Annals of Truth-Twisting: That “Afghan Debacle”
WILD OLIVES, France — CNN at times burnishes Ted Turner’s legacy with coverage and interviews that glue me to the screen. At other times, I’m about to protect my TV with a wire cage lest I attack it with an axe.
Jeff Zucker’s CNN, in my view, was the main reason Donald Trump pushed past Hillary Clinton in 2016. Absurdity spiked ratings. Now, new management focused on personalities, pulled punches and angertainment may put him back in office.
A single network hardly bears all the blame. Yet that dubious boast — “more people get their news from CNN than any other news source” — is based on multiplatform clicks. When big stories break, viewership swells.
That June “debate” with a fact-free blowhard finished off Joe Biden’s presidency. But CNN had already wounded him after seven months on the job.
“The most trusted name in news,” CNN’s other conceit, implies credibility across the board. Skewed reporting when Afghanistan fell irreparably sank Biden’s approval polls. Three years later, it still underpins Trump’s most damaging big lie.
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No wonder Tim Walz’s word, weird, caught on. Americans facing the most crucial elections ever are anxious to hear fresh thoughts from Democrats. Yet TV cameras focus instead on increasingly demented Trump ravings as they did in 2016.
Go figure. “Journalists” still suck up to a sociopath criminal who reviles them, spewing disjointed lies in response to direct questions. They mercilessly hounded out of office the most effective president since wheelchair-bound Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Biden’s tireless diplomacy produced a stunning prisoner exchange involving seven countries. He has kept the Middle East from bursting into flame after Trump splashed kerosene across the region. He mollifies Xi Jinping and thwarts Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s self-focused response to Covid-19 needlessly took a half-million American lives, sinking the economy toward Great Depression depths. Biden restored the booming prosperity that he and Barack Obama had left behind.
But that pathetic debate crippled Biden. By the rules, opponents were supposed to correct each other’s facts. That is impossible when one lies with every breath.
Biden spent days of preparation while keeping up with affairs of state and a world at war. Trump golfed. He would only make shit up and parrot old grievances. Biden faltered badly. Public opinion, mistaking that for dementia, crucified him.
CNN said the debate had its largest-ever audience. Within minutes after its panels finished cross talk, Democrats were scrambling to find a new contender.
As it turned out, Biden’s gracious departure buoyed spirits across America. As a lame duck, he is hardly lame. He has five months to head off Middle East war, rally support for Ukraine and push for global action against climate collapse.
If you do nothing else all month, watch Lawrence O’Donnell’s Tomahawk missile strike on America’s Trump-besotted press. It is summarized below, with an attached link. But first, Afghanistan.
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As elections approach, it is vital to set the record straight. An ignominious end to the war left America scorned and hobbled in a world that badly needs its leadership. The fault is Trump’s, not Biden’s.
In Kabul soon after 9/11, I talked with Afghans who, despite suffering from errant U.S. bombings, saw the need to rid their country of Osama bin Laden.
Seasoned statesmen, Senator Biden included, wanted U.S. troops to hunt down Al Qaeda and get out. The Taliban was not yet the enemy. They knew from Vietnam about quagmires and lights at the end of tunnels.
But just as U.S. commandos closed in on Bin Laden near the Pakistan border, George W. Bush diverted troops to Iraq. Bin Laden escaped with his entourage. Al Qaeda remnants dug in to stay, alternately allies and adversaries of the Taliban for the next 20 years.
Vice President Biden urged Obama to end the war, but the generals prevailed. I recall one who assured victory in winter; his men were better equipped. Afghans have run off all invaders since Genghis Khan. They survive in snowy crags on tea, rice and mutton.
Trump brags that no U.S. troops were killed on his watch. By then, only a reduced force was hunkered down safely in bases while a dispirited Afghan army lost ground to the Taliban. Corrupt politicians with ethnically divided power bases fought for supremacy.
In 2020, the withdrawal Biden promised had strong popular support. But Trump wanted to claim credit for ending the war. He bypassed the Kabul government to capitulate to the Taliban and agreed to free 5,000 imprisoned fighters.
Trump said he would pull out all U.S. forces during his term. A Taliban offensive, flouting his deal, forced a delay. He left Biden with only 2,500 troops and no plan to evacuate Americans or Afghans at risk. His immigrant-averse aides denied visas to families that had foreseen the inevitable.
Biden advanced the deadline so the Kabul government could negotiate an orderly handover and evacuation. But the Taliban knifed into the capital sooner than Western or Afghan intelligence expected. The president fled, banks closed, panic was total.
Old-hand reporters know that when things unexpectedly collapse, terrified people storm the only way out. Some hand babies over fences. Others cling to retracting wheels as planes take off. We saw it in Saigon, the dramatic last act after years of folly.
Clarissa Ward, CNN chief international correspondent, described the roiling chaos for 10 heart-tugging minutes. Her focus on the effect, not the cause, left a clear impression: Biden was responsible for a humiliating American failure.
“There is no way to rescue anyone,” she said. “It’s survival of the fittest…It’s very hard as an American to be here.” The blitz was a surprise, she said, but plans for every eventuality should have been made. She concluded, “Surely, there was a better way.”
It is hard to see what that might have been.
A deal was brewing to transfer power. Had Americans begun quiet evacuations while shutting down the embassy, word would have spread fast, risking countrywide chaos and urban war in a capital of five million. Biden attempted to buoy optimism.
President Ashraf Ghani had vowed to stay until the bitter end. But on Aug. 15, he and a few intimates fled at night in a helicopter. In the hinterlands, those who could headed for the borders. Kabul converged on the airport.
After the first tumultuous days, U.S. forces and allies managed a stunning success. They flew out nearly 124,000 people from a single runway with Taliban coordination. They helped NGOs and news organizations get their staffs with their families to safety.
Many were left behind, and serious mistakes were made. That happens in war, which is why Biden opposed it from the start.
Under Bush, Obama and Trump, futile fighting killed 6,341 U.S. troops and contractors, twice the toll of 9/11, along with perhaps 130,000 Afghan combatants and civilians. The country America set out to save now starves under medieval tyranny.
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If Americans think of Afghanistan at all today, two words dominate news stories and conversations: Biden’s disaster. Trump exploits that at every turn, playing to his cult’s unfathomable gullibility and most other Americans’ inattention to detail.
He says he would have brought everyone home safely, along with all those billions of dollars in hardware Biden abandoned, after beating back an enemy that besmirched America’s honor.
How? The token force he left behind could not secure Bagram Air Base, let alone the perilous road from Kabul and a rugged expanse the size of Texas. Trump could have ended the war years earlier in concert with NATO allies and Afghan authorities.
At the Republican convention, Trump brought to the podium family members of 13 U.S. servicemen killed at Kabul airport by a lone suicide bomber. Victims of Biden’s war, he called them, the most shameful blot in American history.
He introduced a sergeant who faults officers for not pursuing a likely culprit. But that was the wrong man. An intensive Defense Department analysis said the actual bomber, an ISIS terrorist, could not have been not stopped in the crush at the airport gate.
CNN still excerpts bits of Ward’s reporting in house ads. In a recent investigation, it said soldiers heard more shots fired than the Pentagon reported. It did not dispute the essential conclusion: that was an ISIS attack.
Trump claims that he wiped out the Islamic State. True, U.S. support helped Kurds and other Iraqis reclaim the ISIS caliphate’s occupied territory. But ISIS offshoots and their allies continue to thrive in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
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Earlier in 2021, CNN hired Sam Kiley, an exceptional Times of London correspondent I worked with in Africa. He switched to TV and excelled: gutsy, savvy, sensitive. His calm delivery includes background to explain the bang-bang he shows onscreen.
His 2009 book, “Desperate Glory,” describes a six-month stay with crack British paratroopers, stymied in Helmand Province by ragtag Afghans and confused rules of engagement. (Americans who replaced them later did no better.)
Kiley earns trust from top officers and grunts, who speak frankly on camera or off. He flew into Kabul for an inside look at the evacuation. CNN used only brief standups before cutting to Ward and guesswork panels in America. Then reporters inside the airport were ordered back to Doha.
Later, Kiley was brilliant in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and elsewhere, with live shots and long narratives. But his contract expired this year and was not renewed. No reason, no criticism — just one case among many. It is David Zaslav’s CNN.
Warner Bros. Discovery bought the network in 2023. Chris Licht replaced Zucker. His first big idea was a 70-minute Trump townhall moderated by Kaitlan Collins. Her smart questions irked Trump in the White House. In a townhall setting, her efforts to correct facts was like howling in a hurricane.
Zaslav’s takeover was a financial nightmare. He paid multi-million-dollar yearly salaries to star anchors but scrimped on paying reporters near ground truth. Coverage is often based on smoke and mirrors.
As I write this, a freelancer who describes himself as a journalist, master of ceremonies and public speaking coach is reporting on Ukraine. A staff correspondent is providing updates on Israel. Both are in London.
CNN maintains some excellent reporters abroad, immersed in the stories they follow. Ben Wedeman, to name one, is now in Beirut. A 30-year CNN veteran, he speaks perfect Arabic. But often big names parachute in, sometimes clueless.
One CNN promo features a popular anchor. In helmet and flak vest, she says, “I’m about three miles from the Gaza border.” Safe among Israeli officials selling the party line, she might as well have stayed in New York.
Worse, CNN now blurs the hallowed line between reporting and paid huckstering. I just watched a sometime anchor spend 30 minutes hyping Kazakhstan. Its fledging winemakers in small vineyards, she “reported,” may soon be on a par with France.
(My editor, who saw that piece, asked whether it was really a sponsored ad. That’s the point. Some “advertorials” are dead obvious at a glance. Others might be some editor’s bad idea of an upbeat brief story.)
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Fox News has some good reporters playing piano in a whorehouse. In a nation bereft of options, that leaves CNN and MSNBC along with the three “legacy” networks that barely touch on major world news.
Lawrence O’Donnell last week savaged campaign coverage, his own network’s included. A former Washington insider, he and Aaron Sorkin depicted what America’s chief executive ought to be: Jeb Bartlett in “West Wing.” Martin Sheen plays a Nobel economist from New Hampshire who lives up to his oath of office.
Normally wry and restrained, O’Donnell seethed unvarnished fury in a diatribe headlined, “’Stupidest’ Candidate Trump Does Not Answer Reporters’ Questions.”
For 18 minutes, he berated reporters for squandering the chance to grill a convicted-felon candidate during an hour-plus “press conference.” One asked: “Mr. President, can you tell us a bit more about your upcoming interview with Elon Musk?”
The setup at Mar-a-Lago left questions mostly inaudible. None were answered. One serious reporter asked Trump’s position on mifepristone. O’Donnell read aloud the reply, incomprehensible babble that came nowhere near abortion or birth control.
To another, Trump replied, “That’s a stupid question.” Then he continued his soliloquy at a rate of, by one count, three unchallenged lies or gross distortions a minute.
It was as O’Donnell said: 2016 all over again. Except much worse.
After networks showed the entire circus, none aired Kamala Harris’s brief speech thanking the United Auto Workers for endorsing her. It was the uplifting barnburner that so many disaffected voters needed to hear. O’Donnell played the full video.
What struck me most were two clips of the same press corps attacking Biden and then press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre like piranhas after a haunch of beef. They shouted over each other, thrusting fingers and interrupting honest answers.
Those desperate crowds at Kabul airport displayed more decorum.
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November is still months away. Next week, the Democrats hold their convention. On Labor Day, Sept 2, Americans will start paying more attention. Ten days later, we’ll find out whether Harris is too dumb to debate Trump, as he says. Hard to imagine.
I’ll be listening to CNN for thoughts from regulars I’ve learned to respect and guests in a position to know what they’re talking about. I’ll follow Amanpour, Fareed Zakaria and a lot of reporting. But, as it is now, it is hardly my most trusted name in news.
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