Never in my life did I witness American soldiers pass away the method 13 U.S. servicemembers did last Thursday.
Throughout the day we heard that an attack was coming. American intelligence was warning it. British intelligence was cautioning it. So what was President Joe Biden doing leading our soldiers like lambs to the slaughter?
Oh, you say– however he agreed with the Taliban to secure the airport!– a claim that would be laughable, if it weren’t so tragic. Yes, President Biden left our troops’ security in the hands of those who have been hell-bent on murdering them for 30 years.
There are so many things the most effective male on earth might have done to keep our servicemembers alive. Knowing that the hazard was very credible, he could have simply stopped all airlifts up until the ISIS terrorists had been identified and discovered and postponed the American pullout a few more days to compensate for wasted time. He could have sent more soldiers to secure the airport. Above all else, he could have hung on to Bagram Air Base, which was considerably more protected than the airport, and conducted the refugee airlift from there.
But Biden betrayed his role as commander-in-chief by making an arbitrary pullout deadline more important that the lives of the troops under his command. And the irresponsibility of having actually closed Bagram is nearly unforgivable.
It bothers me a lot to see that the needless deaths of these 11 males and 2 ladies, nearly all of whom were in their twenties, made it essentially to a single news cycle. By Friday we were already speaking about Biden’s “retaliation,” a single drone strike that killed two ISIS-K terrorists who might or might not have actually been associated with planning the attack.
Prior to the Afghanistan debacle, I really believed President Biden was doing a decent task as President. Yes, he was investing way more cash that America might fairly afford– and yes, his economic giveaways were making it tough for companies to discover workers considered that federal government aids were at times more than people would make in good paying jobs. But for all that, Biden discovered as a good male, committed to his family and the American individuals, who was dedicated to bringing America back from the pandemic and ensure that Americans got vaccinated so we could completely reopen the economy.
However it’s difficult to see how his presidency recovers from the Afghanistan debacle. It’s also hard to see how the armed force will ever again trust his judgment.
Weakness is deadly in a leader, particularly when challenging terrorists. Even Ariel Sharon, extensively acknowledged to be Israel’s greatest ever fighter, never recovered from his Gaza fiasco when he turned over the strip to the Hamas terrorists who have been firing rockets at Israeli cities ever since. Even prior to Sharon had his disastrous and tragic stroke while he was in office, his track record lay in tatters.
And it has never ever recuperated.
The very same holds true, of course, about Jimmy Carter, whom America initially welcomed as the civil remedy to the insanity of the Nixon and Watergate years, just to watch him fall apart in the face of the Iranian mullah onslaught. A bunch of terrorists took our embassy and its employees captive, and thought properly that the hapless Carter would be disabled as a result. Yes, he introduced a military operation to release them, however it appeared doomed from the start, and led to the deaths of another 8 American military heroes.
Every summertime I attempt and take my kids to Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields. This year we went to Gettysburg, Richmond, and Yorktown. The great heroes of both wars were those who demonstrated unwavering resolve in the face of unsurmountable obstacles.
George Washington was leading a freezing, shoeless army against the world’s greatest superpower and he cornered British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, and accepted his surrender in October 19th, 1781.
Abraham Lincoln, our biggest president, showed steely resolve to beat the Confederacy and emancipate the slaves versus the backdrop of years of Union defeats at the hands of Robert E. Lee, who till today needs to be appropriately regarded as a traitor to the United States and his tradition dealt with appropriately.
And General Ulysses S. Grant, who was dismissed as a drunkard and a failed business owner, hammered away at Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia up until Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court Home in April, 1865.
When it comes to the northern generals like George McClellan– who hemmed and hawed, halted and considered and discovered endless reasons not to combat– their credibilities have actually been consigned to the dustbin of military history. Lincoln himself stated of McClellan,” [H] e has the slows.”
It appears that Biden, too, has the slows. Yes– I know, I understand. Trump worked out the peace contract with the Taliban terrorists. But ask yourself if the Taliban would ever have tried to break the peace agreement and take control of the entire nation, including all of America’s military devices, if Trump had still been president?
I think that even Trump’s worst detractors would have yielded that the Taliban would have concerned Trump as insane enough to do something drastic.
But not Biden, who seems incapable of bold and relentless action.
America’s warriors under Biden have been minimized to what British ITV Elder International Reporter John Irvine precisely described as “seething humiliation.” He words, composed right after his departure from Kabul, bear duplicating:
The dividing line between Taliban-held Kabul and the American-held part of the airport was a roll of concertina wire. At that divide stood a line of armed Taliban now using Western army combat tiredness. Just feet from them were soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Department, among the US Army’s most storied units. The look on the Americans’ faces was one I hadn’t seen before. It was seething embarrassment.
It’s rather an achievement to take the greatest nation in the world and reduce us to pleading women-beating terrorists to safeguard our vaunted soldiers, while we try and save terrified civilians. It is a completely various accomplishment to reduce the warriors themselves to a group of embarrassed, and after that killed, targets.
I shiver for my nation when I view this abasement. I shudder for our soldiers when I consider how they have been treated as cannon fodder. And I tremble for the world when I consider the ramifications of how America has been brought so low.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the very popular author most recently of “Holocaust Vacation: One Family’s Descent Into Genocide Memory Hell.” Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Picture: file