Taking Stock Of The Great and Cowardly Press Freakout Of August 2021

With the American war in Afghanistan and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan now definitively over, I’ve been trying to put the entirety of the last four weeks into some perspective. As you can see I’ve been fairly dug in on the proposition that the great majority of the criticism we’ve seen amounts to ignorance and deflection. Pulling the plug on a failed or misconceived mission isn’t pretty. But it is inevitable. The ugliness is built into the failure rather than a consequence of recognizing it. Most of what we’ve seen is an attempt to deny the failure (mostly hawks) or imagine that withdrawing would be orderly and free of consequences. But with all this reasoning, what parts were handled poorly? What could have been better organized or cleaner?

Perhaps this is only a matter of stepping back and with the benefit of clear eyes and more perspective and, well … agreeing with myself. But honestly, I think I really agree with myself. The airlift evacuation appears to have transported well over 110,000 people out of the country, an astonishing feat under any circumstances and probably unprecedented for a civilian airlift in a kinetic military context and in the context of state collapse.