Report: Kabul Was Offered To The U.S. By The Taliban; We Declined

According to a new report from the Washington Post, the Taliban asked if the U.S. wanted to control the entire city of Kabul to facilitate our evacuation.

We declined. We told the Taliban that we only needed the airport.

Fox News had this to say:

Taliban fighters took the Afghan capital city of Kabul faster than anyone anticipated earlier this month – including the Taliban – but according to a Washington Post report, the U.S. had an opportunity to hold the city only to willingly turn it over.

When Afghanistan‘s president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the city began to collapse as gangs were reported to be taking over. This led to U.S. military leaders meeting and reaching an agreement with the Taliban, a U.S. official told the Post.

“We have two options to deal with it,” Taliban political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar reportedly said, according to the official. “You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”

Faced with the decision of whether to accept control over Kabul or allow the Taliban to do so, the U.S. opted for the latter, given President Biden’s insistence on withdrawing from Afghanistan by August 31. As part of the agreement, the U.S. assumed control of Kabul’s airport until the end of the month to facilitate its exit while the Taliban ruled the city.

According to the Post’s report, the Taliban had no intention of taking control of Kabul that day. Prior to Ghani’s departure, the U.S. had not anticipated it either, as several top officials had reportedly been on vacation.

The chaos that ensued when Ghani left, however, required someone to step in. The U.S. decided that it should be the Taliban.

If this all turns out to be accurate, then the people in charge of this operation are even dumber than I thought.

I don’t claim to be an expert, and there will always be details that the general public are unaware of, but this seems like another miscalculation.

I suppose the argument would be that Biden didn’t want to send in more troops to secure the city, but he ended up having to send more in because we didn’t.

If we controlled the entire city, wouldn’t it be easier for those who wanted to leave to get to the airport in a calm and timely fashion? There wouldn’t have been Taliban checkpoints to get in.

There wouldn’t have been a need for Afghans to storm the runway and hang on to a C-17 until they couldn’t hang on anymore.

13 young, courageous Americans may very well still be alive right now.

This entire situation was avoidable. The Biden Administration did the steps out of order, made a huge mess, and are acting like everyone should be proud of how it was “cleaned up.”

I’m not. I’ve seen very few who are. All of my liberal acquaintances who were proud that “diginity is back in the White House” are oddly quiet now.

There’s one person who’s digging her heels in though:

I’m proud of @POTUS and the incredible job he’s doing. He’s the right person for the job in this moment in history. #IStandWithBiden

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) August 29, 2021

What a lunatic.

Don’t blame me – I didn’t vote for someone with the IQ of a giraffe fart.

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) August 29, 2021