In this essay for The Washington Post, written days after the fall of Kabul, Elliot Ackerman rebuts President Biden's claim that Afghan forces were unwilling to fight for themselves, and argues that America, not its Afghan allies, was the first to leave the battlefield.
Two Falsehoods From the East Room
Ackerman disputes Biden's claims that the administration had plans for every withdrawal contingency and that Afghan forces lacked the will to fight, noting that the Afghan military sustained more annual casualties fighting the Taliban than the U.S. did over twenty years.
A Military Built in Our Image, Not Theirs
Ackerman acknowledges real flaws in the Afghan military, tracing them to the U.S. decision to build a nationally recruited force rather than one organized along the regional and tribal lines that historically gave Afghan fighters their discipline and cohesion.
A Betrayal Vietnam Veterans Saw Coming
Ackerman recalls the quiet pity he once mistook for bitterness in Vietnam veterans he'd known, realizing only now that they recognized, before he did, the betrayal of allies and promises that awaited the end of his own generation's war.
Read the Original Article
This essay originally appeared in The Washington Post.