Afghan Withdrawal: A Media Debacle
/By Don Varyu
August 24, 2021
The evacuation from Afghanistan continues tenuously. At this writing, no American has been killed—and let’s hope that number remains unchanged. Meanwhile, an unknown number of non-American support staff (largely Afghan interpreters) reportedly remains hiding in outlying areas, searching for ways to get to the Kabul airport. This messy process should have produced pointed questions for foreign policy experts, military leaders, and Congress. But instead, the media collectively decided that only one man is responsible—Joe Biden.
To be sure, the Afghan pullout has been chaotic. But those same words apply equally to the media voices who are paid to assess what’s going on. To be clear, I am not taking about the brave journalists on the ground in Afghanistan. In total, they are doing their jobs well, reporting directly on what they see and what they’ve found out.
Conversely, my criticism is aimed squarely at the smug and perpetually perturbed observers who sit comfortably in newsrooms, broadcast studios and online in the Twitterverse. They have failed miserably.
How, exactly?
Let’s begin with a set of irrefutable facts:
The British invaded Afghanistan in 1839…and left in defeat and disgrace.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979…and left in defeat and disgrace.
The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001…and are now leaving in defeat and disgrace.
President George W. Bush decided to invade. He certainly was never going to leave because that would have conceded his mistake.
President Barack Obama campaigned on leaving Afghanistan. He never did. He did kill Osama bin Laden, which seemed to fulfill Bush’s mission. But he then spent five years being persuaded to actually increase troop levels.
President Donald Trump campaigned on leaving Afghanistan. He never did. His contribution was freeing numerous Taliban leaders as part of a withdrawal agreement that actually made things worse.
President Joe Biden campaigned on leaving Afghanistan. He did.
Previous Presidents collectively had 231 months to correct the error and figure out how to pull our troops out. But the media decided that the problem was confined to what Joe Biden did in the weeks leading up to the withdrawal.
Fortunately, some of America’s more seasoned and clear-eyed journalists see exactly what’s going on
.
Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post is one of our leading journalism critics. She wrote an assessment entitled, “The Afghan Debacle Lasted Two Decades. The Media Spent Two Hours Deciding Who to Blame.” An excerpt:
If ever a big, breaking story demanded that the news media provide historical context and carefully avoid partisan blame, it’s the story of the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Instead…coverage (tended) to elevate and amplify punditry over news, and to assign long-lasting political ramifications to a still-developing situation.
Thus, lesson number one: it’s far too early to decide what happened while it’s still happening.
Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett are former advisors and speechwriters for Barack Obama. They now see the process from the other side, as widely followed podcasters. Their assessment:
Since the days of Watergate, the media treats accountability as the raison d’etre for being a journalist. What (they) do…is blame rather than explain. That creates the false impression that the job of journalists is to bring down Presidents...because they saw a movie once with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman that said that was the job. It’s not. Their job is to report stories. If that reporting leads to people in power being held accountable, great. But that should be a biproduct.
Lesson two: don’t blame, explain.
They also identify where journalistic guns should be trained:
It’s long been the view that military intervention can somehow help uphold human rights around the world wherever they’re threatened. Elements of the press corps who cover the Pentagon...talk to generals and military leaders who have a bias towards military intervention. "Overruling their generals"…is always seen as bad. (But) that’s why we have civilians in command of the military.
That sentiment is underscored by veteran investigative reporter Eric Levitz who wrote the following in New York magazine:
Those who fought to extend America’s war in Afghanistan…would like the public to miss the forest for the trees—by mistaking Biden’s tactical errors for strategic ones. The primary lesson…could be that the U.S. war was a catastrophe, and that those who misled the public about the Afghan army’s strength—thereby delaying an inevitable Taliban victory at immense human cost—deserve little input on future policy, no matter how many stars they have on their uniforms or diplomas on their walls. Afghan news coverage focuses exhaustively on the shortcomings of Biden’s withdrawal…ignoring what our client-state’s abrupt collapse says about our two-decades long occupancy.
Lesson three: if you’re going to assess blame, have the insight and courage to place it where it belongs.
Let me suggest just four logical areas of reporting which are vastly more important than what we’ve witnessed from the pundit class so far:
Estimates of America’s expenditures related to Afghanistan range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. Where did that money go? How much went to defense contractors? How was it that over the final several months, the Afghan soldiers we spent 20 years training reportedly were not paid at all? Follow the money.
Understandably, there is media focus on people desperately trying to get out of the country. Some could be killed. However, during the U.S. occupation, nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians...and more than 65,000 Afghan military...were killed. Without our invasion, perhaps every one of them would have lived. Who is telling their stories?
The Taliban are now faced with running a country. To date, abuses of their own people are limited and anecdotal. What are the chances they increase once the Americans depart? How do they say they’ll treat women and girls? Are they telling the truth? How will we know? In a wider sense, the Taliban have to consider their footing in relation to the wider world. What signs are they giving as to how they might proceed?
Their country will become even more impoverished. Do they intend to seek financial help from the outside world? Under what circumstances could or should Western nations consider sending aid…or allowing non-government organizations to operate?
Joe Biden didn’t wake up one morning and determine the timing and method of the withdrawal. He relied on his diplomatic and military advisors. Certainly, he can’t throw them under the bus. The buck, after all, does stop with him.
But the nation’s leading journalists and editors should realize this. Instead of engaging in a White House feeding frenzy, they should have the intelligence and fortitude to begin exploring the real reasons for the disaster. They should see that their “experts” pushing the media’s outrage buttons about Biden are exactly the ones who deserve the outrage. Point your reporting in the right direction—and then fire.
And most importantly, maybe in the end they can identify what went wrong in Vietnam and Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan so that we don’t make that same mistakes again.
