The Kabul evacuation is winding down and it looks like the final numbers will be in the neighborhood of 20,000 Americans rescued and 100,000 Afghans—all in the space of two weeks. I wonder how many people understand just how extraordinary that is in historical context? Certainly the United States has never pulled off anything close to that size, and very few other countries have either.
And you hardly have to be a Biden stan to understand that there are pretty easy answers to most of the criticisms that have been raised.
- We were suffering almost no casualties, so why didn't we just stay in Afghanistan? Because things were peaceful only due to the Taliban cease-fire. If we had stayed, the Taliban would have started fighting again and US casualties would have escalated.
- Why were weapons left behind? Because those weapons had been given to the Afghan army as part of the turnover.
- Why was Bagram air base closed? Because we only needed one airport and the military decided that Kabul was a better choice.
- Why was there so much chaos? It's easy to see how it looked that way if you were caught in the middle of it, but there wasn't, really. There were thousands of Afghans who wanted to flee the country and they all surrounded the airport hoping for evacuation. There's nothing anyone could have done about that, and for the most part the crowds were handled well and processed as efficiently as anyone could have hoped for.
- Why did it take so long to approve visas for Afghans who qualified for evacuation? It didn't. We approved visas for 100,000 Afghans in two weeks! And to the extent that this was slower than it could have been, it's because the Trump administration deliberately sabotaged the process before they left office.
- Why didn't we rescue everyone? As always, there are limits to American power. The Taliban controls Kabul, and rescuing literally everyone who wanted to get out was never remotely feasible.
- Why didn't we start evacuation earlier? Because we couldn't. As long as the Afghan government was in power, we had to support them. Starting a mass evacuation would have been an obvious signal that we thought they were doomed.
- Why didn't we know that the Taliban would take over so quickly? That's a very good question, and it was certainly a failure on our part. On the other hand, literally everyone made the same mistake. There wasn't a single analyst or reporter on the ground who thought the Taliban would take control of Kabul in less than a month.
Nothing is perfect. Obviously there were security breakdowns on Monday the 16th. The suicide bombing on the 26th was an enormous tragedy. The future of Afghanistan under the Taliban is likely to be a violent and miserable one for a lot of people. There's no need for defenders of the evacuation to pretend that literally no mistakes were made.
That said, if you can look past partisanship; and neocon defensiveness; and individual stories of grief and hardship; and huge crowds on the ground that inevitably gave the impression of chaos—if you can look past all that to the bare facts on the ground, the evacuation of Kabul should go down as one of the shining moments of the US military. That hardly compensates for 20 years of bungling, but taken on its own it was a magnificent effort. No other country was as dedicated as we were to rescuing our Afghan allies, and probably no country in history has ever done anything similar under pressure like this. The final reckoning will be about 120,000 civilians rescued in two weeks with very few casualties. Anyone who refuses to see this as anything but an enormous accomplishment is just refusing to look.
As for Biden himself, there's no need to paint him as some kind of hero. However, I'm grateful that he kept his head while so many around him were panicking. Biden stuck to his guns and is finally getting us out of Afghanistan. Regardless of anything else, he has my thanks for that.
We approved visas for 100,000 Afghans in two weeks!
So that means fully 100,000 Afghans will be able to come to the US? I hadn't realized the number was quite so large, but I'm glad to hear that's the case.
They will be living rentfree in Steves Bannon & Miller's heads.
Those two have no idea how "immigrants" bolster our economy. I would be happy to arrange for those two to be traded with most any other potential immigrants.
Considering both have enjoyed flooding the us with immigrants. Your point is dead.
Not sure where Kevin got that figure -- I don't think it's possible that we fully approved 100k visas in just two weeks. My understanding is that most of them will be taken first to US bases in the Middle East and vetted/processed there. Some were also flown out by other NATO countries.
Well no, he's wrong. That 100K+ includes:
- Approved SIV holders
- Conditionally approved SIV applicants on "parole"
- Other Afghans under P-2 and P-1 USRAP
80K or so. The remaining 40K were evacuated by other countries.
And out of those 80k, most will stay in the middle east
So you're saying the people calling this the most humiliating and catastrophic military withdrawal since Napoleon's retreat from Russia and shreiking for Biden's immediate impeachment and crucifixion are overblowing things a tad?
BIDEN TO ST. HELENA IN 2024 GQP PLATFORM: CONFIRMED.
After Trump escapes from Elba and makes a triumphant return.
As soon as Mr. loser learns how to drink using only one hand.
Or maybe escaping from the Upside Down.
After we impeached FDR over losing 2400 dead at Pearl Harbor, and Ronald Reagan resigned after losing 240 marines in Lebanon . . .
I also recall a few miitary casualties under George W. Bush, but my memory's a little hazy there. I'm sure he was appropriately disciplined.
Yeah, wasn't there something in Iraq back then? It's so hard to remember.
Impeaching Lincoln after the debacle at First Manassas.
Um, and Manhattan.
As long as the Afghan government was in power, we had to support them. Starting a mass evacuation would have been an obvious signal that we thought they were doomed.
I've read several sources indicating the Afghan government itself pleaded with us to delay the evacuation, for the reason cited by Kevin.
"Why didn't we start evacuation earlier? Because we couldn't."
This is the only point i either don't understand or don't agree with. Whether believed or decided to pretend the Afghan government and military were going to survive and maintain control of Kabul and surrounding areas or not, I don't see why some limited evacuation would be signal we didn't have faith in the government. A large number of Americans and Afghans surely wanted to leave even with a semi-stable anti-Taliban government controlling some portion of the country but in an ongoing civil war. And if such an evacuation DID send that signal, honestly, who cares. The vast consensus was that the Afghan government was going to fall to the Taliban no matter what "signal" we sent, in a year or two at best and in months at worst.
The State Department sent out some 19 evacuation warnings to Americans between May and the present. And as for Afghans, well, their government opposed starting an evacuation. Maybe we could have broken with that government on this issue, but given that we're talking about Afghan nationals...
Well, if the argument is we could not do it because many americans refused to respond to evacuation warnings and the afghan government would actively block afghanis, that's one thing that if true, ok. but what i've heard argued is explicitly "it would send a bad signal", which again, i don't think makes any sense.
I think a potentially more problematic issue (if we're talking mistakes) was the administration's failure to move more quickly and decisively to end and reverse the Trumpian (mostly Stephen Miller, from what I gather) sabotage of the visa program for Afghans.
For all I know Biden didn't have enough people confirmed to take quicker action on this; or perhaps there are other bureaucratic or administrative barriers I'm aware of. But if Biden came into office determined to get us out, this should have been a very high priority.
There was an existing government. We wanted it to survive. (As it turned out, that was completely impossible. But we didn't know that at the time.)
That government asked us not to evacuate Afghan citizens. How could we have disregarded that request and carried out a mass evacuation in a way that didn't undercut the existing government.
"But we didn't know that at the time"
I think the pretty wide consensus was that it would not survive, the only surprise was how fast it collapsed.
"How could we have disregarded that request and carried out a mass evacuation in a way that didn't undercut the existing government."
I just don't think this argument holds water. This idea that the confidence fairy is what would somehow save the afghan government after 20 years and trillions of dollars seems absurd and the actual outcome of a complete and near instant collapse despite our delay in evacuating seems to support my contention.
How do you evacuate thousands of Afghans nationals while still ostensibly supporting the government we backed in the Civil War?
Tens to hundreds of thousands I should have said.
This is exactly the argument I don't understand. We can both ostensibly AND actually support the existing government while also evacuating those afghanis and americans who want to leave. And if that sends the wrong "signal" i find it a trivially easy decision to evacuate signal be damned. We can see how much the signal of confidence in the government we sent by not evacuating earlier mattered: not at fucking all.
Gotta love the Monday Morning quarterbacks, the game is so easy and always undefeated!
calling it "monday morning quarterbacking" in reponse to any questions or critiques of a decision is just a lazy, meaningless argument.
Your comment makes no sense. Anyone who wanted to leave was free to do so any time they liked. The State Dept urged Americans to do it last April, even if they didn't want to.
the tens of thousands of afghanis being airlifted in the last two weeks were free to leave whenever they want? the civilian embassy and other employees were free to leave whenever they wanted? i don't think so.
These Two Weeks™ will be studied at Staff Colleges everywhere.
Joining the Sarah Jessica Parker & Hugh Grant romcom in the Two Weeks Notice syllabus.
CORRECTION: Sandra Bullock, NOT SJP.
+10
probably no country in history has ever done anything similar under pressure like this
Dunkirk's the only instance I can think of, and France isn't landlocked. We got about 60,000 out of Saigon in March and April of 1975, according to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frequent_Wind
With respect (because I have read some of your other posts), any Dunkirk comparison is off the mark — the glorious thing about that was that civilians took their own boats over to bring troops back, and I haven't noticed a flood of private jets being involved in Kabul. Incidentally, they didn't get all of them at Dunkirk — my father did not get there in time, but gathered up the soldiers under his command, marched them south and eventually got them all out alive from a different port. He was then a lieutenant operating well over his station and later commended for it, which the family only discovered by accident in January 2021 because he never, never talked about the war. Except for casually admitting he had “walked up Italy.”
They're both large scale evacuations flowing from military collapses, so, there's obviously a comparison to be made. As I noted, Afghanistan is land-locked, unlike France, so Kabul wasn't a maritime operation. I could have noted (many) other differences, too: I as was supporting Kevin's point about Kabul's uniqueness, not disagreeing with it.
Interesting typo there. A Freudian name coining for new refugee neighborhoods?
Interesting notion, but not a slip. It's (fairly recent) slang for uber-fan, check it out at urban dictionary. Either from an Eminem number or combining stalker and fan, supposedly. Seems to be in wide podcast use.
I think Eminem's hit from 2000 is more analogous to the Barack Obama/Cornel West acquaintance.
Not a typo. It appears that being a Duck Dad is not close enough.
Clearly.
I understood what he meant. A version of "Trump World".
And I think Kevin's take is right. Things went about as well as they could have. If you could have gone back in time and changed things you just would have made other mistakes. There was no way to get significantly more people out or to make it so no one died.
The real mistake was make 15 years ago when Bush/Chaney/Rumsfeld refused to take the Taliban's surrender and then ignored the corruption of our regime. Everything after that was just moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic until it sank.
Thank you Kevin for such straight and unbiased reporting. There will always be arm chair quarterbacks who think they know everything, spouting off in the headlines. I simply wish the media would stop grasping for headlines, at any cost.
This was a great airlift that should never have happened had we minded our own business.
“As for Biden himself, there's no need to paint him as some kind of hero. However, I'm grateful that he kept his head while so many around him were panicking.”
Reminds me of:
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too …”
There's also 'why didn't we delay leaving until winter?'
Presumably because the Taliban wouldn't have sat still for it, and because then you'd have had that same crowd surrounding Kabul airport, except it would also have been freezing cold because still that many people wouldn't have believed we were really leaving until we did it.
Biden addressed that, would have required a surge of troops because Taliban wouldn't have agreed to it, and would have started targeting American troops again (at least the 2,000 left).
This link darkened your inbox 11 days ago: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-diplomats-warned-afghanistans-collapse-dissent-cable-month/story?id=79549635
There's no explicit timetable in that cable, so we don't know what time frame they were referencing, and the people who sent the cable later confirmed that Biden administration went above and beyond expectations in reacting to its recommendations.
Actually I believe there was a timeline. They feared the collapse might possibly occur as soon as August 31st! (That would be tomorrow.)
Our military is good at logistics. A two ocean war left a mark.
One on the quotes by defeated Confederates was how good the Northern logistics was. Our military is also good at having gear ready for a "surge".
You literally pointed to just one mistake -- security breakdown -- which frankly wasn't even attributable to the US military or Biden.
Regardless of the success, in 2022, when the Republicans almost certainly take the house back, they are going to impeach him over this. My money is that the republican house impeaches Biden no less than three times just to make sure he was impeached more than dear leader.
Let them waste time while he cruises towards re-election.
I think it’s very unlikely that Biden will be re-elected. His record of achievement will be very limited because of the filibuster and the tacit support of maximalist Republican obstruction by “moderate” Democrats. By the time that the shrunken versions of the various economic recovery bills, it will be too late for their effects to him the Democrats politically.
Similarly, the Covid-19 disaster will like be a significant drag on Biden’s re-election prospects. There will likely be another 100,000 deaths next year, and probably in 2023 also. Any there will likely be no return to normal before 2025 and Biden will, legitimately, be blamed for this.
Finally, we’re seeing the GOP very openly preparing to overturn the election if by so miraculous turn of events Biden gets both the popular vote and the electoral college. All of which seems fine with Biden and the Democratic leadership.
Your pessimistic scenario might very well play out, but I will stick my neck out and predict that Biden will be reelected -- if he runs, which he may not. He will have gotten legislation passed that will directly affect the family budgets -- in a good way -- of many, many voters. He was not twiddling his thumbs all those years in the Senate. He knows how things work and he knows how to get things done, even in the face of obstruction. His enormous asks on the "bipartisan" stimulus as well as the coming reconciliation bill, even after "conceding" a $billion or so to Republicans and "moderate" Dems will still end up tremendously boosting the economy and improving the lives of those voters. Not to mention he will be the incumbent, and he knows how to campaign for office.
So far, Biden’s got exactly one major legislative accomplishment. It’s a big one but in 2024 it will be too much in the rear view mirror to campaign on. Between the “moderate” Democrats in the house and those two preening assholes in the senate, Biden and the Democrats aren’t likely to pass the big legislative agenda in time for the 2022 midterm and after that the Republicans are likely to command both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court so he’s going to have very little to show for his four years.
Your pessimistic scenario might very well play out, but I will stick my neck out and predict that Biden will be reelected.
I'm in agreement, provided MAGA elections nullification can be prevented. Incumbent presidents get reelected (much) more often than not. Even Trump, a manifestly unpopular and divisive president, very nearly secured a second term: it took the sharpest economic downturn in nine decades and the biggest public health disaster in ten to drive him from office.
And simple post-war averaging suggests we're not due for another recession until 2027 or so.
Would I be shocked if the GOP takes back the executive branch in 2024? Of course not. But if I'm playing the odds, my money's on the incumbent party.
(Again, elections nullification is a very grave worry).
I find the kind of speculation about what will happen politically next year or 3 years from now to be pretty useless. Most certainly confident assertions about what will happen with COVID are beyond ridiculous. We really have no idea. No one would have predicted the Dems barely taking the senate by taking 2 seats in Georgia in 2020, let alone in 2017.
When would you suggest we start thinking about the next two elections? After the Republicans have gerrymandered the house and positioned themselves to overturn unfavorable results? These are things that need to be stopped now because later it will be too late.
Thinking about and planning for elections is one thing. Confident predictions of doom (I tell you we're all doomed!) are not worth a whole lot. Another likely scenario for 2022:
* Broad economic prosperity
* High vaccination rate and COVID finally (mostly) in the rearview mirror
* Hey everyone, the war in Afghanistan is over!
I'm not about to say these things are definitely going to happen, but they could. The truth is, neither of us knows what next year will look like and the vast majority of the country won't even start thinking about who they are going to vote for till next September and October. So I say speculation of that sort is not worth a whole lot.
I've been thinking it unlikely that Biden would run for re-election since he announced for the last one, but with all these crises, if he does a good job steering us through, could see him giving it another go for stability purposes (just an observation, not a prediction).
My point is partly that Biden is unlikely to steer us through the crises because of his passivity and unwillingness to confront the lunatic fringe that seems to be driving everything especially about COVID-19. The path back to normal is clear but it runs right through the anti-vaccine and anti mask nutters. And Biden is still coddling them.
He isn’t going to be able to do much because, among other things, he’s coddling the Democratic “moderates” who see no downside to trashing his agenda.
Biden won’t be in a position to do a good job about anything for the simple reason that the stars are unlikely to align themselves in his favor. So if he doesn’t stop coddling these people, he’s probably finished and so too are the rest of us.
My impression is Biden thinks these people are dying to cause a civil war on almost any pretext and we barely avoided having them seize the government in January, and there is circumstance where they're allowed to take a break and cool off, and there won't be. They will be a permanent threat until they're defeated in some massively abusive way and he can see no alternative and no way to avoid this except to try and force the violence not to happen in the hope that something will break and they will cool off.
unwillingness to confront the lunatic fringe that seems to be driving everything especially about COVID-19.
What magical incantation do you think he could use to convince these folks? His best bet is to get persuadable folks in blue states to get vaccinated and then point out the difference in outcomes to places like Florida or Alabama.
I don’t want him to persuade them. They are beyond persuading; they are beyond reason itself. I want him to ride over them and save the country from these lunatics.
A globalist backed civil war??? Are Russia, KSA sending these "patriots" military support. There is no future for their dialectical illusion. As debt markets collapse, food production collapses, you will be living in a zombie apocalypse type of movie. For the real leftist, this is fine. Industrial civilization will collapse. Mass die off globally. No time to worry about personal freedom, lbtg rights, religious freedom. Tribal rule will take over. Or in other words "socialization" .
"the difference in outcomes to places like Florida or Alabama."
People love to crack on Florida, but vaccination rates in Florida and Alabama are not even remotely comparable. The vaccinate rate in FL is currently 63.7/52.8-- just about the same as the national average (62.3/52.9). For some reason Google is not showing Alabama's % vaccinated and I don't feel like digging it up but I'm sure it's a lot closer to 50/40 like Georgia or Texas.
I don't know where people are getting the idea he won't run. Is there an obvious health problem? I think he very likely won't serve a full second term if he wins, but I expect Joe Biden to run again in 2024.
Or Republicans lose more seats.
Predicting elections is a waste of time. More so idiots like Guthman who try, whine their ignorant progtard social policies aren't passed, when nobody supports them in general. Guthman must be a Republican troll.
"The precedent set by Nancy Pelosi leaves us NO CHOICE but to impeach Joe Biden as many times as we can. These procedings are all on her and her Democrat colleagues!"
Heads up, "free" 5G phone.
If you are a T-Mobile customer, the company has a current promotion that can get you a 5G phone for almost nothing. You have to go on the website and go through various drop downs and selections. You can get a REVVL V+ 5G which T-Mobile sells for $199.00. To get it you have to have an old cell phone that can hold a charge. You have to open it and get the IEMI number that is revealed (you might need a magnifying glass to read it) when you remove the battery so that you can enter the number on the website. You download a postage free mailing label and send a receipt and the old phone off to an address in Texas. Then in a few weeks, T-Mobile will ship the new phone. You get billed sales tax and shipping (est. $30).
An alternative is to charge the old phone and take it into a T-Mobile store and pay an additional $30 handling fee and go from there.
eta: FWIW, it's an android
But, then you're signed up with T-Mobile, right?
Why has not President Ashraf Ghani been renditioned and turned over to the Taliban?
While these basic points are basically correct, there's still something unseemly and willfully blindered about your (KD's) incessant cheerleading. This is a Dunkirk-type of situation where yes, the operation has gone reasonably well, but the surrounding context is still one of defeat and misery and millions of people consigned to tyranny and we need to regard that straight-forwardly and honestly.
People live in tyranny in different places all over the world, the answer is not to invade and occupy all these places, or any of these places really. We are not responsible for Afghanistan's future, but we can help influence it via advocacy and pressure.
At what point does it stop being the surgeon's fault when the gunshot victim dies?
there's still something unseemly and willfully blindered about your (KD's) incessant cheerleading...the surrounding context is still one of defeat and misery and millions of people consigned to tyranny and we need to regard that straight-forwardly and honestly.
Perhaps you skipped over this paragraph:
I don't think Kevin has been engaged in cheerleading. I think he's been engaged in vigorous setting-the-record-straight commensurate with the grossly misleading and inaccurate reportage out of the mainstream media. They. Have. Been. Awful.
We needed to leave Afghanistan and we needed to leave this year. That was something Trump and Biden agreed on 100%. Our defeat and withdrawal was baked into the cake. The question is not whether leaving Afghanistan was a good idea or not. The question is, how was the withdrawal managed.
And how the withdrawal was managed is really only fresh and important right now, it will be in rear-view mirror soon, and won't be factor in any upcoming elections, aside from maybe some late appreciation of how impressive it was we evacuated 120,000 in such a short period of time (and when critics, conservative and mainstream media were calling it a disaster the entire time, almost seemingly wishing for the worst).
Remove "almost" and "seemingly" from that last sentence to make it more accurate.
The US military manages to kill even more Afghan children as vengeance for... whatever. Disgraceful disgusting war criminals.
"Hours after a U.S. military drone strike in Kabul on Sunday, Defense Department officials said that it had blown up a vehicle laden with explosives, eliminating a threat to Kabul’s airport from the Islamic State Khorasan group.
But at a family home in Kabul on Monday, survivors and neighbors said the strike had killed 10 people, including seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization and a contractor with the U.S. military."
They are probably liars. Right?
At least let the dust settle and all the facts come out, civilian deaths are a terrible tragedy, and there have been tens of thousands of them in Afghanistan over past decade (and even in past year many complaints about Afghan air force bombing civilians).
This is why war is immoral. The people pretending that we can do this or that and "win" ignore the carnage that comes with victory. Stay longer and defeat the Taliban? Kill thousands more over many more years.
If you wanted to stay in Afghanistan past 2002, then you have all this blood on your hands. There is no need to wait to make that judgement.
I understand. When ISIS-K killed some 200 innocents at the Kabul Airport, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the United States killing 10 innocents to stop the next bombing which would have killed 200 or so additional innocents. Gotcha.
Yeah, everybody knows that war hurts and kills people, and therefore should be avoided.
My taxes don’t fund ISIS. Well, probably they don’t. If you want to mix it up with them and measure your evil against theirs, be my guest. The body count doesn’t impress me.
Apparently there are lots of people who need to be reminded that war “should be avoided”… Kinda like a traffic jam or some other inconvenience. That’s the problem… it’s an abomination no matter who does it, but cowards and psychopaths don’t have the moral sense to notice. Maybe you’ll learn this time.
Fuck off troll.
Gladly. For years now I’ve advocated for an end to the US military’s endless wars. Today… I won a battle. The war criminals in the US military and US government lost. They are miserable failures. May they rot in hell.
Glory glory hallelujah!
Despite all the things that went wrong that apparently none of you want to acknowledge went wrong, Biden did five things right:
1. He changed course and ramped up the protection force and evacuation capacity.
2. He talked with the Taliban to ensure support for the evac.
3. He added P-2 USRAP.
4. He provisionally allowed SIV applicants to evac, under a 2-year "parole".
5. He didn't fall for ISIS-K's trap of luring US back into major military operations.
But you know, maybe no one should be happy-talking until the operation is over.
I agree, everyone seemingly has been wanting to judge this operation for the history books the whole time it's been ongoing, which makes it all the more notable and remarkable it has gone as well as it has except for the ISIS-K bombing of course (and the civilian deaths related to the drone strike from the other day, whether or not that was due to secondary explosions or not).
Thank you President Trump and Sec of State Pompeo for negotiating with a terrorist state,. to the great joy of republicans and many Americans and forcing Joe Biden into a corner
Thank you President Biden for seizing this opportunity to get out of a losing situation with minimal loss of life while republicans gnash their teeth over a lost opportunity
Finally thanks to all U.S. service members who lost their lives, risked their lives or just made Afghans lives better by being there. You have the undying admiration of a retired soldier
I find it amazing that commentators would ask "Why didn't Biden have a contingency plan" when, in fact, this was the contingency plan, and it worked as well as could be expected.
CNN also had a headline the other day about White House being pushed to it's limits with all the crises:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/politics/president-joe-biden-hurricane-ida-afghanistan-coronavirus/index.html
Except, they're handling them well--which is why the Republicans are all the more apoplectic.
For good news: the lead is out: https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/business/lead-gasoline-car-climate-change-intl/index.html
Apart from the rest of it Mrs. Lincoln, how was the lemonade?
I agree with everything Kevin wrote except for this bit: "Why didn't we know that the Taliban would take over so quickly? That's a very good question, and it was certainly a failure on our part."
It was impossible for anyone to "know" the Taliban would take over so quickly. Even Taliban leaders were reportedly surprised by the speed of the Afghan army's collapse. I imagine Biden was presented with various scenarios by his advisers, together with associated probabilities. That would be the usual practice in a situation like this. "Ghani holds out until at least '22: assessed 30% probability", and so on. "Sudden, total collapse of Ghani government and army" would certainly have been one of the scenarios; who knows what the assessed probability was, but we can be sure it was lower than 50%. Biden would have been recklessly irresponsible to act on such a probability, knowing it would convert it into a 100% certainty.
Understand, Tom Nichols comes from the right of center, but, he's not some war-mongering conservative; he's very clear-eyed about the use of military power.
The willingness to see what happened with rose-colored lens is really bad. We are mirroring what happened (and continues to occur) on the right, and I'm growing extremely disillusioned by the happy talk on the left. This bunker mentality as a defensive mechanism to avoid difficult truths is beneath honest people.
In other words, Biden wasn't bullshitting us about withdrawing from Afghanistan. He was serious.
Unfortunately for the national security blob, the current president has long been familiar with their ways, and was well aware binding timetables and deadlines are not optional if, indeed, one is serious abound ending a war.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/01/dominic-raab-uk-intelligence-said-kabul-unlikely-to-fall-this-year