Last night I was pondering what would happen if, a week or so from now, we had evacuated 100,000 people from Kabul without the loss of a single American life. I mean, that would be pretty good! What would be left to complain about?
And then it hit me: No matter how well we do, it's inevitable that we won't get literally everyone out. So we'll start getting heartstring pullers about specific individuals who didn't make it out for some reason or another and are now fearing for their lives.
But I was wrong. I didn't have to wait until the evacuation was over. The Washington Post is already doing it:
This isn't even about someone left behind. It's about a family that might be left behind—but then again, might not.
Even though we are now up to 60,000 refugees who have been evacuated from Kabul, the news remains dominated by reports of "chaos." But how long can news outlets keep saying that? With the evacuation so obviously proceeding pretty well I just don't think that dog is going to hunt much longer. Maybe that's why we're already practicing what we'll do next to make things look worse than they really are.
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, I suspect that the rate of evacuations will start to slow down within a day or three. That's inevitable when you rescue the low-hanging fruit first and airlift capacity is no longer the bottleneck. Instead it's the ability to process difficult visa cases and to find all the people you want to rescue. This is why President Biden wants to extend the deadline beyond August 31 even though the current evacuation rate seems like it's good enough to get everyone out by then.
"He took his wife and kids to Afghanistan one last time. Now he can't get them out."
Maybe I'm just having a bad day, and finding it hard to empathize. Or maybe, just possibly, that's the stupidest headline I've seen this week.
I know. What the fucking fuck are you doing? Holy shit.
Yesssss..... I am afraid that even if one loves family back home dearly that traveling back to Afghanistan this year sick mum or not.... well one rolls the dice sometimes but really....
Thats right up there with going hiking on the Iraq/Iran border.
Oh but the sunsets you get along the Zagros Mountains this time of year are stunning !!!!!!
The media is placing no responsibility on people in Afghanistan for making really, really bad decisions. And the media isn’t even bothering to tell people this little detail:
“ ….the embassy focused for months on the Americans in Afghanistan. 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. Despite all that, as many as 15,000 Americans remain across the country.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/afghanistan-evacuation-how-we-got-here-where-we-are-heading/
Of course if the media reported these facts they would have to stop putting all the blame on Biden and start blaming the people who ignored those warnings. Everything is Biden’s fault. Them blame Biden for being naive in thinking the Afghan government could hold out. It can’t possible be the military that was giving him bad info, amirite? Forget the fact that in 2019 the WaPo’s Afghanistan Papers proved the military had been lying for years by exaggerating how well things were going there. They are manly men which makes them People Who Must Not be Criticized.
I am also sick of the media’s framing that all these Afghan people were just doing us a favor and weren’t acting in their own and their country’s best interests. Seems to me that while we did have national security interests in creating a stable Afghanistan those Afghan citizens had an even greater interest in achieving that.
Well said Beth.
Perhaps something along the lines of: 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
Looks like they spotted the guy who talked about brain drain in the comments the othet day.
That was me! And it's something no-one talks about, but should. Because there are 400 times more Afghans who will suffer if the economy crashes and all social progress is halted than potential evacuees. That being said, I was NOT suggesting leaving anybody there. Just pointing out that the brain drain is a very serious consequence of the US withdrawal and Taliban victory. Not taken into account at all, because of the eternal focus on military aspects.
Something tells me that educated Afghanis won't fare well under the Taliban. Particularly educated women.
Of course. And my point is that only one aspect was taken into account in US policy, namely how to get them out. The other aspect is what will happen to Afghanistan without them. I realize I'm crying over spilt milk here. It's too late to prevent Taliban rule and these people have to be evacuated. Still it's a pity that the US all this time has had a "rule it all or leave it all" policy. There are intermediate possibilities, particularly in Afghanistan which is used to them, and they were not explored.
Brain drane is also a major issue with immigration from lots of places.
Immigrants from many sub Saharan African nations are disproportionately their most educated wealthy and capable, not the poor huddled masses yearning to be free. And many of those poor nations do not have a huge pool of highly educated people anyway, so even a small number emigrating can hurt. Even more so for places like India re how educated the immigrants are but at least they have a much larger pool to draw from.
There has even been some discussion that the USA is racist because we allow educated Africans to immigrate.
The harm is possibly offset by the large remittances that the immigrants can send back to the family members that remain , which can be a significant part of their economy. But what that can mean is that, instead of the educated Africans stating home and helping to develop their economy internally to be self supporting, they come here, earn lots of money, and send a chunk back . The people left behind might be materially as well off, but dependent on charity rather than their own work.
And no easy answer to this.
It is somewhat similar to the observation that desegregation might have been negative for the poor black communities and the people living there because it allowed the wealthier educated members to leave and move into white neighborhoods creating a " brain drain " from black ghettos.
With Afghanistan, there is one additional point. At least there, the educated afghans emigrating are often ones who we educated - the us taxpayer paid for the education and they otherwise would not have that training.
That's a pretty shallow and lame "observation" about desegregation.
How many Afghans are concerned about suffering a shortage of engineers, and how does that compare to the number concerned about suffering through a life with educated women, and children who want to choose their own spouses. And hearing music in the streets and plazas, and knowing that people are enjoying sports - horrors! Others are _enjoying_ life!
The ones who are concerned about having an educated population that includes women are the ones the Taliban will go after. You can bet when the Taliban finds out those people worked with us they will be imprisoned or killed. It’s the Taliban that is responsible for the brain drain. Then the Taliban first tool over many educated Afghanis left the country. It is happening again because the Taliban are back.
It's not. Schiff left the briefing and basically said it's not goimg to happen on time. Maybe even not all the Americans. So we either leave people at the airport falling off planes, shoot them, or fight off Taliban attacks while evacing.
I thought it was pretty disgusting that Schiff did that.
What an odd take.
I just listened to his entire statement. What he said — that he didn’t think it was likely we could complete the evacuation by the deadline but that it was possible — was completely reasonable and consistent with what we know is going on. Our government is negotiating with the Taliban to extend that deadline. If Schiff had said he thought we could get everyone out by that date he would have undercut the negotiations we are having,
Most of what Schiff spoke about was the need to find out why our intelligence estimates were so off. From what I have read the military is particularly culpable for lying how well things were going over the past 20 years but Schiff’s committee oversees the intelligence communities, not the military. Everything he said was true and well-reasoned as usual, not in any way inflammatory. Too bad the media disdains politicians like Schiff because they are too boring.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?514220-1/representative-schiff-evacuations-unlikely-completed-august-31-deadline
I just listened to his entire statement. What he said — that he didn’t think it was likely we could complete the evacuation by the deadline but that it was possible — was completely reasonable and consistent with what we know is going on. He reiterated that we have a moral obligation to get people out and we must meet that obligation. Our government is negotiating with the Taliban to extend that deadline. If Schiff had said he thought we could get everyone out by that date he would have undercut the negotiations we are having,
Most of what Schiff spoke about was the need to find out why our intelligence estimates were so off. From what I have read the military is particularly culpable for lying how well things were going over the past 20 years but Schiff’s committee oversees the intelligence communities, not the military. Everything he said was true and well-reasoned as usual, not in any way inflammatory. Too bad the media disdains politicians like Schiff because they are too boring.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?514220-1/representative-schiff-evacuations-unlikely-completed-august-31-deadline
Normally you provide a citation. Would be good to do so here.
Tack.
The longer it goes on the more tense it will get. We had Boat People and Thai refugee camps for years and years. This will not be over on the 31st but we have to get out. The sooner the better.
At one level, I’m feeling the way you are about a man who takes his family to a war zone that Americans and their Afghan employees /associates have been strongly urged to leave for months. It’s just insane to return to that situation and expect to be safe. I feel bad for him but his family’s dire situation is the result of his poor judgment.
On the other hand, there’s probably American soldiers in Afghanistan who weren’t even born in 2001. The war has (and it’s associated gravy trains for connected people) has continued through four U.S. presidents and every time it looked like the Americans would finally leave, the military and the blob actually talked the president into some kind of a surge. The odds were overwhelming that the war would continue to limp along literally forever.
Add to that the widely held assumption that fall of the Afghanistan government would take months or even years, it’s was an understandable, albeit foolhardy, assumption that there would surely be time for at least this one last visit.
Perhaps we could make an exchange with the Taliban: this man’s family in return for Hamid Karzai and his family. This would leave the world a better place.
Karzai is in Afghanistan and in negotiations with the Taleban. Rather queer proposition for a swap.
It is Ghani who left, not Karzai.
Drift... All the news about getting people out (or not) of Afghanistan made me think of Shane Bauer and wonder what he was up to. He no longer appears on the staff list of Mother Jones, per Muckrack, https://muckrack.com/shane-bauer/articles his most recent published article is at: https://www.wisbank.com/articles/2021/08/the-fed-s-fraudclassifier-model-a-powerful-tool-for-countering-fraud-s-increasing-threat/
Guess his departure was some time ago. He appears on the staff list on May 19th, 2020: http://web.archive.org/web/20200519021908/https://www.motherjones.com/about/staff/ and is not present on that list on May 26th of 2020: http://web.archive.org/web/20200526140829/https://www.motherjones.com/about/staff/
If we get out 100,000 people, great. But I am sure there are tens of thousands of Afghans left behind who are at risk. Consider that 200,000 served in the Afghan military. After we leave, I can imagine thousands of executions of all sorts of people who are accused of helping the US . This is a great human tragedy no matter how many people we get out in the next few days. And this is true whether you supported the withdrawal or not.
I read the Taliban this week declared a death sentence for the brother of an interpreter. He is accused of helping his brother. Expect a year or two of stories like this. As many as 50,000 interpreters have worked with the US military.
Part of giving up is leaving without taking everyone with you.
Just like our Founding Fathers and the soldiers who fought in our revolution took the risk of being treated as traitors by the British is they lost, that is the same risk taken by the Afghan fighters. They had to know that and they didn’t fight just to do us a favor no matter how much the media tries to sell that ridiculous idea.
True, but we still walked away, and rather abruptly. Trump made major random cuts leaving a house of cards for Biden. Then Biden pulled the plug.
Also, the coming severe repression is not just against those who worked with the US. It will be against people like women's rights advocates and women in other influential roles. 30% of Parliament members were women. So ignoring that we walked away, it's still a humanitarian disaster. Medieval monsters are now in charge.
Not our responsibility, and never was. We'll pressure and cajole with all the levers available along with the world community, but universal human rights advocacy is not about violence.
There was never any prospective plan or possibility to evacuate the entire Afghan military, the notion itself is absurd, we built them up to over 250K in number to be a countervailing force, not a refugee obligation.
I have seen too many numbers bantered about in the press.
AFter ready many stories about this some things have struck me
First - we warned people in Afghanistan for months to get out
Second - we have NO IDEA how many Americans are there - the US embassy admits many Americans DID NOT REGISTER with them
Third - we are trying to safeguard Afghanis who helped us. That's admirable but unrealistic
Fourth - we believed the Afghan Army would slow the advance of the Taliban
Fifth - we believed the Afghan President would stay and negotiate with the Taliban
Sixth - we had an agreement with the Taliban to leave which was supported by the previous administration and applauded by many.
If we get 50K to 100K out we have done a marvelous job
Their economy is in tatters. They have no access to overseas funds and our allies like Saudi Arabia still support the Taliban through donations.
I'm glad we're out. Biden did screw this up a bit. We followed through on Trumps negotiated treaty.
Now once we're done? Destroy Bagram and as much military hardware as we can
How did Biden screw up a bit?
I guess he shouldn’t have believed the military when they said the Afghan government and military would hold out much longer. Of course he is blamed for that, not the military who, according to the Afghan Papers, knew better.
Imagine how this current iteration of our press corps would have reported on the Berlin Airlift. Or D-Day.
Or Corregidor. "Why didn't Roosevelt have a plan to stop the Japanese? Republicans in Congress demand all Americans be rescued!"
Vog and anyone,
I have seen many comments saying " we" warned people months ago to get out. I assume by "we" you mean the us govt and not commenters on the internet.
But , given the context and the fact that Biden, as president, just last month gave a public speech saying it was highly unlikely that the taliban would be able to overrun everything and own the country ( actually said the likelihood is highly unlikely but clear what he meant ). Given that such a statement would surely have led anyone relying on it to feel they did not have to leave right away, which would be contrary to the message that they should leave, it seems important to consider how the us govt communicated that Americans should leave and how strong it was, especially before you blame those who did stay for not leaving.
And after searching, I cannot find anything saying where when and how the us govt told Americans to leave. I assume there is something you are all referring to but what is it. All I could find is some vagueish statements by trump last year personally which were more like expressing personal feelings .
https://af.usembassy.gov/security-alert-u-s-embassy-kabul-afghanistan-14/
This is pretty clear I think.
And that bears a date in April.
Thanks . That is what I was looking for.
Although I see it says from April that it was saying that it was telling us govt personnel to leave . And for all us citizens the travel advisory remains level 4 which does advise you to leave. I wonder how long it was level 4. I could not find exact level as it appears they go down to decimals. Currently it seems Afghanistan is level 5 ( duh) but Iran is 4.5 and China is 3.9.
I would be interested to know how long the travel advisory was at and what level historically.
I was starting to search on the site ( which has full history) but it was slow and I realized that was probably due to a crush on people needing to use it so maybe I should decline and not clog up the server. My curiosity has lower priority than someone in Afghanistan I think.
But one problem with a lot of travel advisories is that they are issued so frequently and sometimes seem to be issued as sort of a " don't blame the govt if something goes wrong " sort of like warning labels on products warning you about everything or drug labels with every possible rare side effect.
People learn to tune them out over time. Then , when it is a situation where " no, we REALLY mean it now, this is not just cya in case this time" , the message does not get through. Chicken little screams the sky is falling so often that , when it really is, nobody listens. Especially when the president is also saying that everything will be ok.
Same type of thing with global warming or covid. Some have exaggerated the dangers in the past with good motives to try to scare people into doing the right thing. But when the doomsday exaggerated predictions do not come true, and later maybe doomsday really is coming, nobody believes them.
Some of what you seek wrt history in the site might be found via archive org.
Kenalovell,
If you are reading this post today,
Re our discussion from yesterday on the 9/11 date ,
On what happened there re the Biden administration, you were right and I was wrong. Yes, biden did specifically state his deadline as exactly the date of 9/11 initially after saying could not meet the trump may deadline negotiated with the taliban. And the 8/31 deadline came later after they finally did sort of get taliban agreement for an extension. Did the change to a date 11 days earlier come because, as you thought, someone in the administration woke up and realized how stupidly counter productive it was to link specifically to 9/11? Or because the taliban wanted it earlier as some news stories suggested? I do not know but if it was the former, they certainly would not say so publicly.
I was still right that trump never did link anything specifically to 9/11. The proposed camp david was just near that date.
So maybe trump was conned by the taliban into doing something that could be linked to 9/11. But biden came up with that humiliating idea on his own.
"But biden came up with that humiliating idea on his own."
Biden picking 9/11 was always quite strange. I suppose he meant it to symbolize "mission accomplished". He should have learned that it's not a good thing to claim in that part of the world, haha.
I really don't understand this take regarding the evacuation "going pretty well." Honestly it just seems like a contrarian stance against the media (not entirely unjustified) rather than an honest assessment of the state of things.
What is left unsaid there is that it is going pretty well RELATIVE to how terrible the overall situation is.
Do I think we should stay in Afghanistan? No. But, I think we should be reminded daily for at least the next 20 years of how screwed thousands/millions of people living there are.
Saying it is "going pretty well" doesn't just need an asterisk with a footnote. The footnote of how bad the overall situation is needs to be the lede, with the relative success of the evacuation being the footnote.
So how do you get out without it becoming somewhat of a shitshow? Theres no plausible plan. The Taliban had over a year to make deals with all the relevant players and thats what they did. No surprise there.
You don't. That's my point. Just because it isn't a surprise that this would be a huge mess (a very mild way of putting it), that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out how big of a mess it is.
Great, they aren't beheading people at the airport. That isn't my definition of something "going pretty well." Could it be worse? Of course. Is this unexpected? No, not really. To me, that doesn't mean the overall awfulness shouldn't be covered and rubbed in our face.
Sig Heil 88 is where I go for true reportage of decapitations at the Kabul Airport.
You mean, after the administration realized how much of a clusterfuck they'd gotten into, then did a bunch of extraordinary things to address the problem?
So, what's your answer to the situation Biden might be in -- does the US now move the goalposts of the exit deadline or do they continue past August 31, risking one last American life to help refugees and SIVs?
It's a difficult question to answer because you know that it'll expose hypocrisy.
We will be extending after 8/31 and risking American soldiers lives to rescue Americans not afgjan siv holders who are not out yet.
And it seems we are getting out afghans as a higher % of the total vs Americans.
Plenty of afghans will get out too because of an extension but they are helped incidental to the purpose.
Once the last American is gotten out who conceivably can be evacuated from Kabul Airport ( if we ever get to that point) any remaining afghans will be put of luck.
What is annoying me is the "What about the GIRLS?" crowd. Like American could give a s&*t if women in any other part of the Middle East or Asia are oppressed in a patriarchal Islamic state. The promises of improving the lives of Afghan women resonated with liberals and cynical conservatives, but they were only going to be fulfilled for as long as the US occupied Kabul and a few other strategic strongholds. Most women in Afghanistan were suffering before and during the American occupation; now they will suffer after, JUST LIKE THE WOMEN IN SAUDI ARABIA. wtf.
I dont get all the concern trolling. It's the same everywhere. Ppl who didnt give two shits about Afghanistan last year, or even last month, now bleating about how terrible it all is.
People are allowed to change what they're concerned about when things are brought to their attention.
Funny no one ever recommended invading, occupying and rebuilding Saudi Arabia to liberate women there.
What’s your point? There’s obviously a big difference, even if it’s just psychological, of doing nothing and having a bad situation stay bad (e.g. treatment of women in Saudi Arabia) and doing something to improve a bad situation somewhat, only to have it revert back to what it was once you stop doing something (e.g. treatment of women in Afghanistan).
It would be like adopting a pet and then throwing it back on the street versus simply walking by a stray and not taking it in. Both are sad situations, but once you get involved things change.
We don't fight wars or engage in fruitless military occupations for the psychological reasons of believing we helped women a little bit in a backwards place. Sorry, thats just not how reality works, or should work. You don't arbitrarily use violence to psychologically assuage yourself or others, and you don't rely on violence to advocate for greater respect of human rights (and doing so inconsistently actively hurts the cause by leading to legitimate charges of hypocrisy).
Nope they have moved onto the pets not getting out.
Looks like it will have to be: https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics/first-us-troops-leaving-afghanistan/index.html
Of course, with the earlier announcements from the Taliban about not wanting any (more) Afghans to leave, it becomes an open question whether we will indeed "get everyone out" - perhaps the definition of "everyone" will evolve to match the reality of the situation come August 31st.
We have the airlift capacity to get everyone out by 8/31 if we can get them to the airport.
Always have and all the concerns re errors that delayed some flights were overblown. The problem has been getting to the airport.
If biden really is sticking with 8/31, then he does have a plan he thinks will work to get out all Americans or close enough to be reasonable ( anyone who expects zero Americans not being left behind is not serious).
I cannot believe biden would leave while a good number of Americans are simply abandoned..that is political suicide and might even be impeached.
I think there has been a behind the scenes deal with the taliban where they get their ransom for the implicit hostages . And then you might see some strange taliban cooperation like opening up the way to the airport by just attacking the mob at the gates. Hopefully something more innocuous like accepting us rescuing in the city by helicopter.
Might even be that we agreed to abandon the afghans in exchange.
Or maybe biden will send troops into Kabul in defiance of the taliban and risking Mogadishu.
But he is not going to just abandon a lot of Americans
There will be some deal with Taliban about any Americans left or very severe consequences (short if reinvasion of course). And it's in the Taliban's best interest to make this deal, while obviously saying no to any continuing Afghan brain drain.
It is not our country...We Need to Say a Big Thank You to President Biden for Having the Courage to Recognize and Do what is Necessary.
See also this very correct assessment from aljazeera:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/23/the-new-and-improved-taliban-the-us-parting-gift-to-afghanistan
"The Taliban fighters are Afghans, too. They did not come from the moon. This is their country and they are not any more fanatical and conspiracy driven than those tens of millions of Trump supporters, the QAnon believers, anti-vaxxers, Proud Boys, and the rest of them. If people are scared of Taliban leaders Haibatullah Akhunzada, Mohammad Yaqoob, Sirajuddin Haqqani, or Abdul Ghani Baradar, they have not been paying attention to Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marine Le Pen, Stephen Miller, Geert Wilders or Steve Bannon. Same level of sugar density, different bucket.
"The overwhelming majority of Afghans have had no choice but to live with the Taliban. Just like Iranians, the Saudis, the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Egyptians have to deal with their criminal ruling regimes. They all deserve much better than the fate has assigned to them. Fanatical, reactionary, retrograde, or not, the Taliban is at home in the region."
snip
"As for Afghan women and girls, they are far better off fighting the fanaticism and stupidity of the Taliban on their own and not under the shadow of US military barracks. Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish and Arab women have been fighting similar, if not identical, patriarchal thuggery right in their neighbourhood, so will Afghan women. Have Indian women not been revolting against a whole culture of rape in their homeland? So will Afghan women fight against the Taliban."
Thank you President Biden...for Foresight and Wisdom
Best Wishes, Traveller
The next thing is patting themselves on the back by saying that things are going well now because the press raised a stink. That might even be true, I don't know.
What some might be missing re negative coverage now hurting biden politically is that it might help instead.
The situation is still unresolved. All of the errors and problems pointed out , and there have been a lot, are still in the main things that are a POTENTIAL problem, not yet anything that has caused permanent damage.
And the only thing that matters to most Americans whose votes count is whether you end up getting the Americans safely out. Afghans who cares. That is a harsh reality.
If all the screwups, like anything re the fact that Americans are now trapped in Kabul 15 minutes from the airport they could have reached 10 days ago, will not matter if they find a way to get them out now.
The errors have mainly created a high potential for a disaster..the disaster has largely not happened yet.
All of the negative coverage may end up doing biden a favor.
Say end result is that we get out the Americans 15000 of them , but 100 of them die in the process. Failure or not . Seems like 100 Americans dead is bad .
But maybe not if the media has been making the public think it will be worse.
I see politicians making this mistake all the time. You spin after the result. Before and during emphasize the difficulties and admit mistakes. Drive expectations down.
Consider trump and covid last spring when they were playing up the ridiculously optimistic models projecting 60,000 deaths . And they only were lokking through a specific date. And trump played them up and never explained that they were not projecting after summer. That was so foolish. Made the eventual result look like a colossal failure when 60,000 deaths was always not possible.
The wholly loathsome Conrad Black has written a succinct summary of the idiotic arguments of Biden's critics:
These lunatics are willing to provoke a whole new war in Afghanistan, causing God knows how many more deaths and refugees, in order to ... save a small number of deaths and rescue a few refugees.
Going well has an expiration date. Two days later: <blockquote<Biden braces for fallout as his dire warnings of a Kabul terror attack come true https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEO1HiOLF-OIB-QDdsuXknaQqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowocv1CjCSptoCMPrTpgU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen