Stevenson’s army, August 17

– Political Washington is already rehearsing various narratives to use about Afghanistan. Republicans want to blame Biden; Democrats want to blame Trump; many want to say there was an intelligence failure;  even those who favor withdrawal blame the administration for poor contingency planning.

-A lot depends on what the pictures are during the next two weeks. If there’s rape and pillage, the administration suffers. If there’s chaos but mostly safe withdrawal of foreigners, different lessons will be offered.

– Be sure to ignore the “what this means for Biden’s legacy” stories, for the time being. Remember, neither Jerry Ford nor either party suffered because of the dramatic “fall of Saigon.” Reagan recovered from the Beirut barracks bombing; Clinton recovered from Blackhawk down;  Bush recovered from the 9/11 attacks.

– Meanwhile, I recommend the new Post article summarizing the reports and oral histories in their “Afghanistan Papers.”  CRS had a longer summary 2 years ago.

– And for the Congress course, look at CRS report on what Congress has been doing about Afghanistan.

– I also found interesting this from Small Wars Journal.

– And while WSJ says the IC missed the speed of collapse, I remembered Ernest Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy, which applies here: “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).