I think the answer might be something like, renegotiate with the Taliban to keep Bagram open until we can move our shit out. There’s nothing that forces the Taliban to agree to those terms, though.
It seems clear that Biden was determined to get out and he was just hoping that this wouldn’t get messy. He hoped that whatever mess there was would be minimal. That was most likely his own final and personal calculation, as someone who had seen the mission in Afghanistan as a senator, a vice-president, and now a president. If we look back a few months from now and Afghanistan fades from public memory, then the gamble will have paid off, assuming other things are in place. But if we’re still talking about getting US hostages out of there or if there is, God forbid, something worse that happens between now and September 1, then the gamble will have been a costly one for Biden.
It’s also counter-productive. The Taliban has a whole country to run (via force) and the US gifted them a bunch of military equipment that will help them a lot. I don’t see why they’d agree to terms that would allow the US to leave with their equipment.
I’m not even calling the Taliban greedy, or thieves, they literally need that stuff. (And they might still be overrun by ISIS before long, I hope I’m wrong.)
It’s funny to see how many people are suddenly horrified that some Americans were killed in Afghanistan. Where were you for the last decade while Americans were being killed in Afghanistan for nothing?
If only we had a military base that could be used for airlifting people and projecting power against insurgents. I’d put it near the Pakistan border to limit mechanized movement of equipment and people on major roads into Afghanistan.
Such a strategic asset could project power indefinitely until everybody was evacuated.
There’s nothing funny about the unnecessary chaos that left people vulnerable to terrorist attacks. People are horrified about the likelihood of the wholesale slaughter of Afghanis who trusted the US.
For those who think pulling out without chaos and death was impossible, have a look at the withdrawal from Vietnam. The circumstances were similar or worse - the Viet Cong were constantly attacking Americans right up to the end.
First, they got the American civilians out of all the unsecure places. Then they slowly withdrew from outlying bases, removing or destroying any assets the enemy might use. Eventually, all that was left was a heavily defended embassy. When the Viet Cong took Saigon, the only Americans left were in the embassy where they were airlifted from the embassy roof. It took the US 60 days to withdraw while dismantling its bases along the way. And that was a MUCH larger force.
There are plenty of other withdrawals from losing combat zones by many different forces in history. It’s not a mystery how to do it. The logic isn’t hard. First, you start pulling out civilians. This should have started months ago. If necessary, you give them a military escort. Most, given enough warning, could have just flown out on airlines.
Once the civilians are gone, you prepare an orderly retreat, closing bases and removing equipment as you go. You can even do it while civilians leave, so long as you retain enough forces to protect them if need be, You pull everyone back to Bagram, then you depart from there. The embassy is a fallback for those who can’t make it to Bagram. And you make sure it is well defended.
If the Taliban tries to push you around to make it look like you are running, you push back. If they tell you to get out by August 31, whether or not civilians and SIV holders are still there, you tell them you’ll leave when every civilian is out of the country and not a second before, and if they don’t like it they should pray that you don’t cancel the deal and bomb the loving shit out of their new toys and buildings.
Biden keeps changing the subject to the question of whether or not America should have left. That’s not the debate. The debate is whether they should have left this way. Biden’s own generals didn’t think so, and he overruled them. The disaster is on him, and it coild have been avoided.
The Fall of Saigon is a black mark in American history. People reference that event as a criticism of Biden, calling this his “Fall of Saigon”. It wasn’t a triumph.
I agree with you that what happened in Saigon was probably the best possible outcome and it was incredible what was accomplished. But there was chaos and death despite all of that.
So I think your example proves the opposite of your point. Pulling out without chaos and death is impossible. That being said, the US could have done it much better, and I think you have a lot of good points about how it could have gone better. How it really should have gone better. Biden has been and will continue to be criticized for how it was done and at least some of that criticism is deserved. (The only real debate in my mind is how much of it is deserved.)
That’s nice. We had a defensible base with 2 large runways. Oh, and billions of dollars of equipment and weapons that hadn’t been turned over to the enemy.
a completely different scenario from Vietnam until recent events.
I’m not saying it was a good thing, but what was ‘bad’ about it was not the way the withdrawal happened, but that the U.S. left the country to the North Vietnamese and left behind a lot of South Vietnamese people who helped America. That, and the chaos caused by the fall of the South, inlcuding the boat people crisis. That was a political decision similar to leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban.
But the pullout itself was handled competently, as I redall. By the time Saigon fell, the only Americans left were those in the embassy, and they were choppered out. That created terrible symbolism and an image that has resonated for decades, but it was always the plan to remove the last people by helicopter from the Embassy if Saigon fell.
I am not sure you correctly read what I was saying. Bagram should have been the last military base closed, after the last flight left it. The embassy should have been directing civilian withdrawal and coordinating with counterparts in other NATO countries, and should have been the second-last facility to close, helicoptering the people to Bagram if the streets weren’t safe.
no, just keep the base open with the troops that were there. Now we’re going to have to bring troops in to fix this. And the fix has no base of operations. So it’s going to be a clusterfuck.
Agreed - we should have left at least 10 years ago. The unnecessary chaos of over a decade of pointless war that accomplished nothing is a national disgrace, and thank God the president is getting us out.
They recommended US civilians leave several months ago. They can’t force them, so this is all they could do.
I don’t buy your armchair analysis. This was always going to be chaotic. It was an incompetent war with incompetent strategy, incompetent analysis, and I think it’s crazy that anyone could expect a smooth withdrawal after so much incompetence and dishonesty.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I doubt that the people that count in the US government (from the military and otherwise) are much different now to six months ago. Even if the withdrawal operation has been FUBAR’ed (and I’m as skeptical of the armchair critics as you are, in that respect) I’m doubtful that whether it was Biden or Trump in the Oval Office would have made any difference.
Which does bring to my mind that there may have been planners or decision makers today in 2020-21 who were so hung up on that prior example that besides presuming that ANA would at least make a stand a-la ARVN (a year and a half holding the line and the final rout giving you six weeks instead of one to bug out whoever’s left), may have decided in some cases not do what was done then, not even the parts that went well but just looked bad.
But yeah, the American exit from Saigon was executed in an orderly fashion, the bad thing that happened there then (as in Kabul now) was the panic of the local supporters upon a faster than expected collapse and sensing we were yeeting out and abandoning them to their fate.
I mean we have like 6000+ guys there now. You don’t have to man every mile of the road. Instead you have a number of check points set along the road, you have aerial support basically overhead scouting the entire time so you know well in advance if any “trouble” is coming towards the road from the countryside. We had manned checkpoints all over Afghanistan at one point. It’s also how insurgent forces often control roads, they control a few checkpoints to control the flow of traffic.
It would take substantially fewer people, working out of Bagram, to keep the road from Kabul to Bagram open, than it is taking right now to only partially secure Kabul’s airport. This is because Kabul’s airport has no defensive perimeter and is basically within walking distance of many thousands of civilians all trying to press their way in. The roads outside of Kabul are dissimilar from that in a number of ways.