Only the left could twist the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army into whining about “fascism” and production value.
— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) June 22, 2025
Maybe that’s because the only time they’re proud of our military gear is when the Taliban is parading it through the streets after Biden’s botched withdrawal.… pic.twitter.com/0QiYdEqK2N
But there’s another part of the Afghan withdrawal that
rarely gets mentioned. The collapse of the Afghan government turned what began
as an evacuation effort into a massive humanitarian airlift. In less than three
weeks, U.S. military commanders evacuated more than 125,000 people out of the
country — both Americans and Afghans who had worked with U.S. officials during
the war. It was the single largest noncombatant evacuation airlift in American
history — and an extraordinary example of ingenuity and grit.
The withdrawal itself wasn't America's finest hour. However, the decision by President Biden to withdraw was almost unavoidable, given that the country as a whole wanted out and virtually no Republican questioned the decision itself, which was far more significant than the withdrawal itself.
These days, there is no Republican- Wesley Hunt or any other- who has the courage to question the policy. And it's a wise strategy, given that President Trump painted his successor into a corner on this. As Amber Phillips of The Washington Post reported in August of 2021
When Trump came into office, he was pretty transparent- he just wanted out of Afghanistan. "Trump had no real sense of what was at stake in the war or why to stay," writes Georgetown professor Paul Miller in a digestible history of the 20-year-war.
It should have come as no surprise, then, that the Taliban got pretty sweet terms from The World's Greatest Deal Maker as
The deal laid out an explicit timetable for the United States and NAto to pull out their forces: In the first 100 days or so, they would reduce troops from 14,000 to 8,600 and leave five military bases. Over the next nine months, they would vacate all the rest. "The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will complete withdrawal of all remaining forces from Afghanistan within the remaining nine and a half (9.5) months," the deal reads. "The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases."
Phillips wrote "the United States would release 5,000 Taliban prisoners; the Taliban would release 1,000 of its prisoners" or, as the late, great, but mathematically-challenged Jim Morrison once put it, "five to one, baby, one in five." And
One gaping problem, say scholars (including some from the Trump administration): The peace agreement came with no enforcement mechanism for the Taliban to keep its word.
The Taliban basically had to sign a pledge saying it wouldn't harbor terrorists. Nowhere did the Taliban have to- nor did it choose to- denounce al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that launched the 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan, Miller writes....
Overall, it was a pretty good deal for the Taliban, critics said. "Trump all but assured the future course of events would reflect the Taliban's interests far more than the United States," Miller writes. H.R. McMaster, Trump's second national security adviser, has recently called it "a surrender agreement with the Taliban." Another member of Trump's National Security Council said it was "a very weak agreement."
In a glimpse into the kind of deals which Donald Trump makes when he does not hold all the cards
A few months after the agreement was signed, there was plenty of evidence that the Taliban wasn't as sincere as it appeared about peace. The United Nations said it had evidence that al-Qaeda was "integrated" into the Taliban. The Taliban launched dozens of attacks in Afghanistan, ramping up its violence.
"The Taliban views the negotiations as a necessary step to ensure the removal of U.S. and other foreign troops under the U.S.-Taliban agreement, but the Taliban likely does not perceive that it has any obligation to make substantive concessions or compromises," a U.S. inspector general report read.
When the deal was eventually consummated in Doha, Qatar in February of 2020, the Taliban "agreed to start peace talks with the Afghan government and consider a cease-fie with the government." Yet
Before the peace talks really got going got going, Trump had already started withdrawing thousands of troops, and he fired his defense secretary, (Mark T.) Esper, after he wrote a memo disagreeing. (Esper later said that Trump's withdrawing too many troops too soon contributed to what we see now in Afghanistan)....
When Biden took over, there were just 3,500 U.S. troops left in the country (from a high of 100,000 during the Obama years). he pushed back the date of the planned withdrawal from May 1 to four months later, but he kept the deal intact. U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/1 attacks.
The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities this past weekend was uncharacteristic of President Trump. Although it turns out that the scheming fascist does not always chicken out (TacoTrump), Trump did so in 2020. As Phillips noted
"I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show that we're not all wasting time" Trump said as he announced the agreement. He added as an aside: "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no one's ever seen."
It was only a matter of time before those "bad things" would "happen. Therefore, we read in August of 2022, "experts say the downfall of (President Ashraf) Ghani's government was inevitable once NATO forces started withdrawing from the war-ravaged country in May 2021 as a result of Washington's deal with the Taliban in February 2020." It was a deal the President struck without including NATO (whose forces were present) nor the Afghan government. with a terrorist organization of whom activist Zahra Hussein in Kabul remarked "Today is a dark day, and as I was watching the deal being signed, I had this bad feeling that it would result in their return to power rather than in peace."
That's why Republicans such as Wesley Hunt refer to Biden's "botched withdrawal" and only in passing while moving seamlessly from one unrelated topic to another. The act of withdrawal has had far less impact on Afghanistan or even the USA than did the thoroughly botched agreement President Donald J. Trump made with terrorists he trusted.
Donald Trump did perform his photo-op of "honoring our heroes with strength and respect." Still, we need to remember that he once characterized "my personal Vietnam" as avoiding a "social disease" while dating in the 1980s, bragging "I feel like a great and very brave soldier." That's our President and his lickspittle, Wesley Hunt
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