The Path to Zero in Afghanistan = the Path to Hell:

Substack

Even as wildfires and incredible heat have devastated parts of Europe, the summer of 2026 has been almost entirely rained out in New York City. Flash floods, thunderstorms, heavy downpours, incessant rain. The poets understand things best. As Paul Verlaine put it:

"Il pleure dans mon cœur

Comme il pleut sur la ville;

Quelle est cette langueur

Qui pénètre mon cœur ?

It rains in my heart as it rains on the village; what is this melancholy that penetrates my heart?

Melancholy—yes, that's precisely it. Here's why.

Yesterday, I watched an amazing and terrifying documentary that the Wall Street Journal published. It is free for all to watch. The film concerns the way in which America pulled out of Afghanistan five years ago. Biden's decision to do so and in the way he insisted that it be done could not have been a more horrendous and ill-advised choice. After abandoning the airbase at Bagram, leaving behind hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment for the Taliban; after refusing to keep a modest number of American soldiers behind; after failing to evacuate embassy personnel, Afghan allies, and Afghan civilians who had helped America in a timely way—America shamefully, hastily, crazily withdrew, thus causing extraordinary and lifelong injury to our own soldiers, not to mention the erasure of Afghan women (literally their faces were blacked out in windows and under heavy burqas). Women were restricted in every possible way.

America did not go into Afghanistan to "save" women but to find Bin Laden, to respond to 9/11. However, our boots on the ground led to extraordinary freedom for women.

Why do I care about this? Because on that last day, August 26th, 2021, I had someone who has become very precious to me on the way to the Hamid Karzai Airport in Kabul, running under the Taliban batons, whips, and guns; trying to hold her own in the massive surge of mainly men who were doing the same thing. Women and children were largely on their own.

I am remembering the 398 women that my little grassroots feminist team rescued that last day. I am referring to Mandy Sanghera, myself, and a third woman whom I cannot name but who obtained the planes for us. After months of encrypted correspondence, the woman whom I would soon choose as my Afghan granddaughter was on the run towards Abby Gate. Her mother and grandmother could not keep up. They fell back. Her father pushed on.

Did our women make it? Did my future granddaughter get out? We had no way of knowing.

Were they blown up by the ISIS-K suicide/homicide bomber together with thirteen of our Marines? It turned out that "our" women had just taken off and were able to watch the bombing from their plane windows.

All the while I was safely here in New York City, and yet, watching this documentary very slightly traumatized me.

What I learned—what I saw with my own eyes—was the torturous plight that President Biden's policy inflicted on so many brave young American soldiers. The Afghan crowds were wild, desperate, totally out of control. The smell of blood, feces, sweat was everywhere. The military orders kept changing and were often incomprehensible. Parents tried to hand, or really to throw, infants and children over a high wall. A garbage-filled moat surrounded that high barbed wire fence. Yes, America still managed to rescue 124,000 Afghans, and yet, the rest were about to be tortured, beheaded, executed by the gleeful Taliban.

The soldiers on camera describe their psychological war wounds, not as PTSD but as a "moral injury." The faces of all those whom they could not rescue, the sight of their 13 compatriots blown up by the ISIS-K bomber, how the Afghan civilians begged the Marines to shoot them if they could not rescue them—words fail me at this point.

Of course, a genuine rescue, even of one woman, takes years, a lifetime to accomplish. It does not and cannot end with the flight to a European country. That is another story to be told.

What I had not realized was the profoundly harmful effect America's decision to draw "down to zero" had on our own young soldiers.

One Marine on camera wanted the leaders in charge of this disaster to be held accountable. He also said that it might go a long way if any of them sought "forgiveness."

Why did this matter so much to me? As my readers know, I was once held captive in Kabul in a marriage. I was rescuing myself. It was both an altruistic and a redemptive act on my part.

More important: The documentary states (and I agree) that America's dysfunctional and cowardly withdrawal led to Russia, Iran, and Hamas in Gaza to draw their own conclusions about American might.

A Note to My Readers: I am not forgetting that President George W. sent Saudis back home on 9/11 and 9/12 nor am I forgetting the failures of every single American President in terms of understanding how dangerous Islamic Jihad truly is and that includes Presidents Clinton (1 and 2), George H.W., Obama (1 and 2), Biden (1 and 2), and Trump in his first term.

That danger is still with us growing stronger by the hour.