This is where Antony J. Blinken needs to get his nuts kicked in and tossed out. What in the fuck were they thinking would happen when you leave equipment, and bases, and ammo and whatever...and just throw the keys on the table...peace out. This will come back to haunt everyone for decades.
Originally Posted by eyecu2
It's even worse than you think. As Deputy National Security Adviser, Blinken presided over a very similar debacle back in 2011, when he helped to carry out Obama's disastrous and premature withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq. As everyone knows, within 3 years ISIS took over large swaths of Iraq (including Mosul) and executed the Anwar tribal chiefs who had thrown their allegiance to the US and made Bush's 2007 troop surge a big success.
So then Obama had to send US troops back to Iraq in 2014, an admission that his reckless, ill-considered 2011 withdrawal (done for political reasons with the upcoming 2012 election in mind) was a huge mistake. Tony Blinken has this huge mistake written all over his resume, despite his efforts to expunge it.
Now history is repeating itself in Afghanistan, and Blinken is once again one of the guys in charge, this time as our feckless Secretary of State. History will not be kind to this clueless klutz. He fucked up once (2011), didn't learn a damn thing from it, and is now fucking up a second time a decade later, with foreseeably tragic consequences for the country and our allies.