We’re leaving Afghanistan. Our longest war is coming to an end. Joe Biden set the date: August 31. We gone. There’s a part of me that knows this nation will become a haven for terrorists again. At the same time, to secure what the public would consider a win is simply not possible. It would require hundreds of thousands of troops at this point. We’re war weary. It’s time to go home. It’s a rather mixed record and that’s probably being generous.
We spent two decades there. It’s still a tribal nation. US forces being present didn’t speed up the process of forming a liberal democracy. And the Taliban is still there. In fact, they control 85 percent of the country now. Scores of Afghan Security Forces have fled into neighboring Tajikistan. It’s a mess. Nation-building is over. The neoconservative project is over. We left Bagram Air Force base in the middle of the night. Yet, as we leave, there’s one key item that must be recovered and never fall into the hands of the Taliban: a beam from the World Trade Center. It has yet to be located (via NY Post):
A piece of 9/11 history may have been abandoned in Afghanistan after American troops hastily pulled out of a key military base, leaving the New Yorkers who rescued and donated the relic enraged — and worried it might fall into the clutches of the Taliban.
No one seems to know the location of the memorial — a 10-foot-tall, 900-pound steel beam from the World Trade Center which became a landmark at Bagram Airfield after it was donated in 2010 — in the wake of a rushed exit by United States forces from the base last weekend.
Now there’s a “race against the clock” to find it, said retired U.S. Army Col Jeff Cantor.
“We’re determined to find its exact location currently and bring it home,” said Cantor, a Marlboro, NJ, resident who served at Bagram. “It’s really important to those of us who served over there that it doesn’t fall into the hands of the Taliban.”
“It’s absolutely disgraceful. This is a piece of American soil,” seethed Bob Crowley, a retired NYPD officer and member of the Breezy Point, Queens, chapter of the Sons and Daughters of America, the group that salvaged, and then delivered, the beam to troops at Bagram.
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It would be a propaganda win for the terrorists for sure. Hell, us leaving is going to be one for them regardless, but we can at least not offer up to them a beam from one of the towers and force the thousands of families of the victims to have their faces spit on by this news should the item fall into enemy hands. Find it and bring it home, like the rest of our troops.
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