By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
As the world watches the Afghan War lurch forward to what looks like a tragic ending, I cannot get past a thought that has been troubling me since the Taliban began their march toward reasserting control over a country it ruled with ruthlessness and depravity.
My thought is this: What in the world did we do to prepare the Afghan armed forces to cope with the onslaught they are facing?
We arrived on the battlefield not long after 9/11. President Bush ordered our forces into battle to rid the world of al-Qaeda. We succeeded in removing the Taliban from power then after the terror organization had given their fellow terrorists safe haven from which to attack the United States on 9/11.
President Bush left office in January 2009 and President Obama then ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda mastermind; the SEALs and CIA operatives did the deed on May 1,, 2011.
President Obama left office in January 2017 and Donald J. Trump took over. The fight continued.
Trump left office in January 2021 and now we have President Biden on the watch. Through all those previous administrations, there had been an understanding — or so many of us believed — that our forces were on call to do two things: to engage the enemy on the field and to train and equip the Afghans to take over the fight when we were finished.
Biden adds forces for Afghan evacuation, defends withdrawal decision (msn.com)
President Biden made the call to end our involvement there. We began pulling troops out. The Taliban went on the march. The Afghan military has done a terrible job of defending their country. Reports from the field suggest that regular army troops aren’t fighting, that the bulk of the resistance is coming from militia forces.
We spent tens of billions of dollars training these forces to do something that was expected of them. To defend their nation against a savage enemy. They appear to be failing in that mission.
Do we return in full force? No! We must not! I happen to endorse the decision to leave the Afghanistan battlefield. I am aghast at the slipshod way it is occurring. President Biden is deploying 5,000 additional U.S. troops to assist in the evacuation of Americans and our allies, to get out of harm’s way.
But … my goodness. I am troubled by the lack of effort reportedly being shown by the armed forces we supposedly prepared to defend their nation.
I want our young men and women to come home as much as the next person. However, it saddens me terribly to believe we spent two decades fighting and dying for a nation that is unable — or unwilling — to defend itself.