Second Thoughts

My opinion as expressed in my post on Afghanistan is different than Kevin Drum's as expressed here and here.  And perhaps deviates from Tom Friedman, who in the Times writes of the "morning after the morning after".

That's bothersome, as I respect Drum's opinions on almost everything.

So time for second thoughts:

• Trump's Doha deal with the Taliban promised we'd be out by May. Pence has criticized Biden for not respecting that.  I think Biden was right to take some time, 4 months as it turned out, to figure out whether he wanted to go with his gut or follow the recommendations of the military.  He would have been severely criticized if he pulled out in May.  It's debatable whether he could reasonably taken the whole summer to consider, so the departure would have happened after the end of the "fighting season".
• There's lots of finger pointing over the intelligence, did the CIA predict it or blow it?  We'll get lots ore on this.  My guess is the CIA was pessimistic, the military optimistic, but nobody saw the quick collapse (which seems to be Gen Milley's position).
• The planning and scheduling of the departure.  Military says they planned and did exercises.  I'll be watching to see if there was State/military planning, and joint exercises--such coordination has always been problematic, and in the absence of lots of high ranking Biden appointees and the transition coordination might well have been an early casualty.
• Based on how things have gone so far, it looks as if we would have done better by bringing the 6,000 troops much earlier--let them live in field for a couple months while the troops which have been serving there departed.  The new troops would be charged with maintaining order during the departure.
• A key element of the planning should have been developing a database of Americans who might need to depart, including both government employees and civilian contractors; a database of NATO personnel so we're clear whether we need to help other nations evacuate their nationals; and a database of Afghanis who have been on our payrolls in the last 20 years, plus their families.

One point the administration has made which I hadn't considered--early steps to evacuate were opposed by the Ghani administration and could/would be demoralizing to them.   I don't know how you handle that--if we're talking 20-100,000 people there's no way to keep arrangements secret. But that demoralization seems to be the main cause of the rapid collapse of Ghani government anyway.  

Maybe in an ideal world Biden and Blinken would have gone back to the Taliban and pitched a deal--a more planned departure. (Or departures, different arrangements depending on how events transpired.)  Problem is that Trump had bargained away US leverage, so anything we could have offered would have relied on Ghani's cooperation in facilitating a transfer of power.  

It's possible that Kevin is right--if things go relatively smoothly from here on out, what seemed to be disastrous two days ago will fade into the past.  I hope so.