The most humiliating debacle for the U.S. since the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Friend,
President Biden has just presided over, and bears responsibility for, the most humiliating debacle for the U.S. since the fall of Saigon in 1975, almost half a century ago.
The Taliban have swept across Afghanistan and taken Kabul. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has fled, and his government has collapsed.
America has shut down its embassy, lowered the flag, and helicoptered staff to the airport—from which they are fleeing the country—while panicked Afghans crowd the air field, desperate for any way out.
The fall of Afghanistan comes at an increasingly dangerous time of a rising, militarizing, and globally ambitious Communist China, partnering on many fronts with Russia and Iran, and is highly likely to embolden these powers.
For America, this is not simply a faraway disaster. It will have huge ramifications in the increasingly heated contest to shape the 21st century world order.
President Biden, since before he took office, has been signaling American weakness (the deferential dealings with China, the humiliating summit with Putin, and the extravagant failure to control our own southern border).
The message, unfortunately, has been that it is foolhardy for allies to assume America will genuinely have their backs.
There is plenty to criticize about U.S. policy in Afghanistan over a series of U.S. administrations, but it did not amount to anything like the catastrophe we are now witnessing.
In the bigger picture, the Taliban had a goal and a plan, and President Biden’s abrupt and poorly planned policies opened the way for them to execute at speed... even as Biden and his press officers blathered to the world no such thing would happen.
P.S. Tune in tomorrow at 1:35pm EST for a live discussion hosted by me on IWF’s Facebook channel with a U.S. Army veteran and former Helo pilot who served in Afghanistan.
