Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Dereliction of Duty: U.S. military leaders refused to plan
In a gross dereliction of duty, senior American military officers refused to plan for an orderly, complete exit. There is no other construction that can reasonably be put on what we have watched unfold in Afghanistan. Continuous planning for contingencies is at the heart of U.S. military staff training. Senior staffs have dedicated future operations or planning cells, focused on the future while other staff members help the commander exercise command and control in the present. At latest, planning for an orderly withdrawal should have started the moment President Trump was elected in 2016, having campaigned on ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.
American senior staffs, like their counterparts around the world, have long generated plans for all manner of likely and unlikely eventualities. We even had a “Plan Red” in the early 1900s, when color codes indicated different potential opponents around the world. Joint Basic Plan Red, coordinated between the Army and Navy, was our plan for a war with the British Empire. No, we did not have a faction itching for a war with the leading naval power. Rather, the War Department and Department of the Navy used the Joint Planning Board to generate plans useful for exercises, at least.
President Biden gave a clear directive in March 2021 that U.S. forces would fully withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. He then made the deadline slightly earlier for political optics. The generals came in with their objections and warnings about leaving Afghanistan, and were told there would be no more extensions. From that moment, the joint staffs, from Afghanistan to the Pentagon, had a professional obligation to generate at least one viable option to realize the Commander-in-Chief’s intent.
Our military has long experience, plenty of examples and lessons learned, with both military and noncombatant evacuation operations (NEO).
Noncombatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) is the ordered (mandatory) or authorized (voluntary) departure of civilian noncombatants and nonessential military personnel from danger in an overseas country to a designated safe haven, typically within the continental United States. Overseas evacuations could occur under a variety of circumstances, including civil unrest, military uprisings, environmental concerns, and natural disasters. The Department of State (DOS) recommends an evacuation, and the Department of the Army—as the Department of Defense (DOD) Executive Agent for repatriation (RE-PAT) planning and operations—coordinates the execution of NEO.
News reports communicated chaos in the final evacuation of U.S. personnel and designated at-risk Vietnamese from Saigon. The American public’s view was of a UH-1 Huey helicopter on the embassy roof, with civilians covering the roof below and a ladder up to the aircraft’s skids. We also saw a helicopter being pushed off the side of an aircraft carrier deck, the deck covered with refugees.
In truth, there was a carefully designed and rehearsed plan, Operation Urgent Wind, that was executed aggressively. A naval armada floated in helicopter range of Saigon, and a massive assembly of helicopters prepared to swarm over the coast. Island way stations were planned and prepared behind this front line, allowing slack in onward movement to the United States mainland. Marines at Camp Pendleton, Calif. even had male and female volunteers role play, helping rehearse in-processing waves of refugees.
When our military slipped out of Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, that piece of our withdrawal had to have been war-gamed, with some staff raising the obvious risks of danger to our noncombatants, and to accelerated Taliban advances. The current cluster fumble features thousands of military personnel flown in after things went poorly, musical command chairs the top Army general leaving last week, and the shocking claim that we really do not know how many American civilians are in Afghanistan. Taken together, the situation shouts willful failure.
The situation smacks of arrogant senior officers throwing a fit at not being allowed to continue their permanent contingency operations. They expect to avoid any punishment, any loss of prestige and opportunity, while weakening the Commander-in-Chief’s hold over their bureaucracies. Bill Clinton got blamed for Mogadishu, not the generals, so why not weaken the current president? This is not about Republicans or Democrats. Rather, it is about accountable elected leadership versus an unelected, apparently unaccountable expert class.
Just as Camp Pendleton and other bases received Vietnamese and other Southwest Asian refugees in 1975, so Fort Lee, Va. has already received a first wave of refugees, with Fort McCoy, Wis. and Fort Bliss, Texas alerted to receive up to 22,000 refugees. The reception and temporary housing of refugees is well developed. Exit of military forces from a theater of operations, even with hostile forces in close contact, is a matter of long-established doctrine. NEO is not new.
The notion that the massive military staffs, from the Beltway to Afghanistan, never managed to generate a plan to safely evacuate U.S. personnel and designated refugees, and to then self-extract in an orderly manner is unbelievable. No one, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the commanding generals in Afghanistan, should still have their stars today. Retire them all tomorrow, at the last rank where they demonstrated competence and faithful service.
Published in Foreign Policy
I really don’t believe they don’t know the number of legitimate evacuees. They would rather look incompetent and ship an invasion to Red states.
Absolutely correct. Now that Senile Traitor Joe has publicly told the American Public that we will get everyone out, there is absolutely no excuse for not being ready, particularly since they all knew there was a date certain for the withdrawal. To be ready for such an event is almost job one and it’s not like no one was concerned that this withdrawal would become the debacle it has.
Summary court martials with some nice prison time , not just retirement, for all the Generals and Officer Corps involved as well as all the Joint Chiefs are in order. Americans will die and have died because of their refusal to protect our troops and our interests so there needs to be some pretty harsh consequences for their actions.
One other thing. Reports that Biden is considering ordering airlines to assist in evacuation. We have MAC that has absolute capacity to move these people. However, much more convenient to stuff refugees in strategic locations around the country if you use the airlines. And NGO’s who are on the Gov tit to assist putting them in neighborhoods and schools.
The what are we to believe? That it was poor execution of a good plan? Or, maybe that there is something nefarious like Operation Enduring Humiliation designed to further destroy America’s institutions.
David Fox, an American trapped in Kabul it’s claiming that the State Department sent out blank US visas, which were printed and filled out by anyone and everyone in Kabul, including the Taliban.
Well, the FBI and the rest of the Justice Department demonstrated that there are no negative consequences for dereliction of duty, so the military is simply following precedent. No one will resign, and no one will suffer any punishment for failure to carry out their responsibilities.
They haven’t been able to vet the Americans stuck in Afghanistan for disloyalty such as climate denialism, vaccine hesitancy, white nationalism or Trumpism so maybe they’re classified as too dangerous to bring back.
CDR Salamander:
That’s the optimistic view.
Maybe they didn’t fail.
Maybe the intelligence and the State Department establishments succeeded. Not too many whistleblowers so far, so maybe the Vindmans are running the bureaucracies now.
Maybe this is how Milley keeps the Trump insurrection down.
The dude planning Fyre Festival did a better job.
I am willing to bet those “plans” never made it past the “Course of Action (COA)” stage. Further I am willing to bet that the people who would plan those things never did a proper COA Analysis and Wargaming.
Then again – perhaps they did, but their planning guidance never included the NEO portion – just the military abandonment and evacuation of Bagram. Likely, when asked, told to “assume” those other things were taken care of by “other means”.
The State Department maintains the F-77 report that lists all of the potential evacuees. I learned about those when we had to plan a NEO as a class exercise. When checking if F-77 was an unclassified term I found this GAO report from over ten years ago on how to improve evacuation planning.
I deployed to the Air Force Central strategy division in 2013. We were responsible for planning for the commander. We didn’t do a lot with Afghanistan. They had their own command staff in country. I do remember reading a report on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. I can’t remember if it was an intercepted Soviet report or an intelligence community assessment. For awhile we were looking at how to get out. It didn’t get far and we were told the other guys would do it. The Soviets did have the advantage of being able to drive across the border.
I believe this would be under current law giving more passenger lift to the Air Force through the Civil Reserve Airfleet.
These aircraft would fly to Ft. Bliss, Fort McCoy, or Dulles, with busses to Fort Lee.
From CTH
And, says Sundance, the DoS plays for Team Obama while the Senate, stemming from the Select Committee on Intelligence, is functionally an arm of the intelligence apparatus.
That would make this two presidents in a row that the intelligence community is working to take out. The operation against Gen. Flynn and the coup against Trump also involved British intelligence.
Biden is a creation of the deep state. Why would they want to replace him? With Kamala?
Added: Or then again, maybe it doesn’t matter one way or the other to them. I guess the CIA is deflecting blame for the military’s passive-aggressive withdrawal to the Pentagon and the White House.
His polling is dropping like a stone. (Ipsos: +8 to -3 in a week; Susquehanna on the people polled in the last 3 days only 38% approval for Biden) AND: Meanwhile, a recent Economist poll shows that the percentage of Hispanic US citizens who think the economy is “excellent” was 0.0%.
Plan A is probably going to be to try and turn that around, but sooner or later he won’t be viable (perhaps literally.)
Kamala as President loses the sure thing tiebreaker in the Senate, which is needed for the Dems to pass their economy wrecking bills. Her successor as VP needs a majority in both houses to be able to replace her with another safe tiebreaker. Just guessing, but if the IC thinks they can guarantee a suitable VP’s confirmation, the clock is ticking on Biden. Right now, he’ll make a great fall guy on Afghanistan, the border and the economy.
I am sure it’s already been mentioned, but they also left behind billions of dollars of brand new military hardware. Our military evacuation plan was as follows:
As you mentioned Clifford, our military has a special force tasked with evacuations under every conceivable condition. You have put the onus on the military command and rightly so. I question also the civilian authority, which is the highest command, as well. Everyone blew it. It is appalling to hear Biden blame this disaster on his predecessor. He is so weak!
The late Boss Mongo’s take on one of these “military leaders.”
These are not soldiers, they barely qualify as men. Just more bureaucrats acting on behalf of our politicians that do not have to suffer the consequences that an elected official would.
Yup. No matter who was President, they wanted what they wanted. The military mutinied against Trump, part of the larger executive mutiny. Againt accountable elected leadership.
I understand that other people don’t see it, or don’t see it that way, and I know that no amount of argument will convince them (that’s not how argument works). So I don’t bang on past the first few beats.
What a world we live in.
Where are the resignations?
If Milley et. al. did not anticipate this, they should resign. If Biden did this against their advice, they should resign.
These people have no honor.
And why there are no resignations.
The best word to describe Vindman is the Boss’ own “pogue” or even, “REMF” – he isn’t a leader.
“When our military slipped out of Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, that piece of our withdrawal had to have been war-gamed, with some staff raising the obvious risks of danger to our noncombatants, and to accelerated Taliban advances.”
The degree to which potential issues will surface in a war-gaming exercise is very dependent on the organizational culture. Prior to WWI, it was known in the German Army that in war games that involved the Kaiser, you’d better let him win.
I doubt that we have anything quite that blatant in the American military today, but we do have a lot of senior officers who lives and breathe politics and who are likely to skew things in the directions that they think are favored by their political masters.
Nah, in the Joint Operational Planning Process wargaming doesn’t work that way.
Here is a short primer. Wargaming in the JOPP is a tool to identify strengths and weaknesses of a Course of Action. The participants are Blue (the guys that came up with the COA) and Red (either an established Red Team, or an ad Hoc one that covers intel, ops and the other warfighting functions from the enemy perspective). What happens is that the participants are brought together and some agreed upon method is adopted to perform the game and everyone gets a worksheet. The order of go depends on which side is expected to take the initiative first. The intent is to see Blue actions at least moves deep. So if blue is going to execute first the order would go Action(Blue) -Reaction(Red) -Counteraction(Blue). If Red has the initiative then it goes Action(Red) – Action(Blue) – Reaction(Red) – Counteraction(Blue)
Generally you play the wargame at least twice (one covering the Most Likely Enemy COA and once against the Enemy Most Dangerous COA).
During the wargame, the Participants are seeing where their plan is strong and where it needs more work – then the COA is taken back to the drawing board to clear up weaknesses or gaps in planning.
There isn’t a winner or loser per se.
Just posted this on another thread…but felt that y’all should be subjected to it as well:
Just watched today’s (Sunday’s) Idiot Biden news conference.
Reporters still allowed him to lie and not press him on the way in which the withdrawal was conducted and let him blather on about bringing the decision to end the 20-year war.
Then, this doddering @#$%^&* genius said that China and Russia wanted nothing better than see America bogged down in Afghanistan. Was America bogged down in the last 4 years? With 2,500 forces and a secure and working military airbase at Bagram? Really? Bogged down? Was it wise to completely eliminate any presence in a country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and a nuclear Iran on the verge of developing nuclear warheads? Really?
Was it wise to let this moron claim that the Taliban and al Qaeda are now much weaker than in 2001 when they just blitzkrieged their way through the damn country and seized virtually all the provinces, the provincial capitals and Kabul in a matter of a few days? Weaker? Really?
Are the Taliban really that much weaker when the Idiot Biden has just gifted them billions of dollars of sophisticated military equipment including electronic targeting systems, Blackhawk helicopters, Humvees, weapons, ammunition? Perhaps we should have that discussion. Will the press ever grow a pair and ask this fool about any of that?
The other genius, Geraldo Rivera, stated that the Taliban won’t be able to run the country because they don’t have any cash or the technical know-how to keep the power grid up or telecommunications going. Well, that’s pretty much what their friends the Pakistanis and the Chinese are for. And the average Afghan citizen won’t have access to the internet or phones from now on but the Taliban will.
I am so disgusted with White House press corps to let this moron get away with his lies and his claims. We are being led by a highly dangerous moron. Our allies around the world should take extra measures for their security because this idiot and his administration don’t know @#$%^&.
They ran it for 11-12 years after the Soviet withdrawal. Geraldo is an idiot (and blowhard) and a perfect example of how Joe Biden can be selected President.
Don’t forget: Rush often said that the media/tech industrial complex is the dog and the Dems are the tail. They covered up what they knew to put Xi Bai Den in office, they’re going to do the best damage control they can. The tech oligarchs and the intel establishment want backdoored Chinese hardware and social credit scores.
For a very readable and safely historical fictional account of Westerners in pre-Sun Yat Sen China, with a side order of how Chinese might compromise Westerners, read Andrew Wareham’s The Earl’s Other Son series, and also Foreign Mud (aka opium,) the second (and I hope not the last) volume of Nobody’s Child.
For a more rococo look at immensely powerful people written by man who was partly raised in China, was Sun Yat Sen’s godson (his father was a close advisor to Sun Yat Sen,) and wrote a pioneering text on psychological warfare, read Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality of Man stories. Real name Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger:
From Ace:
I am wondering if they were ordered to ‘stand down’ by POTUS?
That was an incredibly eye-opening interview with Mark Levin:https://www.marklevinshow.com/2017/06/07/marks-interview-with-colonel-richard-kemp/