Last Plane From Kabul 8/31/2021

Yesterday the last US military transport jet lifted from Kabul airport packed to the brim with last-minute American departees. Hundreds of thousands of Afghanis hoped to join the exodus from the Taliban ruling Afghanistan. The new government had ordered its fighters to not shell the refugees, although an ISIS-K suicide bombing killed 90 civilians and 9 US Marines. Joe Biden OKed a drone strike and the missile struck the militants, but also a family car with ten children aboard. Typical of the CIA and Pentagon. Kill kill kill.

Americans complained about the speedy pull-out, but the president weighed out the options.

Going back in was never one of them and after twenty years not a single American has his boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

The last soldier out of Kabul was Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who departed on the final C-17 Globemaster III. Something heroic to be the last to go.

General Boris Gromov walked over the Friendship Bridge crossing the the Amu-Daria river on 15 February 1989 with thirty to forty trucks loaded with Afghani treasures as well as an antique Tekke carpet stolen from Darul Aman Palace, which he cut into several pieces, and gave it to his fellow comrades.

Otlichnaya rabota.

Major General Homer D. Smith is generally regarded as the last US soldier out of Vietnam, evacuating more than 7,000 Americans and South Vietnamese before finally retreating himself. A true hero of his times and all that follows and went before.

Back in 2007 Nik Reiter and I waited for a ferry across the Meleleuk River in Cambodia. I was surprised to find a shack selling wurst and frikadelle. The owner was an old German. He was happy to speak German, even though mine was strictly Hoch Schule Deutshe. Oskar had been in the Orient ever since the fall of the 3rd Reich. He explained tht he had been with the Luftwaffe at Stalingrad.

"I was there at the last flights. We loaded the wounded onto the Junkers one of top of the other. There was no heat and one by one they froze in their berths. None of them got out alive. Only my Kamraden and me and some SS. I was never so happy, when the plane lifted from Stalingradskaya airfield. Three Heinkel 111s left as we landed. The flight officer was a major general. Hellmuth Mader. Over fifty years ago. Have you been to Germany recently?"

"Not since 1982." I had been just as happy to flee Hamburg ahead of the pimps of the Reeperbahn as any soldier from the 3rd Reich flying from the doom of the 6th Army."

We crossed the river and I never saw the man again.

On the opposite bank Nik looked back and said, "That could have been bullshit, but it didn't sound like it."

"No, it didn't."

It ain't easy to be the first and it is very hard to be the last, walking away without a backward glance, just thinking Thank the Heavens we ain't there no more.

A Red Line In The Afghan Sand

Throughout April 1975 the NVA and Viet Cong drove the ARVN from every province. Troops threw away their uniforms. Artillery was abandoned on the road. M16s were tossed into rice paddies. It was Thân ai nấy lo or 'Every man for himself' and all combatants and civilians fled the countryside for Saigon hoping that the Americans saved them from their communist countrymen.

Not a chance and in the last week of April the artillery shells crated Tan Son Nhut Airport's runways and exploded amongst the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese government officials and their families seeking flight to anywhere, but Saigon. The Viet Cong had countless scores to settle from the Ten-Thousand Day War or Resistance War against America. There were lists. The names belonged to generals, touturers, intelligence agents, spies, or quỷ quyệt or snitches, thieves, drug dealers and every genre of criminal parasites, but not even a man with a brick of gold there were only so many seats. Chaos ruled the airstairs. Everyone remembers Herbert Von Es' foto of the last helicopter from the US Embassy roof, but the last US soldier to leave Vietnam was General Homer Duggins Smith, a friend's father, from the airport and he never looked back on that day as anything than a miracle. At the end of Operation Frequent Wind. Rear Adm. Donald B. Whitmire told his men: "The sooner we get out of here, the faster we'll get a Budweiser."

There are no Budweisers anymore in Afghanistan. The Taliban have seize control of Kabul. Thousands of foreigners are stranded in the city along with thousands of Afghanis employed by the USA. The American media continues to harp on the similarities to Saigon, except there has been no shelling of the Airport. No rounding-up of soldiers. The refugees are allowed to enter the terminals as planes come and go to countries willing to accepting the fearful. The Taliban is happy to see them go. Less mouths to feed. Less of a threat of insurrection. Better they should go, but they will never be welcome back.

The victors have told the the American military that the red line for departure is August 31, 2021, as promised by President Biden. Eleven more days. Time to get your ass in gear, because there are only two options.

Stay or go>

Me, I would have already been 'went'and I don't drink no more.

Allah Akbar.