America's hasty withdrawal may not enable Afghan forces to survive a Taliban surge.
The Taliban appear to have “strategic momentum” in the fight for control of Afghanistan as they put increasing pressure on key cities, setting the stage for a decisive period in coming weeks as American forces complete their withdrawal, the top U.S. military officer said Wednesday.
“This is going to be a test now of the will and leadership of the Afghan people — the Afghan security forces and the government of Afghanistan,” Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon press conference.
In related news, contractors who support Afghan forces are bugging out, unwilling to stay without American power behind them. Who could have seen that contractor problem coming?
And we're not even fully withdrawn. I guess we may not get the decent interval between withdrawal and collapse. This certainly tells our Afghan allies that we expect them to lose:
The murals that once celebrated U.S. military units have been painted over and the settings that memorialized the fallen are now empty spaces.
I said that there is a danger zone for Afghan forces as America ends its participation in the war on terror theater in Afghanistan:
On paper, the Afghan government can hold. But in the real world, fear of death is heightened by the American-led withdrawal. If enough time passes without a general collapse of government morale, the paper balance will win out.
But the Taliban have a window of opportunity when fear of the unknown without America holding the hand of government forces makes government officials and forces scared enough to preemptively give up.
I'm increasingly worried that Afghan forces won't hold long enough to regain confidence in their ability to fight without our safety net of support. "Strategic momentum" on the Taliban side is worrisome.
And already our military is saying that the focus in not holding the win in Afghanistan but making sure Afghanistan can't be used as a base to attack us at home. Good luck with that:
[On] top of the problem of identifying lawful and appropriate targets, the ability to exploit the strikes is reduced without ground forces able to pursue enemies and retrieve intelligence.
If the Afghanistan government collapses, even if the Taliban don't then actually take over, the ability to monitor and stop terrorists will drop to nearly nothing.
But no worries. We can still destroy pharmaceutical plants and some empty tents at will. So we've got that going for us. Which is nice.
And in a do you want the good news or bad news first story, American airstrikes against the Taliban are continuing. But they include strikes targeting American equipment captured by the Taliban (tip to PJ Media):
The US military carried out two strikes against the Taliban overnight in support of Afghan forces in the Kandahar province, multiple defense officials said, targeting captured equipment.
We aren't "ending" our longest war. We are deciding to abandon allies who have fought by our side killing jihadis and count on ... something ... to protect us from evil monsters who dream of killing us in larger numbers than a mere virus has.
We will learn to regret the decision to stop fighting the
jihadis in Afghanistan.
Have a super sparkly day.
