Right, several MONTHS ago. And, the evacuation just ramped up in the last couple weeks. Unbelievable.

It didn't have to be this way.

The fighting season -- I never thought about that! Withdrawal had to have been better last winter (under Trump? Yeah, right) or next winter (as competently managed as possible by Joe.)

I still maintain that the moment word leaked out that we were pulling our Afghanis out (and that would be instantly) the Afghan Security forces would have melted away, leading to some version of the same chaos.

For what it's worth,

1- most Americans want out of Afghanistan. It’s been a mess for 20 years now so why the surprise if it's a mess at the very end?

2- noone saw the instant collapse of the Security Forces coming. So its not like Joe knew better and screwed it up (like, say, how Trump knew Covid was going to be bad yet screwed it up.)

3- the midterms are 15 looong months away, politic memories are short and midterm voters tend to vote on the state of the economy rather than foreign policy issues.

So I predict that so long as thousands of Americans aren't captured by the Taliban or ISIS (1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis redux) this isn't going to stick to Joe. Your welcome, Elizabeth!

[12]

...phuqued...
Is that a French word? Prounounced "foo KWAY" peut-être?

At roughly ten minutes long this packs all the key points in, says this student of the Middle East.

As much fun as it would be to blame only Trump, Biden also needs to shoulder the blame to some extent by completing the pull out during fighting season.

The only possible way this could have been slightly different is if they withdrew during the winter when you could have taken the afghan army regulars and distributed the highly skilled commando forces amongst the regulars and pointed them at the border regions and kept the TB bottled up in the spring. Of course this also assumes that the SVIP vetting process has been repaired and the SVIP holders had started moving.

Even given the above, chaos is still a certainty vs. a possibility.

War by it's nature is chaotic and history has yet to show a end to one that doesn't have chaos. History doesn't judge chaos, it judges how you manage events after the trigger.

Media does however judge chaos to fill a 24 hour news cycle. Unfortunately with the immediacy of the media things seem worse than they are.

History is legion, the media is not.

Roger that, CRS!

Omygawd people, the withdrawal is far and away the BEST MANAGED (as in least phuqued up) aspect of THE ENTIRE AFGHANISTAN WAR!!!

The "intel we had to go on" was always more like 'lie-tel', or maybe 'false-tel'. People who understand Afghanistan always knew that the intel gatherers will lying and/or stupid.

Come on, my friend. The 'word' DID get out months ago! And the Taliban's march to Kabul followed very soon after. Which was to be expected. No surprises there.

This withdrawal was not done well at all - by the US and all of its allies - and I cannot understand why.

The US and its allies have been in Afghanistan for 20 bloody years, for crissakes. They couldn't fend for themselves without most of their Afghan allies!?

No, this withdrawal was botched from the get-go - rather like the mission once the mission became nation-building.

Now, there is yet another chance for America to learn critical lessons. Will it?

But again, the moment word got out (weeks or months ago) that we were starting to evacuate ur Afghanis this same collapse would have occurred. Why would any Afghani risk life and limb to cover our retreat?

You could have evacuated allies who were not translators, kept just a few translators on base, had the military eat K-rations or use American cooks, and have the military perform only the most basic defense while packing up to go. I admit I'm not a logistics expert, but if the sense of duty to the people who risked their lives was stronger, it would have shown itself in the order of operations.

The decision to leave was made months ago and the Taliban have been making great inroads towards Kabul for almost as long. Why was everything left to the last freakin' minute?

They might surmise that it would have ended well if Americans never left but, then again, they know as well as anyone who has been paying attention that America's attempts at nation building haven't gone well since the end of the second world war. So, there's that.

The pertinent and ongoing lessons of Afghanistan have certainly not been lost on president Biden. He's been there and tried to do all of that. Ahem. Which should, by and large, put Biden in good stead with the historians.

Okay, say we evacuate the front line translators, informants and cooks first. Just how does the last to go US military conduct the most basic of operations without them?

Okay, say we evacuate the front line translators, informants and cooks first. Just how does the last to go US military conduct the most basic of operations without them?

I disagree, as stated Monday:

Also, please note that if Afghani evacuations had begun months ago that would 1-panic the Afghani government (and hastened it's fall,) and 2- leave our troops without translators etc for the intervening months. So THAT was never in the cards.

We just saw how quickly the Taliban swept up Afghanistan. Start the evacuations a month ago and it would have collapsed just as quickly, only a month ago instead.

Listen up, armchair Generals! What would you do differently than Joe, especially if you were working with the same intel he was working with?