Kandahar, Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, the presidential palace, Bagram Air Base–all fell within hours of President Joe Biden’s order to bug out of Afghanistan posthaste.
Another “last helicopter” lifting away from an American embassy in a sign of defeat.
Just last month, President Biden swore that this was a scene that would never occur.
Last US chopper leaves Kabul embassy in Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/Pp62EkM2LA
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 15, 2021
He infamously claimed that pulling out of Afghanistan would never be like that scene in Saigon in 1975.
“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of the embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”
The American flag was lowered at the embassy in Kabul and handed to the chargé d’affaires who ran to the airport. Another artifact destined for a museum of American military bugouts.
BREAKING: The US ambassador was seen fleeing after #Taliban forces stormed #Kabul.
The US flag was lowered from the building, signaling the official closure of the embassy.
The ambassador and the embassy flag were seen at an airport.https://t.co/nmOVaG2frQ— John Basham 🇺🇲 (@JohnBasham) August 15, 2021
Nobody blames the military. They’re trained to win and follow orders.
Related: U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan Lowers Flag as Taliban Prepares to Declare its Islamic Government UPDATES: Taliban Take the Presidential Palace
But, like Saigon, by leaving Baghdad in the first Gulf War, Kabul, and now the city-sized Bagram Air Base, the politicians screwed it up again.
And it makes one retired U.S. Marine sick to his stomach.
Captain Mike Rosen, USMC, Retired, joined the military right after the U.S. Marine barracks truck bomb attack in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. He was barely out of high school. The Hezbollah bomb blast killed 241 troops, mostly sailors and Marines. It made the young recruit sick to his stomach then, too.
Four months after the truck bomb attack, President Ronald Reagan bugged out of Beirut, leaving behind a small contingent at the embassy.
Captain Rosen served in combat in Iraq. He was part of the Second Battle of Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury, and worked logistics. He’d been up for the rank of major. He was wounded by an IED attack while in a Humvee in the sandbox.
After returning stateside, Rosen began work out of a local base in what might be the toughest assignment of his professional life as a Marine. As part of the Marine Corps Casualty Assistance Program, it was his job to break the news to spouses and families when their loved ones died while serving overseas.
Related: Biden Never Saw What Hit Him
He texted me after hearing about Biden’s bugout in Afghanistan. He’s given me permission to share his messages. Names have been removed to save these families the pain of reliving their loved ones’ sacrifice – especially in light of in the ignominy of this moment.
I am so sick to my stomach right now.
Another humiliating evacuation from an embassy to close out a war.
This administration makes me fucking sick. Embarrassing as hell.
The death notifications I did for AFG KIAs, Linsey *******, married for two months to her husband Will, when he was killed on Thanksgiving Day 2010.
Josh *****, KIA in AFG June 2010, notified his wife when she was 7 months pregnant.
My best friend Durand ****** lost his leg, destroyed his face, sense of smell and taste from an IED.
Fucking piece of shit Biden.
I shared that I believe we should have deployed Special Forces to continue the job Mike Spann and CIA paramilitary guys started: leaving a small footprint to hunt bin Laden. We should have left a security force, I told him, retained control of Bagram, and put this 7th Century hellhole on the list of rotations for a limited number of U.S. troops like we do in Germany and Japan. And for God’s sake, cut out the nation building.
100% agree. Biden and his liberal POSs have taken everything we have fought for and literally pissed on us. Fuck him.
Some Afghan interpreters who spent the last 20 years helping American soldiers have been saved; for others it was too late to save them. One who talked to Military.com sounded like Rosen.
“I can’t even talk right now,” the interpreter, who asked to be identified only as Said, said in an interview Sunday. “I’m just about to cry, because we lost everything.”
What the hell must Marcus Luttrell be thinking right now?
Joe Biden pulled the plug on Afghanistan, keeping intact his record of more than 40 years of bad decisions, as Robert Gates accurately declared.
Donald Trump wanted to get out, as did Barack Obama before him. Trump lost his defense secretary, James Mattis, over his attempt to remove American troops from Syria.
No general has quit over this foreseeable debacle.
In 27 days, on September 11, there will be much rejoicing over the complete collapse of the U.S. efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan.
It should never have been thus.
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