Biden was well aware that just about every intelligence analyst, regional expert, and military general on his staff believed that Afghanistan wouldn’t be able to stand on its own for long. In January 2021 the Pentagon’s special inspector general for Afghanistan issued a classified report with a warning to the new president: When the Americans left, the Afghan air force would collapse. It wasn’t an issue of flying the planes: He noted that without American contractors to service and maintain the equipment, the Afghan air force simply couldn’t stay in the sky very long.
