Back in 2014, the Obama administration traded five key Taliban members who were being held in Guantanamo for a U.S. soldier named Bowe Bergdahl who had deserted his post and gotten captured by the Taliban in 2009.
At the time, people railed against Obama for the stupidity of the decision, saying it was supremely dumb to trade five top enemy soldiers for one AWOL sergeant who had abandoned his duties and his oath.
Congressional investigators from the Governmental Accountability Office also determined that the trade was a violation of the law.
No matter, though! Obama said the "Taliban 5" would be kept in Qatar, which definitely isn't known as a middleman for various Islamist groups and sympathizers.
He PINKY PROMISED us with sprinkles and sunshine that those baddies weren't gonna set foot in Afghanistan again!
Yeah, that lasted five seconds.
The "Taliban 5" were quickly back in Afghanistan, where all of them – led by former detainee Khairullah Khairkhwa – just orchestrated the entire takeover of the nation.
Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn't long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.
Eventually, they were recognized by Western diplomats as official representatives of the Taliban during recent "peace" talks.
Remember, though, the only controversy of Obama's time in office was his tan suit!
Earlier this year, one of them, Khairullah Khairkhwa, actually sat across the table from President Biden's envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Moscow, where Khairkhwa was part of the official Taliban delegation that negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.
"I started jihad to remove foreign forces from my country and establish an Islamic government, and jihad will continue until we reach that goal through a political agreement," Khairkhwa said at the summit.
Sounds like a guy who should have been released from maximum security prison. Instead, Obama just let him go with pretty much no strings attached. That's got to be the stupidest military deal in history.
After raiding the presidential palace in Kabul, a group of armed Taliban fighters told Al Jazeera that they were arranging to bring back their Gitmo-paroled leadership from Qatar upon securing the capital. One unidentified fighter, who blasted America for "oppressing our people for 20 years," claimed he had also been locked up at the Guantanamo Bay facility. It's more evidence that Gitmo catch-and-release policies facilitated the fall of Afghanistan to the enemy that Washington vowed to crush after 9/11.
If only, say, the Pentagon had warned that these guys were way too dangerous to let go.
Oh wait...
The mastermind of the regime change is former detainee Khairkhwa, the Taliban mullah whom Obama released from Gitmo even though the Pentagon classified him as too dangerous to release.
Khairkhwa said last year and earlier this year that they wouldn't retaliate against Afghans who helped the U.S. and that they'd be very considerate if Biden would just get American troops to leave immediately.
Turns out, terrorists tend to lie!
Reports coming out of Kandahar and Kabul indicate the extremists have already broken their word. Taliban thugs have started a reign of terror against people who cooperated with Westerners. Guided by a "kill list," they are going door to door to punish their enemies.
It would be silly of me not to point out that Obama's VP at the time of the release was this guy:
What kind of policies can we look forward to under Khairkhwa and his friends?
Mullah Khairkhwa previously served as the Taliban's interior minister in Afghanistan, where he oversaw enforcement of brutal Islamist punishments, including beheadings and stonings. After 9/11, he was arrested in Pakistan and sent to Gitmo in 2002. The Pentagon accused him of closely associating with Osama bin Laden and bin Laden's al Qaeda henchmen.
Absolutely wonderful.
For the entire nation of Afghanistan, we got a cowardly soldier who was court-martialed and pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.
Well done, everyone. Oh, and you're wondering, Biden has resumed Obama's policy of releasing Gitmo prisoners, which I'm sure won't come back to bite us in another 7 years.
Our enemies are rolling on the floor laughing at us.
