Biden administration officials may try to blame the U.S. intelligence community for the Afghanistan debacle. The New York Times on Aug. 18 cited an unidentified senior administration official, who claimed that as the situation grew more volatile in July, U.S. intelligence agencies never offered a clear “high confidence” prediction of an imminent Taliban takeover. But the role of intelligence in critical national security decisions is to reduce uncertainty, not to provide perfect clarity.
Intelligence is difficult to collect...
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Biden administration officials may try to blame the U.S. intelligence community for the Afghanistan debacle. The New York Times on Aug. 18 cited an unidentified senior administration official, who claimed that as the situation grew more volatile in July, U.S. intelligence agencies never offered a clear “high confidence” prediction of an imminent Taliban takeover. But the role of intelligence in critical national security decisions is to reduce uncertainty, not to provide perfect clarity.
Intelligence is difficult to collect and sometimes hard to analyze, especially when considering factors like how a foreign fighting force will react to battlefield pressure. Intelligence isn’t perfect—if it were, it would be called information. It is best used to warn against surprises and to understand developments well enough to avoid adverse consequences. Based on the information made public so far, intelligence failure doesn’t appear to be a critical factor in President Biden’s policy decisions leading to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
The U.S. intelligence agencies filed public testimony before Congress in April, five days before Mr. Biden’s withdrawal speech, saying that the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces was possible. “Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield” and remains “tied down in defensive missions,” according to that assessment. The testimony even said that “the Afghan government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.” This should have warned the Biden administration not to make rash policy decisions.
Mr. Biden was hell-bent on withdrawal. Intelligence gives policy makers an advantage, but it isn’t the fault of the intelligence community if policy makers ignore their reports. Many media reports indicate that Mr. Biden rejected options to keep troops in Afghanistan longer because he believed policy makers were being gamed by generals who supported a greater military presence. He dismissed questions about whether the Afghan government would fall. On July 2 he said, “Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years. . . . I want to talk about happy things, man.” His public remarks since the Kabul collapse revealed his firmly rooted desire to withdraw on his timeline without regrets.
Though it is true the intelligence community at first assessed in April the Afghan National Security Forces could hold off the Taliban for 18 months to two years, cascading failures in the execution of the withdrawal shrunk that timeline. The policy review that led to the April announcement was conducted with the secrecy of the Osama bin Laden raid, and the Biden administration didn’t sufficiently consult Congress, the Afghan government or U.S. allies. The April announcement that withdrawal would begin little more than two weeks later was unexpected. Imagine the demoralizing effect the news had on Afghan soldiers. The announcement gave the Taliban momentum and likely caused an increase in desertions among Afghan soldiers. The original withdrawal deadline of Sept. 11 suggested that the White House was motivated by public relations, not concern for the Afghan troops left behind.
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The intelligence community’s job is to gather and analyze the secrets of foreign governments, not our own. As far as the intelligence community knew, Mr. Biden intended to withdraw troops as he said he would: “responsibly, deliberately, and safely . . . in full coordination with our allies and partners.” Yet the U.S. pullout from its military installation at Bagram shows the opposite. U.S. troops shut off the electricity and left in the middle of the night, apparently without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander. While the U.S. departed stealthily for security reasons, the transfer was poorly executed, and a small army of looters soon invaded the base. The midnight departure made the Afghans feel the U.S. had abandoned them, and it shocked Central Intelligence Agency officials.
Congress shouldn’t let the Biden administration pin its failures on the intelligence community. As the congressional intelligence committees begin their review this fall of the intelligence supplied by the intelligence community to policy makers, they should consider whether the Biden administration’s timing, method and execution of the withdrawal contributed to the downfall of the Kabul government. A simple review of whether intelligence assessments proved true would be inadequate. Congress should also look at whether the April 14 pullout announcement made the collapse inevitable. Midnight pullouts, a diplomatic withdrawal, and U.S. commanders returning home before the withdrawal was complete made the situation worse. To focus solely on the intelligence community, so often the scapegoat for policy failures, insults America’s 20 years of sacrifice in Afghanistan.
Mr. Allen served as special assistant to the president and senior director for counteproliferation strategy (2007-09) and majority staff director of the House Intelligence Committee (2011-13). He is author of “Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence After 9/11.”