The ‘Saigonization’ of Kabul basically comes down to one question: why did the military evacuate before the civilians?
It’s the baffling question at the heart of any examination of what went wrong. The military, which evacuated first, is blaming the State Department for delaying the evacuation.
But why did the State Department delay the evacuation?
The State Department delayed evacuations at the order of President Biden after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani warned that evacuating Afghan allies earlier would destroy morale and lead to the collapse of the government.
If true, this localizes the fault directly with Biden.
Blinken, Austin, and Milley made some bad decisions and went along with some very bad decisions, but if the State Department was following orders, then the ultimate blame for creating the Taliban hostage crisis stops with Biden.
That means everything, the national humiliation, the murder of 13 Americans, and the entire ‘Saigon’ spectacle on TV.
A normal evacuation in which the State Department began its exit, prompting the civilians to leave immediately (Biden, his cronies and his media allies keep emphasizing State Department warnings, but as long as the Staties had 1,000 Americans working in Kabul, the message was that everything was fine) and in which the military was the first in and the last out would have avoided much of this preventable disaster.
Biden’s call means that he was the master of this disaster.
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