America May Be Forgetting Afghanistan, But Our Enemies Aren’t
It’s been two months since the fall of Kabul; and it’s quite clear that most of America has already “moved on.” Virginia has an election coming up; Washington is fixated on the Democratic Party’s recent attempts to follow my advice. After largely forgetting about the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Americans have largely forgotten Afghanistan again.
For our enemies, however, it’s another story entirely.
The Taliban made several promises in order to convince America to withdraw. A few Americans wondered if those commitments would be honored; the Taliban clearly hoped that rest of America wouldn’t care. They were right. Now, the Taliban are back to their old, bad habits.
Terry Glavin has the harrowing details in his National Post column.
It’s been more than a month since the fall term began and teenaged girls are still not permitted to attend school. There is no indication that the regime has any intention of upholding international human rights law. Thousands of Hazara families have been driven out of Daikundi, Helmand and Kandahar in a bloody ethnic-cleansing operation that loudly echoes the persecution the Shia minority endured during the Taliban terror of the 1990s. Earlier this week, the regime’s interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani — a UN-sanctioned terrorist with a $10 million American bounty on his head — met with the families of Taliban suicide bombers, promising them cash and land.
It’s practically a to-do list for making Trump (who agreed to the withdrawal last year) and Biden (who refused to tear up the deal) look like complete fools.
- Discrimination against women and girls? Check
- Ethnic cleansing of non-Pashtuns? Check
- Open support for terrorism? Check
These are the wages of Donald Trump’s appeasement of the Taliban. Here’s another receipt (Glavin again, emphasis added).
More than a dozen Taliban “cabinet ministers” are on the UN Security Council’s terrorism blacklist.
As Afghanistan slides back into its horrific recent past, the words of H.R. McMaster (LTG – Retired) rings in my ears.
“We will pay the price, and we’ll be back. We’ll have to go back, and at a much higher cost.”