{"id":53639,"date":"2021-09-29T17:17:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T17:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/09\/29\/why-bagram-wouldnt-have-made-a-difference-and-more-about-the-afghanistan-exit-plan\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T08:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T08:05:17","slug":"why-bagram-wouldnt-have-made-a-difference-and-more-about-the-afghanistan-exit-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2021\/09\/29\/why-bagram-wouldnt-have-made-a-difference-and-more-about-the-afghanistan-exit-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bagram wouldn\u2019t have made a difference, and more about the Afghanistan exit plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Senior military leaders took to Capitol Hill for the second day in a row on Wednesday, to answer questions from lawmakers about what has, by turns, been referred to both as a catastrophe and an unprecedented success in the final days of U.S. presence in Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While leaders reiterated and lawmakers concurred that the non-combatant evacuation<\/a> from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, the largest ever undertaken with more than 124,000 civilians rescued, was a logistical success, the overall withdrawal left much to be desired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prepared to field the questions, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin included a prebuttal in his prepared remarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo let me take each in turn,\u201d he began, then listing off criticisms: That the U.S. shouldn\u2019t have closed Bagram Air Base before the ultimate exit and that the civilian evacuation process should have begun sooner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere, lawmakers questioned whether troops should have extended their time in Kabul in order to evacuate more American citizens and Afghan allies, and what Afghanistan would look like today if President Joe Biden had taken their advice to keep 2,500 troops in the country. This is how senior leaders handled the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bagram<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, a chorus of critics questioned why the U.S. had closed its most strategically important base in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision to close it was made following an order to bring troop levels down to 650, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, U.S. Central Command\u2019s chief, said. That number was intended to be enough to guard the U.S. embassy in Kabul, and that troop level wouldn\u2019t have been enough to defend Bagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, in order to hold Bagram, we might have needed to probably push in 5,000 more troops on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that would have been a significant decision to hold Bagram, and we were under the direction to go to zero. So it would\u2019ve required a basic policy directive to change the plan. If you\u2019re going to go to zero, and you\u2019re going to keep enough forces to hold your embassy in the airfield, it is incompatible to hold any other base anywhere in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while the U.S. could have surged troops to hold Bagram, strategically, it wouldn\u2019t have done much to ease the withdrawal. Bagram is 40 miles outside of Kabul, on a single highway, neither a feasible evacuation point nor useful to provide protection to an evacuation in Kabul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet me just further add that I did not see any tactical utility to Bagram,\u201d McKenzie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evacuations<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics of the drawdown have raised questions as to why the State Department did not start facilitating evacuations of Americans and Afghan allies in the spring, while the Defense Department was making plans to remove troops and possibly undertake a non-combatant evacuation, if necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn the issue of why we didn\u2019t bring out civilians and [Special Immigrant Visa holders] sooner,\u201d Austin said. \u201cAgain, the call on how to do that and when to do it is, really, a State Department call.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the core, administration officials were heeding then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani\u2019s warning that a mass evacuation would lead to a widespread loss of confidence in his administration, possibly accelerating the Taliban takeover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut again, we provided our input, and we certainly would have liked to have seen it go faster or sooner \u2015but, but again, they had a number of things to think through as well,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t