After the Taliban's triumph

On Balance: Taliban take over Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcqUBtSbxgY
FYI Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. LTC (Join to see) COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SSG Franklin BriantSPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D TSgt David L. SGT James Murphy SPC Michael Terrell SPC Michael Oles SR MGySgt (Join to see)SPC Steve Irvine1LT Voyle SmithGySgt Jack Wallace SFC William Farrell CSM Charles Hayden CSM (Join to see) LTC David Brown

From the Post
[A]s the militants commandeer Afghanistan’s security and intelligence institutions, the Biden administration faces a far steeper challenge in fulfilling the president’s pledge to prevent al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups that have operated there from regaining strength and threatening the United States.

Current and former officials said that the process for identifying and responding to terrorist plots has been upended as the Pentagon and the CIA — instead of planning for operations alongside an allied government and friendly spy agency in Kabul — are forced to contemplate an environment abruptly off-limits and under the control of a hostile regime.

“The counterterrorism posture went from problematic with the U.S. withdrawal to extraordinarily bad with the Taliban in full control,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a veteran intelligence officer who served as a CIA base chief in Afghanistan. “Suddenly one wonders if we will go entirely dark. It’s like a bad dream.”

It’s worth noting that the adverse consequences I discuss here — the resurgence of jihadists encouraged by America’s defeat and the inability to deal with threats emanating from Afghanistan — all flow from Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, not from the way he carried it out. It’s also worth noting that we were preventing these consequences with a commitment of only 2,500 to 3,500 U.S. forces and very few American casualties.

SMH!