Afghanistan

US troops used teargas and fired warning shots to control crowds of desperate Afghans at Kabul airport overnight as they crowded entrances while Westerners in the city were blocked from making their way towards evacuation flights by Taliban fighters who stopped them on their journey.

The chaos in Kabul continued into its fifth day on Thursday as thousands of natives surrounded the airport, desperate to be put on an evacuation flight to anywhere by one of the many NATO countries that are sending planes out, some of them half-empty.

Overnight, 12 US Air Force C-17 jets removed 2,000 people from the region – an average of just 160 people per flight, despite the planes being able to carry 600 people – six fewer aircraft than in the previous 24 hours. Since August 14, the US has only removed 7,000 people in total from the region.

A U.S. agency spent 13 years documenting our government’s failure to stabilize or rebuild the country.

As the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan continues to brutally unfold, there are not a few “we told you so” lecturers out there. But nobody has earned their stripes more than the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Created by Congress in 2008, SIGAR’s job is to serve as independent oversight over the more than $140 billion dollars appropriated for the country’s reconstruction efforts.

While it’s certainly convenient to depict the shock and miscalculation U.S. officials claim over Afghanistan’s tragic, rapid fall to the Taliban as an intelligence failure, the reality is far worse. It’s a convenient deflection of responsibility for decisions taken owing to political and ideological considerations and provides a scapegoat for a policy decision that’s otherwise unable to offer a persuasive defense.

As CIA’s Counterterrorism Chief for South and Southwest Asia before my 2019 retirement, I was responsible for assessments concerning Afghanistan prepared for former President Donald Trump. And as a volunteer with candidate Joe Biden’s counterterrorism working group, I consulted on these same issues. The decision Trump made, and Biden ratified, to rapidly withdraw U.S. forces came despite warnings projecting the outcome we’re now witnessing. And it was a path to which Trump and Biden allowed themselves to be held captive owing to the “ending Forever Wars” slogan they both embraced.

Interesting read, an ex-CIA guy defends the CIA and scorches the “decision makers & politicians.” Some salt may be required.

h/t HY

Twenty years ago, the military-industrial complex rushed the United States into a pair of wars that cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives — only to end in the abject humiliation of American power in Kabul over the past few days. Meanwhile, defense contractors, who had no financial incentive to properly train an Afghan military to operate independently of them, made off handsomely along the way.

Today, a new alliance of big government and big business seeks to profiteer from the domestic culture war. I call it the woke-industrial complex. The consequences could be even more devastating this time around, for democracy at home and for the moral standing of the United States on the global stage.