Withdrawal was needed


History will record that President Joe Biden’s heroic evacuation of Afghanistan demonstrated courage and wisdom that does exist on the other side of the aisle.

A year ago, when Donald Trump bypassed the U.S.-backed Afghan government and met directly with terrorists, he recognized the Taliban as the defacto government, sabotaging 20 years of U.S. efforts and betraying 2,372 U.S. military deaths.

By the time Biden was even inaugurated, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan and there was nobody left to defend Kabul.

The Afghan military wisely went AWOL having seen Trump betray and abandon our Kurdish allies on the battlefield after they almost single-handedly defeated ISIS in Syria, and gave their lives at a ratio of a hundred Kurds to one American soldier.

Not only did Trump fail to evacuate a single Kurdish ally, he turned them over to Turkey’s Erdogan to be slaughtered so Erdogan would not knock down Trump’s hotel, the Trump Tower Istanbul.

After the ISIS-K bombing, the media squawked that “the Taliban failed to provide security,” an ironic perspective as we are talking about terrorists, not cops, but thanks to Biden’s predecessor there was nobody else.

Why didn’t Trump just tell the U.S.-backed Afghan government we were withdrawing? Why did Trump have to cut a deal with terrorists first, not to mention release 5,000 of their most vicious radical Islamist fighters in return for nothing?

Most military seem to think that if Trump had not neutered the government, the Afghan army could have held on to Kabul and other urban areas, at least for a while, but Trump eliminated that possibility in August 2020.

Can you imagine if President Obama had said, “My fellow Americans, I have decided to negotiate with Al Qaeda”?

Kabul fell “faster than expected” because there was nobody left to protect it, and if President Biden had sent more troops to hold Kabul, you can take it to the bank that we would have lost a whole lot more Americans.

I salute the wisdom of President Joe Biden.

Larry Brown
Agoura Hills