The US military has evacuated 7,000 people from Kabul over the past five days, Pentagon officials said. Maj Gen Hank Taylor said there are now more than 5,200 US troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and the Kabul international airport is “secure and open for flight operations”.
There's still a fair bit of chaos around the airport, with some flights leaving only half full. However, the US has the capacity to evacuate as many as 5,000-9,000 people per day. That's the goal.
This "catastrophe" and "debacle" that will define Joe Biden's presidency (not) is already slipping out of the headlines.
How did people think this was going to end? Would a battle of Kabul have been better? And if we had sped up the visa process, how much screaming would we be hearing about potentially letting terrorists into the U.S. (we're hearing that anyway).
Looks like Stephen Miller had a hand in screwing up the visa process -- and I found several articles on a quick search, including one going back to 2019 about slowing or stopping visa processing for both Afghan and Iraqi interpreters.
Miller has been quoted recently on why he thinks we shouldn't take into too many refugees, short story "othering" and xenophobia.
But it is not going smoothly just based on the facts kevin is reporting.
Having a "capacity " to evacuate 5000 or more people per day seems OK to me. Perhaps getting to that capacity is a decent result. I would not call it a failure if we were actually evacuating 5,000 per day and criticize not being able to do more ( I would not call it a great success either and would want a higher number but it seems in the satisfactory range).
But what good does it do to have that capacity if you only have been using less than 30% of it the last five days? I understand the current pace is up to 1800 per day now. And that is not good enough.
When we actually are at the time when we are using near 100% of capacity, then point out we have improved. Until then, pointing out that we have capacity at the airport, that we cannot use because people cannot get to the airport , just highlights the problem.
It would be like saying that the usa did super great on vaccinations because we had all that unused capacity to vaccinate.
And if everything was competently done as best as possible, you really should have the most evacuations at the beginning and then they fall off. If you are still ramping up, clearly something moved too slow and you were caught off guard.
You don't have a leg to stand on, you know it, I know it, everybody else knows it. We know because you refuse to provide evidence for the thousands already killed that you alluded to in a previous post.
So fuck off, troll.
Things are improving, let's see if this trend continues without overthinking it. We've got a mission, let's get it done!
From the WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin:
“According to documents provided by the State Department, it sent increasingly ominous warnings (even with offers to pay for airfare out of the country) beginning on April 17 and following on May 15, May 17, June 8, June 28, July 15, July 20, Aug. 7 and Aug. 12. “
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/afghanistan-evacuation-how-we-got-here-where-we-are-heading/
So the Biden administration repeatedly gave warnings to get out to those American citizens but most just ignored them yet somehow this is his fault?
At least I am seeing much more pushback against the media’s Biden bashing than I have seen before. In addition to Jennifer Rubin, Eric Boehlert at Pressrun.media, Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel.net, Heather Parton at digbysblog.net and Salon, Amanda Marcotte at Salon, and Greg Sargent at the WaPo’s Plum Line are criticizing the mainstream media coverage for its Chicken Little coverage.
Two points:
First, there’s no good way to do this that does not involve cracking down on both the military or Fox News. The only country ever to evacuate its military, its nationals, and a good chunk of its indigenous supporters was France. The Évian Accords were the mechanism by which France handed over power to the FLN in return for being allowed to withdraw unmolested; Biden seems to have informally reached a similar understanding with the Taliban which was complicated by Trump’s exclusion of the Afghan government from the negotiations.
Second, the last three presidents have all wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan but were persuaded not to by our military. Biden seems to have only tenuous control over the military and not whatsoever over the supposed thousands of US passport holders who ignored the urgent messages from our government that they needed to leave.
There’s a point where you cannot allow others to sabotage your initiatives without consequences. Biden needs to impose serious consequences on the generals who seem to have sabotaged the withdraw in an effort to force a new troop buildup and a resumption of the fighting.
We'll need more evidence of this before making such damning claims.
Apart from what we’ve all observed and read over the course of the past twenty years, what sort of additional evidence would be necessary to support the notion that the Republicans were always wolf’s heart and dog’s lungs ? (Apart from the fact they until a few days ago it was the Republicans who were advocating unconditional immediate withdrawal and had halted the process of bringing vulnerable afghans to this country).
As for the control of the military, I don’t see any explanation for the debacle that doesn’t involve the military either trying to manipulate Biden (as they lied to and manipulated Obama and Trump) or else punish him for ending the war.
"Biden needs to impose serious consequences on the generals who seem to have sabotaged the withdraw in an effort to force a new troop buildup and a resumption of the fighting."
Oh, come on.
I think imposing accountability on our generals would not only be just in this case, I believe it would greatly improve our country’s chances of success in future wars. There’s a large number of candidates and I think Biden should make an example ou of at least one « pour encourager les autres ».
Suivez l'argent.
Please remember there has to be an airport where they land. Also the place where they land has to house and feed them. Might also be a good idea to have enough medical facilities to care for them. Who will pay for these things. Sort of a systems problem.
The press wants Fallujah all over again. They seem very excited about the prospect of mass death and atrocities and so forth. Then they can pile on and make it a scandal. Anything to sell advertising.
Yup. Mayhem gets viewers excited, excitement gets eyeballs, and eyeballs sell ads.
Plus it's actually a little PAST time for the ritual "is ____'s presidency failing?" stories. Things were going very smoothly for Joe, and at a certain point it's incumbent on the media to pile on a Dem, regardless of the actual state of affairs, because bothsides.
I would rather the lamestream media -- all networks -- turn into the mid90s SNL morning show sketch involving a teleprompter outage than have them cover a war from the sidelines.
Imagine Donny Deutsch going feral on Morning Joe, beheading Willie Geist, & smearing his chest with the blood.
Heather Cox Richardson highlighted in her post last night that the Taliban needs the money that is controlled outside the country or they'll fail. They also need the expertise that is fleeing their tender clutches. Meanwhile, Russia and China and Iran don't want Afghan refugees. So this may be a case of the dog catching the car.
What monies did they have when they first took over?
From what I’ve read the Taliban always did extremely well in the heroin trade. And apparently Afghanistan’s looking at a good crop this year. The projection is that they could easily take I $450 million or so in tax revenue and so forth. Plus, I gather they’re looking to expand into meth which, according to the article in Foreign Policy, will be even more lucrative.
The popularity of the synthetic opioid Fentanyl has to have cut into the market for heroin. Why screw around with heroin when you can make fentanyl in the lab? Fifty times as potent as heroin, it also much easier to smuggle.
I’m no longer interested in the narcotics trade so I don’t know if you’re right about the market situation. If you are right, that will be a big blow not just to the Taliban but to the Afghan economy generally. From what I gather, it’s always been the mainstay of their economy and, no doubt, even more so now that the Americans have left and taken their money with them.
Some Arabs I met several ages ago were very adamant in telling me they disapproved of man-made drugs of any kind, which were Satanic, but were totally fine with anything provided by nature, the gift of God; so much of the market for opium may be not that badly affected.
My gut feeling is the taliban is creating an implicit but unstated hostage situation.
By blocking access to the airport or at least making it difficult to get there , they will make it impossible for anywhere close to all of the American citizens trying to get out to do so by the Aug 31st "deadline " . And then the taliban will want something in return to agree to allowing the us to hold the airport and continue the evacuation after Aug 31st. And there will be quiet concessions made by the USA to allow the taliban to get some of that outside money.
But this will all be behind the scenes . The taliban has no interest, I think and hope, in explicitly and publicly holding hostages like Iran did in 1979 just to humiliate us. And biden definitely does not want to be seen as publicly paying blackmail for hostages either. But effectively that will happen.
And whether we really even be paying " blackmail " is questionable. Whose money is that being held outside the country anyway? A little murky legally in this sort of situation. It pretty much all came originally from us taxpayers. And I bet some portion has already gotten moved to accounts of former corrupt govt officials. It appears we also were caught off guard how quickly the govt gave up and might not have gotten all assets frozen quick enough. And that freeze was as to stop guys like Ghani getting it as the taliban. Can't let those crooks steal the ransom before you pay it.
And have you noticed that the old northern alliance seems to be reforming in panshir Valley ( which taliban has never controlled). And there has been some talk that they should get the money. Great idea ( the talk of it) if the us govt is pushing it behind the scenes. Increases our leverage in negotiations with the taliban..
You might be right about the hostage trade. No reason to kill the foreigners, especially when you can collect a fat fee from them to enable their departure.
The Taliban seem to have done fine so far without international money or Western expertise. (And in any case, there are doubtless plenty of people who don't like America who will supply whatever they do in fact need.)
It is going very smoothly.
Good news, let's keep it up! I've heard some great things about the leadership we've got on the ground out there, and the competence of how our units are carrying out the mission.
Kevin, how many were we evacuating (besides military) each week before the bugout?
Rick,
Not enough and I do think we could have done better getting the evacuation started before everything collapsed.
But not going to make a big issue blaming biden there.
It simply is the case that, as the Afghan govt and army was so psychologically dependent on the USA, anything making it seem we were leaving and showing we do not have confidence that the Afghan govt can hold will just make it collapse sooner.
Not really fair to say that we should have evacuated before the collapse because the start of evacuation precipitates a collapse itself. If we started evacuating earlier, the collapse would have happened earlier. No easy way out of that dilemma and there was always going to be a rush for the exits with some chaos when the collapse becomes obvious ( and then it happens fast ).
So I will not criticize that much the lack of getting people evacuated before the collapse. I do criticize more we were not ready to start at full capacity once it happened.
I also think we should have planned to hold one or more airports other than just Kabul. And not talking about Bagram as that is 25 miles from Kabul so would just mainly help evacuate Kabul. But what about maybe something in Mazar AL sharif which was a govt stronghold and many thought would hold ( even maybe after kabul).?
What is somewhat distressing to me is the entire focus is on getting out Americans and our Afghan allies in Kabul. What about those in other areas ? Nobody even seems to want to mention them. Maybe because it is so uncomfortable knowing they have largely been written off.
rational (?), I'm tired of reading your long, long posts. Why don't you just give us the bullet points? I'm perfectly capable of understanding the basic point you are trying to make. And, surprisingly, I know how to use Google too.
Then don't read them
I saw somewhere that the German government had a seriously organized evacuation plan for their personnel throughout the country, with everyone assigned local rallying points to come to be evacuated.
Haven't heard anything about that (will look into it), but they are also doing an amazing job managing the pandemic, pretty much making us look like amateurs.
rational,
if that was actually from you
I'm sorry I spaced it out.
And I am not sure what it is you are referring to that you feel you need to be sorry about.
I do get confused with this comment system as to who is replying to who sometimes.
Just suddenly thought I might have actually got that bit about the Germans from you as I really couldn't remember where I saw it.
In February 2020 the Trump administration negotiated an agreement with the Taliban (not the Afghan government) for withdrawal of US troops by May 1, 2021.
In 2021 the Biden administration took office and agreed to honor the US commitment, with the exception of moving the withdrawal date to the end of August.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending our 20-year war, has been very much a bipartisan action.
Had the Biden administration chosen not to withdraw, the result almost certainly would have been an escalation of violence and an outcome far worse than anything we are currently seeing.
The possible outcomes that could have happened with our withdrawal range from a somewhat orderly transition to Taliban control with sporadic instances of chaos to full-blown civil war. (No, nobody thinks the survival of the democratic Afghan government was ever in the cards.)
What we are seeing now is much closer to the best-likely scenario than we really had right to expect.
The media coverage has been absolutely atrocious. After 20 years of war we've hardly learned a damned thing.
????????????????
Nobody thought the survival of the democratic Afghan government was ever in the cards?
If you are referring to what was thought before, that is just not true . Did not biden himself give a speech just last month saying it was unlikely the taliban would be able to take over completely ( and that was stated not just as unlikely soon but unlikely at all)?
Maybe biden was lying then ( I am still not sure if he believed it or not) . But surely there were plenty who did, including plenty of govt supporters in Afghanistan.
Once the Afghan army and govt completely lose hope, they will collapse quickly ( which is what happened). But, almost by definition, before the collapse ( like just a week or two ago) lots of people in Afghanistan had at least some hope the govt would survive , so it still had a chance.
If you mean that, in hindsight, seeing what we see now, nobody still thinks the Afghan govt had a chance , arguable but that is just irrelevant. Obviously you cannot plan for something you do not know until later.
And I would disagree even now that the govt had no chance to survive ( not holding the whole country just survive ).
The Afghan govt had 300,000 soldiers compared to 75,000 or so taliban, and the govt army was better armed ( even considering lack of maintenance etc.). Even factoring in the corruption and that many of that 300k had no will to fight, if just 20% were willing to fight should have been enough. And they did have 20% at least good troops.
The taliban strategy was honestly masterful. They tricked, intimidated, bluffed a clearly military superior force into running away by making them believe they had no chance. Does illustrate one thing that should be remembered for the future. It is better to have a smaller number of good soldiers who will fight together than to add to that army a lot of extra troops who will run away at the first tough fight.
This reminds me of other examples like Lee bluffing a far superior union army in the Civil War peninsular campaign into retreating, or the Japanese campaign
In Malaysia and Singapore in ww2. Wanted to think of examples of the "good guys" pulling off this sort of thing but cannot.
Another way this could have ended ( and I think many thought it would) was the taliban negotiating with the govt allowing it to survive in "control" of Kabul and some other cities sort of at their deterrence. Keep it as a fug leaf and tolerate some degree of relatively liberal policies in those cities. With the purpose of keeping the us money flowing into that fig leaf govt and with most of it ending up with the taliban. Actually would have been a smarter play for them. Let the USA be a sucker and keep sending billions.
"And I would disagree even now that the govt had no chance to survive ( not holding the whole country just survive )."
Are you saying that the Afghan government before this withdrawal might have survived? How would that have looked? If I recall, the Taliban had already taken control of about half of the country. Would a central government that includes basically only Kabul be considered a surviving entity? I suppose if the very large well equipped Afghan security force (why not call them the Army) had managed to pull back to Kabul that might have worked.
In fact, I really wish that this had happened. The ugly scene we are seeing now could have been prevented. I am certain Biden was hoping this would happen. It didn't. The head of the government snuck off in the middle of the night (coward) and the supposedly huge well trained security force mostly ran away and left their arms for the Taliban to confiscate.
I am saying that they possibly could have survived and in more than just Kabul. Even possible that they could have eventually won and really got control of the whole country. People always in hindsight want to think the eventual result was inevitable. Especially on military issues, really not true . Too many factors and little chance things could change it.
Consider Ghani leaving. That could have helped if it had come a week earlier in order to maybe give someone else with an actual backbone and a shred of honesty the chance to try to rally things before everything was starting to look bad. When he left, it was looking bad but not yet hopeless and his departure was the last straw re hope.
Could not have come at a worse time..sort of suspicious and wonder if prearranged in a deal with the taliban. And the vice president ( who had lost the fraudulent election) was clearly the superior choice.
Even now, the taliban is not in compete control and the opposition is trying to rally in panshir. But likely too late.
@rational thought
A few quick points:
Your hope that the Afghan military could have and should have fought the Taliban is probably conventional thinking. But it almost certainly would have been a worse outcome for the Afghan people. Why is “US leaves, country erupts in civil war” an outcome that anyone should have been hoping for?
I haven’t heard anyone say they are surprised the Taliban took over. The only surprise has been the speed of the collapse of the Afghan government and military.
Who saw the inevitability of the Taliban takeover? The Afghan president, for one, who got out of Dodge as fast as he could. The Trump admin, for another. That’s why it negotiated withdrawal with the Taliban, and not the government.
I suspect Biden believed it was the most likely scenario, whether he felt allowed to say it or not.
Reports about the Afghan air force indiscriminately bombing civilians weren't sounding good either, a real fighting civil war would have been the real disaster.
I never said that I hoped the Afghan government could have held on or not or if it would have been better. Just that it was not inevitable that it could not.
As to whether that would have been better, for the USA, almost certainly as could have evacuated orderly. Of course the idea that the Afghan govt would hold to help give us that time was a crackpot idea .
For the Afghan people, hard to say. There are so many different scenarios where they could have it really matters how . I said one way is the talliban letting them control Kabul some as a fig leaf government to keep us aid money flowing and get a big share of it. Almost certainly better for the Afghan people than now ( but maybe not us). A long brutal Civil War is way different and there are a whole lot of other scenarios.
And part depends on how much you value life and your comfort versus freedom and rights. And that is a value judgement so no right or wrong answer. The TV and movie answer is better to be dead then not free, but that is not reality.
Most slaves did not risk their lives to escape and they valued being alive over being free. And the vast majority anywhere will make that same choice.
Very few were of course "surprised " that the taliban took over ( there actually were a few and unfortunately seemed to be us experts). But saying it was not inevitable is a far cry from saying it was a surprise..
I do not think Ghani got out as soon as he could. He did not do so until the end was just about clear. If he knew for sure the govt would fall, he would have been out earlier. Note in videos of the top govt officials homed, how much they left
Behind in a rush.
I give up trying to figure out what biden really thought if he actually had any thoughts. All the various statements are just so contradictory and make no sense looked at together. Even if he was just lying, the messaging has been horrid practically and politically.
Have to remember that the government forces had to defend everywhere and the Taliban could pick and chose where to attack.
If we thought it was really the "democratic Afghan government", we may never have left. In 2020, Freedom House ranked Afghanistan as "Not Free" and gave them an overall score of 27 out of 100. That's slightly lower than Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.
There were certainly Afghans in Afghanistan trying to make the place better, but you also had extreme corruption and tribalism undermining the attempt at "democracy". By Freedom House standards, there was no democracy.
Agreed.
We've got to stop sponsoring this nonsense.
Mr. Harbin has this about right and I appreciate Rational Thought's input...long they may be, but they add value. This is not twitter.
I've tons of writing on this elsewhere...nothing to add really except I think Mr. Biden's appearance yesterday was weak.
"Personally, I think Biden should entirely own this....I am the only President in 20 years with the courage to end this insanity....and it was insane especially even with lefty NGO's and the righty Military Industrial Complex sucking up funds that should be used in the United States...or for that matter Haiti that seems more worthy of help to me. Haiti is at least not landlocked!)"
Best Wishes, Traveller
What you are quoting is what you think Biden should have said for best politics, right?
Pretty spot on, I think.
Not that I think it is all correct but it would work better politically.
Biden should have grabbed full ownership of the concept of withdrawing. Yes , trump initiated it and deserves some of the credit for that ( or blame if you do not like it). But ignore that. Trying to drag trump in to slide off some of the blame for the mistakes in execution was not going to work anyway and just reminds the public that trump was withdrawing too, and that is popular and you want to hog all that for yourself.
And, if you make a lot of mistakes in execution ( and there was) just take responsibility and say you made mistakes. The American public will forgive that in the end . Do not say the buck stops here but then still blame others and then later say therr were no mistakes.
But this is standard politician. They cannot never just admit they screwed up or were wrong. Trump was terrible that way.
The facts are the facts, better to get out in front of them while Trump is howling for your resignation while Republicans are otherwise deleting web pages about their support for withdrawal, which takes everything away from them except the short-term execution, which isn't over yet and still salvageable (especially from viewpoint of public, who pundits eventually follow), and also in a high risk situation never hurts to hedge your bets (if hedge opportunity is there).
After we evacuate all the “good” people, Afghanistan is doomed forever. What a bunch of cowards! Why would we want them here? Illiterates and religious fanatics. Good grief.
This is snark, right?
It's hard to tell sometimes.
Like all good commentary with snark or sarcasm, there is a kernel of truth and then exaggeration.
There is certainly a debate about the religious views of afghans. They seem to mostly prefer sharia law and this is, to me, a fanatical view. Or perhaps at least a pre-modern one.
"79 percent favored a death penalty for leaving Islam"
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jun/16/donald-trump/trump-mostly-correct-about-sharia-law-support-afgh/
Yikes - As an atheist, it's certainly not in my best interest to seed the US population with such radical views.
And basic literacy in Afghanistan is abysmally low.
Currently, over 10 million youth and adults in Afghanistan are illiterate.
In 2018, adult literacy rate for Afghanistan was 43 %.
What we end up with, then, is a brain drain.
https://www.voanews.com/us-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/new-us-refugee-program-afghans-prompts-fears-brain-drain
These are not only traumatized war refugees... they are basket cases of dysfunction and deplorables!
But sure... we should evacuate the best and brightest. They will, I assume, be just fine. But that leaves the most vulnerable behind... the elderly, the sick, the illiterate. Too bad for them.
And what you are saying is why I said it is wrong to think afghan refugees will vote democratic because they will think Republicans resemble the taliban. Even most Afghan refugees will have social views which are more towards the conservative view than the average republican. The Republicans will be too left wing for them on those issues.
For a person who claimed that we needed time to see clearly the direction of the withdrawal, you sure seem committed to posting daily updates, minus the negative parts.
I would like for you all to evaluate the American Afghanistan withdrawal as if it Trump were still president.
Get Americans out, and as many Afgan allies as possible, then we do the post-mortem, and being out of Afghanistan, big picture fantastic. Of course, if it was Trump, I'd also be worried Republicans would influence him enough to double down and surge in order to keep our "standing", which could then lead to no withdrawal at all.
I agree with jimm that would be more likely with trump .
Trump tended to say a lot and set grand goals and policies buy never actually managed to act on them . And often got talked out of them or simply ignored by the beurocrats who did what they wanted ( see Syria where trump continually wanted to withdraw but continuously delayed).
So many of the dc beurocracy is democratic and liberal and innately hostile to trump that they resisted on principle and trump could not get things done he wanted to do. And he never had the detailed focus to force the follow up. The beurocracy sometimes could just delay and hope trump moved on to something else.
A reason many conservative Republicans opposed trump in 2016 was fear that he would be flattered and manipulated by democrats in DC and end up being a quasi democratic president. I think that was Schumer 's initial idea and it may have worked.
It was the overriding intense hostility to trump from liberal democrats at the start that made him become more of a standard conservative republican. With trump, what matters is whether you are for or against him. If liberals hate him then he will be a conservative.
Once the intra-party Republican food fight really gets going about resettling Afgan SIP refugees, which their base will demand, the current crisis will likely be mostly over and quickly fade from public memory (or importance), and we'll be back to the big picture - out of Afghanistan, no longer risking American lives or spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a foolish nation and military building effort, and getting back to the business of America (which will include probing how this deacde-lojg occupation proved to be such a failure, and with such consistent rosy assessments).
I expect Republicans will be more supportive of resetting Afghan refugees here than democrats.
How so? Please do detail.