As Taliban fighters have seen success after success routing Afghan security forces amid the drawdown of U.S. combat troops after a two-decade-long presence in the country, many are asking why the Biden administration seems to have been caught off-guard by the Taliban's ability to topple one provincial capital after another.
This reality sent the Pentagon and State Department scrambling to organize an airlift of American personnel while seeking to avoid comparisons to the 1975 fall of Saigon as the Taliban seems likely to isolate and take Kabul in the coming weeks.
Afghan security forces have numerous advantages, insisted Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby earlier this week while State Department Spokesman Ned Price rejected the idea that 3,000 combat troops being sent to airlift Americans out of Kabul was an "evacuation."
At this point, it's less about *how* did things get this bad — there's little that can be done at this point in the Biden administration's withdrawal — and more *why* is the Biden administration now scrambling to get Americans out of the capital city while public-facing officials struggle to come up with an explanation for what's happening.
Part of the answer may lie with the man Biden chose to lead the Department of Defense, Lloyd Austin, who is not a stranger to enemy resurgence against U.S.-trained troops amid a withdrawal of American forces.
Before serving as Secretary of Defense, Austin was in charge of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) under President Obama, commanding troops in — among other places — Iraq, as ISIS took over.
According to The Atlantic's report on the Obama Doctrine, Lloyd Austin was the source of President Obama's much-maligned reference to ISIS as the "jayvee" team:
According to administration officials, General Lloyd Austin, then the commander of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told the White House that the Islamic State was “a flash in the pan.” This analysis led Obama, in an interview with The New Yorker, to describe the constellation of jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria as terrorism’s “jayvee team.” (A spokesman for Austin told me, “At no time has General Austin ever considered isil a ‘flash in the pan’ phenomenon.”)
But by late spring of 2014, after isis took the northern-Iraq city of Mosul, he came to believe that U.S. intelligence had failed to appreciate the severity of the threat and the inadequacies of the Iraqi army, and his view shifted.
Austin has denied this story, but when Congress investigated CENTCOM's handling (or lack of handling) of ISIS, they arrived at several concerning conclusions about how Central Command, on Austin's watch, handled intelligence about the seriousness of the threat posed by ISIS and the reality on the ground in Iraq.
In August of 2016, Congress announced its initial findings which "substantiated that structural and management changes made at the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate starting in mid-2014 resulted in the production and dissemination of intelligence products that were inconsistent with the judgments of many senior, career analysts at CENTCOM."
"These products were consistently more optimistic regarding the conduct of U.S. military action than that of the senior analysts," explained the panel's findings on CENTCOM activity under Austin's leadership.
Based on specific case studies evaluated by the Joint Task Force, during the time period evaluated by the Joint Task Force, CENTCOM produced intelligence that was also significantly more optimistic than that of other parts of the Intelligence Community (IC) and typically more optimistic than actual events warranted. Additionally, many CENTCOM press releases, public statements, and congressional testimonies were also significantly more positive than actual events.
The Congressional panel also reported that "the leadership environment within CENTCOM and its Intelligence Directorate deteriorated significantly following the 2013 departure of Marine General James Mattis and his senior intelligence leaders. Survey results provided to the Joint Task Force demonstrated that dozens of analysts viewed the subsequent leadership environment as toxic, with 40% of analysts responding that they had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence in the past year" while serving under Austin.
All this being known, Biden still picked Austin to lead the Pentagon. In his op-ed announcing his pick for Secretary of Defense, Biden said Austin "got the job done" in Iraq against ISIS — a rather bold characterization of the situation that unfolded under his watch at CENTCOM — adding Austin "is the person we need in this moment.”
The last time Austin got a "job done," ISIS quickly established a tyrannical caliphate that beheaded, enslaved, and burned alive anyone who resisted. As the Pentagon sends some 3,000 combat troops back to Kabul to airlift remaining Americans, one can only hope Austin's intelligence picture is more accurate in this "moment" than the last.