That would not have aided in the policy goal of "leaving Afghanistan". This was already such a well known strategy in the 80s that the (absolutely fantastic) British comedy show Yes Minister explained exactly how to do it:

Bernard Woolley : What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?

Sir Humphrey Appleby : Then we follow the four-stage strategy.

Bernard Woolley : What's that?

Sir Richard Wharton : Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.

Sir Richard Wharton : In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

Sir Humphrey Appleby : Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

Sir Richard Wharton : In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.

Sir Humphrey Appleby : Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

The back-and-forth sounds similar to the same concerns raised about mail-in voting and security of the vote for last year, or even for strong action to be taken in early days of the pandemic (masks, border closures, etc).

Nothing to see here since nothing has happened yet, after it happens it's too late to do anything about it. Oops!

Sad I guess, but not unexpected any more.

I think the assumption was that the Afghanistan army that the US funded, trained, etc. would fight back instead of running or surrendering.

Looks like that was a bad assumption.

So we’re going back for a cycle of US-trained and armed people joining an extremist group that will turn on the US?

I hope history doesn’t repeat itself completely :(

This was contained in the publicly released treaty the US signed with the Taliban last year. No surprise. No fuss. Just theatre.

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-F...

Pretty much every point in section 2 pre-supposes that the Taliban will control all of Afghanistan, from domestic security to issuing visas.

It's like a grownup version of Looney Tunes. This is basically video game pacing.

No proof to suggest this is true, but I assume they were lying through their teeth.

I was going to ask who, but then I realised everyone was.