Our new partners for peace, the Taliban
What is wrong with these people?:
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.
The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.
You may think my question that began this post was a rhetorical one. No; I actually meant it, as in: (1) Are they abysmally stupid and mindbogglingly, criminally ignorant? (2) Are the American officials in charge there – and perhaps elsewhere or even everywhere – moles? Not just one mole, but mole after mole after mole? In other words, is it moles and spies and traitors all the way down? (3) Were they acting on their own or did they get orders from the higher-ups to do this? And if so, who were those higher-ups?
More:
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”
In other words, they are asking to remain anonymous in order to protect themselves from retaliation. Can’t say I blame them – although actually, I do. I wish people were more courageous, but I can’t say that I would be any more courageous if I were in their shoes; I just don’t know. At least they’re speaking to the press and getting the word out – unfortunately, way too late (it’s not clear when they themselves learned about the policy).
More [emphasis mine]:
…In the earliest days of the evacuation, the joint U.S. military and diplomatic coordination team at the airport provided the Taliban with a list of people the U.S. aimed to evacuate. Those names included Afghans who served alongside the U.S. during the 20-year war and sought special immigrant visas to America. U.S. citizens, dual nationals and lawful permanent residents were also listed.
“They had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport,” one U.S. official said.
Yes, you were between a rock and a hard place – and it was entirely of the US’s own making. The Biden administration put us in the position of relying on the Taliban to protect the very people the Taliban would like to torture and kill. That’s unconscionable. Did no one not think of that as the Taliban made their way unimpeded through city after city in Afghanistan?
Or perhaps they did think of it and considered it a feature rather than a bug, because learning that we did this would discourage anyone, in any country that was experiencing anything similar, from ever cooperating with the US again. Who would risk it?
Here are some of the perpetrators – and I don’t mean the Taliban:
In written and verbal communications, Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, head of U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan, have referred to the Taliban as “our Afghan partners,” according to two defense officials.
The Biden administration has been coordinating the evacuation effort and airport security with the Taliban, which is running the checkpoints outside the airport’s outer perimeter. Officials have been “in daily communication” with Taliban commanders about who to let in, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters this week.
I wrote the title of this post before I had read that part of the linked article. I had no idea that the people in charge had actually called the Taliban our “partners.” I was being sarcastic; they were not.
And then there’s this:
After the attacks, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) appeared to criticize the Biden administration’s strategy of coordinating with the Taliban, writing in a statement: “As we wait for more details to come in, one thing is clear: We can’t trust the Taliban with Americans’ security.”
Is it clear now, Bob? Was it clear before, Bob? And if not, why not? Because it’s been clear to the rest of us for more than twenty years – crystal clear. What’s becoming more and more clear is that we can’t trust our own government with Americans’ security.
More proof that they simply have NO clue….
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/26/us-officials-provided-taliban-with-names-of-americans-afghan-allies-to-evacuate-506957
If the Taliban was giving the orders in Washington not 1 decision would be different
Maybe this is off-topic, but who can tell, since the whole universe of discourse now seems to have become a tossed word-salad?
Anyway, I watched the (p)resident’s address from start to finish. It was simultaneously disgraceful and surreal. Not in more than fifty years have I been so shocked and disgusted by our leadership class (or caste) — shocked but not surprised.
God help all those people Biden and his enablers have turned into sitting ducks in Kabul.
The Canadians are getting in on the act too: “Canada’s minister for women and gender equality referred to the Taliban as ‘our brothers’ during a virtual news conference Wednesday morning. ‘I want to take this opportunity to speak to our brothers, the Taliban,’ Maryam Monsef said. ‘We call on you to ensure the safe and secure passage of any individual in Afghanistan out of the country.'”
With a name like that, she’s not likely to be a member of the Bloc Québécois.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/canada-trudeau-minister-taliban-our-brothers
There apparently was a Dept of State mass mailing to all SIVs, with no names filled in. So there are multiple thousands of possible copies.
The Taliban isn’t going to allow all Afghans to leave who ask to leave. If they’re in charge … they ARE the “government”. And Dems love gov’t! And Dems trust the gov’t. Despite all evidence, since they want the gov’t to be good.
Magic thinking.
So how many Afghans on the list need to be caught and tortured/ killed for this to be a bad idea? 10% of the number who the Taliban let escape? 50%?
And how many/few Afghans do the Taliban have to allow to leave to be evaluated as being good/bad about letting other Afghans leave?
We don’t have good language for such nuances, nor honest predictions, which allows after-the-facts claims that whatever happens support the pre-event beliefs.
I wouldn’t be surprised if “peace”, meaning no Americans are killed by the Taliban, actually mostly happens after Oct 2021 (Sept a big question transition after the Aug 31 final pull-out date). All will be gone.
Tho it also won’t surprise me that many who stay are caught and killed, and many who stay become Taliban boot-lickers (like Jane Fonda with N. Viet commies).
I fully expect a huge number of Afghans who helped Americans will be killed, and many Afghan feminist women to be raped and tortured. Expectations of upcoming sickness that now I can do nothing about.
Glad I voted Trump.
What is wrong with these people? –neo
(4) Our leaders are doing the best they can to return Americans from Afghanistan … or at least to have a good explanation for the attempt, when it fails.
I think the State Dept. should issue laminated passes like at rock concerts for getting backstage.
Man, just one look at one of those babies and the Taliban will part like the Red Sea for Moses!
–“Wayne’s World”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuK7V2zJ_6c
I keep on remarking that the basic, fundamental mission of the Democrats, the Progressives, is to pull America down to Venezuelan levels. But few in my acquaintance agree. “It’s above my pay grade”, they say.
Canada’s termination of airlifts is no biggie. What? One plane per day? Canada is turning into a secular paradise that imprisons pastors for holding church services…too many parishioners turned up. Quebec is going to be the best sanctuary…64% still claim to be Catholic, unlike the secular, pastor-imprisoning West (Alberta and BC).
On another front, on tonight’s NBC News, Lou Holtz lionized the murderer of Ashli Babbitt. May God damn both of them to Hell.
Apparently-
Biden said today, about the War in Afghanistan:
“If Osama Bin Laden had attacked us, from Saudi Arabia, or Yemen, would we ever gone to war in Afghanistan?…”
What is he talking ABOUT?
I guess his message to the world is:
DEAR ENEMIES of The US:
PLEASE only start a war with us, in COUNTRIES THAT WE WANT TO FIGHT.
Not from the other countries.
(His uses of the military are very dumb.)
Neo correctly assumes that the Taliban was given that list of names by the U.S. But did you hear Biden’s response when he was questioned about it?
[I] can’t say with “certitude” that there was a list of names passed to the Taliban. “There may have been,” the president said.
Does that remind you of anything? That’s almost exactly the response that Hunter Biden gave in an interview when questioned about laptop(s) he lost. Are they yours? “They might be. I can’t say.” (paraphrasing)
What a couple of weasels.
_____
This whole operation has the odor of some CIA fever dream of a plan for a shake-and-bake instant pop-up government. No doubt some idiot at State thought it was a great idea and brought it up at a cabinet meeting. Just guessing of course.
A great overwhelming depression has taken hold of me. I thought it might not get worse but Biden and his cronies have proved me wrong. I just can’t say more.
I will add this. Will Biden or Harris or Miley or any of the other idjts show up at Dover AFB?
The more I think about Zaphod’s comment, the more it seems as though it might actually be happening, in some fashion or other.
Someone calculated that 6% of the people being flown out are Americans and the rest refugees. If you have followed the numbers, the claim today that only 500 to 1K Americans remain is almost certainly nonsense. It’s probably 5K to 10K Americans left, or more.
In a brief moment of extreme cynicism, I did think that the Biden admin. wanted to import 50K more Seddique Mateens into the U.S.A. No, that can’t be. Snap out of it.
Who is controlling the refugee flights really? The U.S. does have authority over issuing SIV visas. But the Taliban and the Haqqani network is in charge of security and the check-points outside the airport. So in some real sense, the Taliban gets to choose who leaves.
TommyJay:
Robert Spencer posted to that effect today:
____________________________________
… the Biden administration, which has been bragging about the success of its airlifts out of Kabul, made the decision not to prioritize getting Americans out of Afghanistan first. As of early afternoon, the American death toll was 13 and likely to rise.
The administration was much more concerned with bringing Afghans to the United States than rescuing Americans in Kabul. Kirby said on August 15: “Once we get more airlift out of Kabul, we’re going to put as many people on those planes as we can. There will be a mix…not just American citizens, but perhaps some Afghan SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants as well. We’re going to focus on getting people out of the country, then sorting it out at the next stop. It’s not going to be just Americans first, then SIV applicants.”
–“Never Forget: Biden Prioritized Getting Afghans Out of the Country”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/08/26/never-forget-biden-prioritized-getting-afghans-out-of-the-country-n1473030
I’m working from my memory here – which as forgetful as it is, it no where nearly as poor as Biden’s – when the US pulled out of Saigon and Phnom Penh the US embassies didn’t destroy all critical documents and, actually, did leave behind a “hit list” of who had worked with Americans. But, it wasn’t intentional; it was just stupid, ill-timed, unpreparedness.
Then when the Tehran Embassy was taken by the radical students and I heard that the embassy staff did manage to destroy a lot of documents I thought “good someone learned from past mistakes.”
But, this!? OMG! yes, I agree what IS wrong with these people? To which I say, only half in jest, that they must all be doing crack! or something worse. Just how stupid can people be?
I don’t even want to think about how much worse it will get – but, it will get worse; very frightfully worse.
@bob sykes –
Lester Holt is the NBC news guy.
Lou Holtz is a retired football coach.
Your government hates you and wants you replaced (=dead). Just the Facts. Any objective Little Green Man from Mars could tell you that.
It’s nigh time for the 250 year house cleaning. The problem with revolutions is that contra the myths, they don’t spring fully-formed from below. Elite Defectors are required to run much of the show. Can’t see that happening before significant economic pain kicks in and the physical hurt from BLM/AntiFa/‘Refugees’ starts hurting the Big Swinging *****s.
That was Lester Holt, not Lou Holtz.
What Zaphod said at 8:52pm.
@mikeski
Thanks for the correction, I was confused. That just seemed like a weird thing for Lou to be wading in on.
The Taliban may have demanded the names or no one would be allowed to leave. More likely is an incomprehensible stupidity driven by ideological blinders. Like Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality(!) referring to the Taliban as ‘our brothers’. She’s sets a new low in stupidity with a craven attempt to appease. Reportedly, Trudeau has abandoned any remaining Canadians as well by ceasing all efforts to rescue Canadians stranded in Afghanistan.
The brutal reality is that as far as the Taliban are concerned anyone trying to leave is effectively declaring themselves to be the Taliban’s enemy.
“If the Taliban was giving the orders in Washington not 1 decision would be different” Skip
So wrong, so true.
BCE is *not* a Happy Camper today:
https://bigcountryexpatoriginal.blogspot.com/2021/08/my-take.html
Pretty much like every other day of late, though.
““Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.”
__________
I strongly doubt the “defense official” will think of resigning over this?
Don’t be ridiculous. Like all the rest, he’ll hold on to his phony baloney job.
Do you actually expect an entire party that believes the lies that our country was founded in 1619 when slavery came to the colonies, we revolted against the Britain to preserve our system of slavery, and our founding documents are steeped in racism, to love this country? They hate it. No Democrat has ever sworn a true oath to “serve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the United States. How could they? They keep telling us that it’s a racist document. That wearing a MAGA hat and carrying a pocket uniform is practically the new Klan uniform.
Only people who hate this country would create the catastrophe on our southern border, let alone Afghanistan
I wrote it before and I’ll say it again: The Party of Treason, Liars and Criminals must be utterly eliminated.
The Biden administration put us in the position of relying on the Taliban to protect the very people the Taliban would like to torture and kill.
After hearing the Austin/Milley testimony on whether Bagram should have been retained, it’s clear from their garbled statements that neither is a leader nor a commander speaking from a knowledge of facts and circumstances, but rather both are timeservers who’ve made it far above their competence, their ‘pay grade’, to a stratospheric elevation of ignorance, undecisiveness and mushmouthed incompetence. Can them soonest.
Insufficiently Sensitive, like case of the herpes they will be with us always
This is easy to explain. Robert Conquest laid down 3 rules of politics. Number 3 is:
3. The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
FYI, The first two are:
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.
Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the examples of the Church of England and Amnesty International. Of the Third, he noted that a bureaucarcy sometimes actually IS controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies–e.g. the postwar British secret service.
“on tonight’s NBC News, (Lester Holt) lionized the murderer of Ashli Babbitt”
Consider: She was not warned. There was no “Hands up, you’re under arrest”. She was not armed. She was not attacking anyone.
Consider further: the shooter was not in danger. No other Capitol guard felt compelled to shoot a protester. It’s a huge outlier.
The reaction includes hiding his name, praising him, foregone administrative reviews and the like.
When I hear LHolt praised the cold blooded murderer what I hear is: “Forget normal behavior. Kill more of them. We have your back”.
We all need to be careful.
Literally they are trying to gradually ramp up their supporters to perform indiscriminate murder. Am I wrong?
@JimNorCal:
“Literally they are trying to gradually ramp up their supporters to perform indiscriminate murder. Am I wrong?”
Nope. Rwandan Radio. Do not adjust your set.
This may not be the right blog to bring up the topic … apologies in advance.
Part of my bleak outlook above is from wading into my local NextDoor.
LOTS of talk about vaccines.
There are only 2 choices:
1) get vaxxed and maybe have some short term discomfort
2) get infected, get intubated and probably die.
To fail to be vaccinated is to consign your neighbors to death.
It’s just crazy talk.
There’s a meme going around which is true:
“The only people worried about Covid now are those who are vaccinated”
We the unvaxxed are entirely willing to live and let live. We are not spending our time in anxiety. When pushed, I think most would say we’ve gone past “pandemic” to “endemic”. Covid is a permanent part of the medical landscape and we will all eventually get it. Perhaps multiple times. Nearly all will survive the experience, but some will die. Keep your lifestyle healthy and your immune system tuned up.
In areas under Dem control the outlook described above is intolerable.
If passed, all CA emps must vaxx. CA citizens denied access to anything except churches and grocery stores.
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/california-legislature-guts-transportation-bill-to-create-vaccine-mandate-on-private-industry/
California Legislature Guts Transportation Bill to Create Vaccine Mandate on Private Industry
AB 455 by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), was a bill to authorize the Bay Area Toll Authority to designate transit-only traffic lanes on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, in consultation with the Department of Transportation, Caltrans.
Gut-and-amend bills can be particularly insidious. This secretive process often leaves lawmakers, as well as the public, little or no time to review entirely new legislation dropped into an old bill. And usually, the subject of the legislation has nothing to do with the bill’s previous legislative issue.
Gut-and-amend typically happens with budget issues and heavy special interest legislation. Lawmakers have complained loudly for years that the gut-and-amend process has been grossly abused by whichever party is in power.
Sources say they don’t know if this bill will come to fruition or not.
@Zaphod:
My favorite book on Rwanda:
–Philip Gourevitch, “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda”
https://www.amazon.com/Wish-Inform-Tomorrow-Killed-Families/dp/0312243359
A bit more cheerful than Huxley’s
Life before birth
About 7 min
https://vimeo.com/325006095
I’ve been hard-pressed to understand how they could possibly be so stupid. At this point, it is starting to feel like enemy action. I really wonder who is running the country right now. It is frightening.
A few months ago I scoffed when neo said she thought the country might be lost.
Now I am entertaining the same thought.
Glenn Reynolds recently said (on Instapundit) that the passage of the so-called infrastructure bill is probably the end of the republic.
I find it hard to believe, intellectually, but emotionally it seems true. So I am living in a state of cognitive dissonance.
Someone made a good historical analogy comparing Joe Biden to 77-year-old Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg the last President of the Weimar Republic in Germany.
Meeting Ahmad Massoud, the Sandhurst graduate taking on the Taliban
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/meeting-ahmad-massoud-the-sandhurst-graduate-taking-on-the-taliban
^^^ Because the ones who can speak English and make good BBC and CNN interviewees are the natural born winners in life. Obviously.
We always back these kinds of guys. They always lose.
At most this guy might hold his valley. If so, good for him. Nothing wrong with defending home and hearth against guys from next valley over. It’s as human as you can be. But build him up into the Great White (errr) Hope? Jaysus Wept.
Everybody just STOP puhleeeeese and GTFO and go play other games. The Great Game is Tired of us.
Zaphod:
The Great Game may be tired of us. But the terrorists aren’t, and that’s what the current concern is.
Of course, in Hong Kong, that’s not your concern.
Sundance at Conservative Treehouse sees the Politico piece as agitprop by the CIA-DoS axis to blame Biden and the White House and the Pentagon.
Yet, as most here agree, Afghanistan has been a work without much progress, a money pit, and a cash cow for all of the above, plus the oligarchs of Wall Street.
It’s a worthwhile analysis of the Deepest Deep State infighting: after all, these lists were provided by the CIA and DoS https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/27/the-report-on-u-s-officials-giving-taliban-a-list-of-american-and-allied-afghans-makes-sense-the-lists-were-provided-to-taliban-by-state-dept-and-cia/
The most shameful indicator of the Fall of The Republic is the failure of Congress to restore Federal Budgeting after the Great Recession.
Instead all “budgeting” is done by managed decrees manifested by “omnibus spending” bills. That no one reads.
The model was Obamacare. And it’s become the new norm of post Constitutional government “control” ever since.
SCOTUS essentially rubber stamped the Fall of the Republic with Chief Justice Robert’s blessing when he declared what was everywhere legislatively not a tax – or, the individual mandate to have health insurance – merely a tax and hence Constitutional.
We’ve lost The Great Republic — which Winston Churchill called our nation — and which the excellent classic US history survey by Harvard’s Bernard Bailyn named his classic textbook, following Winston’s recommend.
Class War follies, anyone? It’s the oligarch’s delight.