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Home » Whose decision was the precipitous and disastrous nature of our Afghan withdrawal?

Whose decision was the precipitous and disastrous nature of our Afghan withdrawal?

The New Neo Posted on by

Success has many fathers but defeat is an orphan. Thus it is with our withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan after twenty years. Even Joe Biden, who said in a speech that he stands by his decision, spent most of the speech blaming a host of others for it.

This WSJ article – not behind the paywall – describes who supposedly tried to talk Biden out of it and who did not. Some of this may be mere CYA, but it also may be true:

The president’s top generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who previously served as a military commander in the region, said a full withdrawal wouldn’t provide any insurance against instability.

In a series of meetings leading up to his decision, military and intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that security was deteriorating in Afghanistan, and they expressed concerns both about the capabilities of the Afghan military and the Taliban’s likely ability to take over major Afghan cities.

Other advisers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, raised the possibility of Taliban attacks on U.S. forces and diplomats as well as the Afghans who for two decades worked alongside them. Ultimately, neither disagreed with the president, knowing where he stood.

So those last two disagreed but offered no significant pushback (if you believe this report). If so, it’s fitting that they now are spokesmen for the administration in facing the press, and have done an abominable job.

I’ve said from the start that I think this actually was Biden’s own decision, despite the fact that he is cognitively challenged and that it’s very likely that a lot of other people generally “assist” him in making his decisions. But this one – this one has his fingerprints all over it. In it I see his arrogance, his impulsiveness, and in particular his bad judgment. In addition, he has a long history of wanting to end this engagement with Afghanistan coupled with a history of not caring what happens to those left behind when the pullout occurs.

You can see some of that history described here:

“By the time Biden became vice president in 2009, the disastrous war in Iraq, the endemic corruption of the Afghan government, and the return of the Taliban had made him a deep skeptic of the American commitment. He became the Obama administration’s strongest voice for getting out of Afghanistan. In 2010, he told RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the U.S. had to leave Afghanistan regardless of the consequences for women or anyone else. According to Holbrooke’s diary, when he asked about American obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied with a history lesson from the final U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973: ‘Fuck that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.’”

Did Biden actually say that? If he did, it certainly would be consistent with what’s happening now. It’s also typically Biden that he gets his facts wrong, because of course it wasn’t Nixon or Kissinger who finally pulled the plug on South Vietnam, it was the Democratic-led Congress (granted, there was some bipartisan approval).

Those famous Saigon helicopters on the roof occurred in late April of 1975; Nixon had resigned in August of 1974. He had earlier presided over the drawdown of forces, but it was Congress about two years later that drastically reduced support and greatly embolded the North and demoralized the South:

In the fall of 1974, Nixon resigned under the pressure of the Watergate scandal and was succeeded by Gerald Ford. Congress cut funding to South Vietnam for the upcoming fiscal year from a proposed 1.26 billion to 700 million dollars. These two events prompted Hanoi to make an all-out effort to conquer the South. As the North Vietnamese Communist Party Secretary Le Duan observed in December 1974: “The Americans have withdrawn…this is what marks the opportune moment.”

The NVA drew up a two-year plan for the “liberation” of South Vietnam. Owing to South Vietnam’s weakened state, this would only take fifty-five days. The drastic reduction of American aid to South Vietnam caused a sharp decline in morale, as well as an increase in governmental corruption and a crackdown on domestic political dissent. The South Vietnamese army was severely under-funded, greatly outnumbered, and lacked the support of the American allies with whom they were accustomed to fighting.

The NVA began its final assault in March of 1975 in the Central Highlands. Ban Me Thout, a strategically important hamlet, quickly fell to North Vietnam. On March 13, a panicked Thieu called for the retreat of his troops, surrendering Pleiku and Kontum to the NVA. Thieu angrily blamed the US for his decision, saying, “If [the U.S.] grant full aid we will hold the whole country, but if they only give half of it, we will only hold half of the country.” His decision to retreat increased internal opposition toward him and spurred a chaotic mass exodus of civilians and soldiers that clogged the dilapidated roads to the coast. So many refugees died along the way that the migration along Highway 7B was alternatively described by journalists as the “convoy of tears” and the “convoy of death.” 6 On April 21, President Thieu resigned in a bitter televised speech in which he strongly denounced the United States. Sensing that South Vietnam was on the verge of collapse, the NVA accelerated its attack and reached Saigon on April 23. On the same day, President Ford announced to cheerful students at Tulane University that as far as America was concerned, “the war was over.” The war officially concluded on April 30, as Saigon fell to North Vietnam and the last American personnel were evacuated.

But of course, we can’t expect Joe Biden to know all that. After all, he wasn’t around – oops, my bad, he actually was [emphasis mine]:

From The Atlantic:

“In the spring of 1975, as North Vietnamese divisions approached Saigon, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese with connections to the U.S.—soldiers, officials, spies, interpreters, drivers, bar girls, cooks—begged their American friends and colleagues to help them find a way out. But the embassy in Saigon and the Ford administration in Washington were slow to face the gravity of the situation and reluctant to prepare an evacuation for fear of panicking the population into chaos. In mid-April, President Gerald Ford finally realized that the government of South Vietnam might fall, and he asked Congress for $300 million in emergency aid, including money to evacuate the remaining 2,500 Americans and their dependents along with up to 175,000 South Vietnamese.

“Some of the most strenuous objections came from the 32-year-old first-term senator from Delaware, Joseph R. Biden.

“I feel put upon in being presented an all-or-nothing number,” Biden said at a rare White House meeting between the president and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 14. “I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out.”

…”In a Senate speech on April 23, Biden argued that the president lacked the authority to rescue any Vietnamese. ‘I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals’ other than diplomats of third countries, Biden said. ‘The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.’”

So in 1975, Biden was willing to rescue Americans but not a single South Vietnamese who had helped us. How many of them died as a result? Reliable statistics are hard to come by in a quick search, but you can see some answers here, and there’s no doubt that many died. And here’s a description of the suffering in the re-education camps that housed millions.

These days Biden is more of an equal-opportunity rejector of rescue. Nowadays he doesn’t seem all that concerned about even the Americans in Afghanistan. At least, the speed of his withdrawal indicates callous disregard of their fate, and they are in deep trouble at the moment:

There are thousands of Americans still trapped in Afghanistan. According to the Biden team, 5,000-10,000 are still trapped near Kabul, but John Kirby said they didn’t have a real count, showing more ignorance.

According to a former Bush official, it’s far more than that, spread across the country — with up to 40,000 Americans still in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has ringed the airport, the last area that the Americans are holding.

So how is the Biden team going to get them out?

First, they caused some of the problem by telling Americans near Kabul to shelter in place on Sunday which was probably the last safe day to get to the airport. Now, if Americans or allies are going to get to the airport, they have to go through the Taliban who are blocking all the entries. While the Biden team is claiming there is an uneasy agreement to let people through for the next two weeks, there are also reports of the Taliban beating people trying to reach the airport.

In the face of all this, here’s what the American government has sent out to citizens. Imagine getting this after they told you to stay in place on Sunday.

That is followed by this tweet:

If you saw this in a movie you would think the incompetence exaggerated. But no, this is actually happening.

As I said, in my opinion this debacle has Biden’s fingerprints all over it. But he’s hardly alone in this. He’s not composing a note like that, for example. As many have suggested, one thing we are seeing here is the overwhelming incompetence of the so-called “elites” – that is, the people in charge of these things, be it the military or the State Department. It may not be all the people in those agencies, of course. Some people may be objecting, but if so they are apparently being overruled by others.

We kept saying during the Trump administration, witnessing the mendacity and collusion involved in the efforts to remove him, that at least the awful proceedings were revealing the depth of the rot in the government. The same is true here. Unfortunately, the cost is very very high.

[NOTE: More here on the situation Americans in Afghanistan face.

I will add here that, if Generals Milley and Austin actually objected to this “plan” strenuously and were overruled, why didn’t they resign in protest? I can think of several possible answers. The first is that they didn’t actually object, at least not strongly. The second is personal ambition.]

Comments

Whose decision was the precipitous and disastrous nature of our Afghan withdrawal? — 55 Comments

  1. The blame for this disaster should be assigned to numerous corrupt and thoroughly incompetent actors in a fiasco which will long be remembered as a national disgrace, and some are suggesting that Biden should be impeached, although his deliberate mishandling of the southern border is far more egregious and far more damaging to our sovereignty. The extent to which a senile buffoon, illegitimately installed, bears responsibility is certainly of interest, but he is surrounded by malevolent advisers and handlers and, without question, puppet-masters, who, being of sound mind (even though utterly malign) ought perhaps to be held more severely to account. At the very least, the two morons (Austin and Milley) running our very expensive military (costing more than two billion per day) should resign in disgrace.

  2. I tend to believe that this was Biden’s decision but the Deep State people around him didn’t push back hard enough, that is, if they actually did push back.

    I think there are public statements by Milley to the contrary; as in he said the Afghans would fight.

    So, so many mistakes and one of the biggest was closing our airbase. Things like that should have been worked out on January 20, 2021.

    If Ron Klain was smart, he’d start firing scores of people. Biden needs scapegoats.

    The thing to know about the Taliban is that they are Stone Age Muslims and their main mission is to fight, rape and kill. They want revenge for all of their fellow fighters we’ve killed over the years.

    This will get much, much worse. Major bloodshed. American hostages. Swap for Gitmo detainees. KSM free.

    The end game is that Kamala and Doug execute a 25th Amendment transaction. Joe is the ultimate scapegoat. This is absolutely certain.

    Hunter’s art sale will happen. The Taliban will buy some pictures. And then burn them on FB live in the $700m US Embassy. KSM will set the match.

    In good news, Trump essentially said today on Fox Business that he is running but no official announcement.

  3. One thing that really, really bothers me. There are Dem operatives in Philly, ATL, Milwaukee, Madison, Phoenix etc who know how the Dems stole the election. And they remain silent. After this, I would hope that one would rat out this whole corrupt system the Dems have created.

  4. Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . at 4:30 pm (it’s about 3:50 as I type this), God’s gift to God is going to “deliver remarks on the COVID-19 response and the vaccination program.”

    Joe’s gotta pivot away from Afghanistan as soon as possible to keep the sheeple duly frightened of the Woo-Woo Flu. Here’s the link if anyone wants to watch the farce: https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/

  5. I have no doubt that in a week. The press will have firmly pinned this entirely on Trump. Trump did negotiate the basics of withdrawal. And that is where it ends. They did not follow through on those negotiations. Or even use his general timetable.

    Yet we have Biden who planned this entire debacle from an operational perspective. Obama/Biden who released the many of the commanders of this takeover in exchange for an American defector.

    And has spearheaded an armed service who has been concerned solely with its multicultural bona fides and searching for the ever elusive white whale of supremacy. That they consistently claim is the true enemy of the US.

    Nothing that this administration has attempted has been an improvement. NOT ONE DAMN THING. A pretty amazing level of incompetence.

    Spending has increased even beyond what other feckless presidents have done. To levels that are completely unsustainable even during the short term.

    Our National defense has clearly been gutted of competency in exchange for woke syllogisms that do nothing but employ its proponents and destroy operational effectiveness.

    He has tried to destroy our domestic energy production. In exchange for begging foreign sources to increase production. They have told him to go get bent.

    Therefore gas prices and inflation are at massive highs and are increasing almost daily.
    The border has zero effective enforcement and it appears little to no attempt is made at stopping anyone from crossing.

    And many of those are COVID positive something the administration claims is of utmost importance. Through its relentless propaganda of the need for the extremely low risk portion of the population to be vaccinated. Regardless of having had COVID , or the vaccine seeming to be of a higher risk than covid among children.

    And that is just 7 months in. Im sure there are a few things I have missed. Yet the press continues to give us updates on Bidens favorite ice cream this week. And ignore the fact that he basically refuses to answer questions at the majority of his press conferences. Even though they are far few of them than any president I can remember.

    It will be terribly hard for us to see any improvement in these areas for the next 4 years. As Harris is likely just as ideological and incompetent as Biden. So get ready for a wild 3.5 years

  6. This is a disaster akin to a tanker truck full of toxic waste crashing into a child daycare facility… and Joe Biden was the driver. His approval numbers (which were almost certainly aritificially inflated anyway) are now plummeting. He’s even being criticized widely from the Left. And like Cornhead says, this is highly likely to get much worse rather than better over the comming days and weeks. Imagine how it will look to Biden voters to hear and see American citizens being raped and beheaded? The tech gatekeepers and main stream media handmaidens will no longer be able to protect the administration if that happens.

  7. I’ll say it again: this is a self-centered old man trying to relive the “glories” of his youth.

  8. Apparently the conversation with Holbrooke included Joe talking about not sending his boy over there again. Joe has also gone on the record more recently blaming veterans’ cancers on toxic fumes from combat. (Recall that Beau Biden succumbed to cancer after serving in Iraq.)

    I mean no disrespect to Biden as a grieving father, but perhaps this is something the public should have heard about before the election? Perhaps some journalist should have committed an act of journalism and reported on these previous statements or asked Biden to comment on them? It sure looks like they may have been relevant to Joe’s decision making.

    Now the left is is hoist by its own petard. They’re stuck with a destructive senior citizen in White House that competent vetting by the press might well have stopped or constrained. They’re also stuck with a VP, picked for her sex and skin color, who no one wants to have to take over.

    I have no sympathy for the left in general or Democrats in particular, but I fear for the country, which is now stuck with this train wreck for the next three years.

  9. The Brits are apparently having their ambassador and staff at the airport at the airport getting people onto planes. The Home Office saying just get them out no matter what nationality and that they will straighten out the papers later. The Brit 2nd Paras are going out into Kabul in force to escort people back to the airport. Our troops have been ordered to not do that but to stay inside the airport.

    I linked to this report on a couple of other threads.

  10. I wholeheartedly agree. Believe that this is the first decision Dementia Joe has made on his own, one not made by his puppeteers but by him alone. I have some personal experience with dementia, and this decision looks exactly like what my relative would decide. It’s a decision made by a mental six year old and based upon a situation that existed many years ago, but not at present. I cannot believe any sane competent adult in their right mind would decide to cut and run like this, and so think that Biden, being the de facto President, overruled his generals and intelligence people, and they, being good Democrats, went along with their Leader. And the trouble is just beginning.

  11. I am sure more than a few people with influence in the administration knew this was fustercluck in the making, and knew exactly how and when it would come to this; and I think Austin and Milley were probably two of them. Like Neo, I wonder why they didn’t resign in protest before it happened. I will answer why- they lack the character to do so.

  12. Althouse and Instapundit highlighted an essay from an anonymous US military officer who tore into the decision. I note in passing that it might have more impact and get us close to the truth if this person had had the courage to put his actual name on the essay. I realize doing so opens him to court martial, but sometimes ones honor requires a bit of courage.

  13. There was nothing rushed about the withdrawal from a 20 year engagement set in motion in 2017 with final draft plans agreed to in Jan of 2020.

    The military thought they could convince the next guy to keep the gravy train rolling and did nothing. When Biden decided to follow through they still had 4 months but failed at every level because they simply weren’t prepared to have to follow orders.

    Biden is largely blameless in all of this. His failure extends to being too feable minded to fight this. His speech should have been one of outrage with the sacking of the Sec Dec, and Milley and the promise that whatever Generals engaged in this disgrace would be court martialed. Along with a promise to get those Americans out and a warning to the Taliban that if every last American isn’t allowed out the consequences would be severe.

  14. This is a disaster akin to a tanker truck full of toxic waste crashing into a child daycare facility… and Joe Biden was the driver. –Nonapod

    I fully understand why some have called this cluster, “hubris.”

    Yet to me that’s too grand for Biden. It’s like calling out the retarded kid across the street for hubris after the failure of some ridiculous scheme he came up with to make people like him.

    Even the people around Biden seem more guilty of buck-passing and careerism than hubris.

    To be sure, the results are still horrific. But it all seems so sad and pathetic.

  15. I am hopeful the Taliban will be smart and let all the westerners leave along with a select group of Afghanis- it is actually to their benefit to do so. However, I also realize how silly it is to have to hope for that.

  16. When I was working in Doha, the university organized annual evacuation drills. The drills were done by well-meaning people, and I’m uncomfortable mocking them now, but evacuation in the face of a large terrorist attack would have been hopeless. Sheltering in place would have been a best-case scenario. I think that’s as true today for Kabul, as it was fifteen years ago in Doha. To some extent, it’s what you sign on for, even as a civilian.

    Having said that, Afghanistan is now obviously much more dangerous than Qatar ever was. I can’t help but wonder who these American civilians are. They can’t all be girl’s school construction crews and LGBTQ activists. Why are they there? What was their plan for getting out? If I had a young family, there’s not enough money in the world to convince me that I should take them with me to Afghanistan. I certainly hope that there’s no one like that left in the country.

    Anyway, I’ve read that there are at least 10,000 American civilians left in Afghanistan, but I haven’t seen any reports describing who they are. For now, all I can do is hope that they’re mostly dual nationals. If they can’t get out, then there’s some hope that they can blend into the general population and escape the Taliban’s retribution.

  17. From Bill Roggio in Kabul

    “This is what it looks like outside the north gate at the airport in Kabul. I won’t mention why this location is important. I will say that the
    @CENTCOM commander, who agreed to allow this airport to be the primary/only evacuation point, should be dismissed/replaced immediately.”

    https://twitter.com/billroggio/status/1427810858256769031

    https://www.longwarjournal.org/

    h/t
    https://redstate.com/streiff/2021/08/18/british-evacuation-commander-says-hes-cut-out-of-us-taliban-discussions-plus-the-best-rumor-of-the-day-n428954

  19. doha funds probably half the area experts, at state and the security counsel this is where the taliban negotiating team was at, they are the money behind hamas muscle, the icg is robert malley’s baby and he went to school with blinken (I dubbed him nod) this is why they were going after prince salman and most recently
    prince zayed, because they support the anti islamists from yemen to north africa,

  21. Of course it isn’t om.

    I explained why this sack of suck falls squarely on the military. Unless you wanted Biden lining up star officers on the WH lawn for the firing squad back in July telling the next group they are on the clock with 3 months and better be ready to go this time, I am not sure what you wanted him to do.

    Do we delay indefinitely because the military can’t figure out how to leave in an orderly fashion.

    Biden is the Commander and Chief, not a senior logistics officer. He gives the order to leave, and 4 months time would have been reasonable even without the prior 16 month notice the military got.

    Biden’s only failing in all of this is not holding the military to account.

  22. One thing to be hopeful about? The media is actually going after Biden on this whole mess and not just covering up for him. Sure, they’re not going at Biden with even 20% of the hellfire they’d be throwing at Trump and, yes, the fact that elements within the intelligence community and military are sniping at Biden has given the Beltway media the green light to “get tough” on Afghanistan, but there is something to be said for as broken and despicable as America’s journalist class is…even they still have SOME limit.

    Mike

  23. It could go either way, Taliban just wanting any foreigner gone, or going for the gold capturing people for ransom, which I thing might be more end stage.

  24. Sounds like satire to me. And some strawmen: “indefinitely delay” and “leave in an “orderly fashion.”

    Who sets Foreign Policy? Who is the Commander In Chief? Who can can those military incompetents who failed to implement the C in C’s masterful plan? Has he held anyone to account yet, or has he just high tailed it back to Camp David?

    And now we have more personnel in Kabul at risk than before Biden set his cluster into motion.

    Satire. Have you ever been exposed to project management?

  25. but there is something to be said for as broken and despicable as America’s journalist class is…even they still have SOME limit.

    I’m going to be cynical and suggest they’re just peddling the line of whichever Deep State faction has developed them as a conduit.

  26. Biden is largely blameless in all of this. His failure extends to being too feable minded to fight this.

    Well, a signature of Alzheimer’s is that you’re not aware of your impairments.

  27. Apparently the conversation with Holbrooke included Joe talking about not sending his boy over there again. Joe has also gone on the record more recently blaming veterans’ cancers on toxic fumes from combat. (Recall that Beau Biden succumbed to cancer after serving in Iraq.)

    His son was a JAG who spent precisely one year in Iraq. He turned up with a brain tumor a year after his return. Brain tumors are random strikes and it beggars belief his can be attributed to bad air in his office.

  29. Today Biden addressed the nation … on masks for children returning to school and vaccines and boosters. He took no questions from the press, turned his back and walked off. This after emerging from hiding for the first time since the start of the debacle in Afghanistan. I see the calls here for impeachment. The disturbing truth is he is not sufficiently competent to face a tribunal.

  31. In a just and sane world, none of this would ever have happened.

    In a minimally just and sane world, they’d all be put up against a wall and shot.

    “Biden’s only failing in all of this is not holding the military to account.”

    No. That’s just one of Biden’s failures. Not insisting upon a workable plan to get American citizens and Afghan allies out is a far larger failure. We all know where the buck is supposed to stop.

  32. Art Deco – I have no idea whether a JAG officer would have actually been exposed to anything. I’d wager that a JAG officer who also happened to be the son of a Senator/Vice President was probably less likely to be exposed to dangerous fumes than the average soldier.

    That said, the relevant thing here is what Biden thinks, not whether his belief makes sense. On what Biden thinks, see here:

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/biden-addresses-possible-link-between-sons-fatal-brain-cancer-and-toxic-military-burn-pits

  33. Cornhead – “After this, I would hope that one would rat out this whole corrupt system the Dems have created.”

    But even if there exists a Democrat with a tiny shred of honor, a longshot, who will prosecute them or those they implicate? This whole thing is going to require stronger justice than our corrupted DOJ or Courts can administer!

    The Democrats should be pondering what form such a rough justice might take!

  34. Yeah and The Cloth Headed Dummy in Chief said for years (lied) that a drunk driver killed his wife. Did he think that too? PBS? Why not go to the source, Corn Pop? Burn pits, the new DU of the evil DOD.

  35. I remain stuck on the disastrous desertion of Bagram Airfield.

    Milley’s explanation is that they were limited to 2,500 troops and couldn’t defend Bagram and the Embassy.

    Spoiler: They lost the Embassy anyway.
    __________________________________________

    Milley is at best a witness to one of the greatest failures in American military history, if not one of its principal architects.

    Another reporter asked why the military command chose to abandon Bagram Air Base in the month prior to the fall. Austin demurred as if he did not understand or didn’t want to answer the question, and Milley took up answering.

    Milley said that based on the number of forces needed to secure both Bagram Air Base and the embassy in the heart of Kabul, the in-country command made the decision to “collapse Bagram” and move forces to concentrate on securing the embassy and that decision was briefed up the chain all the way to the White House. Securing both would have required more forces than the 2,500 that were in country at the time.

    The gambit to secure the embassy obviously failed, as the embassy collapsed and its personnel, including the ambassador, had to flee to Hamid Karzai International Airport, which the military refers to as HKIA. Milley’s answer indicated that Biden’s decisions left the military unable to safely carry out the operation he tasked it with.

    The reporter pointed out an obvious issue with this decision, namely, that Bagram had two operational runways while HKIA only has one. Thus, the second runway could have been used to double the evacuation throughput.

    It also could have been used to provide military combat air support during the evacuation. The reporter did not bring this up, and neither did Gen. Milley, but it’s an obvious advantage the massive base could have provided. The second runway at Bagram would have given commanders on the ground flexibility that they do not have at HKIA. In fact, HKIA is vulnerable to one well-placed artillery shell that could damage the single runway enough to shut down the aerial evacuation. Then what?

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/08/18/secdef-austin-and-gen-milley-defend-operational-decisions-that-led-chaos-in-the-fall-of-afghanistan-n1470728
    __________________________________________

    Court-martial these parasites and revoke their pensions.

    Pour les encourager les autres.

  36. @om

    The military was ordered out in 2017. So no strawman. And the CiC recommitted to it 4 months ago. They own this. If they can’t figure out how to get Americans out in 4 months they shouldn’t exist.

    Why do you think I said some Generals’ heads needed to roll?

  37. Will:

    Captain obvious here. Miley needs to be fired, Austin needs to be fired, The head of the US Navy needs to be fired.

    2017 was President Trump, remember? The top brass fought him tooth and nail and he fired a few of them too. The Dems and the press thought President Trump should be impeached for not listening to a Lt Col. Vindmann, remember him?

    Biden owns this disaster, he couldn’t manage his (our) military.

    Consider reading this post about the Biden disaster and the military culpability:

    http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/

    Again, are you familiar with project management: setting deadlines, holding folks accountable for completion of tasks to a schedule? Things that executives and decision makers have to do? (As do Construction Engineers and lowly Field Geologists.) Or they have responsible underlings (called staff) to ensure that things get done, sort of like a Commander In Chief might have?

    Satire continues.

  38. huxley —

    In August 1839, the British refrained from occupying Kabul’s citadel, instead establishing their military cantonments 1.5 miles (2.4 km) outside Kabul. …. On 23 November [1842], Afghan forces occupied a hill overlooking the British cantonments and began bombarding the camp with two guns. A British force sallied out to drive them away but the Afghans inflicted heavy casualties firing jezails at long range from the high ground.

    — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_retreat_from_Kabul

    Not coincidentally, the 1839-42 cantonments are not far from the site of the airport.

  39. Art Deco – I have no idea whether a JAG officer would have actually been exposed to anything.

    Quit playing dumb.

    That said, the relevant thing here is what Biden thinks, not whether his belief makes sense. On what Biden thinks, see here:

    Beau Biden died of glioblastoma. They percolate for a while ‘ere they show symptoms and he may have already had it when he was stationed in Iraq. The only notable risk factor identified is having had radiation treatments, which I doubt Beau Biden was receiving as a desk officer in Iraq. He could have learned this from asking a few questions of his son’s oncologist. There are some questions doctors answer poorly, but these would not be among them.

  40. Bryan Lovely:

    What’s a jezail? They sound useful.

    My historical allusion is:

    Dunkirk, 1940 — After the Battle of France several hundred-thousand Allied troops are cut-off and surrounded by the Nazis. Churchill calls it “a colossal military disaster.” The war hinges on what happens next.

    Within eight days using every desperate means available including civilian fishing boats, they rescue 340,000 troops and keep Britain in the war. Churchill calls it a miracle.

    Kabul, 2021 — With months to prepare an evacuation from Afghanistan, the US military superpower dithers and dithers, makes silly plans and assures the world everything is on course, then loses the entire country, the American airfield and Embassy to 12th Century savages over a long weekend.

    Five-thousand, ten-thousand, who knows how many thousands, American civilians are stranded in Afghanistan with no safe way to reach the Kabul airport. Not to mention Afghani allies to the American cause who are now in serious jeopardy from the Taliban.

    Now America is playing “Mother May I?” with the Taliban to get those Americans out. Little is said about the Afghan allies.

    WTF?

  42. Bryan Lovely:

    I think I remember jezails from the Flashman books. The David Case audio versions are fabulous.

  43. @Huxley:

    Audible was made for the Flashman Chronicles! Not so that BugXirsons could bathe in Malcolm Gladwell Midwittery on their commutes.

    Kicking myself for not thinking of GMF and instead going with some Trollope for my first month’s freebie audiobook.

  47. Is this the fault of the Pentagon, not Biden, too? It was a Trump program after all.

    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/18/bombshell-joe-biden-disbanded-state-department-crisis-response-bureau-prior-to-taliban-takeover-n429147

    Wouldn’t want the bad optics of the Tripoli Annex to happen again. After all, an attack on an embassy and having some planning in place, for those things called contingencies would be messy. Rapid responses might have consequences. Just let it be known that the US won’t respond at all?

  50. “It was a Trump program after all.”

    Yes, it was. And therefore no damn good for “he” who will NOT be blamed…

    (Good thing the Taliban aren’t trying to get across the southern border…although no doubt some of their compatriots have already tried to get across, with more on the way….)

    Moreover, it is reported that Trump’s position while negotiating with the Taliban was that IF they didn’t abide by any treaty they might sign (which is not really an “IF” but a “WHEN”—though the chances they would sign anything were pretty small one might think), then he would make them regret it. Massively.

    (But then I guess threatening the Taliban is Islamophobia…or something…and heaven forfend that “Biden” get blamed for THAT!—the “Squad” would have a conniption fit and be reduced (elevated?) to hysterics, making up accusations and FACTS with entertaining abandon…)

  51. “Remember these characters?”

    Holy moley…

    What a treasure trove of devastatingly poor judgment…

    (But then I have to keep reminding myself that Dershowitz voted for “Biden” too…)

  53. Neo wrote: “As many have suggested, one thing we are seeing here is the overwhelming incompetence of the so-called “elites” – that is, the people in charge of these things, be it the military or the State Department. It may not be all the people in those agencies, of course. Some people may be objecting, but if so they are apparently being overruled by others.”

    It’s not all of the people, at least at State, but they ARE being overruled, that I can assure you. The top tiers at State are not incompetent, they true believers who just “know” that they are better than you and those handful of people at State who are objecting. The Anthony Blinkins and Wendy Shermans are not/not outliers at State – they are the main body of the Senior Foreign Service.

    State can never be fine-tuned into a better organization to serve America’s foreign policy goals. It must be gutted, cleaned out like the filthy Augean Stables that it truly is.

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