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Senior defense leaders this week faced more than 12 hours of questions in public hearings on the chaotic exit from Afghanistan, but lawmakers see that as just the start of their oversight work on the issue.

Leaders in the House and Senate are promising additional classified briefings and public inquiries into not just the last few months of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, but the last 20 years of military involvement there.

In addition, Senate Armed Services Committee member Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., on Thursday introduced legislation to create an independent commission to review a variety of military decisions in Afghanistan, to ensure the United States never repeats the mistakes it made in Afghanistan during the 20 years of war.

The panel would be styled after the commission formed to examine intelligence failures in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and would be staffed by outside experts who were not involved in political or military decisions related to the conflict.

Its important to keep it non-political and to make sure that it truly is expansive, that they look at decisions made by the four different [presidential] administrations and 11 different Congresses, Duckworth said. Its not just a look at DOD, but also the State Department, and where did Congress fail?

The commission idea gained preliminary backing from fellow armed services committee members during the panels hearing on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also offered some support, saying an interagency review of the entirety of the war effort would be useful.

Republicans have also called for more investigation into the Afghanistan exit, but with more focus on the final weeks of the conflict.

On Wednesday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced legislation to create a new State Department task force to both review the evacuation of roughly 130,000 individuals in the final weeks of the U.S. presence there and the ongoing work to help more American citizens and Afghan allies get out.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., promised multiple classified hearings on the topic in coming weeks, to include the Defense Departments ability to conduct anti-terrorism operations in and around Afghanistan without a ground presence there.

Senate Armed Services Committee held another public hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal Thursday morning, with views from outside experts about the short-term and long-range security implications there. Officials vowed more will come.

There is a temptation to close the book on Afghanistan and move on to long-term strategic competition with China and Russia, Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., said at the hearing. However, while the threat from violent extremists has changed, we must ensure we remain postured to carry out counterterrorism operations in an effective manner.

In order to move forward, we must capture the lessons of the last two decades.

Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley are scheduled in coming days to deliver written responses to unanswered questions from the marathon Afghanistan hearings earlier this week. Those submissions may provide the basis for future appearances on Capitol Hill by the pair in months to come.

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

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Lawmakers vow investigations into Afghanistan missteps have only just begun - Military Times

WHITE HOUSE

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered to Congress this week an unwavering defense of the Biden administration's exit from Afghanistan, in which he outlined the administration's priorities for the country going forward.

Here are those priorities and the challenges in meeting them.

Assisting Americans and at-risk Afghans

Blinken said the administration was continuing "relentless efforts" to help the fewer than 100 remaining Americans as well as potentially thousands of at-risk Afghans to leave the country if they choose.

Citing the "ongoing terrorist threat to operations of this nature," the State Department declined to provide an official count of Afghans attempting to flee.

A VOA source with knowledge of the evacuation process says that as of Sunday, at least 1,300 at-risk Afghans and U.S.-affiliated individuals are seeking to leave through the Kabul airport or overland transport. Approximately 8,200 are trying to depart from the Mazar-e-Sharif airport, where charter planes have waited for weeks to be cleared for departure.

"The United States has pulled every lever available to us to facilitate the departure of these charter flights from Mazar," a State Department spokesman said.

But those assisting evacuations are losing patience and accuse the administration of offering "empty promises."

"As the days go by and the situation becomes more dire for our 704 passengers, it's hard to have any faith in political promises," independent humanitarian Hazami Barmada told VOA. In recent weeks, she has been assisting the evacuation of a group that includes nine American citizens, nine lawful permanent residents of the U.S., and 170 Special Immigrant Visa holders and their families. As of Wednesday, the group is still stranded in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Engaging diplomatically with Taliban

The U.S. and other Western nations have moved diplomatic operations from Kabul to Doha, Qatar. Blinken said the U.S. was prepared to engage with the Taliban from the Qatari capital in coordination with allies and partners "on the basis of whether or not it advances our interests."

With military intervention no longer a point of leverage for the foreseeable future, the challenge is "how to be diplomatic with a terrorist group," said Brian O'Toole, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Paired with the right leverage, diplomacy may be effective, O'Toole said. This includes the previous Afghan government's $9.5 billion in assets currently frozen in American banks, U.S. dominance over the global financial market, and threats of United Nations and Western sanctions or trade restrictions. Incentives could include offers of international aid, budgetary assistance and recognition of the Taliban government.

Blinken said the U.S. has organized key countries to leverage their combined influence over the Taliban. Last week, he led a ministerial meeting of 22 countries plus NATO, the EU, and the United Nations to align these efforts.

The effectiveness of the soft power approach also depends on whether the Taliban will continue to behave as an extremist group or move toward governing Afghanistan as part of the international community in some form.

At this point, the signals are mixed, said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Despite their pledges to build an inclusive government, members of the all-male interim cabinet are Taliban old guard who may care more about maintaining the internal cohesion of the group than about placating the West. On the positive side, the Taliban have been largely cooperative in the U.S.-led evacuation of 124,000 people out of Afghanistan.

We were adversaries when our country was occupied," Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told VOA. He added the Taliban has "turned a new page with its former battleground enemy and that it "depends on the U.S." whether they will help in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

So far, the Taliban are calculating that it's in their best interest to help Washington, O'Hanlon said. "They really don't want to be in a military fight with the United States, even if they won the previous fight."

Over-the-horizon capability

A key priority of the administration is ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a breeding ground for terrorists plotting attacks on the homeland. U.S. intelligence, however, can no longer closely monitor terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State-Khorasan province.

"There's just no question, as you pull out, without troops on the ground, without the infrastructure we had, without the Afghan government in the position that it was, our intelligence collection is diminished," Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told attendees at a national security summit Monday.

Now the administration is relying on its "over-the-horizon" capacity its ability to detect and destroy terrorist threats through aerial surveillance and drones launched from outside of country. The same approach has been employed in places around the world where the U.S. does not have military forces on the ground, Blinken said.

But in those countries, the U.S. has at least some intelligence and logistical support, either from a military base or a partner country nearby.

"In Somalia, we're nearby in Kenya. In Syria, we're nearby in Iraq or Turkey. In Yemen, we have access to the water right around Yemen and, if necessary, facilities on the Arabian Peninsula as well," O'Hanlon said. "But here in Afghanistan, the landlocked Hindu Kush, we don't really have any easy, close by waterway. And we don't have any countries that are particularly interested in helping us monitor the Taliban."

There are no American bases in any of the six countries that border Afghanistan. The closest base is more than 1,600 kilometers away, in the United Arab Emirates, and it was used to launch drone strikes against IS-Khorasan during the chaotic last days of evacuations before the August 31 withdrawal.

The best option for Washington is to engage with Pakistan, said James Jeffrey, former special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and current chair of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center.

"We have been at odds with Pakistan because of their support of the Taliban," Jeffrey said. "But now that de facto the Taliban is no longer an enemy, I see no reason why we can't, as part of our overall approach, force the Pakistanis to allow us to strike ISIS and al-Qaida from their territory."

How much support Washington can wrangle out of Islamabad remains to be seen. "There is no way we are going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan," Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said in June.

Earlier this month, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Willam Burns flew to Pakistan and India to discuss with counterparts the security concerns following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Support humanitarian aid to Afghan people

On Monday, the administration announced it would send nearly $64 million in new humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, for a total of $330 million in assistance to the Afghan people this fiscal year. Blinken said the aid would flow through independent organizations such as nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies and not through the Taliban government.

"That may work for $64 million in aid, because you can air-drop things and the Taliban has no air presence," said O'Toole. But it will be challenging to distribute larger aid packages without the blessing of those in power.

"You're talking about having real supply convoys and land routes," O'Toole added. "It may be hard to avoid the Taliban."

Moving on from Afghanistan

While Afghanistan has been the first major foreign policy crisis for the administration, the focus will continue to be on Biden's domestic priorities, said Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Within that context, Afghanistan is an issue that they would like to put in the rearview mirror," Miller said.

Polls show Americans are more focused on issues such as the pandemic and the recent Biden vaccine mandate, the push to renew the nation's infrastructure, and the upcoming fight on the debt ceiling.

"There are just so many issues out there that I wouldn't be surprised if Afghanistan receded to some degree," said Karlyn Bowman, a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on American public opinion.

"But clearly as we move ahead toward the 2022 elections, Republicans will remind Americans what happened in Afghanistan," Bowman added.

Biden's approval rating has dropped to a new low of 43% with Americans disapproving of his handling of foreign policy (56%) and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan (61%), according to a September 2 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.

Still, a majority of Americans said they support the decision to withdraw in recent polls from the Pew Research Center and ABC News/Washington Post.

Jeff Seldin and VOA's Urdu Service contributed to this report.

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What's Next for the US in Afghanistan?

1960s Afghanistan presents a stark contrast to the war-torn region we recognize today. Take a peek at the way Afghanistan was and how it can be again.

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Dr. William Podlich (second from left) almost always had his small Olympus camera with him on his travels, and he was usually the man behind the camera. This is a rare photo that he himself appears in.

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Afghan men out for a picnic.

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Peg Podlich on a trip from Kabul to Peshawar, Pakistan.

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Dr. Bill Podlich on a hillside in Kabul.

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A Buddha statue in Bamiyan Valley. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed the two largest ones.

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Men looking over Istalif, a centuries-old center for pottery.

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Men and boys enjoying the waters of the Kabul river.

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An Afghan boy decorating cakes.

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Jan Podlich during a shopping trip in Istalif.

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An outdoor market selling a colorful variety of produce.

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A crowded plaza filled with people celebrating the new year.

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A senior English class at the American International School of Kabul.

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Young students in a playground.

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These students do their work in a shaded outdoor classroom.

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Desks and a leafy canopy are all these students need to make a classroom in the summer.

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Wading children play and women wash as ducks float serenely by.

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Students at the Higher Teachers College of Kabul, where Dr. Podlich taught for two years with UNESCO.

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An Afghani military band.

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An Afghan Army parade through Kabul.

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Afghan repairmen in Kabul.

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Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque, built in the early 20th century under the reign of Amanullah Khan.

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The streets fill with cars during rush hour.

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Kabul Gorge, sometimes called Tang-i-Gharu, connects Kabul with Jalalabad.

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The seasons change, and this winter crowd smiles for the camera.

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A boy sells balloons by the river.

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Men gather on makeshift mobile bleachers.

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Parking lot of the American International School of Kabul.

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A chemistry lesson in a mud-walled classroom.

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Sisters walking the streets of Kabul.

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Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, home to numerous Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as Islamic edifices.

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A man bends his head for a shave.

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A man preparing jalebi, a sweet dessert.

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King's Hill in Paghman Gardens, constructed following Amanullah Khan's tour of Europe, India, and Iran. Paghman soon became a chic holiday retreat filled with chalets, villas, and gardens. These royal gardens were public; however, in order to enter, one had to don Western garb. At the tail end of the 20th century, though, Paghman became a Mujahideen battleground, and most everything has since been destroyed.

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A residential hillside in Kabul.

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The King's Palace, where guards are always on duty.

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The Soviet-built Salang Tunnel, which connects northern and southern Afghanistan.

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A man kneels to pray.

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Two Afghan men walking home.

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Afghan men exercise their civil rights and protest.

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A gas station in Kabul.

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Afghan girls coming home from school. Both Afghan boys and girls were educated until the high school level.

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Even as cities grow, many areas of rural Afghanistan remain untouched by the changing times.

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A truck trundles down a dusty road.

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Two Afghan teachers at the Higher Teachers College.

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A stop during the Podlich family's bus trip through the Khyber Pass.

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Peg Podlich arriving in Kabul.

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The peaceful mood and smiling faces that fill images of 1960s Afghanistan are a far cry from modern photos of a country struggling with war and vast corruption. In Afghanistan before the Taliban, the infrastructural investment and Western influence of the 1960s and early '70s created a sociopolitical climate much different than the one that's dominated the last several decades. See more of 1960s Afghanistan before the Taliban in the gallery above and dig deeper into the history below.

The 1950s and 1960s were a hopeful time for the inhabitants of Afghanistan. Internal conflict and foreign intervention had plagued the area for centuries, but recent decades had been relatively peaceful ones.

In the 1930s, the young and progressive king Amanullah Khan was determined to modernize Afghanistan and bring the social, political, and economic achievements he witnessed on his tours of Europe to his own land.

He asked the world's wealthiest nations for help bankrolling his projected reforms, and, seeing the strategic value in a modernized Afghanistan friendly to their own interests in the region, world powers agreed.

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1960s Afghanistan Before The Taliban In 46 Fascinating Photos

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi began interpreting for U.S. forces in Afghanistan when he was a teenager. Since coming to the U.S. as a recipient of a special immigrant visa, he has mainly relied on gig work to support his family. Andrea Hsu/NPR hide caption

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi began interpreting for U.S. forces in Afghanistan when he was a teenager. Since coming to the U.S. as a recipient of a special immigrant visa, he has mainly relied on gig work to support his family.

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi was just a teenager when he ran into a group of U.S. Marines at a bazaar in his hometown of Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2003.

"I just started saying, 'Hi' and 'How are you,' and they say, 'OK, you speak English. Do you want to be translating for us?' I say, 'Of course, yes!' " recalls Ahmadi, now 36.

He went on to work as an interpreter for U.S. forces for nearly a decade, a job that took him all over Afghanistan. He forged friendships with U.S. service members, including a number of high-ranking officers. His nickname was Rock.

In 2009, he applied for a special immigrant visa to come to the U.S., a program set up for Afghans who'd served the U.S. government and faced threats as a result of their employment.

It took 11 years for his visa to come through.

By then, he had a wife and three children. And soon after arriving in the U.S. in early 2020, he discovered his biggest test yet: He needed to find a way to support his family.

It's the central challenge facing tens of thousands of Afghans who have escaped their homeland in recent months as the U.S. has pulled out of a 20-year war. In the early months after arriving, the U.S. government provides a safety net for new arrivals refugee resettlement agencies help families with immediate needs such as food, medical assistance, housing and school for kids. But when it comes to finding employment, Afghans who have come to the U.S. in prior years say they were largely on their own.

Noah Coburn, an anthropologist at Bennington College and author of Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War, has interviewed over 100 Afghans who made their way to the United States.

Afghan refugees arrive at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27 after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Afghan refugees arrive at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27 after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Over the years, he has heard countless stories about their struggles to find employment despite their skills and experience, often gained while working for U.S. contractors.

"They end up doing things like landscaping. They end up driving for Lyft, driving for Uber. They end up working at some of these big-box stores because that's really the best that they can do," says Coburn.

A recent survey by the nonprofit No One Left Behind found that as many as half of Afghan special immigrant visa holders drive for Uber, Lyft or Amazon.

Coburn is calling on the many private companies that held big U.S. government contracts in Afghanistan to step up and do more.

"The contracting companies that made so much off the war in Afghanistan, and made so much off of paying these Afghans fairly low wages, really have a real moral obligation here," he says.

Ismaeil Hakimi, originally from Afghanistan's Ghazni province, trained as a lawyer in Iran. Shortly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he returned home to help rebuild his country. After working with the United Nations, he was hired by the U.S. contractor PAE to work on its Justice Sector Support Program, to help build a fair and effective criminal justice system for Afghanistan.

After he survived a Taliban attack on the Ministry of Justice and numerous other threats, a colleague urged him to apply to come to the U.S. through the special immigrant visa program. His application was approved in 2014, and he and his family settled in San Diego, where through a friend he found work as a teacher's assistant at a prep school.

Ismaeil Hakimi worked for U.S. contractor PAE until 2014, helping to build Afghanistan's criminal justice system. After coming to the U.S., he struggled to find work but eventually landed a library job at the University of Utah. He and his family visited the Statue of Liberty on Aug. 5. Ali Hakimi hide caption

Ismaeil Hakimi worked for U.S. contractor PAE until 2014, helping to build Afghanistan's criminal justice system. After coming to the U.S., he struggled to find work but eventually landed a library job at the University of Utah. He and his family visited the Statue of Liberty on Aug. 5.

The cost of living in Southern California was high, so after a couple of years, Hakimi moved his family to Salt Lake City, where the landscape was reminiscent of home. His children, by then old enough to work, found jobs at Target, Walmart and the airport, but he had a harder time. He didn't expect to be able to use his training as a lawyer, given his lack of familiarity with the American legal system, but he could not even land a job at the local grocery store Harmons.

Hakimi was out of work for three months until he finally got what he considers a big break. He was hired at the University of Utah's Marriott Library to help students and other patrons with research. Today, he is working to build the library's Middle East collection.

He considers himself lucky. His children are now in college at the University of Utah, studying computer science and medicine.

"We are very happy here," he says.

Jina Krause-Vilmar, CEO of Upwardly Global, a nonprofit that helps refugees find professional jobs, says Afghans often arrive with skills that don't exactly match what employers are seeking.

"They get kind of lost in limbo," she says.

Some people need additional certifications to work in the United States. Some need introductions to jobs that didn't exist back home. Often what they need most is help presenting their experience in ways that make them more marketable to U.S. employers.

She points out that many of the Afghans who make it in the U.S. are college graduates. They're lawyers, engineers, accountants.

"That's talent we're leaving at the table," says Krause-Vilmar. "It's a missed opportunity for our country."

At this particular moment, it's a huge opportunity, given how desperate employers are to find workers, she says. There are nearly 11 million jobs open in the U.S. right now.

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi arrived in the U.S. just as the coronavirus pandemic was forcing a shutdown. He started delivering food for Grubhub and DoorDash, working 12 hours a day, as a way to support his family. Andrea Hsu/NPR hide caption

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi arrived in the U.S. just as the coronavirus pandemic was forcing a shutdown. He started delivering food for Grubhub and DoorDash, working 12 hours a day, as a way to support his family.

That was not the case when interpreter Ahmadi landed in the U.S. back in January 2020. The coronavirus was taking off around the world. By spring, tens of millions of Americans were being laid off.

Heeding the advice of the Afghan community in Northern Virginia, Ahmadi got his driver's license. With the help of a retired U.S. colonel, he was able to buy a car. He started delivering food for Grubhub and DoorDash, working from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. Later, he also started driving for Uber and Lyft.

It's decent money, but the costs of working in the gig economy are high. He has to pay for gas and insurance, and he doesn't get to see his children.

Last year, he got a job at McDonald's for five months as a cashier and customer service representative. But the $10 hourly wage wasn't even enough to cover rent. He then moved to Walmart, which paid $12 an hour, but the hours were erratic and the pay still wasn't enough.

Ahmadi has a high school education and various certifications from Afghanistan. In the many years it took to get his U.S. visa, he worked as the general manager of a fuel-delivery company and started his own travel agency, building up a bevy of skills, including in database programming.

But he has yet to find an opportunity to put those skills to use in the United States.

"My certification doesn't work here," he says.

He'd like to get an American degree but can't afford to take time off from work to enroll in classes.

The U.S. exit from Afghanistan did open a brief opportunity, one that allowed Ahmadi to take a break from gig work for a couple of weeks.

He heard that interpreters were needed at the expo center near Dulles International Airport, in the Washington, D.C., area, to help process Afghans who were arriving in the United States. He speaks both Pashto and Dari and was offered the job on the spot.

The pay was good, so he worked double shifts, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., to bank as much money as possible while he could. What he saw in those long hours was sobering. Many of the new arrivals he encountered do not even speak English.

"I'm so worried about these people," says Ahmadi. "Life is very challenging in the United States."

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They Got Out Of Afghanistan. Next Up: Finding A Job In The US - NPR

First there was the Biden administrations withdrawal from Afghanistan. Then there was the chorus of disapproval. And then, as is so often the case in American foreign policy, there was the Blob.

The Blob turns on Jake, Alex Thompson and Tina Sfondeles wrote in Politico, referring to President Bidens national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. And then: Ive got to say hats off to the Blob on this whole Afghanistan thing, the commentator Matthew Yglesias said sarcastically on Twitter. They couldnt achieve any of their stated war aims, but theyve proven they can absolutely wreck you politically.

What is this Blob of which they speak? What does it have to do with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and whether they can actually govern? And why, like the nebulous malevolent organism in the 1958 horror film with which it shares a name, is it perpetually lurking around, sucking up everything in its path?

The term Blob is generally understood to describe members of the mainstream foreign-policy establishment government officials, academics, Council on Foreign Relations panelists, television talking heads and the like who share a collective belief in the obligation of the United States to pursue an aggressive, interventionist policy in the post-9/11 world. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen in this context as Blob-approved.

This foreign-policy philosophy has its origins in the post-World War II view of American exceptionalism, epitomized by officials like Dean G. Acheson, that U.S. military intervention in foreign conflicts was vital to defending American interests and generally did more good than harm. To the extent that the Blob holds this view, the Afghanistan withdrawal was a defeat for its position. For Blob critics, it was more fodder for discussing why the Blob gets things so wrong.

Coming out of Afghanistan was a rebuke to, or the swan song of, the neoconservative approach, which had its heyday during the Iraq war, said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. After the first Iraq war, the United States developed a sense that the U.S. could basically engage in war, and help shape outcomes internationally, at little or no cost.

Former President George W. Bush positioned a group of ragtag terrorists as Americas great strategic rival and an existential threat to the United States, Mr. Nasr continued. Even though the effort failed early on, it continued unimpeded and became fundamental to the Blobs thinking post-9/11.

The term was coined in 2016 by Benjamin J. Rhodes, who was a deputy national security adviser for President Barack Obama at the time. It was not a compliment. Rather, it was a criticism directed at foreign-policy experts with an unrealistic set of assumptions about what America could do in the world, Mr. Rhodes, who is now a co-host of the Pod Save The World podcast, said in an interview.

Its not that people are issued a card with their name on it that identities them as part of the Blob, he said. But back in 2016, he singled out Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties, who, he said, had an unpleasant tendency to whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order.

As a simple branding exercise accusing ones enemies of practicing hegemonic groupthink and being mired in a sclerotic, outdated view of U.S. power it was a diabolical master stroke.

But to the foreign policy establishment, it was a provocation.

A lot of people who are proud members of the foreign policy community would object to the phrase, said Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger distinguished professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He himself objected last year, writing an essay with Peter D. Feaver and William C. Inboden for Foreign Affairs that had a title intended to tease: In Defense of the Blob: Americas Foreign Policy Establishment Is the Solution, Not the Problem.

What I find troubling about the idea of the Blob is that it taps into this old conspiratorial mind-set about what produces American foreign policy, Mr. Brands said. It makes it seem that American foreign policy has been so disastrous and foolish that it must have been foisted on the American people by some elite that doesnt have their best interests at heart.

Even Mr. Rhodes realizes that, like the gelatinous alien mass in The Blob movie, his creature has grown out of control.

Everybody since then has sought to define it for their own purposes, including those who want to make it a badge of honor, and those who want to hang it on their opponents, Mr. Rhodes said.

Maybe, and maybe not.

Ben Rhodes had a very precise definition, and his definition was people who disagree with me, or people who disagree with me and Obama, said Mr. Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University.

And he added onto that a layer of faux populism, as in Woe is me, Im just a poor assistant to the president trying to speak truth to all these well-entrenched fat cats. That is nutty. No one could be more inside the system than the speechwriter for the president.

Mr. Feaver added: Everybody has borrowed this exact same conceit. Youll find Harvard professors complaining about the Blob.

At the American Enterprise Institute, Kori N. Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies, said that Blob was a reductive and obfuscatory term, used to misdirect.

Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Heres more on their origin story and their record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These arethe top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be. One spokesman told The Timesthat the group wanted to forget its past, but that there would be some restrictions.

The reason they lash out and snarl at the Blob is because their positions are so contrary to the widespread belief about the effective use of American power internationally, she said. Criticism of the so-called foreign policy Blob is a way of saying, I have been ineffective in persuading people that the policies I advocate are the correct ones.

Gideon Rose, a former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Mr. Biden had to overrule the Blobbish, deep-state-ish, permanent government-ish factions within his own administration in order to carry out his Afghanistan withdrawal.

That is potentially confusing. For one thing, who could be Blobbier than Mr. Sullivan, the national security adviser, or Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, both veteran establishment foreign-policy figures? (The Blob is Back, The American Conservative magazine said in December, referring to the Biden administrations foreign policy team.)

The people claiming that there is some sort of unified theory of Blob-dom are not thinking clearly, said Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. For one thing, he said, even within Brookings there is a wide range of opinion on Afghanistan. He supported the withdrawal, for instance which would seem to make him a traitor to the Blob, even though he is, by any definition, in the Blob himself.

My impression is that people who talk about the Blob have not read or inquired into what the people in the think tanks have actually said about the topic, he said. They dont know what theyre talking about. But, he said, if they want to say that Biden is doing something that Richard Haass disagrees with, then thats true, he is.

It is also true that any discussion of this topic inevitably leads to Mr. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was christened Pope of the Blob by the writer Andrew Sullivan in 2019. For the record, Mr. Haasss view on Afghanistan is that America should have maintained its presence by leaving behind a small number of troops and not pulled out completely.

In an interview, Mr. Haass said he was happy to be considered part of the foreign policy establishment, but not happy that the foreign policy establishment was called the Blob.

Its a lazy term, he said. Its a pejorative and imprecise way to dismiss those who disagree with you, and it doesnt advance the foreign policy conversation.

Lets have a serious conversation about what should be the lessons of Afghanistan, or about Americas role in the world, Mr. Haass continued. But to simply describe certain people who disagree with you as the Blob is useless. And that is a generous way of putting it.

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Afghanistan Outcome Affirms a Warning: Beware the Blob - The New York Times