Yeah so that absolute catastrophe that was the Biden administration's immediate and complete pull-out of Afghanistan -- turning our backs on many Americans, as well as any and all Afghans who have helped us for the past who-even-remembers-how-many years, and handing the country of Afghanistan as well as $85 billion in U.S. weapons and vehicles over to the Taliban terror group -- continues to pay off in spades.
Afghanistan is now on the brink of a mass starvation event that will be especially brutal on children:
Nearly four months since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass starvation that aid groups say threatens to kill a million children this winter — a toll that would dwarf the total number of Afghan civilians estimated to have been killed as a direct result of the war over the past 20 years.
While Afghanistan has suffered from malnutrition for decades, the country's hunger crisis has drastically worsened in recent months. This winter, an estimated 22.8 million people — more than half the population — are expected to face potentially life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to an analysis by the United Nations World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization. Of those, 8.7 million people are nearing famine — the worst stage of a food crisis.
Such widespread hunger is the most devastating sign of the economic crash that has crippled Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power. Practically overnight, billions of dollars in foreign aid that propped up the previous Western-backed government vanished and U.S. sanctions on the Taliban isolated the country from the global financial system, paralyzing Afghan banks and impeding relief work by humanitarian organizations.
Across the country, millions of Afghans — from day laborers to doctors and teachers — have gone months without steady or any incomes. The prices of food and other basic goods have soared beyond the reach of many families. Emaciated children and anemic mothers have flooded into the malnutrition wards of hospitals, many of those facilities bereft of medical supplies that donor aid once provided.
There is a lot more info at the NYT article as well as some heartbreaking photos.
I don't know why Biden blew the whistle and ordered all U.S. military out of Afghanistan immediately the way he did. But now we know one reason why so many Afghans tried to cling to the sides of U.S. planes as they took off for the last time.
Maybe Biden doesn't even know why he did what he did. I guess that's what happens when you elect an elderly man with deteriorating mental faculties to lead your country.
When and how to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan is the type of complex, high-level decision that requires rigorous thought, because it has implications for many people, and for many years. As the people of Afghanistan are tragically finding out.
They, and I, mourn the incompetence of Biden administration.
