Afghanistan

It’s been four plus years since the US pulled out of Afghanistan and time for a review of what happened. Trump had proposed to withdraw but he was not reelected so Biden took over. The generals recommended that Biden remove the people, then the equipment and then the troops, leaving behind 2,500 troops and maintaining Bagram Air Base. Things were going slow and Biden saw an opportunity to end the occupation by the 20th anniversary of the war. This meant complete withdrawal by 9/11/21. Against the wishes of his generals, Biden pulled out the troops leaving the people and the equipment behind. The withdrawal culminated in the Abbey Gate terrorist attack on August 26, 2021, which killed 13 U.S. servicemembers, wounding another 45, and killed more than 170 Afghan civilians. The withdrawal concluded on August 30, 2021, when the last U.S. military aircraft left Afghanistan. This caused Biden’s approval polls to drop below 50% from which he never recovered. He wanted to go around the country giving speeches about how he ended a 20-year war but instead had to talk about the rapid removal of people, bringing back memories of the disastrous withdrawal of US troops from Saigon, something he said would not happen. Administration officials have stressed that the operation was “the largest noncombatant” evacuation in U.S. military history. More than 123,000 people were evacuated, including 79,000 since Aug. 14. The news reported this was the largest withdrawal since Dunkirk but Churchill said, “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.” Today there are still Americans in Afghan who want to come home and Biden broke the US cardinal rule of leave no man behind.