Pentagon Is In CYA Mode As The Situation In Afghanistan Deteriorates With Each Passing Day

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, will take over for General Miller at least through August.Credit...Phil Stewart/Reuters 

 New York Times: Pentagon Seeks to Soften Blow of U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan  

Keeping the top commander in the country longer is part of an effort to reassure Afghans as the Taliban step up their offensive. 

WASHINGTON — When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III convened his military brain trust last Thursday on a classified videoconference for an update on Afghanistan, commanders had reason to feel positive. 

The American troop drawdown that President Biden ordered in April was complete — two months ahead of schedule. The last combat forces would exit the military’s hub at Bagram Air Base overnight, leaving just 650 troops to help secure the United States Embassy in Kabul and Kabul International Airport. There was even talk that the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, would leave for good in a few days. 

But reality steadily intruded in the days leading up to Mr. Austin’s meeting with General Miller; Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command. The Afghan Army was reeling from a series of defeats in battles against the Taliban. The Afghan Air Force faced grounding without contractor support that was scheduled to end. And Mr. Biden’s plan to relocate thousands of Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces in an effort to keep them safe had stalled. 

With the White House’s blessing, Mr. Austin, a retired four-star Army general who oversaw the American troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, ordered a series of steps to slow the pace of the final withdrawal from America’s longest war. The measures would buy some time to soften the drawdown’s psychological shock to the Afghans, and to extend at least through August an American security umbrella that no longer had any combat troops, equipment or bases in the country.  

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WNU Editor: This New York Times post is an eye-opener. The Pentagon is admitting that what they are doing in Afghanistan right now is all about optics. But the problem is that the Pentagon is fooling no one. The Taliban don't care what the U.S. is doing. The Afghans who relied on the U.S. for support are now realizing that the US is no longer there and they are panicking. And all the reassurances from President Biden that the U.S. will support the Afghan people and its government ring more and more hollow with each passing day as the Taliban advance and the Afghan Army disintegrates in front of our eyes.

I do not know when it is going to happen. But one day there is going to be an accounting on how the Pentagon conducted this war, and why all of their reassurances and predictions that they fed Congress, the media, and the American people fell apart in the end.