Former President Donald Trump is now calling the bungled withdrawal "the most embarrassing, incompetent, and humiliating event in the history of the United States." Bob Maginnis, senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council (FRC), says the images of the C-17 transport plane lifting off from Kabul International Airport surrounded by a desperate crowd hoping to escape the country are hard to forget.
"Today, of course, the Taliban has taken over," he tells AFN. "Women are forced back into the 15th century. The people are mostly starving. They've welcomed in al-Qaeda, as we've seen recently with Zawahiri being killed on the balcony of an apartment belonging to the Interior Ministry of the Taliban government. The Chinese are in there for their own interest to extract minerals, but also to keep the Islamists from penetrating into China."
So Maginnis can see nothing good coming from America's military absence there.
"I know the rationale was that we needed to put our forces in the Asia-Pacific to counter China," he notes. "I haven't seen that move yet, although it is much in discussion."
But regarding the situation in Afghanistan, the FRC spokesman reiterates, "I see only negative outcomes at this point."
