Seems like doing that earlier would've been better.
I have the terrible suspicion it wasn't because it makes the 'optics' even worse.
Bright side to all the dead people this has resulted in--all this makes very clear that high-level civil and military authorities in the US are a cluster of incompetence, blame-shifting, and PR-obsession.
I don't think it's incompetence on part of the Biden Administration. This sort of thing could just of easily have happened under Trump. If I had to make a guess as to what happened, it is this; Biden had hoped to extend the time that America was in the region WITHOUT becoming more committed, but the Taliban, who felt they had negotiated in good faith under Trump, were intent on launching an attack earlier. That left Biden with two choices; either send in more troops to repel them (thus ruining the peace negotiations and further committing the troops) or withdraw.
In the end, Biden was forced to withdraw and had to hope that the ANA could hold the Taliban off for at least a few months. He was probably warned that the ANA would fold like a house of cards, but I don't think he believed it. ANA had allegedly superior numbers and weaponry. That would be enough time to convince Americans to leave and process the Afghans they wanted to get out. Of course, he put his hopes in the ANA, which any military vet apparently knows is a practice in futility and self-delusion.
The result was Biden getting trapped. There was still a chance that the ANA's more competent elements might be able to rally and fight the Taliban off--or at least hold out for a few months. Hitting the panic button MIGHT get the message to Americans to get out, but it also had the high chance of collapsing what remained of the ANA. So Biden's administration continued urging Americans to leave, while keeping the embassy open. When all the other major cities fell, Biden and his team must have realized that Kabul would not last long. Talking heads speaking on their behalf said that analysts expected an attack within weeks--Biden's admin must have thought sooner, because he sent troops to secure the airport and began to close the embassy (though again, not entirely).
And yet it seems that even Kabul fell faster than Biden and his team imagined when they realized the assault was coming, because he's still seeming to try and play catch-up. He can't abandon the airport now without being sure that every American is out of the country, because it would be damning in the eyes of his own party. He can't send troops back in either, because other countries are already agitating the Taliban with their rescue and convoy missions. 70% of Americans want out of the are, not going back in for round two. So now he's having to process all these Afghans and shipping them out, because he still needs to get the rest of our people out and they're both in the way and politically damaging.
There is no clean way out of this. That died a week ago. Biden's best hope is that the media loses interest in the story. Then he can make the unpopular decisions and hope that the media doesn't beat him too hard on it. I don't think it will matter though. His image as the sane, safe choice as president has been horribly tarnished. Possibly beyond repair. The news coverage has been going for about two weeks now, which is never good. Voters will remember this come midterms and even for the next presidential run.
The downside with this waiting game I think Biden is trying to play is that it also bears the risk of something else going wrong. It's one thing if he got every American out and left the Afghans to fend for themselves, he'd get a bad week of press, but he could shrug that off, because we would already be gone. Now he's in danger of the disaster getting more and more coverage, because the US hasn't gotten all of its people out. And the longer we're there, the more Afghans will show up, the angrier the Taliban will get, and the greater chance this destroys his presidency (if it already hasn't).
He's getting the same sort of bad press as Trump did when COVID-19 came out.
EDIT -- It just occurred to me that Biden may have been trying to stall the Taliban until the fall season. Lots of people would need to finish the harvest around that time and the Taliban would have to worry about their offensive running into winter. Especially if Biden and his administration thought the ANA could hold out 3-6 months. Get to October and the Taliban offensive would have grounded to a halt in the central and northern regions, as temperatures average around 47 with a low of around 32. And gets colder from there. That squares with what the admin had been saying; 3-6 months. I don't think that was a lie. If we had left May 1st, that would give the Taliban May, June, July, August, September, and October. So a victory between July and October was likely.
That explains the deadline idea that I'm sure was driven by a committee that had a strong disconnect with society; if we leave in September, the Taliban couldn't possibly (lol) have gotten very far by October and by November, they'd have to wait out the winter. The Taliban wouldn't be able to start a new offensive until May of 2022. By that time, about a year would have passed and Biden could lay the blame entirely on ANA's shoulders. He'd be in the clear.
My guess is that the Taliban were thinking along the same lines. They didn't want to run a risk about a winter offensive and they didn't want to wait till next year to begin a spring offensive. Instead, I suspect they pushed forward with the invasion on their terms, putting Biden into a double-bind he can't escape. The best that Biden could hope for was the longer estimate (ie, six months), which again might have kept at least some of Afghan's government intact until next May.
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