Source: Townhall Media/Katie Pavlich
Posted on 02/19/2021 4:39:37 AM PST by Kaslin
Source: Townhall Media/Katie Pavlich
Is President Joe Biden prepared to preside over the worst U.S. strategic defeat since the fall of Saigon in 1975?
For that may be what's at stake if Biden follows through on the 2020 peace deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1 -- just two months from now.
Consider. If the 2,500 American troops remaining in Afghanistan are pulled out, the entire 10,000-troop NATO contingent departs.
This would write an end to the Western military commitment.
And the likelihood the Kabul government could then survive the constant and increasing attacks from the Taliban, as the latter now control half of the country and many roads leading to the capital, is slim. After all, an Afghan army that could not defeat the Taliban a decade ago, when 100,000 U.S. troops were fighting alongside it, is not going to rout the Taliban after the Americans have gone home.
In short, if Biden does not breach the terms of the deal the Taliban and U.S. signed last year and keep our troops there, he would be inviting a repeat of Saigon '75, with all that would mean for the Afghans who cast their lot with us.
Biden knows what Saigon '75 was like. In his first Senate term, Hanoi overran South Vietnam and Saigon, and the boat people began to flee in the thousands for their lives into the South China Sea; the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh. And the Cambodian genocide began.
In Brussels, Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that any NATO departure from Afghanistan is "conditions based."
What are Stoltenberg's stated conditions?
The Taliban "has to reduce violence ... negotiate in good faith and ... stop supporting international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda."
Yet, the May deadline looms, and if the U.S. does not meet it, Taliban attacks on American troops in Afghanistan could start again, forcing Biden to send more troops back into the country to protect the U.S. logistics and training personnel still there.
What makes this problematic is that Biden has long been known as a supporter of a smaller U.S. footprint and a swifter U.S. pullout than were other advisers in the Obama administration.
But if we fail to meet the May deadline, what new deadline would Biden set? And what guarantee is there that we can ever, after withdrawing, avoid an outcome like South Vietnam -- with the enemy overrunning the capital after the Americans have left?
If no president -- Bush II, Obama, Trump, Biden -- is willing to risk a strategic defeat on his watch, then when can we ever end our involvement in this longest of the long wars? If Biden cannot get our troops out of Afghanistan, when, ever, do we get our troops out of Syria and Iraq?
Given what is being said today in Washington, and in Brussels by NATO defense ministers meeting there, Biden will likely decide to follow in his predecessors' footsteps. He will extend the May deadline for months, kick the can up the road, and leave in place enough troops to prevent a collapse of the Kabul government but not enough to reverse the inevitable outcome of this war.
Just as the Taliban are likely to achieve their goal in Afghanistan, as they persist and we withdraw, Bashar Assad appears to have prevailed in his civil war in Syria, and the Houthis have, after six years of fighting, held off the Saudi interventionists and their U.S. allies in Yemen.
A Biden decision to suspend a final pullout of U.S. forces will be well received by our foreign policy elites. But the anti-interventionist wings of the two parties are growing in strength. And "America First" retrenchment, which Donald Trump championed in 2016, but could not deliver as president, is going to be represented in both parties' presidential primaries in 2023 and 2024.
America today is taking on more of a load than this nation can carry.
We are out to contain mighty China, a peer competitor with four times our population, across the Indo-Pacific theater, including the East China and South China seas and Taiwan Strait.
We are containing Vladimir Putin's Russia, whose strategic arsenal is comparable to our own in Central and Eastern Europe. We are fighting a war on terror in the Middle East, supporting Sunnis against Shiites, and containing Iran in the Persian Gulf.
Our national debt is larger than our national economy. We are running deficits unseen since the late days of World War II. Our economy has sustained crippling blows from a year-long COVID-19 pandemic that has taken the lives of half a million Americans.
A migrant invasion appears to be shaping up on our 2,000-mile Southern border. Our country is as divided as it has been since the Civil War. And we seek to remain the nation that writes the rules for the world order in the 21st century.
Something's gotta give.
Read your history of this place.
The Brits lost.
The Rooskies lost.
Winning is not staying in AFG.
I have a former Marine buddy. (Present buddy. Former Marine.) He spent several tours there before being wounded. Without anger or rancor his opinion is that Afghanistan is a waste of time, blood and treasure. He said, We trained them and armed the (peasants) to defend themselves from the Jihadists who make them slaves to work the land and cannon fodder for the Jihad. He said he watched the men come out from their huts without their guns and literally bow to the Jihadists. They then resumed their role as slaves to work the land to feed the Jihadists and raise the drugs that the Jihadists sell to support their war.
I have no reason to disbelieve what he said. What then, do we gain by remaining in a place where we must enrich equally evil regimes so that we can equip our troops? Trump was right to pull us out. It was the Deep State and the financial interests who want this Endless War to continue.
Incidentally, has the Biden regime started droning people all over the world again? If they have, has anyone tried to explain it to the senile pedophile in the White House? Does he care? Can he remember his name?
Yeah, let’s get the heck out of there.
If we had gone in to totally devastate the Taliban and hunt Bin Laden like a mad dog the campaign would have been over in a month. But the military industrial complex got us stuck there. If the Afghan people don’t want the Taliban then let them fight for their own country. My son fought there in 2002 and I had visions of a Vietnam redux. Now here we are. It’s time to pull up stakes and leave. If it becomes a hotbed of terrorism then hit them with tactical nukes or get off the pot. And with these jabonies in charge,fuggetaboutit.
True! Unless someone lives off the government's military teat. Then it means having to learn how to code. Or build solar panels or wind farms.
Depends. Does “intentionally planning to lose” count as prepared to lose?
How does one win in Afghanistan?
It’s not really a country, but a tribal shithole.
Salt the poppy fields, and strip mine the mountains.
2 generations is more than should be there. Religious wars are dumb to get into, just turf stuff. Now if they were building nukes that is different.
pat buchanan is a moron.
we are not the worlds policeman
Did Pat Buchanan steal Joe’s dementia the way we are stealing Syria’s oil, and bragging about selling it?
Colin Powell and the state department idiots decided to do nation building in the worst place on the planet with a history of destroying armies. We wanted to get Bin Laden and did, we wanted to punish the Taliban and did and to destroy Al-quiada and did so. We then should have got out of that crap hole. If they want to live like 7th century throwbacks more power to them. Biden is so stupid he will overrule the peace deal and keep us there to bleed and never to win.
We could have just let the Mossad take care of Bin Ladin.
“He said he watched the men come out from their huts without their guns and literally bow to the Jihadists. They then resumed their role as slaves to work the land to feed the Jihadists and raise the drugs that the Jihadists sell to support their war.”
Pretty much the same thing I saw, also observe the same in other countries. A lot of people miss understand Jihad. Jihad has a broad meaning in Islam.
There are two types of Jihadist in Islam. The warrior and the supporters.
In Islam when a person is on a Jihad, it is the duty of others that are true Islam believers to support this person on a Jihad. When people (Islam believers) do not support the warrior Jihadist it is a sin against Islam.
Until the Islam leaders condemn the Jihad purpose you will not see an end to those wars. The Islam leaders use Jihad as a source of power.
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
If we would have ignored Afghanistan and spent our resources taking out the Wahabbis and House of Saud in Saudi Arabia the world would be a better place today.
Afghanistan is actually is a beautiful country with great weather. Kabul reminds me of Denver. Some beautiful women there too with the mixing bowl aspect from being at a historical crossroad.
Funny thing, the Greeks settled in the southwest. I think it was around Helmand province. Now this area is a hot mess of taliban support. Rather ironic as Greece was the cradle of western civilization. Islam is like the Borgs. You cannot live with them, cannot convert them...
I’ve seen older pictures of Iran and Afghanistan.
Some pretty women if they aren’t wearing blankets.
As long as the poppy continues to thrive there no one is willing to stop the flow of that sweet, sweet money greasing so many palms.
“Consider. If the 2,500 American troops remaining in Afghanistan are pulled out, the entire 10,000-troop NATO contingent departs“
Why would that be? Because they do nothing of value and are just window dressing? A tacit admission.
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