Chaotic exodus

The incompetence of America’s confused and chaotic exodus from Afghanistan, despite the Aug 31 deadline to get out, came as an unwelcome surprise and threatened to undermine the majority of Americans’ approval of the decision to end the hopeless, thankless, useless 20-year war in a remote corner of the world where the United States’ only national interest was to defeat al-Qaida following the devastation of 9/11. It succeeded at that mission and should have quit Afghanistan immediately after that. Iraq got in the way.

“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building,” Biden said recently. “It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.” He’s been wanting for years to get the United States out of Afghanistan.

Similarly, the departure of Americans and their Afghan allies should have begun as soon as the troops started pulling out, thus avoiding a last-minute rush to evacuate everyone who wanted to be airlifted out. Members of the Biden administration responsible for planning the civilian withdrawals should be held accountable for their egregious mismanagement, if indeed there was any thorough planning.

Biden is trying to fix things by possibly extending the deadline beyond Aug 31 and announcing Sunday, without providing details, that the perimeter has widened to create a ‘safe zone’ outside the airport’s gates in order to hasten the transfer of people to planes waiting on the tarmac.

“Any American who wants to get home, will get home,” he said.

Though tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, tens of thousands more, including up to 15,000 American civilians, are waiting to leave. The delay in getting everyone out struck the thought that the Islamic State may stage a terrorist attack.

“The threat is real,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said Sunday on CNN. “It’s acute. It is persistent. And it is something we’re focused on with every tool in our arsenal.”

The scenes at Hamid Karzai Airport, the clamoring people surrounded by little kids, the visible anxiety, may cost the Democrats politically, depending on the endgame of what so far has been a disaster. Congressional lawmakers reportedly are mulling investigations into the bungled withdrawal, including some who may seek Sullivan’s resignation.

“The idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing – I don’t know how that happens,” Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulus last week.

Honest of him to be so forthright. But he should know how things like that happen because, as president, he’s expected to surround himself with the best and brightest.

Republicans, who like the military and its contractors generally oppose leaving Afghanistan, are characterizing the Afghan pullout as presenting the image of America as an unreliable ally, one that doesn’t have the patience to stick with its friends.

Excerpted: ‘A Fumbled Afghan Exodus’

Commondreams.org