This Monday afternoon EST the last American troops left Afghanistan. They left hundreds, if not more, of American citizens to the tender mercies of the Taliban as potential hostages. We also left this inventory to the Taliban:

NEW – Military equipment left in Afghanistan under Biden’s watch: pic.twitter.com/ppMX93bCIq

— The Stark Naked Brief. (@StarkNakedBrief) August 30, 2021

Read those numbers again. We have armed a new regime that hates us. The American taxpayer has likely funded attacks against our homeland and our forces overseas. The administration may call it an evacuation. I have called it a bugout. The Taliban is calling it “independence.” But surely it is one thing more than anything else, it is a surrender.

The basic fact is that we fought a war in a country who had attacked us. We fought there for 20 years. At the end of the war the enemy solely controls the battleground and now is much militarily stronger than we found it because of the supplies we left them in our haste to cut and run.

This was not the first time this has happened, only the worst. In Vietnam there was a “decent interval” between our troops leaving and the fall of Saigon. This time, there was an indecent interval of a mere several days.

The military is not at fault. They did their duty as ordered. There is a story from the end of the Vietnam War, at the Paris Peace Talks. One of our negotiators there, Colonel Harry Summers, told his North Vietnamese counterpart, as they watched the NVA occupy the presidential palace in Saigon, “You never beat us on the battlefield.” The NVA officer responded, “True Harry. And also irrelevant.” The NVA colonel was right. We lost this war, and have been humiliated at the end of it, not on a battlefield, but because of the contested verdict of an American presidential election last November.

Our troops fought bravely until the very end. But even the most valiant of military efforts cannot overcome an absurd mission and a weak president. So, what have we learned?

We’ve learned nation building is a waste of blood and treasure. Medieval theocracies will not become modern democracies because we think they should. George W. Bush is to blame here and much of the blood is on his hands. He wasn’t evil or initially wrong, just incredibly stupid and naive in the follow through. The mission should have been totally punitive. But Dubya’s tender sensibilities couldn’t handle that hard fact and many died because he was too ill-informed and weak to do what needed to be done in Afghanistan and leave.

And we now know, don’t try a military bugout with a senile and confused president. If you do, you will have a surrender on your hands. We needed Dunkirk. We got Bull Run.

The woke military parade that passes for our Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to inform Biden of the swift Taliban advance. Our allies knew, our diplomats knew, media knew. But not our military leaders or Biden. Thus when the Taliban were already on the outskirts of Kabul we awakened, weeks too late. It led to our planes leaving Monday afternoon, our flag trailing the dust of surrender behind it.

Two administrations, two parties, two failures of a basic duty of an American president regarding our military and war. However, those two presidents won’t pay. As usual, only those who served will. These politicians will go on to pontificate, blather, and try to cover up their manifold sins of incompetence and weakness. As such, there will be no justice to come out of Afghanistan for anyone. Just a charred bloody pit in Central Asia where America left the bones of her young and her brave…for nothing.