I've never been this embarrassed and frustrated by America, and really the whole western World. We pulled out of Afghanistan knowing full well their government would collapse, wrong only about the speed it would happen. Ignore for a moment the Americans and Afghan allies trapped there because of the speed of the collapse. Think about the everyday citizens. Already there's reports of a woman shot in the street because she wasn't wearing a head covering, girls already being prevented from going to school, neighborhoods disarmed so citizens can't defend themselves. We know how this ends; a country of 38 million will become enslaved to "Sharia Law", they'll once again live in a world where every day they're at risk of dying if they dare speak an opinion contrary to fundamentalist Islam.

    America has spent the last several years bitching about "systemic discrimination", with Democrats ensuring us Trump wants to make "The Handmaid's Tale" come to life. But it was Biden who has actually (and knowingly) put a country of women back at the mercy of the ruthless, woman-enslaving, child-raping Taliban. And we've heard <crickets> from the Democratic base. The Taliban will kill woman at will, and yet the Democrats have no desire to save them. The Taliban will kill gays outright, and yet the party of LGBTQ+ can't be bothered to act. The party that complains America is too sexist has turned their backs on girls our troops have protected from birth, letting them be forced away from schools or even worse, into "marriages" to Taliban fighters(i.e, raped). The party that thinks that America built its wealth upon the abuse of the poor has no desire to spend a small portion of our annual budget to at least try to bring security and freedom to 38 million people in one of the worst areas of the world. The party that regularly slanders our military as full of right-wing racists thinks the security of 38 million people is worth less than keeping a few thousand American troops there continuously.

    While Democrats are especially hypocritical due to the nature of their untrue attacks on Republicans, Republicans are far from innocent in this. Trump ran on a "Leave Afghanistan" platform. Republicans have elected Congressional members opposed to any so called "nation building" at all, such as Rand Paul. According to them, we should have bombed Afghanistan and then just let them be, and we'd be better off. This was always an idiotic position, proven more false as time goes by specifically due to how hard it was to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban with troops *in* the country. Dropping a few bombs and leaving would have allowed them to continue planning and launching more attacks. Then, GOP voters nominated Trump and got him into office. Trump kept his word and created the plan to leave(conditionally), despite the fact there was no expectation Afghanistan was ready for us to leave. Biden ignored that plan and simply left in chaos. But voters got what they asked for either way. A majority of Americans wanted to leave, but were either too uncaring or ignorant to consider the impact on millions of innocent people, or the impact on our security when the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are free to launch new attacks with near zero ability for the U.S. target them at the source beforehand.

    And the rest of the world? I expected their condemnations of the Taliban and the U.S. alike as we dealed Afghanistan right into chaos, but they don't seem to care enough either. Perhaps they're too afraid to condemn us because then the question will become, "If The U.S. won't do it, why don't you send your military in force and save the Afghans instead?". Nope. Virtual silence.

    The West failed by choice. We lost an average of 180 soldiers a year to Afghanistan, every one a tragedy; but that number had dropped significantly  since combat operations were turned over to the Afghan military. It wasn't going great for Afghanistan, but it was going. Despite huge losses of their own they had a military willing to fight so long as we were there to help. When it turned hopeless upon our exit, they crumbled. 

    From this point forward, every Taliban murder of a former Afghan ally, or stoning of a woman for violating Sharia Law, or forced "marriage" of a barely teenage girl to a Taliban fighter, the West had a role. We walked away. Shame on us.