KAOS*

Now that 30,000 folks (and climbing) have been evacuated from Afghanistan, can I ask what the magic number is that will change the media narrative? 40,000? 50,000? A million. Please decide.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 23, 2021

Interestingly, most of the reporting is about the "chaos," not about the numbers already evacuated. I even heard one former Bush official (name lost to poor memory) on NPR asserting we simply should have emptied Kabul (or at least the approximately 30,000 Afghanis who "helped" us over 20 years) and worried about "bureaucracy" and relocation later.  (No mention of how many have already been evacuated, just about how bad the line is outside the airport now.) Which is a beyond-Trumpian level of incompetence and misfeasance.  Scoop people up helter skelter and put them...where?  On planes circling for months while governments negotiate how many refugees they will take? 

Even Rammstein doesn't have the capacity for that many people. But, you know, "chaos."

If you heard in June that the Afghan military would collapse, the president would flee, Kabul would fall in 10 days, but the US would still be doing evacuation flights and there are 0 US casualties, would you have called that a terribly executed withdrawal?
Under-considered point https://t.co/vbQkwtibvb

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) August 21, 2021

Why do you want to ruin a perfectly good narrative?

Obama: wants to end Afghan war

Trump: Campaigns on ending war, announces end

Biden: campaigns on ending war, follows prior deal, gives offers months notice

Allies: 😮

This may say more re: allied thinking about ability to extract concessions from US than it does re: US policy https://t.co/G6J18yzGd5

— Josh Shifrinson (@shifrinson) August 23, 2021

Or that narrative.

From August 22 at 3:00 AM EDT to August 23 at 3:00 AM EDT, 28 U.S. military flights (25 C-17s and 3 C-130s) evacuated approximately 10,400 people from Kabul, per White House official

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) August 23, 2021

Clearly not enough is being done.

*One for Mel Brooks fans.