Being one of our longstanding allies in the war in Afghanistan, Great Britain also has people left stranded in the country at this point. They also have their own translators and helpers to worry about. The Brits have been working to identify all of their citizens and Afghan associates around the country and have been working to get them out, but it’s going to take time. With that in mind, it was announced today that Prime Minister Borish Johnson will be pushing Joe Biden to extend the evacuation deadline past August 31 during a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven tomorrow. But he seems to have more of a grip of the realities on the ground than his American counterpart because even the British Armed Forces Minister said that the Taliban will probably have the final say in the matter. (Reuters)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will urge U.S. President Joe Biden this week to extend the evacuation deadline from Afghanistan, but even if one is agreed, the West will also need the approval of the Taliban, a defence minister said.

Johnson will host a virtual meeting of leaders from the Group of Seven advanced economies on Tuesday to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan where thousands of people have descended on Kabul airport in a bid to flee the Taliban.

James Heappey, minister for the armed forces, said Britain was pushing for the deadline to be pushed beyond Aug. 31 after it identified thousands of people, including Afghan citizens, that it wants to help evacuate.

BoJo has a vested interest and responsibility to get his own people and their Afghan helpers safely out of the country just like we do. They have fewer people in total to move, so it’s probably a more manageable task, assuming they can identify and locate everyone and find some way to get them to the airport. (Easier said than done, I know.)

But the Armed Forces Minister is offering everyone a sobering glimpse of reality. Speaking of the upcoming meeting of the Group of Seven, Heappey admitted that while they would like to see an extension, these global leaders no longer have the ability to make such pronouncements, and the Taliban “will get a vote.”

“Even though they are the seven most powerful people on the planet they don’t get to take that decision in isolation. The Taliban get a vote as well.”

It sounds like the Taliban gets more than one vote. Both Biden and Johnson may have already ceded the power of the veto to the terrorists. And as Ed Morrissey already brought up this morning, the Taliban is preemptively saying that an extension isn’t in the cards. They are threatening reprisals if we’re not out by the 31st and apparently we have seven of the most powerful nations on the planet taking them seriously.

Is there a backup plan? Possibly. Biden is supposedly talking about launching airstrikes against some of the biggest pieces of military equipment abandoned in the country. (Daily Wire)

“The Biden administration is considering launching airstrikes against the larger equipment,” Axios reported. “They also fear that such a move could provoke the Taliban at a time where the U.S. is focusing on evacuating people from Afghanistan.”

The news comes as experts worry that the billions of dollars in equipment that was abandoned could fuel a regional arms bazaar that would supply Islamic terrorists.

But won’t that just make the Taliban more likely to retaliate? Perhaps, but it could play out a couple of different ways. First, if the Taliban sees that we’re still prepared to bring in some heavy airpower even if it means significant collateral damage, the same could happen to their forces in Kabul if they try to overplay their hand. That might lead them to look more kindly at an extension. The more nauseating alternative is that Biden could make it clear that he’s ready to take out the heavy military gear, but then put that on the table and agree not to blow it up if the Taliban gives us an extension.

The idea that the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain have to go begging for “permission” for anything from the heads of a terrorist organization is sickening. Unfortunately, this withdrawal was so poorly planned (if there was a plan at all) that we’ve now left our proverbial fingers in the meat slicer and we may have lost most of our leverage. With all of those people left to rescue and our only exit route in such a precarious condition, the Taliban is probably posed to embarrass us yet again on the global stage.