After twenty years of the war in Afghanistan, the United States of America has officially decided to cease operations and remove all personnel from the country.  In early August, President Biden and his advisors determined to remove all of the remaining troops.  The moments that followed had American citizens and Afghans, who had worked for or helped the United States in the 20 years, racing to the Kabul Airport.  The Taliban surrounded the airport and quickly took control of the neighboring cities.  The United States did everything they could to evacuate over 122,000 people since August 14th, but they left billions of dollars worth of military equipment in the process. 13 United States Service Members and 90 Afghans passed away from a bombing at the Kabul Airport during evacuations.

Suleman Sami, a freshman Computer Information System major, has family members that derive from a neighboring country to Afghanistan.  Sami believes that the situation could have been handled much better.

“It was a mistake by Joe Biden,” said Sami. “He should’ve taken out the refugees and American citizens first.  Then take out the equipment and, lastly, the military.  Biden completely messed up and it was all his fault.”

Kevin Cooney, an undecided freshman, seemed sorrowful by all the American and Afghan lives that had been affected by the Taliban during the evacuation process.

“It’s obviously devastating to see so many men and women killed, who honestly should not have been put in that situation.  I feel like we could’ve handled it a lot better,”  Cooney explained.  “Leaving equipment to the Taliban is just ignorant and should’ve been easily avoided.  Now it’s going to bite us in the butt and we have only made it harder on ourselves to retrieve our equipment.”

Kaitlyn Bevilaque, a sophomore majoring in Elementary Education, followed the situation closely and wanted to share her views on the events that unfolded.

“I’ll just say that there could have been a trillion ways to deal with the situation and we, as a nation, did not think of all of them before we acted,” said Bevilaque. “President sleepy Joseph (Biden) should have taken all of the United States citizens, refugees, and everyone who needed safety out first.”

She continued, “Since he did not, we now have the same situation, if not worse, that we did twenty years ago.  We are back to square one and are moving backwards rather than moving forward.  I believe this action made the United States look weak.”

Josua Melton graduated from Stockton University in the fall of 2018 with a degree in Sociology.  Melton served in the United States Navy and currently works at Stockton.  As someone who has firsthand experience in one branch of the United States Armed Forces, Melton was very knowledgeable on the topic.

“The current event, as a US Navy veteran, we are slowly departing that country without democracy, setting up a government for them to help support.  So the Taliban, right now, are bullying the people who want the country to be a democracy, instead of being a dictatorship under Taliban or the Islamic radicalism.  For us not being there to support the democracy change and just leaving Afghanistan to the let the country run on their own means that it’s kind of what we did with Saudi Arabia or the same ideal, so it’s kind of a mess in my opinion.”

All of the current and former students that voiced their opinions in this article believed that the situation should have been handled much better and were saddened by the lives that were lost during the evacuation.