Another day, another disaster. Many more like this one and we’ll be able to stack them on top of one another and peep over wall built by the party propaganda arm formerly known as the legacy media. All the details and dealings of the rotten mess that is the leadership of America-last movement calling itself the Democrat party will then be visible to those with a strong enough stomach to have a look.
The current debacle is the rout in Afghanistan and the chaotic scenes at the Hamid Karzai International Airport at Kabul. Thousands of desperate Afghanis surrounding planes, some clinging to them as they take off, only to fall to their deaths. No, we didn’t see scenes of “people climbing on helicopters on the embassy roof.” We’re using an entire airport instead, and it’s still a tableau of hopeless people waiting to be torn to bits by evil men.
No, Joe: no one is arguing with your decision to withdraw from Afghanistan – although you could have coordinated it a little better. Or at all, as far as our allies were concerned. As was the point several times during debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Everyone agrees that we and our allies no longer had any business trying to make Afghanistan the Central Asian version of Belgium. But that’s not the question, is it? The question is, how could our withdrawal have been so utterly, completely, disastrously bungled?
Don’t try to blame Donald Trump. Yes, he had a tentative agreement with the Taliban. But it was an agreement clearly based on the word “if.” As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained at the time, the agreed withdrawal was “conditions-based” and “phased.” As President Trump put it, “But if bad things happen, we’ll go back …with a force, like nobody’s ever seen.” Evidently, the Taliban believed him. Joe Biden said no such thing, and the Taliban was listening. Intently. When bad things began to happen and he did nothing, the collapse was inevitable.
In addition to blaming Trump for his failure, Biden tried to convince credulous American audiences that he was taken by surprise. In his favor, he might have been. In an administration which has politicized everything including the country’s military and intelligence services, the Big Fellah doesn’t hear anything which might trouble his certitudes. So negative reports from the lower levels where people are still in touch with reality simply get spiked somewhere along the line. Suddenly, everything is good everywhere, until it blows apart. I’ve seen it happen more than once. For a relevant taste, check the State Department’s “dissent channel” cable from Kabul in mid-July. It’s damming.
The result when reality finally crashes in is not pleasant – and it has been on full view lately at the White House where the president insists that “the buck stops with me” or some such plagiarized drivel, before blaming anyone else for the abysmal failure brought about by his fecklessness and inattention.
This catastrophe is his, and his alone. He owns it, and the sooner he stops blaming others and starts repairing the smoking wreckage that is his foreign policy, the better.
Because what happened in Kabul last “Friday to Monday,” to echo Secretary of State Blinken’s sneering dismissal of the possibility of a Taliban takeover in a June House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, is another dangerous signal of this President’s incapability to, and lack of interest in, defending this nation’s interests against our adversaries in a world which has just seen for themselves how deep the incompetence of this entire administration really is.
China’s watching. They are already planning to draw Afghanistan, or at least its mineral wealth, into their orbit. They are again threatening Taiwan, pointedly commenting that the Kabul catastrophe shows that America is not to be relied on. Look for immanent and dangerous mischief from this quarter
To think that Russia, North Korea, Iran and a slew of other similarly-nasty types are not also sharpening knives and drawing plans is to ignore millennia of the history of human mayhem. And that’s not all.
This Administration may have forgotten about the roughly five to ten thousand Americans still in Afghanistan – the administration isn’t quite sure how many there are, but it’s said they’re on their own – but you can bet the Taliban hasn’t. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Josh Rogin, Taliban elements are already conducting door-to-door searches for Westerners and I don’t think they’re being sold insurance. Wait for the hostage-taking and public executions to begin. Then what?
It’s a question the Biden administration must answer immediately or sooner, and the answer better be both good and convincing. A bunch of religious fanatics who think it’s still the seventh century have got their hands on modern weapons systems and the territory of a national state. They have a grudge against everyone who isn’t Muslim, and a taste for blood. They couldn’t care less about “international recognition.” They will not be deterred by “strong messages” or other sorts of finger-wagging from the usual scolds. As bad as things have gotten, they can get a whole lot worse. Fast.
