UPDATE:
From Defense One:
U.S. Air Force cargo planes and contracted aircraft are headed to Afghanistan to evacuate potentially thousands of Americans and Afghans per day as the Taliban advances on Kabul, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday.
On Thursday the Taliban took Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar, and advances by Taliban fighters have put the country’s capital at risk of falling.
“Our intention is to be able to move thousands per day,” Kirby said.“Time is a precious commodity here,” Kirby said. “Clearly from their actions it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated.”
Time has been a “precious commodity” in Afghanistan for the past six months.
The question is, what took the administration so long to realize this?
Original Post:
Two weeks ago, there was the uplifting news that the first flight to evacuate a couple of hundred of our Afghan allies directly to U.S. soil had indeed reached U.S. soil.
Today, the news out of Afghanistan has turned very grim and foreboding.
As more and more provincial capitals fall to the Taliban and “the insurgents appear to be nearing a complete military takeover” (Afghanistan is “crumbling,” “unraveling,” “collapsing, “imploding” is blazoned everywhere), the U.S. is now scrambling not just to evacuate our Afghan allies but also our own citizens, including staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
As we continue our hasty withdrawal in what is almost an incongruent, contradictory sequence of events the U.S. is now moving three infantry battalions (two Marine and one Army) to the Kabul airport to help evacuate our own citizens.
At the same time, 1,000 troops are being moved to Qatar and, within the next week, another brigade will head to Kuwait.
All these troop moves raise the question “as to how a drawdown of 2,500 so quickly turned into a surge of at least 3,000.”
More than ever, our thoughts and prayers for the people of Afghanistan are in order just as wisdom, courage, and a sense of urgency on the part of our leaders are direly needed.
