Thread by @JasonKander

THREAD:
A passage from the President's speech really struck me yesterday.

He addressed the question of why the evacuation of Afghans who worked with the coalition were not evacuated sooner with two claims:

1. Many Afghans didn't want to leave because they held out hope that Afghan forces would hold the line.
2. The Afghan government asked them not to begin evacuations because it could cause panic - a crisis of confidence among the population - including the military.

I believe there are anecdotal examples of this first reason, but I assume they were only anecdotal, and frankly I doubt this was a major part of making the decision to wait.

As to point 2, the Afghan govt's request, I 1000% believe this. The question is should it have mattered?

Way back in 2006, when I arrived in Afghanistan, I was instructed that the Government of Afghanistan ("GoA" we called it) was "the center of gravity in the war."

Usually "center of gravity" is used to describe a more tangible tactical advantage, like terrain for instance.

But in AFG, the GoA was the center of gravity, because - or so the thinking went - if Afghans believed it was successful, it could be successful. Back during my deployment, I believed this too. Firmly. In fact, it still makes sense to me.

AFG is not Iraq. We were not working to win "hearts and minds." We already had them. Most Afghans wanted the coalition to succeed. Instead, we were working to win faith.

Because backing the GoA meant betting your life, and you wouldn't bet your life on a loser bet.

And so when the President says that the GoA asked him not to effectuate a months-long mass exodus of those who helped us, I KNOW that has to be true.

That is exactly how the GoA thought.

The question I keep asking myself is: Would I - if I were in the President's place - have granted that request?

And I really don't know. On the one hand, if you open the floodgates before the Taliban nears Kabul, and then Kabul falls quickly, you'd never know if you caused it.

On the other hand, this was the endgame.

This was the end of our mission in AFG one way or the other. And furthermore, there was just no way the security forces were going to hold. Without our close air support, our intel support, they just weren't built for it.

People keep asking why they didn't fight for their country. First of all, I'm damn tired of hearing that from people on twitter who have never fought for this one, but that's beside the point.

It wasn't a question of whether or not to risk their own lives.

Surrounded, probably hungry, they knew how it was going to end, and if they laid down their arms they might be allowed to live, but more importantly, if they fought and died - they believed the Taliban would send a message by killing their families. What kind of a choice is that?

Back to the GoA: It has been obsessed with optics over accomplishments for two decades. (As someone who conducted anti-corruption and anti-espionage investigations within GoA, I can tell you they were more interested in appearing not to be corrupt than not actually being corrupt)

And so in retrospect, we should have ignored this request from the GoA. We should have begun loading anyone who wanted out onto birds months ago.

It makes me sick to think about the Afghans I served with meeting their fates (if they weren't killed years ago in the fighting).

It's hard to look at my own kids and not think about the fear my Afghan friends must now have when they look at their own.

We owed the people who fought with us more than this.

I want to believe my own experience would have led me to the right choice, but belief is all it is. I can't be sure that given that question I'd have answered correctly. It was simply the final impossible choice in a 20 year string of them.

I just wish we'd gotten it right.