American withdrawal from Afghanistan: a failure?
The primary objective in Afghanistan since the 2001 and 9/11 attacks was to destroy and diminish the threat of terrorism (Al Qaeda) against the United States and its allies.
This withdrawal marks the end of nearly 20 years of American military presence in Afghanistan.
The excuse the Biden administration makes now, after their botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, is that their primary goal was accomplished a decade ago: Al-Qaida’s capabilities are a fraction of what they used to be.
The Biden administration claims, ‘this war has been, and would continue to be, costly, both in financial terms and in terms of American lives. This is not very true and is quite misleading.
There have been 0 American casualties in Afghanistan in the last 18 months.
Overseas operations funding for Afghanistan has generally trended downward since 2011.
American involvement in Afghanistan takes up only about 0.5-1% of the federal budget.
After receiving backlash for his plan, Biden has shifted the blame to the Afghan government and its people, saying, “They have got to fight for themselves.”
It may be easy to shift the blame onto Afghan troops for not fighting harder, however, the Afghan military has lost over 62000 troops in the last 20 years, which is nearly 72 times the number of American casualties throughout the last 70 years.
When questioned regarding the improper evacuation that led to stranding American and Afghan civilians, Biden responded, “I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. Part of it because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence.”
Another misleading statement.
The US as of last month had a visa application backlog of 18,000 Afghan translators and others who believed themselves to be in danger from the Taliban for their work with the Americans.
The biggest botchery committed during the evacuation was leaving behind 80 billion dollars worth of weaponry for the Taliban to simply just claim.
Mark Milley (chief of staff) said, “There was nothing, that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”
A lot of people have decided that the Taliban- “a terrorist group” would now show their good side as they claim to be more inclusive.
They’re all just hoping that maybe the Taliban will moderate and play nice.
“They’re not going to kill and rape people anymore”
“They’re going to let women work and study at schools”
“They’re not going to suppress basic human rights”
A day after such claims were made:-
Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) has announced that that Taliban spokesmen will be able to maintain accounts on its social media platform as long as they abide by the terms of service.
Taliban spokesmen with accounts on Twitter include Suhail Shaheen with 360,000 followers, Zabihullah Mujahid with 318,000 followers, Dr. M. Naeem with 213,000 followers, and Qari Yousaf Ahmadi with 65,000 followers.
This does raise the question, how is a terrorist group allowed to remain on social platforms such as Twitter.
The Biden administration expected the Afghan army and government to quickly adapt without the support of any American forces whatsoever, after having led and guided them for 20 years.
Biden said, "The overwhelming consensus was that they were not going to collapse, the Afghan forces were not going to leave, they were not going to just put down their arms and take off. That's what's happened."-
What had he expected from a military that over the past twenty years had learned to rely on U.S. support for airpower, intelligence, logistics, planning, and other vital enablers,
They were fatally demoralized by the U.S. decision to abandon them.
It wasn’t only the 3000 troops that departed, but so did 8000 allied troops and 18000 contractors that the Afghan forces relied upon to operate their air force and for logistical support.
The US will no longer be able to monitor any activity in Afghanistan, the US has lost all their airbases and resources on the ground.
"You've known my position for a long, long time: it's time to end this war," Biden said as he simply handed over the world’s 41st largest country with a population of 38-39 million people to a bunch of terrorists.
This has been the worst first six months for any president and this is clearly reflected by the polls. Biden has recently dropped below 50% in the polls.
See you next week!
with love,
:)
SOURCES + LEARN MORE :
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/us-goes-one-year-without-a-combat-death-in-afghanistan-as-taliban-warn-against-reneging-on-peace-deal-1.661464
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-afghan-army-collapsed-under-talibans-pressure
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-vows-bring-home-all-americans-who-want-leave-afghanistan-1621585
https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2020/02/10/us-military-budget-request-for-afghanistan-lowest-in-a-decade/
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