Afghan war

US waves the white flag of surrender to the Taliban and al Qaeda

Eighteen years, five months, two weeks, and four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States waved the white flag of surrender to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. Austin Miller, great Americans, no doubt secured the best deal they could after Secretaries Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper pulled the plug on what was unironically christened Operation Enduring Freedom. President Trump’s partisans will polish this turd of an agreement best they can, to help his reelection. But this war now likely ends like Vietnam did: enemy tanks crashing through our embassy gate and a CIA officer slugging a liaison partner trying to board the last helicopter out.

Withdrawal conditions will be interpreted with a view toward getting out fast. The Taliban did not even follow through on its promised weeklong ceasefire, quickly rebranded as a “reduction in violence.” The Taliban will break its agreements, al Qaeda will return, literally with a vengeance, and terror attacks will be launched to kill people in the U.S.

Those who say we can manage this threat from the air forget how that worked out between 1996-2001, while those who say from barstools that we can “carpet bomb” the enemy forget we have not done that since 1945. The military experience of those who say we can simply parachute in a handful of special forces may be limited to watching Rambo.