No thanks or fanfare from Biden for returning US troops
Donald Trump would have held a parade.
The former president would at least have had a welcome home ceremony for troops returning from Afghanistan, publicly praising them for a job well done.
Our initial task in Afghanistan was to hunt down and kill al-Qaeda terrorists and their associates for the Sept. 11, 2001, deadly attacks on America, which killed some 3,000 people at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Thousands more were injured.
That mission was accomplished in a matter of months, and Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader, was eventually tracked down and killed in Pakistan years after fleeing his safe haven in Afghanistan.
The problem is we stayed there too long, like 20 years too long. And while media critics called it “the longest war in U.S. history,” it was more a long series of skirmishes than a war. There was no Battle of the Bulge.
Still, whether you get killed by a roadside bomb on patrol outside Kandahar or get shot storming Omaha Beach, it is all the same.
And the U.S. did suffer more than 2,000 killed in Afghanistan and many thousands more wounded.
What they, their families and the country need right now is a president who tells them that their sacrifice was worth it.
And it was. Because of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, neither the terrorists of alQaeda, ISIS, the Taliban nor any other America-hating radical group were able to use Afghanistan as a staging area for another attack on the U.S. as it did on 9/11.
Instead of welcoming, patriotic remarks by the president, or a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue in New York, our troops have been forced to abandon Afghanistan under the cover of darkness.
Thanks to a White House unable to admit it was following policy set by Donald Trump, the troops have been treated as though they were a defeated occupation army rather than the liberators as they once appeared to be.
Trump would have decorated these brave soldiers and thanked them for their service. He would have provided the troops with some dignity as they left the battlefield.
Instead we abandoned Bagram Airfield outside of Kabul in the dead of night, leaving behind hundreds of Humvees, trucks, cars, weapons, ammunition, along with the personal gear of thousands of departing U.S. soldiers.
Looters had a field day selling what they could to the advancing Taliban before the Afghan army came along to secure the base. How long the Afghan military will hold out is anyone’s guess. The Taliban appear to be advancing on all fronts now that the U.S. has left.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, where hundreds of Americans still work, is a ripe target for Taliban forces.
Can anyone say Saigon, April 1975?
That was when, after years of thankless fighting to save South Vietnam by defeating a North Vietnamese Communist takeover — and some 58,000 American deaths — the U.S. called it quits and abandoned Vietnam. It was a long struggle in which U.S. troops won every battle but lost the war.
And Vietnam was never a threat to the U.S.
As the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong captured Tan Son Nhat Airport and entered Saigon, South Vietnamese who had worked for the Americans waited in long lines outside the U.S. Embassy seeking to escape. Some climbed the walls and had to be beaten back. Others fought to get on waiting helicopters.
Adding to the national embarrassment were humiliating pictures of U.S. helicopters taking off from the roof of the abandoned U.S. Embassy in Saigon, ferrying trapped and desperate Americans, and lucky Vietnamese, to waiting aircraft carriers. It was a nightmare.
The only airport left in Kabul, several miles from the embassy, is guarded not by U.S. forces, but by 600 Turkish soldiers. The airport provides all the incoming supplies for the embassy. It is also an escape route.
But what will the Turks do if they are attacked by the Taliban? Will they fight to save the airport for the Americans?
It will be a huge surprise if the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is not on the Taliban’s hit list.
Will we see another Saigon?
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.