One of the things the United States is world-class at doing is logistics.
Think of what we’ve witnessed during the time since March 2020, when there were all manner of issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic and shortages of everything from toilet paper to potato chips.
When it came to delivering things, if the things were there to be delivered, then delivery happened. Think of FedEx, UPS, the USPS and Amazon. These are all delivery services extraordinaire.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” — nor even deadly viruses kept the USPS and the other organizations from continuing to get it done.
Who didn’t watch with anticipation the news feed when the delivery trucks from FedEx and UPS were staged outside the Pfizer plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, trucks that were outfitted with the refrigeration equipment necessary to safely carry the first vials of vaccine across the country?
While it is hard to say that these outfits are perfect, it is harder to deny that most of the time — a vast majority of the time — they get the job done.
Yes, we are really, really good at logistics.
Which brings me to the collapse in Kabul.
Logistics just isn’t about the physical moving of things, although that is critically important.
It is largely about planning. Given something at point A, the need to get it to point B, and based on the means by which the transfer can take place … how do you do it?
This is not to objectify people, to make it seem as though they are the same as a Prime box of whatever.
It is to say the fact that there are literally thousands of people whose lives are at risk — at risk because they were on the same side that the U.S. was ostensibly there to support, to say nothing of the U.S. personnel on the ground who were told to “lock down” because getting from the embassy to the airport was problematic at best — who are left in that position because there was a failure to plan.
A failure to plan how to move from A to B with the equipment available to make that move.
President Trump had said that the U.S. would leave Afghanistan by May. President Biden talked September. It all came down in August.
Which leads me to wonder: Why didn’t the Biden team take the time to get the logisticians in place to come up with plans to get people out of that country tout suite?
To hear the otherwise urbane Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying, in effect, “Gee, that happened faster than we’d expected,” is really quite a sad indictment of the inability of this country to get the loafers, high heels and running shoes off the ground. (We do a good job of getting the boots on and off; it is the civilians for whom there is a serious, serious problem.)
Biden has wanted the U.S. out of Afghanistan for more than 10 years. Didn’t he take some of that time to figure out how to accomplish that rather than just to make a proclamation about how he was doing the right thing?
Whether the U.S. leaving is right or wrong thing is not the issue here. What is the issue is the fact that we had a responsibility to the people with whom we had created a bond of trust and the U.S. utterly failed them.
Biden had claimed there wouldn’t be a Saigon moment. There wouldn’t be pictures of helicopters taking people off the roof of our embassy.
No, there hasn’t been a Saigon moment but a Kabul moment, one where we see the Hueys flying and people crushing people at the airport, hoping for a ticket out.
Where was the planning? Where are the logistics skills and capabilities?
Why is there such an epic fail?
While the proverbial woman or man on the street of Anywhere, U.S.A., probably hasn’t spent a minute thinking about Afghanistan (unless one of their loved ones or friends was serving there) over the past 20 years, when that person turns on the TV and sees what a cluster this surrender has been, the confidence in the Biden administration is going to take a hit the likes of which will be more surprising than what Blinken admitted to.