I respect and admire Clarissa Ward, but she is not at all qualified to comment on

[thucythucy]

35. While I agree with the general thrust of your post

you might consider what would have happened if the Biden administration had begun a large scale withdrawal of Americans and other foreign nationals before announcing the pull out.

It would have been obvious that his administration had decided to cut the cord, but without announcing it. The Afghan government and military--already on the verge of collapse after Trump's horrific backstabbing deal--would have done just what they did anyway, and the evacuations would most likely have been no easier.

Except then neo-cons and Republicans (and perhaps the Afghan leadership as well) would then have blamed the collapse entirely on Biden. "He caused this to fall apart by signaling the end of US/NATO support. Everything would have been fine if only Biden hadn't cut and run..." and so on.

Thousands would have been stranded anyway. The media would have pounced anyway. The Taliban would be in control anyway. And the pundit class would be blaming Biden alone for the entire collapse, and not just the botched (in my opinion anyway) evacuation.

But yes, this has been a screw up. The Trump administration ended the processing of visas for eligible (endangered) Afghans. There should have been an immediate ramping up of that program, cutting the paperwork, evacuating people first from the outlying areas, then Kabul itself.

Then again, recall that Trump adamantly refused to share any information with the incoming administration. Instead of having a normal transition from one administration to the next, the Biden team arrived on January 20th without any of the usual briefings, case books, etc. And the focus, for good or ill (and I think mostly for good) was on getting a handle on the raging pandemic, the cratering economy, and the domestic terrorist threat. All this while scrambling to make appointments, put together an administration in the face of unending opposition from Republicans. I don't think any administration has had to deal with this kind of opposition, not since Lincoln anyway.

I'd like to see an in-depth investigation and public examination of ALL of what happened in Afghanistan, beginning with the decision to allow bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora. That alone should have been a clue as to whether or not our Afghan "allies" were truly committed to securing their country from Taliban and other extremists.

The closest we had post Vietnam was the publication of the Pentagon Papers (which actually happened while the war was ongoing). We never had a deep, comprehensive assessment of why we got involved in Vietnam to begin with, and all that went wrong from Truman to Ford, with the result that we keep repeating the same mistakes at a horrific cost in lives and treasure.

Nation building in Afghanistan never had a chance--for one thing "Afghanistan" has never been a nation, but rather a loose knit conglomeration of different ethnic groups historically at odds with each other. Just as "South Vietnam" was a cold war fiction, "Afghanistan" exists for the most part as lines on a map.

But then, we can't even get a bipartisan investigation on an actual coup attempt, so I doubt we'll see what's needed in this case. With the result that twenty years from now we'll tangle our horns in some other part of the world, with similar or worse results.