Kilkenny Major General says USA’s Afghanistan withdrawal could be one of greatest military blunders in history

The US says it’s killed a member from a branch of the Islamic State group in an unmanned airstrike.

It’s after ISIS-K said it was responsible for Thursday’s bombing near Kabul airport, which killed 13 US soldiers.

Conflicting reports also claim nearly 170 Afghans may have died.

Efforts are continuing to airlift eligible people out of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, a local expert says that America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan could be one on the biggest military blunders of all time.

Kilkenny man, Kieran Brennan, is a former Deputy Chief of Staff Operation in the Defence Forces.

Major General Brennan says it’s unbelievable that the US allowed the Taliban to take over the whole country unopposed while they tried to evacuate their personnel:

“What I cannot get my head around is the fact that with all these sophisticated intelligence platforms that particularly the United States military has, that they couldn’t foresee what the Taliban did in the space of literally two weeks. They took over the country from start to finish.

“It’s unprecedented in modern history, I think, that a group could do that. In fact, I was listening to a commentator this morning and he said that this will go down as one of the greatest blunders in military history.”

Continuing, he said the Taliban has been helped to become a modern military force:

“The Taliban now would not have been considered a potent force in the context of defence armies, etc. But they have now acquired a significant and sophisticated armoury that has been handed over to them by the Afghans, which has been provided by the American tax-payer.

“That’s the irony of this… I would suggest they took it over simply because when the Americans decided to leave, the will of the Afghan forces to fight just ebbed away.”