Look at the time span from Biden entering office and the withdrawal, then look at the time span from September 11, 2001 to the invasion of Afghanistan. Reversing the withdrawal months in advance was logistically well within the capabilities of the US military and would have been politically less risky since withdrawals are extremely hard to execute as well as the US military executed this one.
edit:
Massive changes/reversals in military objectives are implausible on the scale of hours or even days, but making sudden changes, moving masses of men and material in a new direction to do a new thing on short notice is one of the abilities of a good military. The notion that the US military, a very good military, couldn’t reverse itself when given months to do so isn’t well thought out.
And what were we going to tell Pakistan? You realize the bulk of our supplies came by land through there?
What would the Afghan reaction be? Because at that point you lose credibility. They see it as a second invasion.
And yeah, what do you tell the American people who are severely war weary?
It was never about the military’s internal ability. It was about the actual logistics chain and appearing to go back on a major deal in a county where that means people definitely start helping the terrorists because they lose faith in you ever leaving voluntarily.
He’d have to have sent troops back when he got into office. We weren’t getting the interpreters out without controlling the ground ourselves.
That was politically and logistically unfeasible.
Look at the time span from Biden entering office and the withdrawal, then look at the time span from September 11, 2001 to the invasion of Afghanistan. Reversing the withdrawal months in advance was logistically well within the capabilities of the US military and would have been politically less risky since withdrawals are extremely hard to execute as well as the US military executed this one.
edit: Massive changes/reversals in military objectives are implausible on the scale of hours or even days, but making sudden changes, moving masses of men and material in a new direction to do a new thing on short notice is one of the abilities of a good military. The notion that the US military, a very good military, couldn’t reverse itself when given months to do so isn’t well thought out.
And what were we going to tell Pakistan? You realize the bulk of our supplies came by land through there?
What would the Afghan reaction be? Because at that point you lose credibility. They see it as a second invasion.
And yeah, what do you tell the American people who are severely war weary?
It was never about the military’s internal ability. It was about the actual logistics chain and appearing to go back on a major deal in a county where that means people definitely start helping the terrorists because they lose faith in you ever leaving voluntarily.