We Still Live by Lies About Afghanistan

The fault, shame and humiliation is all ours; all red, white, and blue.

We owe HM3 Maxton W. Soviak, USN, the thousands who died the two decades before he did, and their families the truth. The uncomfortable, blunt, clear truth. Frankness. Directness. The respect that comes with honesty, honesty to the man who was in diapers when the first US forces crossed into Afghanistan, and with 12 others wound up as one of the last to die there during our retreat.

We’re still not coming to terms with our defeat.

Fear, shame, and humility—these are strong gods of a superior military. With each passing year, this becomes clearer and clearer to me. As all three were drained from our military, we increasingly relied on the weak gods of false-bravery (wearing combat utilities for daily use in CONUS) and easy-honor (NORK levels of awards and badges) that always lead to arrogance. With arrogance comes eventual defeat.

Fear and the desire to not bring shame on yourself, your family, your service, and your nation bring humility. Humility stops you from thinking you have all the answers.

…and so we come to the issue of the Afghanistan war again. I have a little shorthand that will allow me to move along on to the subject of the day. It is something I will remind everyone of who refuses to speak clearly and directly on the topic of our national disgrace.

The Afghan army and government the Soviet Union left behind lasted over 3 years.

The Afghan army and government the USA left behind lasted barely 1 month.

The old Cold Warrior in me doesn’t like to say that the Soviets were better than we were, but at least in Afghanistan, they were.

I didn’t think that my re-post on August, 17th was going to be my last Afghanistan quote for awhile; I knew I would revisit it. It is that time of the year.

I am still about where I was three years ago. For new readers, let me give you the executive summary from the above post.

While in uniform, Iraq was not "my war." From the C5F AOR and AFG proper from 07SEP01 and months following, AFG was my war for most of the rest of my years until then towards the end of 2QFY09 I left Kabul for good and inside six months later became a civilian. Most of that almost 8-yrs was either focused directly on AFG or indirectly supporting it - the archive is there for new readers and over on Midrats. It was an old war when I left it, yet it went on for another dozen years.

I failed. They failed. We failed.

After a years reflection, I was only further stuck on the topic. I have not move all that much since the below I wrote a year after the child sacrifice during the fall of Kabul.

It wasn't supposed to end like this. If in the early fall of 2001, just as we just finished OPERATION RHINO, someone at C5F put up a picture of a 10-yr old boy standing behind a group of five newborns, three 1-yer olds, three 2-yr olds, and a 4-yr old and told us, "We will take Kabul, and after 18-months without a single casualty, we will abandon everything. We will be allowed to go home only at the pleasure of the Taliban and after we sacrifice these 13-children and abandon hundreds of American citizens behind us as we leave in darkness, tens of billions of dollars of our equipment left as tribute in addition to our children." we would have thought you insane, sick, and someone off their medications.

But we did, and there is a price.

In a defeat of choice in a complete collapse of competence at the most senior levels of our civilian and military leadership ... we did. In our panicked retreat we had our deadliest day in 11 years. Our Marines, Sailor and Soldier filled with their bodies the gap in intelligence, planning, and leadership by - what we are all told - are the very best, most credentialed from the finest institutions and selection processes to produce competent leaders for our nation of 330+ million souls.

Read the rest at the links above. I won’t be able to finish the rest of this if I do.

I know I’m not alone in being unwilling to wink, nod, and let everyone move on, but it is a smaller group than it should be. We should not let ourselves lead our nation down this path again, but if we are not open with our failure, we will.

I have no issue, really, with such a small percentage of American who make the choice to serve in the military. We are a republic of free people. We were not in an existential threat (though The Smartest People in the Room™ pretended we were to justify what I now see as national-soul thinning actions). Of that small percentage of people who served, even a smaller slice were involved in Afghanistan. As such, we need to not let our perspective get lost in the background noise.

Now that I took way too much time to set the table—thank you for the one-way group therapy session—someone else is having none of this “move along” foolishness towards those that brought us the disaster. Jerry Dunleavy over at Just the News put out an article over the weekend you have to start your September with, Pentagon claimed Abbey Gate still would’ve happened even if ISIS-K bomber had remained behind bars.

Does anyone feel that there has been any accountability for this?

..the Taliban was willing to withdraw its forces from in and around Kabul and would let the U.S. send in as many troops as it wanted to secure the Afghan capital and conduct the U.S. evacuation free from Taliban interference, but McKenzie admits that he turned the offer down on the spot.

A U.S. military investigation also found that the U.S. military had not done all it could to properly secure Kabul airport against threats ahead of the evacuation. The U.S. military also did not conduct constant surveillance of Abbey Gate during the evacuation, despite the ISIS-K threats against the airport and against that gate. The U.S. military also did not carry out any strikes against ISIS-K until after the Abbey Gate bombing.

…

It would later turn out that the deal McKenzie made would allow the Taliban's notorious suicide unit, called the Badri 313 to be responsible for securing the airport. Taliban commander Abdul Hadi Hamdan later said in an HBO documentary that “when I came to Kabul I was put in charge of the airport. We surrounded it with a thousand suicide bombers.”

Let this soak in.

Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis insisted in 2022 that “this was not preventable." A defense official asserted in a Defense Department news article in 2024 that ISIS-K would have simply used a different bomber and thus the Abbey Gate attack still would have happened even if Abbey Gate terrorist Abdul Rahman al-Logari had remained behind bars at Bagram Air Base. HFAC's report last year did not mention this claim.

OK. I’ve written about this for over a decade and a half. It wasn’t just preventable, it was predicted.

Before we go further, I don’t want to make McKenzie or Curtis villains here. We all have orders to execute—good, bad, or ugly. We all have superiors to obey at a certain moment in time, but those times pass. History and respect to those who in turn followed your orders requires at least an arguable candor.

Back in 2019, 21 months before the fall of Kabul, I recalled again a conversation a gaggle of ISAF staffers had over coffee at Destille Gardens in front of ISAF HQ as we continued to refine the building “Uplift of Forces” in 2008/9.

US Army to the East, USMC to the South; Uncle Sam was taking the keys back from a spent NATO force as the drawdown of forces in Iraq made it easier to find ready to deploy units.

We knew none of the trends were going our way and that there was no easy fix. This was going to take a long time. The general consensus at the table: 10-years if we stuck with Shape-Clear-Hold-Build.

We all knew the district map - and district by district we would have to create the conditions so AFG could be stable on AFG terms and we could all go home.

The key to us going home, we told each other, were those 8-yr old kids in schools who would have a different mindset when they became 18 ... if we could help the adults build a better AFG for them while they grew up.

If we didn't have the patience to see it through. Well, it got quite. None of us saw a high probability of anything but a lot of killing with any other plan - and more importantly, any path to something resembling peace on AFG terms. My take at the moment was, darkly, if we can't stick it out - retreat to the airfields, get everyone home, take what we can, leave what the ANSF can use, blow the rest in place. Let them work it out.

Sorry General, but bu11shit on your “not preventable.” Also, we all agreed that the last airfield should be Bagram.

McKenzie said in September 2021 that “yes, we do” know which Taliban forces were providing security at HKIA, and admitted that the Taliban’s Haqqani-linked Badri 313 Unit "specializes in suicide bombing attacks,“ under questioning from Rep. Mike Gallagher, R., Wis.

Then-Major General Chris Donahue told investigators that “we met with the Taliban” and “we told them which areas we would be in charge of and which areas they would need to control.” Donahue said that “our general breakdown was that if it was tactical, I would deal with the Taliban. If it was above that, Rear Admiral [Pete] Vasely would deal with it. If we met with them together, same thing.”

One U.S. military officer whose name was redacted, involved in planning for the NEO said that “the Taliban did give General McKenzie a POC [point of contact] for the ground commander in Kabul.” The contact was Hamdullah. The U.S. military officer said the Taliban told McKenzie that this Taliban ground commander would "give you anything you need.”

This is a good point to focus in on McKenzie. Again, not a villain, yet, but he still seems to be covering for the decisions of others if not. Though we recently saw what looked like some contrition, he is still hiding.

McKenzie is currently listed as the Executive Director for the Global and National Security Institute at the University of Southern Florida. The general did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him through his email at the school. Nor did he respond to requests for comment for prior Just the News reporting about him.

His performance in the 2022 Congressional hearing (then Rep. Michael Gallagher’s (R-WI) summary afterwards is superb. Watch it if you need a refresher) where he still tries to call the negotiated surrender of Kabul a “Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation” (NEO) remains a low point of uniformed candor in the last quarter century.

As a Southerner, I would never call General John C. Pemberton, CSA’s surrender of Vicksburg a NEO. He too was able to march his army out of the city. He too had civilians come with him as he left. Pemberton would never claim he was conducting a NEO. No, he negotiated a surrender, a surrender only slightly harsher in terms than those McKenzie negotiated.

Pemberton accepted accountability. Could anyone have done better for the Confederate cause at Vicksburg against Grant? Probably not…but still…he knew.

Then we have this.

McKenzie wrote in his memoir, The Melting Point, that “I am confident that using the Taliban reduced attacks on our forces” but that “I am also sure that it reduced by some number — and perhaps a significant number — the Afghans that we wanted to get out. To mitigate this problem, the Department of State provided examples of travel documents to the Taliban and also names and lists of Afghans that we wanted to evacuate. In some cases this helped; in others it did not. I would make the same decision today.”

McKenzie told Politico in August 2022 that “by and large, the Taliban were helpful in our departure. They did not oppose us. They did do some external security work. There was a downside of that external security work, and it probably prevented some Afghans from getting to Kabul airport as we would have liked. But that was a risk that I was willing to run.”

Unmentioned were the Americans who were blocked by the Taliban and the Afghans who were murdered by them as the evacuees tried to escape during the NEO.

I don’t see how McKenzie’s continual coping like this is healthy for him or the nation. Why can’t we just be candid about what happened?

Despite McKenzie’s claims, the Pentagon inspector general emphasized in 2021, just after the NEO, that the U.S. had relied upon the Taliban for security at HKIA: “DoD officials met with Taliban representatives and agreed to cooperate on security at HKIA, with the Taliban forming an external security cordon that U.S. forces inside the facility incorporated into their force protection operations.”

Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on August 17, 2021 that “we are in contact with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of people to the airport” and that “the Taliban have informed us that they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment.”

The Taliban would inflict violence against Americans and even murder Afghans attempting to escape the country, with no consequences. No U.S. generals were blamed by HFAC for the debacle.

Everyone sees this, yes?

When asked if the Taliban ever declined or refused to search or raid some suspected ISIS-K locations, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan reconciliation, replied in testimony to the HFAC, “No, not that I'm aware of. General McKenzie on the record said he hates the Taliban, but the Talibs did everything — his word, not mine — that we asked them to do during that period. You'd have to ask him. There was a partnership between the — I mean, the word is not like that, I'm sure, by everyone — between them, our security people, and the Taliban, during that period in Kabul.”

But as McKenzie and others admitted, the Taliban had repeatedly declined to assist the U.S. in defending HKIA against the ISIS-K threat during the NEO. McKenzie said on August 26, 2021, shortly after the bombing, that “the Taliban have conducted searches before they get to that point” at the airport gates, but admitted that “sometimes those searches have been good and sometimes not.”

Are we just supposed to be polite about it?

Taliban official Habibi Samangani said that “just because we have an agreement not to attack the Americans until they complete their pullout doesn’t mean that we have cooperation with them or provide security for them.” The Taliban tried to say that it was the fault of the U.S. that ISIS-K was able to conduct the bombing, arguing that the night before the bombing it had "warned the foreign forces the repercussions of the large gathering at Kabul airport.”

Who do you think is actually telling the truth? Which side is being more honest? Can you tell? Do you have to think too long to give an answer? Is, “It depends…” part of your answer?

We’re all OK with this, four years later?

A member of the Marine sniper team whose name was redacted said that just after the bomb went off, “I was sighted in on the Taliban and saw they were sitting in lawn chairs and laughing at us.” Another Marine sniper in the tower said, “I remember when I was pulling security by the vehicle outside the gate, I was looking at the Taliban by the chevron through my sights. I saw a dude in a lawn chair pointing and laughing. I wanted them to do something stupid, I would have taken them out.”

Lt. Col. Brad Whited also said that, after the bombing, “as I looked over, I saw that the Taliban were laughing.” The quotes from service members about the Taliban laughing after the bombing did not appear in the HFAC report.

Why does that sniper or Lt. Col. Whited have to carry the burden of shame?

Who is McKenzie helping to cover here? Milley, Sullivan, Blinken, Austin, Biden? I’m all about, “Aye, aye, three bags full.” I’ve carried out to the best of my ability orders I thought were garbage, but I am under no obligation in retirement to say they were good or even moral acts (NB: see Clinton’s embargo of Haiti). If he is trying to cover for himself, I’m sorry. No reason to. No ability to.

If we have to wait until the crack of doom for someone to step forward to offer the full story toward accountability or we have some other long-drawn-out process toward just being very clear about what happened, then fine. Everyone will just have to get used to Jerry, me, and other every late-AUG/early-SEP digging up the story and run it up the flagpole again. Don’t care if others don’t care. I do. I don't care if other people want to move on. I don't. Without accountability that is no justice. Without the end of lies, they will grow into greater lies. I won't be part of that.

As I took a break Monday night from pounding this out, Jerry put this up on X.

As I’ve mentioned SEPCOR, I have Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, USMC (Ret) book The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century, on hold (~5 weeks. I’m 17th in line for 8 books) at my library. Tom Ricks indirectly shamed me into giving it a read…though I decided to go the audio book route as the “return by” date keeps me on it, and I can’t throw it against the wall.

In FEB 2021, half a year prior to the fall of Kabul, I wrote the following.

It is easy to say, "We need new elites." but we do.

If we will continue to insist on pulling people from the same intellectually inbred lines, we should at least hold them to account and make them address their shortcomings.

Yes, the Afghans failed themselves, but we did not help them all that much either. We damaged our own - and their - opportunity after the events of almost 20-years ago.

We will repeat those errors again, somewhere else, if we do not look at how we failed - who led that failure - and the ideas that drove their failure - with clear eyes.

Fear. Shame. Humility.

We are lacking, still, in all three.

There is so much more to the story. Read Jerry’s article in full. There is so much more there.

Don’t forget, his book that came out two years ago, Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End, has yet to be matched.

If you didn’t catch his visit to the Midrats Podcast about it, give it a listen.

• 800,000—the number of Americans who served with the U.S. military in Afghanistan since 2001.

• 2,461—the number of American military personnel who died in Afghanistan, including the 13 brave Americans who were killed by ISIS-K as they facilitated the evacuation of more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan over the course of 17 days.

• 66,000—the number of Afghan National Security Forces killed in the conflict.

• 47,245—the number of Afghan civilians killed since 2001.

That is what we owe honesty and candor to.