On leaving Bagram, on leaving Afghanistan
If the whole thing was really motivated by a conspiratorial desire to undermine America, then the decision to leave Bagram prematurely doesn’t need explaining. It explains itself.
But let’s work on the other theory that remains plausible: incompetence and misjudgment. Even if one assumes those twin flaws, the military’s actions in Bagram were so obviously stupid, so egregiously over-the-top FUBAR, that they warrant some sort of attempt at explanation. Some thought process, however deeply erroneous, must have been going on.
Here’s my attempt at reconstructing the basic elements of that thought process, in particular the assumptions and goals. In it, I’m going to assume that Biden himself was a major player in these decisions, although I’m well aware that he might not have been. But to me, the process bears the stamp of his mind.
It may have gone like this:
(1) Joe Biden, who is commander-in-chief and has the final say, wanted out as soon as possible. He had wanted out even in 2009 as VP, and they didn’t do what he said. He waited twelve long years for this and he wasn’t going to wait any longer. One of his top priorities was leaving by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and being able to brag about what he’d done – something that no one, not even Obama the Great, had been able to accomplish.
(2) The military leaders had poor intelligence, both in the usual sense of the word (not intelligent) and the military sense (information on enemy movements, goals, and the like). Therefore they were initially unaware of the strength of the Taliban, or of their newer methods such as the propaganda the Taliban successfully spread throughout the entire country with the innovative use of Facebook and WhatsApp.
(3) Because of #2, the military planners actually became convinced that the Taliban were not going to take over and certainly wouldn’t be doing it soon, and that the US military would have plenty of time to rescue people beforehand. This was obviously short-sighted and just plain wrong, and a quick Taliban takeover should have been planned for anyway to maintain some flexibility of action in case it started to happen. But this was not done.
(4) It was May of 2021 when the Taliban began to take territory in earnest – which it did shortly after Biden’s April 14, 2021 announcement that troops would be out by September 11, 2021. In my opinion, the timing was no accident, and should have triggered an announcement by the Biden camp that the Taliban had violated the conditions of the agreement and the agreement was moot. It should also have triggered a reevaluation of the Taliban’s chances of achievhing a total takeover, and much quicker than expected. But it seems to have done neither – probably because the Biden administration was completely focused on getting out before the 9/11 anniversary and had basically washed its hands entirely of Afghanistan. Whether or not Biden actually said “f-k that” in 2010, as reported, when “asked if the US had an obligation to protect Afghans from the Taliban,” he certainly acted in accord with that sentiment.
(5) With the push for a drawdown, and a very quick one at that, the generals felt they didn’t have the resources to defend both Bagram and the airport in Kabul. They opted for the defense of the latter, which makes no sense in terms of holding off the onslaught. But if you consider that they stupidly ignored the signs that the takeover was imminent, it begins to make a bit more sense. They “reasoned” (I use that term advisedly) that the Afghans could hold Bagram for at least as long as it took for all the Americans to depart (a literally fatal miscalculation). After that? – well, f-k ’em. The fact that it would not only hurt the Afghans if the Taliban took control, but that it would hurt us (and the western world) as well, didn’t seem to enter into the picture because they had tunnel vision: get out, and fast. The Kabul airport was easier to get to – Bagram being somewhat distant from the city – and if the goal was to defend the embassy and evacuate people, the Kabul airport seemed to make sense to them.
(6) So, despite the terrible risks that were made obvious by the Taliban advance since May, Biden did nothing to stop them and the military did nothing. Did they want to, and did he block them? I don’t know, because at that point I think the flawed reasoning was shared: the sooner we go the better, and the Taliban won’t take over before we get out. Those were the guiding assumptions, and they had no backup plan, so arrogant were they about their correctness.
If that’s the way it went down, it at least partially explains why they didn’t destroy the weapons and didn’t worry about the prisoners. The Afghan military would hold for a while – I think the original estimates were at least a year – and after that it would be Afghanistan’s problem, and we washed our hands of that.
Let me add that I was not in favor of a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, nor was I in favor of nation-building. But I was in favor of a non-trivial presence there to deter a takeover that would once again promote the growth of radical Islamic terrorism. I wrote this post presenting my views on the subject almost exactly four years ago, and I believe they are a pretty good description of my views right along. It was interesting to look back and read the whole thing in light of what’s happened since. Here’s an excerpt:
Afghanistan has presented a knotty problem for several previous administrations. It’s dangerous to not be there, it’s dangerous and frustrating to be there. Once there, pulling out is a terrible option. How important is Afghanistan to the fight against Islamic terror, and how far should we go to secure it or to attempt to change it? Is it possible to fight terrorists there (and/or prevent more of them finding a haven there, as they did before 9/11) without some sort of “nation-building”? And what is “nation-building” anyway
As Paul Mirengoff points out, “it has been a while since we have done any serious nation-building in Afghanistan.” I would go even further and say that while I think we engaged in “serious,” or at least semi-serious, nation-building in Iraq,…our nation-building in Afghanistan was never as intense. And neither effort involved anything like the commitment of a full-scale occupation (which I’m not recommending, by the way)…
I’ve long thought that it is wishful thinking to believe we can disengage from these places at this point or in the near future. However, that sort of wishful thinking is indulged in by most liberals and by some in the isolationist wing of the right. It is an attractive but unrealistic and impossible suggestion, and we saw the consequences of such withdrawal when Obama left an Iraq that was substantially pacified but which required an American presence to sustain that state. What followed was a disaster for Iraq and also for the world, including the Western world and Europe in particular.
Wishful thinking is not a recipe for good military planning and execution.
[NOTE: I plan to follow this post up with one about the GOP reaction to Biden’s April 14 announcement about the pullout by 9/11.]
I think Biden and his cabinet were presented with a choice given the forces level that Biden had already chosen for July and August- defend Bagram and let Bagram be the point of final departure, or Kabul. Biden and his cabinet chose Kabul, probably because that was where the billion dollar embassy was located.
What needed to be done in April after Biden confirmed the departure was a public announcement that foreign nationals should not depend on getting out after May in a safe evacuation- they should start leaving now (in April). This message should have been repeated every single day through the Spring and Summer. If we had done that, the military could have lifted off 2 weeks ago without having to defend an indefensible position at the local airport.
The refusal to acknowledge the obvious, that the Taliban might start kicking the US out of Afghanistan rather than waiting in the hinterlands, is a blunder- a major blunder that cost 13 American servicepeople their lives on Thursday.
What can one say about abandoning Bagram AFB in the literal middle of the night, leaving billions of dollars worth of military equipment on the ground? On JULY 5.
Now the Taliban owns more Blackhawk helos than 85% of the planet’s countries. And lots of F-15 fighter jets. They will be quick to sell some to China for its reverse engineering.
This was done by traitors, not just senile fools.
Yancey Ward:
That certainly would have helped avoid the problem of the trapped nationals. It would not have touched the other major problems that resulted from our withdrawal: the loss of the weaponry and other machinery, and the release of the prisoners at Bagram prison. These are not minor; they are major and they matter. Nothing was done about them for many reasons, chief among them I believe were the focus on speed and the idea fixee that the Taliban wouldn’t take over quickly. But someday they would takeover – the military must have at least known that – and then huge numbers of terrorists would find a home in Afghanistan and start up again.
That’s the thing that always troubled me about a full withdrawal. Wishful thinking, pipe dreaming – and dangerous pipe dreaming at that.
This entire episode is indefensible but the abandoning of so much military equipment to the Taliban is truly staggering.
The problem with staying indefinitely with a limited amount of troops like SK or Germany is that a huge amount of the support was being provided by the private sector so the presence would really be much larger and who knows when the Taliban decides to go on the offensive and before you know it mission creep returns.
No honest person can say that is an unlikely scenario.
Griffin:
The risks of leaving entirely were greater, however, than the risks of staying in a somewhat reduced way. I always thought that and I continue to think it.
I was also reading a comment somewhere (don’t remember where) explaining that there were so many contractors because the effort to train the Afghans wasn’t really a serious one (don’t know whether that it true or not) and the contractors had a lucrative thing going there and therefore they certainly weren’t motivated to replace themselves.
Whatever we had decided to do, stay or leave, the whole thing involves risk and there is no way around that.
neo,
Yep, it was a very difficult situation that these incompetent fools were clearly not up to pulling off.
That nobody has been fired is just amazing.
neo:
Your scenario is the one I’ve been arguing, albeit not so fleshed-out and spread over a dozen or so comments.
I soured on Afghanistan when Obama (and Biden) decided early on to back that war half-heartedly — just enough not to be overrun, but not enough to win — and thus to keep Americans dying for Obama’s political purposes.
In 2021 if I’d known so few Americans were dying and that the situation was stable without too much yearly outlay, I’d have reconsidered.
Just to add to the confusion, I’ve recently read that Biden delegated the withdrawal planning to the State Department. The military was assigned a supporting role. Sorry, no citation at hand. If this is true, then it’s entirely possible that incompetence could have risen to a level indistinguishable from malice. In fact, for many years, that could have been the State Department’s slogan. On the other hand, this kind of report could well be derived from a Defense Department leak.
Well, anyway, there’s still too much confusion. I don’t even know whether the confusion itself can best be attributed to incompetence or malice. So far, all I’m sure of is that this is some kind of very bad mess, and I hate to think how much worse it could get.
Cornflour:
Perhaps incompetence plus malice.
As with others Why pull out without warning to friendly armies like British and Australian? Killing power and leaving sure doesn’t seem to be a good plan.
Skip:
There wasn’t one thing about the way they did this that wasn’t bad. And I think they wanted to do it secretly, too. They didn’t want to argue or have to justify. They wanted to move quickly and present a fait accompli.
No need to stay at Bagram according to General Milley.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/26/june-23rd-jc-general-mark-milley-bagram-is-not-necessary-tactically-or-operationally-for-what-we-are-going-to-try-to-do-here-with-afghanistan/
Neo: “They wanted to move quickly and present a fait accompli.”
Like the coup d’état, I mean, the election. It’s a distinctive style of doing things.
Just to add to the confusion, I’ve recently read that Biden delegated the withdrawal planning to the State Department. The military was assigned a supporting role. Sorry, no citation at hand. If this is true, then it’s entirely possible that incompetence could have risen to a level indistinguishable from malice.
The Secretary of State is a politically-connected lawyer who held a succession of 2d and 3d echelon patronage jobs in the Clinton and Obama Administration – all at the NSC, while betwixt and between he was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has no history in the military, the Foreign Service, the intelligence services, the overseas development and relief apparat, or any business sector (international or domestic); it’s a reasonable inference that prior to January 2021 he’d never had more than 50 people working under him. I’m told the Russians have a term for men like Blinken which translates as ‘office plankton’.
Wishful thinking has characterized our presence in Afghanistan almost from the beginning. I initially ascribed this disaster to malice but I now lean toward flawed reasoning, incompetence and an amoral indifference to the loss of American lives.
Abandoning the Bagram air base makes sense if they rationalized it as leaving our former Afghan allies the resources needed to resist the Taliban. Stealing off in the night indicates an awareness that the Afghans would blow a fuse over it. So the US Military commanders made it a fait accompli. Assuming the Afghans would suck it up and deal with it. If they didn’t well they brought it upon themselves…
Re: neo’s assertion that “I’ve long thought that it is wishful thinking to believe we can disengage from these places at this point or in the near future.”
I agree within the context of America’s unwillingness to act outside the ‘box’ of its own assumptions.
Those assumptive premises lock America into the path it has chosen.
Until America and the West are willing to face the reality that the source of Islamic terrorism is Islam itself, no other recourse than forever police actions or surrender exists.
No strategy can succeed that refuses to identify an enemy.
Jihadists are the most devout of Muslims, as they are willing to lay down their lives as Allah has commanded.
Facing up to Islam’s inherent nature opens up other courses because the originating premises regarding the issue change.
Operating upon the truism that you gain leverage over an enemy by attaching to their actions what for them are intolerable consequences, other reactive possibilities arise.
Islam does not care about the deaths of its adherents, in fact it celebrates deaths that result from even attempting to advance Islam’s borders.
Islam promises great rewards for those who do so.
Islam’s most devout adherents do care about Islam’s ‘holy sites’, which hold great symbolic value for devout Muslims.
Intolerable consequences consist of two factors.
Firstly, attaching the ‘intolerable consequence’ of loss of Islam’s holy sites to terrorist attacks. Yes, that will piss off Muslims around the world. So what? They show no respect, only contempt for other culture’s treasures. That’s the rules they themselves have set.
So, the larger the attack, the greater the reactive consequence. Put the Dome of the Rock and the City of Qom on the table.
Announce that the day that America suffers a nuclear terrorist attack is the day that Mecca ceases to exist.
The purpose is not to punish but to deter.
The second consequence addresses jihadist recruitment and bans slain jihadists from paradise; terrorists to be slain and executed with ammo from guns lubricated with oil containing pig fat, (Silver Bullet Lubricating Oil). Captured terrorists executed in an “unclean” manner after a military trial, as no Geneva Conventions apply. By Allah’s declaration in the ‘sacred’ Qur’an, no ‘unclean’ Muslim can enter paradise. It takes a special cleansing ritual to return an unclean Muslim to a state acceptable to Allah. No virgins in paradise = plummeting recruitment.
History provides several examples of how to deal with Islamic fundamentalists. It’s our moronic ‘modern sensibilities’ that have us stuck in this trap of our own making. Only we have the key to our jail cell.
Its this or keep doing the same thing expecting different results or Richard Fernandez’s “The Three Conjectures”.
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html
In a Counterbalance podcast aired on August 19, Dr. Thomas Lynch, a research fellow at the National Defense University, and a retired US Army officer with considerable experience in Afghanistan, offered some plausible explanations.
In brief, IIRC, Lynch says that intelligence in general conforms to policy directives, and that the disaster we’re seeing is the outcome not of poor intelligence but rather of disastrous policies. He also mentions that the Taliban, during the “off” season, made a number of agreements with key individuals in a large number or provinces, and that these agreements account in large part for the speed of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Clearly, according to Lynch, US intelligence was not able to discover those agreements because intelligence was being driven by other priorities.
https://counterbalance.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-24-afghanistan-what-just-happened
I think neo probably nailed it. Netflix has a documentary right now on the Challenger disaster and it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if there was a similar dynamic over Afghanistan – i.e., fingers crossed and hoping that the worst doesn’t happen while those who actually know what’s going on sweat it out.
It’s interesting to think about how this would have gone of Trump were still president. Of course the people on his orbit say that he would have backed out of his Taliban deal if the Taliban reneged. Maybe they’re even right. (I have no doubt that Trump wouldn’t have hesitated to bring heavy firepower to bear on the Taliban, which by itself would have made things much different if Trump had attempted to pull out.)
What’s most interesting to me is the difference in treatment between Biden and Trump. If Trump had actually tried to do something as box-of-rocks stupid as Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal and did it against the advice of the military, the leaks out of the military and DoD would have dominated the news cycle for weeks. The press would have been unbelievable and the press would have eaten it up.
Much has been made of General Milley’s claim that he had a Hobson’s Choice: defend Bagram OR defend the Embassy.
A second-year ROTC student could draw the obvious conclusion that you transfer essential Embassy operations to Bagram and evacuate / destroy everything else, and you do it the day after you announce the change in timetable on April 14.
Like this, only sooner:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cia-base-kabul-blown-up-us-forces
My big question is in re (1) “He waited twelve long years for this and he wasn’t going to wait any longer.”
If Biden’s one Big Goal was getting out of Afghanistan ASAP, why not use the Trump plan that already had evacuation slotted for May 1? Why change it?
We know what he did do: toss the plan, and eliminate the agency department tasked with running evacuations under fire.
His TDS over-ruled even one of his most signature policy preferences.
@ Neo > “I was also reading a comment somewhere (don’t remember where) explaining that there were so many contractors because the effort to train the Afghans wasn’t really a serious one (don’t know whether that it true or not) and the contractors had a lucrative thing going there and therefore they certainly weren’t motivated to replace themselves.”
Possibly one of the reports by Lee Smith that are circulating.
Both of them are worth reading in full, and go a long way to explaining a lot of things about the last 5 years.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/assabiya-lee-smith
“What drives the success of the rising tribe is its group solidarity, or assabiya. Its awareness of itself as a coherent people with a drive for primacy is frequently augmented by religious ideology. The stronger the tribe’s assabiya, the stronger the group.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/lee-smith-botched-afghanistan-withdrawal-the-culmination-of-20-years-of-corruption-and-failed-leadership_3963784.html
You may have to subscribe (free) to read the ET interview transcript, but I think their material is worth it. It is a more detailed version of the Tablet story.
I read this a couple of days ago, and thought the author made some good points.
It’s originally from The Atlantic, which still has posts that are worthwhile, when the contributors aren’t frothing over Orange Man Bad.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-the-taliban-got-right/ar-AANDFnC?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
The Atlantic 2021-08
Americans Never Understood Afghanistan Like the Taliban Did
by Shadi Hamid
RTWT
This passage could apply to our own domestic situation as well: same elites, different “deplorables” to be whipped into line.
It occurred to me just now that the opening for the Taliban is the same one that was exploited by the Left in its former incarnation, worming its way into the American political and cultural system at vulnerable points because of the failures of the government and other institutions(the Gramscian March); but can also be used to replace it.
It would seem worthwhile to have maintained a minimal presence in Afganistan. Militarily, it wouldn’t have been large enough to engage in serious actions, but it would have told people, both in and outside Afganistan, that America has a strong enough interest there to maintain and protect it.
Culture transformation, ie., “nation building,” would not have been possible with such a small presence, but nothing the United States could have done save import 100 million Americans would have done anything on that front, either. The cultures are too radically different for more than some small changes around the fringes.
It would have also provided a foundation for intelligence operations, which is where the greatest value would have been. We maintain a presence in multiple places around the globe: Korea, Germany, England, etc. Airplanes into buildings didn’t come from Seoul, Stuttgart or Marseille, it came from the remote areas of the Middle East, from which something like it will probably come again.
Bagram might have been a reasonable place to maintain that presence – the runways and buildings were already there, so air access was established; some fortification had been accomplished, certainly more would have been necessary; enough equipment to perform “maintenance” functions (a few helicopters, a couple transports, refueling for “visiting” combat aircraft, etc.) staffing levels high enough to provide adequate security but low enough to not pose an attractive target (there’s no glory, or very little, in a “pushover campaign”); Afgani citizens knew where Bagram was so they could find it if they needed to, which is an argument for minimal societal involvement (a small medical clinic, dispensing equipment for cleaning water, etc.).
But, all that would have required intelligence (meaning “possession of enough smarts and understanding”) to plan and execute. I’m not convinced that anyone in government above the level of dogcatcher may have enough of that to succeed at the task.
For Pete’s sake, the Afghan military has sustained 70,000 deaths in 20 years, compared to the US total of 2400. So what were the Afghans to do when they saw the cravenness of Biden and his worms like Austin and Blinken? They caved. Better to join the Taliban than to be slaughtered.
“Slowly at first, then all at once”.
Once Biden (CiC of America) ran away from Bagram, it was clear to most AF soldiers that Biden knew he was going to lose.
How many locals want to die for an empire that is running away?
70k AF deaths over the decades was with the idea that the USA had their backs. But the US military mission was being corrupted into a money-laundering corruption racket. The top AF generals became those most willing and able to lick the boots, and maybe other brown areas, of the US commanders with cash to distribute.
This is also the reason so much “aid”, for so much of the world, including Haiti for instance, becomes wasted.
Some 50k or more AF SIVs and other locals who helped the US forces — why weren’t more of them in AF army actually fighting the Taliban directly? Because the personal risk for them is so high.
And they didn’t believe Biden would run away to leave to die, er, to Taliban’s tender mercies.
But similarly, why weren’t there more Afghans trained to maintain the helicopters? Like Lee Smith (good links, AesopFan) says – the Westerners there had it “good”.
Pink Floyd explained it:
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it riding the gravy train.
US leadership is terrible. It’s disgusting.
Tom Grey:
Let’s modify your statement to read “Present US leadership is disgusting and terrible. It is also treasonous.”
Griffin:
Who is in position to fire any of the incompetent malefactors? Only the senile, corrupt, immoral President. Good luck with that.
Alarm Bells Ringing on the dialysis machines over at National Review where one cookie cutter item, name of Noah Rothman is attempting to refute ‘fallacious’ arguments about Forever Wars.
The one glaring flaw with most arguments about the pull-out being well-meaning is that they don’t address one critical issue – why didn’t we tell even our closest allies when the withdrawal date was? I’m not talking about the Afghan citizens. I’m talking about other foreign countries that had installed a presence in Afghanistan. We up and left like a thief in the night, and the countries that had followed us to Afghanistan essentially at our request following 9/11 were caught completely by surprise.
junior:
I think even the people here who were in favor of a total withdrawal (I was not one of them) are very critical of the way this was done. Somehow we (and by “we” I mean the Biden administration and its generals) managed to offend almost every group on earth except our enemies. We betrayed the Afghans and all our allies. That’s a pretty astounding thing to manage in one fell swoop.
The Arab world has a challenge doing maintenance, “inshallah”. It’s gods will. It’s meant to be. A huge cultural issue. And combine that with tribalism and low trust, where knowledge is hoarded and considered a source of power, and you have huge challenges doing maintenance. The really smart ones by hook and by crook left for the West. This is why the gulf states have so many Western contractors for their military. And top that off with a huge amount corruption.
And us military equipment is high maintenance. Russia’s equipment is perceived to not be as good as the US, but it has the advantage of being much lower maintenance.
Under Obama the nsc micro managed everything the military did in Syria. I did not realize Blinken’s connection to the NSC. My guess is you had a similar level of micromanagement out of the nsc, that made sure Biden’s withdrawal was carried out. Jake Sullivan head of the nsc also has little real world experience.
The original error in the nation building was trying to create a strong centralized government, where it should have been a federal system with a weak central government. This is a Bush error. But hey, Karzai and his other expat friends got very rich. The end result was a military that was more of an invading army, but had a 10% quota for women!
There seems to be some infighting going on in the Biden Administration on who gets the blame, with strategic leaking by various parties. The blame Trump, even with an assist by Romney, does not seem to be working. Intel Agencies / State allies are one group. Nsc (Biden Loyalists is another) is another. Military I’m sure also wants to avoid blame, but I don’t think they do strategical leaks as other groups do through the NYT, CNN, and Washington Post. Jim Acosta just tried the unity plea, where in this dark time we should not be picking on poor Joe.
Ray SoCa —
I suspect you’re referring to this article, Why Arabs Lose Wars originally from 1999.
The Afghans are not Arabs, being a combination of Indo-Europeans, Turks, and Mongols, but I suspect the same problems apply to them more due to tribal reasons than due to Islam. Lots of non-Arab Muslim countries have tough, professional, modern armies. Turkey and Pakistan spring immediately to mind, possibly Iran as well, at least pre-Iran-Iraq War; I don’t know what they’re like now.
@ Bryan “I suspect you’re referring to this article, Why Arabs Lose Wars originally from 1999.”
The impression I got from that article (which is very thorough and informative) is that the US Military, under the Democrats’ leadership, is devolving into a close analogue of the Arabs.
NTB cites two WaPo stories in support of some rather troubling assertions about what went on behind the scenes that we all saw.
https://notthebee.com/article/the-taliban-did-not-take-over-kabul-on-august-15-we-gave-it-to-them-and-i-really-wish-i-was-exaggerating
Bryan Lovely, you are right on the ethnic make up.
Tribalism drives the corruption that has Afghanistan rank 177 out of 180 nations on corruption
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Afghanistan
Neo or anybody … have you seen this? In the comments it also says NYT confirms but it’s behind pay wall so i couldn’t confirm for myself.
https://www.weaselzippers.us/473716-abc-correspondent-bus-loads-of-american-women-turned-away-at-hkia-gate-turned-over-to-taliban-likely-dead/
@ jack and all — at this point I think we need to invoke the “48 hour rule” on all atrocity stories from Afghanistan.
Some will be “too good to check” or in the current context, “too awful to check” — but checking nonetheless must occur.
Same thing with the NTB story I linked above; still waiting to see what can be confirmed.
Sadly, some of them will be true or almost so.
But, even the stuff we know has happened is bad enough without piling on fake news.
Jack’s story has hit the other media since I checked about an hour ago.
This was the top of my DDG search.
It looks to be based on the NYT story, but also looks totally believable.
https://nextsharknews.com/2021/08/30/american-university-of-kabul-students-trying-to-flee-were-sent-home/
Hmm. HTML fail in that last comment. You can probably figure it out; my interpolations are the stuff that says “Probably …. charges were safe” and the comments beginning “IF any are still alive.”
WZ posted just a single tweet from Emily Miller yesterday; she had an update today with some good news (for now) (sort of). She mentioned 7 buses in her first Tweet, and only “the” bus today.
https://twitter.com/emilymiller/status/1432179085942345730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Update from special ops leader on just the women on the bus – “I was told they are safe.” He said State Department involved.
Adding this from below her Tweet on my thread:
Jack Posobiec Flag of United States
“We are now able to debunk government lies in realtime.
And this is why they want social media gone.”
He linked this story in another Tweet.
I bet they didn’t get that memo from DOD about not criticizing officers.
https://flagofficers4america.com/media-and-pr
Here’s the letter with signatures.
How many flag officers does it take to staff an alternate to the Wokerati Force?
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/fb7c7bd8-097d-4e2f-8f12-3442d151b57d/downloads/DOD%20Resignation%20Letter%20083021.pdf?ver=1630334079818
President Trump:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-DoZjkXIAoD7pm?format=jpg&name=large
#StillMyPresident
More on the Bus story in this thread:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/08/28/the-afghanistan-bugout-the-gop-hawks-called-this-one/#comment-2574040