by Victor Davis Hanson
The fall of Kabul is not the end, as Joe Biden seems to think, of the Afghanistan nightmare.
It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.
In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 servicemen, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.
On the very day of the killing of Americans, the command sergeant major of the U.S. Army callously reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength in commemorating not the dead, but Women’s Equality Day.
If so, then is the opposite of diversity—unity—our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram airbase in the middle of the night without opposition?
Recently the Office of Naval Intelligence, in reaction to the Kabul news, warned all its active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize their Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.
That is true. And indeed, the U.S. Marine Corps just relieved from active duty a lieutenant colonel who posted a video accurately blaming the military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.
But until January 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander-in-chief with impunity.
Recently retired General Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific slur that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump’s border facilities to the German death camps.
Other generals and admirals in 2020 variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving to be removed from office sooner than later. None of these retired politicized four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.
Fifty retired intelligence officials on the eve of the November balloting signed a letter preposterously suggesting that Hunter Biden’s missing laptop—his third to be lost—and its incriminating contents might be “Russian disinformation.” They used their stature and positions for political purposes to convince the American people that a true story was a lie.
Recently retired General Joseph Dunford and Admiral Mike Mullen have blasted retired top brass who had questioned Biden’s cognitive ability.
Again, OK. But they should have issued that warning earlier when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in the election year 2020.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley apologized for doing a photo-op with President Trump, erroneously buying into the lie that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture.
Yet the politicized Milley never offered a correction of his first apology. Worse, Milley leaked to toady journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he “considered” resigning.
Think of that irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could now consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.
A busy Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi’s racialist diatribes.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin likewise vowed an internal audit of military personnel to chase the phantoms of white supremacy. Does Austin also profile his targets by their being “overrepresented” in terms of the dead in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.
The Pentagon needs to stop virtue signaling about diversity days, culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees, and rooting out supposed white conspiracists.
Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram Air Base was abandoned by night? Why suddenly are the terrorist Taliban our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?
Which general allowed over $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban—a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers?
Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?
Who left behind 7,000 biometric scanners that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?
Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people—along with the wars it fights abroad.
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Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won and The Case for Trump.
As ususal the dems (communists) have circled the wagons around another utter failure by their inexpt brethern. The senior military top brass are not warriors, they are politicized bureaucrats. Perhaps when the first entered the military they trained to be warriors, but over the following years they lost sight of being warriors. They forgot that the nuber one mission of the military is to fight and win. Their apathy has turned them into a a stumbling block to victory. Military leaders must lead from the front, they must care for all of their troops, and most of all they must have the will to win. That means they must stand up to politicians who seek to hamstring the military with ROE that leads to demoralization and eventually defeat.
I am sorry to say that this all by design. Obama relieved the competent Commanders from duty, leaving morally pliable “yes” men at the top.
I equate what happened to this. Possibly an extreme example, but there were no children involved in the process.
I’m standing with my boss and I see him pull a pistol out and point it at a coworker. I tell him not to shoot, but he says bugger off. Do I simply say ok? If I do say ok, I’m as guilty as my boss.
Now, what if I said no but he shoots anyway? Do I continue to stand with my boss as the body bounces on the floor? Do I stand with my boss and support his decision when the police arrive to ask questions later?
One or both examples are what we’re seeing out of the Pentagon.
We need to stop pretending that this was just a bad supply order submitted by some untrained L/Cpl. Between the joint chiefs there are nearly 200 years of military planning experience and multiple combat tours. These people (the entire JCS leadership) should be publicly stripped and marched naked out the closest gates.
Yes we’re living in a hypocracy of the most ludicrous military, state dept., and administration in the history of the country. Almost like they unequivocally hate and have disdane for all things that could unify Americans. They don’t need
support for their leadership and decision making. It an It great that you can implement an agenda, at the same time blaming someone else before and after it fails. That’s how a careless, feckless and low IQ administration operates a complete SNAFU.