WOW, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING? China Used Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal to Score Propaganda Points, Pentagon Finds.

The Chinese Communist Party used the botched American military withdrawal from Afghanistan to portray the U.S. as an unreliable international partner and a nation in decline, the Department of Defense found.

In a Tuesday report to Congress on national security developments involving China, the DOD noted that the CCP exploited the Afghanistan embarrassment to undermine the U.S. and its reputation.

“In 2021, the PRC employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence, such as highlighting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and criticizing U.S.-backed security partnerships,” the department concluded.

The CCP used the foreign policy failure as “evidence that the U.S. is an unreliable partner and declining power,” the report said. . . .

In August 2021, the Biden administration presided over a messy military departure from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to seize control of Kabul before U.S. forces and diplomats had vacated the country.

The withdrawal ended in chaos, with 13 American service men killed in a suicide bombing and desperate U.S. citizens and Afghan refugees scrambling to evacuate the war-torn country. As the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, as many as 9,000 Americans were left in the country, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released in February 2022.

How many are still there?