In his trademark style, former president Donald Trump offered a hair-raising idea on how to decommission tens of billions of dollars in U.S.-supplied military weaponry in Afghanistan: ‘bomb the hell out of it.’

With worries mounting over the Taliban’s capture of the abandoned arsenal, the former president advised U.S. President Joe Biden in a withering assessment of the hasty withdrawal overseen by his successor.

“All equipment should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost,” suggested Trump in a statement. “If it is not handed back,” wrote Trump, then “we should either go in with unequivocal Military force and get it or at least bomb the hell out of it.”

The Washington Post has since discredited the US$85-billion figure, saying part of the money went to training and housing Afghan police over the span of a 20-year military presence in the country. According to an estimate by the U.S. Government Accounting Office, the hardware left behind includes 22,174 Humvees, 8,000 trucks, 358,530 assault rifles and 33 Blackhawk helicopters.

About a month ago, Afghanistan’s ministry of defense posted on social media photographs of seven new helicopters arriving in Kabul delivered by the United States.

“They’ll continue to see a steady drumbeat of that kind of support, going forward,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters a few days later at the Pentagon.

In a matter of weeks, however, the Taliban had seized most of the country, as well as any weapons and equipment left behind by fleeing Afghan forces. Videos have shown advancing insurgents inspecting long lines of vehicles and opening crates of new firearms, communications gear and even military drones.

“Everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,” a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

The Taliban offensive gathered momentum after the Trump administration announced last year that it had reached a deal with the group to withdraw American forces by May this year.

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/at-least-bomb-the-hell-out-it-trump-advises-biden-on-abandoned-u-s-military-equipment