Trying To Put The Best Face Possible On This. And Failing
By Mitch Berg
Looking at the collapse of Afghanistan, and the likely re-emergence of Al Quaeda and ISIS, as well as the inevitable surge of Chinese, North Korean, Iranian and Russian aggression that will attend the adminstration’s show of not just weakness but pathetic senility, one looks for some bright spot.
“But it’s not actually Saigon…”
So – a bright spot to the most dismal day of American foreign policy since I watched that Huey take off from the roof of the embassy in fifth grade?
Maybe it’s this: some of the top “minds” in DC Democrat messaging are going to have to spend so much more time thinking of ways to convince people that “conservative white supremacist terror” is the greatest threat facing this nation, they won’t have time to think of anything new.
I said I was “looking” for a bright spot. I didn’t say I found one. But then, what the heck, we can’t even find the ^$#@ President:
Site note: as I watch thousands of Afghans trying and failing to flee for their lives because American bureaucracy is more concerned about Covid testing than mass murder…
…I have to wonder if Michelle Obama is still proud to be an American .
Because I’m have a touch of “not”, at the moment.
More tomorrow.
August 16th, 2021 at 12:48 pm
CPEC, rare earths: With US out, China set to scale up ambitions in Afghanistan China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met a Taliban delegation in July
“China’s English tabloid Global Times on Monday referred to the humiliation of the US in Afghanistan. The article also talked of China’s interest in ‘post-war’ reconstruction in Afghanistan.
The use of the term ‘reconstruction’ appeared interesting since Afghanistan has been under reconstruction ever since the US invaded the country in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The use of the term appeared aimed at projecting China’s interest in becoming a factor in Afghanistan’s politics using the development plank, a strategy China adopted previously, particularly in Africa.”
Afghanistan is full of rare earth minerals, which are a necessary component of electric motors. Right now, all of the rare earth processing is in China; we are at their mercy to keep things moving.
The Taliban has no ability to mine these minerals, and dgaf about them anyway; when the US isn’t handing them military vehicles they move around on horses and mules
The Chinese are sopping up the wealth in the shadow of America’s humiliating defeat.
August 16th, 2021 at 1:20 pm
If you have access to a teevee, you really need to tune MSNBC in…I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Pedo Joe will never recover from this debacle; never.
If he cares about America, he must step down.
August 16th, 2021 at 1:24 pm
you are sooooo naive
August 16th, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Ha! And Austin has already shown that he can’t provide the leadership. He and that idiot Milley are more interest in kissing Biden’s ass that in war fighting.
August 16th, 2021 at 2:12 pm
Has Biden been proven wrong? In fact the speed with which it all collapsed shows that Biden was right, there is nothing there left to defend.
August 16th, 2021 at 2:14 pm
Pedo Joe was being warned back in July
“(CNN) Updated 3:15 PM ET, Sun July 4, 2021
Army Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the top US military official overseeing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, said that there should be concern about the Taliban advances on the ground there.
While President Joe Biden is remaining steadfast in his decision to draw down troops by September 11, concerns are rising about the pace of troop withdrawal, the deteriorating security in Afghanistan, and lingering questions about the US’ long-term strategy.
Miller expressed his concern about the security situation in Afghanistan and raised the potential of a civil war once US troops are gone, as the Taliban are already moving rapidly to take over districts in the northern parts of the country.
“You look at the security situation, it’s not good. The Afghans recognize it’s not good. The Taliban are on the move. We’re starting to create conditions here that won’t look good for Afghanistan in the future if there’s a push for a military takeover,” he said.”
August 16th, 2021 at 2:58 pm
there is nothing there left to defend.
Except the Afghan civilians who risked their lives and the lives of their families to act as interpreters.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:00 pm
Should we have gone?
Probably not. Obama needed to divert attention away from the mistakes the women in his administration committed in the Middle East. Getting Bin Laden was not a military necessity, he was an excuse.
Should we have stayed?
Probably not. Nation-building is the new phrase for White Man’s Burden, remaking brown savages into modern Englishmen/Americans. It takes at least three generations – kill off the current bad guys, occupy the country while you indoctrinate their young. See: Japan and Germany. Takes patience which Liberals don’t have.
Should we have left?
Yes. But in a draw-down instead of a bug-out. There’s a difference between leaving town and being run out of town.
Should we leave other places, too?
Probably. We went into Korea to prevent a domino from falling. Our troops are still there as a ‘trip-wire’ so that if the Norks invade and slaughter G.I.s, Americans will be incensed and nuke the Norks. Except The Garden won’t, not with China standing behind them, so our troops would die for nothing. That’s dumb. Get them out of there. Start drawing down now, be out in two years.
NATO – what threat are we defending them from? Why can’t they defend themselves, or not, as they choose? Why is it our problem?
Middle East – we prop up the House of Saud and others so we can get access to cheap oil, on the theory it’s cheaper to support a tyrant than to fund an empire. Fine with me. Every investment of American military might should be subject to the same analysis – what’s the threat to us, what’s the benefit to us, what’s the cost to us?
August 16th, 2021 at 3:05 pm
I’m listening to Biden. He sounds drunk.
He’s blaming Trump for himself executing Trump’s agreement.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:07 pm
He’s doubling down! Oh, this is too good
August 16th, 2021 at 3:07 pm
He just said “lurking” when he meant “lurching.” Good God, he is drunk.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:08 pm
He’s whispering into the mic.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:09 pm
“The Taliban doesn’t have an air force”
They do now.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:16 pm
Good God, he is drunk.
Not drunk, drugged.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:20 pm
Can anyone explain to me what “rebinal diplomacy” is?
What is a “sigur Afghanistan”?
We are seeing now the Biden who graduated 79 out of 87 in tier 3 law school.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:31 pm
Listened to NPR. In their “analysis,” no one mentioned his slurred speech.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:32 pm
Aaaaaaaaand he’s off to Camp David. It’s nap time.
August 16th, 2021 at 3:55 pm
Twat, I’m enjoying your performance today. You conveniently forget Trump fell for the Generals tricks in 2017 and then was so incompetent he couldn’t actually end the war by the end of his presidency.
This was the best speech of Biden’s career and one of the most important speeches a president has given in my lifetime. We have been waiting 20 years for someone to say “enough”
August 16th, 2021 at 4:12 pm
I’m holding out for the “You won’t have Old Coal Miner Joe to kick around anymore” speech.
August 16th, 2021 at 4:16 pm
NYT pans Pedo Joe’s disgraceful, slurred excuse fest. No one is buying it…PEdo Joe failed bigly
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/16/us/politics-news
August 16th, 2021 at 4:18 pm
JD, I was thinking that same thing. This was the worst address since Nixon
August 16th, 2021 at 4:19 pm
Jesus fucking christ, little fella, if you’re gonna give pedo joe a blow job, at least you use you own words.
August 16th, 2021 at 4:19 pm
Biden sounded drunk. I wonder if he was drunk when he ordered his feckless withdrawal? I hate to reuse the word “feckless,” but it’s the most fitting word:
feckless
adjective
1. lacking initiative or strength of character; irresponsible
August 16th, 2021 at 4:22 pm
“Helping Afghanistan become self-sustaining is going to be a monumental task. It’s going to take up to a decade, and more blood will be spilled and more treasure will be spent. But I think it’s important”
– Joe Biden, 2008
August 16th, 2021 at 4:23 pm
NPR has gone full retard
President Biden Defends Afghanistan Withdrawal, Saying ‘The Buck Stops With Me’
JFC…he blamed everyone but Epstein!
August 16th, 2021 at 4:24 pm
“It’s not that we left Afghanistan, It’s the grossly incompetent way we left!”
-Donald J. Trump.
Hard to argue with that, unless you are a neocon.
August 16th, 2021 at 4:35 pm
The morale of head chopping muzzies hasn’t been this high since September 11, 2001. The Taliban is standing as the big dog now, but there are hundreds of little crews out there that want a piece of that pie.
They have seen our leadership consists of feckless nitwits, incapable of planning a morning crap.
I predict an act of terror in the US before the end of the year.
August 16th, 2021 at 4:43 pm
To me it sounded like he said ” uh puck ost wimmy.”
August 16th, 2021 at 4:45 pm
I’d have hoped that Biden (and Emery) would take to hear the fact that the Taliban are going to forcibly take girls out of school and make them–girls as young as 12–into sex slaves for Taliban soldiers. Of course, if he doesn’t care about Democratic support of Planned Parenthood, which steadfastly refuses to comply with laws requiring reporting statutory (and forcible) rape of minors. So it makes sense that Biden (and Emery) wouldn’t make much of a fuss about the return of the harem system to this portion of the Ottoman Empire.
Oh, yes, and let’s not forget; a consistent thorn in the side of our troops as well as the Afghan use for teenage boys.
But no harm done, right, Emery?
Really, the major thing we did wrong in our occupation was to fail to teach young Afghans how f***ed up the system their country had been working with was.
August 16th, 2021 at 4:51 pm
The Afghan military should have been able to repel the Taliban. According to some military operatives and advisors, the U.S. supplied the training, weapons and millions to sustain them. The problem stems from the corrupt Afghan government. Their military haven’t been paid, received food or ammo for months. All of the contractors that were maintaining the aircraft, pulled out long ago. Without maintenance and fuel, the aircraft are obviously useless. Further, there is no longer ground spotters to coordinate air strikes. Just like Mohammed Karzai before him, Russian officials witnessed Ghani arriving at the airport in four cars, full of cash. They stuffed as much as they could into a helicopter, but had to leave some of it behind. His whereabouts are unknown. Now, instead of making U.S. citizens into enemies of the state, the CIA should be tracking those crooks down and get that money back.
August 16th, 2021 at 4:54 pm
Really, bike, just how effed up is their system? As I stole from someone else and commented way, way up top, “Afghanistan is now finally liberated from a [culture] that imposes mandatory face coverings, destroys statues, and promotes the genital mutilation of children”
August 16th, 2021 at 4:56 pm
All of the contractors that were maintaining the aircraft, pulled out long ago. Without maintenance and fuel, the aircraft are obviously useless.
They can of course sell them to others, if only for parts (or secrets), but the Taliban is not going to use helicopters nor fighter jets.
August 16th, 2021 at 5:02 pm
In Biden’s speech, he seemed like the reason there is an FP crisis is because he chose to withdraw the American military from Afghanistan. Which was ridiculous, because we’ve known about this April.
The reason there is an FP crisis is because he botched it so badly. People are literally falling off airplanes, and we’ve had to call in thousands of troops to conduct an evacuation under fire.
The only time he addressed the issue of the taliban taking prized American military equipment, killing people, and threatening our people and their dependents in Afghanistan, he said that garzi assured him the afghan army would fight, and that people didn’t want to leave.
So this means the debacle is the fault of the people fleeing the taliban?
I don’t get it.
August 16th, 2021 at 6:19 pm
I like Presidents who make the hard choices, tell the truth and accept the responsibility.
Once Biden is up to 600,000 dead Americans through malicious negligence for the sole purpose of short-term political gain, then I’ll start worrying about his legacy. Not one minute before.
August 16th, 2021 at 6:37 pm
Legacy? Did Biden die?
August 16th, 2021 at 8:21 pm
He’s been brain dead for quite a while, MP. Surprised you did not notice.
August 16th, 2021 at 9:33 pm
Tell me when Biden accepts responsibility for the brutal rapes of tens of thousands of teenage girls (and boys), Emery. I won’t be holding my breath. Tell me when Biden accepts responsibility for the exclusion of girls from schooling, and the exclusion of women from paying work and open society. Tell me when Biden accepts responsibility for allowing Afghanistan to once again become a major haven for terrorism, along with assisting Iran to become an even greater haven for terrorism while he was Vice President.
Like I said, not holding my breath on this one.
August 16th, 2021 at 9:37 pm
And regarding the ludicrous claim that Trump is solely responsible for all the deaths from COVID, has it ever crossed your mind that a huge part of the problem was Democratic governors like Cuomo, Whitmer, and Walz sending COVID patients to recuperate in nursing homes, a bonehead move every bit as dumb as having Larry Nassar serve his sentence in a gymnastics training room? Has it ever crossed your mind that a huge part of the problem was the CDC and NIH, which ignored clear signs that the epidemic was a lab leak enabled by US-funded research at WIV?
More to the point regarding Biden, has it crossed your mind that the un-doing of the great improvement in COVID infection and death rates from the Trump vaccines (ahem) has its roots in Biden’s refusal to detain, vaccinate, and deport COVID-positive illegal immigrants, as is required by law?
August 17th, 2021 at 4:15 am
Emery, you are as brain dead as your hero Joey Demento. Will he accept the responsibility for suppressing the fact that the WuFlu can be cured by HCQ, Ivermectin and Regeron? Thousands of people have been saved from those therapies and thousands more could have been saved by them, but the corrupt DemoCommie cabal wanted to politicize it and see what they could get away with, exercising control over ignorant, low information true believers like you.
Oh, any guesses as to what moron let 5 of the Taliban generals, currently leading them, out of Gitmo? It was hypocritical party boy Barackus Obamanus I.
August 17th, 2021 at 7:26 am
Joe Biden, July 8, 2021:
‘The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.’
Highly unlikely became ‘always inevitable’ very quickly, didn’t it?
Now consider that the rank incompetence of Biden is at the root of all of the crisis the nation faces now that it did not face before he was sworn in.
August 17th, 2021 at 7:44 am
I like Presidents who make the hard choices, tell the truth and accept the responsibility.
Emery listened to a different speech than the rest of us.
August 17th, 2021 at 7:49 am
Donald J. Trump, compared to Biden, is the voice of sanity:
Can anyone even imagine taking out our Military before evacuating civilians and others who have been good to our Country and who should be allowed to seek refuge? In addition, these people left topflight and highly sophisticated equipment. Who can believe such incompetence? Under my Administration, all civilians and equipment would have been removed.
August 17th, 2021 at 8:03 am
Absolutely the right call by Biden. How on earth can the US continue to justify spending Trillions of dollars in a country, training an army that clearly does not want to stand up for themselves?
The Taliban could not have taken over the whole country, and so quickly, without the support of many of the Afghan people. The Afghan people appear to support the Taliban and their ideology. Good luck to them.
August 17th, 2021 at 8:10 am
Minnesota is about to become home to a very interesting experiment.
Very soon, thousands of Afghanis will be arriving in that beleaguered state, following in the steps of the last batch of 3rd world refugees from Somalia.
After 2 decades, the Somalis have settled into lives of political grifting, welfare dependency and, for the youts, gang warfare and crime.
But the Afghanis bring with them, much higher average IQ’s than the Sammies. 90 vs. 68.
It will be highly instructive to watch the Afghanis progression through our degenerate, and crumbling American society.
August 17th, 2021 at 8:12 am
Weapon seizures ‘massive boon’ for Taliban as cities fall
The United States spent billions supplying the Afghan military with the tools to defeat the Taliban, but the rapid capitulation of the armed forces means that weaponry is now fuelling the insurgents’ astonishing battlefield successes.
“We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools — let me emphasise: all the tools,” US President Joe Biden said when defending his decision to withdraw American forces and leave the fight to the locals.
But Afghan defence forces have shown little appetite for that fight and, in their tens of thousands, have been laying down their arms — only for the Taliban to immediately pick them up.
The Taliban’s social media is awash with videos of Taliban fighters seizing weapons caches — the majority supplied by Western powers.
Footage of Afghan soldiers surrendering in the northern city of Kunduz shows army vehicles loaded with heavy weapons and mounted with artillery guns safely in the hands of the insurgent rank and file.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210814-weapon-seizures-massive-boon-for-taliban-as-cities-fall
August 17th, 2021 at 8:17 am
From the AP:
WASHINGTON — America’s top general said Sunday that the United States could now face a rise in terrorist threats from a Taliban-run Afghanistan. That warning comes as intelligence agencies charged with anticipating those threats face new questions after the U.S.-backed Afghan military collapsed with shocking speed.
August 17th, 2021 at 8:19 am
On the bright side, as they fan out to take cab driving jobs, open convenience stores and restaurants, you will find the cuisine of Afghanistan is fit for human consumption, and actually quite tasty, contrasted with the nasty shit the Somalis consume.
August 17th, 2021 at 8:19 am
Senator Tom Cotton:
“The president seemed totally oblivious to conditions on the ground. He acts as if the withdrawal is going in an orderly fashion, yet surely he can see what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan right now, which is a direct consequence of his ill-planned, disorganized decision to withdraw.”
August 17th, 2021 at 8:42 am
I see the troll has gone from claiming that this Disaster is all trump’s fault to this is the greates thing Biden has ever done, all in a single thread.
August 17th, 2021 at 8:50 am
Nicolle Wallace hosts a Biden fry on MSNBC..yes *that* Nicolle Wallace
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/08/16/fmr-cia-analyst-zeller-biden-lied-no-plan-to-stop-allies-being-slaughtered-by-nazi-taliban
The leftist reprobates that were 100% complicit in the theft of the election are the owners of everything that happened after Nov 2nd, and no one is more to blame then the reprobate media.
My stomach churns when I see these scumbags sharpen their knives now. They’d do everyone a favor by using them to open their veins.