Army commander abandoned his Afghan allies to the Taliban’s tender mercies so that he could transport an enemy truck home
On August 31, the official Twitter account of the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army tweeted a photo of its commander, Major General Christopher Donahue.
The image, taken using night vision equipment, shows Donahue boarding a C-17 at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Donahue, according to the tweet, “is the last US #Paratrooper to leave Afghanistan.”
In an exclusive posted on Sunday, conservative website RedState reported what the tweet did not show.
“During the final hours of the evacuation, according to troops under his command and as documented by photographs and witness statements, Donahue ordered all passengers aboard a C-17 transport plane to disembark in order that he can have a memory loaded on the plane, “RedState reported.
“This souvenir, or ‘war trophy,’ was an unusable Taliban-owned Toyota Hilux with a fully operational Russian ZU-23 anti-aircraft autocannon mounted in the bed.”
According to RedState, it is not known how many people momentarily exited the plane to make room for the truck. Still, troops at the scene told the website that “at least 50 people and possibly up to 100 people have been left in Kabul to make way for the Hilux.”
Who were these people?
RedState notes that the soldiers said they were Afghan civilians who had worked for, or provided intelligence to, US troops.
Further, as with the “death lists” the Biden administration provided to “pragmatic” and “pragmatic” Taliban butchers, RedState, citing multiple sources within the military and the intelligence community, said that Donahue had provided the new Afghan leadership with “a full manifesto of passengers on board flights, including passport information, photos and biometric information for those passengers.”
An anonymous military intelligence source told RedState: “The 50 were bona fide personnel who should have been evacuated. They will probably never be heard again. The Taliban have received literally anything that would prevent any of these people from hiding or escaping and escaping, and we know there are a lot of “disappearances” going on.
RedState said it received transcripts of two videos taken of soldiers loading the truck onto the plane. They were not happy and wondered if the general could legally seize a “war trophy”.
“For Donahue, leaving more than 50 evacuees behind to bring the Hilux to Fort Bragg doesn’t make sense,” observed RedState.
“It makes even less sense to use the vehicle as a ‘museum piece’ to commemorate a major failure.”
But in Donahue’s defense, nothing the Biden administration did in the last month of the American era made sense.
Support journalism by clicking here on our GoFundMe or sign up for our free newsletter by clicking here
Android users click here to download the free press app and never miss a story. It’s free and coming soon to Apple users