Afghanistan roundup
No doubt there are other things happening in the world, but right now Afghanistan is front and center.
(1) Here’s how Joe Biden, our stalwart Commander-in-Chief, indicated in his Stephanopoulos interview that he is unaware that we have US military stationed in Syria:
Most intelligence analysis has predicted that al Qaeda would come back 18 to 24 months after a withdrawal of American troops,” Stephanopoulos said. “Is that analysis now being revised? Could it be sooner?”
“It could be,” said Biden. “But George, look, here’s the deal. Al Qaeda, ISIS, they metastasize. There’s a significantly greater threat to the United States from Syria. There’s a significantly greater threat from East Africa. There’s significant greater threat to other places in the world than it is from the mountains of Afghanistan. And we have maintained the ability to have an over-the-horizon capability to take them out. We don’t have military in Syria to make sure that we’re going be protected.”
Um, yes we do, Mr. President! There are currently about 900 U.S. service members stationed in Syria.
In fact, it’s a major scandal that there are U.S. troops over there at all. Former President Donald Trump ordered their withdrawal in 2018, declaring, “We have won against ISIS.” The then-commander of the military repeated the order again in 2019, only to have nameless bureaucrats lie to their superiors and simply undermine his order.
Biden’s statement represents an alarming degree of ignorance, but unfortunately it’s less alarming than most of what he’s been doing lately and most of what comes out of his mouth.
But I have a theory about his Syria ignorance, and I’m only being a little facetious. I think “they” (whoever is in charge of briefing him) are keeping the news about Syria from him because if he finds out they fear he’ll do some crazy thing like in Afghanistan that will draw additional attention and ire – although not as much furor as with Afghanistan, where the length and scope of our commitment and the number of our people there is far greater.
(2) I am surprised that CNN is covering this with any degree of honesty:
#BREAKING from CNN's @ClarissaWard: "During the last eight hours, the time that we've been waiting here, we have not seen a single U.S. flight evacuate people. We saw one U.S. flight took off about half an hour to an hour ago but it was filled with U.S. servicemen and women." pic.twitter.com/rVtP7VMIOj
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 20, 2021
If you listen to the clip, you’ll hear Ward say that the troops there feel guilt. No need for them to feel guilt, though, although some of them probably might describe it that way. They have been betrayed by their leaders, who have also betrayed the Afghan people who trusted them, and who have indeed betrayed every American who fought there, the American people, and our allies as well. What the military members there should feel and probably do feel is rage at that betrayal, and at the fact that they (and all of us) have been shamed by the behavior of this administration.
(3) Absolutely dreadful:
Horrendous.
RIP. https://t.co/udTmcaA2Yl— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 19, 2021
(4) Here’s the full interview transcript of Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, if you can stomach it. In the video they showed, they apparently edited out the worst parts of Biden’s performance.
Regarding #2,
As I wrote when this first happened, how quickly the coverage changed on Biden when this happened makes me think the fix is in and he will step down in less than 12 months. It’s an awful thing, and no matter who was President, or what his or her mental acuity was, press reports would be scathing, but a fair amount of reporting is specifically calling out his diminished mental capacity. I don’t believe this was a set-up at all, but, perhaps, there was a general sense that a shake up is needed to get Kamala in the oval office prior to the mid-terms and this was the first, obvious event to pop up that makes Biden’s removal not only plausible, but preferable, and good for Dem PR.
Transcripts I learned from Dennis Prager are a better way to grasp every word if hopefully verbatim. He would read Barack flowery speeches and find the words ment nothing but listening you might not catch that .
I feel for troops past and maybe just being pulled out, like a job unfinished wouldn’t doubt many feel they are running away.
And as said down a few threads getting more convinced everything done is according to a plan.
I thought I saw yesterday a report that we were sending more troops into HKIA but that above seems to say we are taking them out and leaving the civilians instead.
I hope you’re right, Rufus T.
I certainly have no love for Kamala Harris, but at minimum she is able to comprehend what’s going on around her and is herself comprehensible. I honestly can’t say the same for the current occupant of the oval office.
Excepting the fraud, millions of voters went for this guy, with, presumably, their eyes open. Or, at least, they’d hardly claim they voted while sleepwalking or something.
What will they say? I’m anticipating a jaw-jutting variation of “But Trump!”
I imagine that the decision of whether to remove Joe Biden or not will be made within the Deep State. If he’s become a liability to their agenda, he will have to be removed. If it is decided that it’s time to remove him, you’ll start to see Democrat Senators and Congress Critters publically pushing for his removal via the 25th Amendment as well as all sorts of articles at the NYT and WaPo and all the other Deep State organs.
Some countries care about their own.
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2021/08/20/british-and-french-troops-are-going-out-into-kabul-to-rescue-their-citizens-while-the-us-sticks-to-the-airport-n410356
Perhaps the blinders are coming off of the reporters and other media and reality is setting in, this mess can not be spun, the spinner will not work and the whole debacle is starting to smell, like bad fish and low tide. I think the entire Biden administration has been tainted long with the Democratic leadership in Congress, perhaps wishful thinking but the press might start smelling blood and detecting weakness and they do love being bullies. We might also be on the edge of some real bad stuff coming along in the next year or two, kind of like the mid 1930’s when folks were trying to secure ‘peace in our time’ and other bad ideas while the Axis powers had a plan of their own. So best thing that could happen will be the enough of those who voted for Biden and his gang will decide we need some actual leadership, maybe even the orange headed clown, who knows how to lead but then again, it may be too late for the present and too far in the future.
To be fair, Biden’s team is in a pickle. Unless they want to invade Afghanistan again, they must negotiate with the Taliban to get the 5,000-15,000 Americans out safely.
I don’t think the Taliban care much about the Brits or the French. We are the Great Satan and we are in a poor negotiating position.
In terms of humiliation this is worse than 9-11.
When I read about the Syrian lies my first thought was finding them a Wall.
We might also be on the edge of some real bad stuff coming along in the next year or two, kind of like the mid 1930’s when folks were trying to secure ‘peace in our time’ and other bad ideas while the Axis powers had a plan of their own.
OldTexan:
^^^ This.
and so Afghanistans reputation remains as solid as it was before…
Getting some honest coverage from the media comes from not having a clear partisan split on the issue. Both sides are split on what to do and how to do it which leaves organizations like cnn without a clear stancethat pushes their agenda.
huxley said:
“To be fair, Biden’s team is in a pickle.”
It’s a self-inflicted pickle. Like Benghazi and Somalia for the previous Democrats in the WH.
“Manhunt – The Afghan Files”
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-are-rounding-up-afghans-blacklist-private-intel-report-2021-08-19/
A sigh, followed by elevated blood pressure and anger.
Biden is a dope and a short tempered bully, he always has been, especially as it relates to foreign policy and strategy, and I have no sympathy for him. I must say, however, that his wife, his handlers, the Democrats, his advisors, and his cabinet are, by propping him up at POTUS, committing elder abuse.
Biden’s team?
Obamaphiles/liars like Susan Rice; SecDef Lloyd Austin, a black who worried on taking the job about systemic racism as the military’s greatest problem, not Afghanistan; or Pete Buttigieg, the wife of a man whose prior credential was mayor of a piddly city, which qualifies him for Sec Trans(portation)?
It takes a Cabinet majority to find the president mentally incompetent and remove him from office under Amendment 25.
Who believes these worms, who owe him their jobs and perks, will vote Biden out? And there remains the Deep State, entrenched and universally Democratic.
geoffb: Nothing happened to the perps of Benghazi or Somalia, though we put lots of Somalis into Minneapolis. Home-grown jihadis and Rep. Omar, hot dog! Damn, we’re good!
There are reports coming out of Kabul that American citizens are being beaten and prevented from getting to the airport. CNN is reporting that in 8 hours… ONE US cargo plane left the airport.
That’s a HUGE sign on the Wall that the Taliban intend to keep thousands of hostages.
CNN is fact checking Biden. ABC essentially is calling Biden a liar. MSNBC is pulling no punches in its coverage.
The anger in the White House Press room is the liberal “useful idiots” starting to get the sense that they’ve been played the fool. As they are in fact fools, they’re only mad at Biden because the optics are bad not because they’re questioning their ideological gods.
Cicero,
The worms will do as they’re told. Plus, as well as anybody they know, just from personal observation that he’s incapable of lasting another 3 months.
Political animals are especially sensitive to when political winds shift. None of them intend to go down with Biden’s ship.
We might have been really played by a ‘long game’ from various Asians, Middle East all the way to China and Europe is getting nervous, I don’t think we have been this far along the road to some real difficult war since I was born in 1945. I hope not and I really did not want to live long enough to ‘live in interesting times’.
OldTexan:
When your grifting Rulers and their Managerialist Bugmen Underlings are playing the shortest of grifting perversely incentivized short games, well then every Inscrutable Oriental with functioning frontal lobes looks like a genius Long Game playing Wizard.
I’m sure somewhere in Sun Tzu there is a chapter about making a batch of popcorn and plonking down in the BarcaLounger while your Enemy is busily shooting himself in various parts of his own anatomy.
Zaphod,
“The Chinese play the long game” is just this generation’s version of the old “Inscrutable Oriental” racist stereotype. It’s not true, the Chinese throughout history are just as liable to short-term thinking and failure to predict obvious consequences as anyone else.
BUT: you are correct that in comparison to our caffeinated-squirrel ruling class, they look like Ancient Sages.
@Bryan Lovely:
I’d agree with you except that (a) I *like* being ‘Racist’ (Enemy Term) and (b) plenty of Orientals *are* Inscrutable. And (c through z) I score Low in Trait Agreeableness.
Is OK to flip (b) around per your caffeinated squirrel formulation and say that Whitey walks around with his heart on his sleeve — not regarded as being quite the Done Thing in any part of Asia not called the Philippines.
Re Ancient Sages: Bring Back the Boston Bonzes! Hmm… maybe not.
Wow, you must drink a lot of coffee Zaphod and stay alert so you can refine our postings with your input.
“Well done, or something I must say, maybe, or something, I really don’t know.”
Maybe excellent information we might or might not need but what the heck.
Z has the sads he wasn’t born a Han.
Not to be confused with Born Again, that much is obvious. For you can be born anything and still be Born Again.
One of the things that galls me even though it may not have a major impact, is all the very nice small arms, U.S. arms, in the hands of the Taliban.
So the Taliban got a few Blackhawk helicopters. In a few weeks or months they won’t be able to fly them, if they could at all. (Maintenance issues.) Though they might fly them to Pakistan or Iran where they can be used and studied.
But the M-4 and M-16 rifles they will know how to use. And a few seem to have nice compact optics mounted, which you don’t usually see with the average AK rifle. Those optics might be red-dots or reflex optics, which are not exotic, but are very easy and effective to use for the short and medium ranges.
@TommyJay:
Been a few mutterings in the blogs about Taliban fighters having COTS night vision gear. Same kit hog shooters use. Not as good as Milspec, but good enough to get the job done.
Gun smithing is something Afghans definitely *can* do.
TommyJay, exactly, were those arms in the possession of the US Forces or had they already been given to the Afghan Military? If there were any our people left over there those folks should do hard time at Fort Leavenworth for what ever you call what they did without pouring gasoline on them and setting them on fire. As far as the Afghan Military turning them over I don’t know but they obviously were not ready to take a stand against the Taliban and we should have known that. With a population of 38 million the Afghanis have lost over 66,000 in combat so they have been willing to fight in the past, that is more than we lost in our Vietnam situation almost 50 years ago. I am so very sorry for all the folks who have been caught up in the recent chaos and nit-picking who and why does not help make things better for those in place right now, in the wrong place at the wrong time.