Hey, “no plan is perfect” – HotAir
We first had Joe Biden doing a Chip Diller impression yesterday afternoon. Today, John Kirby offers the Otter Defense for the catastrophic performance of the administration in Afghanistan. No wonder this administration staggering, as Kirby did this morning on MSNBC.
Kirby tried to say Good morning joe that the administration game planned the final stages of the retirement, but that “no plan is perfect.” However, you would first have to look at the evidence for a plan to test that hypothesis:
Kirby insisted Tuesday that US officials had “planned almost all contingencies” around the evacuations. “But as an old military maxim says, no plan survives the first contact. So obviously we had to adjust in the moment, ”he said.
“It would have been difficult to predict the level of chaos and chaos we saw there,” Kirby added. “We are aware of the images, the graphic nature of them. Certainly no one wanted to see the result as it did in the last 24 hours. “
While the military’s north side of the airfield “is back online,” Kirby said US officials will continue to better secure the civilian south side throughout Tuesday.
“No plan is perfect, and no plan can predict perfectly in terms of what friction, what unknowns and factors that are going to be dealt with at the rear,” he said.
“We plan a lot of contingencies,” Kirby insists, except apparently for the contingency of removing Americans and allies from Kabul. Biden handed over Bagram Air Base on July 1 and, until the collapse of Kabul, never bothered to effectively secure Hamid Karzai Airport, the only other air departure option. Biden has had to order the entry of 6,000 more soldiers into Kabul on the progress to re-secure the Karzai airport, and still does not have a safe way to trap Americans in the area to that airport for flights. In fact, the State Department emailed those Americans yesterday to shelter in place and await an email invitation that would include instructions to follow on how to get to the airport, once they found out.
Either there was no plan at all, or the “table” planning Kirby discusses here was based on fanciful versions of the outcome of Biden’s actions. That is, unless pleading with the Taliban for safe passage into Kabul was an integral part of the war game Kirby describes here.
If there had been a plan, the troops needed to secure the airport would have already been in place.
If there had been a plan, the State Department would have had people in transit to the airport in the week it took the Taliban to approach Kabul.
If there had been a plan, the US would have retaken control of Bagram and used it as an alternative platform for exit and exfiltration.
If there had been a plan, we would have listened to officials who could carefully present it in detail and show metrics on how it was performing.
Instead, the metrics are on all of our TV screens and they all show that no one planned anything in the context of the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.
“No plan is perfect” is certainly true … when it comes to coming into contact with an enemy. That’s the part that Biden and all his planners forgot when it came to strategizing for an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even Bluto could have done better than this incompetent bunch in the Biden White House. All they have to offer now is a “screwed up, he trusted us,” and the knowledge that we have no choice for the next three years for American leadership.
