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2021-09-03 Afghanistan
State Department's 'Turf Wars' Over Trump Program 'Mucked Up' Evacuation of Americans From Afghanistan
[PJMedia] Hundreds left behind in Afghanistan by Presidentish Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created ... by the — you know — you know, the thing...
’s hasty and ill-planned bugout could have been gotten out, if not for State Department pie fights over the Trump-era Contingency and Crisis Response bureau.

The story you first read about here two weeks ago got an added boost from Adam Ciralsky’s latest for Vanity Fair.

Planned as a major upgrade to the Obama-era Operational Medicine (OpMed), the CCR was quashed so badly by infighting inside Anthony Blinken’s State Department that "OpMed was in limbo" just as the situation in Kabul went Tango Uniform.

Ciralsky described OpMed as "a turnkey solution for overseas operations." Even as a mere office, William "Doc" Walters’ in-house organization has carried out "daring rescues of U.S. officials, American citizens, and foreign nationals imperiled overseas."

In his last year as President Donald Trump
...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
’s SecState, Mike Pompeo had planned to elevate OpMed to bureau status at the Bureau of Contingency and Crisis Response (CCR).

But then Blinken blinked:

Blinken approved a recommendation against upgrading OpMed into a bureau. A unit distinguished by its ability to blow through bureaucratic wickets would instead be forced to play "Mother May I," answering to a series of administrators: a director, an acting undersecretary, and on up to the deputy secretary for management and resources (DMR). To outsiders, this might seem like a low-stakes game of Jenga in reverse. But the move, which blindsided many, appeared to have profound consequences.

Walters resigned in protest, telling Blinken, "Sir, you deserve to have leaders who can get behind the decisions you make. I can’t do that. So I’m leaving," according to Vanity Fair.

As I wrote when the less-detailed version of this story broke on August 19, "Biden didn’t plan for every contingency. He killed our ability to respond to the most likely contingency."

There is so much blame to go around that I hardly know where to begin.

But the rot does seem deepest at Blinken’s State Department if Ciralsky’s report is anything to go by:

This individual described the decision-making process at Foggy Bottom as being plagued by "pathologic optimism." But as the days and weeks wore on, several other State Department sources would explain that the problem came down to hubris. Eliminating CCR and degrading OpMed, without clearly defined alternatives, was evidence, they said, of meta-ignorance (known in psychology circles as the Dunning-Kruger effect); America’s diplomats, in the view of these insiders, were ignorant of their own ignorance.

Two very bad things were apparently going on at the very same time earlier this summer.

Our top military brass was going forward with closing Bagram Air Base first, thus eliminating the Pentagon’s ability to deal with the crisis created by Biden’s childish determination to exit Afghanistan completely by an arbitrary deadline.

While the White House and Pentagon were busy creating a military and humanitarian crisis, Blinken’s State Department was busy sidelining the one organization they had on hand to respond to Biden’s bungled bugout.

The cascading symmetrical failures would be something you could laugh at in a Franz Kafka story, except these are the deadly and real-world failures of an administration that was supposed to put the grown-ups back in charge.
Posted by trailing wife 2021-09-03 01:27|| || Front Page|| [11136 views ]  Top
 File under: Taliban/IEA 

#1 Two very bad things were apparently going on at the very same time earlier this summer.

I suspect "two" would be a very conservative estimate.

Biden watched the entire Osama bin Laden - Abbottabad, Pakistan operation go down just before Obama was re-elected. His ill-fated 9/11 AFG (made for TV) withdrawal scheme was intended to be his and his WH strategy advisor's Abbottabad media success story.


Posted by Besoeker 2021-09-03 07:46||   2021-09-03 07:46|| Front Page Top

#2 Read a piece that said the debacle was a three way turf fight between the Executive group, what he called 'the intellegence kiddies', and the remote control military.
Short version: the intel guys got shanked.
Posted by ed in texas 2021-09-03 11:11||   2021-09-03 11:11|| Front Page Top

#3 BTW
the piece was:
https://bigcountryexpatoriginal.blogspot.com/2021/08/deep-state-war.html
Posted by ed in texas 2021-09-03 11:12||   2021-09-03 11:12|| Front Page Top

#4 With such a weak chief executive (who has never run anything before in his whole life), the bureaucratic turf wars are the way the country will be run for the next 3 1/2 years. Not looking forward to it.
Posted by Tom 2021-09-03 11:43||   2021-09-03 11:43|| Front Page Top

#5 ^ This is basically the same bunch of guys who think they can control the climate of the planet and re-engineer the US power grid.

And today is the Friday before a 3-day weekend, prime bad news dumping time, so who knows what fresh hell DC will announce this evening.
Posted by Matt 2021-09-03 12:12||   2021-09-03 12:12|| Front Page Top

#6 Walters resigned in protest, telling Blinken, "Sir, you deserve to have leaders who can get behind the decisions you make. I can’t do that. So I’m leaving,"

Daaaaaaaaaaamn!
Posted by swksvolFF 2021-09-03 14:46||   2021-09-03 14:46|| Front Page Top

09:11 Mercutio
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