Having read Franklin Foer's account in the October issue of The Atlantic describing the disastrous evacuation of Afghanistan, I was struck by what it did not contain. Nowhere in the months leading up to the withdrawal did a senior military leader question the choice of Kabul's Karzai International Airport over the more defensible Bagram military air base.
The military chain of command knew an evacuation was imminent for months, and the Kabul airport was even more vulnerable to attack than the disastrous French position at Dien Bien Phu during the first Vietnam war. Despite that, not a single general officer, beginning with the secretary of defense -- a retired general -- raised an objection to the State Department's choice of the Kabul Airport. One of two things happened here: Either they lacked the moral courage to speak up, or they did not know. In either case, I am convinced that the deplorable state of our military professional education system lies at the root of the problem.
Interesting piece. Reminds me of someone pointing out that, in the modern Navy, none of the admirals that fought WWII in the Pacific would ever have made that rank.
3 comments:
An air base wouldnt allow for the pitiful videos of people chasing aircraft or falling off of it. They wanted a negative American spectacle on the world stage, and it was delivered as ordered.
Link is broken.
Link fixed
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