Few things brought this nation together the way that the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 did. Now, after twenty years of memes, posters, songs and slogans reminding us to “never forget” it is appropriate that we reflect on the fact that, apparently, we did forget. Now we should prepare ourselves for something like it or worse to happen again, because it is going to.
I keep hearing that “everybody agrees that we had to get out of Afghanistan.” That is a lie. I don’t agree, and I’m sure that there are others who think the same way. It is true that we spent a trillion dollars,* thousands of lives and twenty years in that country, but why did we go there? Yes, to get the ones who planned and executed the terror attack of 9/11, but there was more to it than that.
I’m not talking about “nation building.” Over the last two decades, many of the people of Afghanistan (women, in particular) learned what it was like to live in a semi-democratic civilized country. They have lost that now, and I’m sorry for them, but that is not my major concern. It’s hard to find any example throughout human history where freedom was given to a people who kept it for any period of time. Enduring freedom is never granted or given; it is won, and right now there are men in Afghanistan who are still fighting for their freedom. But their cause is almost hopeless. They will get no help and we just armed their enemies beyond imagination. They are invisible, hidden by our traitorous news media, betrayed by our treasonous leaders and forgotten by the same people who forgot what happened twenty years ago in New York City, Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.
Yes, the cost of the war in Afghanistan was high, but not as costly as ignoring an enemy who is bent on our destruction. We should consider what we got for the blood and treasure. When America first ventured into that nation, often called the “Graveyard of Empires,” I heard it said quite often: “we are taking the war to them over there so that we do not have to fight them over here.” And that’s what we did. We fought them over there and as a result we enjoyed twenty years of relative peace at home. Yes, there were some “lone wolf” attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing, but no airplanes flown into buildings, no nukes set off in New York harbor, no anthrax released in the Mall of America.
Everyone who owns a house knows that you don’t spray for roaches one time and then sit back and relax.** “No more roaches! They’re all gone!” No, pest control is a never-ending task, because they will come back. We spray for roaches. We treat for termites. We call in the experts to evict the mice from our crawl spaces and the bats from our attics. It never ends. It is a task that you must continue for as long as you own your home or accept living with roaches, termites, mice and bats. In fact, the worst of it was behind us, the fumigation, the stink of insecticide, the major expenses. We had the roach problem under control.
And then we just quit. The roaches didn’t go away forever, so we gave up. It is as if we spent a trillion dollars, twenty years and a thousand lives building a big mansion and then one day we said, “this house costs too damn much!” So we just got up and walked out. No, it’s worse than that. It’s as if we abandoned the house to a bunch of people who hate our guts, want to kill us, and now have a nice big house in which to plan their next attack. We even left our gun collection behind for them.
The Soviet Union/Russia didn’t go away, and we still have troops all over Europe helping NATO keep the Western World safe for democracy. North Korea and China didn’t go away, and we still have troops in South Korea, protecting everything below the 38th parallel from the scourge of communism. We have troops all over the world in places where America’s national interest requires–some more, some less–but we don’t just quit and go home because the threats to our security didn’t go away after a few years.
Why was Afghanistan different? I have my ideas and opinions. It is really hard–impossible even–to imagine how the Biden administration could have done more to damage America, destroy its reputation around the world and lay the groundwork for future gut-wrenching agony and loss than the manner in which they disregarded our national interests and those of our allies in Afghanistan. But you know, it’s also hard to imagine any way that America’s future could be more imperiled than by utterly abandoning our nation’s southern border to an outright invasion by the drug cartels and a horde of third-world escapees with (as hard as it is to imagine) even less knowledge of our nation’s history and tradition of liberty than the average graduate from a Chicago public high school. It’s hard to think of any way to encourage runaway inflation, crush our economy and bankrupt America than the utterly out of control spending the Democrats have indulged since gaining their thinnest possible majority in Congress. And even as a writer of fiction, it beggars my imagination to invent anything as absurd as a President of the United States crippling our newly achieved energy independence at home while boosting the energy sector of our nation’s enemies and fostering the dependence of our allies on them. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Until it occurs to you that perhaps harming, crippling and destroying America is the goal. Until you realize that perfidy may hide behind senility, and treason may disguise itself as incompetence.
Either way, the roaches will be back before long. Count on it.
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*Please don’t whine about the money. We have wasted a lot more money on so many stupid things that brought us no benefit and even harmed us. Of all the trillions that Democrats have spent in just the last few months, how much of that money will go to fund left-wing activists, “Green New Deal” warriors, socialist and communist colleges and their programs, BLM and Critical Race Theory whores, all helping to accelerate our destruction? Not to mention the millions that will be funneled off to the pockets of crooked politicians, their donors, families and friends.
**Credit to Greg Gutfeld for this spot-on analogy. But even though this is his thought, inexplicably, he still says that “we had to get out of Afghanistan.”