You can't evacuate tens of thousands of people in the cloak of darkness.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Panic would have ensued as soon as Afghans saw their neighbors who worked for the Americans leaving. The same thing happened when South Vietnam fell with similar consequences.

The problem is the American people should have been prepared.

It goes without saying we should have left a long time ago.

[PortTack]

1. +1000

The panic fed on itself...it always does regardless of the emergency

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. It's a Catch 22

If the president says there is no way of leaving without chaos ensuing many Americans will say don't leave and then they will turn around and say we have been there long enough.

And the fact there was a make-believe Afghan army complicates things.

[2naSalit]

6. There seem to have been several...

Paper facades like the army, the government, our construction efforts building schools etc...

Biden ripped the bandaid off a seeping, festering wound and all the puss is hissing as it is exposed to the light of day. The only thing happening in Afghanistan was a safe zone for the corrupt marriage of government entities and MIC villains to operate with impunity.

[tulipsandroses]

3. Jennifer Rubin just said Trump Admin stopped

Processing special immigrant visas March 2020. When trump started pulling troops out of Afghanistan, the visa processing for people that helped the troops should have increased not stopped.
This was always going to be messy. But to dump all of this in Biden’s lap is ridiculous.

[Haggard Celine]

4. Even if it had been planned better,

there still would have been a scene with all these people trying to leave with the Americans. I know that a lot of them aren't looking forward to living under the new regime, or really, the old regime all over again. A lot of people these days are more concerned about optics than they are with the reality of a situation. Of course, with tv news, optics are everything.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. "Of course, with tv news, optics are everything."

Three things can be simultaneously true. The outcome was inevitable, it wasn't Biden's fault, and there's a short-term political price to be paid.

[Haggard Celine]

7. Yes, I think the political price will be short-term.

I just don't see people getting really bent out of shape about this. Nobody I know is really talking about it. I think Americans are generally more focused on domestic issues these days.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. If we would have left earlier we could have bargained from a position of strength or parity.

That hurts.

[Haggard Celine]

10. "Earlier" You mean like 15 years ago?

Yes, it probably would have run more smoothly if it had been ended in Bush's terms in office. Obama could have ended it, too. But Trump started the exit of our people over there, and the ending was left for Biden. Each President knew that the ending would be messy and they didn't want to deal with the fallout. But Biden was more worried about all of the things that the continuation of the war cost average people. Biden chose to do the right thing, even though it's hurting him politically.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. From what I read we could have gotten a good deal up until 2011.

[Haggard Celine]

12. That would have been best for U.S.

One would think Bush would have wanted to end it while in office. It would have been a star in his crown if he had concluded the war he started and was given credit for winning it.

But it seems to me that it hasn't been ended up until now because of the profits being made by certain people. The weapons manufacturers, the private security forces, etc have made a killing, quite literally, from this war and the Iraq War. So it's never been quite the right time to end it and bring our people home.

Whoever ended the war was going to make some powerful enemies, too, which is another reason why it was allowed to continue. Biden didn't care about any of that, and he should be commended by everyone, not attacked because our departure wasn't graceful enough.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. Hamid Karzai wanted to give the Taliban a seat at the table.

I despise them but as Lyndon Johnson said it is better to have your opponents inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.

[Haggard Celine]

14. I hate it when fundamentalists of any kind

have a seat at the table. They always hold back any kind of progress. But there's a much larger population of fundamentalists in Afghanistan than in America, for instance. They couldn't be overlooked in Afghanistan. Can't pretend they don't exist or wish them away. And as awful as they are, a lot of Afghans want them to be in charge.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

8. Ostensibly, if you believe there's a functioning Afghan Government and Army to defend it

Then there's no need for a bunch of Special Visa's ... because the people that helped the USA are perfectly safe.

So yeah, just openly expanding a SIV program (let alone evacuating people physically) pretty much lets everyone know ... you pretty have no real expectation of the government continuing to hold power once you leave.