Horrific stories are emerging after the swift fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban – learn more here. Eight people have died at Kabul airport, where thousands of desperate Afghans have clambered onto moving military planes, and U.S. troops have fired warning shots into the air amid a chaotic scramble to flee the Taliban.
Three stowaways are believed to have plunged to their deaths, with harrowing footage showing their bodies falling from the underside of a hulking USAF transport jet as it climbed into the skies over the fallen city on Monday. See feature photo and learn more here.
Other videos showed despairing Afghans chasing after a plane, risking almost certain deaths as they darted beneath its wheels and clung onto the fuselage as it hurtled down the runway. See below.
Many are blaming the Biden administration for this debacle, and rightly so. Still, others might say, we went there and broke Afghanistan, so somehow it is now our responsibility to fix it. America and its allies gave the Afghan people a false sense of security only to be hung out to dry – so goes the narrative. This thinking has prompted the Biden administration to ramp up a massive Afghan refugee immigration program.
The US Department of Defense could be planning to make room for some 30,000 Afghan refugees at US Army garrisons like Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort McCoy in Wisconsin – a whisper number makes this as high as 80,000. This is according to a report from Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News White House Correspondent. The UK will most likely do some similar Afgan refugee program, though exact numbers have not been announced. Learn more here what other countries will be doing.
This prompts the question, Why? What responsibilities do the American people have towards the Afghanistan people?
America has already invested trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, along with our allies, to prop up the Afghan people. America built, trained, and provided all the military infrastructure for the Afghan 300,000 strong army along with the military infrastructure required to sustain Afghan security. It wasn’t just security support, but civilian infrastructure as well – see here. Below is a short summary.
- USAID completed the construction of three generation plants in 2009, 2016, and 2019 and is constructing three solar power plants and a wind farm that will add 110 megawatts of power to the national power grid, offsetting the use of fossil fuel. When construction is completed by the end of 2023, an estimated 3.5 million Afghans will have access to reliable and affordable energy.
- Between 2003 and 2017, USAID built and improved more than 2,000 kilometers of roads, linking Afghanistan’s five most populous provinces and facilitating travel and commerce. Thanks to USAID, Afghan businesses can more easily transport their products across the country, and citizens have improved access to urban centers. The 2,000-kilometer road has bolstered economic growth along the entire corridor and improved the lives of hundreds of communities by connecting once-remote villages to schools and clinics.
- In 2016, USAID partnered with UNICEF to bring desperately needed safe drinking water to Afghans in hard-to-reach communities. Thanks to our partnership, USAID has helped provide clean drinking water to more than 650,000 Afghans and has helped improve access to basic sanitation services to more than 1.2 million Afghans across 17 provinces.
The American people gave Afghanistan everything – to no avail. Perhaps America gave the Afghans the false hope of utopian democracy blossoming out of the Afghan desserts. However, my guess is that that many of the Afghan people knew that their society was not ready for this utopia.
Go back and re-review these videos of these understandably desperate people trying to leave Afghanistan – especially at the airport. It was difficult to get to the airport in the first place. Many are reasonably dressed for Afghanistan. This group most likely represents the more affluent of Afghanistan – business owners, government workers, the leaders of society – not the poor of Afghanistan.
It should be noted that often in countries like Afghanistan, one can not be successful without some sleight of hand to survive. Many of the now old Afghan regime leaders and their families benefited from the 20 years of American help. But when the time came to defend their freedoms, they cut and ran. In a matter of hours without hardly firing a shot. Were they cowards?
Will these refugees eventually become part of America? If they wouldn’t fight for Afghanistan would they fight for America anymore? Perhaps they will even become resentful of America once they reach our safety. Would the Taliban be so generous? Of course, they will be prime targets for the Taliban. Perhaps instead of clinging ridiculously to jet aircraft and falling from the sky, they should be planning the Taliban resistance. The latter may be a better risk.
I know you may think that this author is heartless, lacking empathy, and what about their innocent families. Fire away at me in the comment section of this post – I understand there are two sides to this story. It is now time to return the soldiers home, but don’t bring any of the natives with you – it’s time for the Afghan people to sort out their problems on their own. Besides, they will need these “leaders of society” right inside of Afghanistan more than ever, if it is ever to make it into the 21st century.
Is it not time for some “tough love?”
For sure America does have some responsibility and not just abandoned totally the Afghani’s that have worked directly with the allied forces over the past 20 years. But any support should not be nation-building in a policy that would require extensive on-the-ground troops and financial resources. A “policy of containment” could have three primary goals.
- Control the import of any military equipment.
- Control the export of terror.
- Control the export of the drug trade.
This could reasonably be done with a few military bases in the area from the air and from time to time special forces – at a much lower cost in blood and treasure than we have had in the past 20 years. It would also address the potential power vacuum that would open the door to Chinese or Russian influence in the region. Whatever happens to the government of Afghanistan will be up to the Afghanistan people. We have done this successfully in the past in other countries.
An unfortunate principle was broken by many here in the West as well as in Afghanistan – “If you are not prepared to fight badass hard when necessary, be prepared to be ruled by others that will.”
