After Twenty Years

 

 

So, after twenty years, we have entered a new phase of the War Against Terror.

The phase is called:  "Boy Did We Look Stupid".

For those who have short memories, we went into Afghanistan to destroy the "safe havens" the Taliban set up for terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.

It seemed to work, I guess.

There hasn't been a major terrorist event like 9/11 in twenty years.  

But The War In Afghanistan was a major pain in the rear. So instead of just getting rid of the safe havens, we tried to build a country. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a mistake because we first had to teach the Afghans to read so they could shoot the rifles, drive the tanks, fix the jeeps, treat women like human beings, et.al. 

Then we decided to pop Iraq, which people are still arguing about today.  In the last years of The Bush 2.0 administration, we had to do a surge to make sure Iraq didn't completely fall apart.

At the time, I remember many people, like a Senator from Delaware, talk about how The War In Afghanistan was "the good war."

The War On Terror, with a total meltdown of the economy, contributed to the election of Barack Obama.

The War on Terror was not popular with a caller into "Imus In The Morning" named Donald Trump, who was starring in a game show at the time.

In the last months of the Trump administration, we began meeting with the Taliban to negotiate a withdrawal from Afghanistan.   

Mr. Tough Man Queens agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Well, as we all know, Obama's Vice President, Joseph Sominex, won the Presidency last November.  We all know that, right?   Right?

As a matter of course, President Sominex started to unravel the policies of President Trump. First, he canceled the Keystone pipeline, which caused gas prices to rise and the unemployment of the dear union workers the President loves.

There were others with the main theme being "If Trump liked it, I don't" except for one:  withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The President added his little cherry on top of this pie:  We would leave by August 31st.   

I will be the first to tell you that I am not an Ivy League-educated person.      

I barely graduated from Cobb County Public Schools and went on to barely graduate from Kennesaw State University.  But I knew The Taliban would not play nice and we would be back where we were twenty years ago.

I was shaking my head when I heard the Sominex Administration talking about the Taliban caring about the reaction from "The International Community."  I don't see the memos and the intel, but I've always been under the impression that the Taliban didn't really care what the Ambassador of Luxembourg thought of them.

At this writing, the President of Afghanistan got out of Dodge when he heard the Taliban were in Kabul.  NBC News reports, "Twenty years after toppling the militant regime, the United States rushed to exit the country after the loss of thousands of American lives and billions of dollars failed to bring lasting democracy to the nation."

In the understatement of the year, NBC News says, "U.S. officials had clearly not anticipated a possible fall of Kabul this quickly after President Joe Biden announced the full withdrawal of U.S. forces, and were scrambling both to protect their staff and to explain the defeat politically."   Yes, they had clearly not anticipated this as quickly.

What a mess.  We put all of that time, money, resources, and lives into Afghanistan, and it will be just like it was before.

We've had twenty years to think about a way to leave. This wasn't it.