Over the past few days, there’s been an undercurrent on social media of people saying the implosion of Afghanistan, culminating [1] in yesterday’s suicide-bomb attack killing (so far) 10 Marines and close to 100 people all told was “the angriest/saddest they’ve felt since 9/11”.
For me? In some ways, it’s worse.
9/11 wasn’t a “surprise”, per se – if you’d been paying attention through the ’90s, with the USS Cole, the Khobar Towers and the first WTC Bombing, it was a natural progression. But it was enemies doing what enemies do. We were attacked – like Pearl Harbor, like the Norks crossing the 38th Parallel, it was people who hated us, doing what people who hate us say they’re going to do.
This past two weeks? That same motivation was – let’s not delve into conspiracy-land here – colossal incompetence on every level of our own government, humiliating this country. It’s basketball team doesn’t just shoot a three-pointer into their own basket, but every member of the team slamming a dunk into their own bucket, as the coach says “yep, that’s the plan – score 100 points for the other guys; then we’ll have ’em where we want ’em”, and the other team does casual free-throws when there isn’t one of our guys hanging from the rim.
They say “never chalk up to malice what can be better explained by stupidity”. But if the Biden Administration had planned from the very beginning to humiliate this nation, what would they have done differently? Make Robin DiAngelo the chair of the Joint Chiefs, and put Steven Colbert in charge of Special Operations Command?
Seeing our nation blind-sided twenty years ago was bad enough.
Seeing our nation humiliate itself? Over and over?
This is a new one for me.
This is not the nation I wanted to leave for my kids, my grandkids.
And as far as I can help it, I won’t.
[1] And when I say “culminating”, I mean “so far”. This seems to be a barrel with no bottom.
Waiting for ANY resignation or firing.
Nah, just kidding brah, no-one’s going down for this.
The call for rat Biden’s resignation or impeachment it growing….among DemocRATs
Like Reagan resigned over Beiruit, and Bush resigned over 9/11.
The competent way to leave would be to stay indefinitely.
Neither Beirut nor 9/11 were direct, cause and effect results of either President’s policies.
Not derivatives of those policies (Reagan could have perhaps had a better mission for the Marines) or fantasy-land movie tropes applied to real life (like the dolts who think Algore would have read the intelligence briefing and wound up at Logan on the morning of 9/11 like Elliot Ness at the head of a pack of G-men).
This calamity is a cause-and-effect result of:
.Got an alternate theory? Put it on out there. And watch it get vaporized in near real time.
In one week, Biden has accomplished the following:
-Alienated our traditional allies
-Encouraged our Islamic enemies
-Encouraged our strategic competitors (Russia and China)
-Reduced Americans trust in our intelligence services, military and foreign policy professionals.
–
You guys catch the very butch army sergeant who is apparently all hot and bothered to shoot American civilians?
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/08/27/woke-army-sergeant-to-american-civilians-that-weapon-is-pointed-at-you-n1473297
This disgusting display of ignorance and disloyalty is on you lefties. Own it.
MP, but in all fairness to his fraudulency he did watch the complete Matlock seasons 1 and 2.
Conducting an orderly withdrawal is beyond the skill level of our current C-in-C and his generals. As usual, Biden’s defenders are reduced to gibbering insanity by trying to claim the rout of Afghan and US forces was both inevitable and not predictable.
Kinlaw, she looks lethal af. Literally shaking over here.
But MP, look at the airlift, 100,000 flown out!!! (does not pass the smell test). Where did they put these 100,000 people, haven’t seen any of them.
Bill: you might laugh but actually I think she has pretty eyes. And she is in for a rough stretch ahead.
The problem wasn’t Iraq or Afghanistan, neither was it Osama bin Laden nor Sadam Heussein, same with ISIS/Taliban, the problem is Islam. Period.
Ooh, look at AllenS laying down the truth-bomb. Nicely played.
How childish to think that getting out of Afghanistan was going to be in some way peaceful or orderly. All the mea culpas for bad policy decisions, and yes there are many egregious bad decisions, were not going to make our exit graceful or nuanced.
And as to complaints of abandonment, someone has to explain to me how 20 years and trillions of dollars = abandonment.
The mistake was thinking we could change Afghanistan through military might. That is a mistake we have now made for the past 70 years. WW2 is so far in our taillights you’d think everybody would get that by now.
I’m glad Biden is getting us out.
We should not have gone. Agreed.
We should not have stayed. Agreed.
We should have left long ago. Agreed.
We should abandon our biggest airbase and all our guns/planes/ammo to pull out our troops leaving thousands of American civilians to fend for themselves.
No.
Waiting for ANY resignation or firing.
C’mon, man! Bidon shed a tear! Isn’t that enough to forgive all sins and wash the blood of the hands? Of course it is!
Abandoning a fully functional aitbase to the taliban. Bad decision.
Abandoning a billion dollars in military vehicles and weapons — including aircraft — to the taliban. Bad decision.
Allowing the taliban to take Kabul without firing a shot. Bad decision.
Not keeping our allies up to date on our pace of withdrawal. Bad decision.
Not evacuating American citizens when we could have done so easily. Bad decision.
Not evacuating vetted Afghan dependents when we could have done so easily. Bad decision.
Sticking to an arbitrary date of withdrawal of US forces. Bad decision.
These were all bad decisions. They were Biden’s decisions, but they were made in agreement with our intelligence services, our military, the state department, and Biden’s national security adviser.
Leftists love abortion so much they decided to have one in Afghanistan.
Kinlaw, I believe the military has responded to the sergeant’s misdeeds by promoting her to Lieutenant and giving her a new last name, “Calley” I believe.
Emery, it says something about you–something unprintable–that you can not even concede that Biden has made some horrendous, unforgiveable mistakes in this. I understand varying political positions about whether we should have remained in Afghanistan or not, and I understand that any evacuation under the noses of the Taliban is going to be dangerous, but I think that we all ought to agree that if we’re going to evaluate our military, we at least try to evacuate civilians first.
If you can’t admit something so basic, you have some serious problems, Emery.
Let me remind you how badly Biden f*cked up.
With the taliban making large gains in territory as Afghan soldiers surrendered to them or fled them, The US abandoned Bagram air base in the dead of night, without notifying our Afghan allies, or our European allies, and leaving behind nearly a billion dollars of US military supplies. The Afghans we left behind promptly surrendered themselves and the abandoned US weapons to the taliban.
Biden blamed the Afghan soldiers for this.
It is painfully embarrassing to read Emery’s posts on this subject ….
ewaters925, it’s just a shame the author itself never seems to be embarrassed.
This is a clear demonstration that there is rot at the top of the Biden administration.
This mix of cocky self assurance covering for incompetence is behind all of Biden’s crises, from the border to covid. No one knows what the Hell they are doing, and it shows.
Biden is correct here, despite the ensuing predictable trauma of leaving the fray. Testosterone is overrated, and for this war, counterproductive.
My guess is in six months we’ll not be so focused on the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, but rather the reasons while the whole conflict lasted 20 years and cost trillions of dollars.
Six months? Depends on how fast they behead the American hostages on You-Tube.
If they only execute one or two a day, they could stretch it out as long as maybe 444 days, which is the present record.
^ Another doomsday prediction from SiTD in-house Attorney Joe Doakes.
Afghanistan sure doesn’t seem to bother Wall Street. The Biden boom marches on..
And the attempt to change the subject.
This isn’t just an American thing, or a conservative thing, or even a Republican thing. The sheer incompetence of the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal is making people around the world recaculate what they assumed were bedrock assumptions about America’s ability to assure stability in an unstable world.
Another doomsday prediction from SiTD in-house Attorney Joe Doakes
And you think he’s wrong why?
The Biden boom marches on.
It’s not so much “Marching” as floating on a cataract of newly-printed money.
Its inflation, Em.
Look up “Weimar”.
People know unforced errors when they see them. Well,most people do.
C’mon, man! It was ienvitable™
Mitch, don’t give trollbots any ideas! We all know what Weimar begat. Well, the “we” with an ability to think.
Biden is correct here, despite the ensuing predictable trauma of leaving the fray. Testosterone is overrated, and for this war, counterproductive.
Ascribing action to “testosterone” is the last refuge of someone with no actual response.
Well, maybe not the last…
And anyway, the chemical most relevant is Donepezil.
My guess is in six months we’ll not be so focused on the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan
The media will do their darnedest to make that a guess come true. But events might be beyond their ability to memory-hole.
Because my guess is in six months people will be tying yellow ribbons around trees in their front yards hoping for hostages’ return, and the poppy fields of Helmand will be irrigated with the blood of SIV Afghans.
With all the teeth gnashing going on right now, I’m left wondering: ‘Since the Trump administration was negotiating an agreement with the Taliban, why did that administration not simultaneously speed up processing of those SIV applicants?’
All reporting to date indicates they slowed the process down due to Covid-19. What? Given the overall anti-immigrant stance of the Trump administration, I think it is fair to surmise there was never any intention to help those who supported our troops. Is MBerg asking the right questions? As usual, I suspect not.
why did that administration not simultaneously speed up processing of those SIV applicants?
My favorite part of the post-election gas-lighting is thinking that the State Dept bureaucrats would do anything Trump/Pompeo asked of them that couldn’t be “eaten by the dog”.
Trying to change the subject again, from Biden’s real world folly to Trump’s imagined foolishness.
This is Biden. It’s all Biden. He owns it completely. He has had months and months to do this right, instead he f*cked it up, as usual.
Thanks for another boat load of stupid, Emery.
“I’m left wondering” about Trump?
What a surprise.
Trump’s was the first unconditional surrender in US history. Shame on thoughtful SiTD readers for not acknowledging this. I always thought conservatives preached personal responsibility.
Emery said: “Trump’s was the first unconditional surrender in US history”
That is some first class stupid right there.
Testosterone is overrated…
Yeah, that’s just what all the rat eunuchs say.
Let the record show that the disastrous, poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan (if it was planned at all) was all Joe Biden, acting as Joe Biden has acted for decades. To the extent that he has had power, he has misused it.
And now he is president, God help us all.
Joe Biden once snarled “F–k that” when asked if the US had an obligation to protect Afghans from the Taliban, according to newly resurfaced reports.
The commander-in-chief allegedly made the callous remark back in 2010 when he was vice president, while speaking to US diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
At the time, Biden reportedly was arguing that the US should leave Afghanistan despite the humanitarian costs, including the potential erosion of women’s rights.
“F–k that. We don’t have to worry about that,” he allegedly told Holbrooke. “We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”
The conversation between the pair was documented in Holbrooke’s diary that was eventually included in George Packer’s 2019 book, “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.”
https://nypost.com/2021/08/17/biden-once-said-f-k-that-on-us-obligation-to-stay-in-afghanistan/
MBerg wrote: “It’s not so much “Marching” as floating on a cataract of newly-printed money.”
Yes — the printing press goes Brrrr.
So Taper may happen but interest rates are staying at Zero for years. The US government cannot afford for rates to rise. Therefore, rates will not rise. That is the entire analysis.
Everybody in finance and investing and beyond is looking to the FED for good and bad reasons. The dollar dependence has created it and all other nations have happily accepted the development of the current monetary economic situation. Can you name one economy that matters who has opposed to today’s main stream monetary policy? The experiment is continuing.
Buy growth stocks or an S&P 500 Index Fund. I like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO)
An actual on-topic comment:
What kind of a Commander-in Chief couldn’t see this coming?
A Commander in Chief named Joseph Robinette Biden.
When people become older, they “become more of what they are.” the Joe Biden who has spent more than four decades in DC has always been a feckless, witless, blowhard. Even Obama knew this.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Built and trained at a two-decade cost of $83 billion, Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly and completely — in some cases without a shot fired — that the ultimate beneficiary of the American investment turned out to be the Taliban. They grabbed not only political power but also U.S.-supplied firepower — guns, ammunition, helicopters and more.
The Taliban captured an array of modern military equipment when they overran Afghan forces who failed to defend district centers. Bigger gains followed, including combat aircraft, when the Taliban rolled up provincial capitals and military bases with stunning speed, topped by capturing the biggest prize, Kabul, over the weekend.
A U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous.
Here is how the hard-left British paper “The Guardian” is covering Bombardier Joe’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan:
Afghanistan live news: UK’s ability to process evacuations ‘extremely reduced’ as US on alert for further attacks
British Ministry of Defence warns UK’s ability to process any more evacuations now ‘extremely reduced’; White House says the next few days of evacuation operation likely to be the most dangerous
Fear and fury in Kabul as thousands face being abandoned by UK
‘We feel hopeless now’: British nationals left behind in Kabul
Afghans crowd airport gates as evacuation efforts wind down
‘Bad options all around’: Biden’s vow to avenge attack could take years
Twelve days of chaos in Kabul – in pictures
See all our Afghanistan coverage
Unbelievable. All avoidable, if we had a president who was not a half-witted incompetent.
None of this was “inevitable.” Biden didn’t even try. He is not normal, he never cared about the havoc his idiotic withdrawal woud leave in its wake, as evidenced the Holbrooke quotes in my 6:53.
Imagine considering the plight of the millions of South Vietnamese people we abandoned as mainly being a matter of “getting away with it”. And the South Vietnamese were willing to fight.
One of Biden’s first actions as Senator from Delaware was to vote against the aid package that would have helped them fight the North Vietnamese back in ’75.
Biden is a doddering incompetent and was the worst choice to lead a superpower. Kamala would be an improvement, at least she isn’t stupid.
You see what the psycho commenter is doing, don’t you?
The topic of MBerg’s post is the miserable failure of Biden to manage an orderly withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. Over a hundred dead, so far, and over a dozen soldiers, all easily traceable to the failure of Biden to properly plan a wind down of US forces. It isn’t even debatable.
But the psycho commenter doesn’t want to talk about that. He wants to talk about something else, anything else, so the psycho commenter tries to change the topic to something he would rather talk about.
And Leon Panetta spits in Biden’s face:
“Leon Panetta says US troops will need to return to combat in Afghanistan”
Panetta, who was defense secretary under President Barack Obama, said President Biden’s sudden withdrawal of troops left a “very dangerous and difficult situation” with “thousands of our troops located in a very limited area in an unfriendly country.”
He insisted that the Taliban — despite claims of peace and a new era of leadership — were “terrorists, and certainly supporters of terrorists, operating checkpoints for terrorists.”
https://nypost.com/2021/08/27/leon-panetta-says-us-troops-will-need-to-go-back-to-afghanistan/
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Wonder how you reconcile the fact that the first 7 years (and so many months) of the conflict was conducted under a Republican administration?
And that the downward spiral took place during the last administration, especially after that peace deal in February 2020 that cut out the Afghans, and codified a policy of cut and run with few real concessions or guarantees?
Guess, just pretend none of that happened?
Wonder how you reconcile the fact that the first 7 years (and so many months) of the conflict was conducted under a Republican administration?
And that the downward spiral took place during the last administration, especially after that peace deal in February 2020 that cut out the Afghans, and codified a policy of cut and run with few real concessions or guarantees?
Guess, just pretend none of that happened?
An active duty, Marine Batallion commander, with 3 years to a pension, has chucked it all to say out loud what every competent military officer is thinking: we are being led by a junta of woke clowns. They are getting Marines killed.
This has never happened before, and Joe Biden’s hand picked, incompetent General staff is shitting themselves.
Mutiny is in the air. And it lays in the lap of the senile, mendacious buffoon who soils the office of POTUS.
Meanwhile, a jr non-com dyke is threatening to shoot US citizens on social media, and *crickets*.
Xe will probably sue the Army if xe doesn’t get a medal and promotion.