5 minute read
Biden’s Saigon
Alex Newberg, Editor-in-Chief
There are miscalculations, and then there are colossal screw-ups. US President Joseph R. Biden’s recent decision to withdraw all US troops, intelligence, and support from Afghanistan was a colossal screw-up bordering on malice.
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To fully realize how unreasonable this decision was, one must first understand how and why the US military arrived in Afghanistan.
Following the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001, citizens of the world experienced an unyielding shock. The evil attack was not only an act of terror against the United States but against the entire free world. So, to prevent anything remotely similar from occurring again, then-President George W. Bush vowed: “[to] direct every resource at our command– every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war– to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network.”
Of course, behind the 9/11 attacks was al Qaeda. This vicious, Islamist terrorist group was, at the time, being bolstered by the Taliban in Afghanistan. After Bush demanded the Taliban turn over al Qaeda members with no response, he said, “now the Taliban will pay a price,” and into Afghanistan, we marched.
After quickly toppling the Taliban and rejecting an unconditional surrender, the United States and NATO allies ended primary combat operations and began nation-building. Initially seeking to establish a western-style democracy, the operation, indeed, fell victim to mission creep. smallest military presence since 2001 with only 3,500 troops. Nevertheless, against the advice of his advisors and the intelligence community, President Biden announced on April 14, 2021, that the United States would initiate a complete pullout starting on May 1.
Biden followed through, and precisely what was predicted transpired. The Taliban almost immediately took over the entire country, including sweeping the Capital, forcing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country. And despite the Taliban’s laughable offer for a peaceful transition of power, the fundamentalist organization has already begun its reign of terror on Afghanistan.
The Taliban has begun going door-to-door, targeting women: gang-raping them and seeking to indoctrinate them. They have stoked so much fear that women have started passing their babies over fences seeking to put them in the safe hands of soldiers.
After Biden’s foolhardy, precipitous pull-out, Afghanistan witnessed its deadliest day of conflict since 2011. 60 Afghans and 13 US troops perished. This marked the first combat troop deaths since February 2020 (illustrating that Afghanistan was not America’s longest-standing “war” by any stretch of the imagination). All this unfolded because Biden enacted an unnecessary withdrawal without a real contingency plan.
The Taliban is now one of the most well-equipped forces globally due to the amount of equipment and intelligence the military was forced to leave behind given such short notice. According to Reuters News, “the current intelligence assessment was that the Taliban are believed to control more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.” And equally concerning is the massive supply of
night-vision goggles left behind, which gives the Taliban the ability to fight at night. Additionally, the US military was forced to ditch files with faces and names of every Afghan citizen who has helped the US military for the last 20 years. Those people are certainly not safe under the Taliban’s brutal, theocratic rule.
Americans were stranded, including a 3-year-old boy from California. He does not deserve to be left for dead. He and his family are stranded in Afghanistan and have already been physically beaten by the Taliban.
Why did Biden not feel the need to afford all US citizens the ability to leave before executing the withdrawal? Could he not wait until the Winter when there is a known pause in Taliban conflict due to the frigid temperatures and harsh climate?
Instead, Biden decided to act in defiance of his intelligence community, close the airport in Kabul, leaving Americans for dead, and allow the Taliban to topple the country’s leadership in a matter of days.
Biden has repeatedly shifted blame, specifically to one person. Biden blames Trump. When in doubt and in need of political capital, just blame Trump, or so the leftist mindset preaches.
Biden claims that it was Trump’s Doha agreement that required troops to leave by May 1. This could not be further from the truth. You see, the way an agreement functions is that there are conditions that must be met by both parties.
Trump’s Doha agreement set the clear expectation that US troops would be withdrawn ONLY if the Taliban upheld its requirements of the agreement, including its commitment to participate in an “Intra-Afghan dialogue,” implement a “permanent and comprehensive ceasefire,” and agree to an amenable plan for Afghanistan’s future. And Trump made it explicitly clear that if the Taliban did not honor its terms of the agreement, there would be “hell to pay.” Even Democrats have blasted President Biden’s unwise decision to withdraw troops. Veteran himself, Rep. Seth Moulton (D–MA), took an unauthorized trip to Kabul. “Even if you completely agree with the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw, the way they have handled this has been a total [expletive] disaster,” Moulton said.
The time for partisan politics has come and gone. As a country, we must universally condemn the irresponsible precipitous pull-out authorized and executed by President Biden against the advice of his intelligence community. We must rectify swiftly what we can. This foreign policy blunder is only paralleled by the gut-wrenching images of the fall of Saigon in 1975. Evacuations of Kabul are eerily reminiscent of the evacuation of the Vietnamese US embassy at the end of the Vietnam War.
Biden has repeatedly stated that “the buck stops with [him].” Still, it seems that Biden will continue weaseling his way into having it stop with anyone else. Own it, Joe. This was a failure of epic proportions, and you are responsible.
