bridged by hiring trained, non-U.S. personnel. Some U.S. companies have indicated a possible willingness to remain — for example, if they were hired by Afghan authorities. Some training and support might be maintained from outside Afghanistan.

One U.S. official has assured me that the Pentagon is doing all it can do for the Afghans, including developing bridging strategies. And there may be exaggeration in some of the stories coming out of Afghanistan, as that country’s government and military, installed and supported by the United States, reel from the shock of the U.S. decision to leave and cope with their own internal problems. But whatever is being planned inside the Beltway does not seem to be getting down to the field.

The only thing that contractors are being told is to get all their personnel out of Afghanistan. A memorandum from the Army Contracting Command at Bagram air base near Kabul reminds them that “the base closure timelines are set for every base at this time and it is imperative that each individual has a ticket and knows the date they are departing.” The Defense Department is requiring contractors to submit detailed plans for leaving Afghanistan for every one of their American employees, on pain of being held in noncompliance of their contract.

In principle, maintenance will be turned over to the Afghans. But they have not yet received any U.S. funding to pick up the operations, and setting up new procedures or contracts takes time. Perhaps we and the Afghans will find ways to manage the problem, but in the meantime, balls seem to be dropping right and left as the U.S. military (or the White House, or wherever the orders are flowing from) pushes to get out of Afghanistan months sooner even than the Sept. 11 date given by the president.

It may well be that feverish work is going on behind the scenes. But on the ground, the withdrawal of contractors is messy, confused and damaging, a process that is not only not continuing to support the Afghan security forces, but is actually weakening them.

Confusion is famously a byproduct of military operations. But this confusion is happening as fighting is intensifying and observers and analysts predict major Taliban offensives. As Afghans look for visible signs that Biden’s promised support will continue, what they see is a rush to the door — and silence about the details that would make the promises real.

Morale is as much a part of combat power as equipment and technology. The current uncertainty undercuts morale and could gravely weaken the Afghan army just as major Taliban attacks begin. And if the army crumbles, it will be the women of Afghanistan, the journalists, judges, democracy activists and the like — the same people now being regularly assassinated — who will be left to the Taliban’s mercy.

Everything he says was as true in 2001 as it is now and, indeed, IMO it’s a powerful argument for not invading Afghanistan in the first place. I find his stance morally vacuous. Where was this blunt assessment while he was serving as ambassador to Afghanistan? That was the point at which he should have made his case for staying permanently. Over the past 20 years we’ve had four different administrations, each of which was publicly committed to leaving Afghanistan. There was no public debate of the prudence of an indefinite military commitment to Afghanistan before the invasion or since. Have career diplomats like Mr. Neumann simply been assuming such a commitment the entire time?

Additionally, I’m skeptical of his claim that the U. S. military is unprepared for withdrawal. That just doesn’t sound like the military that has contingency plans for just about everything, even remote contingencies like an invasion of Canada. Is he mistaken or has the U. S. military been assuming that the commitment to leaving was phony, for the rubes? It all sounds like mutiny on the parts of the State Department and Department of Defense to me.