Imagine one day you wake up and you realize that the Taliban one of the most ruthless tyrannical regimes in the world were about to overtake your city. Knock on your door take away your daughters, sisters, cousins and taken in the middle of the night to become brides for men triple there age. Some used as sex slaves others beaten to death because they are not wearing their burqas.
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But also imagine being an American working in Afghanistan or an Afghan citizen who helped the US in the war effort to see some of the last planes leave knowing that you are left behind. Then imagine knowing what it is the Taliban will do to you such as burning you alive, hanging you from a pole, whipping, stoning or even removing your head. It sounds like a scene that is apocalyptic in nature only were not dealing with zombies were dealing with a humanitarian crisis caused war one that has transpired for twenty years and without a real exit strategy in place. We opened pandoras box and we have no idea how to put the lid back on it.
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While I am not here to play politics I do not shift the blame on one presidents but this was a failure on all four presidents. When 911 occurred we went into Iraq on the basis their were WMD’s when we did not find them or rather the intelligence was wrong we went to war with the Taliban who were harboring Bin Laden and Al Qaeda along with other terrorist organizations. We went in their we literally decimated the Taliban while thousands were killed many were sent to prisons while some of the terrorist continued to blend in waiting for the US to finally clear out.
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But once cleared out what would happen to those left behind? Will they be killed or will they be assimilated into society. Both you and I know the answer to this very question. A tiger never changes its stripes while the Taliban has grown more technologically and diplomatically savvy nothing has changed. Seeing Afghan citizens holding onto a cargo plane and falling to their deaths tells you all you need to know. The people of this nation know what is to come in fact they are so fearful of being left behind they are willing to die before becoming enslaved by a regime who bans TVs, kids flying kites and everything else in between.
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While the regime says they have made changes the only changes we can see are the ones when the cameras are rolling. When they are not people are being gunned down, hung from poles and women are gang raped. All while being left behind not just by the US but by every country that had a hand in freeing Afghanistan and its people. Now all people who are either fleeing or are stranded as massive planes leave imagine being on borrowed time because that is how it is for these poor people right now.
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While I am not a military strategist what I do know is first its get your people out, second all the equipment and third the soldier. Instead we had gotten our soldiers out and left the other two behind. Now the only thing the US controls in Afghanistan is a small runway at an airport in Kabul surrounded by Taliban making a very volatile situation that could blow like a powder keg at anytime because other factions within the may not abide by the withdrawal agreements that are in place.
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Imagine being a US Citizen and your out in the middle of the Afghan desert cut off from communication. Knowing ISIS, Taliban and Al Qaeda are running around outside your door. Knowing their will be no rescue planned and no military is coming to get you. That is exactly what we as facing and without the ability to clear paths for our the Americans who are stranded due to a Taliban takeover they may never walk on American soil again.
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But what does that mean for the future of Afghanistan? It means women will never have any rights and girls can only get an education up to twelve years old. It means that the country will become a terrorist state. It means that many will be left behind because the Taliban is taking many of the citizens visas and papers. If they do not take them they were lost when the US embassy destroyed them due to the encroaching militants. It means that the Taliban now are carrying around US Weaponry such as drones, armored vehicles, jets, thousands of guns and helicopters. As a matter in fact we gave the Taliban an air force one at anytime they could use against its own people just as the weapons that they fire all on our hard earned tax dollars.
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The entire world should be furious or livid over the fact that this is a more dangerous Taliban then twenty years ago and that anyone who helped NATO or the US left behind will more then likely end up eventually as a hostage or worst. That is if they do not make a suicide pact as I had heard was transpiring by some of those who felt they may not get out of the country. What were witnesses here is a disaster with huge implications. One of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern times! Handing babies to US Soldiers over razor wire does not look good for the Taliban brand but this is how terrified the Afghan people area which should really have the world revisiting the entire situation.
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The US has troops in over 100 countries in parts of the world where we had major wars such as Germany, Japan and South Korea. Despite that factor the US is pulling completely out of a part of the world that terrorism is for breakfast and in turn one day in the near future we could see another 911. We will have no boots on the ground to maintain order, terrorism will grow once again, people will die, young girls will be raped and we will have no intelligence that we can gather in the middle east because we simply will not be there. But if we remain our US Soldiers will die but if we go then one day will be back there and this next time around will be much worst. Its a lose lose situation on the worlds watch and I say the world because our allies cannot just rely on the US to play big brother.
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When I heard that Trump invited the Taliban out to Camp David near 911 I was utterly shocked perhaps insulted and YOU should be too. We cant and should not negotiate with a regime that we defeated what is their to say they killed and injured thousands of our troops. But Trump put agreements into place that the US had to adhere to even though Biden had taken office otherwise the Taliban were threatening all out war again. Why? Because while we have the watches they have the time and they know it. Your always going to have a difficult withdrawal in a war that last this long and its not even the withdrawal that is the issue its the manner in which it was done.
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Would I have done things different? Of course and probably most of you would have to considering were a military power and we do not have to put up with the Taliban dictating the US evacuating Americans or the Afghans we promised asylum too. But how did we ever know that it would take us twenty years to nation build and win a war but only eleven days to lose everything we as a nation worked so hard at? Bush got us involved in the conflict, Obama kept us in it even though we got Bin Laden, Trump negotiated the terms and Biden handled the withdrawal. Years of bad decisions leading up to this? Bad intelligence, corruption or perhaps a miscalculation we now have to sit back watching militants taking our hummers out for a spin. It may take years even decades to find out what went wrong and even still we may never entirely know the truth. However their never was a contingency plan to begin with for evacuation only a troop withdrawal.
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Sadly, its utter mayhem because you have Americans getting beat on the streets, Afghans are having their visas ripped up and most of the airport gates are blocked. Physical violence is erupting on the streets and eventually when the US clears out the cameras will not be rolling when war crimes are taking place. Yes war crimes! The militants are at war with its own people and all the Taliban are is the bearded bully club for men. Most of them join the club because they let you do anything without any sort of consequences this includes child molestation, rape, violence against women and men have a say in everything as long as your part of the club. I know some will try to argue that this is not true but history shows us just like with NAZI Germany that often when power is a driving force so is immortality.
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Honestly, if I was president I would just drop millions of guns to all of Afghanistan’s civilians including women so that when the Taliban enter your homes to take your daughters, cousins, sisters and women for their brides they get met with a barrel of a gun to the face. If were going to leave them behind then we need to arm them as well! If you were left behind would you want to be left unarmed? But that is what were about to witness. Our 800 million dollar US embassy failed the people with its red tape, all the politics involved and the inability for others to conduct their jobs. An embassy that our flag no longer flies, an embassy that ended up burning all documents of the Afghans who helped us fight terrorism and an embassy that the Taliban will get to use as their base of operations.
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I know some will make this a red or a blue issue but its not its a failure on multiple levels. Many contractors from the US went to Afghanistan because they were contractors getting paid big money. Some making big money to build the city of Kabul as a matter in fact the millions that we poured into the country which should have been used on the Afghan people was robbed by Ghani as he fled the country. How can the people fight when its own leader flees? Twenty years of nation building, blood and treasure lost all gone in days.
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The tragedy in all of this is that their will be people left behind whether they are British, Americans and definitely some Afghans who already are being threatened to be burned alive for helping fight the Taliban. Some of these people have had visas and paperwork taken from them so how can they even flee to start new lives! You have babies being born on the tarmac, children getting sick, people being shot in the streets, citizens starving, Americans hiding in homes with no lights on and windows being covered up. I can go on? I think my viewers are understanding where this is going!
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Women will no longer be seen on the Afghan news or playing women’s sports or going to a university to study medicine and some will be enslaved forced never to leave their homes. All the accomplishments, rights and freedoms women once had were all gone the day the Taliban marched into Kabul to enjoy all the infrastructure the US built up. Not only a waste of tax dollars but also a failure on our part. I get it its not our job to police the world but when the world intervenes in a nation then tries to build that nation in its form we do have some responsibility to that said nation.
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As a journalist I try to capture the interest of my viewers by making them feel they are part of the story. Often people see politics only when it comes to an evacuations and not for what it really is. Saigon was just as messy and therefore maybe its plausible to say that the US does not know how to pull out of any nation they are at war with. Our troops are in over one hundred nations we have more of them in countries like Spain but soon we will not have one in Afghanistan to help those who are left behind therefore the situation is getting very dire and time is running out. We have a Taliban that refuses to allow us to continue with the evacuation efforts past August 31st and we have thousands of terrorist being released from Afghan jails to basically slaughter anyone who ever helped NATO or America!
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What really needs to be happening is NATO and the US needs to be telling the Taliban we are not leaving till ever person needed for evacuation is out and if you do not like it will knock you back into the dark ages. Whatever happened to the days where the US were the good guys like in WWII? Unfortunately I am afraid those days are over and we allow genocide in other parts of the world to continue when those are the same nations that pose national security threats. Mark my words terrorist will once again find safe harbor in Afghanistan and those that are left behind may resent their own countries for being left behind. We failed these people so how can we blame them if their hatred grows towards our very own failures.
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Nobody knows what will happen in the future maybe the people themselves will rise up or maybe they will become enslaved. While our apocalypse has not occurred yet for some of the people in Afghanistan it already has because the life they have known the past twenty years is a life they will know no more. It is easy for others to not give a care but what happens around the world does effect us and has huge implications. We have to be reassured that American lives were not in vain and they were not because that was twenty years without a 911. However, without a proper pullout we are ten times more likely to see another 911 in the near future because now Afghanistan is more dangerous now then it was twenty years ago when Osama Bin Laden was using it to harbor Al Qaeda.
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Not only that but no other countries civilians will ever help us in the war effort knowing that America will leave you behind. This will have huge implications for the future in fighting terrorism because most nations will come to realize that they also may be left behind. While many are being rescued many will not be because of our own failures to govern and manage our withdrawal from a nation we occupied for two decades. We live in a time where were technology, half of the world uses social media and we are going space all exist. Yet we still have parts of the world as if the Mongolia War is still taking place where barbarians slaughtered entire villages, raped the women and enslaved children pilling everything in their paths. This kind of thing should never happen in the year 2021 but sadly it does!
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We have to learn by our mistakes and be better then that. We can point fingers all we want but this goes deeper then just a president it involves all previous presidents, intelligence agencies and the lack of human decency. We never won the war on terror sure we defeated Osama Bin Laden but ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban all thrive more today then they did ten years ago. The fact remains is that all the women, children and men were leaving behind are going to suffer some are going to die for helping the US terribly. Most of them will never have the same freedoms you or I will ever have. Trump opted for thousands of prisoners to be released as well as poor agreement with the Taliban that did nothing to help the people of Afghanistan, Bush came into Afghanistan with the might of the military, Obama kept it going even after Bin Laden was out of the picture and Bidens withdrawal was botched. This is a United States failure and I am okay as a journalist saying that because this is what it all come down to.
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Since we spent trillions in Afghanistan shouldn’t the country be a US owned territory? If it was then the threat of terrorism would never been a concerned and NOBODY would ever be left behind because they would be living under US rule so the concern for terrorism, people being left behind, losing money on our investments etc would never even exist period! But it does exist and the fact is many will be LEFT BEHIND! While most of the American people want us out of this country we must not think without emotion but we must also look at the facts. The fact is that even some of our own people will be left behind to be tortured, beaten, starved to death, burned, hung, raped, held hostage and forgotten. What would you do if you were left behind? What can you do? Where would you go? Once the might of the US Air Force leaves Afghanistan and its last plane flies off into the sunset that is when those will know they are left behind!
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Copyright By,
Lord Rick Rowe
Founder, Journalist & Producer
