For people that have led Soldiers, “keeping Bagram” is not akin to keeping Germany or Japan bases. It would always have been a 18-24 month, family-less deploym

For people that have led Soldiers, “keeping Bagram” is not akin to keeping Germany or Japan bases. It would always have been a 18-24 month, family-less deployment. South Korea is already known to be a fairly hard deployment for this reason. Bagram would be similar, but worse. These risk calculations of “not many personnel” have American boys and girls on the receiving end, who spend 18-20 months to do what, maintain presence? Two notes then: - already been tried as a course of action in the last several years. The problem then and in this future hypothetical is that the mission creeps. If you watched American KIA in AFG the last few, youd start to notice deaths that come from patrolling and convoys. There is no scenario where Americans stay on Bagram only and ever. Even If Kabul is in fact surrounded, you’d have risks just the same but with a fighting force at Bagram completely unable to respond because it’s undermanned and without a clear mission (enter in: Somali 1992). - let’s say it’s an accepted risk though. how that model works in reality is long term, sustained presence. The desire impact of a long term Bagram is achieved by lengthy relationships with locals. The army model is 18 month rotations. This doesn’t build that relationship. There is a reason the last instances the US had really succeeded at war was “go to Berlin, come back when the Nazis are gone.” This stuff takes a very sustained presence to achieve, including leadership not leaving every 18 months. So which unit gets to live in AFG full time, in this long term Bagram scenario? Bc if it’s not done that way, you get the life disrupting/ending shadow war of 2016-2021.