On July 23 in a phone conversation with the President of Afghanistan, President Joe Biden promised to provide the Afghan army with air support through the end of August and perhaps beyond. But on July 5th we abandoned Bhagram airbase in the middle of the night without telling anyone. So everyone, President Ghani, the Taliban, and the Afghan army knew that the promise of air support was a lie. President Ghani then fled in a helicopter stuffed with cash and the Afghan army surrendered without a fight.
The Taliban then offered the option to President Biden to let the U.S. military secure Kabul while we evacuated our citizens, our Afghan allies, and our troops. But President Biden didn’t want to do that because we would have had to temporarily bring in more troops, and he didn’t like how that would look. So he told the Taliban that they should secure Kabul during the evacuation instead.
The result: 13 dead American soldiers, hundreds, at least, of abandoned American citizens, thousands of abandoned Afghan allies, and billions of dollars worth of abandoned weaponry and equipment. In the words of President Biden, “an extraordinary success.”