Logic of Leaving Behind
 

What is the logic of leaving Americans and Allies behind???

If it's political, just state "political" and let the thread live.

Otherwise, what is the logic???

People first, Equipment second, Troops last seem logical.

:posting:

I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few days and for the life of me, I don’t understand. It’s either a catastrophic mistake or total incompetence. SMH.

There are Americans in Afghanistan who aren't officials, soldiers, connected to anyone of import. They're just normal people who for whatever reason went to Afghanistan. Maybe they have family there and are visiting. Maybe their spouses have family there and they're visiting. Maybe they're doing missionary work.

For whatever reason, ordinary American citizens are in Afghanistan. There's no singular list of everyone who's there. It's entirely possible that some people have chosen to stay and finish doing whatever they came there to do. It's also entirely possible that they didn't feel any need to inform YOU that they were there, and that they were there on purpose, and that they wanted to stay.

So YOU will never know why those people were "left behind." If even a single un-named unknown unimportant American citizen stays in Afghanistan on purpose, you won't ever learn that.

So why would you even ask what the logic is of "leaving Americans behind?"

The administration can't get ALL Americans out, because the administration doesn't have a list of ALL Americans who are there. That may be why they didn't state they would get ALL of them out. They said they'd get any who wanted to get out, out.

Those who choose to stay, will choose to stay.

The problem though, is that there are Americans who are in remote areas of the country who might not even realize that the American government wants to know if they plan on staying or not. Those people - may also get left behind, and discover that some day, when they decide to leave, they won't be able.

The intention though is to get all Americans out who want to leave.

If the intention was to get all Americans out that wanted to leave, there would have been a plan to do so….there wasn’t. Additionally, if there was a plan, we could have possibly avoided losing 13 military personnel.

There is ALWAYS an emergency evacuation plan for Americans in other countries. And there are ways to contact Americans. Most Americans in country are listed at the embassy and a means of contacting them with an evacuation order is known. The problem is that the plan was not utilized properly, if at all. Americans are instructed ahead of time where to meet for evacuation. It appears that this was not done.
Just my opinion, but this is probably an unusual circumstance where the leader of the country flees, leaving the country in the hands of the enemy. Even so, the evacuation plan should have stipulated such a contingency.
And yes the military has a plan written up for just about every foreign country. When civilians/bureaucrats/congress get in the way of set plans, it is inevitable that we have a catastrophe.

There is no doubt that it is incompetence.

Neo
 

Non-combatant Evacuation Operation.

The OP implies, my interpretation, that leaving people behind was intentional. I completely disagree with that interpretation,. I believe that decisions were made based on the best advice of top military and state department advisors.

There is NO way after 20 years we were just going to walk away and make a clean break. It has NEVER happened in all the places we have sent our military. It is just reality.

It is very easy to armchair quarterback after the fact. But, I don't accept the "incompetence" argument. People saying that were not there do not know what information was used to make the decision.

True there are always plans, and those plans never work out. NEVER have we left a major long-term operation (invasion?) cleanly - look at VN? It doesn't happen. Life is not simply and clean.

True, but there are always contingency plans written in. Even the military members that I know said it is plainly a cluster **** as bad as the assault on Iran way back. Probably going to be worse unless they can pull a rabbit out of their @$$ and pull off a miracle. The way it looks, quite a few will be left behind.

Again, arm chair quarterbacking is easy. Real life is never easy. If you KNOW what information was reviewed and what decisions were made, please inform us. Otherwise, I stand behind my country and my presidents decision.

I know that saying that I actually support something will be taken as political, while all the complaints are obviously not political. If I get banned, so be it. I am proud to be an American and support the Presidents decision to withdraw. I am confident he did was he and his advisors thought was best. I am sorry it didn't work out - that is war. It is messy, it is deadly and it is never the people that sent us there that serve and die.

All I know our govt handled this whole thing incredibly poorly.

I've been to Afghanistan, four tours

First you need to grasp the size of Afg, next you need to think how you get around Afg. Essentially, there is one road, the ring road, to get from many bases (FOBs) to another. This is not interstate level pavement, or pavement at all.

This one will be hard to grasp for many:

The US has said repeatedly that we are leaving, sometimes we even close a base only to reopen it again. Obama did something similar in 2015 when announcing a certain troop level only to step back from that number (this is a fact not a political statement).

So, let's say you are in Afg and another politician says 'we're out of here' do you believe it? Probably not. Let's say you are working at Bagram (BAF), now you have to dash over to Kabul, over the mountains. Just 70 miles, no problem right, just like a trip to Daytona! Eh, no.
US forces avoid that trip with MRAPs.

Suffice to say unless you caught a flight from a base you were screwed. Easy?, again no as the base shrinks more and more of the base perimeter becomes the responsibility of Afghan forces. Competency and the Afghan forces are two words which do not share the same sentence. If they don't let you in you're toast.

I could go on. Ask questions if you want more details.

One more thing, the State Dept might not know how many US citizens are in AFG but I will tell you 99% of the citizens are contractors and 99% of those are DoD contractors and with absolute certainty we do know who they are and if they left AFG. I personally supervised that program.

Had we just been smart enough to include the Afghani government in the withdrawal talks, instead of ONLY the Taliban, more than likely the whole country wouldn't have fallen to the Taliban in a record time - that no one could predict. At least smarter heads eventually prevailed, when the asinine idea of inviting the Taliban to Camp David on 9/11 was floated, to 'celebrate' the original May withdrawal. Let's hope we learned a big lesson here.

I’m not at all trying to make this political but the plan to remove Americans and friends of America was totally botched. You may disagree with the term, “incompetence”, but I’m not sure how else to describe it. Read the article from the NY Times first published on August 21st and updated on the 25th. There were mistakes and miscalculations galore. Advisors can offer advice but the results are only as good as the decisions made. The whole situation was a monumental mistake that could have been avoided.