U.S. departure has been a disaster

To the editor:

It is sad that on the day after the Biden Administration abandoned hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan’s to the Taliban it didn’t rate an article in the paper, just a disingenuous opinion piece claiming a President Donald Trump evacuation would have been as bad a debacle as the mismanaged Biden plan.

A freshman at West Point would be smart enough to realize you don’t pull out all your troops and then try to evacuate your citizens and friends.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s news conferences became the lie of the day. The worst lie was his claim that our military would not leave until the last American was out. The Taliban told the leader of the free world that was a no-no and he caved like a house of cards.

He pulled all our people out of Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling the Afghan military or our NATO allies. At the time he was claiming he had full support of our European allies, the British Parliament was voting to condemn his actions. Now thousands of Canadian, British, French and German citizens are also trapped behind enemy lines.

He claimed he had no idea how weak the Afghan government and military were, but in a leaked telephone call with the Afghan president he was asking him to lie about how weak they were.

There are currently six charter planes with Americans at an airfield north of Kabul that are not being allowed to leave.

Twenty-four California students trapped in Afghanistan have been in daily contact with the school corporation but couldn’t contact the State Department while it was still in the country.

And while Bumbling Biden and Gen. Mark Milley claim it was an overwhelming success, out of the other side of his mouth Biden says it was all Trump’s fault.

Stephen Erwin

Portland