CNN reporter describes Taliban chanting ‘Death to America’ on Kabul streets as ‘friendly’ - " CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward described a group of Taliban fighters as “friendly” whilst they chanted “Death to America” on the streets of Kabul."
Facebook - "Afghanistan: Desperate women throw babies over razor wire at compound, asking British soldiers to take them"
"I wonder how do the people that normally use the term "oppressive patriarchy" on everything explain it to themselves that they must now remain silent so that differences by orders of magnitude are not obvious."
Michael Graham: Biden stops the buck, but passes the blame - "During a White House speech amid the Afghanistan evacuation fiasco, President Joe Biden looked into the camera with a cold, steely eye and said, “I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.” It’s a powerful line. Or rather, it would have been, if not for the 16 minutes and 39 seconds of buck-passing that preceded it... Despite his “buck stops here” talk, Biden was shameless in his attempts to shift blame to others. Even his declarations of culpability were dishonest. When he pledged not to “shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today,” he was falsely suggesting there is someone else who needed to be cut in on the blame. Who? Maybe invading Afghanistan was a George W. Bush mistake. Maybe not pulling out back in 2014 was an Obama flub. Was Donald Trump wrong to negotiate with the Taliban, increase their stature and outlandishly claim those murderous thugs might become our terrorist-fighting sidekicks? Absolutely.But what does any of that have to do with turning an orderly withdrawal into a panicked evacuation? It’s like a doctor blaming a cancer patient’s smoking for the fact that he removed the wrong lung. Biden’s bizarre, off-putting speech even lacked internal consistency. On the one hand, Biden insisted his administration had it all under control. “We planned for every contingency,” he said again and again. On the other, Biden admitted the whole thing was a mess and tried to say it was Trump’s fault... Biden could have done nothing and kept the status quo. Or he could have withdrawn, but done so competently. Instead, we have a humiliation of America on the world stage, gloating Taliban press conferences celebrating our defeat — and Joe Biden claiming the fact that he fouled it up so badly is actually proof that he was right all along... It’s now being widely reported that Biden had to override his military advisors and top Pentagon counterterrorism experts to execute his “bug out now” plan. As pollster David Paleologos of Suffolk University told InsideSources, by going it alone, Joe Biden’s most important political partner is now a group of Islamist terrorists."
Afghanistan: Biden Planned for Taliban Takeover - "I t is becoming increasingly difficult to draw any conclusion other than that President Biden knowingly and willfully surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban. To be clear, this is different from concluding that Biden committed to a recklessly premature date for withdrawing all U.S. forces (which, practically speaking, would necessitate NATO’s departure, too) while being aware that the Taliban were capturing territory and that the Afghan security forces might be unable to hold them off over the ensuing months. That would be bad, but not as damning as what I am deducing. I now believe Biden long ago reasoned that the Taliban were going to take over the country inevitably and decided to treat them as the de facto government. Consistent with this — and with the progressive Democratic orientation that American military power is needlessly provocative, and that concessions are the preferred way to inspire rogues into good behavior — Biden determined back in the spring that he would set a firm deadline to pull our forces out, and then demonstrate to the Taliban that the deadline was real... Biden was also effectively administering the coup de grâce to the Afghan government, and not only by elevating the Taliban to the sole Afghan party with which his administration would negotiate the terms of the U.S. departure. Biden would also pull out in a manner that undermined the Afghan security forces’ capacity to fight the Taliban. After all, if U.S. troops and contractors continued providing technical and logistical support to the Afghan ground and air forces, the Taliban might interpret that as an American commitment to continue the war. Biden would make sure the jihadists had no cause for doubt...
5. “In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.” With the Biden administration having assured the Taliban that the U.S. was vacating the country by September 11, and with the Taliban actively executing an offensive in which they captured district after district, Biden had to have known that depriving the Afghan armed forces of the basics they needed to operate would mean the Taliban would rapidly roll over the Afghan government — just as the U.S. commanders had warned Biden the Taliban would do...
8. OIn July 13, in a secret State Department cable, 23 American diplomats in Afghanistan warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden policy-planning director Salman Ahmed that the Afghan government could not hold Kabul, and it would fall to the Taliban. The diplomats exhorted the Biden administration to accelerate the process of registering Afghans who qualified for U.S. visas due to the assistance they’d provided our government. Many of these Afghans were trapped, or in imminent danger of being trapped, in districts that the Taliban were seizing. The Journal adds that diplomats “also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban.”
9. This highlights the sheer mendacity of claims by the president and his top advisers that no one could have anticipated that the Afghan government would collapse as rapidly as it did. The administration was repeatedly advised by knowledgeable officials that this was the likelihood unless Biden changed course. The president did not just ignore these admonitions; he affirmatively cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and armed forces. Furthermore, the calls for condemnation of the Taliban fell on deaf ears, as the Biden administration continued negotiations with their representatives in Doha. And the administration dragged its feet on evacuating our Afghan allies out of the country — an initiative to which the Taliban would have objected strenuously at a time when the administration had so reduced U.S. force levels that it was clearly going to be difficult, if not impossible, to get the thousands of Americans out...
10. President Biden has steadfastly refrained from criticizing the Taliban, even as he hammers American detractors of the catastrophe he has made of Afghanistan. Biden unabashedly touts his administration’s close and constant contacts with Taliban leadership in Kabul and Doha. And he makes blatantly false representations about the Taliban’s good faith. Astoundingly, the president seems to believe the public will be mollified by his confidence in his “agreement with the — with the Taliban” to allow Americans throughout the country to get to the airport in Kabul — notwithstanding that a) his assurances have been contradicted by U.S. officials and media reporting on the ground, and b) well, we’re talking about the Taliban."
Afghan Interpreter Who Helped Rescue Biden in 2008 Left Behind After U.S. Exit - WSJ - "Thirteen years ago, Afghan interpreter Mohammed helped rescue then- Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators stranded in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm. Now, Mohammed is asking President Biden to save him. “Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed, who asked not to use his full name while in hiding, told The Wall Street Journal as the last Americans flew out of Kabul on Monday. “Don’t forget me here.”... During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden, who was then running for vice president, often spoke of the helicopter incident and the trip as a way of burnishing his foreign-policy credentials."
U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate - "U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials... the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials. “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”... that U.S. officials handed over a list of Afghan allies and American citizens and residents shows the extent to which they outsourced security of the airport’s outer perimeter to the Taliban. The Taliban has gone door-to-door in search of Afghan interpreters and others who helped U.S. and Western forces. In written and verbal communications, Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, head of U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan, have referred to the Taliban as “our Afghan partners”... Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) appeared to criticize the Biden administration’s strategy of coordinating with the Taliban, writing in a statement: “As we wait for more details to come in, one thing is clear: We can’t trust the Taliban with Americans’ security.”"
Maybe all of them will "go missing"
Taliban appear to fly US Black Hawk helicopters over Kandahar - "The Taliban, by some estimates, has more Black Hawk helicopters than 85 per cent of the world after the US abandoned $85bn worth of military equipment... As the Biden administration assesses the amount of equipment left in Afghanistan, the Taliban has been trolling the US by posing in American uniforms and high-tech gear like night vision goggles while driving around in armoured Humvees.
Taliban Made Biden an Offer He Refused Which Could Have Avoided Debacle in Kabul - "One of the things that certainly has been surprising about the Afghanistan debacle has been that some in media seem to have woken up and become journalists again. They are now questioning Joe Biden and his team, and raising very pointed and good questions, even being honest about the mess that he has caused... Biden was offered control of the Kabul by the Taliban and he/his people turned it down. And they then agreed to an impossible date to get everyone out by, shortening from his own date of 9/11... Why are we only hearing this now from the Washington Post and not from the Biden administration before this? Did they not want us to know another absolutely horrific choice they made in all this mess? Remember White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday, Biden didn’t think anyone needed to resign, basically implying there were no mistakes. This finishes any question of this being on President Donald Trump, if the prior facts haven’t already foreclosed that. He now wants to blame Trump for Trump making a deal, acting as though he couldn’t change it even when it was a conditioned deal where the Taliban weren’t holding up their end. But he changed everything on the dictates of the Taliban. It’s all on Biden."
I still see people with TDS blaming Trump
Afghanistan Withdrawal: Bagram Air Base Abandonment -- Biden Passes the Buck - "President Biden was either confused or — worse — actively misleading the American people when he said at Thursday’s press conference that senior military officers advised him to abandon the Bagram air base because there “was not much value added” in holding it... You need not be a military genius on the level of Napoleon or Frederick the Great to realize that the international airport in Kabul — with a single runway, surrounded by mountains, and in the middle of a city of 4 million souls — is not an ideal base of operations from which to conduct this evacuation. In fact, the airport is dangerously exposed. As we’ve so painfully discovered, basic security for the airport is a problem and flight operations can be threatened and even shut down due to the security situation. So why exactly did we give up our air base at Bagram? The operational situation would suggest that a second, more-defensible air base equipped with modern facilities would be an asset during a crisis such as this. Well, according to what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said just last week, we did it because of an arbitrary cap on troop numbers in Afghanistan."
Who Abandoned Bagram Air Base? - WSJ - "Biden says the military, but the military says he gave them little choice... The way U.S. forces quietly slipped out of Bagram was also demoralizing for the Afghan army and probably contributed to its collapse. The Associated Press spoke to soldiers wandering the base the next day. “They lost all the goodwill of 20 years,” one said, “by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area.” The word must have spread: If the U.S. is abandoning its prized air base, then it really was bugging out altogether. After the collapse of the Afghan government, Mr. Biden could have sent in enough U.S. troops to retake Bagram and provide for a safer evacuation. He declined that option in favor of getting to the exits as fast as possible, hoping to avoid a confrontation with the Taliban that could result in American casualties. On Thursday he got casualties anyway. The wreck of Mr. Biden’s Afghan withdrawal is damaging enough. But he compounds the harm to his credibility, and America’s, when he refuses to acknowledge mistakes and spins defeat as a victory for realism. Mr. Biden should take responsibility for his own bad decisions, instead of trying to hide behind the military brass."
Facebook - PSAKI: "This is now on track to be the largest airlift in U.S. history...so no, I would not say that is anything but a success."
"This is like bragging about how many lifeboats were filled after the sinking of the Titanic"
RAMZPAUL on Twitter - "First US service member who died in Kabul identified as Navy medic Max Soviak"
"This is the type of person the Biden Administration hates. They would claim he had “White privilege” and “toxic masculinity.” This man would be last in line to get employment, loans and scholarships due to his race. He died defending a regime that hated him."
BrooklynDad_Defiant! on Twitter - "The trump admin has been one rolling disaster after another. But the disaster in Syria comes with a steep price. Civilian #Kurds are DYING, and all because trump needs distractions from impeachment. DO SOMETHING, CONGRESS. #KurdsBetrayedByTrump"
BrooklynDad_Defiant! on Twitter - "If you are using the terrorist attacks on American and Afghan citizens to blame President Biden, stop it. It's disgusting. Shame on you. Whose side are you on anyway?"
This guy is the king of hypocrites. He also had a lot of great flip flops on covid
Did ‘gender studies’ lose Afghanistan? - The Spectator World - "America hoped that with enough half-baked social engineering in the half of Afghanistan it controlled, it would eventually be rewarded with victory, and Afghanistan would become the Holland of the Hindu Kush. On Ivy League campuses, students are taught to decry ‘colonialism’, but the Ivy League diplomats who sought to remake Afghanistan in Harvard’s image were among the most ambitious practitioners of it in world history. So, alongside the billions for bombs went hundreds of millions for gender studies in Afghanistan. According to US government reports, $787 million was spent on gender programs in Afghanistan, but that substantially understates the actual total, since gender goals were folded into practically every undertaking America made in the country. A recent report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) broke down the difficulties of the project. For starters, in both Dari and Pastho there are no words for ‘gender’. That makes sense, since the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ was only invented by a sexually-abusive child psychiatrist in the 1960s, but evidently Americans were caught off-guard. Things didn’t improve from there. Under the US’s guidance, Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution set a 27 percent quota for women in the lower house — higher than the actual figure in America! A strategy that sometimes required having women represent provinces they had never actually been to. Remarkably, this experiment in ‘democracy’ created a government few were willing to fight for, let alone die for. The initiatives piled up one after another. Do-gooders established a ‘National Masculinity Alliance’, so a few hundred Afghan men could talk about their ‘gender roles’ and ‘examine male attitudes that are harmful to women’. Police facilities included childcare facilities for working mothers, as though Afghanistan’s medieval culture had the same needs as 1980s Minneapolis. The army set a goal of 10 percent female participation, which might make sense in a Marvel movie, but didn’t to devout Muslims. Even as America built an Afghan army that ended up collapsing in days, and a police force whose members frequently became highwaymen, it always made sure to execute its gender goals. But all this wasn’t just a stupid waste of money. It routinely actively undermined the ‘nation-building’ that America was supposed to be doing. According to an USAID observer, the gender ideology included in American aid routinely caused rebellions out in the provinces, directly causing the instability America was supposedly fighting. To get Afghanistan’s parliament to endorse the women’s rights measures it wanted, America resorted to bribing them. Soon, bribery became the norm for getting anything done in the parliament. Instead of rattling off anecdotes, perhaps a single video clip will do the job. Dadaism and conceptual art are of dubious value even in the West, but at some point some person who is not in prison for fraud decided that Afghan women would be uplifted by teaching them about Marcel Duchamp"
Rashida Tlaib Says U.S. Supported Taliban Before Taliban Even Existed - "Far-left AOC sidekick Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) says the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan is the result of a failed U.S. policy “going back to the 1980s when we backed the Taliban against the Soviets.” That’s quite the statement. It’s also wrong. All of it. See, the Taliban did not exist in the 1980s. It did not fight the Soviet Union. In other words, the United States didn’t back the Taliban in the 1980s against the Soviet Union. Instead, the Taliban emerged as a major faction in 1994."
Taliban Militants Have Burnt Down An Amusement Park A Day After They Were Enjoying Rides - "The Taliban militants, some of them with weapons in hand, were seen enjoying a ride on the electric bumper cars in the videos. In another video, Taliban militants can be seen riding small merry-go-round horses... the reason cited by Taliban for burning down the amusement park was that there were statues and idols inside which are against Islam."
U.S. Embassy Kabul on Twitter - "The month of June is recognized as (LGBTI) Pride Month. The United States respects the dignity & equality of LGBTI people & celebrates their contributions to the society. We remain committed to supporting civil rights of minorities, including LGBTI persons. #Pride2021 #PrideMonth"
So much for that
Biden Gave Allies Security Assurance on Kabul, Afghanistan in June - Bloomberg - "Biden promised U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Cornwall, England, that “critical U.S. enablers” would remain in place to keep Kabul safe following the drawdown of NATO forces, the note said. British officials determined the U.S. would provide enough personnel to ensure that the U.K. embassy in Kabul could continue operating... The circumstances surrounding the U.S. withdrawal have served as a harsh wake-up call to European leaders struggling to adjust to the reluctance in Washington to operate as a global policeman. They had discussed with Biden at the G-7 summit the need to continue supporting the government in Kabul in order to prevent the country once again becoming a haven for terrorist operations"
"America is back"
Biden’s credibility crisis spreads far past Afghanistan - "Biden claimed during a White House press conference that al Qaeda had been completely driven out of Afghanistan. Hours later, Defense Department press secretary John Kirby could do nothing but admit that this was false. Al Qaeda is not only operating throughout Afghanistan, but according to a Pentagon inspector general report released earlier in the week, the Taliban continue to maintain their “relationship with Al Qaeda, providing safe haven for the terrorist group in Afghanistan.” Biden also claimed during that same press conference that there was “no indication” that Americans stuck in Kabul “haven’t been able to get” to the airport. The press conference hadn’t been over for more than half an hour before CNN’s Clarrisa Ward made clear the exact opposite. “It is extremely difficult, and it is dangerous,” she reported on American efforts to reach the airport in Kabul. Biden even claimed that he had “seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world.” Either Biden is forgetting what he reads or else his briefers left out the leader of Germany's conservative party calling Biden’s handling of Afghanistan “the greatest debacle that NATO has seen.” Biden also must have missed British Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat saying it was “the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez.”... Biden's false statements and empty promises are undermining him on every other issue. A recent CBS poll found Biden’s overall approval rating had fallen 8 points since April to an even 50%-50% split. But the percentage of respondents who described Biden as “competent” fell from 56% to 49%, the percentage who described him as “focused” fell from 56% to 48%, and the percentage who described their leader as “effective” fell from 55% to 47%. An Echelon Insights poll found that Biden’s approval rating had also fallen on every issue tested, including COVID, the economy, foreign policy, and immigration. Worse for Biden, the latest Reuters poll found he had the first negative overall approval rating (46% approve/49% disapprove) of his presidency. Meanwhile, the share who believe the country is heading in the wrong direction rose to 59%."
Of course, liberals just blame Trump
EXC: Joe Biden's State Dept Halted a Trump-Era 'Crisis Response' Plan Aimed at Avoiding Benghazi-Style Evacuations Just MONTHS Before Taliban Takeover. - "career officials inside the State Department objected to the Trump-era aim of creating a Contingency and Crisis Response bureau with the express purpose of avoiding a future Benghazi-style situation for Americans overseas. Instead, Biden’s team revoked the funding and the approval for the plan, even as the COVID-19 crisis reasserted itself, and and Afghanistan withdrawal loomed... The news flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claims that his government planned for “every contingency” in the war-torn country... no Congressional notification was sent to the United States Congress, as is required, upon the pause"
Facebook - "Gen. Mark Milley: "There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.""
"But I thought Biden said that they had planned for “every contingency?” Either they did plan for every possible scenario or it was impossible to plan since it was entirely unforeseeable. It cannot be both. Either Biden or Miley is wrong, or flat-out lying. If I were China, my calculus on making a move on Taiwan right now just drastically changed."
Guess he needs to spend more time trying to understand "white rage"
Biden's Afghanistan Decision Is the Latest Entry in a Ledger of Mistakes - The Atlantic - "In 1975, Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government during its war against the North, ensuring the victory of a brutal regime and causing a mass exodus of refugees.
In 1991, Biden opposed the Gulf War, one of the most successful military campaigns in American history. Not only did he later regret his congressional vote, but in 1998, he criticized George H. W. Bush for not deposing Saddam Hussein, calling that decision a “fundamental mistake.”
In 2003, Biden supported the Iraq War—another congressional vote he later regretted.
In 2007, he opposed President George W. Bush’s new counterinsurgency strategy and surge in troops in Iraq, calling it a “tragic mistake.” In fact, the surge led to stunning progress, including dramatic drops in civilian deaths and sectarian violence.
In December 2011, President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden withdrew America’s much-scaled-down troop presence in Iraq; the former had declared Iraq to be “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant,” and the latter had predicted that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” Their decision sent Iraq spiraling into sectarian violence and civil war, allowing Iran to expand its influence and opening the way for the rise of the jihadist group ISIS.
According to Obama’s memoir A Promised Land, Biden had advised the former president to take more time before launching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Ten years ago, Biden said in an interview that “the Taliban per se is not our enemy.” He added, “If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.” Indeed. In his 2014 memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, Robert Gates, who served as the secretary of defense under George W. Bush and Obama, said that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”... Biden has never been an impressive strategic thinker. When talking about his strengths, those close to Biden stress his people skills: his ability to read foreign leaders, to know when to push and when to yield, when to socialize and when to turn to business. But that’s very different from having a strategic vision and a sophisticated understanding of historical events and forces. What the Biden foreign-policy record shows, I think, is a man who behaves as if he knows much more than he does, who has far too much confidence in his own judgment in the face of contrary advice from experts. (My hunch is he’s overcompensating for an intellectual inferiority complex, which has manifested itself in his history of plagiarism, lying about his academic achievements, and other embellishments.) On national-security matters, President Biden lacks some of the most important qualities needed in those who govern—discernment, wisdom, and prudence; the ability to anticipate unfolding events; the capacity to make the right decision based on incomplete information; and the willingness to adjust one’s analysis in light of changing circumstances. To put it in simple terms, Joe Biden has bad judgment. William Inboden of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, who worked on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told me that the key thing to understand about Biden is he is first and foremost a politician, consistently aligned with the Democratic Party’s center of gravity on any foreign-policy issue, a follower more than a leader, and certainly not an independent or creative thinker. But Biden’s foreign-policy record has one other through line: the betrayal of people who have sided with the United States against its enemies and who, in the aftermath of American withdrawal, face a future of oppression, brutality, and death. And these betrayals of people in foreign lands seem to leave Biden unmoved. There is a troubling callousness to it all, a callousness that is at odds with empathy that Biden has clearly shown in other areas of his life. According to my colleague George Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Biden has argued that the United States does not have an obligation to Afghans who trusted the United States."
Feckless Biden Administration Refuses to Guarantee the Safety of Americans in Afghanistan
Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy - The Atlantic - "For months, members of Congress and advocates in refugee, veteran, and human-rights organizations have been urging the Biden administration to evacuate America’s Afghan allies on an emergency basis. For months, dire warnings have appeared in the press. The administration’s answers were never adequate: We’re waiting for Congress to streamline the application process. Half the interpreters we’ve given visas don’t want to leave. We don’t want to panic the Afghan people and cause the government in Kabul to collapse. Evacuation to a U.S. territory like Guam could lead to legal problems, so we’re looking for third-country hosts in the region. Most of the interpreters are in Kabul, and Kabul won’t fall for at least six months. Some of these answers might have been sincere. All of them were irrelevant, self-deceiving, or flat-out false. While some officials in the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House itself pushed quietly for more urgent measures that might have averted catastrophe, Biden resisted—as if he wouldn’t allow Afghanistan to interfere with his priorities, as if he were done with Afghanistan the minute he announced the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. forces. This hardness is perplexing in a president who spent years in the Senate working on behalf of genocide victims and war refugees; who once promised an Afghan schoolgirl that he would make sure the U.S. didn’t abandon her; who cares intensely about the welfare of American troops."
Dozens of California students, parents stranded in Afghanistan after summer trip abroad - "Dozens of California students and parents are stranded in Afghanistan after taking a summer trip to the country. More than 20 students and 16 parents from the Cajon Valley Union School District in El Cajon, Calif., visited Afghanistan on summer vacation"
Afghanistan Didn’t Have to End This Way - "As Afghanistan collapses, there is no shortage of explanations, justifications, and outright myths taking root, some encouraged by the Biden administration. Among the most common: This was inevitable. The U.S. presence was unsustainable, critics say. The administration was boxed in by the 2020 peace deal with the Taliban. If the U.S. had repudiated the deal, the Taliban would have gone on the offensive and resumed killing U.S. troops... The U.S. presence in Afghanistan the last few years was tiny—just 2,500 troops before the start of the final withdrawal. It was indefinitely sustainable. There is no significant antiwar movement to speak of, there is no domestic political pressure to withdraw, and no election will hinge on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. U.S. troops faced low risks in Afghanistan, and the low casualty rate is not a function of the 2020 peace deal. Just 66 U.S. personnel have been killed in action since 2014, less than one per month for nearly seven years. That is not to make light of the loss of individual soldiers, but it is to recognize, in historical perspective, that the conflict in Afghanistan is very small and U.S. ground troops have not been involved in direct combat in large numbers for years. The US mission in Afghanistan accomplished some important successes. There have been no large-scale international terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan or Pakistan since 2001. The Afghan people broadly support the country’s new constitution. The Afghan economy showed consistent growth. By virtually every metric of human development, Afghans are better off today than they were 20 years ago. The intervention was not an unmitigated failure—except that many of these successes are likely to unravel with the Afghan army’s collapse. The rapid collapse of the Afghan army in recent weeks was not inevitable and is not a sign that the mission was always doomed, nor that we never would have succeeded. We had been making slow, fitful progress building a new Afghan security force from scratch. In 2021, it was better than it had been in 2001—because in 2001 it did not exist. It was better than it had been in 2006—because the Germans, British, and the U.N., which had assumed responsibility for training the new army and police, wasted five years doing essentially nothing. The U.S. took over and cobbled together a fighting force by 2010, one that has lost tens of thousands of soldiers keeping the Taliban at bay for the past decade. The Afghan army was again better this year than previously, but the Department of Defense truthfully reported year after year that it was not ready for fully independent operations yet. The Afghan army’s collapse this summer is demoralizing for anyone who has watched or participated in the war. Historians will give us the full story decades from now, but surely President Biden’s announcement of a full withdrawal—when everyone, including the U.S. Department of Defense, knew the Afghan army wasn’t yet ready to stand independent of international assistance—had a crippling effect on the morale of Afghan troops... While bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is not and, along with the Islamic State and a murderer’s row of copycat jihadists, is almost certain to regain safe haven in Afghanistan and Pakistan following the collapse of our allies. Our presence for the past 20 years kept jihadists on the run, in hiding, and focused on avoiding our air strikes and special forces. They now will have room to breathe, which means room to plan, recruit, train, and fundraise."
U.S. official: 'Majority' of Afghan allies who applied for special visas left behind in Afghanistan
US vows evacuation flights WILL continue after ISIS attack in Kabul - "The 13 troops include 11 Marines, one Navy medic and at least 90 Afghans were killed on Thursday when the two bombs went off as the remaining Westerners in Kabul tried to get out."
Trump’s Pledge to Exit Afghanistan Was a Ruse, His Final SecDef Says - "President Donald Trump’s top national security officials never intended to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, according to new statements by Chris Miller, Trump’s last acting defense secretary. Miller said the president’s public promise to finish withdrawing U.S. forces by May 1, as negotiated with the Taliban, was actually a “play” that masked the Trump administration’s true intentions: to convince Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to quit or accept a bitter power-sharing agreement with the Taliban, and to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan for counterrorism missions... “We did plenty of wargames on this and we knew what the minimal force structure was,” he said this week. “The number was 800. If this all goes bad, what is the minimal force structure needed to maintain [counterterrorism] strike and reconnaissance capability? We can do it for 800, 850.”"
Taliban acquires US military biometric devices that can identify Afghans who assisted coalition efforts – reports - "The Taliban has reportedly seized US military biometrics equipment that could expose Afghans who helped coalition forces – since they contain identifying data like iris scans and fingerprints as well as biographical information. An unidentified Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) official told The Intercept that the Islamist group confiscated the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) devices during its offensive push last week. The report was backed up by three former US military personnel... Besides tracking insurgents, the Pentagon was also reportedly keen to use the devices to gather unique data on 80% of the Afghan population to check for terrorist and criminal activity. Unnamed sources said biometric details of locals who helped the US were also collected and used in identification cards... An unidentified US Army Special Operations source told The Intercept that the Taliban “does not have the gear to use the data” but warned that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency had the additional equipment required to process the data from HIIDE devices... As the Taliban advanced into Kabul, Afghan civilians who worked with the US were reportedly caught in a potentially life-or-death predicament over whether to save documents proving their assistance – considered crucial to acquiring a visa out of the country – or destroy them. According to a Wired magazine report, the Taliban is apparently conducting door-to-door searches to find those who have worked with foreign governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In 2016, the group reportedly killed 12 passengers on a bus they intercepted after fingerprint scans on a biometric machine identified them as security force workers. An Afghan forces commander confirmed the use of the device – which could “identify security force members from amongst civilians”"
Afghan army says Taliban infiltration very sophisticated - "The Taliban have a sophisticated system in place to infiltrate Afghanistan’s security forces and vetting of recruits must be severely tightened, an Afghan army general said... Infiltration has come under sharper focus because of a string of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces on U.S. soldiers since the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base last month ignited widespread protests... The killings at a base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan came less than a week after two senior U.S. officers were gunned down in the Afghan Interior Ministry by what Afghan security officials say was a police intelligence officer. About 70 members of the NATO-led force were killed in 42 insider attacks from May 2007 through the end of January this year."
From 2012. I saw people slamming the US for abandoning Bagram air base without telling the Afghans
Pentagon Spokesman: ‘I Don’t Know’ How Many Americans Remain in Afghanistan - "John Kirby, the press secretary for the Defense Department and a retired rear admiral in the Navy, said the U.S. military does not know how many Americans remain in Afghanistan... Just prior to that exchange, Kirby also professed not to have a breakdown of how many of the approximately 7,000 people evacuated on U.S. government flight since August 14 are American citizens. “It’s not the only way out of Kabul,” he noted, “the commercial side is open, it’s limited… but people are still getting out that way.” The U.S. military is running the evacuation effort out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, but is not venturing outside of the complex. The State Department has sent notices to U.S. citizens in Afghanistan encouraging them to “make your way” to the airport, but also making it plain that “THE UNITED STATES CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SECURITY AS YOU MAKE THIS TRIP.”"
Biden said in July Taliban 'overrunning everything' was 'highly unlikely' - "President Biden last month dismissed the possibility that the Taliban would swarm through Afghanistan, which just weeks later they are in the process of doing."
Facebook - "One of the most admirable characteristics of a leader is admitting failure or mistake... This brings me to president Biden. The actions and the speech that the president gave were great examples of what NOT TO be as a leader and what is worse is that he is doubling down. which is as Trumpian as it can get. It is in fact what he used to criticize Donald Trump about and he called it "disgusting". It's been more than 72 hours and president Biden hasn't issued an apology and hasn't fired anyone. The way you planned and handled the withdrawal was not courageous Mr. president, it was catastrophic. The sooner you admit that the more lives can be saved."
AOC Goes To Afghanistan To Warn Refugees Not To Come To Oppressive Racist America | The Babylon Bee
Comment: "Actually saw people comparing the fear and oppression afghan women are facing from taliban, like being forced to marry fighters, stopped from working or education, with French senate ban on hijabs in public for minors under 18 and saying support for the latter and critising the former is islamophobic. These two are not even remotely the same. Such people are so brainwashed that in retrospect I find myself silly for even having tried to engage such "hijab is female empowerment symbol and totally their choice, any criticism of Islamic societies or practices is automatically islamophobic" crowd."
Facebook - "Imagine taking yourself this seriously while going plaid in clownlife. The Regime knows its weakness is memes, especially satirical memes. That says so much."
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube face content challenges as Afghanistan falls - "A CNN reporter stands in front of a photo of a helicopter flying over the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, a city that has fallen into chaos. Underneath the image, a caption states: "Violent but mostly peaceful transfer of power." The image, supposedly a screengrab of the network, circulated widely on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, prompting questions about its authenticity. How could the transfer be considered peaceful, some wondered. Was the language meant to be satire? Turns out the image was fake."
Authoritarians don't deal well with humour
Global Times on Twitter - "After playing bumper cars, the #Taliban were seen having ice creams in #Kabul on Thu, which some netizens said reminded them of US President Joe Biden, who also likes ice cream."
Arthur Schwartz on Twitter - "Tucker Carlson hosts Sean Parnell to smear Afghan interpreters and those seeking refugee status: "just because an Afghan works with us and is friends with us does not actually mean they are safe to bring here.""
"Media Matters hack leaves out the part where Parnell, a decorated war hero told the story of an Afghan interpreter who betrayed his platoon, murdered one of his troops & injured four."
