Thoughts on the pullout of Afghanistan. My bet? We won't see a rooftop helicopter moment...

 The withdrawal of personnel from our embassy and the return of all our personnel from Afghanistan is top of the list for conversation this weekend.

I'm hearing all kinds of gloom and doom talk.

I don't believe that for one minute.

My thinking?

I'm thinking that they've had pretty constant ISR over the airport for days now.  I'm betting that ISR net will be joined by a PERSISTENT combat air patrol along with missile firing drones.

I'm betting that every available long range bomber will be in theater and ready to bring hellfire to the city.

The Taliban ain't stupid and they know they'd be rushing to a blood bath if they attacked in force.  I can see a few vehicle borne IEDs being used but besides that I see them waiting.

As far as the civilian population?

The news media isn't independent.  They go where we allow them to go and they sure as hell ain't running with the Taliban (at least Western media isn't).  

I'm betting the internet will be cut at the critical moment and a whole bunch of those microwave crowd control devices will be used to "persuade" the crowd from rushing the airport.

You can't put lipstick on this pig.  This pullout looks bad (although I agree it would look bad if we stayed another 10 years and left) but it needed to be done.

Better to take the lick now and be done with it instead of pushing the can down the road for another decade.