by Jerry Esmay, Stevensville
I am very upset with the recent debacle in Afghanistan. Folks this is the worst Military/State Department/Presidential failure in my life time. This has moved beyond just a screwed up Presidential mistake to, in my opinion, a criminal set of stupid decisions.
What I see happened is the President rushed to fulfill a campaign promise to pull out of Afghanistan without first asking for a thorough analysis of how is should be accomplished including an analysis of contingency plans for possible problems that might arise.
The end result is the worst catastrophic disaster in the history of our country. In order to get out, the President basically made a pact with the devil (Taliban). In turn for them promising to help with the massive airlift, we turned over our biggest airbase with enough vehicles, weapons and ammunition to give them one of the largest armies in the region.
Then, to totally embarrass himself, he gives us a victory speech praising his decisions and the un-precedented airlift that was carried out. However, what he failed to adequately acknowledge was his failure to get all Americans out. Additionally, it is now clear that the majority of the Afghans that were airlifted were not the ones who had helped/worked with us over the last 20 years. So, now we have to live with the facts that he not only left hundreds of Americans behind but also left hundreds (maybe thousands) of friendly Afghans as well. He has also failed to acknowledge the fact that females and children will now be back under the barbaric control of the Taliban.
Folks, I am sickened to my core. If this doesn’t fit the definition of Treason I don’t know what does. The President, his State Department advisors and his Military advisors should face criminal charges.
Howard S. says
Fact: The Trump administration committed us to withdrawing from Afghanistan. They made a peace deal that was essentially a complete surrender to the Taliban. Trump even wanted to invite the Taliban leaders to Camp David to honor them. Remember that? I suspect if Trump had been the one to pull our troops out (like he said he would), Fox News would have put a very different spin on it and Mr. Esmay would have been cheering the move, consequences be damned.
Biden had a choice between honoring that deal or breaking it, which would have escalated the conflict with the Taliban and certainly required increasing the number of troops there dramatically. Biden has been consistent in his desire to end the conflict in Afghanistan, so it should come as no surprise that he pulled our guys out. He was against Obama’s troop surge at the time. The chaos came as a result of the Afghan government and military completely folding to the Taliban with hardly a shot fired. It was expected that the Taliban would eventually take over, but the speed at which it happened was surprising. The afghan’s incompetence and lack of will to fight, despite being propped up with billions of $ from the US and our allies over the last 20 years, proves it was a lost cause all along. Nevertheless, we got over 120,000 people airlifted out in a very short time. We lost the war there shortly after it started in 2001 and losing a war is never pretty. That’s just reality. The military lied to and misled every president about the progress we were making there over the past 20 years.
It was far from pretty, but we’re finally out. I think it will prove to be a good decision in the long run. The war cost the lives of close to 2,500 soldiers and $2 trillion. There was nothing to be gained by keeping our troops there one second longer. I hope we learn from this experience and avoid getting stuck in similar quagmires in the future. But let’s not pretend everything was going swimmingly in Afghanistan until recently.
Gomez says
Exactly. This was a 20 year war that was seen over by multiple presidents. Almost 3000 American Service Men & Women died in the conflict. It was never going to be a clean exit because we were dealing with religious fanatics, not unlike those that charged the US Capital in January waving Christian flags. Our troops would have always been in danger when dealing with such people. The more people we had in that country the more targets the suicide bombers would have had.
Running Elk says
Agree totally