[PJ] America’s humiliation in Afghanistan goes on. It’s going to get worse, quite possibly much, much worse, before it’s over, assuming it ever is. But the many reasons it didn’t have to be this way are already coming into clearer focus.Start with the decision made sometime before Independence Day 2021 for the July 6 U.S. pullout from Bagram Airfield, the massive operations and supply center for air power, the decisive element of the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.
That the Bagram withdrawal was pulled off at night without prior notice to our Afghan allies was a huge warning sign of the epic disaster President Joe Biden was setting about. Watching closely were the Taliban, Beijing, Moscow, and numerous other centers of evil in the modern world.
But not only was Bagram the heart of U.S. air cover for its own withdrawing forces and for those it built up in the Afghan military, Bagram was an essential asset in the inevitable evacuation of tens of thousands of American civilians and Afghans who helped the U.S.
Bagram could also have provided decisive leverage for the U.S. in the post-withdrawal period, especially in the event of the Taliban victory over the central Afghan government in Kabul. It’s not entirely analogous, but the U.S. ability to maintain its naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba is instructive in this regard.
Another key decision that was made prior to Independence Day didn’t prompt an embarrassingly well-publicized midnight departure because it was carried out behind closed bureaucratic doors in Foggy Bottom.
That was the "pausing" of a special program then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo established to coordinate and expedite the emergency evacuation of U.S. forces and civilians in crisis situations.
Pompeo saw the need for special capabilities that weren’t coalesced in the State Department, so, being a military veteran, he set in motion the creation and establishment of the Crisis and Contingency Response (CCR) bureau.