The utterly humiliating rout from Afghanistan that America’s armed forces underwent and the American people watched with horror last year might have been the first real disaster of the Biden presidency.
Things were bad before that, to be sure: inflation was starting to rear its ugly head, the border was shockingly overrun with illegal immigrants to an extent not seen in years, if ever, and both the senile president and his cackling VP were constant embarrassments.
But when that sickening video emerged of Afghan would-be refugees running alongside a C-5 Galaxy and attempting to clamber onto it but falling off emerged as an image of a Chinook hovering above the Kabul embassy just like that infamous image of a similar helicopter hovering above the Saigon embassy in 1975 and taking off one last band of fleeing Americans and American allies emerged, we all could see that a disaster was happening.
And now the leader of al-Qaeda has supposedly been killed in Kabul, which, if true, would mean that the place is already a terror safe haven once again.
All that would mean, to the average observer, that the whole “withdrawal” from Afghanistan was not a success. America was run out of the nation like a whipped dog, our allies were left deserted, and the war was an obvious failure, as Afghanistan is once again a safe haven for our enemies.
But, as could be expected, as we hit the one-year anniversary of the withdrawal (read: humiliating rout), Team Biden is attempting to frame the incident as a success.
Such is what happened when a State Department spokesman, speaking on the issue, claimed that America is in a “stronger position” because of the rout, saying:
“Let me start with this. Many of us here at the Department and across the government, and millions of Americans and Afghans alike, are mindful of today’s meaning as the 20-year-long U.S. military mission in Afghanistan ended nearly one year ago.
“Ending the longest war in American history was never going to be easy, but one year later we are in a stronger position as a country because of the President’s decision, better able to focus on the threats and challenges, but also the opportunities of today.”
Opportunities like the opportunity to find what al-Qaeda leaders are hiding out in the country once again?
But that wasn’t all. The same spokesman continued trying to put a cheery face on the issue in his speech, saying:
“We have demonstrated that we are able to fulfill our enduring commitments to the Afghan people using the various diplomatic tools at our disposal and with exceptional help from our partners like Qatar, the UAE and our European allies and others.
“We are grateful for that support. Of course, the international community will continue to expect that the Taliban meet the commitments they have made to the Afghan people. We are doing all of this as we continue to urgently seek the release of Mark Frerichs.
“We can take on all of these challenges without putting our service members at risk in an open-ended military commitment. The same is true for our partners, including NATO, which is now more purposeful than ever in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
“As a result, we are able to focus our resources to face new global challenges, confronting Russian aggression, managing the competition with PRC, addressing shared challenges like Covid-19 and climate change, and seizing opportunities in the Indo-Pacific among other regions. For the first time in nearly 20 years, our forces are not in harm’s way in Afghanistan and we are fully focused on the challenges and opportunities that define the 21st century.”
Leaving Afghanistan was probably the right call. It was time for American troops to leave. But to be routed from the country in humiliating fashion by a band of a few thousand terrorists, to leave the humiliating way we did? That was a disaster, whatever the spokespeople Team Brandon finds try to say.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Facebook and Subscribe to My Email List
