The entire Afghanistan situation is political and strategic malpractice, and it is curious if the J4 and loggies at CENTCOM/TRANSCOM were ever consulted at all.
Why is the situation in Kabul is so bad? Mainly, a single runway Kabul international airport sits in the middle of a city of 5 million.
Bagram Air Base (which was closed a month ago) sits 25 miles to the north, in an easily defensible area, multiple runways, secure perimeter. There is zero infrastructure to deal with the tens of thousands of refugees rushing Kabul International Airport.
The US left Bagram in the middle of the night. Up and disappeared. That was a voluntary choice, and it means the plan included evacuating tens of thousands out of a single runway airfield in the middle of a city.
The above images show Bagram. It’s surrounded by nothing. Flat ground. Fields. Bagram is an easy base to reinforce and from which to launch both rescue and punitive missions. The image in the upper right tile is Kabul.
Road distance between Charikar and Bagram is 20 km.
Also, if an enemy attacks the airport, they’re going to be attacking from the city. Urban warfare is the worst type of warfare. Incredibly hard to utilize air support, massive collateral damage.
History Note: 200 yrs ago the Poles explained to Napoleon why he should not go straight to Moscow. Ex Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fought with Mujahedin against the Soviets, explained to the Americans why they should keep Bagram.
But who cares about ‘clever’ advice from eastern Europe?
Paul Plante says
Speaking as a VEET NAM combat veteran who has witnessed first-hand the moronic idiocy that goes on when the US goes to “war,” which is dictated by ignorant hack politicians put in office by moronically stupid people who can vote despite being moronically ignorant, all I can say is that while this seems incredibly stupid, and it truly is, in the history of our involvement in wars, especially when mindless, stupid Democrats are in charge, this stupidity by the Biden-istas and the CULT OF JOE is par for the course, because those fools in Washington, and this includes our supposed “intelligence” agencies, which lack intelligence, lack the ability to think, and in their arrogance, which is really hubris, like the Romans, they think they are in charge of the world.
In his “Remarks by President Biden on the Drawdown of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan” on July 08, 2021, Joe Biden made it incandescently clear to anyone with the ears to hear him that he was cutting and running, skedaddling, doing a tactical đi đi mau (go quickly, bug out), to wit:
Earlier today, I was briefed by our senior military and national security leaders on the status of the drawdown of U.S. forces and allied forces in Afghanistan.,
Our military commanders advised me that once I made the decision to end the war, we needed to move swiftly to conduct the main elements of the drawdown.
And in this context, speed is safety.
Conducting our drawdown differently would have certainly come with a increased risk of safety to our personnel.
end quotes
Like someone skipping out without paying the rent, of course, it is done in the middle of the night, and thus we have the simple story of how we handed Bagram and Afghanistan to the Taliban.
That is what happens when America reaches as far down into the toxic sludge at the bottom of the political barrel to dredge up an incompetent misfit, hack politician and put him not only i8n charge of our nation, but our military, as well.
Paul Plante says
As to the evacuations, here is what Joe Biden himself had to say on the subject in his Remarks by President Biden on the Drawdown of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan” on July 08, 2021, to wit:
Q Mr. President, if this isn’t a “mission accomplished” moment, what is it, in your view?
THE PRESIDENT: No, there’s no “mission accomplished.”
Q How would you describe it?
THE PRESIDENT: The mission was accomplished in that we get — got Osama bin Laden, and terrorism is not emanating from that part of the world.
Q Mr. President, if “speed is safety,” as you just said in your remarks, are you satisfied with the timeline of relocating Afghan nationals?
Is it happening quickly enough to your satisfaction, if it may not happen until next month, at the end?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, much of it has already happened.
There’s already been people — about a thousand people have gotten on aircraft and come home — come to the United States already on commercial aircraft.
So, as I said, there’s over 2,500 people that as — from January to now, have gotten those visas.
And only half decided that they wanted to leave.
end quotes
Joe lacks imagination, a fatal flaw in a supposed “war leader,” which Joe in his mind sees himself as.
In an article entitled “Tactics: Mandatory Imagination in Leadership” by Rémy Hémez on April 1, 2016, we are informed as follows on that subject:
War is both a science and an art.
Therefore, it requires certain qualities that, prima facie, are not those of the military leader.
Among them is imagination, a creative capacity that offers the opportunity to represent objects that are not perceived or to make new combinations of images.
Imagination does not dissipate the fog of war but it helps the tactician to have a vision of what could be beyond it.
end quotes
And there is where Joe Biden fails miserably, and has failed in Afghanistan with respect to Bagram airbase.
In a U.S. Army War College article posted on the internet titled “BELIEVING IS SEEING: ON STRATEGIC IMAGINATION” posted byAndrew A. Hill on March 23, 2018, we learn as follows:
American national security strategy is generally unimaginative.
It is too often constrained by a rigid, unimaginative pursuit of optimal objectives that are poorly-suited to a world in which rival powers are likely to challenge the U.S. indirectly, through various forms of aggressive diplomacy and limited war.
It needs the constructive, creative impulse that characterizes great strategy.
end quotes
But in Joe Biden and his pathetic political administration that rewards political loyalty and reliability instead of intelligence and foresight and imagination, that is totally missing to our detriment, which takes us to a Yahoo News article entitled “‘He does not want them to live on the earth anymore’: Psaki clarifies Biden’s ISIS-K threat” by Brittany Shepherd, White House Correspondent, on August 27, 2021, where we have as follows:
White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified Friday that President Biden’s deadly threat toward ISIS-K terrorists who killed 13 U.S. service members in a suicide bombing attack in Kabul was not theoretical.
“I think he made clear that he does not want them to live on the earth anymore,” Psaki told a reporter during a press briefing when asked to clarify what Biden meant when he said Thursday that he was positioned to strike back at the Islamic State affiliate group.
end quotes
And that comment takes us to Bagram airbase, as we see by going back to that article, to wit:
An explosion outside a major gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport killed at least 100 people Thursday afternoon in what the U.S. described as a “complex attack” carried out by one suicide bomber and Islamic State-linked fighters.
The Pentagon said 13 U.S. service members were killed and 15 more were injured, along with scores of Afghan nationals, in the single deadliest day for U.S. troops in the country in 10 years.
The Islamic State group took credit for the attack Thursday evening.
Biden spoke of the threat from the group on Sunday, saying that “these troops and innocent civilians at the airport face the risk of attack from ISIS-K.”
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Friday that “specific, credible threats” to U.S. troops and allied forces from terrorist groups in the region remain, yet those threats have not halted or deterred the planned retrograde evacuation phase, which is planned to be completed by Aug. 31.
Kirby also confirmed that thousands of ISIS-K prisoners had escaped from regional prisons as the Afghan government collapsed earlier this month and U.S. troops chose to retreat from Bagram Airfield — which housed a prison containing ISIS-K members — in early July.
end quotes
So when Joe gave away Bagram air base, he also gave freedom to the same terrorists who then killed those U.S. Marines at Kabul airport.
Stupid is as stupid does, and outside of the Cape Charles Mirror, nobody seems to be making any kind of issue about Joe setting those prisoners free so they could then make deadly attacks on U.S. troops, apparently because no one in this country, especially the mainstream media, really gives a damn.
kw says
The consequences of this idiocy, for a political photo op, will be very severe. Unfortunately biden and his fellow clowns will not be paying this bill.