OPINION:
It’s brilliant but diabolical: infect a vulnerable host, gain control over its functions, then, practically overnight, claim complete conquest. The coronavirus spreads in this fashion, but it’s also the modus operandi of the Taliban in its successful takeover of Afghanistan. As unwise as it may appear, a critical element to the regime’s success has been the White House’s role in empowering an adversary, and, sadly, it has happened before.
During the weeks since the last U.S. forces jetted away from Kabul’s international airport, President Biden has defended the abrupt end to 20 years of involvement in the remote land as a painful one necessitated by a Trump-era withdrawal deal. However, he has not offered a remotely rational explanation for why he left behind enough expensive and sophisticated military material to equip a modern army.
Thousands of armored humvees and trucks, hundreds of fixed-wing and rotor aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of firearms are now the property of the Taliban, the benefactors of the very terrorists who killed 3,000 innocents on 9/11. Americans who risked their lives overseas to crush the perpetrators now helplessly watch TV images of the enemy decked out in U.S. military uniforms riding high on U.S. vehicles while subduing forlorn fellow Afghans. If departing U.S. troops had no means of shipping their equipment home, they could have destroyed it instead. But they didn’t.
Instead, the Biden administration is reportedly trying to retrieve U.S. military aircraft flown across the border to Uzbekistan — retrieve them for the Taliban, that is. Negotiates are ongoing with Afghanistan’s neighbor to the north for the return of Blackhawk helicopters, close-air-support A-29s, and intelligence-gathering choppers, reports Fox News’ Lara Logan. In return, Team Biden hopes to win the release of Americans still held by the Taliban. “It is almost as if the U.S. is quite happy to let these American citizens fall into the Taliban [hands] so they can be used as the justification for what they’re doing,” she says.
Mr. Biden’s empowerment of the Taliban and its newly declared emirate is reminiscent of President Obama’s efforts to spur Islamic ascendance during the so-called “Arab Spring” a decade ago and the acknowledgment of Iran’s clout with the signing of the joint nuclear agreement in 2015. Americans have since searched in vain for signs of warming relations resulting from attempts to cozy up to hostile regimes.
Mr. Biden has served the Taliban’s interests, not America’s, with the surrender of an army’s worth of modern equipment for an enemy to use as it wishes. The likelihood that advanced U.S. technology will be shared with adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran is particularly egregious. Even worse are U.S. attempts to claw back armaments on behalf of the new Afghan emirate – explained as an attempt to buy the freedom of Americans callously left behind.
Like the coronavirus, the Taliban has infected and conquered its host. Like Mr. Obama, President Biden has helped empower America’s enemies.
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