Afghan Lessons

What can be learned from the botched withdrawal of American forces and support personnel from Afghanistan after 20 years of “nation building”? 

Most pundits go quickly to the lesson not learned in Vietnam, like don’t send American military into cultures you not well understood, and don’t expect other “peoples” to find the American way the right way.  While these two observation are unquestionably true, there are others which will carry relevance for the days and years ahead.

President Biden, like his recent predecessors, can’t help but think he is the sharpest knife in the drawer.  He is the President after all.  But Washington and the power it holds also attracts a lot of talent.  There are simply a lot of people who think they are pretty smart and talented and do not need to think in “team” methods.  Who’s the fairest of them all?

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has been celebrating its goal of being the “most diverse” Administration in history.  The example served by having gender, race, age, or sexual preference diversity leading the Administration can be powerful, assuming of course that this diverse group is individually talented and collectively cohesive.  And there in lies the first lesson from Afghanistan.

How could it be that at the 11th hour there was no plan to evacuate civilian and support personnel (including Embassy staff) in the event that the Taliban exceeded expectations and toppled the Afghan government quickly? 

And once the mess was there for everyone to see, the Biden Administration recognizes that the military has followed his orders and already evacuated. In addition, the process for granting exit visas to Afghans, despite promises made, was more attuned for Methuselah that the current need?

Part of President Biden’s problem is his team’s reliance on polls to judge politically whether a policy implementation is wise or not.  When polls indicated most Americans favored getting out of Afghanistan, for example, then that was all that was needed, case closed.  

Most policies, however, involves a wide range of stakeholders.  And each stakeholder sees the “elephant” from their own perspective, not their team members’ view.  Consequently, policy implementation must involve all parts of the team working together with an overall team leader herding to various team members towards a team consensus and a team success versus bragging rights for one element of the team. This is less about diversity and much more about driving team results.

Diversity is valuable but it is doubtful that diversity offers value exceeding the value inherent in the completion of key Administration projects. Remember Katrina and the perceived incompetence of the Bush Administration.  President Biden has receive a wake up call and if he pays attention, he could prevent a repeat of Government’s Katrina response on future “must do” projects.      

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Afghanistan, diversity, President Biden

You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.