The world watched in horror this summer as the Taliban erased in just days the efforts of the United States to transform Afghanistan into a Western democracy.
According to The Daily Wire, as calls for accountability continue to echo over Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal, a candid letter has surfaced from an Afghan pilot condemning the end of the U.S. military mission, in which he said he felt “abandoned.”
Colonel Belal Kohistani accused the Biden administration and Western allies of abandoning his unit to “death and destitution.”
“How can you abandon us?”
In his letter, Kohistani, a member of the counter-terrorist Special Mission Wings, said that he and his fellow pilots felt abandoned by the United States and the West and that pilots and their families are “waiting” to be rescued by their former allies.
“Our question for NATO and Special Operations Units for US, UK, Australia and Italy is this: How can you abandon us like this?” he wrote.
“The best of NATO and the United States trained the best fighters in Afghanistan; we felt valued, appreciated, and vital to the mission. In the end, it turns out, that was not the case.”
Kohistani said that pilots and their families fear “death and destitution” and feel betrayed as others who did not fight are prioritized for evacuation. “We fought and got our hands dirty so that the rest of these people could have a peaceful life,” he wrote, “but SMW pilots and their families are still in Afghanistan and the US government and those in power are doing nothing about this.”
Biden’s post-Afghan slump
Indeed, many of the so-called “refugees” from Afghanistan were not part of the war effort, as Fox News noted.
The Biden administration has blamed the Taliban’s rapid coup on a lack of will within the ranks of the Afghan army, which collapsed with hardly a shot fired in just days in August, and Biden has said the 20-year Afghanistan war no longer served America’s national interest.
Still, Biden has been widely accused by critics of abandoning American allies and damaging U.S. prestige, and although Americans have long favored ending the unpopular war, a recent poll found Americans believe some troops should have been left in the country.
Thirteen American service members died in a terror attack during the chaotic evacuation, which left hundreds of Americans and many Afghan allies who fear retribution from the Taliban behind. A retaliatory strike that the Biden administration claimed killed terrorists actually killed innocent children, The New York Times reported.
Biden’s approval rating started to drop for the first time during the Afghan crisis, and it has not yet recovered as a series of trends, especially inflation and supply chain problems, continue to dampen public opinion.
The post Afghan pilot pens letter, says he and colleagues were ‘abandoned’ by US government first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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