Afghanistan

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing. As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country. And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.

To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.

If someone had told you in September 2001, as the Twin Towers fell and people in the Pentagon perished, that on the 20th anniversary of this atrocity America would be contemplating aligning with the guys who helped to do it, you would have thought them insane. And yet here we are, fast approaching 20 years since that grim, apocalyptic day, and a US military chief is saying it’s ‘possible’ his forces will work alongside the Taliban. Yes, the same Taliban that hosted Osama bin Laden as his minions were plotting 9/11. The same Taliban whose ties with al-Qaeda have actually deepened over the past two decades – as a recent UN report said, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now closely bonded by ideological sympathy and intermarriage. That Taliban. That al-Qaeda, essentially. This is who America’s military chiefs are fluttering their eyelashes at.

Joe Biden came into office inheriting the war in Afghanistan. But unlike previous presidents, he inherited a war that was relatively quiescent by Afghanistan standards, involved few American troops on the ground, and was in a phaseout due to an agreement his predecessor had struck with the Afghan government and the Taliban. Under that deal, the U.S. would remove its troops by May 1, 2021, if the Taliban and Afghan government met certain conditions.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks has an op-ed published in The Hill titled “Addressing Racial Disparities in the Military Justice System” last night. The level of tone-deafness coming for the Biden administration cannot be understated. The only reason for such timing for a piece like this from the Pentagon right now is to serve as a distraction from the reporting on the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. It is shameful.

The Taliban showed off dozens of US-made armoured vehicles and weaponry during victory parades today.

One event, in the southern city of Kandahar, even featured a fly-past from a Black Hawk helicopter flying the flag of the Taliban.

The parades of the hardware, captured from Afghan forces during the group’s takeover of Afghanistan, were held just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden defended his decision to end two decades of American presence in the country.

‘It looked apocalyptic’: Crew describes Afghan departure

WASHINGTON (AP) — It looked like a zombie apocalypse.

For the U.S. military pilots and aircrew about to make their final takeoffs out of Afghanistan, the sky was lit up with fireworks and sporadic gunfire and the airfield littered with battered shells of airplanes and destroyed equipment. Stray dogs raced around the tarmac. And Taliban fighters, visible in the darkness through the green-tinged view of night vision goggles, walked the airfield waving an eerie goodbye.