One year ago, Joe Biden ordered the disgraceful and disastrous surrender of Afghanistan. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), a veteran of Afghanistan himself, is one of many who’d like to remind Americans just how badly Biden bungled it all.

Earlier this month, the United States announced the killing of Al Qaeda’s terrorist leader, Ayman al- Zawahri. The announcement came as welcome news to all Americans. Finally, one of the last living plotters of 9/11 got the justice he deserved.

But the strike on Zawahri is notable not only for who it killed but where it occurred: Kabul, Afghanistan. Not one year after President Joe Biden’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, the country’s capital and largest city is already harboring some of the world’s most notorious terrorists and enemies of America.

To make matters worse, Zawahri reportedly was hiding at a home owned by an aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban leader. This was a direct violation of the Taliban’s assurance, as a condition of our withdrawal, that it would not harbor terrorists. Its members might as well be taunting us.

The Taliban is defying us because it believes we are weak, and it believes we are weak because they saw Biden’s weakness firsthand one year ago.

Cotton recounts the “catastrophic series of events” surrounding our exfiltration — events that should have given Biden and our other leaders time to adjust the plan or change course. They didn’t.

He tells the story of Americans who needed help getting out but who couldn’t count on the administration to come to their aid. Instead, Cotton and countless others picked up the slack; thanks to the August recess, he said, “I could dedicate my entire staff to the mission” of getting Americans home safely.

But for every person rescued, there were many tales of tragedy. America’s final days in Afghanistan were scenes of chaos, confusion, horror, and death.

In fact, Cotton concludes:

Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco wasn’t just a tragedy for those we lost, their families, and those we left behind. It was strategic disaster of the first order.

The Zawahri incident is yet more proof that the world is a more dangerous place thanks to Biden’s weakness. It’s not just in Afghanistan. China is firing artillery into the ocean near Taiwan to intimidate us into abandoning the island to communist subjugation. Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine and is now threatening to cut off energy to Europe this winter. The fanatical theocrats in Tehran are now closer than ever to acquiring nuclear weapons. Friend and foe alike believe the United States will not protect its allies and does not have the will to defeat its enemies.

A large reason is that Biden’s disgraceful failures in Afghanistan signaled that America was in retreat. It is important to recall those dark days and the lives we lost as a lesson of how not to lead a nation — and a warning that America’s actions have consequences.

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