Author: Blazingcatfur

Our country has undergone a radical change in the 21st century. It has not been a change for the better. We have focused more on arguing among ourselves while the “barbarians are at the gates,” so to speak. If we learn no other lesson from the Afghanistan debacle, it is that our military and intelligence agencies need to refocus their priorities. If we fail to do so, situations such as Afghanistan might become much more common.

The West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the country’s subsequent fall to the Taliban, has brought the number of refugees the UK should take back to the forefront of the political conversation. It is eerily familiar: many of the same ideas were being advanced by many of the same people in 2015 at the height of the Syria crisis.

Earlier this year, Ayaan Hirsi Ali did an interview with UnHerd in which she predicted exactly this, and warned about not making the same mistakes again.

While Sleepy-Time Joe recuperates from the hard work of not getting lost on the White House lawn (Camp David is so peaceful this time of year), the vultures are circling.

The America which flexed its muscles under Reagan and Trump is now prostrate.

The Taliban, Mexican cartels, OPEC, city savages – the sky is full of carrion birds. Signs of weakness always bring them out. With Biden, America might as well be wearing a kick-me sign on its back.

Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan has been the worst managed event in American history.  With Saigon as an example, the administration knew exactly how bad it would be.  There’s a lot of finger-pointing going on now, but, at bottom, people are wondering if the unconditional Taliban takeover, including the trapped Americans, is a deliberate policy.  On Tucker Carlson’s Wednesday show, Lara Logan said, “Yes, it is.  This was what the government wanted.”

When the cash-strapped Soviet Union stopped providing military support to its client government in Afghanistan in February 1989, U.S. intelligence officials predicted immediate demise for the Russian-backed Afghan regime.

They were wrong.

“Weeks passed and then more weeks. [Soviet-backed leader Mohammad] Najibullah, his cabinet, and his army held firm. Amid heavy snows, the Afghan military pushed out a new defensive ring around the capital, holding the mujahedin farther at bay,” author Steve Coll wrote in “Ghost Wars,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning history on Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s. “As March approached, the Afghan regime showed no fissures.”

There are many lessons to learn from the disastrous US pullout from Afghanistan, but there is one that we should take home right now: Failure must be punished.

The United States has been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. It has been obvious for the last few years that we would be leaving soon. Former President Donald Trump wanted to leave Afghanistan, but the generals managed to slow him down and wait him out. Instead of making plans, they stonewalled.