Author: Blazingcatfur

The time has come for America to reaffirm the purpose of the military.

America’s longest war is coming to an end. As an active-duty officer, it has been very depressing to watch how quickly Afghanistan has fallen. More than 2,300 military service members and approximately 3,900 U.S. contractors have lost their lives, with another 21,000 injured. The financial cost has been a staggering $2 trillion. Now should be a time for reflection to consider the profound sacrifice of life and resources that the American people have given for the past 20 years. Was it worth it?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the overnight collapse of the American-backed government in Afghanistan could pose a serious threat to countries surrounding the troubled Central Asian nation, including his own.

Speaking on Sunday as part of a meeting with members of the governing United Russia party in the run up to parliamentary elections next month, the president said that the number of civilians fleeing Kabul poses challenges for the international community. “Who are these refugees? How can we tell? There may be thousands, or even millions,” Putin said. “The border is a thousand kilometers – they will get on everything, a car, even a donkey, and flee across the steppe.”

In the age-old tradition of large lumbering bureaucracies and armies and reporter stake-outs, this was an excruciating weekend of ‘hurry up and wait’. Their only shelter in the dusty and brutal Afghan sun was the red white and blue canopy of a self-serve gas bar. Maybe ten families who had completed the path to Canadian citizenship were told by government of Canada text to come to this spot late Friday with the promise of a Canadian Armed Forces flight waiting on the nearby airport tarmac.

h/t CC

… What better way to destroy the United States than by opening its borders to illegal immigrants; surveilling its citizens; inflating its currency; ignoring its laws; demoralizing its police; undercutting its energy independence; issuing arbitrary, contradictory, and unnecessarily restrictive policies regarding public health; and fomenting strife along the lines of party, class, and race? Our governing elites seem to believe that Americans deserve to be punished. But of all the things that the Biden administration has done to crush the American spirit, none is more damaging than the president’s cruel abandonment of the people—and especially the women and girls—of Afghanistan.

20 years is a long time with nothing to show for it. An Army of 300K surrendered without a shot to an army of 70K. The Afghans do bear responsibility, but yes a pity that more innocent blood will be shed.  

With President Ashraf Ghani’s hasty flight from Kabul, we are now witnessing the fall of the second of five regimes that label themselves “Islamic Republic” in just over two years.

The first to fall was the Islamic Republic of the Sudan and what we have left are Islamic Republics in Pakistan, Iran and Mauritania. If we include the Islamic State created in parts of Iraq and Syria a few years ago and still lingering as a bad smell, we might conclude that, despite Taliban’s latest success, the label “Islamic” is not as invulnerable as some suggest.

The difference is that in Sudan the Islamic Republic was replaced by a timid, though no less sincere, attempt at democratization while the Islamic Republic in Afghanistan signals the return of the Islamic Emirate or a more radical version of Islamism.