While Ryan Crocker is no friend of Donald Trump’s, he has “grave concerns” about Joe Biden’s ability to lead. [An understatement if ever there was one.]
That’s quite an admission from a left-wing partisan diplomat. It looks like the Left, in general, is getting ready to dump Joe. Where is Kamala? Where’s Jen? CNN’s even concerned.
OBAMA’S FORMER AMBASSADOR
Ryan Crocker, Barack Obama’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, told The Spokesman-Review on Friday, that while the pace of the insurgents’ advance has surprised him, the Biden administration should have seen it coming.
“I think the direction was predictable; the trajectory was not,” he said. “What President Biden has done is to embrace the Afghan policy of President Trump, and this is the outcome.”
[The trajectory was not Donald Trump’s, Crocker failed to say. He also left out the fact that the country is tribal without national loyalty. And he didn’t say that they had twenty years to get it together, although some of that could have been in faulty training. However, the air support probably should have been maintained and it’s not clear why Bagram was abandoned.]
Since Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal in April, Taliban insurgents have overrun much of the country, taking control of key border crossings and most provincial capitals. They controlled two-thirds of Afghanistan when they made their move.
That should have rung some alarm bells for Biden.
THE MAJOR FACTOR
The army and government were demoralized and that was a major factor, Crocker believes. Even with only 3,500 US military since April, it gave Afghan allies symbolic and practical air support.
By cutting the Afghan government out of the peace talks, while agreeing to terms that included the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners, Crocker said the U.S. government “effectively sided with the Taliban” in the eyes of Afghan forces, who have reportedly deserted in large numbers.
Crocker said Afghan security forces largely did what the U.S. government asked of them and maintained garrisons throughout the country, but those deployments were only viable with the help of U.S. airstrikes. The predictable collapse of Afghan forces without that air support, he said, suggests “a total lack of coordinated, post-withdrawal planning on our part.”
“That’s why this is all so sad,” he said. “It is a self-inflicted wound.”
BIDEN CAN’T LEAD
“I’m left with some grave questions in my mind about his ability to lead our nation as commander-in-chief,” Crocker said. “To have read this so wrong – or, even worse, to have understood what was likely to happen and not care.”
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