One question stands out among the many: How could the most powerful country in the world, which annually spends hundreds of billions of dollars on its military and intelligence capabilities, have gotten our intelligence effort in Afghanistan so wrong?
When the Taliban rapidly advanced through Afghanistan’s major population centers last month, smashing Afghan forces and overthrowing the government in a matter of weeks, U.S. leaders were caught distressingly off guard. This led to the stunning scenes at the Kabul airport, where our military lost 13 lives rapidly trying to evacuate U.S. citizens and allies.
Scrutiny should be focused on the military and intelligence organizations that supply information and national security recommendations to our leaders.
We are familiar with the now infamous intelligence reports from mid-August that projected Afghan forces could hold Kabul from the Taliban for 90 days. In April, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Afghan forces were capable of securing their borders and protecting Afghan citizens. As recently as late July, Austin was not sounding alarms about their capabilities or motivation.
Austin was right in his assessment that Afghan forces had the capability to defend against the Taliban. On paper, they outnumbered and outgunned the Taliban by a wide margin, boasting the best of weaponry and even an air force. What they lacked was a collective will to fight. Which begs the question of our national security organizations and government leaders: Did they completely miss this, or was it conveniently ignored?
Damning investigations like the Afghanistan Papers and years’ worth of reporting from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reveal it was largely the latter. The national security bureaucracy had a vested interest in maintaining the narrative our strategy was sound and that nation-building activities in Afghanistan were successful. To admit otherwise would acknowledge their own failures and jeopardize careers, budgets, and public faith.
Senior leaders of the Biden administration supported this narrative for years. As an Army general, Austin served as the commander of U.S. Central Command from 2013-2016 and was responsible for the Afghan theater. He testified numerous times to Congress about the progress supposedly being made by the Afghan forces. Similarly, Secretary of State Antony Blinken played a significant role as a senior adviser in the Obama administration in developing Afghanistan policy. President Joe Biden himself is steeped in foreign policy experience as the former vice president and a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Members of the Biden administration may face consequences from voters for their role in the intelligence failures, but what about the government apparatus that helped steer these decisions? Political leadership comes and goes, but the bureaucracy that drives much of our national security strategy is entrenched. Will there be accountability for those organizations that consistently assessed Afghanistan through rose-colored glasses and pushed information they knew misrepresented our efforts as more successful than they were?
Congress is the best-positioned body to intercede and bring about the necessary whole-of-government changes, but partisan gridlock and a general failure to comprehend the problems have prevented them from doing so. Most members of Congress neither served in the military nor have significant experience with national security and foreign policy strategy. So, they give great deference to the very officials they are supposed to oversee. Much of the security analysis and recommendations these political leaders receive are classified, giving decision-makers a buffer against public scrutiny until it is too late.
This creates a cycle of unaccountability that keeps bad policy alive.
The country would benefit most from a new series of Church Committee-style investigations, giving as much access as possible to the public and media to assess our failures and give transparent recommendations on a way forward. Until such an open, objective process occurs, it is only a matter of when, not if, we will make such mistakes again.
Robert Moore is a public policy adviser for Defense Priorities. He previously worked for nearly a decade on Capitol Hill, most recently as the lead staff for Sen. Mike Lee on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
