As the war in Afghanistan comes to an end shamefully amidst shirks, lies, and mutual accusations… and this is just the catastrophic pressure of Joe Biden yesterday (see Joe Biden performed an obscene performance after finally performing for the postponed Afghan media), another equally intense and protracted conflict broke out in Washington. Although the main players are the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Intelligence Community (IC), it is clear that the country and the Department of Defense are moving towards an alliance that will blame the intelligence community for this failure. Not that this is a bad thing. National defense and the country have a lot of stupid things**, which makes us beg the Taliban to “let my people go” so that they can use the only airbase in Afghanistan that we can still enter, the goat-the main rope we have witnessed in the past week Belongs to IC. The risk is high, because the budgets of the state, defense and intelligence agencies are all used up, and losers in bureaucratic wars are likely to be hollowed out. As i posted before:
This battle is going on, because any time you have an American ally, it has gained 20 years of attention, about 88 billion U.S. dollars in U.S. funds, and absorbed the blood of about 23,000 Americans, folded into a mixed force, its With more than about 4:1 and doing this within a few days, even the bleakest, most corrupt and compromised MPs will demand answers.
A few days ago, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milly held a joint press conference. In my opinion, it raised more questions than it answered.I am posting at this press conference in RedState SecDef Lloyd Austin and CJCS Mark Milley Afghanistan press conference with James Bond Martini qualityThe key parts of the press related to bureaucratic struggle are:
Let me comment on intelligence, because I have seen warnings of rapid collapse in all news.
As I said before on this podium and in the sworn testimony in Congress, intelligence clearly shows that many situations may arise. One of them was the direct takeover of the Taliban after the rapid collapse of the Afghan security forces and government. The other is the civil war. The third is to negotiate settlement. However, the time frame for “rapid collapse” is widely estimated, ranging from weeks to months or even years after we left.
I or anyone else did not see any signs that this army and this government would collapse within 11 days.
Milly clearly accused IC of not providing useful information. However, the clear way in which he made this claim leads me to believe that he has conducted an extensive investigation into who knows when and when he knows what and that he will not be refuted.
At the same time, IC launched several attacks on State. Both of them are obvious nonsense; unexpectedly, a stupid nonsense attack has become popular in the media.
First, we have a post Just security blog A man named Douglas London claimed to be the head of counter-terrorism for South and Southwest Asia at the CIA and an adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign team. He is obviously hostile to the idea of leaving Afghanistan… He sneered about “eternal war”, which is exactly what he wants us to participate in. This article has some interesting points. For example, he believes that part of Biden’s withdrawal strategy is to blame Trump, but this is mainly about waving his hand and making excuses, using the hint of “if I tell you I must kill you”. Show that he really knows. This is the interesting part:
The US intelligence community assesses the fate of Afghanistan based on various scenarios and conditions, as well as the multiple policy options that the president can choose. So, is it 30 days from retreat to collapse? 60? 18 months? In fact, all of the above, the forecast is consistent with various “hypotheses.” In the end, it is estimated that under the circumstances we have witnessed, the Afghan army may surrender within a few days, in the forecast emphasized to Trump officials and future Biden officials, among others.
If you have ever dealt with ICs, you will know that any analytical products they produce “can happen under certain circumstances” because they want to cover all the basics. But if you read Douglas’ statement carefully, he actually didn’t say, although he hinted, IC considered an option involving an immediate collapse. He was referring to the lag between the U.S. withdrawal and the collapse of Afghanistan, not the collapse of the U.S. forces still in the country.
Next, we conducted an epic blow by the National Intelligence Agency through the Wall Street Journal.This article was written by Vivian Salama with the title State Department internal telegram warns of Kabul collapseThis is described as a kind of foresight forecast that has been ignored by the State Council. no. This is an extremely wrong prediction, and it is proven wrong every day.
According to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the matter, an internal memo from the U.S. State Department last month warned senior agency officials that Kabul could collapse shortly after the August 31 deadline for the U.S. to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Confidential telegrams are the clearest evidence to date, showing that government officials have warned on the ground that the Taliban’s offensive is imminent and that the Afghan army may not be able to stop it.
Two people familiar with the matter said that the telegram was sent through the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, warning the Taliban to quickly seize the territory, and the Afghan security forces subsequently collapsed, and made recommendations on ways to alleviate the crisis and speed up the evacuation.
One of the people familiar with the matter said that the telegram dated July 13 also called on the State Department to use harsher language when describing the atrocities committed by the Taliban.
Although I don’t want to say that, this is exactly what Millie said. The collapse began three weeks before the scheduled withdrawal of the US military and was basically completed on Sunday/Monday this week. The craziest part of the “Wall Street Journal” story is that when the telegram sent on July 14 suggested that the evacuation flight should begin on August 1, the “crash prediction” received attention. There are only less than five days left before the collapse of the Afghan National Government. What has also been overlooked is that the “rebels” using “dissent channels” apparently did not consider preparing to evacuate Afghan nationals until mid-July.
Around the time Austin and Lloyd set IC as blocked, someone fired one Shooting defense.
According to ourselves Daniel Lipman with Lara SeligmanIn early December, the outgoing acting secretary of defense Chris Miller According to three former officials with knowledge of this exchange, he sent a text message to his potential successor, Lloyd Austin, congratulating him on being selected as the head of the Pentagon as the new president, and offered to meet to discuss the handover. In response, Austin texted Miller “thank you”, but did not follow up to schedule a meeting.
A transition official told POLITICO at the time that due to Covid-19 concerns, Austin chose to complete all his transition plans remotely. According to two people familiar with the matter, Austin and Miller did not talk on the phone during the entire transition period.
Compared with Austin, the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo According to a person close to Pompeo, Biden held a face-to-face meeting with Secretary of State Anthony Brinken, which involved Afghanistan.with Robert O’BrienAccording to two people familiar with the matter, Trump’s last national security adviser held more than six conference calls or face-to-face meetings with his successor, Jack Sullivan.
I’m not sure what Austin can learn from Miller will help Afghanistan, considering that the main defense player was there in January.
This battle will continue for a while, but I bet that when the intelligence agency’s estimate of the situation is revealed, they will show that our spies are ignorant of what is happening inside our allies. Have the ability to move around freely because they have their own views on what is happening in North Korea.
