Afghanistan: Former advisor to Mike Pence warned in 2020 that Trump was setting up another 'Benghazi'
Category: News & Politics
Via: tessylo • 3 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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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."
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.
Keep dreaming Ronin!!!!!!!!!!!!
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.
Funny how you haven't been around in a long time and when you come back you act like you know everything I've posted for years.
Plus Ronin is never correct on anything. Just his usual talking points, plus projection, deflection, and denial.
Also, Prove it!
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.
"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."
No we're not, The prior criminal enterprise of an administration was an embarrassment to the rest of the world and whatshisname loves these scumbag enemies.
That's where the blame squarely belongs.
Wrong in so many ways......................but you got the narrative down according to this.
Some people just totally refuse and/or cannot accept the fact that when Biden raised his right and took the Oath of Office as POTUS he accepted responsibility for all that has occurred. What has happened in Afghanistan since January 2021 Biden owns lock, stock, and barrel plain and simple. They still have to scream "but Trump" to make themselves feel better!
No donald is just a moron that you all were silent about when he was making deals with the taliban.
Now all the sudden those deals didn't mean shit...
Funny they could be trusted under donald's watch yet not Biden's.
I have never claimed otherwise about Trump, and please specify the "you all" you were referring to. I'd say that could fall under the sweeping generalization category. Were you personally keeping track of every single conservative leaning Trump comment made on NT? If so that's a neat trick I'd like to learn. (SARC)
Have a problem with vernacular, take it up with management, or what ever you worship. Because I don't give a fuck.
Sorry, that's your issue not mine. Have a good day.
Obviously it was your issue if you are the one that had to bring it up.
No bother though, I see it only as a deflection anyway.
"Because I don't give fuck."
That's the issue I was referring to. Was that really necessary? I guess it was to you, but again have a good day. I'm done.
I know I'm correct. I don't care what anyone else says.
Nobody is blaming him for the 20 year nightmare. Just the 2 week nightmare of getting us out.
Biden announced in April we were pulling out.
Like Ford sneaking out of Vietnam leaving our dead and wounded behind? Where was the outrage?
Or Reagan pulling out of Beirut after the USMC Barracks explosion killed 241 Marines and 58 French military?
October 23,1983 is still the bloodiest post WWII day in Marine Corps history and remains unavenged.
Where was the outrage?
While the suicide bombing was tragic,
Americans have facilitated the airlift of over 105,000 people from the shit hole so far,
hopefully another 20,000 including our troops will be gone by Monday or Tuesday with no additional losses.
The towel heads will dance in the streets for a few hours and then get back to killing each other
like they have since forever.
I'm talking of the last two weeks with the advent of the takeover of the government. If he announced in April this shouldn't have been such a rush job. And started then. Perhaps we wouldn't be leaving $80 billion in equipment and armaments.
There was PLENTY of outrage back then. Were you not alive?
None of us know what went down. You are focusing on the last weeks of a pullout where everyone knows that is when all hell will break loose.
The closer to the date the more chaotic it will become.
That is just common sense.
And the State Department in Kabul sent every American messages by mail, cable, texts, robocalls
every three weeks to "get out now", from April til now,
each new message supposedly "stronger" than the previous. And still they stayed.
And some 500 will still stay.
We cannot force them to leave.
So they have been trying to get people out since April. That's not the narrative some around here are pushing
Yes, blame the victims and pretend Joe Biden wasn't publicly saying the exact opposite.
Got a source?
Always, Greg.
Even Real Clear Politics....
Wilson also says that they are in "nascent conversations" with the Taliban in Doha to allow Americans to leave the country after the military evacuation is over.
What victims?
After 4 years of Trump's 208 Infrastructure weeks and promises of the best health care plan ever
and a big beautiful wall that Mexico will pay for?
Really your going to be serious about that?