St. Cloud Area Vets Comment On End of U.S. Involvement in Afghanistan

(KNSI/AP) – According to reports from the Kabul airport in the country’s capital, the planned withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan has descended into chaos.

On Monday, thousands tried to flee Afghanistan a day after the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

Two Star Retired Major General Gerald “Gerry,” Lang from Sauk Rapids says it’s like watching history repeat itself.

“There are two times now we pulled soldiers out first. This happened about 50 years ago in Saigon when the soldiers went back with the aviation units and the assets went back to bring all the civilians back. And we are doing exactly the same thing.”

Lang says the most significant logistical issue is getting the U.S. Department of State people to evacuate because they don’t listen to the military’s chain of command.

Rockville Minnesota Senator Jeff Howe served as a Colonel in the Minnesota National Guard. He says what’s happened in Afghanistan was a failure of American military strategy.

“Limited war is a failure. And this is just another example. You cannot say that I’m only going to play with these tools and this amount of tools and I’m only going to do this much and hope for a good output.”

Both men served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The U.S. military is sending another battalion of about 1,000 troops to help safeguard the Kabul airport. That’s according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. The troops will join nearly 6,000 other U.S. forces being sent to calm a chaotic evacuation from the airport.

Separately, a U.S. official says one of America’s top military commanders has met face-to-face with senior leaders of the Taliban. The official said Monday that Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, had met with Taliban officials in Qatar to urge them not to interfere with the massive U.S. airport evacuation in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s U.N. ambassador says, “there is no time for the blame game anymore.” He is urging the Security Council and secretary-general to use every means at their disposal to call for an immediate halt to violence and respect for human rights and to “prevent Afghanistan descending into a civil war and becoming a pariah state.”

The ambassador told an emergency meeting of the U.N.’s most powerful body on Monday that he was “speaking on behalf of millions of people in Afghanistan, whose fate hangs in the balance and are faced with an extremely uncertain future.”

The associated press contributed to this story.

___