The blame game for the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle is underway.
Wednesday, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and told reporters that military leaders were caught off-guard by how quickly and easily Kabul fell to the Taliban. The reason, he said, is because military intelligence did not give any indication that such a rapid collapse was likely to happen. Milley said the estimates he was given for a timeframe for the Taliban seizing power ranged from weeks to even years after the American withdrawal from the region.
“There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”
Milley said it ultimately came down to will and leadership, an inference that the Afghan security forces lacked both.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley on Afghan security forces: "This comes down to an issue of will and leadership. I did not, nor did anyone else, see a collapse of an army that size in 11 days." https://t.co/0Xu76CgyYZ pic.twitter.com/aMwAXWJ8Gk
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 18, 2021
The General’s comments come on the same day that the New York Times published a report saying U.S. intelligence agencies foresaw a rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban once U.S. troops withdrew. As the criticism and questions about what went wrong in Afghanistan grow, the White House has struggled to provide satisfactory answers and those in the military and intelligence branches of the government are looking to deflect blame. Intelligence officials are trying to knock down the narrative that the collapse was any sort of surprise; Military personnel are trying to avoid being blamed for the poor planning that led to the chaotic scenes at the Kabul Airport.
From The Washington Post:
While politicians took aim at various scapegoats — the military, the intelligence community, the White House, the Afghans — current and former officials, experts and veterans of America’s longest war said the past week’s events should have come as no surprise.
“There is plenty of blame here,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who led a review of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan for President Barack Obama in 2009. “The most egregious is the complete failure of strategic planning and diplomacy.”
At Wedneday’s press briefing, General Milley pledged that the military is focused now on getting American citizens and the Afghan allies who aided U.S. efforts the past two decades to safety.
“We intend to evacuate those who have been supporting us for years, and we are not going to leave them behind. And we will get as many out as possible.”