Everyone has long since recognized what an utter disaster the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 turned out to be. It wasn't only the deaths of American and allied service members, the bodies falling from planes at Kabul airport, and the desperation of the more Westernized Afghan people as the Taliban approached. The previous system collapsed in a way that sent shockwaves through the region and proved destabilizing far beyond the borders of that country. But how could Joe Biden have known all of this? Many (including myself) were ready for the war to be over and he had promised to make that happen. Was there some way that the situation might have been resolved differently? As it turns out, there was. And Biden had been made aware of all of this. He didn't hear it from pundits or policy analysts. During recent testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Retired General Austin Scott Miller, who had been in charge of our Afghanistan forces at the time, told Congress that he had specifically warned the President what would happen if the pullout was conducted as it was being planned. He was ignored and the results speak for themselves. (Daily Caller)

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan repeatedly warned the Biden administration that the region would get “very bad, very fast” after U.S. forces withdrew, The Washington Post reported.

The Biden administration orchestrated the effort to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021 in what critics decried as an operational disaster that ended in the deaths of several troops and Afghani civilians. Retired Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan in 2021, expressed concerns to the Biden administration about the region’s security post-withdrawal and feared that they did not understand the risks of keeping an embassy open with little protection, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a closed-door testimony last month, according to the Post.

The phrase "very bad, very fast" hardly begins to describe it. General Miller called the entire horror show. He knew that the embassy couldn't be left to stand without defenses once the Taliban arrived. He expressed his fear over the decision to prematurely abandon Bagram air base and what would happen to his other troops around the region, not to mention all of the civilians who relied on them. He knew we would never be able to get all of our equipment, vehicles, and weapons out of there on that timeline and they would fall into enemy hands. He told the President all of this and they went ahead with the plan anyway.

As I mentioned above, that botched withdrawal caused a terrible ripple effect. The Taliban threw themselves a victory party and began terrorizing their own people. They began collecting all of our weapons as predicted. Some were used against us and our allies while many others showed up on the black market. The United States was suddenly seen as an unreliable ally and a weak actor in foreign affairs. The world was watching. Vladimir Putin was watching. Do you suppose he took that debacle into consideration when contemplating the invasion of Ukraine? Clearly, we weren't sending a signal of strength and giving him any reason to be concerned. 

Shockingly, even after everything that has unfolded, Joe Biden continues to insist that everything went according to plan. Just last year during a rare occasion when reporters had the nerve to ask him about the withdrawal, Biden's response was dumbfounding. He said, "Do you remember what I said about Afghanistan? I said al Qaeda would not be there. I said it wouldn’t be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right.”

Al Qaeda wasn't the issue. The Taliban and ISIS-K were the issue. And what sort of "help" is Biden insinuating that we got from the Taliban? They took over completely, went on a murderous rampage, and undid whatever progress had been made during our occupation, just as they had been predicted to do. Joe Biden's inability to ever admit to having made any mistakes or having done anything wrong continues. That's particularly galling when you consider the staggering number of things he has gotten massively wrong in less than a single term in office, but the botched Afghan withdrawal is clearly among the worst. And he was told it would happen by his own top commander on the ground in that country. It boggles the mind.