Tragedy is an inadequate word to describe what’s happening in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden’s administration’s feckless, vacillating incompetence is a catastrophe. Wrought by more than mere misfeasance; it’s criminal negligence. Biden and his advisers have blood on their hands. Worse, Biden’s complicity will be much more sanguinary in days ahead.

We, along with Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida’s 6th congressional district, have been making recommendations about how to avert an absolute disaster in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. Yet, in recent days, Biden and his “doublespeak spokespersons” have been lying to “We the People” about what’s happening in Afghanistan.

Biden and his mouthpieces claimed the Afghan Army outnumbered the Taliban 300,000 to 75,000. They don’t.

Biden and company said the Afghan government, unlike the Taliban, has an air force. They don’t. He and his toadies at the Pentagon assured us the Afghan government could survive without U.S. troops, air support, intelligence or contracted maintenance workers. They cannot.

The president asked, “What difference a ‘few’ American troops deployed there” could possibly make. While Biden spent a leisurely weekend at Camp David imitating Nero, fiddling while Rome burned, the Taliban answered his question.

Biden’s blunders in Afghanistan now overshadow the catastrophe of April 30, 1975, in Vietnam, or even the invasion now across our southern border. Biden’s Kabul blunder is fast becoming America’s humiliation. Biden’s “Afghanistan bug-out” makes the horrific end of the Vietnam War look like an act of strategic genius. So quickly did the Taliban take advantage of Biden’s blunder. The Pentagon has been forced to redeploy 6,000 military personnel to Afghanistan in hopes of preventing another Jimmy Carter moment in which American hostages are paraded through the streets of an enemy capital.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani skipped town to Uzbekistan. The Taliban flag flies over the Afghan presidential palace. The U.S. Air Force now runs the Kabul airport. The American embassy is abandoned beneath a Taliban flag. U.S. troops and a tiny remnant of Afghan Special Forces soldiers guard the airport perimeter but are surrounded by the Taliban terrorists Biden claimed could not defeat the Afghan Army. We can only pray our 6,000 U.S. Marine and Army “rescuers” won’t become hostages — or worse.

The most important questions for the Biden brain trust: How do we avoid the humiliation of having to beg the Taliban for the safe return of American troops, now surrounded at the Kabul airport? How to ensure tens of thousands of Afghanis aren’t slaughtered in revenge killings? How can we prevent Afghanistan from becoming, once again, an international exporter of radical Islamist terror; women and girls don’t become sexual slaves to Taliban troops; and China and Iran don’t become the ultimate winners of the Afghanistan war?

Here is what we recommend:

No.1: Develop a plan for preventing Islamic terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a safe haven for launching attacks against the U.S.

No. 2: Recognize the Iranian theocracy as America’s No. 1 adversary in the region.

No. 3: Ensure access and connectivity for employing U.S. airpower in the region.

No. 4: Reinforce the “Abraham Accords” as essential for both Israeli and U.S. national security.

No. 5: Understand the communist People’s Republic of China has already promised to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government and intends to be the ultimate victor as Kabul 2021 becomes another Saigon 1975.

No. 6: Pull out as many of the loyal Afghan interpreters, or “Terps,” as possible.

No. 7: Make it clear to the Taliban they will face a massive, lethal response if Americans are harmed, and develop plans for fulfilling that promise now.

No. 8: Make sure all remaining Americans at the Kabul airport can be brought home safely without the “help” offered by the Chinese, Iranians or Russians. Otherwise, you should be impeached.

COPYRIGHT 2021 OLIVER L. NORTH AND DAVID L. GOETSCH