Two years ago, the world watched in disbelief as the United States and allied countries conducted a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan .

The operation ended with the deaths of 13 American servicemembers and hundreds, if not thousands, of Afghan civilians and allies. Thousands remain trapped in the country, abandoned to live under Taliban rule. As Jerry Dunleavy and James Hasson highlight in their new book, Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End , none of it was inevitable.

The disaster that unfolded was the result of policy decisions made by the Biden administration . Dunleavy and Hasson ably document these failures in crisp prose and with righteous anger. What emerges is a portrait of an impending tragedy that was both predictable and, indeed, predicted by many analysts and intelligence estimates.

Both authors are well-equipped to write the story. Dunleavy, an investigative reporter who worked for the Washington Examiner, spent years covering courts, the intelligence community, and the national security arena. Hasson, a military affairs analyst, is a former U.S. Army captain who deployed in Afghanistan. Their look at one of the darkest moments in modern American history offers jaw-dropping details about what went wrong and who is responsible.

As Dunleavy and Hasson make clear, the buck stops with President Joe Biden. Although he would later seek to variously blame the Trump administration, the Afghan military, and others, Biden was dead set on a withdrawal from Afghanistan as soon as possible. As the authors highlight, Biden wanted as much long before he was president. And he was willing to do whatever it took, details be damned, to get it.

The lack of planning for the withdrawal was truly astonishing.

Amazingly, Biden’s "directives and planning for the withdrawal were never put into a national security memorandum, despite that being the standard process for major national security decisions, especially one as significant as ending a two-decade-long war." But irregularities — and poor planning — were par for the course.

Biden, the authors note, never truly understood Afghanistan — including its "fighting season" and geography. Choosing a withdrawal date at a time of year when it was easier for the Taliban to rapidly advance before the onset of treacherous winters was a gift. But it was far from the only one. "Optics, not tactics, guided Biden’s decision making." This would prove to have disastrous effects. Perhaps most absurdly, the administration clung to COVID protocols that severely hampered the operation, leaving American military forces on the ground short-staffed.

Later, facing criticism over how few were being evacuated, the order came down to put as many "asses in seats" as possible. This resulted in a flood of people overwhelming U.S. and allied forces at the airport. It hindered the ability to fully vet those attempting to flee, resulting in key allies and U.S. citizens being left behind while others, including many military-age males with no links to the United States, were taken aboard. The chaos that followed, one Marine platoon commander said, "looked like the end of the world."

The order accelerated an already deteriorating security situation, and along with the decision to trust the Taliban for security at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), directly led to the suicide bombing on Aug. 26, 2021, that claimed at least 183 lives, including 13 U.S. servicemembers. The withdrawal ended up being the third bloodiest day for U.S. troops in America’s two decades in Afghanistan. The decision to close Bagram Air Base, and thus rely on HKIA, helped ensure a disaster. Bagram was not only strategically important, but it also had far more runways and infrastructure. Additionally, leaving Bagram on short notice enabled the Taliban to conduct a jailbreak of prisoners, among them Abdul Rahman al-Logari, the Islamic State operative who would perpetrate the suicide bombing at HKIA.

Choosing Kabul was itself fateful. Several months before the Biden administration’s decision to base any evacuation out of Kabul, a U.S. intelligence official assessed that ISIS-K "maintains a steady operation tempo and probably retains the ability to conduct attacks in Kabul and other urban centers." Further, ISIS-K sleeper cells were active "particularly in Kabul, where the current commander and his overall" deputy "are based."

The book also showcases the Biden administration’s stunning lack of transparency. For example, firefights between the Taliban and U.S. troops on the ground have been papered over. The State Department initially admitted that the airport attack included both a suicide bomber and gunmen — a claim that was later scrubbed from their website. The administration has also refused to officially acknowledge that al-Logari carried out the bombing. The authors note that this is "the only terrorist attack in which the government has known the perpetrator’s name but refused to share it with the public."

Nor has there been accountability. Biden, the authors point out, hasn’t ever spoken the names of the fallen 13 in public. Not a single official responsible for the fiasco has resigned or accepted blame.

The consequences of the shambolic withdrawal are still being felt. As Dunleavy and Hasson document, the event has been fodder for America’s enemies, emboldening both China and Russia. Meanwhile, some U.S.-trained Afghan commandos, abandoned by the Biden administration, have sought shelter—and work—in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has reportedly extensively debriefed them on American tactics and technology. The world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism will not let their talents go to waste.

"Victory has a hundred fathers," President John F. Kennedy famously said after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, "and defeat is an orphan." Kennedy took both the blame and the responsibility for the failure of U.S.-backed forces in their attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Cuban dictatorship. But as Kabul makes clear, that was another era and a very different White House.

The writer is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.