Posted on 08/27/2021 5:26:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Say what you will about President Joe Biden, he has stuck to his guns on ending America's 20-year involvement in Afghanistan's forever war.
His decision not to delay our departure after Aug. 31 was fortified by hard intel that the terrorist ISIS-K was preparing attacks at Kabul airport.
Thursday evening, the two bomb attacks occurred.
It now seems inevitable that the withdrawal will be completed by Aug. 31, with all U.S. military forces following the last civilians out.
Before yesterday's attacks, the airlift had been going far better than in its chaotic first days. Some 100,000 Americans and Afghans had gotten out of the country since Aug. 14.
Biden held his ground, refusing to be stampeded by Democratic critics, NATO allies, Republican hawks or media demanding he extend the deadline for departure until all Americans were out.
His adamancy testifies to the convictions Biden came by during decades at the apex of the U.S. government during our longest war.
Those convictions:
Even if the end result of a withdrawal is that Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, the cause is not worth a continuance of the U.S. commitment or the blood and treasure that four presidents have invested.
Better to accept a U.S. defeat and humiliation than re-commit to a war that is inevitably going to be lost.
Biden's decision and the botched early days of the withdrawal have not been without political cost. Polls show the president's approval rating sliding underwater. A Suffolk poll has him down to 41%.
Yet, on his basic decision to get out now and accept the costs and consequences, his country appears to be with him. After all, former President Donald Trump was prepared to depart earlier than Aug. 31, and a majority of Americans still support the decision to write off Afghanistan and get out.
Still, we need to realize what this means and what is coming.
According to the secretary of state, 6,000 Americans were still in Afghanistan when the Afghan army collapsed and Kabul fell. Some 4,500 of these have now been evacuated.
The State Department is in touch with 500 other U.S. citizens to effect their departure. As for the remaining 1,000, we do not know where they are.
What does this mean?
Hundreds of Americans are going to be left behind, along with scores of thousands of Afghan allies who worked with our military or contributed to the cause of crushing the Taliban. And many of those Afghans are going to pay the price of having cast their lot with the Americans.
After Aug. 31, the fate of those left behind will be determined by the Taliban, and we will be made witness to the fate the Taliban imposes.
This generation is about to learn what it means to lose a war.
When the war for Algerian independence ended in 1962, and the French pulled their troops out, scores of thousands of "Harkis," Arab and Muslim Algerians who fought alongside the French, were left behind.
The atrocities against the Harkis ran into the tens of thousands. Such may be the fate of scores of thousands of Afghans who fought beside us.
Biden's diplomats may be negotiating with the Taliban to prevent the war crime of using U.S. citizens left behind as hostages. But we are not going to be able to save all of our friends and allies who cast their lot with us and fought alongside us.
Yet, while the promises of the Taliban are not credible and ought not to be believed, we are not without leverage.
As The New York Times writes, the Afghan economy is "in free fall."
"Cash is growing scarce, and food prices are rising. Fuel is becoming harder to find. Government services have stalled as civil servants avoid work, fearing retribution."
The Taliban's desperate need is for people to run the economy and for money from the international community to pay for imports of food and vital necessities of life.
What will also be needed from us, soon after the fall of Afghanistan, is a reappraisal of America's commitments across the Middle East.
We have 900 U.S. troops in Syria who control the oil reserves of that country and serve as a shield for the Syrian Kurds.
How long should we keep them there?
We retain several thousand troops in Iraq. Why?
These are questions for which new answers are going to be needed.
Indeed, there will be a temptation to counter our defeat and humiliation with defiant gestures or precipitate action to restore our lost credibility. Henry Kissinger's advice on any such action today seems wise:
"No dramatic strategic move is available in the immediate future to offset this self-inflicted setback, such as by making new formal commitments in other regions. American rashness would compound disappointment among allies, encourage adversaries, and sow confusion among observers."
As for Afghanistan and the Kabul airport, there comes a time when even a great nation needs to accept the reality that Corregidor is lost.
No, it isn't.
This generation is incapable of learning much of anything at all.
My fear is that yesterday’s suicide bomb attack was just a stray cannonball “recon by fire” lobbed into the Alamo by one of General Santa Anna’s gunners.
The Kabul Alamo Airport is indefensible, with no overhead cover for our troops. It’s surrounded by hills on three sides, and it’s inside a city of over 4 million. At any time, the airport can be hit with mortars, with no way to stop them.
The order to leave Bagram should have generals court martialed and jailed in disgrace. They should have resigned en-masse rather than agree to put troops into the Kabul Alamo with no local air base from which to cover them.
Kabul Alamo Airport should have just been a collection and ferry point for moving evacuees to Bagram by helo and only then onto C-17s. Now, if we move to retake Bagram, the Kabul Alamo will be mortared and massacred.
I saw a photo of about six C-17s wing parked tip to wing tip at KIA. A single mortar could wipe out billions of dollars of our best platforms in 5 minutes. And this can happen at any moment of the enemy’s choosing.
And now our hands are tied, like a man on a gallows with his neck in a noose. We have been left with no options, we are at the mercy of the Taliban, thanks to the fools, cowards and traitors we call our leaders.
So, the ends justify the means? Handing over billions fo dollars worth of arms, ammo & aircraft and losing 13 American lives (so far) was an equitable trade? Sorry, Pat, but it did NOT have to happen this way (and you know it).
“This generation is incapable of learning much of anything at all.”
I am beginning to believe that this is the most accurate observation I have encountered. What it foreshadows will not be good. Life is short, and when you make stupid mistakes it is shorter. Countries involve many lives, but the equation is almost the same.
Especially when Biden screwed this up from the beginning and this disaster of a withdrawal id entirely his. Pat, you are so ignorant to praise the dumbest man in the Senate.
We can all sleep peacefully knowing that G.I. Joe is on the job protecting Americans ...
Watch out terrorists !!!
He’s coming for you !!!
Afghanistan was always going to fall to the Taliban regardless of who oversaw the withdrawal and regardless of whether it was done now or ten years from now.
“It now seems inevitable that the withdrawal will be completed by Aug. 31, with all U.S. military forces following the last civilians out”.
What???
There will be American civilians left to fend for themselves.
To what generation is he referring to?
The youngest Baby Boomers?
Gen X?
Millennials?
Gen Y?
Gen Z?
Pat is jumping the gun talking about ‘after Aug 31’ .... our soldiers are in a kill zone on the tarmac/in the air over KIA now, TODAY. Whether they live or die depends on the ‘tender mercies’ of the Taliban as KIA is an indefensible position.
Think about Daniel Pearl. Think about that happening to women and children on prime time. To innocents handed to the Taliban by Clueless Joe. Will the media be able to save him?
LOL. There is no such thing as ISIS-K. The Taliban did this crap.
Bagram is forty kilometers from Kabul. How do you get the embassy staff and U.S. citizens there?
Mere incompetence can’t explain this cluster****. This is malice.
There’s no other explanation.
L
Pat Buchanan is out of it, as his screed reveals. A series of mindless sound bites about “forever war”and “blood and treasure” etc. Sad fact is that at 82 he is older than Biden and just as demented. Too much Irish whiskey over the years takes its toll in the end. Bye Pat.
These reports make it sound like there are thousands of American contractors and NGO-types over there. In fact, I suspect the vast majority of the "American civilians" are nothing more than Afghan citizens who have never set foot in the U.S. but who happen to be considered U.S. citizens only because of our own stupid laws and judicial rulings about what constitutes a U.S. citizen.
This is so cute. He speaks of Biden as if he’s actually making decisions on his own and isn’t just a puppet.
Yes, “bad luck” doesn’t cause a coin to land on tails 100 X in a row. It’s a fake coin. It’s malice, Obama in the background running Biden via Rice.
I think he means we’re going to learn in the same way that the German people learned in spring of 1945. It’s more a case of what’s going to happen not do people actually learn.
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