He survived the bombing in Kabul on May 31, 2017. He was a Door Gunner on his third deployment to Afghanistan in 2010, where he notched up 260 flight hours. Justin Parks is a combat veteran with a degree in Arabic studies, who has served in the Marine Corps and the Army and has done multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghan forces in many places had not been paid in months, and the Taliban was offering money for them to hand over their weapons, per a Washington Post report.Īn Afghan special forces officer also told the Post that the peace deal the Trump administration struck with the Taliban in February 2020 induced a massive level of uncertainty, and Afghan soldiers felt that the US committing to a full withdrawal of troops meant it was only a matter of time before the militants regained control of Afghanistan.A US combat veteran says he’s heartbroken seeing what he considers to be treason committed on the American people by the Biden administration who allowed the Taliban to retake power after fighting them for 20 years. Though Biden expressed faith in the Afghan military, the reality is it's an institution that's been plagued by corruption and discipline issues for years. The militants also didn't face significant resistance as they entered Kabul, with President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country and the US-backed government collapsing the same day. Still, the Taliban advance was rapid and its northern victories - such as the surrender of Mazar-i-Sharaf in the north without a fight - allowed them to encircle Kabul, sealing the capital's fate. There were clashes with the Taliban in some areas, like heavy fighting with Afghan forces in Helmand province's capital and skirmishes with militants outside Herat in the weeks before its capitulation. That capacity did not happen," Sullivan said. There was the capacity to stand up and resist. "What the president kept saying over and over again was that it was not inevitable that Kabul would fall, and it wasn't inevitable. "The speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated," national security advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday during an interview on NBC's "TODAY." The administration appears to have severely underestimated how tired Afghans were of fighting, and of the already huge losses borne by its most effective troops. "The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely," Biden said during a July 8 news conference, in words that have aged poorly and been disproven in a matter of weeks. In July, Biden expressed "trust" in the capacity of the Afghan military to keep the Taliban at bay, and denied that it was inevitable the militants would once again take over the. Over and over, the president and others in his administration reiterated that it was up to Afghans to take the fight to the Taliban and prevent the militant Islamist group from returning to power. Indeed, the Biden administration was caught flatfooted by the blistering pace at which the Taliban advanced across Afghanistan in recent days, failing to recognize that the militant Islamist group would face little to no resistance on much of its march toward the capital.įor weeks, President Joe Biden and his top advisors defended the US withdrawal from Afghanistan by citing how well-equipped and trained the Afghan military was. By Sunday, this assessment was completely discredited as the Taliban entered Kabul. Just a week ago, the US military assessed it would take up to 90 days for the Taliban to capture the Afghan capital. These were not the optics President Joe Biden was hoping for in April when he announced that American troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, bringing an end to the longest war in US history. Taliban fighters are now parked outside of the US Embassy in Kabul after a Saigon-esque evacuation that involved diplomats fleeing the building by helicopter. With less than a month to go until the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks that sparked the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban has regained control of the country.
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