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**AUGUST 27, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Progressives and the Afghanistan Debacle

****

Many progressives argue that there was no way the endgame was going to
be pretty. The lesson is that we shouldn't have been there in the
first place
.

Yes, of course. Yes, but ...

As several senior military people warned Biden in April, setting a date
certain for a total withdrawal gave all the power to the Taliban. This
was not a pretext for prolonging U.S. involvement indefinitely, as some
have argued. It was smart tactical advice that Biden rejected
.

And as the

**Prospect**'s Jonathan Guyer reported yesterday, two dozen diplomats
in Afghanistan used an emergency back channel to warn Biden

in mid-July that there needed to be far more preparation for
evacuations. The cable went to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and
evidently stopped there.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan never forwarded this to Biden.
According to Guyer's reporting, Sullivan learned about the
diplomats' July dissent cable for the first time when he read about it
in

**The Wall Street Journal**

on August 19.

Obviously, if the U.S. government, in the person of CIA chief Bill Burns
no less
,
can negotiate the terms of U.S.-Taliban relations

**after the fact**, when the U.S. is playing a much weaker hand, we
could have done so before a final date was set for a total withdrawal.

Biden's contention at his wobbly Thursday press conference that he was
only following a withdrawal policy and timetable set by Donald Trump (!)
just doesn't cut it. Biden has reversed dozens of Trump policies and
orders. And he did push back Trump's deadline from May to August.

Let's not try to whitewash this. It was a screwup of the first order.

Just as the right should not be allowed to conflate the bungled pullout
with the issue of whether the U.S. should have stayed in Afghanistan at
all once the Taliban was routed in 2002, the left should not play the
same game in reverse. The exact terms of withdrawal and evacuation
should have been negotiated while the U.S. had a lot more bargaining
leverage.

This is not Monday-morning quarterbacking. Military people, diplomats,
and intelligence people on the ground were issuing these warnings months
ago.

The Republicans will now try to prolong hearings as long as possible, to
keep the spotlight on Afghanistan at the expense of Biden's other
impressive achievements. Some heads may have to roll. But at least this
will be over well before the 2022 midterms.

OK-Just to cheer up a depressing morning, here are three pieces of
good news.

In an interview with

**The New York Times**, ostensibly promoting his new book, Supreme Court
Justice Stephen Breyer made clear that he has shifted his views and is
now open to retiring soon
.
Whew!

According to FiveThirtyEight, the population shifts reported by the
census to urban blue strongholds and away from rural red ones will help
Democrats offset Republican redistricting
.

And in California, public opinion is slowly but steadily moving away
from voting to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom
.

Not a great week for Biden. We'll take good news where we can get it.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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