Biden Trashes 'Trust but Verify' Common Sense

An errant 21-year-old guardsman, Airman First Class Jack Texiera, released buckets of intelligence.

Hardly a pioneer, leaking intelligence seems to be all the rage in D.C.

What is novel, is that Texiera seems to be the first in recent memory to get locked up over it. If only he had some "greater purpose" like going after former-President Donald J. Trump.

The leaks indicate that analysts believe ISIS is not only alive and well in Afghanistan, they have set up shop and have plans to hit the U.S. and Europe.

A day later the Pentagon tells us to rest easy because the Taliban is on it, having killed a yet-to-be-named ISIS planner of the suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 13 American heroes as we disgracefully cut and ran from our war of 20 years.

Trust in the Taliban means the Biden administration has destroyed decades of "trust, but verify" common sense.

Before the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 the Taliban played host to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The two groups developed training camps and planning cells on a shoestring budget projecting global terror.

Consider where we entered this deadly dance with Islamic violent extremism.

We justifiably went to war and quickly eliminated terror cell capabilities with brilliant applications of Special Operations Forces combined with American airpower, leveraging a shared interest with the Northern Alliance.

What if we had stopped right there, leaving a stern warning that B-52s, B-2s, and B-1s could and would hold these groups at risk 24-7-365, globally?

The cost of war exacted a heavy price: 2400-plus service members killed, 20,000-plus wounded and $2-plus trillion spent.

Enter Team Biden. Whatever foreign policy edge Ronald Reagan built, and generously gifted us; then furthered by Donald Trump, has now vanished.

Without consultation with our allies and partners, let alone Congress, they abruptly pulled out the critical "Jenga" block, bringing the teetering tower of peace crashing down in a defeat that pushed us back to a more perilous world than 9/11.

What did our blood and treasure yield?

Did we fight in vain? In our time there, we managed to liberate and educate a generation of men and women. One day these seeds, though damaged by our retreat, may grow and possibly turn the "Graveyard of Empires" into a civil society.

Was this the mission? Hardly.

America’s adversaries won when we left Afghanistan.

The Chinese and Russians have helped themselves the spoils of war to include natural resources, an airbase and weapons left behind costing America billions.

The Taliban resumed their brutal rule enslaving a population with murder, rape, and terror.

Al-Qaida and ISIS, while not fully in league with the Taliban, certainly have resumed operations with ambitions to hit us again and soon.

At least that’s what we surmise from the wayward Airmen’s intel dump as told to us through the press.

Afghanistan is reverting to a status of clear and present danger.

Have no fear, the Taliban are here — remember they killed an ISIS planner.

During a recent congressional hearing, veterans testified that our tax dollars, more than $2 Billion for humanitarian aid, are being skimmed by the Taliban to rebuild their war machine.

Are we surprised?

Americans should think of the tweet showing the picture of "Last soldier leaving Afghanistan" as a switch, turning on a giant flywheel, hurling wars, and crises globally.

Never-before-seen weakness spawned the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Iran and North Korean nuclear weapons advancements, the rise of the BRICS+ led by China to destroy the dollar, and recently a civil war in Sudan where we see the administration’s signature result: stranded Americans.

Can we fix this?

No.

The unelected bureaucrats at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just affirmed it.

Days ago, DHS published its "Third Quadrennial Review," or an assessment of the threats we face to the homeland and what they are doing or will do about it, if only Congress will add billions and billions more to their empire within the federal government.

In reading this Mayorkas narrated tale, you would find that DHS is doing amazing work on scant resources and that the lion’s share of threats we face are Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs).

Meanwhile, the DHS open border policy offers something that Taliban and al-Qaida version 1.0 could only dream about: a wide-open border, North and South, with no clear picture of what cells ISIS and the others have stood up as a result.

At some point, we will pay for decades of poor leadership and NEOCON dreams of war and conquest.

The current National Security Team however stands in a class by itself, stroking the afterburners to get to, quite possibly, an existential challenge.

Only this time, we will face it broke, militarily weakened, antiquated equipment, and untrustworthy leadership.

Perhaps Sir Winston Churchill foreshadowed our situation the best; "Now that we have run out of money, we have to think."

We must demand more of our elected leadership. If we don't, our future will evaporate.

This is not a guess. It's guaranteed.

Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt (retired) is a co-founder of Restore Liberty, a former deputy representative to NATO, a lifetime member on the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Newsmax contributor. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, or its components. Read Gen. Holt's reports — More Here.