There are a lot of people out there who seem to think that a withdrawal from Afghanistan means the war is over and that everyone will just go about their business. Some even mistakenly think that with the United States gone, Afghanistan can begin rebuilding and truly become its own nation.
These people are dead wrong. The country will now become a tyrannical hell hole whose primary export will be radicalized terrorists with a stark hatred of the United States.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spent a good part of the day getting the ever-loving crud kicked out of him during the House Armed Services Committee, and for good reason. The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was one of abject failure that saw Americans abandoned to the mercy of the Taliban and the United States lessened in the eyes of its allies. While Biden’s name will be slapped on the cover of this chapter in American history, Milley was the real author.
But while Milley lied and dodged as much as he possibly could in order to protect himself, there is one thing he said that was absolutely true. He warned the committee that “the conditions could be set for a reconstitution of al-Qaeda and/or ISIS” and added that there was a “real possibility” of these terrorist groups rebuilding themselves as early as spring of 2022.
And herein lies another tragic aspect of the fallout of this botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
We spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, over 2,000 Americans dead, nearly 21,000 injured, and for what? So that terrorist groups can retake control, take weapons and supplies, military vehicles, and have an entire country where they can train up more people just like them and send them to various parts of the world to enact terrorism and sow discord and fear.
Do you think 9/11 was the last great attack we’ll suffer at the hands of Islamic extremists? We just paved the way for it to happen again, and who knows how much worse it’ll be this time?
Hawkish Sen. Lindsay Graham, who may be having the time of his life right now, predicted our future back at the beginning of this month:
“We will be going back into Afghanistan,” Graham predicted. “We’ll have to because the threat will be so large.”
He warned that Afghanistan will become “a cauldron for radical Islamic behavior,” despite assurances from Taliban leaders that they will not allow the country to become a safe haven for groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS like it was before the 9/11 attacks, which prompted the U.S. to invade 20 years ago.
He predicted that the Taliban are “going to give safe haven to al Qaeda who has ambitions to drive us out of the Mideast writ large and attack us because of our way of life.”
“We will be going back into Afghanistan as we went back into Iraq and Syria,” he added.
To be sure, many ideological extremists have been waiting for this to happen and they’ll now be making their way to Afghanistan to be recruited, outfitted, and trained to go to war with the free peoples of the west.
Judging by what we knew about the readiness of the Afghanistan government, it makes Milley, Austin, and Biden’s decisions on our withdrawal all the more questionable, and possibly even sinister.
This wasn’t just a withdrawal that left Americans behind, it’s a withdrawal that endangered Americans at home as well. That Milley is not resigning over a failure so monumental is astounding and everyone from the halls of Washington to the fields of middle America should be demanding he leave his post in shame, and our country prepare for both our eventual return to Afghanistan and the incoming violence we’ll see on our own soil.
