Biden's actions that led to Afghan debacle

 Fox News:

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"It was just a compilation of events that led to this precipitous fall," a former senior Defense Department official, Mick Mulroy, told Fox News.

President Biden repeatedly reiterated his commitment to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Aug. 31, even as the Taliban swept through the country at a speed that, according to a spokesperson, surprised even the Taliban.

Biden also repeatedly blamed the Afghan army for giving up rather than fighting the Taliban once the U.S. troops began to depart.

But the reality is more nuanced.

Afghanistan’s fall and a bottleneck at the Kabul airport were results of a combination of complementary factors, laid out by experts who spoke with Fox News: the peace deal’s effects on the Afghan government and military’s morale and confidence; the U.S.-trained Afghan army’s reliance on air support; the Taliban’s highly effective military and diplomatic strategies; and the U.S.’ failure to hold a crucial air base and keep the Taliban out of Kabul until it completed its evacuation.
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"I think it was a mistake to negotiate with the Taliban," Mulroy, the Trump-era deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, told Fox News. "It was essentially a negotiation for our surrender."

"It was clear that the way the U.S. treated the negotiations to depart essentially excluded [the Afghan government] as even relevant in it," Mulroy continued.

The peace deal required the Taliban and the Afghan government to enter peace talks, which ultimately fell apart.

"The current administration had no obligation to carry through on that agreement," said Mulroy, an ABC News national security analyst. "It had been violated, and they chose not to carry through on a lot of agreements of the previous administration.

"So, the idea that their hands were tied, I think is just not true."

Regardless, Biden announced that he would still withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

"When President Biden announced the complete troop withdrawal on April 14, it really registers among Afghans as a vote of no confidence in the Afghan government, as well as the Afghan army," Elliot Ackerman, an author and a former Marine and CIA intelligence officer, told Fox News.

"What you begin to see is a crisis of confidence and a complete collapse of those institutions, particularly as this announcement is made in the lead-up to the fighting season," Ackerman continued. "When that fighting season begins, we see a very intense Taliban offensive that leads to one city in one key bit of strategic terrain falling after another, culminating in the fall of Kabul in August."
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Ackerman said: "Somewhere in our American narrative, we seem to have got in our head that wars end when all the troops come home, that it’s a prerequisite for a war ending. If you look historically, that has never been the case."

Ackerman and Mulroy both pointed to Germany, South Korea and Japan – all nations where U.S. forces fought during war and remained afterward.

"In fact, the troops only all come home when we lose wars," Ackerman said. "We leave troops behind to secure peace."

"And that is what led to this calamitous situation in Afghanistan," he continued.
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"The way we set up their military had them essentially dependent on our support," he continued, specifically highlighting U.S. air operations.

It was an Afghan army facing declines in both morale and air support that faced the Taliban’s emboldened aggression.
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While the impact of this policy should have been obvious to the Joint Cheifs and commanders, they look like bystanders to the debacle that followed the moves.  There is no evidence of any objections.  there were no resignations at the time.  It was a total failure of leadership.  We had military leaders who believed more in the mythical "white supremacy" and "white rage" narrative than in real-world problems that caused a costly defeat.  They are apparently still pushing the CRT garbage in the military academies despite the latest debacle.