So it has some to this: It falls to a conservative old white guy to come to the defense of the Afghan women who will be raped by the Taliban.

The single women who will be “married” to Taliban fighters. The girls who will be forced out of their classrooms and their schools shuttered. The woman and girls who will be regarded as mere chattel by the Medieval forces of the real misogynists who are about to overrun Kabul and the entire Afghanistan nation.

What will happen to Fawzia Koofi, as the Taliban advance toward Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, leaving a bloody trail in their wake. “She risked everything for women’s rights in Afghanistan. Now she could lose it all,” as CBC Radio explains it.

As the Taliban advance toward Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, leaving a bloody trail in their wake, Fawzia Koofi doesn’t know what will happen to her, her daughters and other women who have worked to champion gender equality in the country.

Koofi, a peace negotiator and former Afghan MP, has survived multiple assassination attempts during her career, including one last year, as she fights for peace and women’s rights. Now she fears that work will be unravelled. 

The liberal Guardian reports, “‘Nowhere to go’: divorced Afghan women in peril as the Taliban close in.”

Even if you thought that U.S. forces shouldn’t have been in Afghanistan in the first place and if you believe that our military should no longer be there, the truth is that the withdrawal as conducted is an international betrayal on a massive, ugly and inhumane scale.

Brave Afghanistan soldiers signed up to fight for freedom–as our ally and partner. We committed ourselves to fight with them. Sure 20 years is a long time to be there and Afghanistan people need to “learn”–as the Biden administration says–to fight for themselves.

A liberal Guardian analysis has a different view in, “U.S. deserves big share of blame for Afghanistan military disaster. White House accused of unfairly pointing finger at Afghan military after decades of mismanaging war effort.”

From the conservative New York Post comes the observation that the precipitous way that President Joe Biden has executed the withdrawal is wrong. In the middle of the night, the U.S. abandoned–snuck out in reality–Bagram Airfield, without notifying the Afghan, leaving the major military facility open to looters and valuable weapons to the Taliban.

When Biden announced that our troops were leaving, the Taliban shifted into high gear, and as of Thursday has captured 12 of 34 provincial capitals and are closing in on Kabul. U.S. intelligence estimates that Kabul would fall within 90 days; that now seems laughable.

A Wall Street Journal editorial, put it succinctly:

The White House dispatched diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad to warn the jihadists not to take the country by force. Mr. Khalilzad struck the “peace” deal during the Trump Administration that the Taliban failed to honor. The U.S. is also pleading with China and Russia to intercede with the Taliban.

Someone also dispatched White House press secretary Jen Psaki to the briefing room to say that “if the Taliban claim to want international legitimacy, these actions are not going to get them the legitimacy they seek. . . . They could choose to devote the same energy to the peace process as they are to their military campaign. We strongly urge them to do so.” Strongly urging should do the trick. [Emphasis mine.]

Former President Donald Trump doesn’t escape criticism either for setting a timetable for the withdraw, firing the starter’s gun for the Taliban’s planned advance. The ever-ego-besotted Trump issued a statement as reported by CNN: “Trump calls Afghanistan withdrawal ‘a wonderful and positive thing to do’ and criticizes Biden’s timeline.”

Biden, Trump and others insist that Americans want out of Afghanistan, that it’s been a colossal waste of life and treasure. That we were foolish to go in in the first place. They blame “neocons” for this abysmally failure.

People have called me a neocon, having as I did get left behind by liberals and found friendly policies among Republicans. Neocons are are inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, Jan. 21, 1962:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge–and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do–for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom–and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required–not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. [Emphasis is mine.]

And more. Those words got us into the Vietnam War, one I thought we could not win. And yet, even with the war lost to North Vietnam communists, it did eventually–after the genocide in Cambodia–halt the spread of tyrannical communism. Something not to be ignored.

The U.S. military has been stationed in Europe and Korea much longer than in Afghanistan. It’s in our national interest. Just as it is having influence in regions where Islamic terrorists concoct their deadly schemes against us.

Keeping enough troops in Afghanistan to protect our interests is not as outrageous as Biden and Trump would have it. Yet, Biden, while calling on Afghanistan to go it alone, pulled out American skills and armor to–what?–prove a political point.

Biden, as Barack Obama’s vice president advised against going after Osama bin Laden. I recall his advice for ending the war in Iraq was to split it into three separate nations.

And on it goes. Biden’s envoy Khalilzad pleaded with the Taliban not to attack the American embassy when it overruns Kabul. Please, please. Pathetic.

But that’s Biden. He now has to repair doubts our other allies have about our word. Can they trust us to live up to the terms of our alliances? Or will we betray them as we have now betrayed the people of Afghanistan. Biden’s answer: yes.

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