Article

2021-08-13 Afghanistan

This Afghan rout is entirely on Joe Biden

Wait til the Ospreys are taking off from the roof of the embassy. Carter era good times

New York Post cover for August 13, 2021. Biden's Saigon

[NY Post] It doesn’t get more idiotic: "The Taliban also has to make an assessment about what they want their role to be in the international community," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said with a straight face Wednesday.

Oh, and the State Department has sent diplomats to "press the Taliban to stop their military offensive and to negotiate a political settlement, which is the only path to stability and development in Afghanistan." They’re also begging to have the US embassy in Kabul left alone, warning that future US aid is at risk — and so effectively promising that we’ll actually subsidize these barbarians.

Hello? The Taliban has never given a damn about world opinion or "stability and development." It was a global pariah when it ruled Afghanistan in the ’90s, ignoring the handwringing as it crushed the country’s women, destroyed those 1,500-year-old Buddha statues and hosted the al Qaeda plotters of 9/11.

And it hasn’t changed a whit since, blowing off all diplomatic efforts these last 20 years to get it to abandon its drive to reconquer the country.

These are fanatics out of the 10th century. They’re turning girls as young as 12 into sex slaves as they advance.

The Afghan army, meanwhile, is showing all the fortitude of the Iraqi forces who melted before ISIS in 2014: Provincial capitals (plural) are falling every day, with No. 10 (Herat) and 11 (Ghazni) gone Thursday. (To be fair, Afghan morale surely fell through the floor when Americans started literally abandoning bases in the middle of the night.)

Now it’s a race to Kabul, where Uncle Sam is desperately rushing to airlift out all Americans in a replay of the 1975 fall of Saigon.

The White House can pretend that diplomacy might somehow save the Afghan government, but its real sentiments rest in President Joe Biden’s words while campaigning last year, when he said he’d have "zero responsibility" for what happened after he pulled US troops out.

We didn’t disagree with Biden’s move to remove the last US ground forces, just as Donald Trump promised as well when he was in office. That’s plainly what most Americans wanted, too. Afghanistan had become an endless war.

But any pullout had to have a plan. Not an utterly disastrous cut-and-run, with virtually no provision for the Afghans who worked with us all these years.

The Army of the Republic of South Vietnam fought off an invasion in 1972 — with the help of massive US airpower; 1975 was a disaster because anti-war liberals in Congress prevented more airstrikes.

Posted by Frank G 2021-08-13 00:00|| || Front Page|| [13 views ] Top
File under: Taliban

#1 ...The inevitable post-mortems will also likely find that a disturbing percentage of Afghan forces - both police and military - simply did not exist; 'ghost soldiers' whose pay was being collected by their putative commanders.

And that we knew it.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2021-08-13 04:59|| 2021-08-13 04:59|| Front Page Top

#2 I remember from my Homeland Security days a group of Middle Eastern "educators" who were running a fast growing private school for learning English as a second Language for immigrants, and how one of the classroom auditors brought the police in because she suspected fraud since she thought some of the people looked familiar. They were given auditing schedules and asked to make lodging arrangements for visiting sudit staff and bussed the same 30 people to site after site....sound familiar? Everything old is new again!

Posted by NoMoreBS 2021-08-13 12:04|| 2021-08-13 12:04|| Front Page Top

#3 I think the senior generals deserve at least half of the blame for this fiasco. President Trump ordered them to prepare for this when he was sworn in at the beginning of 2016. But they blew him off until last year, and then they delayed until President Biden was sworn in and agreed to delay a few extra months. So the generals have had five years to plan and organize, during which time they clearly did absolutely nothing to prepare our troops, our allies, and the Afghans for even the possibility of us leaving.

Posted by trailing wife 2021-08-13 20:58|| 2021-08-13 20:58|| Front Page Top

#4 So you are saying the generals spent the last 5 years kicking the Af-can down the road...

Posted by SteveS 2021-08-13 21:10|| 2021-08-13 21:10|| Front Page Top

#5 If I’d said that, I’d send myself to my room for it, SteveS, instead of ordering you there. ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2021-08-13 22:59|| 2021-08-13 22:59|| Front Page Top

10:58 M. Murcek
10:58 Grom the Reflective
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