Kabul, or Saigon
Whether we should ever have gotten into a conflict in Afghanistan…or whether we should have left even sooner…is not germane to the conversation right now. The fact is that whatever plan this country had in place was undeniably a failure. Unless, of course, the plan was to abandon the country and its people, leave allies behind to face almost certain death, and leave priceless military hardware to be at best used by the Taliban, and at worst sold by them to Russia or China, thereby exposing innumerable secrets to enemies.
Before you think this is a predictable right-wing talking point, comparing the fall of Kabul to the fall of Saigon 46 years ago…I first saw the comparison drawn by Politico early Friday morning. Politico, no friend to the political right, flatly stated that Kabul would be Joe Biden’s Saigon. The same point was made Friday morning in a Washington Post column…again, a newspaper not known as a right-wing mouthpiece.
And let’s be very clear on one point…this is not the fault of anyone there wearing the uniform of this country. This politically-motivated move and any criticism associated with it falls squarely on the shoulders of politicians in Washington, not fighting men and women who are now placed in harm’s way needlessly.
It was either policy that turned out to be tragically bad, based solely on optics of not having U.S. troops in Afghanistan when the 20th anniversary of 9/11 comes up next month…or those who pushed the early withdrawal plan had such flawed intelligence that something they conceded might happen within 90 days happened within 72 hours. Of the two, I’d rather it be due to political considerations…because the implications of intel that was that bad is truly frightening for all of us going forward.
I never served, and am grateful for those who did, and do. But my understanding is that any mission has to have a plan. If the new mission was withdrawal, there needed to be a plan. Hard to believe that the plan included hurrying people to a helicopter to get out of town before true insurgents were at the door of an embassy…that is a scene we already saw one too many times.
