The Atlantic’s Packer: ‘No Need’ for Marines to Die in Kabul Attack, Biden Refused to Do Things He ‘Was Urged to Do’

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” George Packer, a staff writer at The Atlantic, discussed his article about the exit from Afghanistan and stated that “there were many things” that the Biden administration could have done to handle the evacuation of Afghanistan that it was “urged to do, again and again, publicly and privately,” but didn’t do until it was too late, and “there was no need for children to be trampled to death outside the gates of the airport. There was no need for U.S. Marines to be blown up by a suicide bomber as they tried to pull people out of sewage canals. All of that was a result of the failure to plan and to carry out evacuations when there was time.”

Packer said, “I mean, messy, of course, the end of a 20-year war, by definition. But beginning with the president’s announcement that he was going to withdraw all troops by September 11 and later August 31, there were many things the administration could have done and was urged to do, again and again, publicly and privately, by advocates for Afghans that it simply refused to do until it was too late. There was a mad scramble in late July and early August to begin doing some of these things. But by then, Kabul was on the verge of falling and all the time had been lost. So, no, there was no need for children to be trampled to death outside the gates of the airport. There was no need for U.S. Marines to be blown up by a suicide bomber as they tried to pull people out of sewage canals. All of that was a result of the failure to plan and to carry out evacuations when there was time.”

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