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Henry Kissinger, former United States diplomat who was a master in the art of betraying American allies, once said, “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Unfortunately, history continues to prove this cynical view of morality and its treachery to the republican principle of solidarity as continuity within the spineless political class. The U.S. abandonment of its Afghan ally, after a twenty-year relationship, will prove most costly over time. It is America’s fall from grace.
The direct murder of approximately 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, and the countless thousands of civilian deaths that followed due to diseases borne out of the rescue attempts, was why the United States went to war against the radical Islamist Taliban regime. This Sunni fundamentalist haven was to be defeated. According to the combined data from Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and the Brown University Costs of War project, over 6,294 people serving the United States were killed in Afghanistan between service members (2,448) and contractors (3,846).
As part of NATO’s presence, over 1,144 Allied soldiers died. As per the U.S. Department of Defense Casualty Status report, more than 20,000 soldiers were wounded in Afghanistan, many of these brave heroes bearing permanent disabilities.
The people of Afghanistan paid a dearer price in this war to keep their imperfect country free from the control of radical Islam. According to the same Harvard Kennedy School and Brown University mentioned reports, over 66,000 Afghan national military and police members were killed. Additionally, 47,245 Afghan civilians perished.
Wars are fought for many reasons. Justice is a good one. So is a strategical necessity. Few Americans would argue that they would rather fight the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or Hezbollah in New York City, Miami, or Los Angeles. The notion of taking the war to the enemy’s terrain is sound judgment. The War on Terror, that binomial front of Iraq and Afghanistan, was supposed to be about that. The victory was not just about toppling bad regimes which served as bases for evil people seeking to harm America. The free world and the United States win when, because of a decisive military presence, radical Islam, and their enablers Pakistan and especially, communist China are kept out of the picture.
China, the world’s largest Fentanyl manufacturer and exporter, will now have a new drug factory: Afghanistan’s opium industry. The Taliban of the 21st century will not be the cash-poor group of savages of the 1990s. They now have the backing of Beijing, Islamabad, and soon Moscow. They will plot their next attack on America with more sophisticated weaponry and superior intelligence than the 9/11 attacks.
The Biden-Harris administration, by betraying another American ally, has put the United States in a perilous situation it will live to regret. While Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A. Milley, have been busy focusing on implementing cultural Marxism’s poisonous Critical Race Theory, Gender Ideology, and Critical Queer Theory on the U. S. Armed forces, the Taliban have been slitting the throats of their former allies, enslaving and mass raping women, and setting the stage for Afghan killing fields.
President Trump was a fool to sign a deal with the criminals now in power in Kabul. This will be Trump’s darkest legacy. The responsibility for this insidious act falls, however, on the Biden-Harris duo and the leadership of the Democratic Party. They certainly know what it takes to undo Trump’s doing. This indignant foreign policy disaster could have been easily averted.
Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.