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Two years later, people are still paying the price for the catastrophe of Old Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. And people will be paying the price for decades to come. The Associated Press reported on August 22 that “more than 200 extrajudicial killings of former Afghan government officials and security forces have taken place since the Taliban took over the country two years ago, according to a U.N. report.” These were people the Taliban had promised not to kill, but as Muhammad said, “War is deceit” (Bukhari 4.52.268). Nine days before that, the Daily Mail reported that “militants who left...

The Taliban “grossly violated” its 2020 agreement with the United States by “hosting and sheltering” al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, after President Biden announced that the fugitive terrorist had been killed in a weekend drone strike in Kabul. Blinken said the Taliban had violated not just the Doha agreement but also its “repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries.” “They also betrayed the Afghan people and their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with...

The Afghan president on Monday blamed the American troops' speedy pullout for the worsening violence in his country and said that his administration would now focus on protecting provincial capitals and major urban areas in the face of the rapidly advancing Taliban. "An imported, hasty" peace process - a reference to Washington's push for negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban - "not only failed to bring peace but created doubt and ambiguity" among Afghans, Ghani said in his address to Parliament.... ...The Taliban are now trying to seize provincial capitals after already taking large swaths of land and scores of...

Criticizing it as based on "calendars, not conditions," Richard Haas, in his ever-polite fashion, has ripped President Biden's decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. On today's Morning Joe, Haass, the show's foreign policy maven and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted with "near certainty" a "human rights tragedy" in Afghanistan as a result of Biden's decision. Haass also ominously foresaw that Afghanistan would once again become a bse of operations for terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Morning Joe's Willie Geist, interviewing Haass, didn't precisely defend Biden's decision. But...

Source: Townhall Media/Katie PavlichIs President Joe Biden prepared to preside over the worst U.S. strategic defeat since the fall of Saigon in 1975? For that may be what's at stake if Biden follows through on the 2020 peace deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1 -- just two months from now. Consider. If the 2,500 American troops remaining in Afghanistan are pulled out, the entire 10,000-troop NATO contingent departs. This would write an end to the Western military commitment. And the likelihood the Kabul government could then survive the constant and increasing attacks...

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi has told the U.S. secretary of state to send a delegation to Iraq tasked with formulating the mechanism for the withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq, according to a statement released Friday. The statement, from the office of the Iraqi caretaker prime minister, said the request came in a telephone call between Abdul-Mahdi and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday night. It says Pompeo called the Iraqi premier. The prime minister said Iraq rejects all violations against its sovereignty including the attacks carried out by Iranian forces against U.S. troops in Iraq and...

If you want to stop Donald Trump from making unilateral decisions regarding war and peace, then stop letting all presidents make unilateral decisions about war and peace. It's really quite simple. Trump can abruptly pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria because Congress, having abdicated its foreign policy responsibilities long ago, has no leverage to stop him. When Congress passed the War Powers Resolution as the Vietnam War was winding down, it gave the president the power to send troops abroad for 60 days in response to any "national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories...

Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, a moment vividly encapsulated by the frenzied scene of South Vietnamese desperately trying to reach the last helicopter on the roof of the American embassy. April was also the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, when Robert E. Lee capitulated to Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the bloodiest fighting of the Civil War to an end.The two episodes seemingly have little to do with each other. But each, in its way, illustrates one of the bleakly recurring themes of US military history: When America's armed forces prematurely abandon the...

In 2008 then Senator Obama campaigned on the promise of ending the war in Iraq and bringing combat troops home. In 2012, Obama touted that promise as complete (one of the only campaign promises he actually kept) and critics warned leaving Iraq without a residual U.S. force would result in a power vacuum and vulnerable state. Now as the country falls apart and the radical Islamic State army continues its march unchallenged in Iraq, Obama is claiming he wasn't the one who made the decision to pull U.S. combat troops out of the country and that claims to the...

During his statement on the situation in Iraq before leaving for Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama was asked if he regretted pulling the remaining U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. An agitated Obama answered that it wasn’t his decision. In other words, “Bush’s fault”: -snip Obama campaigned on and eventually took credit for and celebrated the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and now it wasn’t his decision?

1) In 2011, President Barack Obama pronounced Iraq "self-reliant and democratic," and "a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process." In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden called Iraq "one of the great achievements of this administration." Obama ignored pleas by top generals who advised against pulling out without leaving a residual force. 2) Nearly everybody assumed Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Of the newspaper editorials that opposed the war, not one challenged the assumption that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD. President George W. Bush...

Hundreds of Germans will lose their jobs through US Army troop withdrawals under cutbacks announced by the American military. The military announced last week that 554 Germans directly employed by US forces would be made redundant. But the communities around the army bases warned the knock-on effect would be far greater than the headline job loss figure. …

Earlier this week, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., seized upon a column in the New York Post that described Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as having urged Iraqi leaders in a private meeting to delay coming to an agreement with the Bush administration on the status of U.S. troops. "Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a drawdown of the American military presence," Post columnist Amir Taheri wrote, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told the Post that Obama, during his meeting with Iraqi leaders in July, "asked why we were...

BAGHDAD — Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained aloof from the process, not even phoning top Iraqi officials to help reach a deal, according to logs released by the U.S. Embassy here.

If the Iranians pride themselves on playing chess while we play checkers, they never could have expected us to walk away from the board. But that’s our next move in Iraq. President Obama announced on Friday that all of the roughly 40,000 U.S. troops will leave the country by the end of the year. We are thus handing the Iranians a goal they have sought for years — to remove us from Iraq entirely so they can better influence the country for their ends. It once seemed that Iraq could be a strategic ally and base for our influence in...

BAGHDAD — For the second time in a week, a joint Iraqi-American raid aiming at insurgents resulted in the killing of civilians. Amid pressure from American officials, who privately say some troops should remain, the Iraqi government announced on Wednesday that it would begin negotiations about a continued American troop presence. Some politicians were already railing against the Americans for Friday’s raid, criticizing troops in the local press for once again violating Iraq’s sovereignty. According to American military officials, the operation in Ishaqi was singling out a cell of insurgents who were assembling explosives. It remains unclear whether the insurgents...

Terrific catch by Stephen Hayes from this afternoon’s Afghanistan testimony by Lt. Gen. John Allen. I can’t help but wonder: Why would the White House lie and claim that Obama’s withdrawal plan was within the range of options presented to him by Petraeus? I thought the next 18 months were going to be all about Obama going with his gut. Wingin’ it, if you will. His gut told him that he needs to get reelected, and the easiest way to do that was to yank as many troops as possible out of the country no matter what it might mean...

The White House sought on Tuesday to put the pressure on top Republicans to say whether they support the withdrawal of 90,000 troops this month from Iraq. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs questioned GOP leaders — in particular, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) — to say where they stand on the change in mission in Iraq that resulted in the withdrawal of tens of thousands of U.S. troops from the country. "I think what the American people would like to know with Congressman Boehner is: Do you support the withdrawing of 90,000 troops that the president is marking...

One president gave his pre mature "Mission Accomplished" speech about Iraq on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Now another has given his own version as part of a Chicago-ward-politics sales pitch to disabled veterans. The difference is that the first guy was sincere. President Obama's pork-barrel speech to the Disabled Veterans of America yesterday (if you want to help our vets, shut up and do it) would have drawn a blush from those Soviet propagandists who cropped purged Politburo members from Stalin-era photographs. Ignoring his own opposition to the liberation of Iraq, supporting our troops and the surge, Obama...

It's a bizarre sight watching Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama trying to grab the credit for American success in the war in Iraq -- a war of which both were outspoken critics. It's a little like someone who's been throwing rocks at a drowning man, demanding a lifesaving medal when the man manages to swim to shore. But now the crucial issue isn't the credit for winning the war. It's whether Obama is up to winning the peace. Simply rechristening the operations in Iraq from Iraqi Freedom to New Dawn, as Obama did this last week, won't cut...