The Shadow
A year later after the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan where my son fought as a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, Russia has invaded Ukraine, and China has completed its most aggressive military training exercises by surrounding Taiwan.
Not to mention that $7 billion worth of U.S. military equipment was left behind in Afghanistan for the Taliban to use as it sees fit, the females there now live under severe societal restrictions as they were living under prior to the U.S. and the United Nation’s forces coming to the aid of Afghanistan following the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.
As President Barack Obama observed about the attack on 9/11, Al-Qaeda’s training ground was Afghanistan, not Iraq where President George W. Bush led the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
At any rate, the withdrawal from Afghanistan that President Joe Biden touted as a success after 124,000 people were airlifted out of Kabul was chaotic because security was delegated to the Taliban rather than having the U.S. Armed Forces retain control after Bagram was evacuated, an event that set the stage for13 American military personnel being killed by a terrorist suicide bomber at the Kabul Airport.
After the last flight took off to complete the evacuation process to meet President Joe Biden’s self-imposed deadline, the U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken estimated that 1,500 Americans who wished to leave were left behind, rendering an ironic twist to the U.S. Marine Corps’ slogan, “Until they are home, no man left behind.”
According to Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw who lost his eye in combat in Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal has enabled Al-Qaeda to regroup in Afghanistan where it is working with the Taliban along with other terrorist groups. Crenshaw perceives the safe haven for terrorist training as a threat to national security and laments that after more than 20 years, the U.S. is back to where it started when it first sent troops to combat terrorists in Afghanistan. He is also painfully aware of the consequences of abandoning Bagram, a strategic airbase close to China, Pakistan, and India.
The U.S. blood and treasure lost during the two decades of our nation’s anti-terrorism military action in Afghanistan that gave female citizens of Afghanistan the freedom to pursue an education, interact in public without covering their faces, and freedom to listen to music will be remembered, especially by America’s Gold Star Families who lost loved ones and by those like Crenshaw who returned to the U.S. as wounded veterans, many with debilitating injuries that have proven to be life-changing.
While the Pentagon has apparently joined Disney in embracing Woke spawned pronouns and ideology, the U.S. Military is not meeting its recruiting quotas, and the Taliban has restored its traditional restrictions on female behavior which constitutes what some in America now deem as the Taliban’s “War on Women.”
The bottom line is that not one American soldier had been killed during the last year while the U.S. was operating Bagram, but because of the blunder of withdrawing the number of U.S. troops that led to the shutdown of Bagram that would have provided security for an orderly and safe evacuation of Americans and citizens of Afghanistan such as interpreters who had helped the U.S. Military, the gates at Kabul became the deathtrap for many Afghanistan citizens and American military personnel.
The suicide bomber’s attack left 170 dead, including 13 U.S. Military personnel. Also, the blast wounded 18 other Americans serving in the U.S. Military.
The bombing resulted in the most fatalities for the U.S. Military in Afghanistan since Aug. 6, 2011, when 38 lost their lives when a U.S. Chinook helicopter was shot down by insurgents. The crash took the lives of 15 Navy SEALS from Team Six’s Gold Squadron.
Congressman Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal, warned President Biden in mid-Aug. of 2021, that his self-imposed airlift deadline should be extended without yielding to threats by the Taliban that dire consequences would follow if the Aug. 31, 2021, deadline was not met.
Nearly a year after the airlift from Kabul that President Joe Biden authorized, he approved the launching of two hellfire missiles that struck a Taliban owned building in downtown Kabul, killing Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian Al-Qaeda leader who was involved in the planning of the 9/11 terrorists attack.
My son returned home safely from fighting against the Taliban as a forward air-controller, and after flying F-18 Hornets for the U.S. Marine Corps for nearly a decade, he has been a pilot employed by Southwest Airlines for nearly a decade as well.
