It's August 31st, 2021. The last USAF plane has left Kabul — that is, the last USAF plane that wasn't abandoned in our rush to be gone by Biden's deadline. There also seems to have been a fair few American civilians left behind. Whether they chose to remain behind or were simply unable to get to the airport in time is as yet insufficiently clear. Also left behind, apparently, are a large number of Afghans who served as interpreters during the occupation, even though they are at serious risk of Taliban retaliation.
There are rumors that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unvetted refugees made it onto airplanes to be whisked away to centers of Afghan immigration like Wisconsin. One YouTube video claims that the U.S. State Department emailed blank visas, presumably to vetted addressees, with instructions to "fill them out and bring them with you to the airport". A blank form such as that can be replicated easily and filled out by others who (presumably) have not yet been vetted. Beyond that, the roads leading to the airport were by then under the control of the Taliban, and it is not guaranteed that everyone who ought to have been admitted to the airport actually got close enough for that to happen. It also appears that something like $83 billion (with a 'b') worth of planes, helicopters, armored vehicles, and other weapons (including over 350,000 M-16s and ammunition) were left behind at Bagram airbase.
Clearly, this pull-out was bungled in a way that has no immediately-comparable example in our experience. Why?
People of all stripes are asking piercing questions like: "What level of military expertise is required for a leader to understand that the order of evacuation has to be (a) civilians first, (b) expensive and/or militarily-sensitive equipment next, and (c) military last ?" And if the leader doesn't have that kind of military expertise, isn't there someone close by who does have it?
FOX News and Republicans in general are blaming this incredible series of fuck-ups (sorry, there's just no pleasant way to say it) on Biden, and Democrats while CNN and MSNBC are pointing their fingers at Donald Trump.
Well, whose fault is it?
The Democrats shrug and say "that's the evacuation plan Trump left us with!" and expect everyone to shrug along with them. But Biden, on his first half-day in office, signed 40 Executive Orders undoing many acts of the previous President. Is it possible that in the seven months since, no one at the Pentagon pointed out the error in Trump's horrible plan? No, it's not possible. If that were Trump's plan, it would have been changed as easily as those 40 EOs. Therefore, the plan we witnessed being executed in the last two weeks was not Trump's plan; it was Biden's plan, either because he changed Trump's plan or because he didn't.
This was Biden's fault. The buck stops there.
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"It also appears that something like $83 billion (with a 'b') worth of planes, helicopters, armored vehicles, and other weapons (including over 350,000 M-16s and ammunition) were left behind at Bagram airbase."
ReplyDelete$83 billion was the entire amount spent over the last 20 years on the Afghan army -- training, salaries, equipment, etc. -- not the value of equipment that was captured or abandoned.
I wonder how many of those vehicles have well-hidden listening and geo-location devices in them?
And the problem with "unvetted refugees" is the pretense that there should be any "vetting" in the first place.
The 20-year cost of the Afghan adventure is estimated at $2 trillion (with a 't'). Since the (snork!) Afghan Army is still in Afghanistan along with their training (snork!) and equipment, I think it's fair to say we left $83 billion behind.
DeleteIt's certainly fair to say that they (whoever the "we" involved is, I'm not one of them) left $83 billion behind.
ReplyDeleteBut it's inaccurate to say that they left $83 billion worth of arms, ammo, and vehicles behind.