“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

So warned Abraham Lincoln in a speech in January 1838.

On November 5, 2024, Americans chose to die by suicide.

They re-elected Donald Trump President by 76,429,164 votes over 73,736,923 votes for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Abraham Lincoln

The two issues securing his victory were hatred of illegal immigrants and inflationary prices.

Harris had repeatedly cited Trump as a threat to democracy. In her “closing argument” to voters on October 29. She warned that Trump was “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.” 

Trump “would walk into [the Oval] Office with an enemies list when elected.” 

It hasn’t taken long to prove Harris’ warning correct. On November 16, the NBC News website carried the following story:

“The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan. 

“Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason.” 

The Pentagon

The article stated that Trump had condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.” 

Ignored in all of this:

• The military officers were following the lawful orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. 
• Trump first reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, roughly 13,000 troops, and release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison.
• The Biden administration then completed the withdrawal and badly overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own.   

Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, has criticized the withdrawal, saying the U.S. lost the war and wasted billions of dollars. 

In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Hegseth wrote, “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired. The debacle in Afghanistan, of course, is the most glaring example.”

This despite the blunt reality that the United States had been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001.

The war began as a “find and destroy” mission against Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11. He was then living in Afghanistan under the protection of its ruling thugocracy, the Taliban. 

Osama bin Laden

The administration of President George W. Bush demanded his immediate surrender to American justice.

The Taliban refused.

So, on October 7, 2001—less than one month from the 9/11 attacks—American bombers began pounding Taliban positions.

The whole point of the campaign was to pressure the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden.

But the Taliban refused. Bin Laden holed up in the mountains of Tora Bora, and then ultimately escaped into Pakistan.

After December, 2001, American Intelligence completely lost track of Bin Laden. CIA officials repeatedly said he was likely living in the “no-man’s-land” between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Still, the United States continued to commit forces to Afghanistan—to turn a primitive, warlord-ruled country into a modern-day democracy.

There was, admittedly, a great deal to detest about the Taliban:

• When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they turned soccer stadiums into execution plazas for mass beheadings or shootings.
• Taliban “fighters” proved their “courage” by throwing acid into the faces of women who dared to attend school.

Taliban religious police beating a woman

• On August 8, 1989, the Taliban attacked Mazar-i-Sharif. Talibanists began shooting people in the street, then moved on to mass rapes of women. Thousands of people were locked in containers and left to suffocate.
• The Taliban forbade women to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative and wearing the burqa—a traditional dress covering the entire body. Those who disobeyed were publicly beaten.

Yet, as horrific as such atrocities were, these did not obligate the United States to spend eternity trying to bring civilization to this barbaric country.

On July 8, 2021, President Joseph Biden said that America would withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan by August 31, thus ending the nearly 20-year war.

“How many more, how many more thousands of American daughters and sons are you willing to risk?” Biden said to those calling for the United States to extend the military operation. 

Biden thus became the first President since 2001 to recognize the futility of sacrificing American lives to turn a hopelessly barbaric pseudo-country into a modern nation.

He gave lawful orders for such a withdrawal.

Now those officers who followed those lawful orders risk being court-martialed and imprisoned—or even executed.