Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown shared his experience in an emotional speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, warning voters that a second term for President Joe Biden would result in more American military casualties like those experienced in Afghanistan.
Brown was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and was nominated for state Senate. During her speech, Brown gave an enthusiastic endorsement of Trump. Brown will face off against incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) in the state House elections in November.
Brown introduced himself in a short speech and explained the urgency of ensuring that Biden, whose policies have put the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan, does not remain in power for another four years.
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“On September 4, 2008, my Humvee ran over a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. The explosion covered me in diesel fuel and burned me alive,” he recalled. “As I approached death, I felt the flames die down and heard a voice say, ‘It’s going to be OK.'”
“I served you as a soldier and I want to serve you again,” Brown said in an appeal to Nevadans.
Brown encountered an improvised explosive device (IED) en route to Helmand province in Afghanistan, killing one of five men in his unit and severely wounding Brown and three others. Pointing to the burn marks on his face, Brown warned that Biden’s misguided foreign policy will similarly affect countless American soldiers.
“Look at my face,” he urged the audience, “This is the great cost of war. If Joe Biden remains in office, more of our service members will pay this cost.”
“He has brought humiliation and defeat to our country and brought us to the brink of yet another war,” Brown argued. “I have been through hard times, President Trump has been through hard times, but hope has not died, it has been rekindled.”
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Brown’s take on Biden foreign policy is especially notable given Brown’s personal knowledge of the Afghanistan war, which could be described as Biden’s most humiliating foreign policy failure. Prior to Biden’s inauguration, Trump had dispatched then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Doha, Qatar, to hold in-depth talks with the Taliban and negotiate a systematic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The Trump-brokered agreement called for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, in exchange for the Taliban agreeing not to attack U.S. troops and to sever ties with jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda. A month before that deadline, Biden abruptly abandoned the agreement, announced he was extending the 20-year-old war, and contradictorily announced a new policy of “withdrawal.”
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The Taliban responded to the breach of the agreement by launching a campaign to reassert themselves as the governing body of the country. Biden had planned to withdraw by September 11 of that year (the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks on the US mainland), but Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, forcing US troops to withdraw. The collapse of the US-backed government triggered a wave of violence and unrest, leading to a massive jihadist bombing that killed dozens, including 13 US service members.
The Taliban currently rules all of Afghanistan as an “Islamic Emirate” without any significant threat to their power. In May, a government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said in a report that the Biden administration has paid about $11 million in taxes and other fees to the Taliban since the fall of Kabul.
