A trio of interesting items that popped up in the morning’s news:
1. Politico relates the contents of “detailed notes of three classified calls” among top military leaders. The notes, like the calls, are classified. Politico quotes the Pentagon’s indignant response:
“This story is based on the unlawful disclosure of classified information and internal deliberations of a sensitive nature,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement. “As soon as we became aware of the material divulged to the reporter, we engaged Politico at the highest levels to prevent the publication of information that would put our troops and our operations at the airport at greater risk.
“We condemn the unlawful disclosure of classified information and oppose the publication of a story based on it while a dangerous operation is ongoing,” he continued.
Looked at another way, “spokesperson” [ugh!] Kirby confirmed that the notes are authentic. That’s no surprise, because the story they tell is of on-top-of-it generals doing all that was within their power to secure the Kabul airport and failing only because the mission was truly impossible.
2. The Washington Post reports that “senior U.S. military leaders in Doha” negotiated with “Abdul Ghani Baradur, head of the Taliban’s political wing” about what would happen in Kabul during the American withdrawal. The latter allegedly said, “We have two options to deal with it: You take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.” The reply, delivered by the commander of U.S. Central Command was allegedly –
that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.
On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.
The Post’s informants attribute that decision to the fact that “President Biden remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind.” Here is a second, rather obvious bit of Pentagon blame-shifting.
3. The Telegraph bases a story headlined “Joe Biden ‘holds grudges’ and will punish Britain for Afghanistan criticism, allies say” on communications to it from “a White House insider”:
He said: “Quite frankly, it bodes poorly for the relationship with the UK. The special relationship is very much in danger at this point.
“The president will say publicly that everything is fine, that our ties have never been stronger, but behind the scenes we are at a very dangerous moment. For him [Mr Biden] it’s my way or the highway.”
This attempt to intimidate Boris Johnson is so feeble – and so likely to be badly received in the United States – that one almost suspects that its perpetrator is hoping to undermine Joe Biden and hasten his exit from the stage (a Kamala Harris “insider”, perhaps?). More likely, though, it’s a genuine, Biden-approved White House threat, quite as ridiculous as his pinprick (albeit welcome [Addendum: Maybe not so welcome in all cases]) drone executions of unnamed Isis-K functionaries (guys from the H.R. department or assistant goat herd keepers, for all we know). [Addendum to Addendum: I don’t criticize the President for destroying a bomb-laden vehicle that was heading for the Kabul airport. I do criticize him for creating a situation in which all alternatives lead to the deaths of innocent bystanders.]
Everybody inside the Beltway believes that leaks from anonymous sources are the most accurate of all forms of information, no matter how often they turn out to be misleading or downright false. (Remember Michael Cohen’s trip to meet his FSB handler in Prague or the Trump organization’s secret transactions with Russia’s Alfa Bank?) We can expect a lot more battles in the Leak Wars as the sundry incompetents strive to look just a little less inept than their rival architects of catastrophe.
Update (September 10, 2021): If the New York Times (key excerpts here) is to be believed (always a dubious proposition, especially when a story reflects badly on the U.S. military), Joe Biden’s Parthian shot drone strike took out not a bomb-laden vehicle, but an Afghan who had been working on our side, along with several members of his family. Whatever the facts truly are, the uncertainty surrounding this incident shows how detached from reality is the President’s notion that we can fight the Taliban from “over the horizon”.
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