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At least 12 U.S. Marines were killed and another 15 were wounded in an attack outside the Kabul airport today. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack which also killed and injured scores of Afghan civilians.
This newsletter is meant to be consumed by consumers and practitioners of politics, including members of the administration. Today, we wanted to give other people a chance to reach that audience.
We reached out to several active duty service members who served in Afghanistan along with veterans of the war and asked them: What would you tell the White House today?
These are some of their responses, lightly edited for clarity and length:
ER physician who served in Kandahar, Afghanistan:
There was no greater honor in my professional career than caring for ill and injured service members in Afghanistan. My mind is filled with images of the injured patients I cared for, many of them only toddlers during 9/11.
Learning of the at least 12 marines killed today makes me so angry — and makes me recall how I felt when we had a green on blue (insider) attack on my deployment and lost several Americans: absolute anger and resentment. We were attacked by those we were trying to help and several Americans needlessly died.
While I feel that we need to do what we can to support those who helped us throughout the war, preventing further loss of American lives should be paramount. We spent 20 years trying to help and now have countless American lives permanently altered — death, horrible injuries and certainly the mental health impacts that will haunt so many for the rest of their lives.
West Virginia State Sen. RYAN WELD, Air Force staff intelligence officer, served in Afghanistan in 2010-11:
We've got to get these people out. We have a moral obligation to get those Afghans who worked with us, who worked with ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], who worked with US forces to help us in our mission to secure Afghanistan.
An Air Force surgeon who served in Afghanistan:
I think I would say that this has been a huge fuckup—the process of leaving—and it could have been done a lot better. I would also say that I feel both sadness and a lot of rage for all the people that I watched die, both U.S. and our partners and Afghans. I feel like what was it all for? All that loss.
I read about explosions this morning when I woke up and I just went back on the web page and found out that 12 U.S. Marines died and, like, I just started crying at my desk in between patients. [long pause]... It's just been kind of a devastating few weeks.
Active duty Marine and Afghanistan veteran:
Americans carrying out your policies died today. Will they have died in vain? Did they give their lives so you could turn your backs on the Americans and huddled masses who still remain trapped? You have a choice. Will you abandon your fellow Americans and bow to those who would kill us? Or will you choose the path of courage, so my Brothers will not have died in vain?
PERRY BLATSTEIN, former CIA officer in Afghanistan and Situation Room official during Obama and Trump administration:
In every case that I've heard of, or been a part of, some part of the process is completely broken... Serving in a situation room, I've been on the other side of fielding the government crisis response. It's really hard. Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have. You're up all hours. I get it. But at the end of the day, there wasn't anyone who kind of put their hand on the table and said ‘Look, we're talking about American lives, and the lives of Afghans who deserve to be Americans.’
We see how that ended. Not only are we leaving people behind who we were hoping would get a Special Immigrant Visa, we're leaving American citizens behind.
JEFF PHANEUF, Marine Corps Iraq veteran who has spent the last five days helping Afghans evacuate:
Since Saturday, I (and many others) have been working without sleep to facilitate evacuations of Americans and our allies through the gate. Our work has saved hundreds of lives, only because I happened to know service members on the ground. I have received desperate pleas for help from senior military leaders, White House officials, and members of Congress, not to mention terrified Afghans and their families who somehow got my number.
I'm just some grad student who happens to be a veteran. The fact that people have had to rely on a ragtag informal network of vets, journalists, and aid workers to get their people out is clear evidence of what a catastrophe this pullout has been. I'm so proud of the rapid mobilization and initiative taken by all these incredible patriots, and dismayed by the failures of our government.
Navy officer who has done a “couple” tours in Afghanistan:
This isn't about political parties - 20 years of American blood and treasure at least deserved a more dignified curtain call. What is unfolding in Afghanistan is a foreign policy humiliation. American blood, sweat, tears & toil went into that place, and most importantly, we dedicated precious days on this earth to it.
Even though obviously it didn’t turn out the way we all hoped, I don’t feel like it was a complete loss. Not worth the price tag necessarily, but as a consolation prize millions of people were introduced to human rights and a better way of life. Tens of thousands escaped. Not worth the $2 trillion. Not worth the Death blow to Pax Americana. Definitely not worth the blood of America and allies. Yet I can look back and feel like some of the best days of my life were spent there, and certainly some of the most gut wrenching and formative ones too. It’s an open wound that will be there a long time.
Democratic congressional staffer and U.S. Army veteran:
I’m immensely pissed. I have slept maybe 24 hours total since the 14th, talking to countless Afghans, Marines on the ground, and other folks committed to this project; and I’ve never been more angry at a Democratic president.
Current active duty Air Force officer who spent time on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Regional Command-South in Afghanistan:
I want them to know that we feel let down. We feel like we are leaving our brothers and sisters who we brought into this situation. We feel hurt. We feel embarrassed, and we are beginning to feel helpless. I for one am beginning to feel misled. This is simmering underneath. The incongruence of what is being said at the podium and what we know to be happening on the ground seems to support as much.
How did we get it so wrong? How will we fix it?
With today's losses we deserve different answers. The families that have frayed, marriages that have been ruined, lives that have been lost, anguish that has been shared demand it. How will we fix it? How will you address the immense mental anguish being unlocked on us by this exit?
Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you ABBEY PITZER?
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PRESIDENTIAL TRIVIA
With the Partnership for Public Service
What is the average salary of a Biden White House staffer?
(Answer at the bottom.)
The Oval
THE DARKEST DAY — Thursday was the most devastating moment in Biden’s young presidency, NATASHA KORECKI and Tina write. And for those in the White House, it was one of the most emotionally trying and frenetic days since taking office.
As the first reports came in about explosions around Kabul, officials were confronted with a deluge of information, prompting senior officials to remind staffers to ferret out facts from the speculation and chatter. During one staff meeting, sniffles could be heard as various staffers fought back tears when they learned of the U.S. deaths, according to a person close to the situation. One White House official described the pace of the day's events as overwhelming.
MEET THE PRESS: The president took questions after his remarks on Afghanistan, starting with a handful of reporters pre-selected by his aides. “They gave me a list here,” he explained, before calling on NBC’s KELLY O’DONNELL. However, Biden did call on some reporters who weren’t on his list.
“Let me take the question from the most interesting guy I know in the press,” he said.
“Is that me?” Fox News’ PETER DOOCY asked, off-mic.
“That’s you,” Biden replied.
Doocy picked it up from there: “Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things unfolded in the last two weeks?”
"I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that's happened of late," Biden said calmly.
But he also stood by his decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan: “Imagine where we’d be if I had initiated on May the 1st that I was not going to renegotiate an evacuation date, we were going to stay there. I’d have had only one alternative: pour thousands of troops back into Afghanistan to fight a war that we had already won relative to the reason we went in the first place.”
SCHEDULES SCRAMBLED: Biden cancelled his scheduled events for the day, including postponing a meeting with Israel’s new president. Vice President KAMALA HARRIS also rejiggered her schedule, cancelling a planned campaign stop Friday in California for the state’s Democratic Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM amid his recall fight, DANIEL HAN writes. Harris, returning from a weeklong trip in Southeast Asia, will head back to Washington D.C., her spokesperson tweeted Thursday afternoon.
Agenda Setting
SCOOP — U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials, LARA SELIGMAN, ALEXANDER WARD and ANDREW DESIDERIO report.
The move was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport. But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, angered lawmakers and military officials.
Asked about POLITICO’s report this evening, Biden acknowledged that there were circumstances “when our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said for example, ‘this bus is coming through with x number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through.’”
But Biden added, “I can’t tell you with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names. There may have been.”
WATER WARS: Drought and wildfires are complicating Biden’s California water plan to rewrite the Trump administration’s endangered species rules, which limits the amount of water that can be pumped from California’s water hub, DEBRA KAHN and ANNIE SNIDER report.
Filling the Ranks
SKIP THE SENATE — ANITA KUMAR reports that gun violence survivors and activists are pushing the president to create a White House office of gun violence headed by a Cabinet-level aide — a position that wouldn’t require Senate confirmation. Their pitch, made in a letter sent to Biden on Wednesday, comes as DAVID CHIPMAN, the president’s pick to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, continues to languish in the Senate and doubts about his confirmation rise.
What We're Reading
What’s driving America’s economic output? Vaccinated blue counties Biden won (Bloomberg’s Joshua Green)
Kamala Harris says U.S. will ‘speak up’ on South China Sea (Reuters’ Nandita Bose and James Pearson)
Where's Joe
He met with his national security team in the morning, including Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN, Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. MARK MILLEY, and commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, then canceled the rest of his scheduled events for the day.
This evening, he delivered remarks on the suicide bombings in Kabul that killed at least 12 U.S. servicemembers.
Where's Kamala
Harris met with social justice advocates, and later, participated in a meet and greet for the U.S. embassy personnel and delivered remarks at the JW Marriott Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam.
She then left Vietnam and flew to Honolulu, Hawaii, with a two-hour layover in Guam, where she participated in the president’s security briefing via video. In Honolulu, she met with troops at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, then departed for Washington, D.C.
The Oppo Book
There was one remark from Biden today that caught our eye.
"I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan,” he said at his presser, “a country that has never once in its entire history been a united country."
Biden has, on occasion, been a lonely voice calling for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But he did at one point buy into the concept of nation building there. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he urged the U.S. to make a substantial commitment to the country precisely on the grounds that building a stable society there could serve as a bulwark against future threats.
"History is going to judge us very harshly, I believe, if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we are fearful of the phrase ‘nation-building,” Biden said in 2002.
At the time, this was a widely accepted position. By 2009, however, Biden was decidedly of a different mindset, arguing, contra the military brass, that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan needed to be dramatically reduced. Then President BARACK OBAMA sided with the military.
Trivia Answer
The average salary is $94,114 for paid White House staffers, according to an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute.
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