In July, President Joe Dementia assured Americans that the pullout of U.S. forces from Afghanistan after two decades would not resemble anything like the chaotic retreat out of what was then the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, including evacuating Americans and other officials from the rooftops by helicopter.
“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, they’re not,” Biden said July 8. “They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”
Fast-forward to this past weekend, when we saw images of American military helicopters lifting off from the rooftops of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, ferrying U.S. officials to the nearby airport as Taliban forces arrived in the city -- in some cases, the very same type of CH-47 Chinooks that airlifted Americans to safety from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, ahead of North Vietnamese onslaught more than four decades ago.
The more things change, the more they stay the same when it comes to American imperialism; it didn't work out well for the British Empire or the Soviet Union, and the effects of expensive expansionism for America will be exactly the same.
That's also the diagnosis of a former U.S. military commander of all forces in Afghanistan, retired four-star Gen. David Petraeus.
The Daily Mail reports:
President Biden must take responsibility for his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, as Taliban warlords roll into its capital Kabul, a top US general has warned.
General David Petraeus the former Commander of US and International Forces in Afghanistan, is calling the withdrawal a 'serious mistake' and says the decision could be 'catastrophic for the United States and the world'.
Petraeus made his comments Sunday after Biden announced he was sending 5,000 U.S. troops back into the country after withdrawing nearly all of them, which spurred the Taliban to mobilize and sweep across their country, Afghan National Army forces melting away as they advanced because they were never up for challenging such brutal militants.
Calling Biden's decision to pull out so hastily and obviously without much fore planning a "serious mistake," Petraeus told the host of WABC Radio Rita Cosby, "This is an enormous national security setback and it is on the verge of getting much worse unless we decide to take really significant action."
"The outcome, whether it is the Taliban taking over the country or it's the kind of civil war that we saw in the wake of the collapse of the post-Soviet government, there are no good outcomes here," Petraeus noted further. "In fact there is nothing more than horrible outcomes unless we are willing to acknowledge that this is not going as more optimistic projections laid out and take stock."
By Monday, the Taliban had taken over all of Kabul save for a very small enclave were American forces were stationed at the international airport. The troops had to restore order as thousands of Afghans scrambled to get aboard any flight leaving the country.
So after 20 years, thousands of American lives, and more than $2 trillion in expenditures, literally nothing changed in Afghanistan.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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