The Pakistan Connection

Maybe she is right. Maybe she is wrong. Whatever the case, Lara Logan’s analysis of the situation in Afghanistan merits some serious attention. It may be a sign of my own limitations, but I have not been aware of many of the points she made. I found her to be illuminating and enlightening on Tucker Carlson Today last night.

Happily, Fox News has offered us a transcription of much of the interview. I would emphasize her most salient point, namely, that the problem with Afghanistan is really Pakistan, but that successive administrations, thanks to the influence of the bureaucracy, have refused to tackle that aspect of the issue.

Logan begins by saying that the problem is not as complicated as people keep saying that it is. In fact, officials tell you that it is complicated because they cannot bring themselves to do what needs to be done. She adds a point about which I have speculated in the past: perhaps the Biden administration really wants this outcome. Perhaps they believe that the Taliban will inevitably win because they are stronger and more righteous. Or perhaps they want improved relations with Pakistan?

So, consider:

"What they want you to believe is that Afghanistan is complicated. Because if you complicate it, it's a tactic in information warfare called 'ambiguity increasing,'" Logan said. 

"So now we're all talking about the corruption and the ‘this' and the 'that’ and that there's all these complex parts — but at its heart, every single thing in the world, in your personal life, professionally, on the global stage, at its heart, it's very simple. It always comes down to one thing, one or two things. And in this case, in Afghanistan, this comes down to the fact that the United States wants this outcome," she continued.

"Whoever is in power right now, whoever is really pulling the strings – and I don't know that – they could do anything they want to change this. And they're not."

The real problems lie with Pakistan, she continues:

Logan explained that the Taliban's main base is not Afghanistan but Pakistan, and that Islamabad is the only regional government with nuclear capabilities. Combining those factors helps explain why there's no urgency to course-correct in Afghanistan.

Do we have any leverage over Pakistan? Of course, we do. Yet, Logan adds, we have chosen not to use it:

She said the U.S. helps fund a good portion if not all of the Pakistani defense budget in terms of military and intelligence services, like the ISI.

"For example, you could stop the money. You could stop the remittances of Pakistanis living in the United States. You could put on sanctions. You could have visas [withdrawn], you know," Logan said of one potential action the U.S. government could take quickly to counteract the catastrophe in Kabul.

"Every time you try to address this issue, the immediate response for 20 years of this war has been, you're advocating for war in Pakistan. No, you're not. What they know is there are many things the United States could do right now to change what has happened and is happening in Afghanistan. And they're not doing it."

Logan reported that President Biden once told then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai exactly what she just stated: that Pakistan strategically matters and Afghanistan does not.

Who is really in charge of policy toward Pakistan? Logan reports that it’s the permanent bureaucracy:

"When we hear about the bureaucracy that is on Capitol Hill, which are the bureaucrats who survive from administration to administration, this has been their policy," she said of the idea they have been propping up Pakistan. 

"They have pushed through the Bush administration, through Clinton, through Obama, through Trump, and now to Biden that because Pakistan is a nuclear nation, they are the only country in that region that actually matters. In fact, Joe Biden told Afghan's president -- when it was Hamid Karzai still in power-- exactly that."

Obama, she said, echoed Biden in his Mideast ‘listening tour’, adding that the Illinois Democrat's message has been the government's position almost consistently over the last decades.

The three Taliban "Shura," or councils, she added, are all in Pakistan – the Quetta, Peshawar and Miramshah. The Shura all benefit from the "warm embrace of the ISI", she added.

"The United States has known this from day one."

Then, Logan adds that the intelligence agencies have known all about what was happening and what was going to happen in Afghanistan. As with her other points, I find this entirely plausible. Otherwise you would be forced to conclude that they are a bunch of buffoons-- like the people running the Biden presidency:

"The staggering part to me is that when you hear this debate, "The intelligence agencies failed to see this." Seriously? The NSA is known as the crown jewel of intelligence collection in the world. There isn't a digital signature in existence that they don't collect and store and analyze and have algorithms and everything else to sort through," she said.

"The idea that they missed this.. You know what it takes to do an invasion like this? You have to stage forces. You have to plan. You have to have meetings. You have to have, you know, weapons that are moving in. They don't tell you the national security threat posed by letting the cartels come across the southern border, do they? They only have a conversation about one thing, the humanitarian aspect. They never address that."

"What they're not addressing right now [is] all of the Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist literature and communications that they're picking up that are celebrating [the collapse of Afghanistan] as a massive defeat."

She added:

Logan posited that the NGIA, which controls government satellites and other armaments, has been watching the Taliban taking control of abandoned U.S. military equipment; bringing it back east into Pakistan.

"The NSA and the [NGIA] are watching this happen in real time," she claimed.

"And they're doing nothing to stop it. Why not? So what the Afghans will tell you…is that the United States chose this outcome."

"The United States government could change this even today. And they don't do it. They don't use the leverage they have with Pakistan. They'll give you 5,000 reasons, but it doesn't matter."

Bracing, don’t you think.