The Truth About Afghanistan: No One Knows The Truth

While watching the disaster of the Afghanistan pullout unfold, and witnessing images like the person falling from a plane taking off, one may wonder how is FOX news covering this? One may guess the FOX headlines would read “BREAKING NEWS: IT’S LITERALLY THE END OF THE WORLD AND IT’S ALL BIDEN’S FAULT.” Of course, that’s what the FOX headlines usually are, but this time there was a hint of truth to it.

With the 20th Anniversary of September 11 attacks, the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan recently followed. Whether you love or hate President Biden, whether you support or oppose the Afghanistan pullout, no one can consider leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban on the September 11 anniversary a wise political strategy.

As former NYC Mayor Bloomberg pointed out, it would be easy to blame everything on President Biden, but it is much more complicated. Currently, the mainstream attitude seems to be that President Bush did not conduct the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 correctly, got distracted by Iraq, and that incompetence set off a domino effect to where we are today. This may well be the case. It is hard to believe there were no alternatives besides staying engaged in a war forever and the course of action that was taken. Some have said that a different pull-out timetable would have been beneficial.

Several members of the new Taliban government are former prisoners of Guantanamo Bay who were released from US custody. To those who insisted we close Guantanamo Bay, the Taliban leaders who were once in that prison who are now helping rule Afghanistan are the result of that policy.

To the progressives who opposed this war, we just handed countless Afghan civilians to the Taliban. This sounds suspiciously like an “America First” style of thinking. Actually, this has received praise from no one other than the ultra-conservative Ann Coulter, who praised President Biden for ending the war, and finishing President Trump’s promise.

During a press conference, President Biden thought outside the box in a way only Biden can, and asked a group of reporters that had Bin Laden launched an attack from Yemen, would the U.S. have ever set foot in Afghanistan? It is hard to argue that we would have. However the fact remains Bin Laden did in fact launch an attack from Afghanistan, and we did in fact enter it. Many have said the “we broke it, we bought it” policy applied to Iraq, is Afghanistan not the same?

One mother of a soldier killed openly directed all of the blame of her son’s death at President Biden. Interestingly enough, you rarely hear about any family members blaming Ronald Reagan for the deaths of the soldiers killed in Lebanon. Some have pointed out that past Presidents have experienced foreign policy mishaps, (President Reagan in Lebanon, President Clinton in Somalia) and they recovered. However, President Biden ran on the platform promising to apply his experience. He does not( and was not supposed to require) the luxury to make such mistakes.

One cannot examine how to defeat the Taliban without understanding where the Taliban acquires its resources from. Opium and heroin trade is a key funder of the Taliban. Throughout the past few years, the fight to legalize marijuana has spread throughout the United States. If legal restrictions on opiates were loosened, it may become less valuable on the black market which may reduce funding for the Taliban.

There is a lot of controversy over what lessons are to be learned from the war in Afghanistan. Some claim that we should have stayed longer. Some say we should have stayed shorter. Some say we should have never gone in at all. The most important lesson is either you go in full force(which includes shutting down your opponent’s resources and not releasing prisoners so they can attack you again) or you do not go in at all.

As for President Biden, he still has a chance to be the most anti-Saudi president ever, which means he has a chance to be the most anti-terrorist president ever. Due to pressure from 9/11 families, Biden has made the long awaited move to put pressure on the FBI to finally release documents that contain information about the Saudi involvement with the September 11 attacks. Earlier this year, the Biden administration issued a freeze on weapons transactions to Saudi Arabia. Biden has long called to make energy independence a priority, which will help sever business ties to Saudi Arabia. Perhaps if he really comes down on the head of the octopus of Islamic fundamentalism, it will be irrelevant if he failed to control one arm.