Afghanistan: Former advisor to Mike Pence warned in 2020 that Trump was setting up another 'Benghazi'
Category: News & Politics
Via: tessylo • 5 years ago • 42 commentsBy: Charles Davis, Business Insider
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Afghanistan: Former advisor to Mike Pence warned in 2020 that Trump was setting up another 'Benghazi'
Two boys in the parking lot at Wazir Akbar Khan hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday. MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES
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James Golby served as a special advisor in the office of Vice President Mike Pence.
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He spent 20 years in the US Army and deployed twice in Iraq.
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Last fall, he said Donald Trump was leaving behind "an unsustainable presence in Afghanistan."
A Trump administration advisor warned late last year that President Donald Trump's decision to leave just 2,500 troops in Afghanistan - and his telegraphed desire to get out whether or not the Taliban chose to abide by its agreement with the US - would leave American forces vulnerable to an attack.
"Perhaps by design, perhaps by incompetence, perhaps out of sheer spite or arrogance, Trump has created the circumstances for another Bay of Pigs, Black Hawk Down, or Benghazi," James Golby, who served as a special advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, wrote in a November article for The Atlantic. Those were all situations, he wrote, "where the United States inserted itself into overseas conflicts enough to draw lethal opposition but without sufficient strength to protect its people."
On Thursday, more than 60 Afghans were killed in suicide attacks outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, per reports, along with at least 13 US troops. The extremist group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility.
Golby, a US Army veteran who is a senior fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, took issue with Trump's mid-November decision because, he wrote, he would be "leaving behind an unsustainable presence in Afghanistan, a crisis for the Afghan people, and a mess for the Biden-Harris administration."
More than 5,000 Afghan civilians were killed or injured in the first half of 2021 - the most since records started being kept in 2009, according to the United Nations , with anti-government forces accounting for 64% of the bloodshed. In May, a terrorist attack in Kabul outside a secondary killed more than 50 people, mostly young girls, the BBC reported .
President Joe Biden campaigned on ending the 20-year American presence in Afghanistan, a decision that enjoys broad public support in the US. Any decision to stay, Golby noted last year, even for a more limited counterterrorism mission, would have required deploying more US troops and could have triggered a new round of clashes between those forces and the Taliban.
Though Biden does not bear responsibility for the large backlog of Special Immigrant Visa applicants created by his predecessor, refugee advocates had pleaded in April - four months before the fall of Kabul - and again in May for the administration to begin mass airlifts of vulnerable Afghans, using his power to grant humanitarian "parole" to bypass the State Department bureaucracy.
Biden elected not to do that until after Kabul fell, though he did authorize a modest surge of US forces just before the collapse, approving the deployment of 5,000 troops . In part, The New York Times recently suggested , those calls were rejected because the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani requested that he hold off so as to not harm morale and to avoid deploying more troops ahead of the complete withdrawal - but also, per two US officials who spoke with Reuters , because he was wary of the "political impact" posed by a "large number of Afghan refugees flowing into the United States."
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So lets pull ALL the military out. Now we are an embarrassment to the rest of the world and our enemies attacked. I just love how the decision made by the current administration is blamed on the previous. But, hey, at least there are no more mean tweets. I guess that's all that matters.
That is all they have is "But Trruuummmmppppp!!!!!!"
Biden undid every other Trump EO/EA; but he left this agreement with the Taliban in place? Not that he followed it to the letter with unilaterally extending the withdrawal deadline to 8/31. We can all see how the Taliban honored that decision.
When the last plane of US military leaves and there are still US civilians stranded in Afghanistan; we will see if the Democrats are willing to put party before country- because the calls for Biden's impeachment will be deafening.
You keep making comments like "keep dreaming" but I don't recall you EVER providing anything to prove anything wrong. On ANYTHING.
In the instance of the train wreck Biden created, Ronin is correct. This is all Biden's doing. In his administrations rush to eliminate everything from the preceding administration they have put the lives of thousands of US citizens at risk. In their futile attempts to get a "win" by ending the war, the result is just like the last time a Democrat was in the WH. We see how Obama's ending the war in Iraq travesty went. Oh, WAIT!!!! Biden was part of that as well.
Um like trmp dismantling the Pandemic Response Team? Making deals with the Taliban without the input of the legitimate (and corrupted) Afghani government? Telling lie after lie about everything?
I know there are more examples but I can't think of them right now
It would boggle the mind to do so.
it's not hard to look at your history here on NT. How long I'm gone is irrelevelant.
He's stated more factual information in 2.1 than I've seen from you. Google is your friend.
You mean like making deals with the Taliban that resulted in several POWs released for one deserter?
See you still don't realize every politician lies. Biden's been doing it for about 50 years but you seem oblivious to that.
As much as you may wish it, this isn't about Trump. This isn't on him at all. This falls 100% on Biden. Like it or not, the plan was in place. But "...because Truuuuuummmmmppppp" the Democrats obliterated any progress made and we are in the shitstorm we see now.
From a veteran's POV? This is a fucking embarrassment and disastrously horrid administration.
trmp made a deal that let the current leader of the Taliban out of prison...dispute that!
2,500 troops isn't a lot when you are trying to maintain the peace while getting yourself extricated from a boondoggle
2,500 is the size of an Infantry Brigade. If they are left alone with clear concise operations orders 2,500 is enough. The problem is the involvement from the political realm that is full of people who have NEVER stepped foot in Afghanistan and don't now what is really going on.
I'll defer to you since you were actually there and retired from the Army.
An embarrassment to the rest of the world? If that is what it takes to get out of that place, so be it.
I don't believe it though.