During its first week, the Kabul evacuation averaged about 4,000 people a day, reaching a total of just over 20,000 by Friday.
According to the White House, there are still about 80,000 people left to go—including both US citizens and Afghan allies—and the Air Force has a goal of increasing its capacity to 9,000 people per day. If they meet that goal, the airlift will be finished in about nine days, or August 29.
Is this increase from 4,000 to 9,000 feasible? Sure. Here's a rough look at the Berlin Airlift in 1948:
The first week was full of snags and ended up completing only 630 flights. The second week was four times higher, completing about 2,500 flights.
Needless to say, these two airlifts aren't strictly comparable. The Berlin airlift was for supplies, not people, and relied on planes with far less capacity than the C-17s used today. Still, the point here is a universal one: the first few days of nearly any operation are full of problems. Once those are sorted out, efficiency rises very quickly.
I doubt that we'll really be done by August 29. I think the Air Force is up to the job, but toward the end of next week we'll probably run into bottlenecks that have nothing to do with airlift capacity. Still, even if we're not completely done by then I'll bet we'll be 95% done by the end of the month. We'll see.
There's a good article on The Daily Beast today by David Rothkopf which discusses how the Afghanistan withdrawal is just one step in a total reset of US foreign (and domestic) policy. It's Biden's grand plan to get out of the "9-11" mindset that has gripped the US for the last 20 years, causing missteps, overreach, unilateralism, and other decisions that have undercut America's reputation and weakened us. Here's the link:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-insiders-our-afghanistan-exit-is-a-part-of-a-much-bigger-reset?ref=home
Good to hear
The problem for Biden is that nearly everyone currently working in the press/media owes their career & current status to the "9-11 mindset" - it is so deeply rooted they're not even aware it is there.
It doesn't just shape their views of the world, but also their roles in it and how they should handle their relationships with the various parts of the government. So when they talk about the military, it's always going to be Our Brave Troops saving girls and painting schools. When they talk about police, it's always September 12 2001. They are the First Responders who are above reproach. Any and all attempts to hold the Pentagon, the military branches, or military contractors accountable are objectively pro-terrorist.
Remember, in the USA, we spent like two or three years realizing that Vietnam was a mistake, then the next 30 or 40 insisting that it was Our Noble Cause and that anyone questioning it hates America, the Troops, and hamburgers.
I wish Joe Biden way more than good luck in this effort, but there is nothing about this country that would encourage a belief in his success.
Graham Greene's The Quiet Man is a must-read for American mis-involvement back in the day.
The Quiet American.
The version with Michael Caine is terrific.
Well except Biden is moving Troops and Special forces to east asia. Sounds more like a switch back to cold war era planning.
To my mind the biggest obstacle to getting another 80,000 people out so quickly is that they are people. You can't simply drop them at a warehouse and stack them on the shelves. That's going to cause a bottleneck not easily sorted out.
It's an excellent point. If we are still holding on to the idea of sorting out the people outside the US, it's begging other countries to allow us to dump the folks there while we make nobody is a terrorist. In 1970s apparently we set up camps in Guam to sort out the folks fleeing Vietnam. Would that work for Afghans?
We're using Qatar and Germany.
There are problems with capacity at Doha, and possibly other drop-off places. Read article in WaPo (or NYT) about Doha arrivals and problems with heat, sanitation with so many people arriving. I guess these are solvable fairly quickly. But still, lots of logistics to get straightened out.
Processing of Afghani refugees is big problem for understaffed State Dept, which suffered cuts during Trump admin, and big backlog of cases held up under Trump. Tangentially, there are many unfilled positions at State and Senate has blanket hold by Cruz on confirmations of appointees to State.
Sounds like another bone-headed Senate rule that needs to be changed.
If I remember correctly, it’s a senate norm, not even a rule. It’s like everything else: Democrats follow norms religiously but Republicans follow them situationally. There’s exactly zero likelihood that Mitch McConnell would allow a single Democratic senator to stop the confirmation of officials and judges in a Republican presidency.
Republicans follow senate norms, except when they don’t feel like it. Remember the blue slips that allow a minority senator to block a judicial appointee from his own state? They regularly disappear when the Republicans hold the Senate majority, but have a nasty habit of reappearing when the Republicans are in the minority.
Exactly. What tends to get overlooked is that adherence to norms depends in part on the consequences of violating them. For décades, Democrats and villagers have allowed Republican trashing of norm to go unchecked because “we they go low, we go high”. But the reality is that what the Democrats have done by unilaterally adhering to broken norms is to all Republicans to have their cake and eat it too.
Not just the cuts but also the workers fleeing because it was a horrible place to work. It's why there's now a program for federal workers to volunteer to be detailed to assist with this huge task.
After the sermon by the imam of the mosque ended, Mr. Haqqani rose to address those present.
“Our first priority for Afghanistan is security,” he told the crowd, which flowed out onto the street. “If there is no security, there is no life. We will give security, then we will give economy, trade, education for men and women. There will be no discrimination.”
He was greeted by rapturous cheers.
The scene was a reminder that the Taliban enjoy broad support in many pockets of Afghanistan, although it is hard to know how deep that support runs, as Afghans have long learned to survive by cheering on those who seize power.
“People are happy now, because the Taliban brought security,” said a security guard near a money exchange booth, who declined to give his name. “But these are only the first days. It depends on how they rule whether the people will support them.”
For the moment, Mr. Haqqani basked in the reception. He was the victor and carried himself as such.
Haqqani's father was Reagan's favorite Afghani. And he was still leading his network til about three years ago.
Understatement…The Berlin airlift was for supplies, not people, and relied on planes with far less capacity than the C-17s used today.You mean those pork barrel planes Congress kept forcing on the military? https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/08/axis-pork-2/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/defense-military-waste-cost-timeline/
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/penauts/
Grrr, lack of edit…
There is always a post.
But another maybe more relevant difference.
In west Berlin, we controlled that part of the city. Whether we wanted to move supplies in or if we had been trying to get people out, the issue was not getting supplies out from the Berlin Airport into the rest of the city, or people from the rest of the city to the airport, the problem was in the airlift capacity to and from the city.
In Afghanistan, we have satisfactory airlift capacity at the airport to complete the evacuation by month end. The bottleneck is getting the people to the airport, and not only from within Kabul but from all over Afghanistan.
If the issue is airlift capacity, it makes sense for that to increase over time. But for getting people to the airport, it would make sense that it will get more difficult over time as the remaining are the ones who have the most difficulty getting there.
I think you need to change something more fundamental. Like maybe doing what the British and French have been and sending teams into the city to get to their people. I think we did that once yesterday but only a helicopter to a hotel 150 meters away.
Of corse the Air Force would prefer to buy just fighters and bombers like real warriors fly. Same reason the Navy prefers carriers over mine sweepers. What admiral would want to command from the flag bridge of a mine sweeper?
Strange bedfellows then, MoJo siding with fighter jocks …
There's an interesting article in the NY Review of Books about Sicily, which like Afghanistan was invaded many times. Self rule was basically rule by the mafia. The Taliban are offering the same thing that the Sicilian mafia offered: self rule, law & order. And their promises align with traditional values -- just like the mafia.
And good luck with that
Sicilians & the Taliban also share resistance to women driving, as we know from Michael Corleone's first marriage.
... APOLLONIA, NO! ...
A trenchant observation.
But thank heaven Michael taught her to drive, he'd have died otherwise.
How the economy works with traditional values,
https://i.redd.it/90v72dv6jli71.jpg
Magic of the marketplace!
Well they just sealed the airport with thousands outside so currently it appears we are airlifting 0. Probably some security threat.
One sign the GQP is still trying to pimp the Senile Joe Afghan Disaster is KKKlay Travis's Twitter feed has multiple tweets alluding to the American failure of the last 6 months, demonstrated best by the hamhanded approach to El Jefe Maximo & Pompeo Grosso's Afghanistan Peace Deal, & none on the cancellation of Mike Richards by the Wokestocracy's hypocritical standards for pogblasgk repartee.
Seriously, I was expecting blanket OutkuckTheCoverage reportage on the manifestly unjust diminution of a qualified gameshow host due to not being colored, gendered, or irreligious enough.
You know what's going on right now?
The Biden administration is working 24 hours a day to make this evacuation from Kabul work.
If it were the Trump administration they would be doing nothing at all, they would have been doing nothing at all, but they'd have been complaining about it loudly and they'd have been working 24 hours a day to make someone pay them to get them out of there.
Donald Trump, by sheer magic, would have made this all a thousand times worse.
How many have we evacuated and how many are we evacuating per day now?
Kevin has told us it was 20,000 total yesterday and we were doing 5,000 per day . And I had sort of assumed kevin got them from somewhere and they were correct.
But I keep seeing reports and hearing things that make me doubt what Kevin is saying. And when I search for any confirmation, I cannot find anything showing what Kevin is saying and actually various answers that do not all agree. But all seem to be significantly lower than Kevin.
The hardest number I saw as of today ( not yesterday like Kevin's 20,000) was 17,000. Of which only 2500 were Americans.
I actually started looking as I assumed Kevin's total was right but I wanted to see how many Americans ( I thought it would be a higher share) but, as I did, I realized nobody was reporting what Kevin was.
Is anybody also seeing the numbers that Kevin is reporting? Is there someplace showing those numbers updated each day that I am not finding? Some actual authoritative source?
You would think that counting bodies leaving on planes would be something doable and the us would have a govt reporting source. And cnn would be showing the updated number on a ticket like they used to do for covid deaths last administration.
Kevin is not someone who I would think would just make up bs numbers so either I cannot find what he is or Kevin made a mistake somewhere. Maybe Kevin's number is total evacuated by all countries and not just what "we" (the us) have evacuated ? And Kevin just got confused? Or am I getting it wrong?
And, if the number today was really 17000 of which 2500 were Americans, were not really getting out Americans much faster if at all faster than the Afghans we plan to evacuate.
Depends on what numbers you have for American and Afghan intended evacuees.
Low side for American %age is maybe 12.5% which is 10,000 put of 80,000. But I have heard some saying Americans are more like 15,000. Plus I doubt 100% of potential afghsn evacuees will decide to leave their homeland. So if it is 15,000 Americans put of 60,000 total that is a high side of 25%.
And 2500 out of 17000 is 14.7%.
Clearly our priority is getting out Americans and, everything being equal, they should be much higher %age. Such as 100% if we could get to all Americans and airlift capacity was the issue, all of the first groups would be American.
If it really has been only 14.7% American, serious problems .
Considering certain statements made it does seem there are significant chunks of Americans left outside the air port.
The us embassy has been telling Americans to get the hell out of Afghanistan pronto for the past three months. Anybody who is still there is on their own. We owe a moral obligation to the afghans who helped us and are at risk of reprisals but I’m very hesitant to risk either the lives of our soldiers or creating an incident to rescue adults who didn’t heed the warnings.
Significant chunks = about 75%
No, Trump would have been making very loud claims about how no afghani could be trusted or allowed in to the US. They'd solve the problem of americans not having access to the airport because of the huge crowds by having contractors randomly firing heavy machine guns into the crowd
OK. Think I got the answer. Per yahoo news the pentagon officially confirmed that we have evacuated 17,000 as of today since the start of the withdrawal on August 14th.
But if you add in 5,000 who were pulled out BEFORE the start of the withdrawal on Aug 14th when the Afghan govt was still in control and the flights were normal, then you get 22,000. And I expect that the 20,000 kevin used included that 5000 too.
In the context kevin is using it, including those 5000 is ridiculous and misleading. Just subtract 5000 from Kevin's numbers if he continues to do that.
What is really happening now and how will it end?
Here is my best guess.
There are huge crowds at the airport gates and Americans thus cannot get to the airport. Why? It is in the interest of the taliban.
The taliban need American " hostages " for leverage in negotiations for things like to get their hands on the bank assets we have frozen. But they are not as crazy as the Iranians in 79 to do so directly ( for one thing they have nowhere near the military capability to stand up to the US military in battle as compared to iran).
The taliban do not want to directly themselves block Americans from the airport- that would allow a US military response with us public support. But not stopping afghans themselves going to the airport gates has the same effect without the taliban doing it themselves.
Result is a situation where the us will need the taliban to restore order by being who they are and killing and beating up those afghans at the airport trying to get put. And the taliban will want to paid off in negotiations to do so.
In the end, the Biden administration will quietly pay off the taliban to do whatever is necessary to allow Americans to safely get to the airport to be evacuated. And that will mean paying the taliban to kill a good number of the Afghan crowd at the gate- the afghans who were pro usa.
It will be humiliating to have to get taliban help to get Americans out and asking them to kill our former Afghan allies to do so , and pay them off too. But it will happen.
In the end, the administration knows that the political hit will be limited of they get the Americans put safe, no matter how bad it is for the afghans. And biden himself has always been closer to trump in not really caring about foreigners.
Alternative is trying to go into Kabul and around the country by helicopter and get them out with us troops. Which risks a larger Mogadishu situation with a good number of Americans killed and political disaster.
Actual it appears the Taliban really are trying their best at crowd control. They just aren't any better at it than americans. And they don't have modern non lethal means besides whips and firing over the heads of the crowds either. Most of the recent deaths have been Taliban crowd control.
Besides the other questions about Kevin’s figures, these don’t even seem self-consistent. If it has been a week, 4,000 a day would be about 28,000. If it was 20,000 it would be less than 3,000 a day. Or it would be its first five days rather than a week.
It appears we did evacuate over 5000.
ONE day.
And were more like 2000 a day both before and after.
I think Kevin is trying to spin it optimistically focusing on the fact that we have capacity to evacuate over 5000 a day. But that matters not if the ones you want to evacuate cannot get to the planes.
Some thoughts to consider.
Well that is just even more infuriating. So the issue is beurocratic snafus?
Those are the type of things you could have prepared for and started in advance.
Also heard that they gave out blank forms that could easily have been copied. Nobody could anticipate the problems that could have caused?
And I doubt that many of those at the airport waiting to get out or at the gates are Americans. We would have evacuated them priority and no visa needed.
So even if we had no issue processing visas, would not help re Americans and still a huge problem getting them to airport.
"Those are the type of things you could have prepared for and started in advance." The Biden administration first told all americans to get out of afghanistan immediately on June 13th. They have been consistent in that message continuously since that date until the afghan government fell.
He's deleted his old posts and redone it with updates: https://twtr.in/3Ek0
Planes are leaving empty.
Whatever those links are Bitdefender doesn't like them.
They're to WaPo military reporter's tweets. The first two are dead b/c he deleted them and replaced them with the last one and did a mini tweet thread to explain more.
The US embassy is telling Americans not to even try to get to the airport, so it doesn't seem like we'll be evacuating 5000 per day or anything close. What a clusterf***. https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/568841-us-embassy-cautions-fleeing-americans-on-potential-threats-at
Once all the American 's are gone, the rest of the Afghans will be toast. Biden will tell the Taliban to bother Russia.
More likely Russian extraction interests will be busy trying to get ahead of China in capturing Afghan mining contracts
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/21/us-forces-in-afghanistan-look-for-alternative-evacuation-plans-as-isis-threatens-airport.html
from,
https://www.rawstory.com/kabul-airlift/
You would think there would be at least one airline that would volunteer, rather than wait to be ordered.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/21/us-weighs-ordering-commercial-airlines-to-help-in-afghanistan-evacuation-efforts.html
…
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/afghanistan-withdrawal-live-updates/?id=79482353
The corrupt decide, perhaps, they can make money with the Taliban. 😂
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-wouldnt-know-it-from-the-us-news-coverage-but
“…the key leaders of the US backed government over the last two decades are relaxedly meeting with the political leadership of the Taliban in Kabul about the formation of the new government.
Meanwhile, Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan President whose precipitous flight hastened the rapid collapse of the government last weekend says he supports these negotiations and is in the process of negotiating his own return to the country.”
Of course… Afghanistan will, I suppose, resume being another corrupt narco state enriching all the right people… just as before!
The US military is out, but those contractors will be back before you know it… helping the Taliban and their new friends secure the heroin trade. Take your sympathy for the poor pitiful Afghans and stuff it.
Don’t ever lose sight of the fact… Money makes the world go around.
https://youtu.be/nj70wzVuwlM
It's pretty damn clear that in no scenario, sudden collapse of Kabul or not, was the US going to make their Aug 31 pullout date. But, once they were out, they were out; no more evacuations of Afghani allies and their families and political refugees.
So, how is it that they're having to ramp up flights, visa (SIV) processing including background checks, and temporary quarters outside of Afghanistan?
Were they secretly planning to leave some allies and most refugees behind to fend for themselves? It sure seems like this was their plan but that they were caught off-guard by the public outcry at the scenes of panic.
I am beginning to think that the problem was the almost universally shared assumption that, at the eleventh hour, Biden would be no more willing to pay the political price of the terrible optics of the Fall of Kabul. And so, like his predecessors, he would kick the can down the road and let the next president deal with it. I think this is what the military, the press, and the blob genuinely believed, particularly after they heard that more troops were landing at the airport. But, alas for them, the last Friedman unit seems be really have been the last.
"Were they secretly planning to leave some allies and most refugees behind to fend for themselves?" That was not a secret. It was evident in the routine rejection of visa applicants despite glowing recommendations from US vets. Or the fact that congress capped SIV's to 26000 of which 16000 were already used by August 1st.
I like to call this American Anti-Eceptionalism:
....fun fact, the British and French have a different agreement with the Taliban than the US has, much as do the Russians and Chinese who are evacuating no one. In more brutal words, the British and French have, or at least had, permissions that the United States Does and/or did not.
In other words, British Paratroopers and French forces have received permission to go into Kabul and militarily escort their stranded citizens to the airport while the Americans are tasked with holding the perimeter, maintaining a safe base for other countries citizens to retreat to and forces to work from.
https://www.lci.fr/international/afghanistan-evacuation-de-l-ambassade-de-kaboul-le-raid-a-du-negocier-avec-les-talibans-2194011.html
It would be best if Americans stopped living in a fantasy world where there is some protective bubble always huddling above them to protect them from harm.
I just looked at USA today on this, more misinformation:
"It also is what our British colleagues might call poor form for the world’s superpower to lack the fortitude to mount these types of rescue missions. It makes the Biden administration look even more weak and indecisive."
It isn't a question of grit,the British and French have permission to go on these missions...so in the strictest sense they are not rescue missions at all. It would have been better if this were not now public, it is the US supporting their allies...which is good.
There are other factors:
Lastly, and most importantly, if an accidental fire fight breaks out between the British and the Taliban with deaths on either or both sides....it is not the end of the world. These rescue missions might end, but that would be the extent of the trouble.
If there is a similar occurrence with American troops, there may be no way to de-escalate for anyone.
I might also note that the British and French patrols could be Pashtun literate and speak Pashtun which the US may not be able to provide. US Forces have always been far behind other services in Language Schooling.
If these facts make you unhappy, as Dirty Harry might say, What are you going to do about it Punk?
(The above may be a little harsh, but that is the truth of it)
Best Wishes, Traveller
There is almost zero coverage of other countries' involvement in US media, except occasional mention of the British because Prince Harry was there, briefly.
I am not sure if it that the British and French have " permission " granted by the taliban. Or if the British and French were just going to try to do it whether they agreed or not and so forced the taliban to decide to fight or not. And, of course, then if the taliban decided to not take the chance and fight it , they will phrase their concession as if they just granted permission and they were OK with it all along. And the British and French, just wanting their people out, would be fine letting the taliban save face in that way.
A lot of diplomatic " negotiations " are really behind the scenes that way. One side absolutely demands something. The other side has to give in to that demand. But the winning side still allows it to be presented as an agreement and maybe throws in some insignificant sweetener to make it seem credible.
You just cannot take the public statements on these sort of things seriously.
Now, if your point is to question whether the us could have done the same, maybe maybe not. And maybe we did that and did tell the taliban we were going in whether they liked it or not. And they called our bluff and said no and biden caved.
The us would have one advantage over the British and French in doing it. Our military power is sufficient that, if we did go in and the taliban resisted, they would lose in the end. An escalation hurts both sides but more the taliban. They are far more exposed to attack now then they have been in twenty years. The British and French do not have that sort of power. But they do maybe have the threat that, if they get ambushed in Kabul, the us will have to get dragged in.
And the taliban have less reason to care that the British and French go in - does not look as bad . So the British and French might avoid our high profile disadvantage while still implicitly being able to piggy back on us military strength.
And I dispute your assumption that the us would have less pashtun speaking troops, especially as compared to the French. Maybe they do focus more on languages and if you were talking about going into Mongolia, maybe. But we have had thousands of soldiers living in Afghanistan for decades. Plenty of them learned pashtun.
And does it really matter. As Richard Gere said while going into the balloon tent, we're not going in to talk.
Airlift capacity has nothing to do with it. 9000 a day is only 1 plane every half hour. And even Canada is flying is providing two c17s. Add in the french Germans, dutch british italian, Australians and other nato allies and the americans only need to provide a half dozen or fewer planes making 1 trip a day. The problem is the planes are all leaving close to empty because we are unwilling to greenlight more than a few afghanis to leave. We are terrified that they will turn into terrorists 20 years from now.
Come the 24th we learn it may become difficult to reach Kevin's stated figure: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/aug/24/afghanistan-live-news-taliban-kabul-us-withdrawal-joe-biden-germany-airport-plane-flights-evacuation?page=with:block-6124fd0e8f08b1506f20d68a#block-6124fd0e8f08b1506f20d68a