Trey Yingst details life in Afghanistan one year after Taliban takeover
Foreign correspondent Trey Yingst reports the latest from Kabul, Afghanistan.
It’s not every day you witness a nation fall in real time. But this week marks one year since the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Time has passed, but for American service members, veterans, and patriots across the country—not to mention our allies still in Afghanistan—the wound is fresh and the fallout continues.
For weeks, images of United States personnel being airlifted out of Kabul, planes packed full of evacuees, and terrified parents handing their infants to Marines in hopes that they might be brought to safety dominated the news cycle. Clips of desperate Afghan civilians clinging to U.S. military planes and falling to their deaths are seared into our minds. The news that Biden forced our troops to abandon billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded military equipment and an $800 million embassy is still as sickening as it is embarrassing. Most tragically of all, 13 brave American service members lost their lives in the chaos. This week, their families will mourn one year without their sons and daughters.
ONE YEAR SINCE TALIBAN TAKEOVER: ‘WOMEN ARE NOT FREE AND IT’S GETTING WORSE'
Meanwhile, American veterans of the war in Afghanistan—who number more than 800,000, with many serving multiple tours of duty— were rightfully angry and upset by this disaster. Those who lost friends in combat couldn’t help but think of their sacrifice. Surveys show that 73 percent of Afghanistan veterans say they felt betrayed and 67 percent felt humiliated by the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal. The Veterans Crisis Line saw an uptick in calls following the fall of Kabul.
The U.S.’s hasty exit led to the fall of the Afghan government and the Taliban taking over. Women have been forced back into mandatory burqas, pushed out of education, and seen their salaries slashed—if they are allowed to work at all. Christians have disappeared underground, practicing their faith in secret. Afghans who worked with the U.S. military and were left behind when the last troops evacuated have found themselves living in fear. Some have even been killed for their service. The Chinese Communist Party, sensing a power vacuum, quickly started engaging with the Taliban—a development particularly alarming for the U.S.
The worst part of the Afghanistan debacle is that it didn’t have to happen this way. Joe Biden and his administration oversaw a chaotic, bloody, and embarrassing nightmare characterized by incompetence and callousness. Biden’s response to Afghans crammed into Air Force jets or falling from American planes? "That was four days ago, five days ago." His approach to honoring our service members during their dignified transfer after being killed in the Kabul terrorist attack? Checking his watch. Biden has been anything but the compassionate, soul-restoring president that he dishonestly promised to be.
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Taliban fighters guard at the site of an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, June 18, 2022. Several explosions and gunfire ripped through a Sikh temple in Afghanistan's capital. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Unfortunately, while Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal was particularly tragic, it’s not the only instance of this administration’s "America Last" agenda. Biden has made it increasingly difficult to drill on American soil and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, only to beg Saudi Arabia to pump more oil. While families struggled with gas prices over $4 per gallon, Biden sent nearly one million barrels of oil from our reserves to a state-owned Chinese company linked to his son Hunter. He’s hoping to revive the Obama-Biden administration’s failed Iran Nuclear Deal. At every turn, he’s projected weakness on the global stage, emboldening our adversaries and alarming our allies—just look at Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and China’s saber-rattling toward Taiwan. In fact, Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades" according to President Obama’s former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
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Biden’s foreign policy failures can’t simply be brushed off as mistakes. They are matters of life and death. They determine our national security. And they direct the course of world events. Unfortunately, the tragedy in Afghanistan wasn’t an anomaly. It’s the obvious result of Biden’s "America Last" philosophy in action.