Adding insult to injury, Joe Biden and his crack team of defense experts are not only leaving American citizens stranded in a war torn nation, but they’re leaving a sizable weapons arsenal as well.
The Taliban army has been restocked with vehicles, weapons, and aircrafts thanks to the inability of the cognitively deficient commander in chief.
A government watchdog group says the U.S. military is leaving behind 75,000 vehicles, 600,000 weapons and 208 aircraft in Afghanistan as forces evacuate the country after a 20-year war.
The Taliban has now become a major U.S. arms dealer.
Of the vehicles left in Afghanistan, 50,000 are tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees they control about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and even about 150 armored personnel carriers.
Since 2001, the U.S. has spent $83 billion on Afghan security forces through training and equipment, he said.
And to top it off, Biden’s Pentagon isn’t even aware of everything they’re leaving behind. According to watchdog groups, $200 million worth of drones have disappeared and 600,000 are unaccounted for. There’s no telling who’s currently in possession of these weapons.
The left-behind equipment and weapons are worth billions.
While it’s virtually impossible to operate advanced aircraft without training, seizing the hardware gives the militants a propaganda boost and underscores the amount of wasted funds on U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. When radical, anti-Western groups get their hands on American-made weaponry, it becomes a status symbol, a psychological win, bragging rights of sorts.
According to the watchdog report:
Between 2003 and 2016, the United States transferred 75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment to Afghan forces, according to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report. From 2017 to 2019, the United States also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the equipment is lost to the Taliban, “and obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”
Last week, he admitted that a fair amount of U.S. weaponry would inevitable fall into the hands of the Taliban.
Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan: “Certainly a fair amount” of U.S. weapons “has fallen into the hands of the Taliban” pic.twitter.com/CWhUAhN6jh
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 17, 2021
Still, Sullivan defended President Joe Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan, claiming the weapons left in Afghanistan were given to Afghani Forces, not the Taliban, even though intelligence reports signaled the likelihood of a Taliban takeover was high.
Author: Nolan Sheridan