The Patriot Post® · One Year After Biden Lost Afghanistan

One year ago today, Kabul fell to the Taliban. The loss of the capital of Afghanistan to the very enemies Americans spent untold blood and treasure to defeat was incredibly demoralizing and disastrous, even if few people could articulate why American troops should remain on the ground there. Losing Afghanistan was a blow to U.S. national security and credibility, and the blame for that shameful surrender and retreat, as well as the fallout of the last year, lands on the desk of Joe Biden.

As Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, so artfully put it, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”

Today, we can clearly see that predictions have come true. The Taliban is brutally oppressing the Afghan people once again. Al-Qaida jihadis are back in their old safe haven, even if Biden did approve a strike that killed al-Qaida cofounder and leader Ayman al-Zawahiri earlier this month — no doubt timed to offset the political damage he knew was coming.

That strike, however, is also a grim reminder that after 13 U.S. service members and nearly 170 Afghans were killed in a terrorist attack during the withdrawal because Team Biden relied on the Taliban for security, all Biden did in retaliation was kill a civilian aid worker and a bunch of children.

The evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies was likewise riddled with incompetence and horror stories. According to The Washington Times, a new GOP report even reveals that “first lady Jill Biden’s office went outside the normal channels and begged veterans groups to help find a way to evacuate people having trouble navigating the process.” That speaks volumes.

The GOP report recounts numerous instances in which Biden misled or straight-up lied about the effects of his withdrawal.

It wasn’t just people left behind but billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment — equipment the Taliban used in a victory parade. It was al-Qaida and Taliban members imprisoned by the U.S. and released by the re-empowered Taliban.

Since then, “Afghanistan has quickly become a humanitarian tragedy, first and foremost for the Afghan people,” says Jeff Smith of The Heritage Foundation. “This was entirely predictable, despite the Taliban’s repeated pledges to form an inclusive government that would respect the rights of minorities and women.”

“Many of us, myself included,” Smith added, “were very concerned that as soon as the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan would again become a safe haven for international terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, which is a particularly dangerous and bloodthirsty faction of the Taliban, and one that was responsible for several high-profile attacks on the United States and its personnel in Afghanistan over the past 20 years.”

As Smith noted, the Afghan people (especially women) are suffering. According to a report from Amnesty International — not exactly a bastion of conservative thought — the Taliban built “a system of repression that discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives,” and this “suffocating crackdown against Afghanistan’s female population is increasing day by day.” Joe Biden is responsible for allowing it to happen.

The Afghanistan economy, corrupt and ineffective as it was, has collapsed and the nation was thrown right back into the seventh century. The UN says roughly half the population is “experiencing high and critical levels of acute food insecurity.” Joe Biden is responsible for allowing it to happen.

Team Biden doesn’t admit that, of course, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken did acknowledge that the situation is far worse than before. “Since the Taliban took over a year ago, they’ve reversed a great deal of the openness and progress that had been made over the previous decades,” Blinken said. “They’ve silenced civil society and journalists. In March, they banned independent international media like Voice of America and BBC from airing in Afghanistan. They continue to intimidate and censor Afghan media outlets.” So, basically, it’s like the American Leftmedia’s chokehold on free speech. Blinken added, “They stifled the free practice of religion for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.” He added: “Perhaps most notably, they failed to respect the human rights of women and girls. … Under the Taliban, women and girls have largely been erased from public life.”

There are efforts afoot to pin the blame for this debacle on Donald Trump for the deal he struck with the Taliban. Biden certainly acted as if he were bound by that deal — strangely the only thing Trump did that supposedly bound Biden. We had our issues with Trump’s deal, but anybody who’s got one lick of sense should know that there’s no way the former president would have allowed events to proceed as Biden did.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said that Biden had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Nowhere is that more painfully obvious than the disaster he caused in Afghanistan.