In Afghanistan US translator Sohail Pardis was beheaded by the Taliban. Anyone suspected of aiding the US faces a similar fate.

What immediately comes to mind is the stream of pro-US Vietnamese trying to board the last helicopter to leave Saigon in 1975. We left South Vietnam with a promise to protect them if the North invaded. The North did invade. We did nothing, proving to a generation worldwide that it was more dangerous to be our friend than to be our enemy.

We could have provided means for our friends to escape to freedom. We didn’t. On the contrary, liberal icon California Governor Jerry Brown refused to take any Vietnamese refugees. And now, leaving Afghanistan, we could have provided means for our friends to escape to freedom. Again, we did little. We learned nothing.

Over a million Boat People took to leaky boats and rafts to escape communism in Vietnam. They preferred waters infested by sharks and pirates to the joys of “true socialism.” Similar Boat People risked their lives to escape “true socialism” in Cuba. Yes, it has been tried, many times. It “works” if by this you mean giving a few bureaucrats absolute power over millions of people. But if by “works” you mean providing a decent living and a modicum of freedom, then no, it doesn’t work.

Now we are leaving a land-locked nation, so there will be no more Boat People to embarrass us, if we are still capable of embarrassment. There will only be headless corpses of those who were unwise enough to help Americans. And another generation worldwide learns that it is more dangerous to be our friend than to be our enemy. Again we are doing something both evil and stupid.

Leave no man behind. Cover your behind. Our choice.

🇦🇫 In Afghanistan, the US translator Sohail Pardis was beheaded.#Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/Tm9OKAbuQa

— War Crimes (@warcrimex) July 24, 2021