Situation at the US Embassy in Kabul is more dire than what the State Department is saying

[ansible]

Link to tweet

If this literally ends the same way that the Fall of Saigon did with the helicopter on the roof, it's going to be an absolute fucking PR disaster.

[JoanofArgh]

1. Actually , no it won't . The majority of Americans wanted out of Afghanistan.

They'll get them out.

[greenjar_01]

3. The majority of Americans were well done with Vietnam by April 1975 too

[at140]

2. How long is the war in Afghanistan gone on?

Just get out. Afghanistan is not ready for any type of democracy.

[FakeNoose]

4. Remember Libya? Remember Benghazi?

God what a nightmare that was.

I believe our military will get the Americans PLUS our friends out, because the Taliban doesn't really want to kill them. The Taliban just wants us GONE.

Please God, let this happen quickly. Please God, let us learn from this!

[Runningdawg]

5. If this goes sideways we are looking at Benghazi on steroids. You know who they will blame.

[SunSeeker]

9. They would blame Dems even if Trump was president. nt

[tblue37]

18. Hillary.

[stillcool]

6. 20 years later...I keep thinking

members of the Taliban have probably lost most of their family members to the U.S. when they were children. Yeah...I'd get the fuck out of there yesterday.

[rockfordfile]

14. f the Taliban they're terrorist.

[calguy]

7. There is no right moment and no right way to exit a war like this

Biden is the fourth president to deal with it. Fortunately, he's the last one to deal with it.
It's a tragedy, but not our tragedy. We've given them everything they need to defend themselves. We can't give them the will to defend themselves. Only they can do that, and they failed, miserably.
We've no business defending a country that refuses to defend themselves.

[cilla4progress]

10. General McCaffrey

and former CIA Director John Brennan on Niccolle Wallace just now are critical of the HOW this is going - not that we are going.

[cilla4progress]

8. Already is.

...

[rso]

11. Embassy

The evacuation will be seamless, should the Taliban try to interfere, we will have more than enough troops to repel them. But of course, the tragedy of abandoning Afghanistan under these conditions is indisputable.

[Bev54]

16. Other countries are also helping with the evacuation of Afghans, including Canada

We are not only taking in those who helped the troops, we have committed to bring in 20,000 activists and leaders, particularly women who are in danger. Unlike the US we have been bringing many Afghans in for years. Trump did not allow that.

[former9thward]

19. Just a quick look at immigration statistics shows 18,500 Afghans came into U.S. in 2019.

Which is the last year stats are available. So the U.S. was allowing them to come in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

[Bev54]

21. Well that is good, I thought there was a Muslim ban??

[former9thward]

23. A summary of the ban (which did not affect Afghanistan)

Summary
On January 27, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order that banned travel to the United States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries–Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen–and suspended the resettlement of all Syrian refugees. The order sparked protests around the country at airports and immigrant rights, refugee resettlement, and civil liberties organizations undertook several legal challenges to the order on the grounds that it constituted religious discrimination. The suits against the travel bans resulted in court injunctions temporarily blocking the order and groups in opposition to the ban also blocked a second iteration of the executive order. Nevertheless, on June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion, ultimately allowed a third version of the executive order to go into force, which expanded the list of barred travelers to include nationals from Venezuela (limited to government officials) and North Korea. In 2020, the Trump administration expanded visa restrictions on six more countries–Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania–citing screening and national security concerns in those countries. Nationals of thirteen countries are currently subject to various travel restrictions.

https://immigrationhistory.org/item/muslim-travel-ban/

[dflprincess]

22. Every woman in Afghanistan who hasn't drunk the Taliban Kool-Aid is in danger.

I hope we (and other countries) are willing to give them all asylum because they will need it.

In the past, long before our involvement there, when the Taliban was in control the U.S. gave very few Afghani women political asylum.

[madville]

12. We're sending 3000 Marines back in to get everyone out

And hopefully they either retrieve or destroy as much of the big ticket military gear as they can like aircraft, tanks, munition dumps, etc. Probably going to be quite a fireworks show once everyone is out with airstrikes destroying abandoned military equipment.

[tishaLA]

13. My sincerest concern is all the RPG launchers

in Afghanistan and what that could mean to an evacuation. I've already come to terms with how terrible this will be in the end, but I worry about them wanting to make a statement as we head out.

[Kingofalldems]

15. Nope. Not a good try.

[joetheman]

17. I think the more we say about it, the more info the Taliban get to use against us.

We should keep quiet about the details of the ground situation and behave as though a siege is imminent and get our people out as quickly as possible and as many of our allies there as is possible within the next 10 days. The Afghan army this throwing down their weapons and joining the other side. The Taliban are seizing the weapons we gave the Afghan military and using those weapons against us.

[Klaralven]

20. In Saigon, the helicopters were flying direct to ships at sea

In Kabul, they have to fly out of Bagram on fixed wing transports. Bagram is about 65 km from the Embassy.