Every piece of information that emerges from Biden’s shameful retreat in Afghanistan somehow manages to be worse than the last. This detail comes from a Franklin Foer article in the Atlantic based on interviews with insiders. Foer is the man you call for an establishment whitewash and that’s what this is. But even the information that slips out between the lines reveals some incredible details.

A big part of what made the Kabul evacuation so disastrous is that the Taliban were allowed to take the city.

The Biden administration sent Gen. Frank McKenzie to negotiate with the Taliban as the disaster was underway.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, who would command the botched retreat on the ground, met with the Taliban leadership in Doha. The Taliban leaders had offered to let the United States control Kabul until August 31st. McKenzie reportedly conveyed to the Taliban that they could take over Kabul so long as the U.S. was allowed to use the airport.

He bragged that, “we use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible.”

There are different versions of what happened at McKenzie’s meeting with the Taliban leader.

The Taliban had offered,  ‘Why don’t you just take security for all of Kabul.’ Gen. McKenzie replied, “That was not my instruction”. The Taliban had urged, “We want you to have it,”

That would have required thousands more troops that Biden refused to authorize.

Gen. McKenzie had initially planned to tell the Taliban to stop outside the city, but in the meeting instead told the Islamic terrorism group that he had “no opinion” on them taking the city.

Afterward, General McKenzie, who had made the original dirty deal that put Kabul under Taliban control, praised them as “partners” who had made a “very good effort” to “secure the airport”.

Previously though McKenzie had warned the Taliban not to interfere with rescue operations.

General McKenzie said any attempts by the Taliban to interfere with rescue operations ‘will be met with overwhelming force.’

The Foer version offers a disgraceful synthesis of what happened at the McKenzie meet.

General McKenzie arrived at the Ritz-Carlton in Doha. Well before Ghani’s departure from power, the wizened Marine had scheduled a meeting with an old adversary of the United States, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Baradar wasn’t just any Taliban leader. He was a co-founder of the group, with Mullah Mohammed Omar. McKenzie had arrived with the intention of delivering a stern warning. He barely had time to tweak his agenda after learning of Ghani’s exit.

McKenzie unfolded a map of Afghanistan translated into Pashto. A circle had been drawn around the center of Kabul—a radius of about 25 kilometers—and he pointed to it. He referred to this area as the “ring of death.” If the Taliban operated within those 25 kilometers, McKenzie said, “we’re going to assume hostile intent, and we’ll strike hard.”

McKenzie tried to bolster his threat with logic. He said he didn’t want to end up in a firefight with the Taliban, and that would be a lot less likely to happen if they weren’t in the city.

Baradar not only understood; he agreed. Known as a daring military tactician, he was also a pragmatist. He wanted to transform his group’s inhospitable image; he hoped that foreign embassies, even the American one, would remain in Kabul. Baradar didn’t want a Taliban government to become a pariah state, starved of foreign assistance that it badly needed.

But the McKenzie plan had an elemental problem: It was too late. Taliban fighters were already operating within the ring of death. Kabul was on the brink of anarchy. Armed criminal gangs were already starting to roam the streets.

Baradar asked the general, “Are you going to take responsibility for the security of Kabul?”

McKenzie replied that his orders were to run an evacuation. Whatever happens to the security situation in Kabul, he told Baradar, don’t mess with the evacuation, or there will be hell to pay. It was an evasive answer. The United States didn’t have the troops or the will to secure Kabul. McKenzie had no choice but to implicitly cede that job to the Taliban.

Baradar walked toward a window. Because he didn’t speak English, he wanted his adviser to confirm his understanding. “Is he saying that he won’t attack us if we go in?” His adviser told him that he had heard correctly.

From a ‘Ring of Death; to “Is he saying that he won’t attack us if we go in?” Even through the lens of Foer’s spin the disgrace comes through.

Gen. McKenzie had started out with the ‘Ring of Death’ bluster that he withdrew when the Taliban leader used the magic words that terrify any bureaucrat pretending to be a general. “Take responsibility.”

McKenzie turned over Kabul to the Taliban because he was making empty threats on reflex that he had no intention of backing up.

Baradar was playing a game. The familiar game that terrorists play of pushing and then claiming that they can’t control their men. McKenzie could have put on a show of force and the Taliban would have backed down. They didn’t actually want to draw the United States into a fight.

But instead, McKenzie backed down. The ‘Ring of Death’ became a slope of appeasement. And Americans were ultimately caught in the ring of death. 13 military personnel and unknown numbers of civilians were killed, many more were stranded behind enemy lines, because McKenzie backed down and let the Talban take the city.

Why did McKenzie do that? As disgraceful a figure as he may be, he was operating on the orders of the Biden administration. And Biden was determined to pull out no matter what. The orders were not to do anything that might delay the scheduled withdrawal. That meant not rescuing Americans or defying the Taliban.

McKenzie had no cards to deal and the Taliban, likely courtesy of their Qatari partners who have bought up half the foreign policy sector in D.C., knew it.

This was where the panicked embassy evacuation and the Americans left behind enemy lines came from.