So, as of this column, we are trying to get out of Afghanistan... for real. Not hypothetically. Real. The Taliban have taken over and a lot of people there, especially Americans, are scrambling to get out while we still have a few soldiers left and an ever-closing window of opportunity to do it.
There is so much that needs to be said about this, but rather than go over a long and drawn-out article, I’m going to summarize the key things.
And this first one is crucial.
Let’s get brutally honest here... America *did not* fail Afghanistan! The Afghan people failed themselves! We were there twenty years ago to take the Taliban out of power, to shut down the al Qaeda terrorist group operating there, and to take down Osama bin Laden and his associates for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. We did those things. We took the Taliban out of power. We shut down the terror groups operating there. And we killed bin Laden and captured and imprisoned his lackey who masterminded the attacks. Those were our objectives. Those were met.
We gave the Afghan people twenty years of support and training and equipment and weapons so they could stand up and defend the government that we helped to put in place, with all of the rights and provisions they wanted. And yet these soldiers, whom we helped and trained and equipped at the cost of our blood and money, turned and ran when it became their job to do what they are supposed to do. They turned tail and ran. They failed their own people and they failed the United States, not the other way around.
Equally important is this: At no time, past, present, or future, would there *ever* be a “right time” to leave Afghanistan. Ever! It does not matter if it would be ten years, twenty years, a hundred years, or a thousand years, our war-hawks and chickenhawks and their descendants would be screaming and wailing in front of every camera and every social media post they can get about “emboldening enemies”.
It doesn’t matter if it is the Taliban, a reborn al Qaeda, ISIL, Cobra, SPECTRE, the Legion of Doom, HYDRA, or an enemy to be named later, there would always be some group that our war-hawks and chickenhawks would claim would be “emboldened” by our departure from any front. That is what fascists do. That is how fascists think. Everything is a war front to them, and war is universal and never-ending in their heads.
Third: The only sin President Joe Biden committed was following through a plan already in motion! President Biden wasn’t even president when a certain orange-skinned narcissist orchestrated his “deal” to get us out of Afghanistan. Hell, Biden wasn’t even nominated yet!
A deal was signed on the last day of February 2020 between the United States and the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan within a 14-month period. That would end in May of this year. Not between the U.S. and the Afghan government, but between us and the Taliban!
Who was president at the time of that deal’s signing? Narcissist Donald John Trump.
Who was there for that signing? The Narcissist’s Secretary of State, Pompous Mike Pompeo, who whines like the hypocritical bitch that he is about the pull-out now that Biden is in the White House.
Where were all those war-hawks and chickenhawks on Leap Day 2020? Where were all the ones screaming loudly today when the deal was struck last year and their orange-skinned “genius” wanted to have the Taliban at Camp David? I’ll tell where they are now: they’re trying to whitewash any mention of that deal and to lie about what they did.
The Trump/Q Party praise of their messiah’s deal? That mysteriously disappeared from their website during what they called “maintenance”. However, this commentator’s good friends over at the Internet Archive managed to find it.
President Biden’s only part in this has been pushing the exit date back a few months, not listening to the war-hawks and chickenhawks to renege on the deal already in place (the one that they helped to create), and to take responsibility for being the one in the White House when it happens. He actually shows more responsibility in this situation than all of his critics and predecessors combined!
We could have stopped the Taliban but we chose not to! We were in Afghanistan a mere six months, and we supposedly had the Taliban and al Qaeda and bin Laden on the run, and then someone decided he wanted to focus our attention on another country.
The president at that time? George W. Bush.
He even openly admitted six months after 9/11 that Afghanistan didn’t interest him anymore. He wanted to go to Iraq and take down Saddam Hussein. Junior wasn’t even president anymore when we did take down bin Laden.
So, yeah, we could have finished off the Taliban decades ago, or at the very least cripple them so they wouldn’t come back as the charging bulls they are today. Instead, we brokered deals. And by “we” I mean the same war-hawks and chickenhawks who drove us there and demanded we stay there until the end of time.
But that still does not excuse the Afghan soldiers from cutting and running like the cowards they are.
There’s one more thing that needs to be said, and it might go towards why the Afghan soldiers cut and ran.
Who sold the Afghans on our way? Here’s a quick fact: we as American colonists had no idea what our proposed constitutional system was back in the day. There was nothing like it at the time. We had to be sold it through published documents like the Federalist Papers. Arguments about what a supposed “free country” would be like without nobility and about democratic representation without “divine right”.
So who taught the Afghans on the way that we supported, a way without the Taliban? Where were their versions of the Federalist Papers?
This is something I was saying twenty years ago when we first went to Afghanistan. Freedom has to be taught. It has to be sold to the people and for them to accept it. That’s the only way they will want to fight for it. Because otherwise we are just another group of occupiers to them, like the Soviets before us and like the British before the Soviets.
Who were their teachers? Were there any teachers? Or did we let the air-fluffed media and “decadent” television be our models and salespeople? If we did that, then it’s no wonder why Afghanistan went back to the Taliban!
Look, it sucks to see Afghanistan fall with such speed. I’m sure it hurts those who fought on behalf of our country and to the families of those who died in service to our country to know that twenty years of sacrifice could go away so quickly and so easily. Twenty years and trillions of dollars and American lives were spent on that. But America didn’t fail the people of Afghanistan. They did that themselves. The only thing that we can do now is try to get as many out as we can.
No comments:
Post a Comment