For the Record, the closure of The Bagram Airbase sits squarely on Trump

[berni_mccoy]

If Trump had his way all troops would have been withdrawn during his term. He left 2500 troops in Afghanistan because Congress was able to prevent a complete withdrawal in 2020.

Bagram had no staff and no defense and was handed over to the Afghanistan government on July 1. The Taliban took it on Aug 15.

Trump is getting media attention for calling the abandonment a critical mistake. So are some Congress people with even Democrats questioning why the base was abandoned.

[Hoyt]

1. The base was "abandoned" in July, 2021. trump was gone. We could have sent in troops to protect it

until withdrawal was complete. Instead, we were left with one evacuation point.

Why are we acting like we had to follow trump's deal and "plan?" The worthless, racist MFer was gone and we could have -- and should have -- ignored anything he did.

[haele]

2. Bagram may be more defendable, but getting to it from Kabul is dicey.

It's mined for one. It's narrow and winding for another. There's a lot of ambush areas, and the road has been notorious for murders and kidnappings since the airbase was built.

40 km from Kabul - basically similar to a drive from San Diego to Tustin, and the military used to transport via helicopter instead of by road, risking being shot down to the greater risk of hitting an IED or being ambushed.

Try moving 50k -100k desperate civilians along that road, and you're probably looking at thousands of casualties and ransom kidnappings.

That's one of the reasons Bagram was let go. Another was that It's usefulness was basically over.

I wondered about that until I asked a co-worker who spent some time over there as to why it wasn't kept open


Haele

[crimycarny]

3. Thank you

Always good to have information from those who actually know what it's like over there. Everything seems so much easier from our comfortable living rooms with pretty much anything available to us with the click of a mouse or swipe on our iPhones.

[emmaverybo]

4. Military advised against using Bagram President Biden said yesterday. Probably considered

the conditions you cite.

[Progressive dog]

5. Thanks

That is the right answer. At Bagram we would have been isolated from everyone and instead of evacuating people, we would have been isolated from both our enemies and our allies. At least so far the Taliban have helped the evacuation. Pissing them off by staying longer would not improve the situation.