President Trump on officers related to Afghanistan withdrawal and abandoned military equipment
Grok 2 generated image of President Donald Trump riding a theropod.
Politico reported that President Donald Trump hinted of his plans for senior officers involved with the Afghanistan withdrawal. During his first cabinet meeting, Trump addressed a variety of topics including issues with the U.S. military. On the topic of officers involved with pulling out of Afghanistan, Trump said that they were going to be largely gone. Trump also addressed his desire to recover the billions of dollars worth of military equipment in Afghanistan.
From Fox News:
“We left billions, tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment behind, brand new trucks,” Trump said during his first Cabinet meeting Wednesday. “You see them display it every year, or their little roadway, someplace where they have a road and they drive the, you know, waving the flag and talking about America … that’s all the top of the line stuff. I think we should get a lot of that equipment back.”
The Taliban seized most of the more than $7 billion worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan at the time of the withdrawal in August 2021, according to a Department of Defense report released in 2022.
Although U.S. troops removed or destroyed much of the major equipment that forces used during the drawdown, military equipment including aircraft, ground vehicles and other weapons were left in Afghanistan. The condition of these items remains unknown, but the Pentagon said in the report it would likely fail operationally without maintenance from U.S. contractors.
More details about how the U.S. would retrieve the equipment left in Afghanistan were not immediately available, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
President Joe Biden moved to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, building upon plans from the first Trump administration in 2020 with Taliban leaders to end the war in the region.
Additional Reading:
McLeary, P. (2025, February 26). Trump signals more firings of military leaders. Politico. Link.
Stancy, D. (2025, February 26). Trump pushes to recover ‘billions of dollars’ of military equipment left behind in Afghanistan withdrawal. Fox News. Link.
Category: Big Pentagon, Donald Trump, Military issues
Just because the US didn’t get anything for that equipment doesn’t mean that someone else didn’t steal a windfall. Somehow, somewhere, there is a path showing how O’Biden and other profited from the “abandonment” of billions of dollars of materiel.
I’m trying to channel a vision of a firing range with the responsible parties lined up for firing squads. Hmm, put them in derelict vehicles and the A10s practice on them?
Maybe put in groups for bomber and rocket pilots to practice? Of course, we mustn’t forget the helicopters from the festivities.
We could name the even for Jane & John Fonda-Kerry.
Too little…too late. Firing the Commanders that were involved would (maybe) be all warm and fuzzy, but how much good would that do to “…get the equipment back.”? That shipped done sailed a long minute ago. Now…should Commander on the scene have blown everything up before the last boots left the ground? IMHO…YES. Or better yet, pulled it out before the whole damn thing went to hell. Any Commander that doesn’t know to destroy equipment in place to prevent it falling into the hands of the enemy should be punished…along with the one(s) that gave the orders to abandon in place. Even John Bell Hood had enough sense to blow up 80 cars full of munitions to keep it out of ‘Cump’s hands before leaving Atlanta. Just more examples of the pure waste of American Blood and Treasure that the whole Affy fiasco was. We’ll NEVER get the wasted blood and lives back. Don’t matter if the goat herders can’t maintain the equipment. You can betcha betcha that Ivan AND Joe Chinaman (can we still say that?) have already gotten some examples of each piece and worked on the whole “reverse engineering” of the stuff. What we gonna do, offer to buy it back? Wasting more Treasure? IMHO, again, make a training mission to blow it all to hell, where ever it sits and cut our losses…”collateral damage” be damned!
“destroy equipment in place to prevent it falling into the hands of the enemy”
That was covered in Basic at Dix. Amazing the kind damage
you can create with a P-38 can opener.
But GEN Milley said we weren’t abandoning the equipment, we were leaving it for our allies the Government of Afghanistan. That is why we trained them all to use NATO weapons and left them CONEXes full of US M4s, M249, M240, Night Vision, body armor as well as all those MRAPs, helicopters and a C-130 or two.
We even had to remind them where the keys were because their Windows 10 computers had stopped working and they couldn’t read their e-mails!!! 😉
Destruction methods are usually found in the -10 for the particular piece of equipment. When in doubt, 5 gallons of JP-8 and a Zippo work wonders.
Yeah, no, after four years of Taliban maintenance the vehicles are going to be mostly just good for scrap.
I was a before the event witness to the Army’s disaster of the overrun of Firebase Maryanne in 1971 in Vietnam. As a result of the incompetence of a rifle company commander, the firebase was overrun and blown up by NVA sappers. The CO was killed along with several dozen others. As a result, the battalion commander was relieved, the brigade commander likewise, and the Americal Division commander, Major General Baldwin, was fired. All three received letters of reprimand that ended their careers. Only the company commander and LTC had any responsibility for that debacle. So, with that example, I say every officer involved in that A-Stan shitshow should get the boot.
The years was 1976, I was at the range getting my annual shoot the M-16 training. We started the day with a lecture reminding us of weapon safety, etc. The instructor went to great lengths on how to destroy the weapon should the need arise. Pity he didn’t leave his leave his notes for later generations.