Marines Preparing to Evacuate Embassy in Kabul

The Pentagon is preparing for a possible evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan amid fears that the Taliban may overrun the compound in the coming days, the New York Times reported Thursday.

As the militant organization makes significant gains, capturing ten provincial capitals across the country, the State Department is expected to reduce embassy staff and is considering relocating its outpost to the Kabul airport, a number of sources told CNN. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is moving marines into position to cover the evacuation of staff as intelligence reports suggest the Taliban may launch an assault within 30 days, the Times reported.

The Western diplomatic source told CNN that temporarily moving the U.S. embassy to Hamid Karzai International Airport is “the most probable” course of action. A small staff will reportedly remain at the Kabul embassy while the rest are shifted away from the city center.

In addition, the U.S. military is reportedly trying to evacuate ‘thousands’ of American citizens and Afghan interpreters from the capital. Military transport planes are expected to arrive at the airport to accommodate those fleeing. The embassy sent an emergency notice Thursday urging Americans to “leave Afghanistan immediately using available commercial flight options,” the Times reported....

On Friday, the Taliban seized control of Firoz Koh, the provincial capital of Ghor, Afghanistan, marking at least 17 Afghan provincial capitals the Taliban have seized in the span of a week. Videos and photos have surfaced on social media showing the Taliban taking over swaths of U.S.-donated military equipment that the Taliban is using to continue overtaking Afghanistan.

Taliban forces have reportedly captured around 100 U.S.-made Humvees and MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) as well as U.S. ScanEagle drones left behind and the Kunduz Airport.

The Taliban captured Kunduz Airport on Wednesday and on Thursday, German journalist Julian Röpcke tweeted, “The #Taliban not only seized appr. a hundred US humvees and (MaxxPro) MRAPs at Kunduz airport, but also several US ScanEagle drones. Billions of US tax payer $ going to Islamist extremists, thanks to the administration’s hasty withdrawal without a peace deal or follow up mission.

On Friday, CNN reported that Firoz Koh fell into Taliban control, marking at least the 17th Afghan provincial capital taken by the Taliban in the span of a week.

Al Jazeera separately reported the Taliban control 18 of the 34 Afghan provincial capitals, including Sar-e-Pul, Sheberghan, Aybak, Kunduz, Taluqan, Pul-e-Khumri, Farah, Zaranj, Faizabad, Ghazni, Herat, Kandahar, Lashkar Gah, Feruz Koh, Qala-e Naw, Pul-e-Alam, Terenkot and Qalat.

Reuters shared footage from Kandahar, including a clip of dozens of Afghan civilians standing on top of a captured Humvee.



EHA News tweeted additional pictures of abandoned U.S. equipment that has fallen into Taliban hands in recent days.

Taliban has captured a massive stash of US-made weapons and drones as they tear towards #Kabul. The insurgents have added American howitzers and a helicopter to their inventory,” EHA News tweeted.

It is unclear how operable the cannon and helicopter EHA News reported are. The helicopter is missing its rotor and its right landing skid.

On Thursday, another Twitter user shared video of convoys of military vehicles bearing the flag of the Afghan government driving out of a crowded city center. They tweeted, “In #Kandahar, #troops are fleeing the city in tanks, and the Taliban are pursuing them.”

On Friday, another Twitter user shared video purporting to show an Afghan National Army Camp surrounded by Taliban fighters. They tweeted, “Badgias afghan army camp called liwa surrounding by taliban and waiting for surrender of afghan army #Kandahar.”

On Thursday, amid the rapid Taliban territorial gains, the Department of Defense announced it would send three U.S. infantry divisions to help evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The three infantry divisions, including two U.S. Marine divisions and a U.S. Army division, represent a total force of about 3,000 troops.

One of these photos is from April 1975.

I don't know what the Chinese think they're going to do in Afghanistan, they seem to have more than enough problems already. And they're enslavement of the Uyghurs might not play all that well with the Taliban.

I ask that you not use my name. I am a currently serving General Officer and what I have to say is highly critical of our current military leadership. But it must be said.

I don’t blame President Biden for the catastrophe in Afghanistan. It was the right decision to leave, the proof of which is how quickly the country collapsed without US support. Twenty years of training and equipping the Afghan army and all that they were capable of was a few hours of delay in a country the size of Texas. As for his predecessor, the only blame I place on President Trump was that he didn’t withdraw sooner.

We should blame President Bush, not for the decision to attack into Afghanistan following 9-11, but for his decision to “shift the goalposts” and attempt to reform Afghanistan society. That was a fool’s errand any student of history would have recognized. And yes, we should place blame on President Obama for his decision to double down on failure when he “surged” in Afghanistan, rather than to withdraw.

However, most of the blame belongs to the leadership of the US military, and the Army in particular. The Washington Post’s “Afghanistan Papers” detailed years of US officials failing to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan, “making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” That report was two years ago, and the stories within it began more than a decade before that. Afghanistan was, and always will be, “unwinnable”.

Of course, I blame President Biden for the disastrous retrograde operation still unfolding. But let us not allow that to deflect us from heaping even more blame on military leaders. They stonewalled President Trump rather than beginning deliberate preparations to exit the country when he told them to. They thought that they could outlast him and then talk sense to his successor. Then after the inauguration, they pressed the new president to reverse course. He wisely chose withdrawal. Then and only then did the generals begin their preparations in earnest. But it was too late to do it well.

The war in Afghanistan lasted more than twice as long as the Vietnam War. Although the cost in terms of American blood was thankfully far smaller, the mistakes are the same: America got involved in a long land war in Asia, in a peripheral region, in order to prop up a floundering and unreliable government, and at a time when there was a much bigger looming threat. In fact, Afghanistan was worse than Vietnam in that at least the Vietnam War was tangentially related to the effort to stop the global spread of communism during the Cold War. Afghanistan was worse than Vietnam in another respect: the military’s leaders of the Vietnam era had no precedent to dissuade them from a disastrous path. Today’s military leadership has the precedent of not just Vietnam, but also Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. That much obtuseness must be punished and removed from the system.

General Milley must resign. Not only is he the Chairman of the Joint Staff, prior to that he was the Chief of Staff of the Army. While all services share the blame, the Army is the land domain proponent. The 20 years of failure in Afghanistan is an Army failure. Scores of other generals also deserve a thorough evaluation; many of them are complicit in the lies to protect a decades-long failed strategy.

Secretary of Defense Austin also must be fired. The recently retired Army general and former CENTCOM commander was, and still is, part of the culture that is impervious to the fact that 20 years of trying it their way did not work.

Just as it did after Vietnam, the military, and especially the Army, must conduct a comprehensive review of why it exists. The purpose of the Army is to visit profound violence on our nation’s enemies; it is not to rebuild failed states. We have decades of experience: counter-insurgencies and nation-building does not work for America. We do not have the stomach for long wars of occupation—and that is a good thing. We are a nation of commerce, not conflict. A constellation of retired stars will tell you that the two can coexist. They are wrong. Retired Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General Jack Keane said only two months ago that because Afghanistan consumes just a small portion of the force, America “can afford the cost of fighting” there. What he does not see is that for 20 years, that “small portion” was the most important portion of the military. Everything else necessarily is subservient to the portion of the force in conflict. It has altered who the Army is and how it thinks. There exists only a handful of officers below the general officer ranks who served during the Cold War and who have lived through an era of great power conflict. From private through brigade commander, virtually every Army Soldier serving today has experienced little other than counterinsurgencies or nation-building while operating out of secure FOBs. Large scale combat operations and insurgencies require different cultures and mindsets. In a resource constrained environment, the same service cannot do both well. The Army today could not win a major war. Yet, winning a major war, is the number one reason why an Army exists. It will take a generation to break bad habits, to think in terms of closing with and destroying the enemy versus winning hearts and minds. Keane sees raw numbers (and ignores the stark evidence that there was no progress over 20 years) and thinks that America’s Army can sustain that level of commitment. It cannot, and the opportunity cost to the culture of the force is much too great. Ignore him. Ignore Petraeus, McMaster, Stavridis, and the rest of their ilk.

Concurrent with its review of purpose, the Army must reevaluate its size and how it is organized. The active component is much too large. That makes it too eager to get involved in irrelevant theaters where failure is likely or even preordained. It should be very difficult for an American president to deploy the Army without the National Guard performing most combat operations. You argue that that takes time? Yes, that’s the point: it should take time to make the case to the American people that war is worth it.

The Marine Corps must provide the nation’s rapid response forces. It is a self-contained deployable multi-domain force. Some would argue that the service has both insufficient combat power and staying power. However, that is a feature, and not a flaw, as it forces the nation to rely on its Army—and hence its reserve components—before engaging in heavy combat or lengthy operations. The current Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Berger, already seems to recognize his service’s role—hence his decision to eliminate armor from the Corps.

Congress must reevaluate the authorities contained within Sections 12301 through 12304 of Title X. The president has too much latitude to, on his own authority, mobilize tens or even hundreds of thousands of Guardsmen and Reservists without congressional approval. It must be the policy of the United States that we do not place our service members in harm’s way without first making the case to the American people. This also means ending the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force as well as strengthening Congress’ role in the War Powers Act such that, absent an actual declaration of war, there can be no war.

Some would argue that such a constraint would limit the nation’s ability to respond to a Russian incursion in the Baltics or a Chinese attack on Taiwan. However, recent open-source studies conclude that the US military already is unable to defend against either attack. Pretending otherwise while not having the means to back up our assurances unnecessarily emboldens our partners and allies, making such an attack more likely. We lose nothing by making the law match the reality.

Let us not forget the intelligence agencies. They reported that Kabul was at risk of falling in as little as 90 days. That report was from last Thursday! The capital fell in less than 90 hours. Failure must be punished. And punishment in a bureaucracy means mass firings and a smaller budget—not more money so that they might be better the next time. Congress must consolidate and collapse our intelligence agencies. And when its reorganization is done, if the overall size of the nation’s intelligence apparatus is a quarter of what it is now, that still is too large.

And while we are on the topic of “too large,” DoD must be halved. There are too many flag officers, too many agencies, departments, and directorates. It is the only secretariat with independent but supposedly subordinate secretaries. There are too many Geographic Component Commands—each led by a 4-star virtual proconsul whose budget dwarfs what the Department of State spends in their regions. The result is a foreign policy that is overly military and underly diplomatic, informational, and economic. Congress must revisit the 1947 National Security Act and the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act. Both were good for their times, but after decades of experience, there clearly are new reforms necessary.

Unreformed, DoD is an inscrutable labyrinth which invites fraud, waste, and abuse. The excess attracts unscrupulous camp followers. Amazon did not choose Crystal City to locate its new headquarters because of low rents and ease of transportation access for its 25,000 employees. It chose the Arlington, Virginia neighborhood because it is two blocks from the Pentagon. That building controls the distribution of three-quarters of a trillion dollars every year. Most of it is wasted. The excess is apparent in the scores of class-A high rises housing defense contractors just blocks from the Pentagon. To end that waste, nothing so concentrates the senses as austerity.

Let me conclude with one last thought: the generals, the intelligence analysts, the defense contractors, and the pundits all leveraged America’s rarest resource: the American serviceman and woman. They are the ones who fought, and sweat, and bled, and died for what is now clearly a failed strategy and a doomed mission. Even after its failure was apparent to their leaders, they continued to enlist and reenlist, largely because their superiors—the experts—assured them that success was possible. It was not. It never was. Absent American support, Afghanistan collapsed over the length of a long weekend. That is proof enough that the last 20 years were in vain, and proof enough that the system is broken from within.

None of the experts in our government thought to contact our NATO allies before our disastrous decision to leave, and now the UK is openly debating in Parliament the usefulness of NATO and if they can trust the United States going forward since they were caught flat footed by a unilateral decision we made without speaking to them. The UK has been ride or die with us for over a century, and it’s shameful that the “experts” not only put our people in harm’s way by the thousands, but the citizens of our allies who didn’t even get a courtesy e-mail.

But hey, at least the young buck national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who has no discernable work history went to an Ivy League school and was a Rhodes scholar, right?

I really think between Afghanistan and COVID, Americans should really question why our “expert” class exists, and if they should ever be listened to again.

"I'm now the fourth American president to preside over war in Afghanistan—two Democrats and two Republicans," President Biden said during his speech on August 16. "I will not pass this responsibly on— responsibility on to a fifth president." He needn't have corrected himself. He did indeed irresponsibly bequeath to his successor a terrible situation in central Asia.

The best-case scenario, according to Biden, would look like this: Afghanistan's reversion to Islamofascism fades from the international headlines. The Taliban understands that its continued rule depends on its ability to prevent terrorists from launching attacks from its territory. America goes back to fighting over masks and vaccinations and "building back better," or whatever.

But the best-case scenario is an illusion. Why? Because the war isn't over. Afghanistan is just one front in a global conflict that the United States did not initiate and cannot wish away. The Cold War did not end when the South Vietnamese government collapsed. Nor will the war on terror or the "Long War" or the "Forever War" cease with Taliban control of Afghanistan. When participants in the worldwide Salafist-jihadist movement look at the developments of the last week, they don't see reasons to quit their mayhem. They see the chaos, panic, violence, disorder, and American retreat as a vindication of their ideology and a spur to further action.

It's happened before. North Vietnam's victory over the South did not make communism less expansionist or revolutionary. On the contrary: Laos fell to the Communists, Cambodia was subjected to the barbarism of the Khmer Rouge, Cuba sent advisers to the pro-Communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the Sandinistas overthrew the anti-Communist Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and a pro-Communist insurgency took root in El Salvador. The relentless humiliations that followed America's defeat in Vietnam ended Jimmy Carter's presidency. They did not stop until Ronald Reagan shifted the nation's course.

Or try a more recent example. When America removed its troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 and failed to enforce its red line against the use of chemical weapons in Syria in 2013, the Middle East did not become less violent or pathological or dangerous. It was only a matter of time before ISIS overran the Iraqi cities of Falluja, Ramadi, and Mosul. On June 29, 2014, the terrorist army's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the formation of a caliphate. Then ISIS moved toward Baghdad and enslaved and massacred Iraq's Yazidi population along the way.

So terrible was ISIS that in August 2014 President Obama intervened against it with airstrikes—an intervention that continued, with greater success, under Obama's successor. As I write, the caliphate is no more, Baghdadi is dead, and Iraq has another shot at a better future. There are 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and some 900 in Syria. This is not a coincidence.

How long, then, before U.S. forces return to Afghanistan? I recognize that it might feel a little silly to ask such a question at this moment. Biden already has deployed more troops to Afghanistan to evacuate civilians than were there when he gave the order to leave. Let's say, though, that the withdrawal is completed without incident—a questionable assumption—and that there are no Americans in Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. What happens next?

The first thing to note is that the Taliban faces rebellion. Demonstrations against the return of the Islamic militia have been met with violence. They may increase in number. Meanwhile, the son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary anti-Taliban mujahid who was murdered two days before 9/11, has announced the renewal of his family's resistance campaign. Just as the Taliban never surrendered after the U.S. intervention, neither will the former partisans of the Northern Alliance acquiesce to the collapse of Kabul. Afghanistan is too geographically and ethnically diverse to submit easily to the domination of one party.

Even a low-grade civil conflict will draw in other powers. The list of interested parties begins with nuclear-armed Pakistan and includes Iran, Russia, China, and India. America will be forced to pay attention and likely will become involved. After all, the fate of Afghanistan is part of the "great power competition" that President Biden said he cares about.

Biden also said he's "adamant that we focus on the threats we face today in 2021—not yesterday's threats." And the "terrorist threat," he went on, "has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan." He didn't acknowledge that one of the reasons the threat spread out of Afghanistan was that for 20 years America denied it a base there. Now that the Taliban is in, and the Americans are out, the elements of al Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan today will be joined by more holy warriors.

Not to worry, though, said Biden. "We conduct effective counterterrorism missions against terrorist groups in multiple countries where we don't have a permanent military presence." And we can do the same thing in Afghanistan, he continued, because "we've developed counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and decisively if needed."

Let's hope he's right. The problem with his argument is that America does have a "military presence" in north and east Africa, Syria, and Iraq, as well as in Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and elsewhere. And America does have a naval presence in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean. Our eyes are "firmly fixed" on bad spots in the Middle East and North Africa because we are nearby. The horizon over which our counterterrorism forces must travel is short. That won't be the case in Afghanistan.

Biden created a situation in which America has neither boots nor eyes on the ground in a landlocked, mountainous country thousands of miles from port and surrounded by unfriendly states. Unlike 20 years ago, China and Russia are strong and adversarial and looking for opportunities to embarrass the United States. Every threat or attack that emanates from Afghanistan will testify to U.S. stupidity and weakness. Furthermore, the Taliban, even as it is dogged by internal opposition, will command more territory and field stronger forces than any of the Salafist-jihadist outfits scraping by in the ungoverned and contested spaces of the Maghreb, the Sahel, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. Our intelligence capabilities will be hobbled and our response time lengthened.

This dispiriting assessment doesn't include the propaganda boon to the Salafist-jihadist cause. Kabul will be transformed from an island of modernity to the global capital of anti-Western jihad. International terrorism flourished alongside the Islamic State. It manifested in spectacular, mass-casualty attacks in Paris, Marseilles, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Manchester. "For a long time now Islamist movements have defined the creation of an ‘Islamic state' as their goal and standard for achievement," writes former State Department official Charles H. Fairbanks. "A state provides a better terrorist sanctuary, and has far more versatile capabilities, than a movement." A state gives a movement safe harbor, institutional support, and physical inspiration for "lone wolves" in the West to murder unbelievers. Such a state is what the Taliban will build in America's place.

"I made a commitment to the American people when I ran for president that I would bring America's military involvement in Afghanistan to an end," Biden said. "And while it's been hard and messy—and yes, far from perfect—I've honored that commitment." Yes, he has. The Taliban's military involvement in Afghanistan, however, continues in our absence. And so the Afghan people are left to suffer, the world watches agog, and America is vulnerable to resurgent Islamic extremism. The Forever War isn't over—it's entered a new phase. Where the enemy has the upper hand.

...I heard even the married mooslems pack their butt buddie's fudge and rape sheep, sorry damn faggots.

All across the nation, American forces are being mobilized. Here is what have learned in the 10-11 hours.

Some of land-based military at Ft. Carson are scrambling to deploy to an undisclosed location
Luke Air Force Base is am F-35/F-16 training base to foreign based pilots, mostly from Singapore. However, some of the Air Force Pilots have been deployed to Hawaii.
Ft. Bliss has been in the news for accepting the first 10,000 Afghan allies. Under the cover of that operation, an undetermined deployment of land-based forces is underway. Some have concluded that a massive rescue mission to various locations in Afghanistan is underway and will commence withing 48-72 hours with rapid deployment teams. However, I no longer share this conclusion.
The most telling deployment is coming out of naval base in Bremerton. For the past 6 weeks, Sam Honnold and myself have been involved in reporting on a multi-national naval task force off the coast of India in supports of a 250,000 man deployment to the Chinese border. Further, the forces in South Korea and Japan have been mobilized against a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I have concluded that no immediate rescue operation in Afghanistan will take place. This is deployment for World War III with China. I have been told, more than once by credible sources that Millie and Biden are being left out of the command decisions for these forces. More to the point, Sam published this account, which originated with the Mexican government. Is Trump in contact with AMLO, because AMLO is NOT cooperating with the Biden handlers. The Biden handlers are working with the Bush crime family and the governors of three northern Mexican states that are on the Southern border. These three states have been working closely with the Chinese and the cartels, in part, are serving as their light infantry forces, armed by the CHICOMS. WE ARE UNDER THREAT OF INVASION ON BOTH OUR NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN BORDERS FROM EMBEDDED CHINESE FORCES! It should be noted that these three Mexican states are basically controlled by the Chinese. A state of insurrection exists within Mexico. Sam Honnold has already revealed the following to Hal Turner. Sam asked me to publish the following from his site:

Two Congressmen, a Democrat Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Republican Peter Meijer (R-MI) took a secret trip to the Kabul Airport to get an idea of what is really happening with the evacuation of Americans and the Afghans who helped us in the war effort. Their report was not positive. Congressmen’s secret Kabul trip

Each of the congressmen is a military veteran, and a member of the House Armed Services Committee kept their trip a secret didn’t tell the Congressional leadership, the administration, or the State Dept. people on the ground. The military on the ground didn’t find out until their plane was about to land. After taking a commercial flight to the UAE, They flew to Kabul on a military plane and stayed in Kabul for about seven hours. Per Rep. Moulton, they “insisted on leaving in a plane that was not full, in a seat designated for crew so that we didn’t take a seat from someone else.”

The two Reps asked the press not to report their mission until they left Afghanistan airspace. They wanted their trip to be seen as information gathering, not grandstanding.

After returning, the two Congressmen released this statement praising the Americans on the ground and explaining that according to the military people on the ground there is no way that the evacuation would be done by August 31:



The reaction by the administration and Congressional leadership was not positive.

While the two were still on the flight home, Pelosi sent a memo to all members of the house to “reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that Members not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger. Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the US military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan.” ...

After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time, even by September 11.

At least 12 servicemen are now dead. And still no briefing from the White House or the Pentagon. I suspect they're trying to find some way to spin this.

“The Taliban have asked Turkey for technical help to run Kabul airport after the departure of foreign forces ... Keeping the airport open after foreign forces hand over control is vital not just for Afghanistan to stay connected to the world but also to maintain aid supplies and operations.“
https://tolonews.com/index.php/afghanistan-174394

“Bilal Karimi, who has functioned as a spokesman for the Taliban, tweeted ... ‘Today, three important locations in the military part of Kabul airport were evacuated by the Americans and are under the control of the Islamic Emirate. Now, a very small part remains with the Americans’”
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/taliban-say-seized-control-parts-kabul-airport-claim-victory

“Taliban forces have taken up position in Kabul airport and are ready to take full control as early as this weekend, as soon as U.S. forces leave, two senior Taliban figures said on Friday.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-...-take-over-taliban-officials-2021-08-27/

The general officer U.S. military ranks have a big problem: The field grade officer and noncommissioned officer ranks have had enough of the double standards applied to leadership.

Top line: Whereas those out in the field are held strictly accountable for any failure, real or imagined, general officer ranks are rarely held accountable for far worse leadership failures that have a far greater impact.

One Marine lieutenant colonel just evinced this sentiment in a Facebook video post. Looking directly into the camera, Stuart Scheller stated , "I think what you believe in can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk. So, if I’m willing to risk my current battalion commander seat, my retirement, my family’s stability to say some of the things I want to say, I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, accountability from my senior leaders."

Explaining his "demand for accountability," Scheller referenced the double standards applied to field grade officers and general officers. He noted that if a "battalion commander has the simplest live-fire incident, [equal opportunity] complaint. Boom. Fired." But Scheller pointed out that there has been no accountability for the litany of leadership failures that have defined the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He noted that "we have a secretary of defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Forces could withstand the Taliban advance. We have chairmen of the Joint Chiefs — who the [Marine Corps] commandant is a member of [the Joint Chiefs] — who’s supposed to advise on military policy. We have a Marine combatant commander. All of these people are supposed to advise."

Scheller's point is well-made. But the lieutenant colonel's is just one example of the Pentagon's double standards fetish.

The Navy served up another example last year. Facing a COVID outbreak, Capt. Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier ordered his ship to port. Crozier was then relieved of his command. That decision sparked fury among lower ranks, who rightly believed that Crozier was being punished for protecting his personnel but embarrassing the admirals. Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly then helpfully lambasted the Theodore Roosevelt's crew for their support of Crozier.

The rage was and remains justified. Any shipboard mistake or failure results in a near-guaranteed relief of command. But when it comes to failures on the part of senior officers?

Forget it.

Whether it's vast cost and delivery overruns for already undesirable platforms such as the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier or the absurd F-35 fighter jet , the admirals and generals in charge get to skate into promotion, to retirement, and then onto the boards of defense companies. Such defective professional culture sets an incentive for ambitious young officers to focus more on the risks and politics of a mission than accomplishing said mission. Risk aversion bears particular concern with regard to the Navy and Marine Corps, which would need field grade officers to show initiative and a high-risk tolerance in any conflict with China .

The challenge is real.

As Scheller was likely losing his career on Friday, a Pentagon general officer was proving that political cover comes first. Asked whether the Taliban had been handed a list of Afghan allies (as reported by Politico ), Army Gen. Hank Taylor arrogantly suggested that handing over this de facto kill list was a good idea. In so doing, Taylor reminded everyone that the prerequisite to be a U.S. general officer is no longer to evince intellect and leadership, but rather to show utter subservience to higher ranks.

Leadership starts at the top and sets the initiative down the ranks. It's time for some four stars to resign.

The U.S. botched exit out of Afghanistan just gets worse every day it seems. As the press finally steps up to do their jobs and hold the Biden administration accountable, many are still giving cover for the president, even after 13 of our servicemen and women were tragically killed by terrorists.

Today, the big three networks chose not to report on another heartbreaking story out of the New York Times, Sunday, about university students trapped in Afghanistan, abandoned by the U.S., as the August 31 deadline nears.

The [i]Times[/i[ reported Sunday that hundreds of students at the American University of Kabul were promised that they would be evacuated and waited all day at the airport Sunday, only to be turned away:



Even worse, these students were also told that their names and information had been shared with the Taliban by the U.S. military, according to “protocol,” which is consistent with other reports about American names being handed over to the Taliban:



This is at least the second report revealing how the U.S. was giving “kill lists” to the Taliban. This weekend, NBC and CNN journalists grilled Biden officials on this alarming news and one Biden official even admitted that names were given.

This morning the networks briefly touched on how many Americans and Afghans trying to evacuate would be left behind.

On Good Morning America, ABC's Ian Pannell reported how at least 250 Americans are still stranded in Afghanistan: “The urgency to evacuate greater than ever. Only 50 American citizens able to get out in a 24-hour period over the weekend. At least 250 who say they want to leave still remain," he stated.

On NBC’s Today show, Richard Engel reported, “The U.S. Is in the final stages of the evacuation. People are not able to get on to the air base anymore. Many Afghans are frightened and it looks as if they are going to have to wait for the civilian airport to open up. No indication when that might happen, however.”

WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - A week into the evacuation from Kabul, the U.S. military was forced to take a drastic step: stop all flights from Hamid Karzai International Airport for seven hours because there was nowhere for the evacuees to go.

For months, military officials had urged the U.S. State Department to convince other countries to take Afghans at risk from Taliban retaliation. They had largely failed to secure agreements with other countries, prompting officials across the U.S. government to rush to try to find space for the evacuees.

The Biden administration's scramble was emblematic of failures over the past month, which culminated with a hastily organized airlift that left thousands of U.S.-allied Afghans behind and was punctuated by a suicide bombing outside Kabul's airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghans.

The chaotic end to America's longest war has sparked the biggest crisis of President Joe Biden's seven months in the White House, finger-pointing within the administration and questions about who, if anyone, would be held responsible.

Despite the missteps, the administration carried out one of the largest airlifts in history, evacuating more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and people of other nationalities amidthe threat of attacks by Islamic State militants.

The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan on Monday.

Current and former officials and lawmakers said there is little appetite for Biden to fire or demote top advisers over the handling of the U.S. withdrawal. The Democratic president, meanwhile, has strongly defended his administration's actions.

Frustrated and angry, officials at the Pentagon have privately blamed the lack of urgency leading up to the airlift on the State and Homeland Security departments, who in turn have blamed the White House for slow decision-making.

"Finger-pointing is an ugly Washington sport ... in this case, fingers could be pointed in all directions and probably be right in each case," said Dan Fried, a former senior U.S. diplomat now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

"A failure like this is collective. Everybody screwed up," Fried added.

A source familiar with the matter defended the evacuation planning and said the State Department was unaware of any concerns at the Department of Defense about a lack of urgency in the effort.

White House officials told Reuters that firings have not been discussed, but the administration expects Congress to aggressively investigate the turbulent exit from Afghanistan in hearings.

One Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said any dismissal would be seen as a tacit admission that the president had erred in removing troops unconditionally from the South Asian nation.

Biden, in a defiant speech on Tuesday, defended his decision to withdraw the troops and stood by the evacuation plan.

"Some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and 'Couldn’t this have be done - have been done in a more orderly manner?' I respectfully disagree," said Biden, who noted that he was ultimately responsible for the withdrawal.


POLITICAL DECISION


Democratic congressional committee leaders have pledged thorough reviews of the events in Afghanistan, but they made clear they intend to look into the entire 20-year conflict, which unfolded under the watch of four presidents, starting with Republican President George W. Bush.

On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the administration has provided many classified and unclassified briefings to lawmakers.

"Now, it's a 20-year war, so there's obviously a lot to dig into," she said.

Democrats want to pursue Biden's domestic agenda - expanding social programs, funding infrastructure and protecting voting rights. On the national security front, they want to highlight their investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

How Congress eventually proceeds will depend on the level of interest from voters.

Less than 40% of Americans approve of Biden's handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said last month that the Biden administration would conduct a "hotwash" - an after-action review - to discover what went wrong in Afghanistan, and that he expected results of that review to be made public.

White House officials said on Tuesday the review had not begun.


WHO IS TO BLAME?


The last month in Afghanistan was a series of failures, from the intelligence and military to diplomatic and immigration fronts, with one core error the failure to anticipate the speed of the Taliban's advance and collapse of the Afghan military.

"In some way, everyone is to blame," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Some Republicans have pointed fingers at Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as the ones most responsible for setting the conditions for a chaotic evacuation, and have demanded their departure.

Republicans also have called for Biden to fire the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the Trump administration's 2020 deal with the Taliban that set the stage for the withdrawal.

But when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was asked whether he thought Biden or Blinken should be impeached, the California Republican did not answer, saying instead his focus was on getting the Americans out of Afghanistan.

Defense officials told Reuters the State Department appeared out of touch with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan and had too much confidence in the Afghan government.

During a congressional hearing in June, Blinken was asked if the administration was considering getting at-risk Afghans out of the country while their cases were being reviewed.

"If there is a significant deterioration in security, that could well happen, we discussed this before, I don't think it's going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday," Blinken said.

The Taliban seized two of Afghanistan's three largest cities - Kandahar and Herat - on Friday, Aug. 13 and took Kabul, the capital, two days later.

WHO IS TO BLAME?

I wish him well.

The United States is aware of about 100 American citizens and legal permanent residents (LPRs) who remain in Afghanistan and are ready to leave the country, a senior State Department official said on Monday.

The State Department was working to get those people on flights out of Afghanistan, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

"Our highest priority in Afghanistan, of course, remains helping those American citizens who wish to leave the country now to do so," the official said.

About 124,000 people were airlifted out of Kabul after the U.S.-backed government there collapsed last month and the Taliban took control.

Since U.S. forces departed and handed over the airport on Aug. 31, 85 American citizens and 79 LPRs have left Afghanistan on sporadic flights, according to the official.

However, some American citizens did not want to leave Afghanistan without family members who did not have the required travel documents to enter the United States, the official said.

The United States would soon intensify efforts to help the immediate family members of American citizens who did not have the needed documentation, the official said, but would not do so for their "extended" families, which could include a large number of people.

"I entirely understand how painful that choice may be for them, but for matters of law and policy, up to this point, we have not extended support for expedited departure and resettlement in the U.S. for extended family members of U.S. citizens," the official said.