AMAC Exclusive – by James Johnson
Joe Biden asserted in his speech this week that his disastrous plan for the evacuation had the unanimous support of his Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, and top military officials. If this is true, it begs the question: now that the war is over, why haven’t those people resigned? And if they won’t resign, why haven’t they been fired?
By now, the entire world knows that America’s 20-year battle against the Taliban ended in a shameful and humiliating surrender. This shocking outcome in American military history was not the fault of the American Soldier, Sailor, Marine, or Airman on the ground in Afghanistan. Instead, the blame rests entirely with senior political, civilian, and military leadership, who failed in their most basic responsibility: the planning, execution, and completion of a military mission.
In cultures that afford greater weight than ours to concepts such as honor and duty, resignation (at a minimum) would be expected in light of such a horrendous performance. When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain badly misjudged Hitler at the outset of World War II, he did not stubbornly stay in office after losing the confidence of the Parliament and the British people; he had the decency to resign. In a more extreme example, the Japanese minister of war committed seppuku (ritual suicide) after signing the surrender document at the end of the war. To this day, public officials in Japan routinely step down from their jobs to atone for errors or embarrassments within their organizations—even ones that came about through no fault of their own.
The United States has typically not had this tradition, and certainly there is something to be said for an American culture that tolerates errors. We don’t want a society that punishes mistakes so severely that no one takes any risks at all.
That, however, is a far cry from the situation in which we find ourselves regarding Afghanistan—a situation in which our leaders were apparently so certain that they would not be held accountable, no matter what happened, that they were vacationing in the Hamptons and Camp David as Afghanistan was being taken over by terrorists. This despite the fact that, as we now know, they were fully aware of the likelihood a collapse would happen.
Both our political and our military leadership have failed on a spectacular scale—indeed, on a world-historic scale—and they have done so after ignoring repeated warnings about the consequences of their recklessness. And not only have America’s leaders refused to accept responsibility for the catastrophe they caused, but the President is angrily telling Americans that the whole thing was a roaring success! He actually appears surprised and irritated that he is being subject to criticism at all.
Plenty of people across the country, including members of the House and Senate, are calling for Biden’s resignation. These calls are certainly understandable; the situation is so bad that there could very well be grounds to overcome the normal American assumption that a president should be allowed to finish out his term. But in any case, Tony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Mark Milley, Jake Sullivan, and Ron Klain were not elected by anyone. President Biden’s refusal to accept any responsibility whatsoever only makes it more urgent that his leadership team resign.
This is not just a matter of politics, but of national security. Anything less would communicate to everyone, our friends and foes alike, that Americans believe what Biden is saying—that the whole thing went perfectly fine.
Perhaps more importantly, this particular group of officials stands totally exposed before the entire world as utterly incompetent. It is literally dangerous to leave them in charge now that their staggering ineptitude has been revealed. It is alarming to our allies, and even worse, it is an open an invitation to our adversaries. This is how you end up with calamities like the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
In addition, if these people keep their jobs, it will be profoundly demoralizing to our Armed Forces. Many veterans and active-duty service members are furious and devastated by their leadership and are demanding accountability. Last week, in an unprecedented act, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel, three years from his retirement, released a video in which he suggested that military leadership needed to answer for the debacle. He was relieved of command the next day.
Even before the Afghanistan nightmare, morale in the military was already plummeting as the Biden administration has moved to politicize the Armed Forces and refashion it in their “woke” image. They have explicitly stated that the priorities of our military are climate change, COVID, and purging Trump supporters from the ranks, in addition to promoting Marxist concepts like “equity.” The frustration with these priorities reached a fever pitch when the Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A. Grinston tweeted about how inclusiveness and hairstyles make the military more lethal, on the same day that ISIS-K killed 13 American servicemembers. Sadly, the tweet was not a joke.
The results of this leadership crisis, as evidenced in Afghanistan, are catastrophic. The simple fact of the matter is that these people have to go. The war is over. There’s no reason to delay. Biden’s entire national security team should resign, or be fired immediately.