Independent:

Mr Biden made the remarks as he has sought to tell the global stage that America has returned from its retreat from the international community during his predecessor Donald Trump’s presidency.

Just ask the French about our relentless diplomacy.

President Trump is the one who negotiated the Doha Agreement, which pulled us out of Afghanistan. All President Biden did was deliberately botch the May 1 deadline in order to foment the humanitarian catastrophe which our political, diplomatic, military, and intelligence Establishment will seize upon in their effort to re-invade Afghanistan.

The Intercept:

The son of Afghanistan’s most celebrated anti-Taliban resistance leader has escaped into neighboring Tajikistan, less than a month after vowing to defend his homeland “no matter what happens.”

Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, fled to Tajikistan shortly after the Taliban seized control of the Panjshir Valley on September 6, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, a Pentagon consultant, and two former senior Afghan government officials. Massoud was joined a few days later by Amrullah Saleh, the former Afghan vice president and longtime intelligence chief, who left Afghanistan by helicopter, the senior U.S. official and two former Afghan officials said.

The Afghan Republic has fallen. Of course Saleh and Massoud both live to fight another day, and they can return when they want. They can sponsor an insurgency against the Taliban. The Taliban are good insurgents, but they are not accustomed to being on the other end of an insurgency. This could be the end of the Afghan civil war, but it is most likely the beginning of the Afghan civil war’s newest phase.

The Hill:

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has tasked Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall with overseeing the investigation, which will be conducted by Lt. Gen. Sam Said, the Air Force inspector general.

“Part of that review will be to examine the investigation itself, the thoroughness of the investigation, to study the degree to which any policies, procedures or targeting mechanisms may need to be altered going forward, if any, and of course to then take a look at what levels of accountability might be appropriate and if so at what level,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a briefing.

CNBC:

In total, at least 85 American citizens and 79 lawful permanent residents have left Afghanistan since the U.S. ended a massive humanitarian evacuation and completed the withdrawal of its troops in August, according to State Department figures.

The precise reason why US citizens are still in Afghanistan is because the US never “completed its withdrawal.”

Independent:

In a parliamentary exchange Defence minister James Heappey told MPs it was “not possible” for everyone MPs considered to be at risk to be granted assistance under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap).

Yahoo! News:

Asadullah Wahdat, a Panjshir resident, said: “We ask the Islamic Emirate forces to evacuate residential areas and go where there are military forces of the former government.”

Safora Amiri, another Panjshir resident, said: “The areas are full of military forces. The Taliban are using people’s houses, this has caused civilians to evacuate their homes.”

Highlighting the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Panjshir Valley, former Afghanistan Vice President Amrullah Saleh early this month had called on the UN to do its utmost to prevent the Taliban’s onslaught into the resistance stronghold.

Raising an alarm over the situation in Panjshir, Saleh in a letter to the UN had said a large-scale humanitarian crisis is occurring across Panjshir province and three Andrabs districts in Baghlan province due to the economic blockade and telecommunication blackout by the Taliban.

The Afghan Republic lives on, in the areas occupied by Afghan National Army forces who have not surrendered. Meanwhile the Taliban are taking the fight to the civilians.

NPR:

The Biden administration, after sticking to its Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw forces from the country, has faced pressure to make sure that U.S. citizens and others who helped the U.S. government — and who want to leave Afghanistan — aren’t left behind with no way out.

See also: Fearful US Residents In Afghanistan Hiding Out From Taliban

ABC News:

Washington’s peace envoy says a Qatar Airways flight has taken more Americans out of Afghanistan, the third such airlift by the Mideast carrier since the Taliban takeover and the U.S. troop pullout from the country

Politico:

Congress’ oversight machine — which has been relatively dormant since Trump left office — is booting up for the first time under Biden’s presidency to tackle Afghanistan. Democrats are already grappling with how to conduct investigations without making it a liability for Biden, especially as Republicans fixate on the issue to portray the president and his party as incompetent ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

The Wall Street Journal:

It was a reversal of the Pentagon’s position on the Aug. 29 strike from just days ago, when military officials said they believed that the strike was justified. Military officials said then that civilians may have been mistakenly killed, but that Islamic State militants had been stopped. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley had gone so far as to say earlier this month that the strike was “righteous.”

See also: Drone Killings Of Innocent Families Expose Deadly Flaws In Biden’s ‘Over-The-Horizon’ Strategy

The Pink Report News:

The top United States general in charge of military forces in Afghanistan up until July of this year says he opposed President Biden’s troop withdrawal plan and warned against intelligence suggesting the Afghan army could hold off the Taliban.

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a classified hearing with General Austin Miller on Tuesday afternoon.

The Times Of India:

In response to the new cabinet announced by the Taliban for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the resistance front in Panjshir province led by Ahmad Massoud has said that they will declare a parallel government in the country after consultations.

The Afghan republic still lives.

See also: Lindsey Graham, One-Man PR Shop For The Afghan Resistance

USA Today:

The envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Financial Times that the U.S. had secured an agreement under which Ghani would remain in Kabul and Taliban fighters would not enter Afghanistan’s capital while diplomats negotiated a political transition of power in Qatar.

After Ghani fled, he said, the Taliban asked American officials if they planned to take over the security of Kabul, a proposition the U.S. rejected.   

“Even at the end, we had an agreement with the Talibs for [them] not to enter Kabul,” Khalilzad told the Financial Times in his first interview since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Khalilzad said he had no inkling “at all” that Ghani was intending to flee. He said the Afghan leader’s decision prompted the city’s security forces to disband – creating a security vacuum and unleashing the chaotic bid to evacuate. 

“There were questions of law and order in Kabul after Ghani fled . . . The Talibs [then] . . . say: ‘Are you going to take responsibility for security of Kabul now? . . . And then you know what happened, we weren’t going to take responsibility,” he said.

Fox News:

During the second hearing on President Biden’s deadly troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., joined his Republican colleagues in casting doubt on the administration’s claim that no one could have seen the quick fall of the war-torn nation.

Kaine said he concurred with two of his Republican colleagues’, Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mitt Romney of Utah, criticism of the administration’s claim, saying he just does not “think that’s true.”

“The notion that General Milley said that ‘nothing I or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,'” Kaine said to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has made the same claim himself, “I just don’t think that’s true.”

Whether it was six months, three months, or sooner than expected, everyone was in complete agreement that the Afghan Republic would inevitably collapse.

With the collapse of the Afghan government an absolute certainty, and the deadline of total military withdrawal looming, the evacuation of the 120,000+ US and international civilians in Afghanistan should have been the Biden Administration’s top priority.