The 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis defined the Carter administration. Iranian students allied with Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini seized the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. The episode sapped American morale, humiliated the United States on the world stage, and ended any possibility of Carter’s re-election.
The rapid Taliban advance stranded several thousand Americans in Kabul and across Afghanistan. The US Embassy in Kabul has urged Americans first to shelter in place and then to make their way to the airport for evacuation. It warned, however, that it could not guarantee the safety of the routes to the airport. That may be sage advice: The Taliban have shut off access to the airport. Bold Afghans now share videos via social media of Taliban thugs using whips and pipes to beat men, women, and children who try to go to the airport. Administration officials like National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, White House Spokesman Jen Psaki, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin refuse to guarantee that they will evacuate all Americans.
It appears that, for the Biden administration, Plans A, B, and C are to beg the Taliban to allow people to pass unmolested. The Taliban agree orally, but then continue their crackdown regardless.
read more:
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/08/bidens-afghanistan-disaster-will-become-a-hostage-crisis/
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The US has the combat power to open routes to the airport or staging areas at various locations in Afghanistan ... these staging areas and selected routes can be used to provide some sense of security while evacuating US Civilian Contractors.
The DOD and State Department ought to be communicating the location and safe routes to these secure assembly areas, where removal from the country can occur. Everyone doesn't need to report to the Airport in Kabul. There are measures and tactics to deal with this fiasco and it looks like they to are being ignored. It is as if they want us to end up with thousands of hostages in the hands of Islamist terrorists.
It is a hostage crisis already... This entire event was totally and disgracefully mishandled. The US Contractors should have been withdrawn simultaneously with or before US combat power was removed. Anyone with a modicum of common sense and a historical memory knows what happens to Non-Muslims that are abandoned in an Islamic Nation during a critical conflict. They automatically become hostages and leverage for the Islamists. It doesn't matter what the Taliban say... it is what the radical Islamic groups will do... The Taliban may blame others for holding US Citizens to avoid responsibility for their treatment while they are used to advance their cause.