By Benyamin Davidsons

Just hours before the Taliban invaded Kabul, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was vacationing in the Hamptons. As reported by the NY Post, on the Friday afternoon Aug. 13th, many senior White House staffers prepared for some time off after President Biden left for his Camp David retreat. Despite warnings that the Afghanistan capital was at risk, many top officials expected the government to be able to hold on for at least a few weeks. That Sunday, Aug 15, the insurgents rose to power, swiftly toppling the government, and Blinken and other top Biden administration officials had to be called back to Washington, DC.

Blinken was in the Hamptons. His family has a longtime link to the East Hampton. Donald Blinken, his father, who was a US ambassador to Hungary under President Bill Clinton, has seasonally lived on Lily Pond Lane for close to 50 years, as per the East Hampton Star.

But a lot transpired on that Friday. Mazar-i-Sharif, the fourth-largest city of Afghanistan, with an estimated population of 500,207 people, fell. In response, on that day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an immediate transfer of all US Embassy workers to Kabul airport. As per the Washington Post, by Saturday night, things had escalated so that Belkin spoke with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani over the phone, from the Hamptons.

Blinken tried to get the leader’s support for a US-brokered agreement with the Taliban— a deal in which Ghani would step aside as an interim government took over, but the terrorist group would agree stay outside the city. Very soon after, Ghani fled from Kabul, in a spur-of-the-moment move which led to the dire consequences. Ambassador Ross Wilson’s personnel were already working in a frenzy to destroy classified documents, equipment, and anything that could be misused in the embassy compound.

For 21-years the U.S. forces kept a presence in Afghanistan in what is now being called America’s longest war. On Thursday, the violence peaked when suicide bombers and gunmen outside Kabul airport killed more than 180 people, including 13 US service members. The Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K terror group is being blamed for the attack, which corresponded with the U.S. attempt to evacuate thousands from the airport. President Biden has been widely criticized over his handling of the evacuation.