Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Many years ago, I was an instructor at an adjunct facility of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. The topic for our group was Command Decision Making. The first item presented to the class was the foundation of everything that followed. It was the mission. To make valid command decisions, there must be a definite mission presented. When the mission is well defined, the commander can assess the available assets and examine the intelligence reports about the adversary.
What was our defined mission in Vietnam? Other than getting Obama bin Laden and his group, what was our defined mission for entering and remaining in Afghanistan? The buck stops with President Joe Biden but it started with President George W. Bush and continued with both President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.
In the withdrawal, the military was given a specific mission. It was made extremely difficult to accomplish when the time was condensed by the actions of the Taliban. The withdrawal of U.S. citizens and our Afghan allies should have started when Trump entered into an agreement with the Taliban. There could have been an earlier withdrawal of military equipment, especially the aircraft. We will remember this month as a failure of the politicians.
