Biden administration won’t commit to rescuing Americans trapped in Afghanistan after Aug. 31

And it’s equally clear that with an estimated 11,000 Americans and as many as 80,000 Afghan evacuees, two weeks is not enough time to get them all out.

At the Pentagon, spokesman John Kirby said any extension of the airlift would be up to President Joe Biden, but for now, they have their orders.

“The commander in chief made it very clear that we were to complete this drawdown by August 31st, which now includes the drawdown of American citizens,” Kirby said at a briefing for reporters. “Right now, the mission runs to the 31st of August, and I won’t begin to speculate what happens after that.”

The big question: What happens to Americans and their Afghan friends who can’t make it to the airport by Aug. 31. “We are talking to them about what the exact timetable is for how this will all play out, and I don’t want to negotiate in public,” said Sullivan.

ESCAPE FROM KABUL: WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE DICEY AIRPORT EVACUATIONS

TOP US GENERAL ARRIVES: Four-star Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie landed in Kabul yesterday and declared the airport securely in U.S. hands and now open to civilian air traffic operating under visual flight rules.

“In meetings with Taliban senior leaders in Doha on Sunday, I cautioned them against interference in our evacuation and made it clear to them that any attack would be met with overwhelming force in the defense of our forces,” McKenzie said in a statement released by the U.S. Central Command.

McKenzie said U.S. military air traffic controllers and ground handlers “are rapidly scaling up operations,” and the Pentagon said it will soon have enough flights in and out to move as many as 9,000 people in a single day.

About 1,000 people were flown out yesterday, including American citizens and foreign nationals.

US ‘CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SECURITY’: Yesterday, thousands of Americans who registered with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul received notice to begin to move to the airport, as an “undefined number of U.S. government-provided flights will begin soon.”

But the notice carried an ominous boldface, all-caps warning: “PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SECURITY AS YOU MAKE THIS TRIP.”

“As things stand right now, what we are finding is that we are getting people through the gate, we are getting them lined up, and we are getting them on planes. But this is an hour by hour issue,” said Sullivan at the White House. “There have been instances where we have received reports of people being turned away or pushed back or even beaten. We are taking that up in a channel with the Taliban to try to resolve those issues. And we are concerned about whether that will continue to unfold in the coming days.”

‘UNACCEPTABLE’: Democrats and Republicans are questioning the artificial Aug. 31 deadline, which risks trapping tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, including American citizens who can’t get to Kabul for the evacuation flights.

“Unacceptable,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. “The White House’s politically driven timetable cannot outweigh American lives. America’s message, to our friends and to the Taliban, should be crystal clear: We will move heaven and earth to get every last American in Afghanistan back to American soil, period. That’s the only answer.”

“In the near term, how are we going to get American citizens out? Are we going to expand beyond the airfield and go get them? Do the troops on the ground have the authority and the rules of engagement to do that, or even outside of Kabul to get Americans out?” asked Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz on CNN. “So, we now face the prospect of multiple Americans held hostage.”

“Our nation’s reputation is on the line,” said Democrat Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “There were clear policy execution and intelligence failures associated with our withdrawal and its aftermath. How the U.S. handles the evacuation over the next few days will have implications well beyond Afghanistan and will impact our ability to build coalitions and work with partners moving forward.”

C’MON MAN, WHERE’S THE PLAN? Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, and several of his fellow Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee, have fired off an angry letter to President Joe Biden.

“For months, we have been asking you for a plan on your withdrawal from Afghanistan. You failed to provide us with one and based on the horrific events currently unfolding in Afghanistan, we are confident that we never received your plan because you never had one,” they wrote. “The security and humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Afghanistan could have been avoided if you had done any planning. Pretending this isn’t your problem will only make things worse.”

WHITE HOUSE CONCEDES ‘FAIR AMOUNT’ OF DEFENSE EQUIPMENT NOW IN TALIBAN HANDS

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TRUMP: ‘MOST HUMILIATING PERIOD OF TIME I HAVE EVER SEEN’: In an appearance last night on Fox, former President Donald Trump said the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan is “a terrible time.”

“I don’t think, in all of the years, our country has ever been so humiliated,” Trump told host Sean Hannity. “You’re dealing with thousands and thousands of Americans and others that are stranded, and very dangerously, really stranded in Afghanistan. So, it’s something that you can’t even believe.”

“I looked at that big monster cargo plane yesterday with people grabbing the side and trying to get flown out of Afghanistan because of their fear, their incredible fear,” Trump said. “And they’re blowing off the plane from 2,000 feet up in the air. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that. That blows the helicopters in Vietnam away. That’s not even a contest. This has been the most humiliating period of time I have ever seen.”

Trump defended his February 2020 agreement with the Taliban that required the departure of all U.S. troops as “a great deal,” and he said during the negotiations he had threatened Taliban leader Mullah Baradar, who has now made a triumphant return to Kabul with the destruction of his home village.

“I told him upfront, I said: ‘Look, before we start, let me just tell you right now that if anything bad happens to Americans or anybody else, or if you ever come over to our land, we will hit you with a force that no country has ever been hit with before, a force so great that you won’t even believe it. And your village, and we know where it is, and I named it, ‘will be the first one.’”

ESPER: TRUMP ‘UNDERMINED THE AGREEMENT’: In an interview on CNN, Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he thought Trump’s deal with the Taliban, while not perfect, was “good enough.”

“We actually had Afghans later in the summer talking to one another, which I thought was an achievement,” But Esper wanted to make any final withdrawal “conditions-based,” while Trump wanted to get all the troops out before he left office.

“My concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement,” Esper told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “Which is why, in the fall, when he was calling for a return of U.S. forces by Christmas, I objected, and formally wrote a letter to him, a memo, based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership, that we not reduce below 4,500 troops unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban.”

Trump rejected that advice, fired Esper, and ordered troops cut to 2,500.

SIGAR’S LESSONS LEARNED REPORT: The Pentagon’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has released his 11th and likely final Lessons Learned report, and it is replete with an accounting of the many failures of the last 20 years.

“If the goal was to rebuild and leave behind a country that can sustain itself and pose little threat to U.S. national security interests, the overall picture in Afghanistan is bleak,” the report concludes. “The U.S. government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly. Ignorance of prevailing social, cultural, and political contexts in Afghanistan has been a significant contributing factor to failures at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.”

“There have been bright spots — such as lower child mortality rates, increases in per capita GDP, and increased literacy rates,” writes Special Inspector General John Sopko in the preface to the report. “But after spending 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has many lessons it needs to learn. Implementing these critical lessons will save lives and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan, and in future reconstruction missions elsewhere around the world.”

‘HOLY F***, HOLY COW!’: By now, you’ve seen the picture of the C-17 cargo plane crammed with hundreds of the Afghans desperate to get out of Kabul. The story behind the overloaded plane has been fleshed out by Tara Copp, the Defense One Pentagon reporter who broke the story.

As Copp recounts, the rear cargo door was open, and Afghans began pouring in while the plane was loading on the tarmac. Soon the massive interior was jammed with hundreds more people that the plane is authorized to carry in a passenger configuration.

The small crew had a short time to call an audible. Either tell the Afghans to disembark or shut the door and take off. They had no idea exactly how many passengers they had. As they headed for Qatar, they radioed ahead to warn air traffic controllers they were carrying as many as 800 people.

The response, according to an audio recording obtained by Defense One: “Holy f***, holy cow.”

It turned out there were 640 Afghans on the plane. A statement from the U.S. Central Command said, “The unusually high number of passengers … was the result of a dynamic security environment that necessitated quick decision making by the crew, which ultimately ensured that these passengers were safely taken outside the country.”

THE OTHER C-17 INCIDENT UNDER INVESTIGATION: Meanwhile, the Air Force is launching a full investigation of the C-17 flight that resulted in civilian deaths when desperate Afghans climbed on the plane as it took off from the Kabul airport Sunday.

“In addition to online videos and press reports of people falling from the aircraft on departure, human remains were discovered in the wheel well of the C-17 after it landed at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar,” the Air Force said in a statement. The review by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations “will be thorough to ensure we obtain the facts regarding this tragic incident.”

The statement gave this account of what happened:

The C-17 Globemaster III landed at Hamid Karzai International Airport to deliver a load of equipment to support the evacuation. Before the aircrew could unload the cargo, the aircraft was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians who had breached the airport perimeter. “Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible.”

HUMAN REMAINS LOCATED IN WHEEL WELL OF US MILITARY PLANE AFTER DEPARTING FROM KABUL

MALALA YOUSAFZAI: ‘I FEAR FOR MY AFGHAN SISTERS’: In a guest essay in the New York Times, Malala Yousafzai, who became the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate after surviving a Taliban assassination attempt, said she fears for the future of Afghan women and called on neighboring countries — China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan — to open their doors to fleeing civilians.

“Afghan girls and young women are once again where I have been — in despair over the thought that they might never be allowed to see a classroom or hold a book again. Some members of the Taliban say they will not deny women and girls education or the right to work,” she writes. “But given the Taliban’s history of violently suppressing women’s rights, Afghan women’s fears are real.”

AFGHANISTAN’S YOUNGEST FEMALE MAYOR SAYS THE TALIBAN ‘WILL COME FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME’

The Rundown

Washington Examiner: Escape from Kabul: What we know about the dicey airport evacuations

Washington Examiner: White House: US will ‘hold’ Taliban to airport safe passage commitment

Washington Examiner: White House concedes ‘fair amount’ of defense equipment now in Taliban hands

Washington Examiner: Former US officials say Biden team needs ‘shake-up’ following Afghanistan debacle

Washington Examiner: Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor says the Taliban ‘will come for people like me’

Washington Examiner: Human remains located in wheel well of US military plane after departing from Kabul

Washington Examiner: Man records himself clinging to US plane as it takes off from Kabul airport

Washington Examiner: US cargo plane carries 640 Afghans on tightly packed flight

Washington Examiner: European leaders dismayed by Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan

Washington Examiner: US vows to stand by Taiwan amid Chinese saber-rattling following Afghanistan withdrawal

USNI News: Taiwanese Official Says Island’s Freedom Key To Stable Indo-Pacific

Wall Street Journal: China Cautious About Taliban Engagement

19fortyfive.com: Will China Fall Into the Afghanistan Trap?

Washington Post: Taliban Promises Peaceful Transition

Defense One: ‘There Is No Afghan Government’: NATO Stops Aid To Afghanistan As Taliban Take Over

New York Times: Contradicting Biden, Reports Warned of Rapid Collapse

Defense News: The New Air Force Secretary Wants To ‘Scare China’

Defense News: The Taliban Has Access To U.S. Military Aircraft. Now What Happens?

Air Force Magazine: 9 C-17s Arrive in Afghanistan to Help with Evacuations

USNI News: Warship USS Arlington, More Coast Cutters to Join Haiti Relief Operation

AP: Billions spent on Afghan army ultimately benefited Taliban

Breaking Defense: Marines Successfully Fire New NMESIS Anti-Ship Weapon During Live Exercise

New York Times: Malala Yousafzai: I Fear for My Afghan Sisters

New York Times: Opinion: I Was a Marine in Afghanistan. We Sacrificed Lives For a Lie.

19fortyfive.com: I Served In Afghanistan. Don’t Let ‘Forever Wars’ Define Its Legacy

Washington Examiner: Why America will struggle to confront al Qaeda in Afghanistan

19fortyfive.com: Opinion: Joe Biden’s ‘Over-the-Horizon’ Afghanistan Strategy Won’t Work

19fortyfive.com: Opinion: The US Embassy In Kabul’s Incompetence On Visas Began Months Ago (No Shocker)

The Cipher Brief: What Should the US Expect from the New Taliban Regime?

The Cipher Brief: Opinion: Why Was there so Little Resistance When Afghanistan Collapsed?

Forbes: Opinion: Lockheed Martin’s Flexible Intelligent Factory At Palmdale May Be A Model For Biden Industrial Policy

Calendar

WEDNESDAY | AUGUST 18

8 a.m. 401 West Pratt Street, Baltimore — National Defense Industrial Association 2021 CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) Defense Conference and Exhibition, with Brandi Vann, acting assistant Defense secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs; and Army Col. Chris Hoffman, performing the duties of the deputy assistant Defense secretary for chemical and biological defense. https://www.ndia.org/events/2021/8/16/2021-cbrn

9 a.m. — The Center for Strategic and International Studies Project on Prosperity and Development webcast: “Picking up the pieces in Afghanistan. What now?” with Mark Ward, country director for Afghanistan, International Medical Corps; Daniel Runde, director, Project on Prosperity and Development; Annie Pforzheimer, senior associate Project on Prosperity and Development; P. Michael McKinley, senior adviser, Americas Program, CSIS; Earl Anthony Wayne, senior adviser, Project on Prosperity and Development. https://www.csis.org/events/picking-pieces-afghanistan-what-now

3 p.m. — Jewish Institute for National Security of America virtual discussion: “The End of Afghanistan,” with former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman, co-chair of JINSA’s Iran Policy Project and former Defense undersecretary for policy; retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, JINSA fellow and former deputy commander of U.S. European Command; retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Toolan, member of the JINSA Hybrid Warfare Policy Project and former Afghanistan commander; and John Hannah, JINSA senior fellow and former national security adviser to Vice President Cheney. https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register

4 p.m. — The Jewish Democratic Council of America virtual discussion: “Afghanistan: What Comes Next?” Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., Marine veteran; and former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Evelyn Farkas. https://www.mobilize.us/jewishdems/event

4 p.m. — Washington Post Live virtual discussion on mounting concerns in Congress over the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the outlook for the bipartisan infrastructure bill and other key legislative priorities for the 117th Congress, with House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.; and Jacqueline Alemany, anchor at the Washington Post Power Up Newsletter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live

THURSDAY | AUGUST 19

1 p.m. — George Washington University Project for Media and National Security Defense Writers Group conversation with Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, U.S. Navy surgeon general. https://nationalsecuritymedia.gwu.edu

2:30 p.m. — Center for a New American Security event: “Against the Clock: Saving America’s Afghan Partners,” with Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass; Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state; Richard Fontaine, CEO, Center for a New American Security; Lisa Curtis, senior fellow and director, Indo-Pacific Security Program, Center for a New American Security. https://www.cnas.org/events