On Thursday, only three days ago, the White House was still saying that it would be at least “a month” before the Taliban could threaten the capital of Afghanistan. This morning they entered Kabul in force. Reporters in the capital city described a flurry of American helicopters going back and forth between the green zone and the Kabul airport. The previous arrangement to have a combination of Afghan and Turkish soldiers take over security at the airport appears to have been canceled as the Afghan forces departed and American troops once again took over. Despite the Taliban’s previous lies about not wanting a return to complete power, their spokesperson, Suhail Shaheen told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network that they were looking for an “unconditional surrender” from the Afghan government in Kabul. A representative in the city told reporters that they were awaiting a “peaceful transfer of power.”

Taliban fighters entered Kabul on Sunday and sought the unconditional surrender of the central government, officials said, as Afghans and foreigners alike raced for the exit, signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.

The beleaguered central government, meanwhile, hoped for an interim administration, but increasingly had few cards to play. Civilians fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings.

Helicopters buzzed overhead as part of an evacuation of personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Several other Western missions were also preparing to get staff out.

Last night, President Biden ordered 1,000 more troops to Kabul to assist in the “departure” At this point, nobody is even trying to pretend that there is any sort of “transition” going on or that the embassy will remain in operation. It’s just a “departure.” What’s not clear is if we’ll be able to get everyone safely to the airport and out of the country.

For the moment, the Taliban seems to be holding back on the mayhem and murder inside of the capital. They are no doubt aware that we still have the ability to launch significant air strikes against them if we choose to do so. But they also know that we’re unlikely to launch any such strikes against them inside of Kabul because of the massive collateral damage that would cause. Any why would they bother wasting their fighters in an urban battle against superior forces if they can simply wait for an unconditional surrender and the departure of the enemy? There will be plenty of time to unleash retribution against the remnants of President Ashraf Ghani’s government and anyone who was seen cooperating with us after we’re gone.

Here’s a video of some of the 5,000 prisoners in a Kabul jail, many of whom are Taliban fighters, leaving the facility after being freed.

Prisoners leaving Kabul jail after being broken out by Taliban. pic.twitter.com/B84F2UrtEA

— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 15, 2021

As a reminder, here’s what Joe Biden said about the Taliban and our eventual exit barely one month ago.

“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, they're not. They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan." – Joe Biden, July 8, 2021

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) August 15, 2021

What we’re seeing in Kabul this morning may not be identical to the fall of Saigon, but it’s pretty darned close.

Last night, Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press asked, has it all been worth it? Twenty years of blood and treasure invested in routing Al Queda and the Taliban, only to leave it in the same hands as we found it?

Clearly, it hasn’t all been worth it. But at the same time, I supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan and I can’t simply turn around and take it back now. At the time, we had just suffered the biggest terrorist attack in the history of the world and that couldn’t be left unanswered. George W. Bush offered the Taliban several options that would have allowed them to turn over Osama bin Laden to us peacefully in exchange for significant benefits and foreign aid from us. They refused, so we had to do it the hard way.

We did eventually kill OBL and we broke the back of Al Qaeda, though they proved to be as resilient as weeds over the following two decades. The cost was extraordinary, though. As bad as all of this looks and as horribly bungled as the planning of our departure has been, it was a job we needed to do. But it’s time to go home. Let the Taliban have Afghanistan. The government we helped establish there has been corrupt from the beginning and the military we built for them surrendered without a fight at the first opportunity. What will happen to the young women of Afghanistan is a tragedy, but it seems as if there’s no longer anything we can do about it other than offer them visas if they can manage to escape.