KABUL SNAFU: AN INDICTMENT ON THOSE TASKED WITH THE LAST CALL.

ICHEOKU says so the inept former President Ashraf Ghani pled with America not to evacuate completely from Afghanistan in order not to cause panic among the population; but why was the evacuation not done quietly without arousing the public. Why were the other five bases successfully closed but not Bagram base? What was the urgency that caused the early shutter of Bagram base on May 6th before the set due date of August 31st? It was more than one month period which could have been used to evacuate every evacuee and avoided the surged evacuation at Kabul airport, which created the picture of Afghanistan on fire, run, run, run. 

Everyone needing to be evacuated would have been easily contacted from a database and scheduled for a day certain to be at the airport for onward departure to their destination. So, why was this period not spent doing the airlift which would have been completed or about being completed by now and before the August 31st final pullout. The mission to Afghanistan was to find Osama bin Laden and he was found and killed in 2011; which technically was about the time the mission was completed and the troops should have been brought home. The military would have been making arrangements on how to wind down their mission in Afghanistan right from then. 

So, crunched time should not have been a reason for why the evacuation was muddled up because there was several weeks still left to complete the task by August 31st when whoever made the call to beat made it in May. That person is who should be taking the fall for whatever is being witnessed at Kabul airport that is threatening to destabilize Afghanistan and nobody else. What was the urgency that necessitated the rush when they still had more time to conclude a  mission that was previously scheduled for May 1st and later extended to August 31st. Who signed off on it despite billions of dollars in weapons and equipments which were neither shipped out, destroyed or even handed off to American allies world over. 

There is no country offered American weapons for free who will not gladly pay for the cost of shipping them to them. So, whose wisdom was to abandon such highly priced and valued American weapons in Afghanistan which the Taliban have now taken hold of. What if they start to export these weapons to terrorists all over the world? What if they hand them over to countries that are hostile to America or use the rocket launchers/missiles to target planes. What if Iran buys them for their technology? What if Pakistan commandeers them and use them in their skirmishes against India? How about China and Russia, could they possibly be interested in acquiring them to see the level of sophistication of current American weaponry. 

What were those in charge of completing the task of withdrawal been doing all these years since they were ordered to withdraw from Afghanistan? The military executes as ordered and with military efficiency, so why was the task of withdrawing from Afghanistan not fully implemented as expected. If those weapons left behind were meant for Afghanistan National Army (ANA), what are they doing with night vision capabilities, Apache helicopters and biometric facial recognition devices which they hardly know how to operate, since they will be fighting only AK47 wielding terrorists and have two friendly neighbors, Iran and Pakistan, both fellow acute Islamism countries, with no chance of ever going to war with either.  

Why such huge wastage of American public's funded weapons and equipments; only in the next budget to ask for billions of dollars in new military equipments and weaponry. Something does not look right with the picture, regardless of the appropriateness or lack thereof of the order for final withdrawal from Afghanistan. It looks like the implementation was purposely undermined and sabotaged to force a reversal of course and have American troops sent back into Afghanistan. They had several years to carry out the withdrawal and an additional six months since Joe Biden came into office, to complete a process which was already largely completed, yet it came to such embarrassing scenes as seen at Kabul airport.

ICHEOKU says whatever went wrong occurred during the last few weeks leading up to the July 6th sudden beat it out of Bagram base. It should be investigated to unearth the underlying factors as it is not a good image for America, particularly American military who did all they were asked to do in Afghanistan, plus more, only for those politically skewed officials in Washington DC to fumble the ball at the final hour. If only they had concentrated on their professional role as defenders of America from its foreign enemies and not mired themselves in Washington DC domestic Woke politics, possibly the mission in Afghanistan would have flawlessly and smoothly concluded without the dent that is the ruckus at Kabul airport. 

But thankfully, the Taliban have managed to maintain order so far in the rest of the city of Kabul, and there is no major or total break down of law and order. Their swift move into Kabul averted an otherwise assured complete anarchy which the corrupt and inept President Ashraf Ghani's cowardly abrupt flee would have brought down on Kabul. Taliban should be commended for this, albeit most reluctantly. General Frank McKenzie have some explaining to do on why the effort he was charged with the task ended with such a thumbing down at the tailed of it. As for the defense secretary and other chiefs at the Pentagon, their commander in chief should decide if their performance warrant commendation, promotion, being written up, demoted or even fired for a job not so well done, at least in the eyes of the world. #SupportsTheDecision.