Call this postcards from the abyss. After spending several days rejecting the idea that any extension to Joe Biden’s August 31 bug-out deadline would be necessary, the Pentagon now has begun to consider its “options.” John Kirby fronted an incoherent mess of a press briefing this morning by combining Chip Diller and John Blutarski at the same time:

Asked by @DefenseOne's @TaraCopp if extending the Aug. 31 deadline to get more people out would be "wholly dependent whether the Taliban would let a U.S. presence remain in Afghanistan," Kirby replies that "what we do here at the building — at the Pentagon is options."

Yikes. pic.twitter.com/SeTikwZGWE

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 23, 2021

Options, you say? Like, er, keeping Bagram in US hands until the end of the withdrawal process? Bringing more troops into Kabul before the Taliban actually arrived? Planning a military withdrawal a few months out to ensure that the enemy doesn’t turn our weapons on us? Those were the “options” in the spring, while Joe Biden insisted on removing the last 2500 military personnel in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon no longer has a range of options at its disposal. They can either bring in more troops to get escape routes secured to the airport, or tell people they’re on their own until August 31st. If the Pentagon chooses anything else, the Taliban have already warned that they consider the date a “red line,” a term that likely has more meaning among the Stone Age jihadis than it does at this White House.

But more to the point: why is the White House vacillating on a commitment to get every American out of Kabul? Biden goes back and forth on that, and Kirby doesn’t even mention that as an ‘option.’

Even while avoiding that basic level of commitment to its citizens, the Biden administration keeps trying to eat its cake and have it too on their evacuation progress. Early this morning, Joe Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain bragged that the US had airlifted “over 37,000 people in eight days,” a rather specific number:

Over 37,000 people evacuated from Kabul in eight days so far. https://t.co/86317EC6Cv

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) August 23, 2021

Major General Hank Taylor also bragged that the US had airlifted 16,000 people in the last 24 hours, and brought the total up to 42,000. That is impressive, without a doubt. So how many of those are Americans who got left behind in the initial retreat from Kabul?

Suddenly, no one wants to talk numbers:

https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1429829102471716875

Taylor says he doesn’t know either:

Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Joint Staff admits to Defense One's Tara Copp that he doesn't know right now how many Americans make up the 42,000 number of those the U.S. has evacuated from Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/qOSGFkbMSY

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 23, 2021

Er … isn’t that their job to know? They’re bragging about numbers in order to get credit for their airlift performance. Someone has to be checking nationalities when the planes get filled, right? If they want to be vague for security purposes, perhaps they should shut up about the total count as well, lest the Taliban suddenly decide that too many of their enemies are escaping their revenge.

At the very least, shouldn’t we get an idea at this point how many Americans are left to rescue? That would certainly inform the Pentagon’s choice among their “options,” and whether or not it will be necessary to push past that August 31st deadline. And it should inform our demands on Biden to ensure every American gets out while we still can operate from Hamid Karzai airport.

For a chaser, Jennifer Griffin asked about the “options,” including the decision to close Bagram in the first place. Kirby accused her of “Monday morning quarterback[ing],” which ignores the fact that these are — or should be — options on the table for a superpower.

“Given the number of people who are in hiding who were either [Special Immigrant Visa] recipients, some Americans, Afghan allies, why not reopen Bagram Air Base? Why not go get an agreement from the Qataris to come land in Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, elsewhere,” asked Griffin. “We saw the Qataris bring the [Taliban co-founder] Mullah [Abdul Ghani] Baradar back with a C-17. Why not use the Pakistanis and the Qataris to help bring people out from? Because right now you’re just bringing people out from Kabul and it’s a choke point.”

“Well, first of all, the throughput has improved and increased,” responded Kirby, who went on to say, “I don’t think it would be a useful expenditure of our time to Monday morning quarterback the whole issue with Bagram. It was closed down as part of the retrograde, Jen.”

“I’m not talking about Monday morning quarterbacking,” Griffin interjected. “I’m talking about why not look at the situation now. You need airfields that you can land on to get people out.”

If this is the play they’re running now, as Kirby states, then they need a new playbook. And a brand new set of coaches, too.