Marine Battalion Commander Fired After Blasting ‘Inept’ Military Leadership Over Afghanistan Withdrawal
A sitting Marine battalion commander was fired Friday after he slammed the "ineptitude" of U.S. military leadership over the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, saying he was willing to risk losing his 17-year career and future retirement pension in order to "demand accountability" from top military brass.
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller said in a Facebook post that he was relieved for cause after he posted a video Thursday saying military leadership let service members down during the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal. His video post came after a terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport on Thursday that killed 13 U.S. service members, including someone with whom Scheller had a close relationship.
"I have been relieved for caused based on a lack of trust and confidence," Scheller wrote.
In his Thursday video post, Scheller said that military leadership should take responsibility for the situation in Afghanistan.
"The reason people are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down. That service member always rose to the occasion and done extraordinary things," Scheller said. "People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, ‘We messed this up.'"
The scathing public rebuke is a sign of the growing anger among U.S. service members over the pullout and evacuation effort, which has led to a Taliban takeover of the country, left departing Americans vulnerable to deadly terrorist attacks, and stranded thousands of at-risk Afghan military allies.
"I want to say this very strongly. I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders: I demand accountability," said Scheller.
On Aug. 18, Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps., issued a public letter in an attempt to reassure Marines who were venting their frustration on social media, telling them that their service was "meaningful, powerful, and important."
Scheller said the letter missed the point and failed to address the actual concerns of his fellow Marines.
He argued that the withdrawal was a major policy failure from the highest levels of military leadership, calling out Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the joint chiefs of staff.
"I'm not saying we've got to be in Afghanistan forever. But I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone'? Did anyone do that? And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up'?" asked Scheller.
Scheller acknowledged that his critique would almost certainly cost him his job three years before he would qualify for a retirement pension.
"I thought through, if I post this video, what might happen to me—especially if the video picks up traction, if I have the courage to post it," Scheller said. "But I think what you believe in can only be defined by what you're willing to risk. If I'm willing to risk my current battalion seat, my retirement, my family's stability to say some of the things I want to say, I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, and accountability from my senior leaders."
FLASHBACK: Biden Said His Foreign Policy Team of Geniuses Would ‘Stand Up for Our Values’ and ‘Keep Our People Safe’
Thursday's suicide bombings in Kabul, which claimed the lives of at least 13 American servicemen, marked the deadliest day for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since 2011. President Joe Biden's low energy press conference in response to the attacks was widely panned for failing to inspire confidence as the situation spirals out of control.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. During the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden touted himself as the only candidate with the experience necessary to successfully handle an international crisis. "To be commander in chief, there's no time for on-the-job training," he said during a primary debate in November 2019. "I've spent more time in the Situation Room, more time abroad, more time than anybody up here. I know every major world leader. They know me, and they know when I speak, if I'm the president of the United States, who we're for, who we're against, and what we'll do, and we'll keep our word."
Former president Barack Obama tried to warn us. He urged Biden not to run for president in 2016, reportedly out of concern that his former running mate "would embarrass himself on the campaign trail and that the people around him would not be able to prevent a belly-flop." Obama did not mince words during the primary campaign, telling one fellow Democrat: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up." We should have listened.
When Biden introduced his top foreign policy advisers in February 2021, he touted their "unmatched experience and accomplishments," as well as their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Biden went on to imply, without evidence, that he had compiled a team "that will keep our country and our people safe and secure."
"It's a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it, once again sit at the head of the table, ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies, ready to stand up for our values," Biden said.
The events of the past several weeks suggest otherwise.
JOE BIDEN: DANGEROUS
Biden’s Botched Bug Out
By Clarice Feldman
This week we were treated to a bloody horror show at Kabul Airport and a preposterous performance (a full day late) by a President who claimed responsibility and then quickly proceeded to shun it, blaming everyone else. As commander in chief, he was responsible for the disastrous consequences of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan by a plan only an idiot would have conceived or endorsed. What followed were continued lies from the Department of State, General Mark Milley, and probably the Department of Defense. Only individual Americans stood fast to preserve our tattered honor.
The Biden Bug Out Plan was exactly the opposite of the plan President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had crafted. In that plan, our well-fortified base at Bagram, some 40 miles from Kabul, was to be the last thing shuttered. In Biden’s plan, it was the first. He had our troops turn off the lights and leave in the middle of the night without warning to the Afghani government, doubtless encouraging the rapid Taliban advance to Kabul. The President blamed the military for this decision, and General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, seemed to concur, although even as he fell on his sword there was wiggle room, for he predicated it on the need to get the troops down to about 600 or 700, a decision only Biden could have made. Essentially a military briefer conceded this by asserting the mission to withdraw was Biden’s and the emphasis on giving priority to protecting the embassy was also his. The Wall Street Journal explains how disastrous this nonsensical order of departure was.
The way U.S. forces quietly slipped out of Bagram was also demoralizing for the Afghan army and probably contributed to its collapse. The Associated Press spoke to soldiers wandering the base the next day. “They lost all the goodwill of 20 years,” one said, “by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area.” The word must have spread: If the U.S. is abandoning its prized air base, then it really was bugging out altogether.
After the collapse of the Afghan government, Mr. Biden could have sent in enough U.S. troops to retake Bagram and provide for a safer evacuation. He declined that option in favor of getting to the exits as fast as possible, hoping to avoid a confrontation with the Taliban that could result in American casualties. On Thursday he got casualties anyway.
The wreck of Mr. Biden’s Afghan withdrawal is damaging enough. But he compounds the harm to his credibility, and America’s, when he refuses to acknowledge mistakes and spins defeat as a victory for realism. Mr. Biden should take responsibility for his own bad decisions, instead of trying to hide behind the military brass.
Left behind in Afghanistan were billions of dollars worth of armaments which will certainly be used against us and our allies. Also left behind are an untold number -- certainly in the thousands -- of Americans, green card holders, allied civilians, and Afghans who aided us and our NATO allies. They are being systematically butchered, with the aid of biometric records of those whom the jihadis are targeting. A huge potential hostage situation awaits. The administration concedes that we had already given the Taliban lists of people we wanted to give safe passage to. If that weren’t enough to target them for death, the biometric records sealed it.
The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces -- and it’s using US equipment and data to do it.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders over the Al Isha unit, bragged in an interview with Zenger News that his unit is using US-made hand-held scanners to tap into a massive US-built biometric database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed computer records that the US left behind in its frenzied withdrawal. [snip] US officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 hand-held scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted.
Apparently, Pakistani intelligence officers are assisting the Taliban’s Haqqani network in utilizing this tool.
As the work of the Haqqani Network becomes more visible, the Department of State, doubtless to bolster the administration’s claim that it had been fine to count on the Taliban’s pledge to secure the Kabul airport, asserted that the Taliban and Haqqani are “separate entities.” This is a new one and a likely bald-faced lie. Section 1217,FY 2021 NDAA (PL116-283) of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act is very clear: "The Taliban....(B) includes subordinate organizations, such as the Haqqani Network, and any successor organization.” At the Washington Examiner, Jerry Dunleavy spells out how ridiculous is the claim that these are separate entities.
The Taliban, Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda are deeply intertwined in Afghanistan, with the Taliban integrating Haqqani Network leaders and fighters with al Qaeda links into its command structure. ISIS-K has long clashed with the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, claiming Taliban rule is illegitimate.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said last weekend, “The Taliban, obviously, to a considerable extent, are integrated with the Haqqani network. Our effort is with the Taliban military commanders currently in charge of security in Kabul.”
Sirajuddin Haqqani, the “deputy emir” of the Taliban, “currently leads the day-to-day activities of the Haqqani Network,” according to the State Department, which explained that “the Haqqani Network is allied with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.” Sirajuddin has been designated a terrorist by the U.S., and the State Department’s Reward for Justice program has offered $10 million for his arrest.
The Long War Journal reported in 2017 that “the Taliban again affirmed that the Haqqanis are an integral part of its organization -- not an independent faction.”[snip] Sirajuddin is the nephew of Khalil Rahman Haqqani, another top Taliban figure who is now reportedly in charge of security in Kabul. The Treasury Department designated Khalil a global terrorist in 2011, alleging he was “providing support to al-Qaeda.”
The Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS-K fighters are believed to have been among the thousands of prisoners freed from the Parwan Detention Facility when the Taliban entered Kabul last weekend. The prison is right next to Bagram Airfield, which the U.S. quietly abandoned in July.
On Twitter, Bill Roggio has more of the intertwining of the Taliban and Haqqani operations.
Just who, apart from their lapdog press, does the Department of State think they are fooling?
So disastrous has this Biden operation been that it is not being much defended. And in perhaps a slip of the tongue, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki finally said something believable:
[A]s I noted a few minutes ago, any day where you lose servicemembers is -- may be the worst day of your presidency, and hopefully there’s not more. But we are certainly early in the presidency at this point in time.”
I would not be surprised if no high-ranking official appears at the airport where the bodies of the servicemen and women will be unloaded. I imagine it's a combination of callousness and the desire to avoid any images which link the administration to the mayhem that followed its orders. Biden lives nearby and as I write this he has not committed to appear there.
Winding up his tardy address, Biden blustered that we'd get revenge for the killings. It’s hard to see how, with no bases in the country, a bug-out that put at risk anyone who helps us and thousands of civilian hostages on the ground. But the Department of Defense came up with an over the horizon Biden bacon saver -- claiming that with a drone strike they’d killed an ISIS-K “planner.” Not sure what a “planner” is, and certainly it is unlikely anyone can verify this claim. So, I place this in the dubious, and even if true, ineffectual file. Another tale for the halfwits among us.
There were only two bright spots in the week. One brave Marine, Lt-Col. Stuart Scheller, attacked senior military officers for their lack of accountability in this mess, knowing it would cost him his command, and very promptly it did. Wade Miller notes how corruptly discriminatory this was:
@WadeMiller_USMC
Lt. Col. Vindman went on national television and proactively attacked the Commander in Chief for partisan reasons. yet he kept his job.
But Lt. Col. Scheller lost his command today for rightly demanding accountability from senior officers who allowed the Afghanistan disaster to unfold.
In a similar vein, active duty and retired naval intelligence officers are told they cannot “disrespect” the President over the Afghanistan debacle. The ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) directive even applies to civilian employees.
An internal ONI member told The Daily Wire that these policies were more relaxed under the Trump administration and recalled retired officers condemning the former President.
The more the senior officials try to button this up to cover for Biden, the more we lose any faith in them and the more obvious becomes the politicization of our military, the one domestic institution which still retained our faith and respect.
The only other bright spot was the marvelous “Pineapple Express,” the successful effort by U.S. special operations veterans who secretly helped evacuate more than 600 Afghan allies and their families, a story worth a movie.
One former SEAL who participated complained to ABC “that our own government didn’t do this. We did what we should do, as Americans.” Another retired SEAL said of an Afghan veteran who refused to abandon his family and eventually led them all to safety, “Leaving a man behind is not in our SEAL ethos. Many Afghans have a stronger vision of our democratic values than many Americans do.”
There still are men in America. There still are honorable people in America. But darned if you can find them in official Washington.
US Officials Handed Over Names of American Citizens, Afghan Allies to Taliban
Officials hoped Taliban would assist in evacuating the country
U.S. officials in Afghanistan offered the names of American citizens and Afghans who assisted the United States in hopes the terrorist group would help them evacuate the country.
Congressional sources confirmed to Politico that diplomats in communication with the Taliban gave the terrorist group a roll of citizens and Afghan allies such as translators as the group took control of Kabul, including the airport.
One defense official quoted in the Politico report called the Biden administration's decision to share the names with the Taliban "appalling."
"Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list," said the official. "It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean."
As the Taliban started to take control of Kabul and thousands of refugees crowded the airport, the Biden administration stopped sharing names. Officials reportedly defended the decision as the best way to stop a shooting war between U.S. forces and the Taliban.
Revelations of the controversial decision come after a series of bombs killed 12 U.S. military service members near the Kabul airport, likely detonated by the Afghanistan affiliate of ISIS. The attack is the most deadly since 30 U.S. troops, including 22 Navy SEALs, died in a helicopter shooting in 2011.
Biden Subcontracts U.S. Security to Terrorists
Column: The disastrous U.S.-Taliban 'partnership' begins with a massacre
Even as suicide bombers attacked the Kabul airport on August 26—killing, at this writing, at least 12 U.S. servicemen and scores of civilians—visitors to the Al Jazeera website could read an interview with Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban official and U.S.-designated terrorist who is responsible for security in the Afghan capital. "If we can defeat superpowers, surely we can provide safety to the Afghan people," said Haqqani, whose guards brandish the helmets, night-vision goggles, small arms, and camouflage the Americans left behind. "All of those people who left this country, we will assure them of their safety," Haqqani went on. "You’re all welcome back in Afghanistan."
He’s lying, of course. Lying is what terrorists do. Haqqani’s forces can’t protect the Afghan people from ISIS, or, apparently, from the Taliban itself. The Islamic militia is executing civilians and former members of the Afghan National Army, according to the United Nations. And Haqqani’s colleague, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, warned Afghan women and girls the other day that they should avoid the outdoors and public spaces, since Taliban soldiers "have not been yet trained very well." And "We don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm or harass women."
Just to subjugate them.
The massacre at Hamid Karzai airport was the consequence of President Biden's decision to rely on the Taliban for security. Despite the lunacy of taking the Taliban at its word, the Biden administration sounded in recent days as if Haqqani, Mujahid, and the rest of their deranged crew were U.S. partners. Not only did Biden's botched withdrawal result in America’s departure from Central Asia, Taliban rule in Afghanistan, a catastrophe for democracy and human rights, and a propaganda boon for the global jihadist-Salafist movement. It guaranteed our dependence on a gang of medieval holy warriors whose loyalty to al Qaeda is the reason the United States invaded Afghanistan in the first place. This historical irony is strategically dubious and morally debased. The loss of life in Kabul is a taste of what's to come.
Biden pretended as if the Taliban had changed. On August 19, he told George Stephanopoulos that the Taliban, like a group of unruly teenagers, is "going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government." Later, in the same interview, he added, "I’m not sure I would’ve predicted, George, nor would you or anyone else, that when we decided to leave, that they’d provide safe passage for Americans to get out." Nor did he predict that there would be more American casualties on the way out of Afghanistan than there had been in seven years.
In his remarks on August 24, Biden said, "Thus far, the Taliban have been taking steps to work with us so we can get our people out." The terrorist threat, he cautioned, came not from the Taliban but from ISIS, "which is the sworn enemy of the Taliban as well."
Biden didn’t mention that ISIS and the Taliban share a common adversary: the United States. Acknowledging that reality might have jeopardized the drawdown of American forces and evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport even before the terrorists struck on August 26. But it might also explain how the suicide bombers caused so much damage. The Kabul airport is surrounded by Taliban checkpoints. The Taliban won't let Afghans pass through. How did the bombers get by?
Biden won't violate the Taliban’s "red line" that America must leave by the end of the month because he fears that to do so would put U.S. soldiers and citizenry at further risk. On August 25, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reminded the world that the safety of Americans depends on the Taliban’s good graces. "The Taliban," he said, "have made public and private commitments to provide and permit safe passage for Americans, for third-country nationals, and Afghans at risk"—at risk of what and from whom, one might ask the Taliban—"going forward past August 31st."
Past August 31? The safe passage ended this morning.
In his August 25 remarks, Blinken said, "The United States, our allies and partners, and more than half of the world’s countries—114 in all—issued a statement making it clear to the Taliban that they have a responsibility to hold to that commitment and provide safe passage for anyone who wishes to leave the country—not just for the duration of our evacuation and relocation mission, but for every day thereafter." And if the Taliban shirk this responsibility—as they clearly did before the massacre at the airport? Well, another strongly worded note is sure to follow.
It’s not just that the Taliban holds all the cards in this game. Biden doesn’t even want to play. He's made U.S. national security contingent on the Taliban's ability to act like a "normal" government and not a terrorist crazy state. Earlier this week, CIA director William Burns met in secret with Taliban chief Abdul Ghani Baradar. According to David Ignatius of the Washington Post, "Burns was delivering a personal message from Biden, who evidently has decided his best course for now is to cooperate with the former adversary."
Former? When did the Taliban renounce its hatred of America—or its allegiance to al Qaeda?
It hasn’t. Yet Biden and his foreign policy team dangled in front of the Taliban the carrot of financial assistance and international legitimacy in exchange for cooperation on counterterrorism and regional stability. As for sticks, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen crashed the Afghan financial system and economy two weeks ago when she froze Afghan government reserves in U.S. banks. The Taliban is broke. It hasn’t quelled the resistance in Panjshir Valley. Which is why it’s negotiating with Hamid Karzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah to establish a government that would cross the threshold for renewed foreign aid and participation in global markets.
"We will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and does it help us advance them or not," said Secretary of State Blinken. "If engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, in the enduring interest we have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are upheld, then we’ll do it."
That sounded like a secretary of state ready to engage. Precedent suggests that deteriorating conditions on the ground won’t matter. Yasser Arafat’s incitement to violence and militarization of the Palestinian security forces did not prevent Bill Clinton from indulging in the farcical Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." Neither Obama nor Biden thought twice about promising (and in Obama’s case delivering) cash money to the terrorist-sponsoring Iranian regime if it stopped spinning a few nuclear centrifuges for a while.
Nor will the violence in Afghanistan this week derail the U.S.-Taliban "partnership." The Taliban’s string of broken promises didn’t pause the "strategic dialogue" that has been taking place in Qatar for the last several years between its personnel and U.S. special representative Zalmay Khalilzad. Indeed, the mayhem in Kabul might reaffirm the administration’s belief that the Taliban can be separated from, and used to combat, ISIS. In a briefing on the afternoon of August 26, General McKenzie, head of Central Command, said there was "no reason" to think that the Taliban were involved in the assault on our troops. Our forces have been sharing intel with the Taliban since August 14. "We will continue to coordinate with the Taliban on preventing terrorist attacks," McKenzie said.
"Any relationship or partnership with the Taliban is going to be deeply frustrating for us," former State Department official Carter Malkasian, author of The American War in Afghanistan: A History, told David Ignatius. It already is. The terrible events of this morning have made that clear. More terrible events await. How depressing to contemplate that the 20th anniversary of 9/11 arrives with the Taliban in power, terrorism resurgent, and America at the mercy of evil men.
Biden Tried to Send Pallets of Cash to the Taliban as Kabul Fell
Creating a hostage situation is a great pretext for funding Islamic terrorists.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
On August 14, Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Afghanistan’s former president and promised that the Biden administration would provide a bulk shipment of dollars.
The next day Kabul fell.
On that same call, Afghanistan’s former leader had agreed to surrender power to the Taliban.
The Biden administration had effectively agreed to provide a massive infusion of cash to the Taliban. But the final deal fell through, the Afghan government fled, and the Taliban took Kabul.
The bulk shipment of dollars never did arrive.
Biden’s diplomats scrambled to evacuate from Kabul. Ajmal Ahmady, the governor of DAB, Afghanistan's central bank, already had a ticket and headed to the airport. He managed to get on a military plane.
Since then he's tweeted that he was warned that the Taliban had come looking for him.
The Taliban were hoping to get their hands on Afghanistan’s money, but much of it is in the United States. The most tangible part of Afghanistan’s assets, $1.3 billion in gold, is sitting in downtown Manhattan, a little bit south of Ground Zero, in the vaults of the Federal Reserve.
If there were any justice, that money would be used to compensate the police officers, firefighters, and workers who died on that day or later on from ailments related to 9/11.
Meanwhile, all the Taliban have to do is fly into JFK, take an Uber to 33 Liberty Street, and ask to be taken down to the basement to see all the bars of gold. And even in Biden’s America and De Blasio’s New York City, they might have trouble walking away with over a billion in gold bars.
Not unless they trade their camos and kameezes for Black Lives Matter t-shirts.
The United States did plenty of dumb things in Afghanistan, but it kept the gold locked up in the basement vaults and $3.1 billion of DAB’s assets went into U.S. Treasury bills and bonds.
Ahmady estimates that $7 billion of DAB's assets are being held by the Federal Reserve which includes the gold, the bills and bonds, $300 million in cash, and another $2.4 billion in World Bank funds for aiding developing countries. There’s also $700 million at the Bank for International Settlements and another $1.3 billion in international accounts.
Those are likely being held in Turkey which is an Islamist dictatorship friendly to the Taliban.
The Taliban would like some or all of that money.
The problem is that while the Taliban expected to find vaults full of gold and cash, Afghanistan had been plugged into the international finance system in which access to cash depends on either great internal wealth or good international relations. The Taliban have neither.
To the extent that the Taliban have been behaving themselves, at least in Kabul, it’s because they want to lay claim to the stream of international wealth that used to flow into Afghanistan.
A week after Kabul fell, the International Monetary Fund was supposed to disburse $460 million in Special Drawing Rights to Afghanistan, but that, like all the other international funding mechanisms that the Taliban wanted to lay claim to, was blocked. While the Biden administration’s diplomats and national security people had made a complete hash of the withdrawal, the treasury people proved to be surprisingly on top of cutting off Taliban cash.
The Taliban still control border crossings and they’ll be able to take advantage of Chinese money, but that’s a long way from the cash they need to run any kind of functional country.
Paradoxically, we were the single biggest revenue source for the Taliban’s money machine.
One expert estimated that at the peak of Obama and Biden's Afghanistan surge, "the Taliban’s ‘taxes’ on truckers supplying NATO likely even surpassed the Taliban’s income from drugs, being tens of millions of dollars at least, maybe up to $100 million annually."
Like a lot of failed states, remittances from Afghans living overseas made up 4% of their GDP. Last year that amounted to $788 million. Some of that money is being blocked. For now.
Without an ongoing war, the money from both NATO and the international financiers of the Jihad will stop flowing. Chinese state businesses won’t allow the Taliban to rob them the way that they looted NATO and while drugs are big money, they’re no substitute for an economy.
Just ask Venezuela and Iran. Or Detroit.
The Taliban’s options are limited. They've appointed Mohammad Idris, a previously unknown Taliban official, to head the central bank. Afghanistan’s currency is imploding and dollarization without dollars doesn’t work so well. Much of Afghanistan’s economy, which was propped up by foreign aid, will collapse leaving behind subsistence farming, opium, and smuggling rackets.
The arms and vehicles looted from the United States will be sold off to fellow Jihadists for a one-time cash infusion because there’ll be no more armored vehicles and drones handed out.
Before 9/11, Afghanistan was facing drought and famine under the Taliban. The United States campaign not only toppled the Taliban, but saved parts of the country from starvation.
But the Taliban do have two key assets: people and trouble.
Those are the same assets held by Jihadists around the world from Hamas in Gaza to the Houthis in Yemen. The Taliban don’t care if portions of the population, especially non-Pashtuns and non-Sunni Muslims suffer, but they know that we do.
Even now there’s talk about how to continue providing humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. And the flow of humanitarian aid to a population in a terrorist area means funding terrorists.
Beyond inflicting misery on Afghans, the Taliban have a variety of options for causing trouble for their enemies. They can speed the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe and also boost the opium business and demand money to “fight drug trafficking” in order to shut it down. (This scam is common in both South America and Southeast Asia, and helps fund the drug trade in the name of fighting it as corrupt politicians cash in on both the drug and anti-drug businesses.)
And their biggest short-term asset are the Afghans and Americans trapped in Afghanistan.
Whatever agreements the Biden administration reached with the Taliban to allow it to operate and to coordinate on security arrangements were almost certainly financial. Once the United States leaves, the Taliban will be able to extract money for every single Afghan who leaves.
But what the Taliban really want is all that money sitting in the Federal Reserve.
There have been precedents for terror states toppling legitimate governments and leaving their wealth in the hands of the United States. From the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union to the Shiite Islamists of Iran, Democrats eventually turned over the money to the red-green terrorists.
There’s little doubt that the Taliban will get their hands on much of the money.
China, Russia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar will likely push to legitimize the Taliban in international forums. The Biden administration will make a token show of resistance. As the international governance bodies topple and humanitarian groups cry about famine, the money pipeline will reopen. And even though there won’t be a single American soldier in Afghanistan, Biden will go on funding the Taliban long after the withdrawal is wholly complete.
The $7 billion will end up being another down payment in the funding of Islamic terrorism.
The day before Kabul fell, Biden nearly allowed a massive bundle of pallets of dollars to be shipped to Afghanistan. He did so knowing that the money was destined for a Taliban regime.
His cash shipment to the Taliban only fell apart because the Afghan government did.
How long will it be until Biden is shipping money to the Taliban? He may already be doing it.
"Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," Biden proposed after September 11. His previous administration illegally shipped $1.7 billion in pallets of cash to Iran. The question isn’t whether Biden will fund the Taliban, but when.
Creating a hostage situation is, as Obama already discovered, a convenient pretext for funding Islamic terrorists. Biden has created a massive hostage crisis in Afghanistan. What better way could there be to force the United States to fund our worst enemies once again?
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