
<p>For more than 20 years, American soldiers have fought and died in Afghanistan. ; Many who survived came home badly wounded and disabled. ; Others suffered the mental and emotional traumas associated with warfare. ; Some of them have since committed suicide.</p>



<p>The issue of Afghanistan is very personal to me my family. ; I lost my Marine grandson in that war. ; At the time of his death, I wrote that I did not want to see him having died in vain. ; He and those others who fought and died in the sands of Afghanistan are national heroes, but the deaths were still in vain &#8211;because American leaders chose to drag the war on for two decades and then retreat in defeat.</p>



<p>Some argue today that our only purpose for going into Afghanistan was to get Osama bin Laden and break the back of al-Qaeda. It was never to drive out the Taliban. ; Never to do nation building. ; But we found and killed bin Laden 10 years ago – and we still have not destroyed al-Qaeda or ISIS, for that matter. ; ;</p>



<p>And we did engage in nation building by helping to develop a more democratic and less oppressive government in Kabul. ; The people of Afghanistan – especially the women and schoolgirls – enjoyed a new era of freedom. ; All that is now lost.</p>



<p>Today the Taliban are swiftly taking over the nation they ruthlessly ruled over at the beginning of the war. ; America and the civilized world gained nothing. ; The Taliban will be more powerful than ever for having beaten the allegedly most powerful nation in the world into submission. ; Terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, will again have a state sponsor – a safe haven from which to continue their attack on the civilized world.</p>



<p>The undeclared war in Afghanistan continued through four presidencies – two Republican and two Democrat. ; Afghanistan has been a bipartisan failure on top of a succession of failures in other nations – Korea, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq. ; The folks in Washington – who oversaw this slow-moving disaster – will not admit that we were defeated in these wars. ; They prefer the euphemism that we “got out” of the conflicts.</p>



<p>President Eisenhower got the United States out of the Korean War. ; President Nixon got us out of the Vietnam war. ; President Obama got us out of Iraq and Syria. ; And now President Biden got America out of Afghanistan. ; We got out because we refused to win. ; Ergo, we lost.</p>



<p>Not only did America lose these wars, but we turned out back on the indigenous people who fought side-by-side with our forces on the ground. ; We left behind the Hmong to be slaughter in the killing fields of Cambodia and Vietnam. Left behind the Kurds and the freedom fighters in Syria.</p>



<p>And now we are leaving behind those who served America in Afghanistan. ; At this very moment, men, women and children are being slaughtered. ; As are the provincial officials as the Taliban continues to claim more land and more cities. ; And the worst is yet to come.</p>



<p>Biden assured those who served as interpreters, advisors and fellow combatants that we would not leave them and their families behind. ; He was lying the very moment he made that promise. ; He knew that there was no plan to rescue them. ; They were being hunted down and killed at the very time Biden offered those meaningless and dishonest words.</p>



<p>Biden lied when he told the American people that the Afghanistan government was now strong enough to hold back the Taliban. ; He lied when he told the president of Afghanistan that we would still have the government’s back.</p>



<p>Biden says that our soldiers will be completely out of Afghanistan except for a couple thousand to project the U.S. embassy and the Kabul airport. ; I would bet that we will be pulling them out when the Taliban begin their assault on the Afghan capital. ; America’s latest retreat.</p>



<p>So, there ‘tis.</p>

The tragedy of Afghanistan
