Afghanistan pull out was always going to be a disaster

before the withdrawal

But the moment we started evacuating our embassy panic would have ensued.

our allies and people out before our withdrawal weeks before.

If the evacuation wasn't a mistake we would not be sending troops back in their to try and safeguard the evacuation.

Chaos was inevitable. Rachel Maddow and the others are dreaming. The only conceivable way this was going to go smoothly would be if the local Afghanis were themselves capable of protecting the rear. They obviously have no will to fight the Taliban, in which case, there never was a chance of a smooth withdrawal.

When you have people from the administration saying we had no idea the Taliban would move so quickly, that is a very bad assessment of the situation

Before the Taliban even started their advance, the evacuations should have begin

Exactly.

Biden was correct in withdrawal, but the implementation of the withdrawal is a total failure.

Pentagon heads need to roll.

DoD insisting that they described this scenario to clueless State people, State going with a damned if you do, damned if you don't argument in which evacuating the embassy first would have led to immediate collapse of the Afghan Army rather than the reverse.

What a shit show.

The people here pretending that this isn't on the current admin are truly living in a fantasy world as vivid as the rosy scenarios of Afghan Army strength.

This disaster is producing very interesting attempts at rationalization and coping with what’s happening.

Appreciate your posts greenjar_01.

It didnt have to be this disastrous. This is worse than vietnam

with caution that Taliban or others might try to take advantage of troop drawdown and, if that occurred, the timeline would be adjusted and/or additional troops would called to stop fighting and defend Afghan citizens.

People chasing planes to escape is not a good optic.

Watching our cargo planes pushing through the crowd on take off. Seeing twitter reports of corpses that supposedly fell from the sky splattered on rooftops in the flightpath.

Horrible optics in a profound historical moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan

Of course, they had the advantage of being able to properly stage a withdrawal through the northern land border.

Until the very last plane left.

We’ve come up with a couple logical ideas, time to apply for pentagon jobs?

You can "extend" an air bridge by dropping paratroops to seize an airport. This works because you can choose a weakly defended airport and have the advantage of surprise. The defenders have the disadvantage of having to defend all the airports, while the attackers can concentrate forces on one.

However, once you have completed your operation, how do you evacuate the last personnel given that they are under attack? In this case the enemy can mass his forces against your last forces on the ground.

In the case of evacuating a beach, you can use naval bombardment and naval air power to cover the last units off the beach. They can't be totally protected, but the Navy can do a better job.

Afghanistan, being landlocked, was never going to end well.

It seemed the only fortress like airbase in the country capable of filling the needs for a massive airlift.

Getting the last deployed detachment out? That’s above my pay grade but I envision overlapping supporting elements being able to cover the last flight. I just play war games made of cardboard and plastic.

Thanks for your reply and food for thought Klaralven.

Edited to add: after some thought, the only other feasible “retract” for the air bridge would’ve been an armed convoy exiting towards a friendly border. One of the other ‘Stans like the Soviets did. But again these are massive undertakings.

Strategically, this was always going to be extremely difficult.

Joe is the very best at foreign policy. I give him that and I await his full and complete explanation of his thinking on this issue. So far, silence.

But we are still the United States of America. Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck Greg Abbott. Fuck the Republicans. They don’t understand honor.

But Dems need to get control of this situation and start messaging it properly. The USA must come back from the Trump fiasco. Biden has even remarked about this in prior speeches. And the USA deals in honor. In giving its word. And we need to get those interpreters and other allies OUT. Or else we are going to look like assholes to the rest of the world.

All these international corporations that the US is always supporting rely on our military and then pay no taxes. Fuck em.

This has all the makings to be a disaster and the media is going to flood us with graphic images. Should any of those images be of Afghans who worked with the U.S. the pundits will draw their knives.

We will pay a huge price in blood and honor. And politics. Every President was warned about this. There were no good plans.

Sorry we can't feel good about it, but that's the breaks.