The Afghan Debacle Broke State Department Officials

This story deserves more attention than it has generally received. We all know of the Biden administration’s debacle in Afghanistan.

In its rush to surrender to the Taliban, Biden, Blinken and company made themselves look like incompetent fools. They damaged American credibility and sold out national honor. One might argue about whether they could have predicted the collapse of the Afghan forces, but, when it comes to leadership, the people in charge are the people in charge. And the people in charge are responsible for the outcome, regardless of what someone else might have done,

Yet, the mainstream media does not much care about any of it. The fact that we left billions in military equipment behind does not faze them. The fact that we abandoned thousands of allies who had worked with us in country does not seem worthy of being reported. 

Now, as Afghan parents are selling their female children to Taliban fighters, we are happy to ignore the story. Our concern, as Politico reports it, is that the State Department officials who were working on the withdrawal problems are now suffering from severe mental health issues. (via Maggie’s Farm) Many of them have been broken emotionally from the strain of implementing a stupid and cowardly policy, of being part of a monumental failure.

The mainstream press might not know it, but the Biden withdrawal, led by the singularly inept Antony Blinken, was a horrific failure.

The mental health issues of State Department officials count as more evidence of what happens to an organization when its leaders are incompetent fools. We recall that Sen. John McCain stood before the senate one day and denounced Antony Blinken as a dangerous coward during an earlier confirmation debate. As it happened, McCain was right.

So, Politico is reporting on the mental health of State Department employees. I will point out that it is impossible, in reading this report, to discern the gender of the staffer in question. Isn’t that the most telling indication that we have entered a gender-free world?

Or does it mean that the officials were empathetic females whose feelings got the best of them? Surely, the notion that empathy is a marvelous quality to have when dealing with difficult executive situations should be shelved upon reading the stories about the State Department trying to manage the Biden Afghanistan surrender. Empathy could only render these officials dysfunctional.

Politico writes:

In the days after the Taliban took Kabul in August, a desperate Afghan father pleaded over the phone with a State Department official to help get his family out of harm’s way.

On the call, the Washington, D.C.-based State official, manning the phone half a world away from the turmoil, could hear pounding on the man’s door.

“The Taliban, you could hear them in the background. You could hear the women in the house screaming. It was awful,” the official said in an interview. “It’s so scary. You don't know if you're going to be on the phone with someone when they get shot. You don't know if the email you're getting from that person is going to be the last email from them.”

Of course, life and death situations are likely to provoke some emotional response. And yet, the larger issue was the rank incompetence of the Blinken State Department:

Interviews with more than half a dozen State Department employees in addition to government officials and advocates, as well as a review of internal administration emails POLITICO obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the desperation and disorganization that consumed frontline State Department employees. As they feverishly attempted to assist Afghans and Americans stranded in the war-torn country and fielded a crush of calls and emails — the inbox where the State Department directed Afghans to send Special Immigrant Visa applications crashed at least once — officials say they were unclear of their own authorities and what policies they were allowed to employ to help evacuate people. It all triggered mental health issues for some staffers, from which some are still attempting to recover, months later.

Their stories are a testament to the U.S. government’s lack of preparedness for the cratering security situation, even as President Joe Biden pushed through his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by Aug. 31.

These officials were not used to failing at that level. One official said that it broke him (or her).

“This experience broke a lot of people, including me,” a second State Department official said. “We were all getting inundated by personal requests to help specific people from everyone we’ve ever known or worked with. And we were powerless to do anything, really. Feeling like you’re supposed to be the government’s 911, but knowing the call for help didn’t go very far beyond you was extremely demoralizing.”

It was, as yet another State official put it, “like we were throwing grains of sand into the ocean.”

So, the State Department was not facilitating the evacuation of Afghans. It had found a larger issue: the mental health and nervous breakdowns of its staff:

In interviews with POLITICO, State Department staffers describe having been “manic” or suffering “a complete mental breakdown” at the time of the evacuation. They spoke of the need for mental health support in its aftermath. One official reported that colleagues continue to meet on occasion for breakfast “just to cry.” Another disclosed seeking out therapy. More than one State Department official described the Afghanistan withdrawal as having damaged them emotionally. The people interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous so they could speak candidly.

“We’re not used to failure at State, and in every single possible circumstance, it was failure,” one of the officials said. “You’re failing with the email, you're failing with getting guidance on what we could do and what we could not do. We weren't empowered enough. No one really understood what our policy was.”

It is interesting to see that Blinken made staff mental health his “top priority:”

In response to this article and questions about caring for the mental health of its employees, the State Department released a lengthy statement to POLITICO that said Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s top priority was the health, safety and well being of department personnel and their families. Department officials said they made mental health professionals available to staffers in the United States and abroad, even using therapy dogs, among other types of support. They acknowledged, however, that given the flood of information staffers had to deal with, many may have missed the notices on mental health.

Again, the mental health issues were produced by an incompetent administration:

Their stories are a testament to the U.S. government’s lack of preparedness for the cratering security situation, even as President Joe Biden pushed through his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by Aug. 31.

“This experience broke a lot of people, including me,” a second State Department official said. “We were all getting inundated by personal requests to help specific people from everyone we’ve ever known or worked with. And we were powerless to do anything, really. Feeling like you’re supposed to be the government’s 911, but knowing the call for help didn’t go very far beyond you was extremely demoralizing.”

The emotional wear on U.S. officials was made worse by the fact that so many had a direct connection to Afghanistan and its people during the U.S.’s 20-year presence there. A huge number of U.S. diplomats have served in the country at one point or another.

“It was really hard to watch everything we’d worked on crumble,” a U.S. diplomat involved in the situation said. “We have a lot of contacts and friends who are still there.”

The inundation of SOS requests went on for weeks beyond the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline.

Photo after photo of passports popped up in employee inboxes. Haunting images of stranded babies, young girls or the bloodied victims of the Taliban populated their texts and emails.

The department did not have a clue about what to do to clean up the mess it had made. But, it brought in therapy dogs to help staff deal with their nervous breakdowns:

The department also brought in therapy dogs to its headquarters in Washington, D.C., a service appreciated by the employees, including several interviewed for this article. The medical bureau also produced videos, held multiple support group meetings and offered webinars focused on mental health, the spokesperson said. And, as of Oct. 19, the Office of Employee Consultation Service (ECS) held over 600 one-on-one counseling sessions with employees involved in Afghanistan-related activities, with about half of the sessions with those overseas, according to the State Department.

Many officials were clear that the fault lay with the leaders. And yet, their voices have barely been heard. If they had spoken out against President Trump they would have been great heroes, especially if they had accused him of doing something that Joe Biden had done-- engaging a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Now they have to make do with therapy dogs and free counseling sessions, while the media buries the story:

But several of the officials said their trauma was only exacerbated by the disappointment they felt in their own leaders and what they described as a lack of a clear plan.

“The department really struggled to provide direction … It was almost like after every meeting, there’d be a meeting, and then there’d be new guidance,” said one official.

While Biden and others have blamed the chaos on a failure of intelligence, several State officials weren’t ready to let their leadership off the hook, saying the problems went beyond faulty intelligence.

“I think there was a general consensus that Kabul would fall and it would fall across the backs of the people who were closest to the United States the hardest. And it was inevitably going to lead to panic,” one of the officials said. “I think anyone who works with human rights or women’s rights or democracy or had spent time in Kabul, our embassy or in our mission staff would have been able to say that. So I don’t think it was an intelligence failure. I think it was a management failure.”

When does a management failure become a dereliction of duty? Perhaps a new Congress, in 2023 will investigate the department management and call its leaders to account.