Editor’s note: This commentary is by Deb Billado, chairwoman of the Vermont GOP.
The liberation of Afghanistan from the control of the ruthless Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies in 2001 marked a turning point in American foreign policy. If you attack our cities, if you prohibit your own citizens from owning a satellite dish, if you condone throwing vats of acid in the faces of un-veiled women, then you have lost all right to call yourself a government.
And we, as a nation, assumed the moral responsibility of displacing a terrorist government and protecting a people who had been subjected and tortured by their own politicians up until that point, rather than represented by them. For the first time, we introduced them to the concepts of elections, a legitimate constitution, and equal rights.
Deborah Billado, chair of the Vermont GOP
Put simply, even in the face of international opposition, we moved Afghanistan into a post-Taliban era. We showed the world what it meant to stand up for human rights.
And in just two weeks, Joe Biden caused 20 years of sacrifice and service to crumble to the ground.
Before vacationing at Camp David, Biden called it “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would take back control. Today, every major city in Afghanistan is under Taliban authority.
Biden called our hurried evacuation a “success” — even former Obama advisor David Axelrod has said Biden needs to accept the responsibility of his mistakes.
Instead of handling the crisis, the spokesperson for the Taliban has taken more questions from the press than our own president has. Imagine that.
And most recently, the U.S. press secretary — who was also on vacation — refused to commit as to whether or not we would safely evacuate all Americans from the country.
The military achievements and civil struggle that brought this country back from the dark ages have been underdone and reversed in a record amount of time. Afghanistan is regressing and devolving back into a state run by theocratic dictators with unspeakable callousness and indifference to the well-being of their own citizens.
In. Just. Two. Weeks.
Perhaps most nauseating — and frightening — is that our President treats this as an accomplishment. He sees the civilians clinging to U.S. airships — desperate for an escape from the totalitarianism they know awaits them — as a success.
In two weeks, we have effectively conceded the War in Afghanistan to the Taliban.
But even more egregious is that we are dangerously close to a “draw” when it comes to the moral cause. After all, if the leader of our nation finds the institutionalized torture of other human beings to be a “successful” foreign policy decision, how we can claim any moral authority at all as a nation? How can we ever look into the eyes of the civilians in Afghanistan — and the citizens of our own country — that we left behind?
The answer: we can’t.
Until Joe Biden accepts accountability and responsibility for his unforgivable actions, our so-called political leaders deserve the reservoir of shame that this action has brought upon them. Joe Biden deserves it most of all.
Trump had the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban absolutely correct. Here is the understanding he reached with them. “If you engage in any activity ever again to harm even1 American, we know who you are, we know your face and we know were you live, we will not only eliminate you we will eliminate your entire village!” That how you end a 20yr bipartisan Deep State scam of nation Building!
To the traitors on TNR: I am truly sickened by you. For whatever it’s worth – may you ef yourselves and your horses – well, naybe not the hosses. And further GTH and stay there bc that’s where you belong. And as we are clearly at war – to the cowardly thumbsuckers – no I do not like, much less love or forgive you – and, as the existential threat against all and whatever I love and hold dear hope and pray for your loss with all that is within me. And that’s the Christian version.
Kindly prove your assertion that Trump did not include Afghan government.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-deep-state-thwarted-trumps-afghanistan-withdrawal/
Pants on Fire Alert: John Freitag once again spins his little web of falsehoods in attempt to defend the DemocratMarxist Party and ongoing crime spree as well as managed decline and Maoist takeover of our nation courtesy of Manchurian Hussein third term. It is no less than galling to watch the traitors here on TNR hurl their hatred for conservatives with leftist subtext-laden commentary.
As such – those who support and defefend aforementioned do not deserve to live in the US as they take the Constitutional freedoms fought and died for on our behalf, support and use them to harm all of us and destroy our nation – nor do they deserve to come here and use TNR as a platform for propaganda and to purposefully present their contrarian comments, which are not just mere opinion but an attack on conservative voices and those they clearly hate so much which is thier default. A sh** sundae is still a sh** sundae no matter how sweet the hot fudge.
Abject disgrace of not only gifting Taliban and Al Queda with 75,000 vehicles, 200 aircraft, 600,000 weapons, and $85 billion in , leaving a killing field just as we did following fall of Saigon, hostaging our American citizens while France, UK and other s are flying daring missions to get their ppl out, leaving them behind to the fate of beheading – their specialty, rape, torture and certain death as the most barbaric religion and people in the world – in a dead heat with Red China – are now in charge is glaringly glossed by Mr Freitag and the other traitors here.
Thanks for bringing attention to my comment.
I would urge readers to scroll down and actually read my comment which attempts to be a fair assessment of our involvement in Afganistan, point to some reasons this project failed and hopefully may provide some guidance when considering future oversea involvement.
In regards to proving that Trump did not include the Afghanistan government in the peace agreement he signed ( which did include the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from prision), there is this article in the National Review.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08remembering-the-shameful-trump-taliban-peace-agreement/
You can also check any site that has information on terms of the Trump-Taliban peace agreement but I thought the conservative National Review might be the most acceptable.
As with everything else the Democrats concoct – your link doesnt work lol
Found it! A Rino disparaging Donald Trump is no surprise – however as usual – still didn’t prove your point lol
I understand that facts that don’t fit our beliefs are difficult to accept. But simply calling people names does not change what is true.
The Trump agreement with the Taliban is a written document and what it contains can be easily found by a simple search. The points I made about it are also included in the first paragraph of today’s TNR commentary Afghanistan Collaspe, Vermont Opporutunity by John McClaughry.
What facts Mr Freitag? And yes – have shown you indeed have a problem accepting truth – your assertion is that everyone who disagrees with you are the ones with the problem.
No one is calling names. Continually peddling a tiresome narrative which is contrary to conservatism – expect pushback. If you don’t like it go where your opinions are appreciated or get used to opposition.
Past is prologue – we are what our history says we are – routinely spin a false contrarian narrative which supports a leftist worldview – as such you and fellow travelers represent an existential threat to the existance of freedom, liberty and justice therefore enemy by default. As we watch our world fall apart pls don’t expect acceptence of your glib dismissals.
So no – not just an opinion but common enemy of evil routinely rearing its ugly head.
And it was dismantled by your President pedophile-in-chief and traitor to our nation Beijing Biden – in early February – my, my, and signed into effect in July damning Americans in Afghanistan as hostages. All who refuse to stand up against this and further continue to support the DemocratMarxist Party are traitors to our nation and all of us.stardust
Unfortunately this hits a lot closer to home than we think.
Our governor is as much of a buffoon as joe biden.
Wasn’t it phil scott who said he put our country before party?
And wasn’t it phil scott it started a movement to get Donald Trump removed from office early but garnering signatures from our supposed republican representation like tom burditt and larry cooper and josh karen genie and brian collamore and the rest of the fools that signed such a stupid document before knowing would actually took place at our capital in washington DC.
Isn’t it ironic now that the fools exposed themselves and the FBI says there was no insurrection..
We are in trouble not only in the state of Vermont but across the country at the hands of people who would sell us out for political gain.
Vermonters we need to have an honest election in 2022 and we need to clean out the rinos from under the dome of gloom in montpelier Vermont and across this country…
We can never win the battle when we have turncoats in the ranks.
Obama, Harvard Law School graduate at the top of his class, said he would never want to see Biden become US President, because he lacked intelligence, and other “attributes”.
Just google
Biden got his law degree from Syracuse University, one of the lowest-ranked law schools in the US, plus he graduated near the bottom of his class, and he was accused of plagiarism, multiple times, including while a US Senator
This led to all-around incompetence, grafting, grifting and sleaze, and him becoming a multi-millionaire.
Just Google
Biden-in-the-basement ran three times for President, lost all three times.
He knows he became President, only because of massive, widespread fraud, most of it in swing states.
All that is largely due to universal mail-in, which provides vastly more opportunities for fraud.
Recently, Vermont expanded universal mail-in.
About 15 million mail-in and other ballots cannot be attributed to Biden, after extrapolation of historic US voting patterns, using standard statistical analyses.
Such analyses have been applied to past elections. The predicted totals are within about plus/minus 1 to 2 million, i.e., very accurate, with almost no EXCESS ballots
Not so with the 2020 Election, which had about 15 million ballots EXCESS ballots, that were unattributable, i.e., they came from outer space.
They could not be assigned to “build-back-better” Biden, because of historic Democrat voting patterns, but they were.
God bless us all.
ADDITION.
The number of “unknown” ballots almost tripled, from 5.9 million in 2016, according to the report, i.e., there was MUCH MORE FRAUD IN 2020.
That indicates there was Dem/Prog fraud to deny Trump the Presidency, in 2016, but there was not enough of it to be successful.
2016 Election:
During the 2016 Election, Dem/Progs did not have the advantage of COVID, and the additional fraud possibilities afforded by universal MAIL-IN voting.
Plus, Hillary, a very poor campaigner, was predicted, by the blind-sided Media, to win by about 10%
Plus, Trump, as a newcomer, proved to be an excellent campaigner
Plus, Dem/Progs likely did not perpetrate sufficient STANDARD and/or “Dominion-type” fraud to “win”
The result was a stinging loss, much to the dismay of Hillary, etc.
2020 Election:
Dem/Progs vowed not to let this happen again in 2020.
When COVID came, Third-World countries effectively used existing, much-less-costly, “off-patent” drugs, to treat the disease.
But that was not allowed by the vested interests in the US, which immediately pooh-poohed these drugs.
1) Dem/Progs wanted to exploit COVID, for election purposes; wear masks, restrict people contacts and movement, vaccination cards, plus $TRILLION-dollar aid “packages” for suffering folks, etc.
2) Drug companies wanted to make $BILLIONS of highly profitable COVID drug sales.
3) New drugs had to be invented, costing months of time and many $BILLIONS, while people were dying.
All that, plus “phony impeachments”, “investigations”, and the fast-growing economy in free-fall due to COVID, were bad optics for Trump.
But it still took a lot of STANDARD and “Dominion-type” fraud, and stopping the counting on Election night at about 10 PM, in most swing states, to “swing” the election towards hiding-in-the-basement Biden.
Gary. The issue is not that we left it’s how we left. Biden has shown zero skills so far.
Backing out of Afghanistan was a matter of (1) remove our personnel (2) remove all those who we could take that wanted to come to America (3) remove our assets and the finally back out our military. What’s not to understand here. Instead our fake president tucked tail and ran and just left everything upside down. We are now distrusted and the laughing stock of the world. Who would trust us now?
Biden is an abysmal failure and all those that voted for him probably have buyers remorse. He is the worst president in the history of our nation. Hope you didn’t vote for him.
Deb, Perfect……..
Illegitimate Joe will go down in history as the worst so-called President in the US,
if liberals don’t try and bury it !!
If we look at the Afghanistan situtation through the lens of history and what is good foreign policy for our country rather than partisan politics, we can see that attempting nation building in a country that has never had a strong central government, has a deep fundementalist religious tradition, a history of corruption and successful expulsion of foreign invaders, was doomed to faliure from the beginning. Adding on was the fact that there was a safe haven for the Tailban provided in Pakistan who played a double game with us, made this an endless quagmire.
I recall how a neighbor and friend, John Hannon, whose son Scott was a Seal Team 6 commander and one of the first to go into Afganistan, told me that Scott was finding in reading old British military histories that our troops were being ambushed in the same places by people with the same names.
The reality is that we do not learn from history. Feedom is not a universal value. Power is the universal value. Along with the lust for power, religion and spirituality are the most profound motivators in human history and Afganistan is the graveyard of empires.
Both President Trump and President Biden correctly shared a belief that we needed to get out of Afganistan. Sadly though, President Trump negotiated a flawed deal with the Taiban which set a fix date of May 1, 2021 for all American troops to be out of the country in exchange for no attacks on Americans. He also released thousands of Taiban prisoners as a good faith gesture. All without the input of the Afganistan government who ended up feeling they were left hung out to dry.
Preident Biden kept the deal Trump had negotiated but extended the deadline for complete withdrawal to September 11, 2021. President Biden is indeed at fault for not anticpating and making preperations for the rapid collapse of the Afganistan army, which in retrospect should have been seen. His mistake, and no question it is a large one, is unfortunately only one in a series of mistakes by four different Presidents that has gotten us to this tragic point and which has led to the death tens of thousands of Afganistanies and of thousands of Americans, including Navy Commander Scott Hannon.
Illegitimate Joe is just showing the world just how inept he really is, the sad thing about
Biden, is that the DemocRATs including Vermont’s two senators still have him Front and
Center, he’s a senile old man and is not a world leader, he’s only a pawn on the agenda !!
With that being said he is the so-called President of the United States and he has just
made a mockery of our country and alienating our foreign partners. Biden should be
removed from office either impeached or use article 25, as that’s what the DemocRATs
have planned since day one………….Joe is just a puppet, when his party stops pulling his
strings, he will collapse in front of the world………. pretty pathetic
I’m not a Biden fan, and apparently, neither is his party !!! Power is all they want, and that’s
at any cost, they will ruin this senile man and our country……….. they don’t care !!
The 40+ year swamp creature who can’t even read off of a teleprompter isn’t only being called out for his ignorance by “us people” but by world leaders..and even lefty Hollywood and the lefts lapdog fake media as well. British parliament has just held him in contempt for this worse then Saigon moment that slojoe and his puppet masters own all by themselves..
Pres Trumps plan was to be out by May 1st when the tallywhackers didn’t fight as it’s winter, slojoe decided to move it closer to 9/11 to give the Islamist another victory over the US over the objections of his defense advisers… So keep defending the imbecile incompetent if you wish but it’s a losing proposition defending someone who’s been on the wrong side of every issue his entire career..
Oh and yes Deb, he’s the biggest national embarrassment and new holder of the worst President title taking it from his kenyan buddy and the peanut farmer…
Close to 50 years, plus 26 years in schools etc.
Never had a private sector job to find out about the REAL WORLD, just as Bernie, Vermont’s premier Communist/Socialist, who celebrated his honeymoon in the USSR, before it collapsed from the INSIDE.
The Russian-Commie pros played him like a fiddle, and he rapturously lapped it up.
The Bernie types are so self righteous, they cannot learn from others.
You folks that sit on the sideline and pontificate either without any understanding of the history of the issue or willfully concealing that knowledge to push your political agenda are exactly what is wrong with this country. Afghanistan was a failure for Bush, Obama and your favorite boy Trump who penned an illogical and unworkable agreement with the enemy. Now Biden is following through with Trumps agreement and you declare it all is his fault. If you were an honest person you would know that there isn’t much Biden could do short of sending in 100,000 troops, declaring your Boys agreement moot and bombing the Taliban to hell and back which isn’t what most Americans want. Frankly, stances like yours is a disgusting place for the Republican Party to be.
You sir are an uninformed, useful idiot.
You certainly have a gift for picking & defending losers Gary. At least you’re consistent.
I encourage you to watch last night’s episode of “life liberty and Levin”. You won’t because you really don’t care to be informed. On the episode General Kellogg outlines Trump’s plan for withdrawal compared to how your President handled it and other first hand, informative bits about foreign policy and working with foreign leaders. If you can put on your America hat just for a bit, you will find that you’re way off. You sir are an embarrassment to our country. And please, never again speak for “most Americans”. As this train wreck moves forward you’ll see you are not a part of the “most Americans” group. You think biden could send 100,000 troops in to bomb the Taliban? Your stupidity knows no bounds.
I did and you have got to be kidding. If anyone thinks that Levin is interested in anything other than spinning the Fox, right-wing Trump agenda that are delusional. Please do not use Levin as a basis for truth…
Gary:
You are one of a handful who is supporting this imbesil, who is occupying space at 1600 PA Ave, some of the time. The remainder of his time is used by shuttling him from point A or B to Camp David so he is out of sight and hopefully (by D’s) out of mind. If this pin ball is the best the D’s can come up with, we are in a huge world of hurt, to maybe even the point of non-recovery. Is this REALLY what you want for this country?
This nation is a Constitutional Republic, with a Constitution and Bill of Rights that has been our Rule and Guide since the 1700’s. You and your like minded brethren had better get right with the rest of America and be prepared to do what is RIGHT and LAWFUL(Constitutionally so) or we are headed for proverbial “soup” forever. I happen to know some Democrats who are not in support of their (D’S) plan, either. We are at a tipping point… 2022 will tell the story, I am convinced that most of the country is convinced we are headed for troubled waters, or we can chart a corrected course. I choose the latter.
Gary Cassady you posted nonsense. Trump had a plan that said we will leave but if you attack our people, you will be attacked and the deal is off. biden did not follow the plan.
So Gary, do you think what Americans really ‘wanted’ was this s-show? That there was no way it could have been done better, by craftier and more perceptive generals instead of the incompetents we have that care more about getting the troops indoctrinated with CRT than with resolving Afghanistan in our favor?
Probably just part of the plan, like the ‘insurrection’ on January 6. Now maybe we’ll have more threats that we’ll have to give up liberties to counter, for the greater good. All of this will be ‘necessary.’
Another pants on fire alert and more teasonous lies. Biden *did not* follow through on Trumps plan *at all*. If you were an honest person would know that Biden is doing exact opposite of what Trump attempted. So blinded by Trump-hate and TDS rage all you can do is cough venom and vitriole
No one is holding a gun to your head – If you don’t like the commenters, comments, contributions or opinions voiced here there is no need for you to be here.
Here, Here! John F. and Gary C. are the useful idiots who are blinded by their own hate. Imagine what Obozo did to the military. Tramp wasn’t a lying politician and had no experience with the deep state. He hired people by recommendations of Washington swamp dwellers who lied to keep their TDS going. His own staff couldn’t be trusted. Just look at where America is today. The people have been used, abused and lied to for years and lead by people who know nothing of the true American. Joe Biden should be impeached then court marshalled then sent to Gitmo for crimes against America. If he was a republican, this would already be in the works. How can anyone with a functioning brain defend this man who has been a criminal for his whole political life, almost 50 years. Shame on those who helped steel this election and the truth will come out soon.