Afghanistan. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. As in, giving further evidence if any be needed that the Biden administration is utterly out of its depth and is has no concern about the potentially deadly consequences of being so.
Current case in point are the six privately-chartered aircraft waiting on the tarmac at Mazar-i-Sharif airport in northern Afghanistan. According to Reuters reports about a thousand people, including an unspecified number of Americans, are there waiting to leave the country. They’ve been there for three days and counting, and the Taliban is not giving clearance for them to leave.
The finger-pointing has already begun. The Taliban says it’s not granting clearance because the destination is unclear. “Ascend,” a nonprofit organization responsible for chartering one of the aircraft said it was scheduled to fly to Qatar, but Doha says it won’t issue landing permission without an okay from Anthony Blinken’s State Department. When asked about a go-ahead, a State Department official deflected the question, saying they “had no people on the ground” to confirm the identities of the passengers.
Well, duh. DoS has no people on the ground because the Biden administration’s ineptitude allowed them to be stampeded out of Kabul in a mad rout to serve its political ends. By the way, if you believe State Department personnel “confirmed the identities” of the roughly 90 thousand people the US evacuated from Kabul in two weeks, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in New York. This evasion of responsibility beggars the imagination.
Remember when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said on August 18 that “we will successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan. In addition, we intend to evacuate those who have been supporting us for years, and we are not going to leave them behind.” Of course you do. It was less than three weeks ago.
It was a lie.
Remember when Anthony Blinken and the President said the same thing? If not, fear not: there’s plenty of video.
That was a lie, too. Now, all the principals involved in the rout at Kabul stand in a circle and point the finger of blame at the person to their right. And that’s not all.
The Biden administration clearly abandoned Americans and Afghans who fought with us; left billions of dollars of military equipment to our foes; gave the world the worst example of strategic ineptitude in the “Graveyard of Empires” since the catastrophic Great Retreat of General Elphinstone’s army from Kabul in 1842. The President began the process without coordinating with our allies or the Afghan government – save for a telephone call with President Ghani asking that he, too, lie about the situation. And now our country is facing the consequences of his dilettantism.
On Sunday Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said following classified briefings that “the Taliban want something” in exchange for releasing the aircraft and their passengers at Mazar-i-Sharif. What’s that called, again? If you just had a bad flashback to 1980 Tehran, you’re not alone.
No, ladies and gentlemen, the war in Afghanistan is not over, not by a long chalk. And the next iteration is going to be stomach-churning.
