Thirteen American servicemen. Nearly 200 Afghanistan citizens. And all it took was a lone suicide bomber positioning himself properly for maximum human loss and collateral destruction at crowded Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. And just the one bomber needed, who freely and happily chose his and all those innocents’ bloody fate, trusting completely in the existence of whatever “Valhalla” version of “Heaven” that he and the rest of his ISIS-Khorasan devils believe in. And the fact that one of the victims, Sgt. Johanny Rosario lived just down the street in Lawrence, Massachusetts makes the tragedy strike home even deeper.

August 31, president Joe Biden’s deadline date for all Americans and repositioned Afghans to be evacuated, shouldn’t be looked upon as anything definite … quite the contrary. Currently there are between 350 and a thousand total Americans and Afghan allies stuck in the nation, as American servicemen and women continue working their arduous schedule of vacating lines of human beings caught in this crossfire of hatred. Planes are still taking off one by one with more evacuees, and ground forces are still charged to maintain what local security they can. The latter task is the most difficult and unnerving one, as without the ability to read minds it is impossible to know for sure how harmless anyone and everyone in the area is, or in last Thursday’s case how debased with evil. Anyone with a passport is being urged to get to the airport and escape … the question is the number of foolish citizens who decide to stay behind, and how much their numbers will affect the deadline.

The Taliban correctly condemned the bombing but they lied in their teeth in its aftermath by originally claiming that the area of the explosion was under US security. Nothing could be further from the truth…the safety of the entire Kabul airport is the Taliban’s responsibility, and it behooves them to do as good a job as possible until US and other forces are safely gone, as this is their most fervent desire now that they have pretty much secured the country in a ridiculously short time.

President Biden vowed revenge in his nationwide address last week against the perpetrators, and Friday’s unmanned air strike against an ISIS-K stronghold in the Nangarhar Province was a success, resulting in group casualties, and thankfully no civilians. And we’ll all be reading about similar strikes in the coming days, even after the evacuation is complete.

The next couple of weeks should be extremely fraught, with the ever-present probability of more ISIS-generated carnage to come. Biden made a courageous decision to end this unwinnable war when he did, knowing full well of the possibility of an ugly aftermath before the pullout was complete. Like Vietnam this perpetual war should’ve been ended long before former president Donald Trump began the withdrawal in February 2020, to be sped up this year by Biden.

America has its tendrils sunk into a myriad of nations across the globe. It’s long past time to end this Afghan quagmire, an invasion that was led for good reasons back in 2001 but had turned into just another one of our drawn-out and deadly slogs after Osama bin Laden was assassinated.