People are treating the Taliban like they're ten feet tall, but they haven't actually won a gunfight with us in twenty years.
Why not take Bagram back by force, and stage a proper retreat action once we've secured Kabul?
We wouldn't have to stay any longer than necessary to pull out the eleven thousand Americans there, plus our soldiers and Marines. We also don't have to accept letting the Taliban roll over us or dictate terms to us.
3 comments:
Wouldn't the bigger problem be the collection of the people that need or want to leave, as evidenced by that State Department warning you posted, since we've largely lost control of the country to the Taliban, regardless of the security of the point of exit?
It appears to me that we've reached some sort of arrangement with the Taliban for now. Trying to look at it from their perspective, there doesn't appear to be much downside to letting us leave relatively unmolested but empty handed. They can watch who is moving and from where, which will provide important clues to who was collaborating, and they can pick off those they wish to capture and hold during the transit. The implicit threat of shutting down the exit is good leverage. They're balancing that threat against the knowledge that we could, if the current junta actually found the balls, make life pretty unpleasant for them if they trap a significant number of Americans or other westerners, especially troops. The visuals they want are their fighters letting us go, not us successfully fighting our way out. We appear to have implicitly, and maybe even explicitly, already made that deal.
If things go as I'm starting to suspect, in a couple of weeks the DNC-media complex is going to start to spin this Dunkirk-style (ole Winnie is going to be rehabilitated for a bit) with stories of tearful but happy reunions replacing those of the current chaos in Kabul. Biden will claim victory in Afghanistan on 9/11/2021 based solely on no Americans being left in the country. Anybody who points out that we didn't accomplish our previously stated objectives and left in a rout will be largely ignored, or called unpatriotic.
I can see the utility of letting the process work for the two weeks they’re granting us — while getting those Rangers and maneuver units ready in case it goes south.
How will Bagram help the 10,000-15,000 Americans (much less their Afghan supporters) scattered around the Afghan countryside escape?
Biden has written them off, entirely, telling them to make their own way to Kabul. He can't even be bothered to go get them.
Eric Hines
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