When President Biden announced that he would have the full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, it became painfully clear what his directive dealt with. It wasn’t based on any sound military strategy developed by the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the rest of the NSC, but it was based on the need for a win.
President Biden thought he would be able to secure a huge public relations victory by being able to point out that he ended a nearly two-decades-long war. He was sorely mistaken. Now, we have 13 dead Americans, the first US combat deaths in Afghanistan since February of 2020, and a Taliban government that is ready to take effect on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11.
Mr. President, you played politics and lost.
In April when President Biden announced that all US troops would be out of Afghanistan, I won’t lie, I was excited. The war in Afghanistan commenced the day I was baptized in October of 2001. It has been going on for my entire life. We have seen thousands of young Americans give their lives in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and defeating those who harbored him. It was a necessary and righteous cause, but after the killing of bin Laden, the United States’ mission switched from anti-terrorism to nation-building, a task we are not the best at.
Don’t get me wrong, I am opposed to the Taliban and their subjugation of women and minorities among countless other human rights abuses, but the United States is not the world’s moral policeman. We simply cannot use our military to correct every wrong in the world. That being said, my opinion quickly changed when the withdrawal began.
Throughout the summer, we saw the critical positions overrun and the total domination of Afghan forces by the Taliban. This was not the plan. The Afghan forces were supposed to hold on for, by some estimates, almost a year giving them time to negotiate with the Taliban and form a new government and secure a peaceful transition of power. This was the plan worked out by President Trump and the one not honored by the Taliban. At that point, the Biden administration should have seen what was coming and stopped the withdrawal.
President Biden was warned in April against withdrawal in the first place but decided to go against that advice. Instead of responding to the new developments that he saw in later months and heeding the warnings of his generals, Biden pressed on. He ignored the advice of his Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who both advised that he would be wise to take a diplomatic approach.
When things went sideways and it became apparent the Taliban would overrun the country as soon as the US left, President Biden did not heed the original warnings and change course. Instead, he continued things as business as usual all the while Taliban forces gained ground further threatening US security.
Why on earth would a president outright ignore the advice of his generals on military matters? Because President Biden wanted a victory. He wanted to get in front of the American people on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11 and finally declare America’s longest war over. Instead, President Biden spent time this past month welcoming home the bodies of 13 American servicemen who died as a result of this bumbled operation. They would never have been deployed there if President Biden had listened to his generals and recognized that his plan as of April was never going to work out. Now, soldiers as young as 20 who were only a few months old when 9/11 happened have become victims of the war it caused.
Now, instead of commemorating the 20th Anniversary of 9/11 with stability in Afghanistan and working towards the proper withdrawal, we have some of the same people who harbored the perpetrators of those evil acts back in power. We are now back to square one and in a world that grows more dangerous with every passing day. Terrorists once again have a safe haven in Afghanistan and President Biden is to blame.
Anthony Ilardi
Anthony Ilardi is a political science major at Clemson University. There he is an undergraduate senate clerk representing the undergraduate student body and a member of the mock trial team. He hopes to take his experiences in Student Government to the real world someday.
The views expressed in this article are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Lone Conservative staff.
@ailardi8
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