Reason’s Eric Boehm writes, “When a group of Taliban fighters stormed the hastily abandoned presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, earlier this week, they carried a powerful symbol of the changing times: American-issued M16 and M4 rifles.”

“It’s not just a propaganda coup,” Boehm continued. “As the Taliban swept into full control of Afghanistan this week, they also claimed a cornucopia of military gear, equipment, and weapons that had been supplied to the Afghan government by the United States. There’s no way to determine how much American military gear has ended up in the hands of Taliban fighters, but the ‘current intelligence assessment was that the Taliban are believed to control more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones,’ Reuters reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed U.S. official.”

Boehm added, “The aircraft and drones are probably useless without training and support staff. But the Humvees and small arms are exactly the sorts of things that a new regime could use to impose its will on the people of Afghanistan.”

“After nearly 20 years of fighting, the Taliban that America is leaving behind is almost certainly better-supplied than it was when the U.S. military invaded in October 2001,” Boehm noted.

Read the entire column here.

The post The U.S. left the Taliban better supplied with weapons than it was in 2001 appeared first on Liberty Tree.

More people should have listened to Ron Paul years ago

My father retired from Congress a decade ago. But he had a few questions that we should have paid closer attention to.

America would have been better off if our leaders had listened to Ron Paul years ago:

“What if our foreign policy of the past century is deeply flawed and has not served our national security interests?

What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others and has nothing to do with us being free and prosperous?

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers Both the United States and Israel?

More people should have listened to @RonPaul years ago.

Come over to https://t.co/1sAnMwUZeq today and all this week for if you’re tired of Big Tech censorship and want unfiltered news on Afghanistan and what we should learn (hint a the neocons were wrong then and wrong today). https://t.co/W7sJT4J3pU

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 16, 2021

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan is directly related to the hatred directed toward us?

What is some day it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair tradeoff for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens (on 9/11).

What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy?

What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful process of inflating and borrowing?

What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?

What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded? Nothing.

But what happens if my concerns are justified and ignored? Nothing good.”

The post More people should have listened to Ron Paul years ago appeared first on Liberty Tree.