Thousands of people have been abandoned to the " mercy " of the Taliban and the President of the United States of America has abandoned them. Apparently, America does not currently have a specific plan to help them.
Yet, back in 1940, things were different. 340,000 troops were stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk after a botched military decision. Our troops were left behind and it took the " Miracle of Dunkirk " to bring the boys back home.
As most of you know, Dunkirk is a small town on the coast of France that was the scene of a massive military campaign during World War II. It sounds eerily familiar, after the surrender of the Biden Government in Afghanistan and the subsequent horror that is unfolding right now.
Perhaps we, as former President Donald Trump has said " facing our Dunkirk moment. "
During the Battle of Dunkirk from May 26 to June 4, 1940, some 338,000 British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops were evacuated from Dunkirk to England as German forces closed in on them. The massive operation, involving hundreds of naval and civilian vessels, became known as the “Miracle of Dunkirk” and served as a turning point for the Allied war effort.
Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium in their lightning war also known as the Blitzkrieg. The 3 countries fell like dominoes and in May 1940 all 3 countries had fallen to the Nazis.
The Allies expected the German troops to advance along the Maginot Line but, instead, they came in through the Ardennes Forest and moved along the Somme Valley to the English Channel. With every mile, they cut off communication and the allies were confined to a small section of the French coast at Dunkirk.
By May 19, General John Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had begun to consider that his only option was to evacuate his men by sea in order to save them from the certain annihilation by the approaching Nazi troops.
Help us cover our monthly costs
The then Prime Minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain was out of his depth. He resigned ( Hint ) and a new wartime coalition government headed by Winston Churchill took the helm to try and mop up the mess. At first, British command opposed evacuation, and French forces wanted to hold out as well.
Churchill soon became convinced evacuation was the only option if he was to mop up the mistakesand errors made by his predecessor.
In planning this risky operation, the Allies got a helping hand from a surprising source: Adolf Hitler, who on May 24 gave the order to halt the advance of German panzer divisions bearing down on Dunkirk.
His Generals were concerned that they might meet opposition ... Goering ( the Luftwaffe Commander ) tried to reassure Hitler that he had it under control, but Hitler hesitated. This gave the allies time to regroup and formulate a strategy.
On the evening of May 26, the British began the evacuation from Dunkirk, using the codename Operation Dynamo. Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay directed the efforts, leading a team working out of a room deep inside the Dover cliffs that had once contained a generator known as a dynamo (giving the operation its name).
In spite of the Luftwaffe bombing the harbour at Dunkirk, the Royal Air Force continued to delay the German planes and they were able to slow down the attack.
On the first day, Operation Dynamo was only able to evacuate about 7,500 men from Dunkirk; around 10,000 got out the following day - May 28.
Because Dunkirk had such a shallow beach, Royal Navy vessels couldn’t reach it, and the Allies put out a call for smaller ships to carry troops from the shore to the larger ships further out in the North Sea. Some 800 to 1,200 boats, many of them leisure or fishing crafts, set sail from England and prepared to bring the stranded soldiers home.
Some were requisitioned by the Navy and crewed by naval personnel, while others were manned by their civilian owners and crew. The first members of this small armada—which would become known as the “Little Ships”—began arriving on the beaches of Dunkirk on the morning of May 28.
At the beginning of the rescue mission, Churchill and the rest of British command expected that the evacuation from Dunkirk could rescue only around 45,000 men at most. But the success of Operation Dynamo was far greater than any one dare hope:
By the end, around 198,000 British and 140,000 French troops would manage to get off the beaches at Dunkirk—a total of some 338,000 men. Unfortunately, 90,000 Allied forces were left behind, along with the bulk of the BEF’s heavy guns and tanks, when the resistance ended on the morning of June 4 and German troops occupied Dunkirk.
The People had rallied around and come to the aid of their government but also their fellow citizens.
For those left behind, the picture was grim.
On May 27, after holding off a German company until they ran out of ammo, 99 soldiers from the Royal Norfolk Regiment retreated to a farmhouse in the village of Paradis, about 50 miles from Dunkirk.
Agreeing to surrender, the trapped regiment started to file out of the farmhouse, waving a white flag tied to a bayonet. They were met by German machine-gun fire.
They were ordered to go to a field where they had their belongings taken from them and they were marched to a pit and stabbed or shot to death.
They eventually surrendered to the Germans and became POWs. One was sent home " traded for some German POWs " and was able to tell the tale of this wartime atrocity.
It is now 2021, and we have seen political incompetence yet again place our boys in danger. But we are also seeing a new kind of war: the abandonment of civilians in what quickly became a war zone.
This incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan is one of the worst foreign policy disasters in American history. The intelligence community warned Biden that the Taliban were ready to take over rapidly if the US didn’t prepare properly.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby has said that between 5,000 to 10,000 US citizens are still trapped in Afghanistan.
They are now trapped, like the troops at Dunkirk and John Kirby has said that if you can’t get to the Kabul airport, America does not currently have a specific plan to help you. Well, isn't that just marvellous?
It is easy to use Biden as the scapegoat, for scapegoat he is. The real architect of this grand failure is Barack Obama, who withdrew troops from the villages and left the shambles that ensued.
Between 2010 and 2013, counterintelligence operations succeeded in driving out the Taliban and al Qaeda from villages and districts. By 2013, the Afghan government controlled 90% of the country, and wartime casualty rates were at the lowest point during the war.
In 2014, the Obama administration said “our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending,” and that the military would only remain in a training and advisory role with 10,000 troops. It might be fair to say that in retrospect that was a most unwise move.
So what do we do now?
I believe it is time to do a Dunkirk and get the poor abandoned people out. Now.
Back in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, a man named Donald Trump sent his own plane in to evacuate stranded personnel.
I know one thing for certain: Donald Trump would never have left people behind.
“This could be... Afghanistan.... another Dunkirk situation!” Donald Trump said Wednesday in a statement.
Well, it certainly was not Biden's finest hour and not America's finest hour.
Maybe it will be Trump who flies in and does the job that America should have done... much like all those years ago in Desert Storm.
