"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." —James Madison (1816) 
August 15 marked the one-year anniversary of the fall of Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, and two weeks later marked Joe Biden's disastrous surrender and retreat from the theater. The consequences were, and will be, dire. How did Biden acknowledge the occasion? Not a word from him at his vacation resort. But he did take time to sign his so-called Inflation Reduction Act, and he and his puppeteers will be taking "victory tours" over the next two weeks, hoping his adoring media will give that more playtime than his Afghanistan disaster. Afghanistan was the first test of Biden's foreign policy "expertise," which he promised the nation would be far superior to that of his predecessor, Donald Trump. That assertion has proven demonstrably false in virtually every instance of Biden's inept foreign policy — most notably, since Kabul, his fumbling of war criminal Vladimir Putin's bloody invasion of Ukraine and his bumbling NATO role. Let me get this out of the way up front: As I stated last year, anyone — ANYONE — who believes that the resurgence of the Taliban and their ISIS-K and al-Qa'ida thugs would have occurred under a second Donald Trump term is so deeply delusional as to be in a state of complete denial. Likewise, anyone who believes Putin would have dared to invade Ukraine if Trump were still president is equally delusional. Every impenitent Biden/Harris supporter voted for the Taliban takeover and Putin's invasion; voted for the terror that has besieged millions of Afghan and Ukrainian men, women, and children; and voted for the slaughter that continues. The blood of innocents is on your hands. 
The most dangerous threat to U.S. national security has been and remains Joe Biden, but his ineptitude ahead of the 2020 election was no mystery. During the 2020 Demo primary, even Barack Obama himself said, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f**k things up." As for Biden's chronic malfeasance, recall that in 2014, Obama's former defense secretary, Robert Gates, noted that Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Similarly, our late friend Charles Krauthammer observed, "[Biden] holds the American record for being wrong on the most issues in foreign affairs, ever." Regarding Biden's retreat, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was clear about the looming national security threat that our 46th president created. He noted, "This is one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history, much worse than Saigon," because the withdrawal from Vietnam did not signal a significant threat to Americans. To that point, he added: "Just because we decided to stop fighting doesn't mean the terrorists go away. So they're still out there. They're invigorated. They're emboldened. They're excited about the success they see in bringing America to its knees in Afghanistan." Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was very clear about that threat: "This was a known. By canceling the insurance policy of having American and NATO forces fighting the terrorist ... in Afghanistan, [it] made it less likely we would have to fight them in the streets and skies over America. What has happened here is seen as a Taliban victory over the United States ... and has given terrorists all over the Middle East a huge psychological boost. ... There are many reports of foreign terrorist fighters already coming into Afghanistan ... and we are going back to the pre-9/11 environment." Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley observed, "Afghanistan is once again a safe haven where terrorists operate freely," and she assailed Biden's withdrawal as "a slap in the face" to our combat veterans. Indeed, I have many friends who served in AFG, some who were severely wounded and a few who were KIA. Biden has irrevocably dishonored their service and sacrifice and that of their families. Historian and social commentator Bill Bennett observed: "This was the most disgraceful act of foreign policy I believe a president has ever done. I don't think there's a parallel and I've been looking through history books for the last three days." And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich observed: "We have not seen a president this incompetent. We haven't seen a president surrender to an enemy in the way that Joe Biden has. And he's allowed a seventh-century tribal group to defeat the most powerful country in the 21st century. It's an astonishing outcome." Fact is, Trump was our nation's strongest domestic and foreign policy leader in decades. When Trump left office, we had about 3,000 troops left in Afghanistan. There had not been a military death in over a year until a week before Biden's exit date, when 13 American military personnel were murdered — the worst loss of American lives in a decade. Those deaths, and more than 150 civilian deaths, were carried out by an ISIS-K terrorist who was released from Bagram Air Base once Biden ordered it abandoned. 
For context, the U.S. has about 750 military base sites in almost 80 countries. We have almost 54,000 personnel in Japan and 26,000 in South Korea. In Europe, we have 35,000 Americans in Germany, 13,000 in Italy, and 9,000 in the UK. In the Middle East, we have 4,000 personnel in Bahrain, 1,800 in Turkey, 1,500 in Saudi Arabia, and 1,100 in Kuwait. But only one country has sponsored a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and that was Afghanistan. Despite assertions to the contrary, Trump's conditions for removing most of our remaining military personnel from that nation was a good plan. Then Joe Biden happened. To be clear, as I noted in "Biden's Afghan Blowup," Trump's drawdown plan had two primary and finite conditions: First, that the Taliban had demonstrably cut their ties with al-Qa'ida, ISIS-K, and other terror groups, and second, that they successfully negotiate and maintain peace with the Afghanistan government. Those conditions for withdrawal were not met under Biden. With Trump gone, the Taliban summarily discarded those conditions and ousted the Afghanistan government. And why wouldn't they? Obviously, they had no fear of Biden enforcing those terms. Former Trump Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell concurs: "The Taliban onslaught started coming once Joe Biden got into the White House. The Taliban knew they couldn't make the move when Trump was in office." In other words, if Trump were still commander-in-chief, we'd have a small contingent of special forces in Afghanistan pounding the Taliban into submission. Given the resurgence of the Taliban, there is now a very real threat of renewed terrorist assaults on American soil and Americans abroad by the next generation of Islamists. Recall that back in 2010, Osama bin Laden declared that then-VP Biden should not be targeted because if he became president, he would "lead the US into a crisis." Maybe in gratitude that's why Biden objected to Obama's authorization of the mission to kill Osama a year later. But Biden didn't hesitate at the beginning of this month in ordering the assassination of al-Qa'ida's cofounder and terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. That's right — the current leader of al-Qa'ida was living in the open in Afghanistan under Taliban protection. Our sources there believe the Biden administration knew where al-Zawahiri was for months before the strike but waited until August to use the strike as a diversion from the looming one-year anniversary of Biden's Afghanistan disaster. The last time Biden ordered a diversionary drone strike against terrorists in Kabul — shortly after his disgraceful retreat — he murdered 10 innocent men, women, and children. 
So Biden abandoned the Afghanistan theater after two decades of containment, leaving the Taliban thugs in a much more powerful position than when we arrived in 2001. Afghanistan is on the verge of economic collapse, and the ugly humanitarian consequences continue to unfold. And in great measure, the Taliban and their al-Qa'ida surrogates are far more dangerous and deadly because of billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment Biden left behind. As I outlined a year ago: 1) The immediate concerns after Biden's retreat are the consequences for tens of thousands of Afghan allies, civilians, and families whom Biden abandoned. As the Taliban firms up its organizational structure and returns to its extremist tyrannical control, the bloody purges will be underway. And the purges continue... 2) The intermediate concerns are that Biden has reseeded the al-Qa'ida and ISIS-K turf, putting the U.S. homeland at risk of another terrorist attack. And al-Qa'ida and ISIS-K are rebuilding... 3) The consequences of Biden's now-obvious failure as commander-in-chief have extended, and dire implications for our national security now exist far beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Biden's retreat will embolden far more powerful tyrants, notably our near-peer adversaries. Brace yourself, America — now that Biden surrendered to the Taliban, China and Russia are going to test Biden's lack of resolve to defend Taiwan and the Ukraine — and it WILL get ugly. And China and Russia did test Biden's lack of resolve and it has gotten ugly... Power does not tolerate a vacuum or an inept and vacuous appeaser like Joe Biden. The catastrophic failure and retreat from our mission in Afghanistan were certainly not because of any deficit of courage and commitment from our warfighters; they were the direct result of Biden's abject dereliction of duty and that of his senior military leaders. The Taliban, ISIS-K, ISIL, and al-Qa'ida all feared Trump — but none fear Biden. For Biden's boundless ineptitude, we will pay a price much higher than the disaster we left in Afghanistan. Amid all the exfil fanfare from feckless Joe Biden and his inept senior military and diplomatic cadres, I was deeply moved by a single sentence that sums up what was conceived as an orderly troop drawdown under Donald Trump but what devolved into a disgraceful and deadly retreat by Biden. "In what f***ing world was it a good idea to just hand over a country to these people?" Those words were from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), an Operation Enduring Freedom combat veteran and former Navy SEAL. 
I am astounded today at the Biden administration's effort to get one celebrity American basketball player out of Russia. By contrast, among Biden's litany of lies were that we would get more than a thousand Americans out of Afghanistan before retreating and that we would ensure a quick path for tens of thousands of Afghan citizens who worked closely with our military — and who are now cowering in the shadows under imminent death threats from the Taliban. Images of desperate Afghan citizens clinging to the outside of C-17 transports and falling to their deaths as those planes departed should haunt Biden et al. for eternity. Finally, let me emphasize that the objective of Biden's compressed Afghanistan exfil schedule was to provide him a political "I got the troops out" victory lap ahead of the 20th observance of the 9/11 Islamist attack on our nation. There was NO victory lap — except for the one taken by the Taliban celebrating 9/11 in our abandoned Kabul embassy. Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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