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ANALYSIS | Kabul terror attack highlights Biden's dilemma in Afghanistan

2021-08-27T06:50:02.100Z


America's longest war is ending as it began, with the nation mourning the death of a terrorist attack and an outraged president vowing to hunt down the culprits in Afghanistan.


Biden on Kabul: Those ISIS-K Terrorists Won't Win 4:21

(CNN) - America's

longest war is ending as it began, with the nation mourning the death of a terrorist attack and an outraged president vowing to hunt down the culprits in Afghanistan.

The bloody coda of 20 tortuous years - the loss of 13 American soldiers and dozens of Afghans in explosions outside the Kabul airport on Thursday - exemplified human tragedy and the ultimate futility of a conflict that failed in its central purpose: to purge the Afghan soil of terrorism. In a cruel irony, the last Americans to die perished in an attack conceived on the same ground as Al Qaeda's assault on September 11, 2001, sparking the war they were trying to abandon.

The atrocity, believed to have been carried out by the Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K, rocked the final stages of the frenzied U.S. evacuation of up to 1,000 Americans who may still be in the country, as well as thousands of Afghans who aided US forces and officials and fear executions by the Taliban if they fall behind.

  • Afghanistan, minute by minute: at least 13 US servicemen killed in Kabul;

    Biden issues warning to those responsible

It also cast a harsh light on President Joe Biden's decision-making and the chaotic nature of the US withdrawal that left American soldiers and civilians so vulnerable in the confusing and chaotic days after the Taliban took over Kabul.

The most alarming conclusion after the carnage was that there could be more to come before the deadline for the United States to leave for good on Tuesday.

Gen. Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, who heads the US Central Command, warned that new threats from ISIS-K, possibly related to vehicle missiles or suicide bombs, could be imminent.

That means the next four days will be among the most tense and dangerous of the entire war for US forces.

And there is a terrible possibility that the country's latest casualty from the first post-9/11 war has not yet died.

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In a moment of national tragedy, nations turn to their leaders. Biden, who spent much of the day in the White House Situation Room, left in the late afternoon for a televised address. Torn between pain and determination, he vowed revenge. "We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt them down and make them pay," the president told the terrorists in remarks that mostly seemed aimed at projecting force to Americans at home.

"We will respond with force and precision in our moment, in the place we choose and at the time we choose," said the president. Biden's withdrawal marks the symbolic reversal of America's arrival in Afghanistan launched after 9/11 and the strategy of fielding soldiers in foreign states to fight terrorism.

But ironically, his promise of revenge mirrored that made by former President George W. Bush days after the world's worst terrorist attacks.

"This conflict started at the time and on the terms of others; it will end in the way and at the time we choose," Bush said at a prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington.

The similarity reflected the truth that American presidents, despite all the power of their nation now somewhat drained by a grueling two-decade war, can be uniquely challenged by terrorism, an asymmetric threat that cannot defeat the United States but It can hurt and threaten you into perpetual conflict.

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Some things in Biden's speech don't add up

Biden: Military killed in attacks in Kabul are heroes 3:17

Biden's speech on Thursday was marked by several contradictions.

First, his promise to "complete the mission" of extracting from the country all the remaining Americans and Afghans who assisted US forces seems impossible, given that he does not plan to extend the deadline for the withdrawal last Tuesday.

His talk of continuing to try to get friends out of the United States after American soldiers leave seemed to confirm that he understands the impossibility of completing that mission in four days.

But getting Afghans out of the country without having American forces will be even more difficult.

Second, Biden's ability to forcefully counter ISIS-K will be much more difficult without American forces on the ground, or anywhere close to Afghanistan.

His promise will be a first real test of what he calls "over the horizon" capabilities, presumably using air power or missile-armed drones, to ensure that Afghanistan does not once again become a terrorist haven that could threaten the security of the United States.

It also means that US operations in the country are not ending, but are changing.

"We may be leaving Afghanistan. We are not abandoning Afghanistan, the terrorist fight and the counterterrorism effort continue," CNN terrorism, intelligence and national security analyst Juliette Kayyem said Thursday night.

  • The Taliban's reconquest of Afghanistan has sparked fears of a resurgence of al Qaeda and ISIS

At least, the attacks exemplified the dilemma Biden faced when his allies asked him to extend the deadline.

By leaving, he may not be able to pull all Americans and thousands of Afghan allies out of the clutches of the Taliban.

But staying would expose US forces to even greater danger.

The attacks also exposed the extreme weakness of the US position in Afghanistan.

After fighting the Taliban for 20 years, US forces now rely on the same inexperienced insurgents to provide security to prevent terrorist attackers from reaching the Kabul airport, an arrangement that failed disastrously before the attacks.

But the president insisted that it was not a mistake to rely on the help of America's enemies.

"It is not what one would call a strictly regulated operation like the US military is, but they are acting in their interests," he told reporters after his speech.

The second attack Thursday on a hotel near the airport gate, which had been used to unify some refugees, likely shut down that method of getting people to the airport compound. This is another blow to the planning and management of the administration of an evacuation that ended up depending on an airport in the middle of an unsecured urban area in one of the most lawless cities in one of the most failed states in the world. The tragedy is already raising scrutiny for another decision: to leave the vast old US base at the Bagram airlift, and critics now wonder if there were ever enough forces in the country to effect a safe and efficient withdrawal.

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An alliance between the US and the Taliban to confront ISIS-K, is it viable?

2:00

Biden's leadership questioned

For 10 chaotic days, Biden's defenders have accused those who have criticized his performance of trying to burden him with the failures of three previous presidents and disastrous decisions that lost the war years ago.

Tragically, the point of their conversation - that no American soldier had died in the effort - is now questionable and he always showed little appreciation for the hugely dangerous environment within Afghanistan.

It is true that many of the ex-officers and military experts on television who criticize Biden's leadership are exactly the people whose strategic decisions failed when they worked for various administrations.

And Biden received a difficult hand from former President Donald Trump, who had negotiated an even earlier exit from Afghanistan, and whose marginalization from the government in Kabul helped precipitate the collapse of the Afghan state.

It is also ironic that Biden, who was always one of Washington's most skeptical leaders of the nation-building project in Afghanistan, ends up bearing the burden of the consequences of the eventual exit from the United States.

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    Within the effort of volunteers day and night to save Afghans

But Biden also ran for office in 2020 on a competition platform and called himself a foreign policy expert. It's hard to look at the debacle of the last few days and see those qualities in action. Most of Biden's televised predictions, that the Taliban would not suddenly take over Kabul and that there would be no Saigon-style exit for the United States, were wrong. And now he seems vulnerable to Republican accusations of weakness and faltering leadership that may not be entirely fair given the impossibility of his options in Afghanistan, but pose a real political danger ahead of the midterm elections.

However, a moment of grief and emotion is never a good time for political predictions, and the images of defeat and horror in Kabul may be processed by the American people as validation of their decision to finally bring all American soldiers home. . While the hawks criticize him for pulling out of the war, there is a historical precedent to suggest that he may be on firmer political ground. President Ronald Reagan withdrew US forces from Lebanon in early 1984, months after 241 US troops were killed in a bombardment of a US Marine Corps barracks and won a landslide reelection victory later that year. .

"Joe Biden has a very intuitive sense of the American people. He understands that there is a lot of American support from both Republicans and Democrats to reduce America's intervention in the world," Timothy Naftali, presidential historian at New York University, told Erin Burnett of CNN.

"One of the things he's betting on is that the American people will accept a brief period of chaos as a down payment for a more sustainable future American position in the world."

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Up to this point, Biden was asked in the White House if, after Thursday's horror, he regretted his decision to go ahead with Trump's withdrawal.

"Our interest in going there was to prevent al Qaeda from resurfacing, first to catch Osama bin Laden, to end al Qaeda in Afghanistan, to prevent that from happening again," Biden said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it was time to end a 20-year war."

Naftali, however, warned that a large part of Biden's legacy would hinge on whether terrorists with the power to attack the United States will find a new refuge in the lawless atmosphere of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

And as demonstrated on Thursday, presidents, for all their power, are often held hostage to horrific events beyond their control.

Joe biden

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-08-27

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