American Commanders Are in Direct Talks With Taliban
The original title was “US Ramps Up Emergency Kabul Airlift to Get 5,000 to 9,000 Out Per Day” I changed it because I thought they buried the lede. So I used their subtitle as the title for the Page. The image is from the height of the chaos when lives were lost. Defense One.
Overnight, about another 700 Afghans and 165 American citizens were flown out of the country, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor said.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said there are “reasonable” questions to be asked about whether the administration should have begun evacuating American citizens, diplomats, and Afghans who helped U.S. troops during the war earlier. But he said Afghan officials “made a passionate case” against a mass exodus that might signal a loss of support for the Afghan government.
“Our signaling support for the government obviously did not save the government, but this was a considered judgment,” Sullivan said at a briefing. “When you conclude 20 years of military action in a civil war in another country with the impacts of 20 years of decisions that have piled up, you have to make a lot of hard calls — none with clean outcomes.”
Some will be really angry we are talking to the Taliban. For now, we need each other. While there is great pressure on the negotiations about flying our Afghani translators and allies out, there can be no interference with getting Americans and American allies out. Citizens of anywhere but Afghanistan. For now, we share some interests in people getting to evacuation aircraft without the chaos. And it will make sense to have sensible contact with their government moving forward anyway. If we don’t we lose ground trying to encourage the Taliban to be more moderate.