I read an article this morning by Kori Schake, a former State Department employee during the Bush era, and I really felt the need to respond in some way. Her article is another pro-war hit piece that has emerged since the recent fall of Kabul. In it, she seeks to disprove the Biden administration’s four main claims justifying “the decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan and to deflect criticism of the disastrous outcome.” However, in my very humble opinion, I think her arguments are weak and her overall position just plain wrong. But don’t take my word for it, go read the article yourself, and let me know if you think that I misrepresented any of Schake’s claims.
Read her article here.
She points to four claims from the Biden administration in the first paragraph:
“The mission in Afghanistan was unsustainable without a dramatic escalation of U.S. forces.”
“They had no choice but to honor an agreement that the administration of President Donald Trump reached with the Taliban that required the United States to withdraw its military forces from the country.”
“They have lamented that Afghanistan’s military was unwilling to fight the Taliban.”
“The administration ‘planned for every contingency’ but that chaos was unavoidable.”
These seem like a good summary of what the administration has been saying, and most, including myself, would agree with her. However, her rebuttal of these points crumbles pretty quickly.
Regarding the first claim, she writes, “the fact is that until relatively recently, Afghan security forces had held their own against the Taliban, even as U.S. and allied forces stepped back from direct participation in the fighting.” This is a contentious point to say the least. The Afghan National Army has been slowly losing ground for years, and the U.S. stepping back is not the same as disengaging.
She follows up this point with a highly misleading statistic. Schake claims that “as recently as 2018, the Taliban controlled only four percent of Afghanistan’s territory—just 14 largely rural districts out of 419 total. Meanwhile, 122 districts had no Taliban presence at all.” Siri, what’s 419-122? It’s 297. That is the amount of districts that the Taliban contested. And how does one distinguish between a district that is under full Taliban control and a district that is contested? I have a feeling that it is likely pretty arbitrary given the fact that the Taliban was waging a guerrilla war and did not necessarily aim to hold large swaths of territory or critical infrastructure.
What makes this point even more absurd is the fact that the source that she uses for this claim literally says what I am saying right now. The headline for the article is “Taliban threaten 70% of Afghanistan.” By her own stats, she could have also pointed out that the Afghan government fully controlled only 30% of the country. Does she believe that people do not check sources or know what an insurgency is? The source also provides a map of Taliban influence.
As one can see from this map, the Taliban already had a strong presence in districts near Kabul and Kandahar, among other Afghan cities.
Schake then cedes some rhetorical territory by addressing the Afghan government’s rampant corruption. She goes on to write, “still, corruption coexisted with progress, and the United States managed to limit the harm caused by graft by depositing money directly into the bank accounts of Afghan soldiers.” Sure, that is one way to work around corruption, but it has no impact on the main causes of corruption, namely poverty, lack of political infrastructure, and outside interference that enables the corrupt. That is also a clear dependency on the U.S. military, almost proving the opposite of the point she is trying to make.
She uses this claim to lead into her next point, writing, “that progress, however, evaporated with the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban and the Biden team’s decision to adhere to it.” So ending the war was what caused the Afghan army to collapse, not its corruption? She goes on to say, “but the agreement with the Taliban allowed adversaries to attack U.S. allies without any risk of retribution—a concession without any clear precedent in U.S. history.” I can think of a precedent in U.S. history: Vietnam. During North Vietnam’s final offensive in the Spring of 1975, the South Vietnamese government also hoped that the U.S. would intervene with airpower if need be. However, this did not happen, and Washington watched as Saigon fell, much like it did this time around.
She then makes another bold claim, writing:
“The Biden administration has asserted that repudiating the agreement would have caused an explosion of violence in Afghanistan, necessitating an escalation of U.S. military involvement. Yet even if that were true, the Afghan government and Afghan soldiers—and not American forces—would have borne the brunt of it, and they were willing to do so.”
Yes, it would be true. The Taliban was making steady progress, and Biden was well aware that if he broke the deal with the Taliban, it would cause a serious military escalation. She is correct to point out that Afghan forces would bear the brunt of the casualties, but that does not mean that Americans soldiers would avoid death.
So, she is correct in her stance that Biden could have acted differently, but he had limited options. He could follow through with the withdrawal or restart the war, with neither of them being particularly pleasant options politically. So he went with what was popular. About 70% of Americans wanted out, so Biden went through with it.
Schake goes on to discuss the administration’s failure to plan for contingencies. She is, to some degree, correct. The administration could have done a better job preparing for this outcome. However, it is also somewhat of a moot point. Many have argued since at least the early 2010s that when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan, the Afghan army and government would collapse. It seems that she agrees to some extent with the notion that the Afghan government was dependent on U.S. forces. But of course, she uses it as justification for the continued occupation of the country. To reiterate, Biden could have done a better job. However, this withdrawal was doomed to be unpleasant.
After summarizing the failings of the withdrawal, Schake writes, “Biden’s shameful disparagement of the Afghan security forces ignores the reality about who has done most of the fighting and dying in this war.” Again, she is somewhat correct here. Biden did not need to disparage the Afghan army, and they have done much of the “fighting and dying” of the war. However, as Schake herself points out in this article, the Afghan government and security forces were deeply corrupt, spoiling their chances against the Taliban.
She concludes this section of the article by saying, “American casualties dropped not because the Taliban stood down but because the Afghan military stood up.” It was neither. American troops were pulled out of more “hot” areas, and redeployed to an advising role. It also included close air support, with recent years seeing a substantial increase in that air support under the Trump administration before the Doha agreement with the Taliban in 2020. Combat troops moved out of the fray, but U.S. forces were still very much engaged in Afghanistan in ways that they are not in countries like South Korea and Japan.
In the last section of the article, Schake first describes possible reactions from the international community as well as some moral posturing about human rights and defending democracy. She also states that Islamic extremists will be emboldened by this defeat. She is certainly not wrong, but she is overstating the power of said extremists. Though extremist groups have proliferated throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, there has not been a serious attack to the U.S. homeland since 9/11. The structural deficiencies that lead to 9/11 were the primary reason for that event occurring, and many of said deficiencies were remedied with a heavy hand, ie. surveillance and increased federal power.
Schake then writes, “U.S. interests would have been better served and American power better sustained by limiting the objectives in Afghanistan and not invading Iraq.” She might be on to something here, but it is unclear to me when this opinion came to her. I have a feeling that she fully supported both wars given her position at the time.
Her last paragraph reiterates the damage this withdrawal has done to America’s global image, but she is inflating the downsides. This withdrawal will have little effect on U.S. policy in many other parts of the world, especially after the media reaction Biden has endured. He will certainly not want to pull off any major actions after this one. Some have said that the U.S. will pull out of Iraq next, but this will likely prove to be incorrect. Biden will happily kick the can down the road on Iraq and Syria, hoping that those conflicts stay frozen for the duration of his Presidency.
Schake leaves us with very little to truly take away from this article. She seems to believe that breaking the Doha agreement and escalating the conflict was the best option. So she wants to send more Americans to Afghanistan to die for a corrupt government that is essentially fully dependent on the U.S. military in order to fight some obscure notion of Islamic extremism, which has only festered during the War on Terror. I am left to wonder if she is willing to send her son or daughter to fight and die in such a war.