(The Center Square) – This week will mark the three-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Biden committed on the campaign trail to withdraw U.S. troops, a move supported by his predecessor Donald Trump, but the process left 13 U.S. service members killed and the country within the hands of the Taliban.
The Taliban also received billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment because it was left behind.
Federal officials have pointed to an effort to render that equipment unusable, but the rapid collapse in the country left little time to actually finish and accomplish that destruction of equipment.
The Taliban held a military parade featuring U.S. military equipment earlier this month.
“What added insult to injury to all of this was the way in which it was conducted, the unnecessary impetus behind it which led to the … collapse” and even “armed our adversaries,” Robert Greenway, a former top intelligence and national security official in the U.S. government for decades who is now at the Heritage Foundation, told The Center Square.
He added that Biden left them “as the best armed terrorist state in the history of the world.”
An eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan has long been on the table as a possibility for both parties, but letting the country fall back into the hands of the Taliban was at one time considered unthinkable and eventually became expected by many experts.
“The Taliban never really had entirety of control over Afghanistan,” Greenway said. “This is the closest they’ve been to it.”
But he added that that grip is “tenuous” and “devolving.”
In the July before the withdrawal, Biden said that Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable and that he trusted Afghanistan’s government.
“It’s a – it’s a silly question,” Biden continued, when asked by a reporter if he trusts the Taliban. “Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- – more competent in terms of conducting war.”
Afghanistan fell into the Taliban’s hands almost immediately, something intelligence and security experts predicted.
Greenway said the Taliban has called on the “faithful” to return to Afghanistan, which increases the threat to the U.S. homeland. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. were planned and launched from Afghanistan.
“Ultimately means a regional threat but more importantly means a threat against the U.S. homeland is on the march and actively coalescing,” Greenway said.
Greenway said Afghanistan’s Taliban takeover affects the Iran, Israel and Hamas conflict “a great deal.”
The loss of presence in Afghanistan has removed a sort of regional forward operating base across the world by which to act quickly in the Middle East, and that loss of deterrence leads to a more volatile region, Greenway said.
He also said the withdrawal sent a message to other powers like Russia, Iran and Ukraine that the U.S. didn’t have the will to act decisively and efficiently militarily, lowering the deterrence threat.
“I feel sorry for the people that are going to have to go back into Afghanistan when an attack happens on the U.S. homeland,” Greenway said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. armed forces are in a recruiting crisis, falling short of target recruitment goals across branches, something Greenway argues escalated after the Afghanistan withdrawal.
“If you don’t have confidence in leadership, in the commander in chief, you don’t have anything,” Greenway said.
Women in particular have suffered since the U.S. left, with the Taliban banning education for women over the sixth grade among other laws that essentially ban women from showing their faces or speaking loudly in public.
“Since 2021, the situation has worsened with the collapse of the economy and restrictions on women’s rights,” Gallup said in a release of a recent survey. “Gallup surveys have found that 96% of Afghan women are suffering under the Taliban, and most do not feel that women in Afghanistan are treated with respect.”
Biden/Harris unconditionally surrendered and pulled out of Afghanistan and gave the Taliban enemy 7 BILLION dollars of equipment left behind. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Biden/Harris left them “as the best armed terrorist state in the history of the world.” 🙁
The Taliban held a military parade featuring U.S. military equipment earlier this month. ” 🙁
“I feel sorry for the people that are going to have to go back into Afghanistan when an attack happens on the U.S. homeland,” 🙁 🙁 🙁
“If you don’t have confidence in leadership, in the commander in chief, you don’t have anything,”
And The Treasonous, Destructive Democrat Party and their supporters wants to put the self-serving Bimbo Kamala Harris back in the White house as President????
🙁 🙁 🙁
Joe Biden’s coitus interruptus Afghanistan love fest withdrawal from the Terrorists he loves to seek votes from, ended up screwing our own military big time, not the terrorists whom were militarily equipped for the next 2 decades with the state of the art weapons he left behind, many sold to the Russians and Ukrainians that are now appearing in that theater of war. Was he and his crime family paid by the Taliban his usual 10% to arm them, or did our military industrial complex persuade him to leave $85 billion in American arms, so that they could profit in the production of the same weapons needed by our own armed forces or in Ukraine to replace them?,,,,,,,,Probably BOTH. I’m Sure Pelosi’s unicorn loving stock trader husband got a heads up to buy up as many weapons producing company stocks before the rest of us got the word. Again, this is how perpetual political parasites like Joe and Nancy leave government office 55 years later, tens and sometimes hundreds of million dollars richer than the sum total of all SELF-serving government salaries earned!,,,while People-Serving democrat attacked Presidents like Trump leave office hundreds of millions poorer, who donated back his salary while in office on top of it! Just who is the better candidate should be a no brainer, once the truth gets out, to WE THE VOTERS.
AND YET they demand WE AMERICANS give OUR guns up..
A failure in Brandon’s leadership and embarrassment to our nation.
And now they have the weaponry to KEEP it!
(I wish Biden had asked to take ME out to the woodshed. You know, back when it would have meant something.)
They probably ran out of wood making Pinocchio as big as he get,,,,his nose that is.
OR Sell off to fuel their terrorism.
Kamala Harris was the last person in the room when the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was ordered, leading to 13 American service members being killed. Harris bragged about her role on-camera.
“She bragged that she would be the last person in the room, and she was. She was the last person in the room with Biden when the two of them decided to pull the troops out of Afghanistan,” he said last week in a North Carolina rally. “She (kamala Harris) had the final vote. She had the final say, and she was all for it.”
The last ot leave the room, and the first to sign off on the deal.
What has become of all the Americans and Afghan allies that were left behind, are they all still hiding or dead?