Zombie Shock

Watching events unfold in Afghanistan through a variety of Twitter feeds is almost too much to bear. There were two items in particular that were worth repeating here. First was this transcript of some comments by David Ignatius, a WaPo lefty, talking on MSNBC. Here were the quotes of note.

My sense, as I talk to people in the White House, watch these folks on TV, is that they are really shell-shocked. This is a kind of defeat, a level of reversal that these folks have never known in their lives. These are people who’ve never gotten a bad grade in school and suddenly they find the world collapsing around them. And I think it’s been really, really difficult for them to deal with this...

And now, I think there’s this crushing sense of having let the country down, having let these Afghan people who depended on us down. They know how this plays. They see the whole world is watching the same images. And again, for a White House that prized itself on being smart, being competent, getting things done, this isn’t Trump anymore, this is the good guys have come in, this has been a crushing week I think.

"They know how this plays." No, they really, really don't. They have no idea what's coming next. We are nowhere near the bottom.

Afghanistan is playing out yet another scenario where the American left reveals that they don't know how anything works. When planning a withdrawal from a dangerous territory, removing your military units before your civilian ones is something only an Ivy League genius would contemplate. That's what we did and now we're facing a World War Z ending.

I don't know how these WW-Z sized masses of people get smaller over time.

Nevermind getting civilians out; how do we get our last military out when there's no one to keep the masses back because they're trying to get on the CH-47 w/o shooting your way out?

This ends ugly. https://t.co/VxfR5izTRx

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) August 21, 2021

Who says we'll get to the CH-47 stage at all? When it's clear that the last 3 C-17s at the airport are the last 3 C-17s that will ever come, what will be the point of queueing up in an orderly manner and obeying the guards?

This is what a crash scene looks like when you have all the emergency vehicles you need and the place isn't swarming with 30,000 desperate refugees, some of them armed. Even under these relatively placid conditions, it takes many hours to clear the wreckage.

They didn't teach this kind of thing in the Diversity and Inclusion Management course.

The Best Possible Outcome

The best outcome is that our "best and brightest" learn about humility.

There probably isn't a best possible outcome for the 10-15,000 Americans trapped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan nor the 50,000+ who are seen as collaborators by the Taliban.