It's rapid exit time for the Americans in Afghanistan

The Joe Biden troop-withdrawal programme in Afghanistan began on May 1 and already it's moving rapidly. Not just troops of course but equipment by the tonnage is being lifted onto C17 transport planes and flown back to the States for whatever future use they might be assigned. When you have been at war in-house as it were, in other words, in another country, for 20 years there's a massive, I mean massive amount of equipment and war zone detritus that builds up inexorably. Some of it gets shifted back home, some gets left for the Afghans and a helluva lot of stuff gets destroyed and left for someone else to clear up. Exiting a country after a war and entering a country for a war involve the same mighty logistics. The Americans are exceptionally good at wrapping everything up and packing it all off back home, except of course in Vietnam where such was the emergency that the exit was by no means a highly-polished logistical success story. After the 1991 Gulf War which was so short, comparatively, the hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles and artillery and containers by the thousand packed with everything from toilet rolls to computers were bundled off in ships and transport aircraft in an exit strategy masterminded by some brilliant three-star American general whose name escapes me. But 20 years of STUFF. That's going to be an unbelievable challenge. But judging by reports coming out of Afghanistan, places like the Kandahar airbase where tens of thousands of troops were located during the peak periods of the war, are emptying fast. It must be so weird and disillusioning and scary for the Afghan military left behind in these cavernous places to realise that in a very short time there will not be a single American to call on to help with fending off the marauding Taliban. Despite the decent wages which the Pentagon will still pay, I anticipate there will be a lot of disappearing Afghan soldiers no longer prepared to fight the Taliban. I hope I'm wrong. But as Kandahar and all the other bases empty of US troops and equipment over the next four months, there will be an eerie silence. The only ones who will cheer will be the Taliban and the other nasties who live or hide out in Afghanistan - al-Qaeda, Isis etc.