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Blinken went back to the Taliban through intermediaries in Doha, Qatar, with the proposal of delaying the U.S. withdrawal.
The Taliban rejected it, saying that if the U.S. sought to delay when May 1 rolled around, if not sooner, the Taliban would start attacking U.S. forces and provincial capitals.
That was the last thing Biden wanted. New U.S. casualties after a one-year hiatus under Trump could be a political disaster.
Blinken shifted again, concluding that the 3,500 U.S. troops were a bare minimum and not sufficient leverage with the Taliban. While 10,000 U.S. troops might have provided that leverage, Blinken couldn’t prove it.
Biden reminded Blinken that six years ago, in 2015, when Biden was vice president, they were in the Situation Room debating whether to extend the U.S. troop commitment.
Military leaders had made the case they needed to extend for another year. They said the last remaining piece to make the Afghanistan military self-sufficient and stand on its own feet was putting in place their ability to build supply lines and conduct aircraft maintenance. And that was supposed to take one year more.
“That was six years ago,” Biden reminded Blinken and it still had not happened. “Six years ago!”
There was no better example of the military hiding the gold watch. Blinken consulted with some of the former secretaries of state. It’s a very informal club. One asked, “Do people remember who was running Afghanistan on September 10, 2001, the day before the terrorist attacks? It was the Taliban. They’d been in charge for five years. Was the United States about to go to war to take down the Taliban because we didn’t like what they were doing? No. Why now?”
“We didn’t go to Afghanistan to make it a Jeffersonian democracy,” Blinken finally concluded.
Austin also agreed the 3,500 U.S. troops was not sufficient leverage. By early April 2021, with Blinken and Austin back supporting the full withdrawal, Biden told his advisers he had decided to do just that. U.S. ground forces would leave by at least September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
He said no one had really told him the situation would be different in a year or two or three years. He said he saw a higher risk in staying than leaving. It came down to, if not now, when? There were too many maybes. Maybe it will get better. Maybe we could turn the corner. Maybe this, maybe that. The Al Qaeda threat had been significantly degraded, if not eliminated in Afghanistan, but the terrorism threat had shifted to other regions of the Middle East. The clear danger zones were in Somalia and in Iran.
Biden noted that his predecessors had wanted out. Obama had wanted out, Biden said, and Trump had wanted out and the easy decision was to keep some troops there.
“There’s an easy way here and there’s a reason we still have troops in Afghanistan. The easier call is just to punt,” he said. “I didn’t become president to do the easy thing.”
But Biden said he did not know what would come next. The outcome was unclear, he acknowledged.
His decision and orders were not reduced to a single document, a traditional NSM, or National Security Memorandum. Secretary Austin transmitted military draw-down requirements to the commanders. Instead, a series of memos called SOCs, Summaries of Conclusions, summarized the meetings and specified the requirements for building over-the-horizon capability and also continuing the U.S. embassy presence in Kabul.
Biden told his advisers the decision was hard. But Sullivan did not think Biden anguished over it. Biden seemed at peace with his choice.
“What we can do is put ourselves in the best position to deal with the terrorist threat,” Biden said, “and through our support, put the Afghan national defense and security force and the Afghan government in the best position to meet the threat from within Afghanistan.”
Chairman Milley thought the review had been fair and open. “U.S. participation on the ground in this war in Afghanistan is ending,” Milley said to his senior staff. “The question: Is this war over for America?” Milley’s answer was similar to Biden’s. It is too early to tell, and it was difficult to forecast the outcome.
Though he could see potentially gruesome and destabilizing outcomes, he felt comfortable that his advice was not taken. “Just because the general recommends it, doesn’t make it right. The president has a much wider-angle view.”
Milley spoke to the Joint Chiefs in the Tank about the issue of the president’s authority to make the final national security decisions.
“Here’s some thoughts for us to think about as the senior leaders of the military,” Milley said. “You’re dealing with a president who was the vice president under Obama and the guys like Blinken and Sullivan and all these other guys. These guys were all in the second and third tier positions in the Obama administration. And all of them have a searing memory of the first year of Obama.” That was when the military and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strong-armed Obama to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to the Afghanistan War.
“I was a colonel at the time and Mullen was the chairman and I was in the basement. I was a witness to some of this. Admiral Mullen, McChrystal and Petraeus, the uniform guys, had tried to box in a president, a new, young president from Chicago that maybe, I can’t read minds, they thought they could take advantage of and box him in on a surge in Afghanistan.
“Here’s what I take from that as Colonel Milley. Here’s a couple of rules of the road here that we’re going to follow. One is you never, ever ever box in a president of the United States. You always give him decision space. Number two, you don’t play cute and you don’t give your advice on the front page of The Washington Post. And you don’t, you damn sure don’t give it in speeches. You just don’t do that. You give candid, honest advice. You give it in private and you give it to the president, you know, face-to-face or through professional documents. We don’t play games. That’s not what we do as a military. We don’t undermine the president. We don’t box a president in. That’s the rules that we play by. It’s that simple. And if someone can’t abide by those, they’re going to be gone.”
On Biden, Milley said, “You’re dealing with a seasoned politician here who has been in Washington, D.C., 50 years, whatever it is. The reason that a lot of the tight decision making took place in the Obama administration and it shifted to the White House is because of that negative first year and there was a breach of trust. And that’s why you get, you know, the complaints from the generals during the Obama administration about micromanagement.”
Austin and Milley decided to expedite the withdrawal because it would be safer for the U.S troops. They hoped all troops would come home by mid-July. A visitor to Austin’s office said he found the new secretary “scared to death” that a terrorist strike might originate from Afghanistan someday.
“When someone writes a book about this war,” Ron Klain said to others, “it’s going to begin on September 11, 2001, and it’s going to end on the day Joe Biden said, ‘We’re coming home.’ ”
As a practical matter, Biden was abandoning Afghanistan to civil war and potential collapse, but Klain, at one of the final meetings, said it was essential that the American families who sacrificed in the war, especially those who lost loved ones, not feel that Biden was turning his back on them. After making a public announcement of the withdrawal decision, Biden should personally visit Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery and pay his respects to those who had given their lives to the mission, Klain recommended. And make sure the families saw him.
Biden gave a 16-minute address to the nation on April 14. Instead of the high drama of an evening Oval Office address, he spoke from the Treaty Room in the afternoon.
“I’m now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats,” he said. “I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.
“For the past 12 years, ever since I became vice president, I’ve carried with me a card that reminds me of the exact number of American troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. That exact number, not an approximation or rounded-off number, because every one of those dead are sacred human beings who left behind entire families. An exact accounting of every single solitary one needs to be had.
“As of this day, 2,448 U.S. troops and personnel have died in our Afghanistan conflicts, 20,722 have been wounded.
“It’s time to end the forever war,” he said.
Biden then visited Arlington National Cemetery and, wearing his mask, walked alone through Section 60 where the dead from Afghanistan and Iraq are buried.
“I have trouble these days even showing up at a cemetery and not thinking of my son Beau,” Biden said. He turned to the hundreds of white tombstones, extended his arms, and said, “Look at them all.”
Lindsey Graham was furious with both Biden and Trump, given the final decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. He believed both did not recognize the full consequences.
“I hate Joe Biden for this,” Graham said. “I hate Trump. I’ve lost all respect for Biden. I’ve lost a lot of respect for Trump,” who tried to get all the U.S. troops out but faced massive resistance from his military leadership.
Graham, who had made more than two dozen trips to Afghanistan in the last 20 years, believed he knew more about the conflict than anyone in Congress, and more than most in the military.
The problem, Graham said, was, “Radical Islam cannot be accommodated. It cannot be appeased. The Taliban is a radical Islamic movement, inconsistent with any of the values that we hold near and dear. That is oppressive to women, completely intolerant of religious diversity, and would take Afghanistan back to the 11th century if they could. All I can say is that a movement like this eventually will come back to haunt us.
“We thought that the Taliban were just a bunch of nut jobs. But the Taliban is a regional, radical Islamic movement that doesn’t have extraterritorial designs, but that creates a permissive environment for international terrorism. They will create instability so Al Qaeda can come back.
“I think the Taliban is going to give safe haven to people that will come after us.
“We gave up the best listening post you could ever have regarding international terrorism,” he said, “which are the CIA bases along the Afghan–Pakistan border.”
But he said he understood. “The American people want us to come home. People are tired.
“I fear for Pakistan’s stability because of Afghanistan going south. But there will be a civil war. Women in certain parts of the country will fall into very dangerous hands and the entire shit show will play out on American television. Biden and Trump will be seen as having given life to the movement that created 9/11.”
Graham said he had a more fundamental objective. “My job is to maintain what’s left of the John McCain wing of the Republican Party, the Ronald Reagan wing of the Republican Party that believes that America is an indispensable leader. That we will sacrifice whatever it takes to maintain our security and values throughout the world. That this idea that you can withdraw from over there and be safe over here is folly. That if you don’t understand the best way to protect America is to be involved in the enemy’s backyard in partnership with people who reject radical Islam, you’re an idiot.”
If there is no Afghanistan rescue effort, Graham said, “The translators and all the people who came to our aid to fight for their country are going to be slaughtered. It’s going to be a stain on our honor. That’s what I believe.”
Retired General David Petraeus, who had commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan and been the modern architect of the counterinsurgency strategy Biden loathed, immediately blasted the decision.
“Are we really going to allow major cities to fall to the Taliban?
“I do expect a civil war that will be brutal, bloody and have all the terrible manifestations of uncivil war.
“We have an administration that talks about bringing back support for democracy and human rights. Well, so much for that. Here’s a place where we actually can be defending it and where the alternative is pretty bleak. And we’re not willing to maintain 3,500 troops? It shows that the support for democracy, human rights, women’s rights is hollow.”
The over-the-horizon surveillance and attack capability was a fiction. “Drone flights would be six to eight hours and drones aren’t refuelable in the air. This is dire stuff. And it’s not worth 3,500 troops?
“A major, tragic mistake,” he said, “reflecting ignorance of the importance of U.S. forces on the ground and surveillance from fixed wing aircraft, close air support, and other intelligence platforms. It will be like Saigon 1975 when helicopters evacuated the last Americans from Vietnam. Only this time it will be helicopters rescuing Americans from the roof of the American embassy in Kabul just before the fall 2022 House and Senate elections.”
Former President George W. Bush said publically Biden’s decision was a mistake. “I’m afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm.”
Biden did not expect to see on television and in the newspapers so much critical commentary. People who had been clamoring to end the longest war were now fixated on the future of various groups in Afghanistan, including women and girls.
To him, they seemed to have pivoted from “we’ve got to end this war” to “what are we going to do about these people?” There was a lot of piling on. Several days after the announcement, Blinken and Sullivan were with the president in the Oval Office.
Though the decision was made, Blinken could see that Biden was still struggling with the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t nature of the decision.
“Mr. President,” Blinken said, trying to provide some comfort, “this was an incredibly hard decision.” It was done in the presidential style. “I admire the fact that you made it.” As they had discussed, he could have ducked it as his predecessors had. But it had been made eyes wide open.
Biden was standing by the Resolute Desk. Blinken could see the president was still carrying the burden of the decision. Presidents lived in the world of the suboptimal.
Standing there alone, the president lightly tapped the desk.
“Yeah,” Biden said, “the buck really does stop here.”