Vulnerable Afghans are in fear for their lives under Taliban rule following the extremist group’s return to power in Kabul this week, with tens of thousands of civilians who are eligible for U.S. visas still left in the country. Meanwhile, a New York Times report Tuesday detailed the grim intel assessments that were coming out of Afghanistan earlier this summer as President Biden was assuring the public that the Afghan government would not fall.
Jim Braude was joined on Greater Boston by retired Army Colonel and Boston University professor emeritus Andrew Bacevich, who is also the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Bacevich recalled the similarities between what happened in Kabul and what happened in Saigon in 1975, when thousands of Vietnamese people were evacuated from the U.S. Embassy. “Different kind of helicopters,” he said. “The collapse was as abrupt, the collapse was as unanticipated by senior U.S. officials, certain U.S. intelligence agencies.”
He added, “as I’ve been watching these events unfold… I have felt such a sense of shame and humiliation and embarrassment and disappointment that this disaster should have befallen our country yet again. And of course, that the Afghan people now are going to be left to pay the consequences.”
WATCH: Andrew Bacevich on the Taliban’s return to power
