EDITORIAL: Military mission ends amid chaos

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From the moment Kabul fell to the Taliban, on the same day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election almost two-thirds of Canadians didn’t want, the federal government’s response to the crisis has been a disaster.

While other nations were sending in commandoes and helicopters to get their allies and citizens to safety, Canada’s Global Affairs department was telling our people to wear red and yell they were from “Canada” at the besieged gates of the Kabul airport.

This while attempting to make their way through thousands of other people, equally desperate, trying to get to the airport, through streets controlled by the Taliban.

Amid the chaos and confusion, even those who had proper documentation were turned aside by soldiers responsible for airport security.

Prior to that, the Trudeau government had imposed absurd bureaucratic preconditions on our allies and their families trying to get out.

They were told to complete complicated forms online, within three days, in English only, in the middle of a virtual war zone where many had no access to computers. Then the government email inbox for the forms broke down.

Canadian authorities reportedly fretted over having enough seatbelts for every person being flown out of Kabul.

Other nations — realizing the Taliban posed a far greater risk than the absence of seatbelts — piled as many people as possible onto their planes to get them to safety.

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Trudeau himself appeared to be poorly briefed on developments and preoccupied with election campaigning.

On Tuesday, he said Canadian forces might stay longer than the U.S. deadline for leaving Kabul of Aug. 31, to get as many of Canada’s Afghan allies out as possible.

Then on Thursday morning, the government announced it was ending its military mission on the same day as terrorists launched attacks near the Kabul airport.

While the government said it was able to get thousands of people to safety, many others are being left behind, hunted by the Taliban.

The Trudeau government had been warned for more than five years by Canadian war vets who served in Afghanistan — and by journalists like the Toronto Sun’s Joe Warmington — that our allies needed to be evacuated because they were being hunted by the Taliban.

Those warnings were ignored. Now, it’s too late.