Afghanistan

I ask that you not use my name. I am a currently serving General Officer and what I have to say is highly critical of our current military leadership. But it must be said.

I don’t blame President Biden for the catastrophe in Afghanistan. It was the right decision to leave, the proof of which is how quickly the country collapsed without US support. Twenty years of training and equipping the Afghan army and all that they were capable of was a few hours of delay in a country the size of Texas. As for his predecessor, the only blame I place on President Trump was that he didn’t withdraw sooner.

We should blame President Bush, not for the decision to attack into Afghanistan following 9-11, but for his decision to “shift the goalposts” and attempt to reform Afghanistan society. That was a fool’s errand any student of history would have recognized. And yes, we should place blame on President Obama for his decision to double down on failure when he “surged” in Afghanistan, rather than to withdraw.

Lots of blame to go round, 20 years worth of lies.

Evacuation flights out of Kabul are taking off almost empty despite tens of thousands of Afghans trying to flee the country after the Taliban formed a ring of steel around the airport and barred most people from reaching it.

One Australian Hercules C-130 aircraft with room for 120 people took off with just 26 on board today, the government has confirmed, while a German Airbus A-400M with room for 150 was carrying just seven people when it departed yesterday.

That is despite there being around 50,000 Afghans gathered at the airport who have been promised sanctuary by western nations. One particularly harrowing piece of footage showed women pleading with US troops that ‘the Taliban are coming for me’.

Justin needs to speak to the Taliban on turning this into a She-Covery.

President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan had to admit that a lot of US weapons intended for the Afghan army are now in the hands of the Taliban, brushing off questions of how the US intends to deal with it.

“We don’t have a complete picture obviously of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” Sullivan said on Tuesday, briefing reporters at the White House as press secretary Jen Psaki looked on.

As Afghanistan has collapsed and been taken over by the Taliban, Kamala Harris is reportedly refusing to accept any responsibility.

A source reportedly told Kyle Becker at Becker News that Harris refused to be part of addressing the American people on Sunday after the terrorist group took over Kubal, the capital of Afghanistan.

In remote, pine-clad valleys of Afghanistan’s Kunar province and in online jihadist chat forums there is jubilation at what al-Qaeda supporters see as “a historic victory” by the Taliban.

The humiliating departure of the very forces that temporarily expelled both the Taliban and al-Qaeda 20 years ago has come as a massive morale boost to anti-Western jihadists all over the world.

The potential hiding places for them now opening up in the country’s ungoverned spaces are a tempting prize, especially for Islamic State (IS) group militants looking to find a new base after the defeat of their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Western generals and politicians are warning that the return of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan, in strength, is “inevitable”.

Aug 17 (Reuters) – It took just a few days for the Taliban to sweep across Afghanistan and seize territory they did not already control, sometimes taking major provincial capitals with barely a shot in anger.

While much has been made of the Afghan army’s military collapse, interviews with Taliban leaders, Afghan politicians, diplomats and other observers suggest the Islamist militant movement laid the groundwork for its victory long before the events of the last week or so.