I don't think it surprised any historian. But nobody listens to us anyway on these sorts of things, because we inconvenience the legions of people who need to keep believing in the lies they tell themselves and others.
I'm particularly incensed by people telling themselves the lie that there's a way to retreat from a losing battle or a failed occupation that is more orderly, more planned, more in control. When you retreat because it's the only way to save some of the soldiers and assets you've put into a losing battle, when you give up an imperial occupation because it isn't and can't work, you don't get to do it in an orderly and planned way. That's a luxury saved for when you control the situation more generally. The first moment that Biden or any President started moving people and assets out of the country on a mass scale would always have been the moment where the mad scramble for the exits began. It can't happen slowly past a certain point--it's already BEEN happening slowly, since 2014 or so, in fact. At some juncture, you hit a point where if you keep withdrawing very slowly and it's clear you're going to be withdrawing completely not too long in the future, whomever you have dispersed away from a central base or location is extremely exposed to attack. The moment you pull people in from dispersed sites of administrative and military control is the moment you lose control over those sites and find your central control surrounded.
It's all so very stupid. After late 2002, this is always how it was going to end, and all the armchair generals and cover-your-ass leadership with their hot takes on how it could have gone better are just continuing the pathetic self-deceptions that kept this catastrophe rolling along this long.
I don't think it surprised any historian. But nobody listens to us anyway on these sorts of things, because we inconvenience the legions of people who need to keep believing in the lies they tell themselves and others.
I'm particularly incensed by people telling themselves the lie that there's a way to retreat from a losing battle or a failed occupation that is more orderly, more planned, more in control. When you retreat because it's the only way to save some of the soldiers and assets you've put into a losing battle, when you give up an imperial occupation because it isn't and can't work, you don't get to do it in an orderly and planned way. That's a luxury saved for when you control the situation more generally. The first moment that Biden or any President started moving people and assets out of the country on a mass scale would always have been the moment where the mad scramble for the exits began. It can't happen slowly past a certain point--it's already BEEN happening slowly, since 2014 or so, in fact. At some juncture, you hit a point where if you keep withdrawing very slowly and it's clear you're going to be withdrawing completely not too long in the future, whomever you have dispersed away from a central base or location is extremely exposed to attack. The moment you pull people in from dispersed sites of administrative and military control is the moment you lose control over those sites and find your central control surrounded.
It's all so very stupid. After late 2002, this is always how it was going to end, and all the armchair generals and cover-your-ass leadership with their hot takes on how it could have gone better are just continuing the pathetic self-deceptions that kept this catastrophe rolling along this long.