Getting out of Afghanistan – E.B. Boyd: “Leaving Afghanistan has become one of the most difficult operations the U.S. military has ever undertaken. “Certainly in our lifetime, it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest operation in terms of complexity, size, and cost,” said Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason, who headed Army logistics until he retired last year. A Pentagon official called it a “nightmare,” and the colonel in charge of packing up Afghanistan last year called it “a logistics Super Bowl.” Packing up a war is never easy. Anyone who’s ever moved house can relate. There inevitably comes a moment when you stare at all your stuff and wonder, What is all this crap? The process of dealing with it all—deciding what to take, what to post to Craigslist, and what to simply toss out on the curb—can overwhelm even the sturdiest of souls. When it came to packing up Afghanistan, the military had that problem on steroids.”