{"id":5078,"date":"2023-08-21T05:03:47","date_gmt":"2023-08-21T05:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5078"},"modified":"2023-08-21T14:24:04","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T14:24:04","slug":"wisconsin-lawmaker-and-iraq-war-veteran-remembers-disastrous-fall-of-kabul-even-as-biden-media-bury-the-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5078","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Lawmaker and Iraq War Veteran Remembers Disastrous Fall of Kabul, Even As Biden, Media Bury the Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/politics\/wisconsin-lawmaker-and-iraq-war-veteran-remembers-disastrous-fall-of-kabul-even-as-biden-media-bury-the-anniversary\/mkittle\/2023\/08\/21\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Lost in last week\u2019s wall-to-wall coverage of the latest Trump indictment and President Joe Biden\u2019s public-relations tour on the one-year anniversary of his costly Inflation Reduction Act was the anniversary of a dark chapter in American military history.<\/p>\n

As the Washington Examine<\/em>r reported:<\/a><\/p>\n

Tuesday came and went, and with it, an opportunity for the Biden<\/a> White House<\/a> to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the fall of Kabul ahead of the completed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead, President Joe Biden<\/a> traveled to Milwaukee to deliver remarks on climate and his economic agenda. The failure to recognize what some consider the end of America\u2019s longest war<\/a> ran in stark contrast to many of Biden\u2019s Republican opponents.<\/em><\/p>\n

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley hammered Biden on the disastrous collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo years after the fall of Kabul and Joe Biden\u2019s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the world is less safe, our enemies are emboldened, and our allies are questioning America\u2019s commitments,\u201d the campaign of the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador said in a press release.<\/p>\n

Ohio entrepreneur and top tier Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy marked the two-year anniversary of the Biden administration\u2019s \u201cbotched Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 or our sons and daughters dead. $8 billion in US military weapons abandoned and now in the hands of our enemies, including the Taliban.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe damage is incalculable,\u201d Ramaswamy wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) account. \u201cThey could\u2019ve waited until after fighting season, but didn\u2019t. They could have left from the military air base in Bagram instead of the commercial airport in Kabul, but didn\u2019t. The sheer incompetence was staggering, it\u2019s been two years and no one has been held accountable. Not Biden, not Mark Milley, not Lloyd Austin \u2013 who will use their failures and the rise of armed jihadists as an excuse to justify our next misadventure in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s now been two years since the botched Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 of our sons and daughters dead. $8 billion in US military weapons abandoned and now in the hands of our enemies, including the Taliban. The damage is incalculable. They could\u2019ve waited until after\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 16, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For State Representative Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), a 20-year U.S. Army veteran who served as an attack helicopter pilot in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War and spent a little time in Afghanistan, the withdrawal was so humiliating, and so unnecessary.<\/p>\n

Kurtz (pictured above) said he saw the pain in the eyes of his friend, a veteran named Josh who served in the War on Terror in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust from his eyes, the hurt in his eyes, the feeling of, I don\u2019t want to say guilt, the feeling of betrayal. I think those were all on the table,\u201d Kurtz told The Wisconsin Daily Star<\/i><\/b> on the Vicki McKenna Show<\/i><\/a>. \u201cI think if you talk to anyone who served in Afghanistan for any length of time, they were in disbelief about the humiliation of that withdrawal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The painful images of Aug. 15, 2021 remain fixed in time and memory. In a fierce attack, the Taliban completed its recapture of Afghanistan nearly 20 years after the United States military opened its Global War on Terror amid the ashes of the Sept. 11, 2011 terrorist attacks. The surge in Kabul forced U.S. and allied forces and as many Afghan friends as they could take into a chaotic escape from the main Afghanistan airport \u2014 two weeks before the scheduled withdrawal.<\/p>\n

An \u201cAfter Action Review\u201d report<\/a> issued in late June by the U.S. State Department laid the blame of the chaotic departure at the Biden and Trump administrations, citing \u201cinsufficient\u201d planning and a lack of communication and decision-making for the disorderly evacuation from Kabul.<\/p>\n

\u201c[D]uring both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,\u201d the 24-page unclassified report states. Another 60 pages, contained in the classified version, were omitted.<\/p>\n

White House officials had little to say on why the president did not, at the very least, issue a statement acknowledging the anniversary. They told the Examiner<\/em> that \u201cthe anniversary of the withdrawal being completed is the end of the month.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Biden has spoken on many occasions \u2014 and given several public addresses from the White House \u2014 about how ending our longest war after 20 years was the right thing to do,\u201d a senior White House<\/a> official said in a statement. The official insisted that the nation is stronger today because of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

That is not the consensus of many. Critics say the graceless departure has emboldened despotic China and Russia to ratchet up their aggressive postures over the past two years, including Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

As for the blame game, Biden was commander-in-chief at the time of the collapse. His Pentagon was in charge.<\/p>\n

The impacts of the disaster continue to be felt.The casualties include the president\u2019s polling numbers.<\/p>\n

As Axios\u00a0<\/em>reported<\/a> on the one-year anniversary of the fall of Kabul, Biden\u2019s approval rating was 49 percent at the start of August 2021, according to Gallup polling. A month later, after the completion of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was 43 percent. A year ago, it was 38 percent. Today, his approval rating is just under 41 percent, according to<\/em> <\/a>FiveThirtyEight.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, the wounds run so much deeper than politics.<\/p>\n

Untold numbers of\u00a0Afghanistan citizens, loyal allies of the U.S., remain trapped, many facing deprivation and death, in the Taliban-controlled nation.<\/p>\n

Western Wisconsin\u2019s Fort McCoy, like several military installations, became a makeshift temporary residence for thousands of Afghan refugees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are all the domino effects from that horrible decision to withdraw and the way we withdrew,\u201d Kurtz said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t realize Tomah [WI, home to Fort McCoy] is roughly 10,000 people. Overnight that city more than doubled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Army veteran and state lawmaker called the disastrous withdrawal a \u201cself-inflicted wound\u201d by the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could have been completely different and should have been completely different,\u201d Kurtz said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The post Wisconsin Lawmaker and Iraq War Veteran Remembers Disastrous Fall of Kabul, Even As Biden, Media Bury the Anniversary<\/a> appeared first on The Wisconsin Daily Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/politics\/wisconsin-lawmaker-and-iraq-war-veteran-remembers-disastrous-fall-of-kabul-even-as-biden-media-bury-the-anniversary\/mkittle\/2023\/08\/21\/ Lost in last week\u2019s wall-to-wall coverage of the latest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":3495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-daily-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5079,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions\/5079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}