5 September 2024

The Afghanistan Withdrawal Three Years Later

Don Ritter

Today marks the third anniversary of the last day of U.S. presence in Afghanistan, August 30, 2021, and no matter how much the White House and the media shy away from the really bad news, the reality is that a radical Islamist Afghanistan as it stands today, poses grave danger to the United States and the West.

The (prideful) post-withdrawal comment of presidential candidate Kamala Harris that she “was the last person in the room” with President Biden and her recent embrace of the Administration’s withdrawal strategy as “courageous and right” will haunt her in the campaign ahead. When the question of which candidate can best protect America as President is raised, she will need to defend a historic failure.

The current anarchic state of the world can be traced back to the failures in Afghanistan.

Both the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations share the blame for the debacle that ensued. Still, the Biden-Harris administration, which reversed much of Trump’s other policies, stuck with his pledge to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and then proceeded to exacerbate matters by botching the execution.

The complete, precipitous, and incompetent withdrawal of U.S. forces deserted an allied nation of 40 million people. We left millions of women and girls to suffer ISIS-like repression of their humanity. An American administration consigned our friends and allies to unimaginable levels of poverty, repression, and despair.

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