Our enemies on 9/11 were al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Now both have our weapons

Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace commented on Fox News Thursday about the U.S. weapons that have now ended up in Taliban hands after American troop withdrawal.

"Perhaps we should have taken some of that equipment," Mace said during an interview. "Perhaps we should have demolished some of that equipment so that it did not get into the hands of terrorists."

"So they should not be using our arms and munitions, but this is what happens, and this happened with the United States previously - we have not learned these lessons."

No, we have not learned. Let's focus on one word Mace said: "previously."

Because that is key.

Sen. Rand Paul wrote about U.S. weapons ending up in enemy hands in 2019, "Iran, to this day, the military still has some U.S. weapons left over from weapons the U.S. supplied to the shah. In Iraq, some of the weapons we gave the country to fight Iran were still there when we returned to fight Saddam Hussein. In Afghanistan, some of the weapons we gave the mujahedeen to fight the Russians were still there when we returned to fight the Taliban."

"Proliferating arms in the midst of chaos is a recipe for disaster," Paul observed.

No one should be surprised Saudi Arabia is giving American-made weapons to al-Qaeda: @RandPaul said US weapons would end up in terrorists' hands. You should have listened to Rand Paul https://t.co/rltbcdEB8f

— Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) February 6, 2019

Though the details of the situations vary, in the recent past U.S. weapons that have been sold to Saudi Arabia or given to insurgents in Syria have wound up in enemy hands, including al-Qaeda and similar groups.

A 2015 Reuters report noted, and I could cite many reports of the same thing happening but consider this a typical example: "Syrian rebels trained by the United States gave some of their equipment to the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday, the latest blow to a troubled U.S. effort to train local partners to fight Islamic State militants."

"The rebels surrendered six pick-up trucks and some ammunition, or about one-quarter of their issued equipment," the report noted.

So... the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan to punish the Taliban for harboring al-Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on 9/11. America's explicit military goal was to route the Taliban and stomp out al-Qaeda.

Yet an unavoidable result of twenty years of war is that the U.S. has since armed al-Qaeda inadvertently and now arms the Taliban, however accidentally.

What was the point of the war again?