Time to set the Taliban straight?
We are staying until every last American and every Afghan we made a promise to is out. You get in our way and the full force of the US military will be used!!!
Do we have the stomach for another possible conflict/war?
IMO the biggest problem with the whole situation is that Biden didn't say this as soon as it was obvious the Taliban is about to take over. Sure the whole "people left behind" thing is a better political/emotional attack, but while it is tragic, I think it's by far not the biggest scandal here. At the point that the embassy was told to start destroying sensitive material and preparing for retreat was the time to tell the Taliban to stand down and wait until
we're ready for them to take over. Any advancing forces will be met with the full might of the USAF and blown to hell. We'll leave when we're ready, not when you want us out.
(The idea is not restarting the whole war, it's just holding them at bay until we're ready to leave. Presumably that can be done from the air. Of course that assumes keeping the position of "it's not our problem any more, we're out of here.")
If we didn't have the ability to backup that threat with action I think that just makes the scandal bigger.
Personally I believe Trump would've done that, although I'm sure some here will disagree. (I actually highly doubt it would've came to this under his watch, but that's a whole 'nother argument.)
Alternatively, the other option would be to basically only evacuate personnel there on US government business (I'm not sure where exactly to draw the line) and tell everyone else "I'm sorry, we were telling you to leave for a year, I can't help you now." While this may be a justifiable position the optics of it are horrible and it would basically be political suicide.
