What happened at the Kabul airport, where American freedom and democracy fighters were hastily evacuated, fighting off Afghan freedom and democracy fighters who wanted to fly with them, made a strong impression on everyone.

"This is some kind of shame."

Moreover, the Westernizers, and the native speakers, and the supporters of freedom and democracy, and those who saw her in her grave - at least in the American version, were in solidarity here.

Such was the evacuation.

Generally speaking, this is often the case.

Retreat or even flight under the onslaught of superior enemy forces, and even with the need to evacuate the carts, is not always a soul-elevating spectacle, worthy of being included in a reader.

More often the opposite.

Perhaps the earliest example of an imperial evacuation dates back to AD 410. An imperial decree (the so-called Rescript of Honorius) instructed the inhabitants of Britain to defend themselves against the barbarians on their own, and the legions were withdrawn to the continent.

16 centuries later, Biden's rescript was about the same: "It is a mistake to stay and fight endlessly in a conflict that does not meet the national interests of the United States."

With the departure of the Romans, Britain was immediately conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, for the first time - and immediately very effectively - performing on the stage of world history.

The Britons appealed to Rome for help up to 440, but to no avail.

In times closer to us, however, the necessity or at least the desirability of evacuating not only our own, but also allies and collaborators began to penetrate more into the minds of the leadership.

Operation Dynamo is known (May 26 - June 4, 1940), when, contrary to the name, the British did not advance at Dunkirk, but, on the contrary, evacuated along with their expeditionary corps (138 thousand bayonets) the same number of French and Belgians ...

True, London's motives were not so much humanitarian as purely pragmatic - England hoped to use the allies in the further war.

But perhaps the most impressive example of evacuation is 1943-1944, when with the Germans left to the west (moreover, voluntarily, forcibly stolen - this is a separate article) of at least half a million (this is the lower limit, rather, there were more of them) Soviet citizens collaborators. The Germans did not particularly succeed in using their services, but the USA and Canada (where there were a lot of Ukrainians precisely at the end of 1944) collaborators and their descendants came in handy. 

It was good or not good at all, but it is obvious that without the assistance of the Wehrmacht, such numerous convoys with collaborators could not have made their way from the USSR to the west.

Somehow it was necessary to feed the citizens of the USSR retreating with the Germans, and the routes of communication - which were also very necessary for the Wehrmacht - were quite strained.

If the Germans, unlike the Americans in Kabul, did not answer their collaborators simply: “Who are you?

I do not know you.

Let's go, go away, go away, ”but somehow they fiddled with them, this indicates that the Reich paid the traitors.

At least helping them escape.

But in any case, the Taliban * could not prevent the mass evacuation of Afghan collaborators.

If the Americans had shown the will to such an evacuation, it would be difficult to imagine the shots from the Kabul airport that amazed the whole world.

Who stood for what is a separate question, but then the will to save their - even a hundred times despicable - servants was undoubtedly higher.

"What an example this is for us, what a lesson!"

* "Taliban" - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of February 14, 2003.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.