Lessons learned in US withdrawal from Afghanistan so far

The worst-case scenario happened, but at least the military could respond in a day because they were ready and prepared in the neighborhood. The fat lady has not sung. I am watching  how the evacuation and extraction of Americans and our allies are going. After that first awful day, the US military got their act together. The last war we lost...Vietnam...after the initial helicopter airlifts, we did nothing. Let us hope we do better this time...and just stay out of wars we cannot win in the future.

Update: 8/28/2021

 Sometimes public policy based upon popular opinion has unanticipated bad consequences. Public opinion has been in favor of ending the war for some time.   Viet Nam should have been a warning. I think that the problem is that Trump did not have much of an exit plan or a chance to develop one and I think that Biden had not foreseen that more than American citizens would be airlifted...and maybe a few SIVs already granted. He did change gears to expand the airlift to over 100,000 of those not in those original plans. For that he gets credit. The extra four months to get people out he negotiated with the Taliban were nearly wasted in red tape and in agreeing with the Taliban not to start a panic rush for the door that would turn into a stampede. The stampede happened anyway. That is the buck that stops on Biden's desk.

 We lost the war as did the Russians before us to a barbaric, radically extreme religious sect in a country that is mostly tribal. with their tribal chiefs willing and able to take bribes to join whichever side will benefit their tribe. The concept of Afghan as a nation is not where their loyalty lies. Of the 4 presidents involved with the Afghan war, only one was wise enough to see the writing on the wall.  It was Biden, who as vice president in Obama’s White House n 2009 opposed continuing the war and doing nation-building

Bloodshed by the victors and a sense of betrayal by Afghans who cast their fate with a losing side can be expected. That is what happens when promises are made by prior administrations and the ball is thrown to the next administration to execute. That Biden is even trying to rescue those Afghans who helped US forces and NGOs who tried to bring society into accepted modern norms is far different than the way we left Vietnam. We did, however, rescue the Hmong, the Vietnamese mountain tribe who were our allies, and Denver has a large population of them as do other parts of the US. One of the Hmong refugee's children just brought the US a gold medal from Tokyo in women's gymnastics. Trump had no plans to rescue anyone from Afghanistan...and it was his team who negotiated our terms of surrender. I am waiting to see how many of those who were not interpreters Biden will rescue. The operation is not over and Biden plans to ignore the August 31 deadline he set. He set priorities to rescue US citizens and those with special visas (interpreters) next, then those who aided charitable and humanitarian non-profits. I cannot quarrel with his priorities. Can you? Trump's deadline was in May. 

Who Are the Taliban, and What Do They Want? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The NYTimes  article is helpful if you can get around the paywall.

To understand my particular interest and to get my take on the tribal nature of Afghanistan, I posted this on Facebook on August 23. 2021  as reports of tribes in the northern part of Afghanistan are showing resistance to the Taliban takeover in the past 30 days.  I began writing about that country early in 2008 when I began a website and began writing for the Sky Hi News.  My earliest columns are posted there.www.mufticforum.com   I have had a hands-on relationship with Bosnia since my college days in 1959 and countries with ethnic conflicts. At Northwestern I spent my senior year on the Balkans and the conflict with traditional Muslim societies coming to grips with Western influences.

August 23, 2021 Interesting to follow. Not so simple. This is an interesting understanding of Afghanistan. The northern tribes that these are have been fighting the Taliban for years. When the US went in after 9/11 they came in from the north with their help. The mujahideen defeated the Russians. The Taliban is mostly from the south and belongs to the Pashtun ethnic group in the south with and the Kandahar area.. The post 9/11 Taliban when defeated were supported and gave refuge with and by Pakistan. There is also a complication that those of Iranian background inhabit parts of the central part of Afghanistan...Shiia. The Taliban is rooted in the Sunni branch of Islam. The Taliban's current rise is heavily supported, it appears, by Pakistan. The views I expressed are based on two things: themufticforum.com which explains why I have followed this so closely and the person who educated me about Afghanistan a US operative and DU professor who was there before 9/11 http://jfrasche.blogspot.com/ I also helped the Colorado School of Mines host some Pashtun women and spent time with them....as part of my activities with the Institute of Internaitonal Education