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Afghanistan’s Last Gasp

Taliban insurrectionists in Kabul

“Photos circulating online,” the Epoch Times reported hours before Afghanistan fell to radical Islamic warlords, “show members of the Taliban, holding AK-47-style rifles, inside the palace. Speaking to Al Jazeera TV during a live stream, a member of the group who was inside the presidential palace said the Taliban is planning to declare Afghanistan the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ in the near future.”

The picture, also displayed on the front page of the Hartford Courant, is not one of a breakaway group of thuggish Trump celebrants romping through the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. This is what a real insurrection looks like. As Nancy Pelosi is certain to notice, shown in the photo are Taliban Islamic extremists victoriously disporting themselves with guns in the presidential palace in Afghanistan.

The photo is a living testament to President Joe Biden’s inept withdrawal from Afghanistan, now and always "the graveyard of empires."

One imagines the President and his supporters are disappointed, rather than surprised, that the Taliban was able, within the space of a few days, to capture so much territory following Biden’s destructive announcement in July that he would end the war in Afghanistan and bring home about 2,500 remaining support troops. “He ended the war in Afghanistan” does, after all, strike a bold political campaign posture. And it was the sight of that neon display, flashing on and off during the coming midterm campaigns, rather than any deep concern for the safety of American personnel and Afghan troops and supporters that made necessary an early announcement to the-Taliban-in-waiting that they should begin assembling a successful military response to an inept American withdrawal.

On July 8 of this year, Biden was asked by a reporter, “Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?” His answer was unambiguous: “No, it is not.”

“Why?” the reporter persisted.

“Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.  It is not inevitable.”

This writer wrote in 2014, well before Donald Trump strode into the White House, that a removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was advisable. "The bad news, to put it bluntly,” he wrote in his blog Connecticut Commentary, “is that if the U.S. withdraws all its troops from Afghanistan, sometimes called 'the graveyard of empires,' the country is very likely, very quickly, to revert to Taliban hands. The worse news is that even if the U.S. were to retain in the country more than 12,000 troops, the minimum number necessary to sustain the present inadequate status quo, the security gains achieved since 2010 would still significantly erode in the south and east of the country.”

There are few soldiers serving in America’s longest war who would agree that Afghan soldiers -- backed by American intelligence and air support -- did not fight valiantly. No active military -- American, Soviet or Afghan -- can long survive in the absence of accurate on the ground intelligence and forceful air support. Even the Soviets had the presence of mind to wait until winter to withdraw from Afghanistan. American air support and intelligence was the rug Biden pulled abruptly from under the feet of the armed Taliban resistance, announcing he would do so in July. That red neon campaign legend – “He brought our troops home!” – flashing in his weakened mind, blotted out a creative and safe withdrawal. Biden is old, weak, thoughtless, a slave of emotion, a derivative president, who rarely has had an original idea he was able to carry successfully to completion.

Afghan women, following the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul, will once again be plunged back into the 10th century, and progressive third wave feminist will swallow their bitten tongues. There is not a single American progressive-socialist politician who does not know that the only way to gain any concessions from Afghan militants, now and forever, is to purchase their always temporary and expensive affections with hard cash. President Barack Obama’s effort to purchase the allegiance of hard-line Islamic puritans in Iran, most objective journalist agree, was a conspicuous failure.

The planeloads of cash and gold flown into Iran by the Obama/Biden administration was used by terrorist distributor General Qassem Soleimani to purchase the services of terrorists who later would lob missiles into Israel. Both Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, another terrorist on the US kill list, was dispatched on orders from Trump.

Biden, New York Senate leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi and Connecticut’s U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, wide-eyed with surprise and shedding hot tears over the future treatment of American friends in Afghanistan, are loaded with taxpayer money. And since Biden is not a creative politician, one may reasonably expect sometime in the future yet another failed attempt to buy the affections of Islamic extremists warlords. Actually, the warlords already have been bought out by Putin’s Russia, Communist leader Xi Jinping’s China, and anti “Great Satan” client states such as Iran.

The Biden administration, however, is for the moment awash in funny money, in addition to a massive unpaid debt to be deeded to American children yet unborn, so what’s the problem?

Really, if we all are reelected to office, what is the problem?

 

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