Many of the reports coming out of Afghanistan this past week mention something that is simultaneously deplored and swept under the rug. I mean the fact that when the United States raised the white flag to the Taliban it left behind an enormous amount of American-made military hardware. Just a couple of weeks ago, all of that war-making matériel had been the property of two entities. Some belonged to U.S. forces themselves. A lot of it belonged to the U.S.-supplied Afghan government that was—the mighty 300,000 man-strong force that, on July 8, President Joe Biden said would prevail over the Taliban if push came to shove. Push did come to shove, as we all know, and now those vast stores of military hardware are under sole control of the Taliban. There have been several differing inventories of these stockpiles. One just published in the London Times provides perhaps the most authoritative …