A Total Collapse of Leadership

We’ve now learned that on July 13th, with plenty of time to change plans, officials in the State Department warned the Biden Administration of the gains of the Taliban, the potential collapse of Kabul, and advocated to use harsher language when describing the violent actions of the Taliban. There were 23 U.S. Embassy staffers signed on the confidential cable where they shared this information, who had to go to this length just to let their concerns be heard. So, now we know the State Department’s plan was problematic and specific to Kabul falling. And yet, President Biden did not change his plan.

In an ABC interview when asked about if the President thought the Taliban would take over when he made this decision, President Biden responded:

"Well, the question was whether or not it —the idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that the – that somehow, the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was gonna just collapse, they were gonna give up. I don’t think anybody anticipated that."

Except for your own State Department.

ACLJ Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy and former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell commented on the report:

"Jordan as you know, I spent more than 10 years at the State Department. . . . Over the last couple of days, I’ve been speaking to a lot of Foreign Service officers. Here is what we know – in early June, the Foreign Service officers started to warn their superiors that they believed Afghanistan was in real trouble – that the Taliban was taking over. Fast forward to July 1st and the Biden Administration closed Bagram Air Base removing our troops. . . . It’s a recipe for disaster when you remove the military from a conflict zone but you leave behind the State Department and other Americans. It boiled over to the point that on July 13th, 22 of the 23 people who work in the economic and political section at Embassy Kabul signed a dissent cable. Which is a very rare thing. They went out of the chain and said we are not being heard. . . . We are in danger. That was July 13th. Fast forward the political teams in Washington at the White House, Embassy, State Department and the Pentagon ignored these warnings for two months and the disaster unfolded. They should’ve been listening to State Department officials and intelligence officials and this wouldn’t have happened."

ACLJ Senior Counsel for Global Affairs and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo worked in the State Department under the Trump Administration. He gave his take on why the Biden Administration ignored these warnings:

"It is almost certainly the case that that dissent cable got to Secretary Blinken. It’s almost certainly the case that it got to so many. I’m confident it got to others; I am sure on the military side as well. I can tell you that because we were concerned for this as well. We knew we had to get the conditions right before we executed on the plan to get our final set of soldiers out. . . . So, it is unsurprising today that they got warned. The fact that President Biden said nobody told us – I thought was deeply inconsistent. I knew Senior leaders inside the U.S. government believed about making sure we had the conditions right before the withdrawal was completed."

As Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo had a different strategy for the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He explains the difference in his new article and adds:

"We had a methodical approach to this. You can see it, you don’t have to guess. . . . You can see how we managed this for four years. You can make sure we drew down our forces and each time we evaluated the conditions on the ground and accomplished the twin missions the President set out for us. The first one being to make sure we get our boys and girls home as quickly as we can. . . . The second was to make sure we did it in an orderly way, to create an opportunity for risk reduction and make sure something like this never happened again. It is unimaginable to me that they pulled the military out before citizens. It’s unimaginable to me they left this much equipment. . . . When I met with the Taliban, we were clear, if you violate the agreement you will pay. Multiple times in the course of our time and service, they did that. They did things they promised they wouldn’t do. It doesn’t surprise us, we didn’t trust them. When they did that, we responded, we imposed real costs on them and we began to have this deterrence model . . . it is only when President Biden lifted the deterrence model and when the Taliban pushed on America under President Biden, America retreated. . . . And when you retreat in the face of an adversary . . . you get enormous credibility loss."

We are filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request after finding out that the State Department warned President Biden before the collapse of Afghanistan to find out why it was ignored. These mistakes will have an impact on the United States putting our status in the world at risk, so we are taking action.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the State Department’s warning to the Biden Administration over the potential collapse of Afghanistan.