Originally Posted by
falcon900
I might hazard to direct some blame towards the armed services......
Leaving aside the question of whether it is the right decision to leave (I happen to think it is) , there is the question of how to organise that departure. Allowing for the fact that the timetable was to a large degree forced on the military, the planning and arrangements thereafter are down to them, and do seem to have significantly contributed to the unfolding tragedy we are witnessing. It was never going to be easy or painless, but the images of people falling off of an airborne C-17 surely eclipse the iconic Huey over the embassy roof in Saigon shots. Pictures do speak a thousand words, and those images say all there is to say about US attitudes and priorities when push comes to shove. Sorry to be so negative about a friend.
To be fair when you have thousands of innocent civilians, men, women, and children storming the airport trying to get out of the country what were the troops on the ground supposed to do? They can’t open fire and they are heavily outnumbered with porous defences (it’s an airport not fort knox. Mostly chain link fences).
Once the taliban reached the city there was no other way this could have played out. The mistake was not starting the evacuation months ago in an orderly fashion. With time to pre-screen everyone throughly.
You can’t really blame the military. They are just providing the security and the transport. They aren’t the ones placing names on a list. They are just checking the list. It wasn’t up to the military to start the evacuation earlier. That was a political decision
When you say the planning and arrangements were left to them you are correct only for the military personnel. But they are already gone successfully. It is the other civilians that the military are now trying to evacuated over which they have very little control of.