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OPINION
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What Went Wrong?

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

In Afghanistan, the United States has not only left behind thousands, possibly over 10,000 Americans, but we have created, in the Taliban, the most dangerous terrorist force in the world. 

Why? Because we have essentially left behind all this American equipment that is now Taliban controlled. The Pentagon spokesman was asked if the United States has any plans to get any of that back. And the answer is, well, not really. 

The Americans left behind are now in desperate conditions. The U.S. Embassy has very little it can do to help them. It's telling them they need to watch out for their own safety, that it will try to get them out, but there's a limit to what it can do.

And then there are our Afghan allies, people who have worked with the United States for a long time. These are people who are being just targeted, shot, bodies in the street, not just in Kabul, but in other regional towns. The media is actually not showing enough of this in part because they're trying to hide and protect Biden by covering up the magnitude of the debacle. 

Due to what has fallen into the Taliban's hands, we've essentially weaponized this terrorist operation. Political commentator Adam Schwartz stated, "The Taliban is set to become the best armed Islamic fundamentalist group in the world when they inherit all the advanced US military equipment from the Afghan army." You see pictures on social media of Taliban guys walking around, and by the way, they used to have these old AK-47s, but now they have M-16 rifles. Our rifles. M-4 rifles, M-249, M-240 machine guns. You'll see the SCAR-H. You'll see military vehicles. Taliban guys sitting in Humvees. Now, who knows if they can drive the Humvees, they probably can, but you see MaxxPro trucks. Taliban guys are jubilantly waving their rifles over them. 

They have M-117 tank-like armored vehicles, which can survive an RPG blast and are also armed with a grenade launcher. This is all in the hands of the Taliban, believe it or not.

The Taliban now have more Blackhawk helicopters than about 150 countries around the world. They have drones, US helicopters. Essentially, in this ignominious end to the War on Terror, a war that we've apparently lost after two decades, that Biden has lost, we have created this menace and almost given over the weaponry to the other side, making them stronger than they were before. Before, they were 11th-century primitives working on the monkey bars. They had to plan the 9/11 attacks, come over here, use our own planes against us. But now they have real weaponry. And you have to say the Biden administration is to blame. 

Now, I realize that when Biden gave his speech, Biden's point was, "Well, you can't really blame me. C'mon, man, I'm just doing what Trump was going to do anyway!" This was Biden's logic: President Trump was going to withdraw; he's going to withdraw; therefore, no criticism is possible of the way in which Biden withdrew. 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) tweeted, "No one in their right mind would have closed Bagram Air Force Base while leaving behind thousands of civilians."

Why would you do that?"

And having done that, the US is basically saying, now we're trying to get 40 to 60,000 Afghans out. How? We don't really have a base. We have a very limited embassy with staff. And here's the State Department's response when asked about this: how will you get these 40 to 60,000? "We are doing as much as we can, for as long as we can."

The sheer helplessness and pathos of that. Under Biden, the United States has become the world's biggest idle talker. "We're going to hold the Taliban accountable for returning US citizens." Really? How? How are you going to hold them accountable? "We demand, and the international community demands that they respect women's rights and human rights." Who cares about what you demand? What power do you have on the ground to enforce this demand? "We deplore their actions and murdering our Afghan allies" Blah, blah, blah. This is really pathetic. And I think it signals it's a very bad sign for US power in the world in the future. 

Now, what should we have done? What would Trump have done? I'm pretty sure I know what Trump would have done. I know what I would have done. And it's actually very simple. I guess it does take a brain that is not like Biden's, a flickering light, to figure this out. But presumably, Biden has advisors who could have thought this up.

Number one, make a plan in which you find out, identify all the people you want to get out. Identify all the US civilians, NGOs, US workers, and US teachers in Afghanistan. Have them identified, move them to the Bagram Air Force Base, get them out. Number two, identify all your Afghan allies, the people who have really helped you that you can count on. Yes, I agree; those people cannot be left to rot, cannot be left to be killed. Bring them to the Bagram Air Force Base, get them out. And then the third and very critical point, and this is to notify the Taliban and say, "Listen, guys, you had a big advantage for the past 20 years. You were hiding in the mountains, and it was pretty hard to find you. And therefore, we had to fight against this guerrilla force. But here's the bad news. If we get out, and you come in and occupy Kabul and take over the government, you're going to be using courthouses and parliament and government buildings and mosques to carry out your normal administrative activities. Well, guess what? You have now given us 300 excellent targets – full of Taliban guys. And so, at any time, starting now, we can come back and pulverize you in such a way that you're going to go back to the Stone Age, kind of the way that you were right after 9/11. So the bottom line of it is the United States now has actual military targets in Kabul."

Now, I don't think the Biden ministration has the stomach for any of this. There are such wimps, such pathetic individuals, they wouldn't even dream of launching strikes now against the Taliban. But that would certainly tame their hubris. That would certainly show, "Yeah, the United States may be out of there. But you know what, we've actually got a long reach. Check this out...Bam!"

This is the way that a powerful country behaves in the world. Think of what China would do in our place or Russia. In a sense, what we're telegraphing through Biden is we don't deserve to be the world's superpower. We don't want to be the world's superpower. We can't even run our own affairs very well. We're just a laughingstock in the world. And all the people who voted for Biden, in a sense, I guess, have signed up for this. We've seen with Democrats before; this is what they do. This is what they're doing now. They're taking us down, and they even seem, in their own pathetic way, a little proud of it. 

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