Afghanistan and the Surrender-Monkey-In-Chief: what’s really going on here?
[NOTE: Today’s latest abomination:
President Biden on Tuesday said he will stick to an Aug. 31 deadline for removing US troops from Afghanistan after the Taliban said it would not allow him any additional time to evacuate US citizens and refugees…
He was scheduled to brief the US public with a noon speech, but his remarks were repeatedly delayed as criticism mounted.]
I have come to dread the news. I assume, and usually correctly, that it will rouse in me a very familiar sense of impotent rage. There are so many infuriating actions (or sometimes inactions) taken by the Biden administration in its precipitous surrender-retreat from Afghanistan that mentioning them all would make a lengthy list.
And that’s one of the odd things about it. It’s as though the “plan” was designed by a madman (certainly possible), an abysmally stupid person (also possible), or a saboteur (another possibility) – or a person or group of people having some combination of those characteristics (possible as well).
I have no military training or knowledge except what a person of reasonable intelligence would figure out through common sense. Certain things are so basic as to be obvious, such as the order of one’s withdrawal actions. For example, don’t leave your citizens in the country that you are abandoning to the enemy; get them out first. If you think you will have enough time to evacuate them safely because you calculate that the enemy will take a certain estimated amount of time to reach the capital city, and then you see that the enemy is advancing and taking territory ahead of your assumed schedule, beef up defenses and get those vulnerable citizens out of there, pronto. In other words, don’t leave before the task is complete, no matter how much you’d like to do so.
And don’t prematurely abandon your vital air base and leave it in the care of an armed forces you have trained to rely on your close air support, while at the same time withdrawing all that air support. Don’t expect them to be able to fly planes that they are unable to maintain, as you simultaneously withdraw maintenance crews (without telling them in advance). In other words, if you are relying on those forces to hold the line against the enemy, don’t make it impossible for them to do so.
And yet these are just some of the things the US seems to have done in Afghanistan. We have not been told why this administration has made these choices; all we hear is lying obfuscating gobbledygook, and then another heaping helping of the same.
It seems, as Paul Mirengoff wrote in this post, Biden chose to lose this war. It was stalemated prior to that with a very small force that really was more of a policing action, casualties had been very low for years, and the enemy we were keeping out of power was a particularly cruel one. So there was no special intense rush to get out and there was no obvious reason for the reckless speed other than the idea that Joe wanted to brag about the withdrawal in a speech on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
It’s one thing for us to believe that a single addled, stupid, narcissistic old man might plan something this bad. But why would so many people go along with it? Are they all merely dumb? I doubt it. Frightened of Joe? I doubt it. The proper remedy, if they couldn’t change his mind or stop him, would have been to resign en masse – or begin to invoke the 25th Amendment. Or was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again? To get it to join the international world order chastened, its tail between its legs, a country on a par with any other, its people ready to meekly follow?
That is a sobering thought, and it’s not the sort of thing I usually believe unless there really are few alternatives that make sense. Ordinarily I do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity and/or ineptitude. And large conspiracies are difficult to control without leaks from someone.
But it’s hard to escape the thought of a planned takedown of the US from inside, as an actual working theory about the truly shocking level of seeming ineptitude and cowardice displayed here. It would explain what looks like a literally unbelievable level of destructive stupidity on the part of way too many people.
In closing, here’s someone with courage:
The NYT and WaPo have opined that blaming insiders for a planned takedown of the US is an echo of Weimar Germany’s stab-in-the-back myth. Guess who they think are the Nazis.
Yeah. 100% consistency is a tell for planned, deliberate, well-thought-out strategy
or something involving Newton’s laws of motion.
You can’t get this good by accident.
tcrosse:
Funny, I hadn’t read that, but I had that exact thought today as well and even a conversation about it. I drew the parallel myself.
The thing is, a thought a Nazi had doesn’t forever discredit a similar thought applied elsewhere. Hitler also loved dogs and believed a vegetarian diet was healthy, but that didn’t make either thing wrong.
The Germans had lost WWI (although they never surrendered). They were dragged kicking and screaming to the Treaty of Versailles. The idea of a sellout wasn’t needed to explain it.
But this is very different. Through a process of elimination of other theories is how I am arriving to the point of even considering such a theory. The Germans had plenty of other far more plausible theories available. The US is obviously the greatest military power on earth. We were in the middle of successfully holding off the Taliban for many years, and not losing many casualties at all, when Biden suddenly did this. It’s hard to come up with another explanation that makes any sense.
Yelling “Nazis!” is the way the media tries to counter it, of course.
Just watched his press statement, no questions taken.
First economy and how big companies have to pay their fair share in taxes
Next HR4 Congressional resolution to make footing fraud the rule of the country.
Last Afghanistan, 75,000 have been gotten out, no tally of Americans but a small portion of that number.
Taliban giving deadline of Aug 31, no Afghanistanis to leave the country.
Good job Joe, made the Taliban a military force to be recognized, importing tens of thousands of Muslums,and vacated the country so China can get what they need for raw materials.
Neo:
Agreed.
“incompetence taken to cartoonish levels” – boy, did Ayaan Hirsi Ali nail it with that statement!
And she further nails it when she explains how Americans have always been there, always rise to the occasion, give everything they have to help others.
Neo, I’ve never considered myself to give in to conspiracy theories; but, I’m not too far away in believing that this is more than stupidity. I remember the Carter years and the stupid mistakes that he made, and some of those mistakes were doozies! But, that was because he lacked real world experience. However, this is just too insane to be simple stupidity. So, perhaps it is planned by those who want to take the US down a peg. I can just see some saying: “Put the crazy guy in charge, we get to pull the shots, he gets blamed, and the US gets knocked down a peg. Win-win for us!”
“But why would so many people go along with it?”
1. A great many people in the government, despite what the leakers are trying to say now, really didn’t have any idea how fragile the status quo was in Afghanistan.
2. The DC blob spent four years fighting Trump and undermining his efforts to get us out of Afghanistan. I am absolutely sure they expected Biden to reverse course and keep us there.
3. The general level of incompetence among our elites actually is as bad or worse than we think.
Instead of trying to view the Afghanistan debacle as a straight line, think of it instead as a two-stage process like the 2008 financial crisis. Stage 1 was a real estate bubble where people were buying homes and property they couldn’t afford. What turned that from a normal real estate bust to nearly a global financial apocalypse was stage 2: taking all those bad mortgages, slicing them into little pieces, and then tying all those pieces together until no one knew who owned what or owed what to whom.
With Afghanistan, stage 1 was Biden trashing Trump’s withdrawal plan and not replacing it with anything because his brain is turning into tapioca. But stage 2 was a military/intelligence/foreign policy bureaucracy that wanted the never leave Afghanistan and had gotten used to ignoring/slow walking Presidential directives to the contrary basically retreating into denial after ever getting out.
Mike
“was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again?” neo
No other explanation so nearly fits the behavior.
These people are courting a terrible reckoning.
MBunge:
I don’t buy it. The problem is that it’s an absurd plan on the face of it. A six-year-old child could see what’s wrong with it. It’s not a question of thinking the Taliban would take more time to overrun the country; I could understand that reasoning. But you still don’t withdraw that way. You simply don’t. You’re violating every principle of the military and evacuations in unstable countries.
It’s maximally illogical to do it the way they did it. It’s not just a question of understandable miscalculations.
But more importantly, I was also talking about now, not when they made the decision. They are all still going along with it and staying in their jobs rather than resigning. I know people are ambitious and want to keep their jobs, but surely one or two of them would and should have had the courage to resign.
No, they are just operatives, and they have no shame about selling the country (and the world, and our allies) out. That is a depth of corruption that speaks of some sort of malice towards that country and our allies. Leftists have already shown that malice over and over again, so it’s not really a stretch.
I suppose it’s also possible that the entire administration is staffed solely by sociopaths.
I didn’t mention it in the post, but one of the “tells” for me was the long-ago (2014 if memory serves me) release by Obama of five hugely important Guantanamo prisoners for Bowe Bergdahl. That was such a transparently awful deal, one seemingly designed to hurt this country, that I think it was part of the same mentality.
A theory I have heard is the DNI maybe be behind it. Blackmail? I look at the indoctrination of our youth. For example, in Australia there are huge protests of participants are of all ages and races against lockdowns. USA youths are protesting racism, fascism, and anyone one who has an opposing opinion. They protest nothing. It is not hard think that what is happening is a planned takeover from the inside. Especially how scripted it seems beginning with the election of Trump and reaching a higher pitch with the primaries and the 2020 election. Yet Paul Mirengoff makes a good point, and reinforces how arrogant and stupid our leaders are at this time. Is it chaos they seek?
I have hope because there are brave people like Hirsi Ali speaking out.
charles:
Yes.
I never thought Carter was in some conspiracy to hurt the US, although he certainly did hurt the US. It was always obvious why he did what he did, and the illusions under which he was operating.
Evidently Hunter Biden really is the smartest man Joe Biden knows.
From the post: “lying obfuscating gobbledygook”.
As I’ve said here before I did not think at all highly of Trump. Among many other things he talked a lot of b.s. But sensible people recognized that there’s a difference between empty scattershot bluster and cold malicious lying meant to seriously deceive about serous matters. We have had way more of the latter from Biden than we ever did from Trump.
Up until this current debacle the instance I used was the assertion that Georgia’s voting law was “Jim Crow on steroids”. Not only wildly false but wildly inflammatory in a nation already divided. I can’t think of anything Trump ever said that’s in the same league in its combination of falseness and seriousness. Now we seem to be getting a daily dose of out and out and very consequential lying.
But, that was because he lacked real world experience.
Electoral politics was Jimmy Carter’s 3d career – the first two being the Navy and agribusiness. His executive experience ‘ere taking office exceeded that of any and all of his four immediate predecessors. He wasn’t lacking in ‘real world experience’. He was listening to people like James Tobin and refusing to bite the bullet on restabilizing the currency (among other ill-considered policies).
Thinking about those who voted for Biden You didn’t need to be a student of the guy to know he was a dumb, corrupt, senile old hack who’d accomplished nothing but arranging for his ten percent in his whole life.
His mendacity was legendary and hurtful.
But they preferred him. Did they not care? Did they buy, instead, the rosy-fingered dawn of a new age of wonderfulness?
For some of them, I suspect, this comes as a kick in the gut. “I did WHAT?” But I also suspect they can’t actually admit it and so they’ll vote for him or the dems next time around to prove to themselves they didn’t screw up the first time.
“very familiar sense of impotent rage” – Yes Neo, I and my friends and neighbors feel the same way. Will that rage explode Nationwide? Not sure that it will. I see more and more wearing masks again although in this state not mandated, except for some schools. The rage is another reason I limit my intake of news to Blogs, where I can scroll through things quickly. TV is just yammering, paper is BS.
I do fear that things will not end well.
“You’re violating every principle of the military and evacuations in unstable countries.”
My point is that they never wanted to withdraw and had successfully blocked Trump from doing so for four years. What do you think they were doing at the end of July and beginning of August, when removing stuff like all those U.S. weapons should have been well underway? I’ll bet they were still spinning scenarios about how Biden was going to have to stop the withdrawal.
Mike
Did they not care?
They didn’t care. Here’s a hypothesis: Trump is not deferential to the Mascots of the Anointed, ergo he is ‘abominable’ (the last is a direct quote of the Biden voter in my household). The Democratic Party is a concatenation of tribes, each of whom have their icons. And their tropes.
Or was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again? To get it to join the international world order chastened, its tail between its legs, a country on a par with any other, its people ready to meekly follow? My answer to these questions is Yes! There is a significant and forceful segment of progressives in the Democratic party who do believe that the world would be a better place, and that they themselves would not give up much, in the new international order.
Biden may actually be trying to prevent any future president from using US forces abroad by making it so toxic to work with us that no foreign government or people would ever cooperate with us again. I’m reluctant to think that even of him. Either that or he really does believe in the good faith of the Taliban, that they will help US citizens to leave when our troops are gone, and want to become “responsible members of the international community,” to coin a phrase. Maybe he really does believe that peace, plenty, toleration and diversity will blossom in Afghanistan, that he will be able to crow that he achieved all that by 9/11 2021. Either theory seems fantastic yet here we are. Maybe bloody-minded stupidity really is the simplest explanation.
“what looks like a literally unbelievable level of destructive stupidity”
I would vote for Neo’s turn of phrase but also accept MBunge’s view that it doesn’t seem like military people in their right minds could have come up with this level of “planning”….
Were they hoping to change Biden’s mind? Did they think it was a “slam dunk” that Taliban couldn’t take kabul so soon? Even now things (as reported) seem backwards, disoriented.
“We did it, Joe. You’re going to be the next president of the United States.”
–Kamala Harris, 7 November 2020
AF JAG retired:
It has certainly occurred to me, also, that they are trying to sabotage our ability to be trusted by other nations to help with anything military.
Why should you be surprised , Neo?
Its cool to confuse young little girls into thinking they are boys now. And we are supposed to assume these people are doing anything logical anymore?
Back in the 60s the nation began turning its back on God.
How many of your readers had parents and grandparents that at least acknowledged the Divine? Now those people today dismiss as mere fables things of faith?
Now we are paying the price.
The whole country is under a curse now.
Romans Chapter 1
skip,
Didn’t he say that we and our allies have gotten 75,000 people out? He is taking credit for other countries’ work, even though he betrayed them by taking out our troops without telling them. He is one hell of a team player.
I agree with at least part of what MBunge said. I think military didn’t take Bidet seriously; I think they assumed that in the 11th hour he would postpone; he would have to, it’s the only logical alternative, right?
Right. But this is a deeply illogical, clueless, addled, narcissistic, and corrupt President. He’s surrounded by handlers who likely know next to nothing about military operations, and couldn’t care less. Some might be fifth columnists, and trying to undermine America, its military, its standing internationally, etc. But I think many of them likely concluded that even if Afghanistan implodes, no one will really care. And that’s what matters: what will affect the administration’s political standing. If Americans are left stranded, if Afghans suffer, who cares, so long as it doesn’t diminish their poll numbers and influence. They felt they could ride out the news cycle with ease (they likely didn’t anticipate the MSM not being complacent and accommodating, but, hey…neither did I or most conservatives).
So in the end I think the military brass was naive (Milley is clearly a paper pushing twit), Bidet was exactly what anyone paying attention would expect and his handlers were (and are) sniveling, obsequious weasels. That’s an awful combination, but I don’t think there was any broader conspiracy to deliberately undermine America.
Sundowner definitely was lumping in lots of numbers of rescued people without defining who they were. Seen around some countries are taking them on a very short temporary basis and I can guess with certainly they will end up here.
AF Jag said:
“Either that or he really does believe in the good faith of the Taliban, that they will help US citizens to leave when our troops are gone, and want to become “responsible members of the international community,” to coin a phrase.”
This was why I called him President Elphinstone on a previous thread. The leader of the 1842 British retreat from Kabul, Gen. Elphinstone, seemingly believed that his Islamic enemy when they said they would help out his trek out of Kabul with 4500 troops and 12,000 civilian men, women, and children. They lied, and those on his retreat, except for one, died or were taken as slaves.
Neo said,
“But it’s hard to escape the thought of a planned takedown of the US from inside, as an actual working theory about the truly shocking level of seeming ineptitude and cowardice displayed here. It would explain what looks like a literally unbelievable level of destructive stupidity on the part of way too many people.”
As Glenn Reynolds always asked, ‘If that were their aim, would they be doing anything different than they are right now?’
It certainly looks like its planned takedown from the inside: If China bought the best POTUS (and House of Representatives, and Senate, and the list could go on) their money could buy, they seem to be getting their money’s worth.
Coming at this from another angle, I recently became aware of a book/paper written by two Chinese PLA colonels (Wang Shiangsui & Qiao Liang) called ‘Unrestricted Warfare’*. I’ve been reading snippets of it when I have time and, given the past two years, its quite sobering.
It’s happening before our very eyes. And social media, owned or influenced ultimately by the CCP, spends a massive amount of energy convincing the majority of people that it isn’t happening, and it isn’t deliberate. They call it conspiracy theory, etc. And they continue to think the election was kosher and we’ll win it all back in 2024.
The CCP and PLA did Sun Tzu proud. They’ve managed to defeat us without actually fighting us. At least it looks more like that every time Biden et. al. take action.
*According to a friend of mine (raised in Hong Kong and who gained US citizenship in 2010) the title in Chinese doesn’t quite translate literally to English. She said ‘All-encompassing Warfare’ was probably more accurate but still wasn’t quite there.
As Jen Pitwhatever said: “Why would you need to know that?”
The Big Guy seems to think he can simply bribe the Taliban to extend the evacuation deadline:
“Joe Biden finds himself in a trap of his own making. U.S. forces operate out of Kabul’s airport at the pleasure of the Taliban. At any point, what Biden called a ‘ragtag’ group can disable the airport and reengage in combat with the American forces they’ve so far allowed a narrow berth. Biden is determined to avoid that outcome. The only alternative to such a disaster would be to bribe the Taliban into submission. It’s an option the president has already foreshadowed. [italics mine]
‘The Taliban has to make a fundamental decision,’ Biden said on Sunday. To be successful, they are ‘going to need everything from additional help in terms of economic assistance, trade, and a whole range of things.’ The Taliban, Biden said, is ‘seeking legitimacy to determine whether or not they will be recognized by other countries.’ No doubt, all these carrots are being dangled before our captors by CIA Director William Burns, who was this week dispatched to Kabul likely to negotiate an extension of our mission there.”
https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/the-largest-hostage-crisis-in-american-history/
Biden is simply not living on the same planet as the rest of us.
… they are trying to sabotage our ability to be trusted by other nations to help with anything military.
I think that is true. They think:
The U.S. must be cured of our inclination to engage in colonialism, imperialism, nation building exercises. After all, who’s to say that a Taliban or Pakistan cultural model is worse than ours?
Even our efforts to build and staff schools in Afghanistan is an affront to diversity and multiculturalism. That’s like missionary work without the religion. Those educators can leave if they want to. Screw ’em if they can’t get to the airport.
A few Biden people probably think:
The great satan of global capitalism must be taken down several notches, or better yet crushed; so that the utopias of anarchism and communism can be allowed to thrive.
Did people hear that the defense minister of the U.K. tried to mount an effort to create a multi-national (NATO I think) military force to step into the U.S. vacancy in Afghanistan. Nobody took his calls. The U.S. and NATO are damaged.
G.H.W. Bush’s New World Order has given way to the Old World Order. It’s a win-win for the left. The 100 year marathon of cultural Marxism is coming to fruition.
Sorry for the gloom.
“Roughly 3,800 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan since July 29, with an estimated 8,000 remaining in the country, an official with direct knowledge of the situation told the Daily Caller on Tuesday. The official told the Caller that it seems “doubtful we are going to bring in 8,000 more Americans” between now and the Aug. 31 deadline.” h/t Ace
https://dailycaller.com/2021/08/24/americans-evacuated-afghanistan-white-house-several-thousand-remain/
HT to Bari Weiss for the link to a blistering essay by Antonio Garcia Martinez:
” . . . in the year 2021, the cream of American society and the flower of its finest universities, can only understand the world as projections of the country’s own domestic neuroses. Our current elites, whether in media or politics, squint at the strange peoples and languages of whatever international conflict and only see who or what they can map to their internal gallery of heroes and villains: Who’s the PoC? Who’s the Nazi?. . .
This is the true privilege of being an American in 2021 (vs. 1981): Enjoying an imperium so broad and blinding, you’re never made to suffer the limits of your understanding or re-assess your assumptions about a world that, even now, contains regions and peoples and governments antithetical to everything you stand for. If you fight demons, they’re entirely demons of your own creation, whether Cambridge Analytica or QAnon or the ‘insurrection’ or supposed electoral fraud or any of a host of bogeymen, and you get to tweet #resist while not dangling from the side of an airplane or risking your life on a raft to escape. . . .
And almost nobody among the whole crew that owns this mess, not even people paid to lie for a living like Psaki, are willing to show their faces and take some damned responsibility now that the stakes have gotten very, very real indeed. . . . In short, an unserious country mired in the most masturbatory hysterics over bullshit dramas waged war against an insurgency of religious zealots fired by a 7th-century morality, and utterly and totally lost. . . . we are no longer a serious people.”
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/we-are-no-longer-a-serious-people
They broke into whatever we were watching with Biden’s teleprompter reading. He does have THAT down. Today he could read the words without slurring them.
I do have to wonder about the 41% of those polled who still have a ‘favorable’ opinion of him. Why?
PA+Cat:
Brilliant article.
The Taliban are a Serious People.
The Chinese are a Serious People.
The Russians are a Serious People.
The Mullahs of Qom are a Serious People.
Hell, even Boko Haram is a Serious Bongo-drumming People.
The really cool thing though, is that if the American Ruling Elite was purged in the way it deserves, it would too become a Serious People and then you’d be surprised how many of the above Exotic Serious People suddenly became less ‘Problematic’ (For all you deeply twisted Cabalistic Straussians on the ‘Conservative Right’ out there, less Problematic for more reasons than one. Perhaps we could grant fellowships to whoever can dream up the longest list.)
It’s not Just OK to be White. It’s also very OK to not give a #@$^ about Other People’s Problems and not fix them gratis (it is to laugh) with Napalm, Drones, and JDAMs.
@Tuvea:
RE 41%.
Just the human species at work. Nothing special.
What is special is that the realm of the political has expanded to just about every aspect of daily existence — or at least we perceive that it has.
Whenever this happens, the bodies will pile up.
How did they all go along with it? Their minds are still muddled by intense hatred of Trump and the cognitive dissonance associated with Trump’s accomplishments while in office.
Never fear, entirely predictable future events shall make of Americans, a serious people.
Neo– Apropos of the SMIC, it’s likely that he’s physically as well as mentally ill: “Arriving five hours late for the [presser], the President took the stage. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed over with his pace of speaking obviously labored as he began to robotically read the teleprompter. What then transpired was one of the most insulting, tone-deaf spectacles I’ve ever seen from a president . . . . He blamed Trump, he talked about killing Osama Bin Laden, and he insisted that our allies were absolutely fine with everything occurring. It was like Groundhog Day. But what I took the most from this presser is this: Biden is sick.
As I said, his eyes were bloodshot and glazed over. It was difficult to even see the whites of his eyes at times. His presentation was cold, with no empathy to be found. Upon finishing his teleprompter reading, he simply stumbled out, taking no questions, clearly unable to physically and mentally do so. It was obvious why he was five hours late for this presser. Something is bad wrong with the president, and there’s no way it can be ignored anymore.”
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/24/joe-biden-with-eyes-bloodshot-and-five-hours-late-insults-everyone-watching-with-surreal-presser-n432218
Time to slap a fresh coat of varnish on the the Resolute Kneepads.
Thank you, neo and all of you commenters. Up to now, I’d been thinking that this was all due simply to incompetence, (fools, not knaves) for Joe had been wrong about foreign policy all of his life, and the military, intelligence services, etal. were too afraid or too unbelieving that it could really happen this way that they went along with his completely bass-ackwards sequence of withdrawal. But then I read all of the above and I think that who is really pulling Joe’s strings are Barack, Valerie, and Susan and I know they DO hate America, they would be doing everything they possible could to take America down, and they, unlike Joe, are diabolical enough to carry it out. As neo says, the Bergdahl trade, e.g.
Neo
Your quote “I have come to dread the news. I assume, and usually correctly, that it will rouse in me a very familiar sense of impotent rage. ”
To me this is quite ironic. It is the mirror image of what liberals claim to have felt through the Trump administration
Yet their lamentation was almost entirely through scandals they dreamed up. Russia was the chief example. And yet now we have the Afghanistan debacle, Poor economic news, and endless Covid contradictions and hypocrisy
These are far more substantial (and proven) issues and the press is just now starting to get some backbone and try to ask questions. Yet Democrats are happily keeping their heads in the sand over the entire thing. There will likely be more Americans left in Afghanistan to die then a decade of supposedly unarmed men being shot by police.
And not only will there be no mass demonstrations. They cant even be bothered to register a complaint.
I know I’m being repetitive, but the mush heads are making me crazy.
One said, “Our longest war,” looking at me as if something profound had been said. I said, “No matter how many wars you’ve had, one’s longer than all the rest. What’s the relevance?” Blank look. His statement was supposed to end all discussion. Fact is, somebody told him that and it never occurred to him that he was being defrauded. Or that he was stupid enough to buy it.
For a lot of the mush heads, this catastrophe makes absolutely no difference.
To the extent they even understand something happened, it will be meaningless, since Biden’s their guy and….so it makes no difference.
I kick around the possibility that admitting this was a bad idea–along with others–would condemn what they fondly thought of as actual thought when they chose their vote. And they can’t afford that. So….no facts, please.
“The proper remedy, if they couldn’t change his mind or stop him, would have been to resign en masse – or begin to invoke the 25th Amendment”
Those pensions don’t pay themselves. As jon baker noted above if there’s no acknowledgement of The Divine then it’s just “me, me, me” baby.
Well, that’s good to hear.
That is very good to hear too.
But does that include not giving a rat’s ass about the problems of neurotic white women, weak white cuckmen, and oh, I’d say about half of the total white population of the United States? That is to say, does it include the population of wokesters, soy-boys, sex perverts masquerading as female strippers, and those special caring, compassionate, feeling-feelers who feel with so much feeling that they have voted the destruction of this polity into place?
Does it include standing back and really letting the Devil whom they have released taking the hindmost? Because if that is what you mean … gazing dispassionately on the sight of Biden’s crack head son writhing in a ditch, or Jen Psaki being dragged through the streets by her hair by some American Islamist … then I am certainly up for it.
But to tell the truth, your mild Falangist-like views seem to take these malignant organisms as potential fellows, and as useful raw material: if only they could be channeled constructively and controlled. Which for my money is like being told you can marry a lesbian and produce half gay children but with the proper social guidance keep them under control.
Well from this not really a real hillbilly’s perspective, it aint worth it. Democracy is worth the effort. Just not with that scum. And a functioning authoritarian system with them in it, is not worth it either. And anyway you are not going to educate them out of their scuminess, out of their angst riddled ennui, out of their tortured feelings of identification with the suffering other. … white, or whiter-than-white, though they may be.
It may come, precipitate, to that yet, if the woke of this country now having the controls ready to hand, act on their preferences – regarding the fate of the middle – as well.
Richard Aubrey:
Most Biden voters will not change their minds no matter what. Maybe they would if every organ of the MSM and all their friends told them to, but short of that (and that’s not going to happen) they won’t do it.
But every now and then there’s someone who will change his or her mind. It’s hard to know who it will be.
I have a relative who was an Obama supporter. Before the election of 2008 we had a mild discussion/argument about it. A couple of months after the election he spoke to me on the phone (something we’ve never done). He wanted to tell me I had been right and he’d been wrong. I was flabbergasted. That is so rare! Then again, he was always somewhat libertarian, not really on the left.
As far as your friend who talked about our longest war, I wonder what he would say if you were to ask what was the average number of US deaths per year over the course of that war. I bet he would way overestimate it (not that it would matter to him, but it might be interesting). Ask him how many US combat deaths in the last 18 months. Again, I am nearly certain he’d get it wrong by overestimating. Ask him how he defines “war.” Are we at war in South Korea because our presence there deters the North? And does he know that the Korean war only had an armistice – technically the war isn’t over. So it has lasted nearly 70 years. Why doesn’t that count as a longer war? Our presence there involves how many troops, would he say? (The answer is 30,000, by the way). Why does he think we stay there? What does he think would happen if we left?
Grandpagrumble:
I haven’t totally given up on the idea of sheer stupidity and incompetence. But I think it less likely to be the explanation than I used to believe.
Zaphod:
As is so often the case, you show your lack of understanding of American traditions. The Americans of WWII were very compassionate towards other people, including people in other countries who needed help. But – and it’s a big “but” – when they needed to defend their own country against aggressors, they were ruthless. Then afterwards, magnanimous.
The two things are not mutually exclusive. As Ecclesiastes says:
@Neo:
Magnanimity toward utterly defeated and demoralised Germans and Japanese might produce different results than magnanimity toward (say) Pashtuns.
Post WWII was almost very un-magnanimous. cf. Morgenthau Plan. Need to counter Soviets prevailed fortuitously.
Additionally, the level of havoc wreaked upon Germany and Japan before the application of magnanimity was orders of magnitude greater than that perpetrated in Afghanistan. But going back to Para 1, I’m not convinced that Afghans are as amenable to the Moral Effect of extreme violence as some other races, or if you prefer, cultures. How do you even demoralise a Pashtun?
All Peoples are not the same. The fact that the USA of the 1940s could do something to vastly different races and cultures back when has little or no bearing on what might or might not work in Afghanistan or elsewhere in 2021. You guys metaphorically *gelded* the Germans and Japanese after having literally killed holocausts of them, women and children included. How do you pull that stunt on a Pashtun? Best that could be managed this time around was piecemeal dronings and some helicopter gunship night vision chop ’em up with the chain gun porn.
Pace Ecclesiastes, how about a time for cutting losses, fencing off on reservations, and profound indifference? Nothing against the occasional punitive expedition if the natives push the envelope and ignore repeated warnings.
Zaphod:
As usual, you misunderstand my point. I was responding to something you wrote here:
My point is that Americans could be very “serious people” (another phrase of yours) when they needed to be. That doesn’t mean not giving a rat’s ass about others. Nor are our wars to “fix people’s problems.” The wars have been for specific threats to our own security.
My discussion of WWII and beyond was simply to say that a country can be very harsh and unforgiving in war and then compassionate in peace. It had nothing to do with any analogy between Germany and Afghanistan, which would be absurd. Nor – if you’ve read what I’ve written lately about goals in Afghanistan, and understood it – am I in favor of nation-building there. A small occupying security and/or intelligence force is something quite different, and I think we should have kept that in order to keep an eye on any greater terrorist threat emanating from there.
Listen, I’m a young(-ish) mom with a small handful of children all under the age of 8.
Can anyone give me hope for America? For the future? Is there any shred of possibility that this current government isn’t going to be the downfall of us after all? Because between this shit right here on top of CRT in schools, vaccine mandates/paasports, biological sex having zero meaning, etc….I just don’t imagine the world my kids are about to grow up in being a pleasant, secure, or free one.
@NS:
Things will get worse before they get better. There is no rewind, only forward and fast forward.
It’s tough. Doubtless you realise that you don’t actually own your children. The State can take them from you at any time on any made up pretext. So you must tread very carefully.
Find like-minded people. Don’t live in a big city. Might be smart to live somewhere gets very cold. Much of the Diversity doesn’t like snow and ice.
The future success or failure of some historical entity associated with a piece of cloth with stars and stripes and should not overly concern you. Said Entity hates you and your children. Aim to decouple as much as you can whilst keeping a low profile. What matters is that you continue your line and live as good a life as you can.
Feel disgust and contempt for your rulers. But don’t despair.
Maybe follow this guy’s blog and look at his blogroll.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/
NS
I think there is hope. But much of it will be in spite of what is happening right now. My suggestions
1) If you have several children under 8. Take advantage of the huge upswing in the child tax credit. Load up on non-perishables and rainy day savings
2) If you can check out private schools in your area. They are not as beholden to much of the ideology of what is currently happening
3) If possible consider one of the more freedom loving states in the union. Florida, Texas etc are at least somewhat able and willing to resist the lunacy.
I realize that may not be what you wanted to hear. But depending on society and what passes for “leadership” to change direction with any meaning in the next few years is doubtful. Trump in many ways was the last stand on many of these issues. And its pretty doubtful to me that the powers that be will allow that mistake to happen again
“…concluded that…no one will really care…”
Perhaps. But that’s no longer relevant. No longer here or there. No longer important. No longer a factor.
Because: even if Americans “really care”, the Democrats are absolutely convinced that since they have EVERYTHING sewn up ELECTORALLY and LEGISLATIVELY—and perhaps soon on the SC—that IT WON’T MATTER A WHIT.
With the media at their backs…
That’s right. Americans (or perhaps one should say “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE”) can care all they want to. And then some, heh, heh, heh….
Heh, LET ‘EM: let THOSE DEPLORABLES—and WE determine who’s a DEPLORABLE and who isn’t, just as WE determine who’s Black and who ain’t—CARE for all WE care….
Because TODAY belongs to US!!!
“…and TOMORROW and TOMORROW and TOMORROW…”
The treason, slavery, and crime party must be vanquished.
See the Ace of Spades long post, yesterday, on why the Right cannot wage its own Long March through the institutions of learning — AND ALSO read the rage and simmering violence among the replies. It’s there folks; it’s coming.
Bloody Hell is coming to the enemy because they have earned it .
“Dread” is such the perfect word. It has the whiff of fore-knowledge, that things are more likely worse tomorrow than today. And there is a lot of dread out there now.
Neo. You want me to give my mush head friend facts???? I could double up and it would make no difference. When I was in, I ran into a lieutenant who’d served with the 2ID on the DMZ in Korea. He had an Indianhead patch on his fatigues shirt pocket. Usually, that’s a shoulder patch for the unit you’re in or the one in which you were in combat–different shoulders.
It was a division-specific–not official–award for “forty missions into the zone”. Wandering around the DMZ looking for Norks. Not for the faint-hearted.
Not too much later, the Army officially absorbed that award into the Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB). IOW, the Army felt that was the equivalent of having been in Infantry combat for the requisite number of days. So a bunch of guys now qualified for the CIB–where it rains bullets–while their folks had thought they were watching a boring border.
I can imagine my friend’s face distorting even further, without the slightest comprehension. He could grok the whole thing, after some lengthy, patient explanation. But why is it relevant after he’s been told “America’s longest war.”?
He’s supposed to be for the pullout and…facts DO NOT matter. It’s not that he disagrees and has different facts. When approaching his awareness, they dissolve into fog.
He’s not alone.
WRT the column over at Ace. Multiply by the number of folks who feel the same but think it useful not to go public with it.
Trying to do some work on our lake front. Trying not to think of the building inspector as assistant Gauleiters. I’m sure he’s not, but in this atmosphere, everybody but the school crossing guard gets my back hairs up.
Biden may actually be trying
I don’t think Biden has much agency, nor that he cared much about issues beyond their use in promoting and protecting Biden. Jill’s been in it for the perks.
IMO, this disaster is a function of (1) sheer incompetence by certain people in the chain of command and (2) bad acts they knew were injurious but which they undertook because they’d have to be forthrightly insubordinate to not do so (insubordinate ultimately to the stated wishes of Biden and the actual wishes of his camarilla, Klain foremost among them). Let’s posit that in Austin and Milley’s case, it’s (2). If they have any integrity, they have to go to the rest of the cabinet and give them chapter and verse with receipts that they did what they did because Biden et al insisted. The very peculiar sequencing of the withdrawal suggest the key decisions were being made by people without much understanding of logistics, and that suggests Klain, Blinken, and Sullivan rather than Austin and Milley.
Art Deco
One of the things I find amazing about this entire incident. Is that everyone claimed Trump was hot headed and unpredictable. And supposedly the alphabet agencies and armed forces opposed the Afghanistan pull out.
Yet in the end while he negotiated the framework for it. He never actually did so. And those self same agencies were fairly open about subverting him and ignoring his orders. Yet bowed down immediately for this disaster.
The sheer number of people who opposed everything Trump did. Are apparently are so vacuous they believed if they just did the opposite of Trump. It would succeed. They actually believed all of their rhetoric.
Art Deco
I’m trying to picture anybody dumb enough to design the current evac plan. Thirty-plus years ago, I coached youth soccer. Once I got into the, say, twelve year olds, I could depend on them not to do stupid stuff out of ignorance. Maybe they wanted to do it because it was fun. But figuring out how to get our equipment and our kids into the vehicles….I didn’t have to bother.
Perhaps my memory fades–where did I leave my Prevagen–but I think two or three of them, given a half hour briefing and a half hour left alone, could have done better. Any two or three of them.
My OCS buddies….
Boy Scouts….
I am only partly facetious. Maybe a very small part. Point is, you can’t do this badly except on purpose.
Milley & Co are going to have to show written orders from Austin, or from Biden down to the smallest details of this skedaddle. As in, “You will leave all equipment lined up and undamaged. I say again, undamaged.”
An officer who had to call upstairs and ask if this stuff should be left around undamaged would be considered lacking in initiative. OF FREAKING COURSE!!! you idiot, and don’t bother me with any other stupid stuff you’re supposed to know.
No, this would have to be specific, dated, detailed. Possibly with reasoning. And signed by people legally entitled to give binding orders to the nation’s command structure. And not with disappearing ink.
It would have to have attached, at least unofficially, that we anticipate recovering the stuff within a few days. Or something similar.
Every last one of them has had a class on how you use a thermite grenade on things you don’t want to leave as functioning assets to the enemy. Which presumes there are things you don’t want to leave as functioning assets to the enemy. And if you don’t have a crapload of thermite grenades, use your freaking initiative. Get a couple of fifty cal and spray the airfield, parking lot, etc. Be hell fixing those things back up without parts and trained maintainers. You could have a lottery; winner gets to shoot up the flight line. Dayum. Proceeds go to the Unit Fund.
The more I think about this, the less I can conceive of sheer incompetence. Might even fall into the narrow definition in the Constitution of treason.
Thanks PA+CAT for leading me to Antonio García Martínez. The linked article is excellent and his exchange with Martin Gurri is worth reading for those who post here. https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-revolt
Dick Illyes– You are more than welcome. Thank you in return for the link to Martínez’ exchange with Gurri– I found it quite thought-provoking. And we should both thank Bari Weiss for amplifying these writers’ voices.
I’m trying to picture anybody dumb enough to design the current evac plan.
You may be right.
Follow the money. Who benefits? This how I see it. Biden suffers the 25th amendment (probably September) because of the American hostages the Taliban has put on display. Harris takes over and says we need to go back in to rescue the hostages and stay for an unspecified amount of time. Just like that we’re back in Afghanistan. The deep state is happy for their masters the defense industry. The rich get richer
The deep state is happy for their masters the defense industry. The rich get richer
During calendar year 2020, the ratio of military expenditure to domestic product was 0.042. In the years since 1939, the lowest that ratio has been was about 0.036. The diversion of resources to the military after 9/11 was on the order of 0.5% of domestic product, with overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan a fraction of that. (< 1% of our military manpower has been deployed to Afghanistan in recent years). I don't think this is about military contractors' revenue streams.
I lean toward deliberate failure. Why? Because they all work for our worst enemies. And quite possibly a number of them are being blackmailed, especially Mr Big.
Would like to read a post proposing some sort of scenario in which our country is rescued from their clutches. Is it too late? Is there hope?
NS…Joy Pullman, on Reasons for Hope:
https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/25/trust-not-in-princes-7-reasons-for-hope-while-the-ruling-class-lights-dumpster-fire-after-dumpster-fire/?&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_federalist_daily_briefing_2021_08_25&utm_term=2021-08-25
Lee Smith on Afghanistan as a jobs program for the credentialed. https://www.theepochtimes.com/lee-smith-botched-afghanistan-withdrawal-the-culmination-of-20-years-of-corruption-and-failed-leadership_3963784.html
Jeanne. If by Mr. Big you mean Biden, I don’t think so. First, you need some shame you want hidden. That’s not applicable.
Then you want to hide illegal activities. Biden is a democrat. Those don’t apply, either.
Then you don’t want your party to disown you, including those who voted for you. That’s hot applicable to Biden–did I mention he’s a democrat?
You want the media to continue to lie for you….no problem.
So, blackmail isn’t an issue for him. Can you imagine anything you, yourself, personally, would find so horrible that the people you know who voted for him would care about?
The Obama-Biden-Rice plan for American humiliation continues……
Also, a big part of this is IMMIGRATION. MOOOOSLIM IMMIGRATION. Barry likes that part!
“no obvious reason for the reckless speed other than the idea that Joe wanted to brag about the withdrawal in a speech on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.”
Exactly! The entire timeline of our pullout, including the very fact that it was being done at all, was so Biden could have some bizarre brag ceremony for the 20 year 9/11 anniversary.
Remember this is the same idiot that was bragging about Iraq being a huge success of Obama’s and his administration despite the fact that they did nothing other than to take the stable situation they inherited and screw it up royally by pulling out—just like Afghanistan. And just like he and Obama did in Iraq, Biden now blames the previous administration as having tied his hands, which is a blatant lie, to wit, if the May pullout date was so sacred, then why didn’t Biden stick to it? I mean, it’s slightly maddening to hear these imbeciles claim they had to stick to Trump’s May 2021 withdrawal date and couldn’t alter it with the Taliban (who anyway had not stuck to Trump’s conditions) when IT IS FREAKING AUGUST! 3 months after May. So BS they had to stick to the plan!
My brother–among others–refers to this as “the managed decline of America”.
Not sure the end game but I can’t help but think of the scene in the movie “Network” (the most prophetic film ever?) where Ned Beatty explains ‘Globalism’ to Howard Beale–might be close. BTW, the ‘Mao Tse Tung Hour’ scene is pure BLM.
Victoria Taft had a report in PJMedia a few days ago saying that Blinken had wanted to leave Afghanistan abruptly during the Obama administration. John McCain said in 2014 that Blinken was dangerous. John McCain was right.
“I have come to dread the news.”
Yes.
Some of us have been saying this since Obama came to power. Deliberate. Still others say this goes back to 1950 and the Mess in Korea. A few say 1913 (Federal Reserve, Direct Election of Senators, and Income Tax) or even 1861 or 1801!
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If one marks the beginning of the United States of America as the issue date of the Declaration of Independence the country has existed for 245 years. The 56 signers of that document certainly did; for them there was no going back once the ink had dried.
And, a large enough portion of the 2.5 million residents of the then-British colonies believed taking the chance to build their own country was valuable enough to support going head-to-head with arms against a country three times the size of the colonies, with a very well established and proven successful military, to pretty much risk everything in the attempt.
In the ensuing 245 years quite an assortment has declared war against the United States: Great Britain (the War of 1812), Mexico, Spain, Germany (twice), Italy, Japan, Romania, Austria, Hungary, and a few others who have engaged in activity against America without a formal declaration (USSR, China) or without official sanction (Colombia, and their fellow drug cartel-supporting comrades). The leaders of those foreign countries through a declaration of war openly expressed a desire to destroy the United States and put no small effort, however ineffectual it may have turned out to be, into achieving it; that the United States has long had enemies who wish to destroy it comes as no surprise to anyone paying attention.
This is the first time, however, that those enemies have actually lived in America and drawn government paychecks. And, they may – and I emphasize “may” – have the power to accomplish it, especially if a large enough cohort don’t care enough to resist it.
I’m trying to figure out why if war has been declared against America one side has adopted the position of willful acquiesense and submission. In 245 years we’ve never done that.
I started out assuming incompetence a couple weeks ago, when the implosion first became unmistakable. But Lara Logan (who knows the local players) has published a number of pieces pointing out that, in the extended runup to this disaster, the toast has landed butter-side-down far too many times in a row for mere stupidity to explain.
This. Was. Intentional. It’s becoming multiple-nines certain that the core of our foreign policy establishment INTENDED this result. Meanwhile our top military leadership was too busy pushing CRT on the troops to lodge more than token protests.
So. What now? Pareto wrote about “circulation of elites”, that if a leadership elite stops letting new top talent circulate in retail, instead selecting on other criteria – the right schools, the right families, the right politics, the right (lack of) religion – a wholesale circulation will eventually occur.
So, how do we start “eventually” rolling in time to save this nation?
Two relevant events from the Obama years come to mind:
1: Obama’s purge of our most competent military leaders who were not left-wing political hacks; See here: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/197-military-officers-purged-by-obama/
“Obama’s Military Coup Purges 197 Officers In Five Years ” 10/29/13
I recall that number was roughly doubled toward the end of Obama’s second term.
2: The PRC’s hack of OPM’s personnel files:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach
PA+Cat: very insightful essay. The business about interpreting the world in terms of our own internal squabbles— “Who’s the PoC? Who’s the Nazi?”—rings very true, and is an interesting contrast to the Cold War when we interpreted internal disagreements in terms of “Who’s the Godless Commie?”