By the way, about the idea that the Bush administration thought the Iraq aftermath would be easy (“a cakewalk”), I beg to differ and I wrote about it in this post from 2005.

The problems in the present campaign against Iran – and they are many – stem from the fact that Iran is a much bigger country than Iraq with a larger population and a more religiously fanatical leadership unafraid to kill vast numbers of its own people, plus the IRGC has a structure that makes it exceptionally difficult to break, with power to control or threaten to control the vital Strait of Hormuz. In addition, we no longer tolerate having any boots on the ground, or nation-building of any complexity or length, and the Iranian leaders are well aware of that fact.

The post How did that war on terror go? appeared first on The New Neo.

This crime brings back horrific memories of the late 60s and early 70s, when many police were ambushed and murdered. Back then the assailants were mostly home-grown, but this one was imported. The Biden administration was warned that people from Afghanistan were being let in without proper vetting after the disastrous 2021 pullout, but it happened anyway. Lakanwal came here during that influx, but was he unvetted?:

Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a US nonprofit run by American veterans helping to evacuate and resettle Afghan allies in the US said one man’s monstrous actions are now hurting all Afghans who risked their lives for the US in its 20-year war — and the shockwaves are hitting the Americans who helped them find safety.

“He betrayed everybody who helped him,” VanDiver said Thursday. “He betrayed his family. He betrayed every American that helped him get here. He betrayed the United States government. And he deserves to be held fully accountable.”

That article doesn’t go into Lakanwal’s personal history, however, so it doesn’t answer the question of how well he was vetted. Here’s something that speaks to that question:

“This is a deadly combination,” Kent declared, noting that the suspected terrorist “was only vetted to serve as a soldier to fight against the Taliban, AQ, & ISIS IN Afghanistan, he was NOT vetted for his suitability to come to America and live among us as a neighbor, integrate into our communities, or eventually become an American citizen.”

A senior US official confirmed that he had been “vetted to fight” alongside US forces against Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS militants between 2011 and 2021 — but that this was a “low standard” that “has never been used before to let people into the US.”

That raises some interesting questions. So Lakanwal fought to help the US defeat the Taliban – and indeed, although that’s an indication he wasn’t fond of the Taliban, it doesn’t tell us much about why, or about any of his other beliefs. However, once we were leaving Afghanistan, it put him and anyone else who had helped the US at grave risk of retaliation from Taliban forces. The idea of bringing such people here was not just to save them – although that was part of it – but also to establish the idea that if you help the US you won’t be abandoned in the end.

“Prior to Biden it took 18 months or longer for someone to be granted a Special Immigrant Visa, including the applicant needing to flee to a third country so the US government could interview and vet them,” the official noted. “Biden threw all of this out and applied tactical war time vetting to people seeking entry into the homeland.” …

Chad Robichaux, a former Force Recon Marine who deployed to Afghanistan eight times and was part of a coalition effort that evacuated 17,000 nationals from the country in 2021, claimed to The Post that there was “zero vetting” for tens of thousands of Afghans flown out of Kabul in the final days of the withdrawal.

“Probably close to 100,000 of them were flown straight from Kabul to the United States to different airfields, and they were let go into the American population. We have no idea who they are — zero vetting,” said Robichaux, who authored the 2023 book “Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban.”

The Biden administration let in an estimated 80,000 such refugees, and their asylum claims were expedited as well. How did Lakanwal end up in Bellingham, Washington?:

The Kandahar Strike Force [Lakanwal] joined was a CIA-backed paramilitary group that fought alongside US forces — but was also accused of being a death squad that tortured and executed civilians.

Roughly 10,000 members of the so-called “Zero Units” eventually settled in Washington State near Seattle. Lakanwal ended up in Bellingham, Wash., with his wife and five children in September 2021.

I assume the FBI will be pretty busy in Bellingham for a while. Here’s an article featuring interviews with some of Lakanwal’s Bellingham neighbors, who seem quite clueless about him and his family except to say that the FBI has visited the apartment where he and his family lived.

Trump has made some announcements, including a “sweeping review of green card holders from 19 countries of concern.” No doubt this will be challenged in the courts.

RIP, Sarah Beckstrom. Such a tragic loss.

The post Rahmanullah Lakanwal will be facing murder charges after all appeared first on The New Neo.

A Florida jury found CNN liable on Friday in a high-stakes defamation trial against U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young, who alleged that the network maligned him as an “illegal profiteer” with a report on Afghan evacuees being charged thousands of dollars to flee the country following the U.S. military withdrawal.

Following two days of deliberations, the jury ruled that CNN must pay Young $4 million in financial damages and $1 million for emotional damage, adding that Young is also owed punitive damages. The trial is now heading into a second phase to determine the amount of punitive damages Young should receive from the network.

And of course this was in Florida. Had it been in NYC or especially in DC, the verdict might have been different.

This is interesting:

Additionally, CNN’s legal team argued in court filings that at the “time of its reporting, CNN knew little about Young’s financials, his model, or whether he’d successfully evacuated anyone because whenever anyone [including CNN] asked Young to explain his business, he obfuscated, behaved unprofessionally, lied, and hid.”

Are people required to answer the MSM’s questions? Apparently CNN thinks so. And why didn’t CNN wait till it knew the facts, instead of implying that what Young did was illegal? This appears to be why:

Throughout the trial, Freedman presented a series of Slack messages and emails from Marquardt and other CNN staffers in which they referred to Young as a “s***bag” with a “punchable face.” In one message to an editor, Marquardt said they were “gonna nail this Zachary Young mf***er,” while an editor responded: “Gonna hold you to that one cowboy!” In another message, Marquardt said of Young: “It’s your funeral, bucko.”

In depositions and court filings, CNN and its lawyers defended the harsh remarks as “banter” that’s part of a candid newsroom and that it didn’t impact the editorial process.

Sure thing. Highly objective.

I seem to remember another person with a supposedly “punchable face” who ultimately was paid quite a bit by various news agencies (including CNN) for defamation: Nicholas Sandmann.

The post CNN found liable for defamation appeared first on The New Neo.

…[T]he Taliban are now selling tickets to visit the ancient monuments that they demolished in 2001, in an attempt to boost Afghanistan’s flagging economy.

The Washington Post reported that Afghanistan’s tourist plan includes a pair of 1,400-year-old giant stone Buddhas that they turned to rubble in 2001, “in a purge of non-Islamic art.”…

…[I]n 2022, around 200,000 tourists visited the crumbled Buddhas. Local official Saifurrahman Mohammadi told The Post that since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 the country’s finances “have plummeted.” However, it is reported that Afghan officials believe such sites have potential “to bring in significant tourist money.” And with destroyed ancient sites serving as infrastructure hubs, Mohammedi said he is planning to build a souvenir market nearby, the Washington Post reported.

I well remember the destruction of those statues.

Count me out on this particular excursion.

The post And speaking of adventure tourism… appeared first on The New Neo.

President Biden announced Monday that the U.S. government killed the leader of al Qaeda, Ayman Al Zawahiri in a “successful” counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan that removes the terrorist from the battlefield “once and for all,” and degrades the terror network’s ability to operate.

The United States government, on July 30 at 9:48 p.m. ET, and 6:18 a.m. Kabul time, undertook a “precision counterterrorism operation,” killing Al Zawahiri, who served as Usama bin Laden’s deputy during the 9/11 attacks, and as his successor in 2011, following bin Laden’s death.

Al Zawahiri was seventy years old. I can’t imagine he’s still completely vital to the terror networks.

Biden will of course brag about this and hopes it gives him a political lift, much as Bin Laden’s killing did for Obama. But I really don’t think it will matter much at this point, because people’s beefs with Biden are much more up close and personal – and recent – than anything about 9/11. I would guess that probably about a third of voters (or more?) don’t even know who al Zawahiri is[was] at this point.

Biden also tried to convince US voters that his shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan didn’t matter, and that this makes up for it:

The president, speaking to his decision to withdraw U.S. military assets from Afghanistan last August, said that he decided that “the United States no longer needed thousands of boots on the ground in Afghanistan to protect America from terrorists who seek to do us harm.”

“And I made a promise to the American people that we continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond,” Biden said. “We’ve done just that.”

Biden said that the killing of Zawahiri helps to “never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe have[n] because he’s gone.”

The post Nearly 21 years after 9/11, a drone takes out al-Zawahiri appeared first on The New Neo.

A 2,000-page Army investigation found that senior military officials were frustrated by the inability of the White House and State Department to recognize the imminent security threat that led to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The investigation, first obtained by the Washington Post Tuesday through a Freedom of Information Act request, was launched in response to the deadly events of Aug. 26, when 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians were killed by a suicide bomb attack…

he top U.S commander on the ground during the evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, told Army investigators that service members would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.”…

The State Department, DOD and National Security Council (NSC) began planning for a potential mass evacuation that summer but did not predict Kabul would fall as fast as it did. The U.S. military had complained privately for months that the State Department and U.S. Embassy were not moving fast enough to approve Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and begin evacuating Afghan allies.

What was happening on the ground was obvious. The need to keep Bagram open was also obvious. But the administration insisted that military personnel be reduced to a number that necessitated closing it prematurely.

The State Department comes out especially badly in this report, but they say the military is just passing the buck to them. Who knows? I think there’s more than enough blame to go around, but I place it primarily on State and the Biden administration. However, long before this report, I felt the military had better plans that were overruled by Biden and company.

The Afghanistan withdrawal was a turning point for the Biden administration in terms of public perception. This report won’t help, but I imagine most people aren’t paying too much attention at this point. It’s over. But I think the damage has been done – to the administration, to Afghanistan, and to the United States.

The post Biden’s Afghanistan retreat appeared first on The New Neo.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services committee Tuesday, head of U.S. Central Command General Frank McKenzie confirmed that he initially recommended President Biden maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, contradicting the president’s claim that the military unanimously recommended total withdrawal.

McKenzie also warned that a full withdrawal would lead inexorably to the collapse of the Afghan forces and government.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, also present at the hearing, echoed McKenzie’s assertion, saying they both believed that a small footprint should be maintained until the Taliban complied with certain conditions for withdrawal. While neither general would say explicitly that they conveyed that opinion personally to President Biden, McKenzie said it “would be reasonable to conclude that” their evaluations were delivered to Biden ahead of the withdrawal.

This has been treated as bombshell news, because in a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos, Biden had said something quite different, which is “No one said that to me that I can recall.”

So here we are, in the land of the liars in which we have to figure out who, if anyone, is telling the truth. Of course an argument can be made that all of them are, because it’s certainly possible that they told Biden at the time and that he cannot recall it anymore. But actually, that doesn’t matter in terms of Biden’s decision-making process at the time, and what responsibility the generals have for the disaster.

They are obviously trying to say, “Don’t blame me!” But it’s possible they’re lying, too. I happen to think they’re telling the truth, though, for two main reasons. The first is that although they are boot-licking CYA cowards and lying is certainly something they’re willing to do, I don’t think they would give military advice that was obviously insane, or insanely stupid, as our military withdrawal from Afghanistan actually was. That plan bears the mark of the stupid, corrupt, and somewhat delusional president – with the help of some of his advisors such as Blinken.

The second reason I think the generals are telling the truth about their advice is because of something I wrote on September 20, which I’ll reproduce here:

…I think it’s instructive to look back and see what people in government were saying. For example, consider this article from April 22, written very shortly after Biden announced his withdrawal schedule.

One of the most curious bits of Congressional testimony to reflect on now was by General MacKenzie [emphasis mine]:…

“’My concern is the ability of the Afghan military to hold the ground that they’re on now without the support that they’ve been used to for many years,’ Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“‘I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan air force to fly, in particular, after we remove the support for those aircraft,’ he added.

“Pressed later in the hearing on continuing to fund Afghan forces when U.S. troops withdraw, McKenzie said that without ‘some support,’ the Afghan forces ‘certainly will collapse.'”

So MacKenzie didn’t just supposedly say this to Biden. He said it in public, to Congress, in April of 2021, and this was reported in the news at the time. So it’s a matter of public knowledge. I’m not sure why I seem to have been the only one who is noticing at this point, but MacKenzie’s prior public statements seem worth considering as evidence that this is indeed what he also told Biden.

That hardly absolves either MacKenzie or Milley, however. As I’ve written from the beginning of the debacle, they should have resigned if they knew they were carrying out orders that weren’t just some small or even big error of judgment on the part of Biden (or whoever was giving them), but were insanely destructive and so against even common sense that even a small child could see that disaster would follow. They should never have been part of carrying them out, but not only did they implement them but then they made excuses and claimed things were going well. Now they are in CYA mode.

As for Biden, the main issue isn’t what he remembers now, although that of course is an issue. The more important question is what he knew then, back when he made his decisions, and why he made them in spite of both advice and ordinary common sense reasoning. The other issue is, of course, whether it was Biden who made the decisions at all.

What a horrific mess.

The post Failure is an orphan: the generals testify on the Afghanistan withdrawal appeared first on The New Neo.

As for their laws and punishments which Turabi insists are not to be criticized, he said that “cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” but that the new Taliban government hadn’t yet decided whether to carry out the punishments in public as they have in the past but pledged they will “develop a policy” to handle brutal punishments for actions they deem to be crimes. If that’s what the Taliban is admitting publicly, there’s surely worse happening that’s so far gone unpublicized.

The Taliban have learned a bit about PR from their last stint in power and then their years in exile. They will keep their brutality more secret this time, but they will continue to be brutal. They have learned how to keep the West at bay – and indeed, it’s easier to do so than before, because the West is far more tired and feeble and has lost the courage of its own former convictions.

The Biden administration has insisted that it’s up to the Taliban to choose how they want to lead and have called on their new government to [be] inclusive and tolerant…

Laughable and delusional on the part of the Biden administration – although I don’t really think they believe for a moment that it would be possible.

The post Sharia law returns to Afghanistan appeared first on The New Neo.

….[T]he west has continued to repeat its fiascos by indulging in the same fantasies that it will end the “forever wars” — whether through the Israel-Palestine “peace process,” the Iran nuclear deal or abandoning Afghanistan, where both British and American governments are now spinning themselves the fantasy that Taliban “realists” will keep the Taliban jihadists in check.

For Islamists, war is indeed forever. For such fanatics, defeat is only ever temporary.

For the west, however, there are no “forever wars.” Its wars are either won or lost; there are victors and vanquished.

And military strength matters less than belief. The 9/11 attackers didn’t use sophisticated military hardware. They hijacked civilian aircraft and turned them into ying human bombs of enormous destructive potential.

What fuels the jihad is the power of an idea. That idea is the cult of death.

To overcome a cult of death, the west needs a belief in life. Its own life. That is the way to draw the necessary courage and resolve from this most sombre anniversary [of 9/11]; but alas, it seems the most difficult of lessons to learn.

It is understandable to yearn for peace. But if the enemy doesn’t believe in it, we cannot pretend – actually, we can pretend, but the results will be disastrous. Sometimes the only way to get the enemy to believe in peace is to vanquish that enemy. That may seem paradoxical to some people, but it’s not.

This might be a good time to call your attention to a discussion between Victor Davis Hanson and H. R. McMaster on Afghanistan. In it they touch on why we were in Afghanistan, how long we should have stayed there, and how the situation was rarely properly explained to the American public over the years. It’s a long video, but it’s not necessary to watch the whole thing to get something out of it:

One thing Hanson and McMaster discuss in that video is a speech Trump gave on Afghanistan on August 22, 2017. They think it was a good one; you can find the text here if you’re interested. I didn’t recall writing about it, but indeed I did, and here’s my post on the subject.

[NOTE: I also wrote a somewhat relevant post in 2007 about the general belief that “war is not the answer.”]

The post Melanie Phillips: on the desire to end “forever wars” appeared first on The New Neo.

One of the most curious bits of Congressional testimony to reflect on now was by General MacKenzie [emphasis mine]:

The top U.S. general in the Middle East expressed concern Thursday about Afghan forces’ ability to fend off the Taliban after U.S. troops withdraw from the country.

“My concern is the ability of the Afghan military to hold the ground that they’re on now without the support that they’ve been used to for many years,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan air force to fly, in particular, after we remove the support for those aircraft,” he added.

Pressed later in the hearing on continuing to fund Afghan forces when U.S. troops withdraw, McKenzie said that without “some support,” the Afghan forces “certainly will collapse.”

It says later on that MacKenzie expressed “great concern” about the future of the embassy, and that he refused to state what he told Biden about the withdrawal. But one can imagine. Perhaps MacKenzie didn’t think the collapse would happen in a matter of days, but I bet he wasn’t in favor of the way this was done. Is anyone aware of what he’s said more recently?

Then there’s this:

“The arbitrary Sept. 11 deadline for troop drawdown risks a power vacuum that terrorists will dominate and use to threaten our homeland again,” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said at Thursday’s hearing.

And Elizabeth Warren should be reminded of this [emphasis mine]:

By contrast, while pressing McKenzie on Taliban gains over the past decade, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday, “It’s clear there is little for us to be gained by a continued U.S presence there.”

“We should have learned by now that a conditions-based withdrawal is just a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever,” she said.

Sure, Liz. That’s all it was – no need to worry about holding the Taliban to any conditions, like those silly warmongering Republicans were advocating.

The post Looking back: predictions about our Afghanistan withdrawal appeared first on The New Neo.