My Threatcon column on President Biden’s shameful surrender of Afghanistan to the terroristic and murderous Taliban was posted online at Counterterrorism magazine's website.
You can read the column below:
President Biden’s Afghanistan Surrender to
the Taliban
By Paul Davis
As I follow the news of the fall of Afghanistan, my thoughts are
of the Vietnam War.
My role in the Vietnam War was a minor one. I served as an
18-year-old seaman on the USS Kitty Hawk as the aircraft carrier performed
combat operations on "Yankee Station" off the coast of North Vietnam
in 1970 and 1971.
Like most Vietnam veterans and many Americans, I felt a
gut-punch when the Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1975, ensuring a swift
Communist victory over the South Vietnamese after America had expended so many
lives and funds to hold the North Vietnamese aggressors at bay.
Now, once again, to our shame, we are abandoning a country where
we have expended many American lives and funds. In my view, the withdrawal from
Afghanistan is another dark day in American history.
Former
CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted famously in his memoir
that Joseph Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and
national security issue over the past four decades."
Biden’s
latest error in judgement, the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan and surrender
to the terroristic and murderous Taliban, will go down in history as a colossal
blunder with deadly affects.
I
suspect that a second war on terrorism will commence once again from Afghanistan.
Kenneth R. Timmerman, a
Middle East correspondent who was held prisoner in 1982 for 24 days by Fatah guerrillas in Lebanon, offers a piece at the New York Post on Biden and
Afghanistan.
“For decades, Joe Biden has touted
himself as a foreign policy genius. As a United States senator, he never had to
make a decision or bear responsibility for running off at the mouth. As
vice-president, he was given backwaters such as Ukraine that he reportedly
turned into a family piggy bank,” Kenneth R. Timmerman wrote in the New York
Post. “But now he is president. He owns the utter disaster that
Afghanistan has become; and the sudden about-face of the Pentagon to send
3,000 fully armed combat troops back into the fray shows that even the woke
military bosses Biden installed can wake up and smell the coffee.”
Retired
four-star general and Fox News senior strategic analyst Jack Keane stated on
Fox, “It's a sad, frustrating moment
to watch an ill-conceived -- and I emphasize ill-conceived, hasty withdrawal --
turn into what is now an embarrassing retreat. And why is that? Well, the IG
from the Pentagon just reported the Taliban offensive began in May of this
year, a month after President Biden made the announcement that we were pulling
all U.S. troops out by August 31.
“The Taliban knew full well
that the United States, in that short period of time, had to close seven
military bases, that the focus of the U.S. leadership and its troops would be
on just that. No time and no resources to help the Afghan security forces
during a major Taliban offensive. And by that I mean sustained, decisive air
support, which they always had in the past, to stop normal Taliban offensives
that occur in that period of time.”
Keane, perhaps the best
military mind in America, noted that warfare in Afghanistan is seasonal. He
said that the Taliban begins fighting in the spring and the fighting ends in
the fall.
“And the Taliban pack up their
bags and go to Pakistan during the winter. So why are we doing a withdrawal right
in the middle of the fighting season, in the heart of it? The withdrawal should
have been done during, what? The winter. And we should have extended our
withdrawal out until sometime next year to get all of that done and make
certain that as the Taliban offensive came this year, we were able to provide
the resources to counter that offensive.”
In an earlier appearance on
Fox, Keane warned that Al Qaeda could very well set up safe havens if the U.S.
completely leaves Afghanistan.
"Al Qaeda did the same
prior to the 9-11 attack. They bombed two embassies in Africa and
the U.S.S. Cole. If we had destroyed the Al Qaeda safe haven in
Afghanistan, there wouldn't have been a 9-11. Safe havens are critical to
the radical Islamist movement,” Keane said. “"The president mentioned it
himself. The reason why we're in Syria, Iraq, Eastern Africa is to prevent
those organizations, radical Islamists, from having what? A safe haven from
which to attack the United States. This is a multi-generational war. That is
why we're still doing that. To walk away from Afghanistan and say this is not a
multi-generational conflict is to ignore the reality of what is taking
place."
Who are the Taliban?
According to the BBC, the
Taliban, or "students" in the Pashto language, emerged in the early
1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Afghanistan. The Taliban, once in power, introduced or supported punishments in
line with their strict interpretation of Sharia law, such as public executions
of convicted murderers and adulterers, and amputations for those found guilty
of theft. Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the
all-covering burka.
“The Taliban also banned
television, music and cinema, and disapproved of girls aged 10 and over going
to school,” the BBC noted. “They were accused of various human rights and
cultural abuses.”
In closing, one should
remember that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were
planned in Afghanistan by bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were protected and
supported by the Taliban.
President Bush took them out.
President Biden let them back in.
Paul Davis, a long-time
contributor to the Journal writes the online Threatcon Column.
Note: The U.S. Defense Department released the above photo.
