Withdrawing from a war zone is incredibly complicated.

[MineralMan]

As a veteran of the USAF, I'm smart enough to know that I have no idea how to do that. However, we are hearing from many veterans who apparently know how to do that better than the Biden administration and the military commanders in charge of the operation.

We are also hearing from many people who have no experience at all with such things. Those, too, apparently know better how to manage this.

I'm pretty disgusted with the Monday morning quarterbacking being done in the news media, on sites like DU, and on social media outlets. People with no expertise are chiming in with vague complaints about how the withdrawal and evacuation is being done. At the same time, those same people have no clues to offer on how they would do it differently.

Complaining and backbiting is easy. Actually, managing complex, dangerous operations successfully is far from easy. So far, thousands upon thousands of people have been evacuated, with more to come. In the end, the US military will leave Afghanistan, something I believe they should have done a very long time ago. The operation will not go perfectly smoothly, because forces over which we have no control are in play.

Amateur advice about how this should be done is beyond useless.

[Walleye]

1. In grief counseling this is called magical thinking

I had to delete the words would’ve, could’ve, and should’ve from my mental vocabulary to keep my sanity. I had to remember that that’s an alternate universe. Nobody knows what would’ve happened

[Ninga]

16. So reasonable, measured and wise. If only..........

[Walleye]

18. Oh yes. Truer words were never said

[Sympthsical]

2. Fixing a car can be incredibly complicated

I don't take off a wheel and then try to drive it down the street. And if I watch my neighbor do that, I'm going to have some commentary from the porch.

Which is what happened when we abandoned Bagram before completing evacuation. It was the biggest mistake possible.

The opposite of "complaining and backbiting" is this:



Which we're getting a lot of.

The evacuation has been a mess.

Even if the withdrawal is the correct policy, which I believe it is.

[MineralMan]

3. Thank you for your example.

[Phoenix61]

6. And you know this how? nt

[Sympthsical]

21. One reads when one wants to know n/t

[Phoenix61]

25. You seem to think there is something being written

that accurately captures what is happening in Afghanistan at this moment. The people who really know what is happening are busy doing their job not spending precious time crafting news bites. They also are sharing classified information.

[Demsrule86]

11. Trump left 3000 troops...not possible to keep both airports. And the fact is most criticizing think

we should stay there. And I don't. I never supported these political wars. It is time to go.

[Sympthsical]

23. Then you shore up for the purposes of evacuation

We had to send in more troops anyway because of the chaos. So, either way, more troops were going. The other way would have been a lot better.

I don't want us to be there either. But I've seen a lot of conflation of evacuation with withdrawal. Note the evacuation has been less than ideal, and responses are often, "We can't stay there forever!"

Which isn't even close to the topic being discussed.

[Treefrog]

14. This.

[treestar]

24. It is far simpler

A car is an inanimate object.

[Devil Child]

29. Bingo!

[haele]

34. Bagram would have been near impossible to use for evacuation.

I've talked to co-workers who have actually been there. The military always used helicopters to transport people and important equipment from Kabul, even though using the road is only an hour and a half drive.

Because the road and areas immediately off road has been mined.
And the road is winding and narrow in areas that are not held by friendlies - Isis-K and other factions hold a good section of road. There have been murders and kidnappings along that road since the base was built.

So, if we still had Bargram operational, we would still have to use Kabul to transport civilians to Bagram, which means there would still be crowds outside HKIA and troops required there to get them onto helicopters to go to Bagram. Or risk sending 100k + civilians over that horrific road, where we would have thousands of casualties or kidnappings while moving people from Kabul to Bagram.

Cut out the middle passage from Kabul to Bagram. If they can make it to Kabul, that's the safest way to get the majority of civilians out.

Haele

[emmaverybo]

35. The military advised Biden against using Bagram and with good reason. Another post outlines

dangerous conditions in the route to getting there.

[LiberalFighter]

4. My creepy U.S. Representative Jim Banks

was a Supply Corps officer in Navy Reserve and thinks he knows better than the experts.

Todd Young also thinks he knows better even though he served from 1995-2000 for 5 years.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes. My service was as a Russian linguist. That qualifies

me as an expert in nothing having to to with such operations. So, I have no suggestions to offer. From where I sit in a Twin Cities suburb, it appears to me that the evacuations, etc. are going better than I would have expected. We have no capabilities outside of the immediate airport area, nor do we have personnel enough to take control of much of anything beyond that.

We are evacuating people in a steady stream, but cannot actually go into Kabul or anywhere else to physically take people to the airport. What we can do is fly people away from there who do get to the airport.

It seems to me that things are going as smoothly as possible, and perhaps even better than I would have expected.

Again, though, I know nothing about the realities in Afghanistan at the moment. I am not there. I have never been there. I will leave the details of the operation to those who are there and have been there. It will not go perfectly, but nothing ever does at that scale.

[LiberalFighter]

13. Totally agree.

Absolutely no military service on my part. Yet, from my reading from history, I know the difficulties and failures in military operations. Hmm Custer's last stand. Winning World War II was not an easy task and there were failures.

[LiberalFighter]

5. I would rather have Biden and his team doing the withdrawal than the idiot.

If there are problems I would blame it Members of Congress that went over there unauthorized. Members of Congress that want to stop the withdrawal or complain about the withdrawal. The dimwitted media pundits that don't have a clue of what it takes to do a withdrawal. Especially the ones that complain about the deadline being too soon.

[MineralMan]

9. Indeed. Biden is extracting us from Afghanistan.

My thanks go to him for that. Thousands are getting out safely, as well.

[Hoyt]

15. No question.

[Phoenix61]

8. I can't begin to imagine how to plan for such an event.

Plans are base on what’s going on and when that changes by the minute….Hats off to all of them doing their best to get everyone out safely.

[MineralMan]

10. +100

[Klaralven]

12. DoD has done as well as it could. State Department needs to be examined by a Congressional committee

In particular, every bit of information relating to Zalmay Khalilzad since he started work on Afghanistan with Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1979 needs to be subpoenaed and gone over in detail.

He's the one constant factor in the whole Afghan 40-year disaster.

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

[Ninga]

17. Interesting that he was retained by this administration. I sadly admit I don't know much about him.

Other than Wiki, any suggested reading would be appreciated.

[Klaralven]

20. US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban's rise

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/23/us-envoy-zalmay-khalilzad-and-the-talibans-rise

[Ninga]

26. The Congress just heard from him.....

“
On May 18, 2021, at a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Khalilzad downplayed the prospect of a swift Taliban takeover when U.S. forces leave saying, “If they [Taliban] pursue, in my judgment, a military victory, it will result in a long war, because Afghan security forces will fight, other Afghans will fight, neighbors will come to support different forces.” He later added at that same hearing, “I personally believe that the statements that the [Afghan] forces will disintegrate, and the Talibs will take over in short order are mistaken. The real choices that the Afghans will face is between a long war and negotiated settlement.”[35][36] Despite this statement, the 2021 Taliban offensive culminated in a swift Taliban takeover and the dissolution of the Afghan National Army.”

[Klaralven]

31. That would be a good place to start the investigation - What made him believe that?

What correspondence, communications, intelligence briefs, etc. did he have, or was it all his wishful thinking?

Get all of State Department's records about him.

[Ninga]

33. Yes, and just as important, did any member of the committee disagree, challenge, say that

they knew better, warn the administration he was wrong… rep Wild D-PA, today’s Biden critic sits on that committee. I would like to hear her questions.

[steve2470]

19. I see Republicans saying oh, this should have been done from Bagram AFB....

No one thinks of the reality that, apparently, the roads to Bagram are heavily damaged and that Bagram might be an even more difficult location to evacuate from, than Kabul.

I have no idea, having no military experience. I think what has happened, is that all planning assumptions were the Afghan military could hold Kabul with a sufficient security perimeter until everyone was evacuated. It seems almost no one foresaw the Afghan military would collapse so quickly.

[nitpicker]

27. +1

[nitpicker]

30. +1

[treestar]

22. And remember that those being interviewed on television

are taking advantage of a chance to get attention.

[MineralMan]

28. Yes, exactly.

We hear from more and more obscure "experts," because 24/7 news channels have to fill their time with people talking. So, "former" officials are often spokespersons, whether or not they have current knowledge or not. It's more important that they be able to sound knowledgeable and glib.

[crud]

32. Bagram is

40 km (25miles) from Kabul. Just pointing that out, because it is rarely mentioned by the so-called experts on the TeeVee.

[MineralMan]

36. Yes, and it was closed earlier this year. We left it.

How would we go back there? There are many "experts" who have very little real information, but that does not stop them from pretending they know things. The media people interviewing them, though, most often know even less, despite having reporting on the end of our military activities at Bagram.

It's not like people in Kabul can just get on a transit bus and go to Bagram, either.

It's very annoying.

[Blue Owl]

37. K&R