Originally Posted by
NutLoose
One thing I note from the myriad of films shot by the Taliban gloating at the Airport and also by the press, is what isn't there, there appears to be a lack of Apache or Chinooks on the ground, these I would imagine were a prize asset the Taliban would have used in their propaganda, So I am assuming they have being flown out of country
That's probably because the Afghan Air Force didn't have any Apache or Chinooks. A point which many seem to miss is that, with the exception of the State Dept Sea Knights, the aircraft weren't actually the US's to recover: they belonged to the Afghan state. Oddly, the US government has helped to fuel the misconception by talking about the disabled aircraft as being 'left behind'.
There's almost an argument to say that the US should have limited itself to stripping the aircraft of sensitive equipment, and not completely disabled them: 1) doing so reinforced the Taliban narrative that the former government was simply a puppet of the US; 2) the Taliban don't need aircraft to terrorise the population (they're capable of that anyway) but aircraft might have helped it to fulfil its undertaking to suppress international terrorist groups; and 3) suffering inevitable crashes and IS-K shootdowns would hasten the Taliban's realisation of the limits on its power, which would be helpful to diplomatic efforts by neighbouring powers and the West.