OPINION
In a recent opinion piece, The Australian’s Adam Creighton tried vainly to defend Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Especially ludicrous was his claim that it was “hypocritical” for Trump supporters to attack Biden for botching the whole affair, because, “Trump himself had earlier agreed in February 2020 to pull US forces out of Afghanistan”.
Even a child should be able to point out that one does not logically follow from the other. Just because Donald Trump had also planned a withdrawal does not mean that Biden didn’t bollix the job. The argument is especially silly when you compare Trump’s plan for a staged withdrawal, with agreed-on conditions, to the panicked cut-and-run ordered by Biden.
Nor are Trump supporters claiming, as argued by Creighton, that the US should have stayed: on the contrary, one of Trump’s most popular campaign promises was to end the “Forever Wars”. Whether Trump would have done the job any better than Biden is, as Creighton argues, “unfalsifiable” — but what is indisputable is the scale of the disaster Biden enacted.
Not least the wholesale abandonment of some $80 billion of weaponry to the Taliban. Weaponry which, as even a child could have foresawn, is being farmed out among militants in the region.
Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister claimed on Monday that U.S. military equipment left behind during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan has fallen into militant hands and ultimately made its way to the Pakistani Taliban.
The equipment — which includes a wide variety of items, from night vision goggles to firearms — is now “emerging as a new challenge” for Islamabad as it has enhanced the fighting capabilities of the Pakistani Taliban, Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said.
Pakistan was, of course, the most fickle of “allies” during the war, but things could always have been worse.
They’re very quickly getting far worse.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, have over the past months intensified attacks on Pakistan’s security forces. They are a separate militant group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban.
A very, very heavily armed ally. Thanks to Joe Biden.
The Taliban overran Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the last weeks of their chaotic pullout from the country after 20 years of war. In the face of the Taliban sweep, the U.S.-backed and trained Afghan military crumbled.
There is no definite information on how much U.S. equipment was left behind — but the Taliban seized U.S.-supplied firepower, recovering guns, ammunition, helicopters and other modern military equipment from Afghan forces who surrendered it. Though no one knows the exact value, U.S. defense officials have confirmed it is significant […] two security officials in Islamabad told The Associated Press that the TTP either bought the equipment from the Afghan Taliban, or was given it as an ally.
Remember: the Taliban held off the world’s most powerful armies for two decades, with little but homemade bombs, AK-47s and Toyota HiLuxes. Imagine what they’re going to do with tens of billions of high-tech weaponry.
The Pakistani Taliban have also released statements and video clips in recent months, claiming they possess, for example, guns with laser and thermal sighting systems.
TTP fighters now target Pakistani troops from a distance, while before their only weapons were AK-47 assault rifles, one of the officials said, without elaborating.
Japan Today
Let us just breathe a sigh of relief that the US didn’t deploy nukes in Afghanistan.