By Miss Kubelik
Between Vietnam, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, and Ronald Reagan's merry little military forays in the 1980s, the United States has been at war for half our life. (Good thing we have nine of them.) Now, thanks to Joe Biden's willingness to take the heat, the last American military plane has left Kabul.
By our watch, that's early, even factoring in the time difference. Maybe the news media will stop clutching their pearls and foisting simplistic observations on their viewers and readers? (Hint: Not a chance. Richard Engel is trending right now, and not because he's delivering reasoned, objective reporting.)
Sure, it's depressing to think about the Afghans who couldn't get out. But the US military and our allies — plus some commercial airlines — evacuated almost 120,000 people. (And a bunch of cats and dogs.) This is an amazing achievement. Those folks will have it rough for a while, because fleeing your country is no small matter. But they'll have the opportunity to start over.
It makes you think of all the descendants of Jews rescued by Oskar Schindler, gathered around his grave in Jerusalem (above), in a moving demonstration of the lives Schindler enabled them to live. And he only saved a tenth of the number of the people we've rescued. We cats salute the 13 US service members who stayed at their posts last week, processing Afghans at the gates of the Kabul airport even though they knew any one of them could be carrying a bomb.
So America's 20-year war is done, and Republicans who have been screaming about impeaching Biden and Blinken are just beginning to look stupid. It won't get any better for them. Leaving Afghanistan was not only the right thing to do, it will have no bearing on the 2022 midterms — except for voters breathing a sigh of relief and saying, thank you, Joe Biden, for getting us out. We cats PURR.
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