Patterico's Pontifications

8/30/2021

Good Night and Good Luck

Filed under: General — JVW @ 5:34 pm



[guest post by JVW]

The humiliation is complete:

The U.S. military completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday, the Pentagon announced.

“I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuation American citizens, third country nationals and vulnerable Afghans,” General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a video appearance at a Pentagon press conference.

The last American military plane took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport shortly after midnight in Afghanistan time. No American troops are left in the country, and members of the Afghan military helping to guard the airport, along with their families, were evacuated along with the last U.S. troops.

However, up to 250 American citizens attempting to leave Afghanistan were left in the country as of Sunday evening, a State Department spokesperson told ABC News on Monday. Thousands of Afghan allies of the U.S. also remain in the country.

I have been listening to some National Review podcasts recently. NR Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry often points out that we spent decades after our withdrawal believing there were hundreds of POWs left behind — just think of all of the movies in the 1980s with a rescue-the-troops-from-the-Cong theme — even though today we now understand that it is pretty murky as to whether or not there were ever more than a handful, if even that many. But now we have the potential of 250 Americans stuck in the hellhole that is Afghanistan, dependent now entirely upon the smooth talking of the Biden Administration and the — please give me a moment here to retch — good graces of the Taliban. Perhaps all of them will be returned home unharmed, but what exactly are we going to have to promise the new rulers of the country in order to ensure their safe passage?

General McKenzie assures us that an extra week or so wouldn’t have mattered: “I think if we stayed another ten days we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out that we wanted to get out, and there still would have been people who would have been disappointed in that.” The most powerful military the world has ever known can’t do anything to bring home 250 stranded citizens? We don’t lack the ability; we lack the will. This will be an important part of the legacy of President Joseph Biden. Hopefully it will serve as a decision that our future Commanders-in-Chief will repudiate, in the same way that Jimmy Carter’s fecklessness was repudiated after he left office.

– JVW

268 Responses to “Good Night and Good Luck”

  1. The Graveyard of Empires indeed.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  2. We’re in desperate need need of an enemy we can defeat. What’s the women’s rights situation in San Marino?

    nk (1d9030)

  3. Does Galapagos have a military?

    mg (8cbc69)

  4. 2.We’re in desperate need need of an enemy we can defeat.

    Plenty of rugs to beat in Afghanistan.

    Oh. Wait.

    Well, there’s always the Army-Navy game.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  5. Does Galapagos have a military?
    mg (8cbc69) — 8/30/2021 @ 6:13 pm

    Careful. Their tortoises make mean tanks.

    Hoi Polloi (998b37)

  6. General McKenzie assures us that an extra week or so wouldn’t have mattered.

    Mattered? Yeah, this bright bulb is JCOS timber: the country fell over a weekend. In a week they could have a space program.

    Isn’t CENTCOM’s main headquarters located at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida?

    Given their history on predictions, he must have a helluva good pair of binoculars to see so far into the future. And even if he’s in Doha, Qatar–he’d still need a helluva pair of yo-knw-whats to admit ‘the most powerful military the world has ever known can’t do anything to bring home 250 stranded citizens.’

    Desert One, here we come.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  7. Sadly, this debacle will long be forgotten by the next election, unless some terrorist incident with an Afghanistan tie-in happens before then.

    norcal (a6130b)

  8. members of the Afghan military helping to guard the airport, along with their families, were evacuated along with the last U.S. troops.

    At least they took them. And their families!

    Other members of the Afghan military didn’t get taken

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  9. 7.Sadly, this debacle will long be forgotten by the next election,

    In this media environment?

    Were you alive in ’75????

    Don’t bet on it.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  10. It’ll be forgotten in a week. By those who even noticed in the first place. And they’re a fraction of those who did not. A small fraction.

    nk (1d9030)

  11. The fall of Saigon is remembered because all the lefties in America had a stake. A decade-long investment that finally cashed in. They were throwing parties to celebrate. I know this for a fact, I could not avoid knowing it, because I was still in school. Who is celebrating this?

    nk (1d9030)

  12. The best we can hope for is that the Trumpmuffins will stop trying to vindicate Trump and unite to stop Biden/Harris. That might get the Republicans the House and Senate back in the mid-terms. But not if it’s a reprise of the Georgia election.

    nk (1d9030)

  13. @7 i’m sure biden has already forgotten

    JF (e1156d)

  14. if you choose to forget or give a pass to the media, that’s on you

    JF (e1156d)

  15. Resenting the media is as fruitless a distraction as trying to vindicate Trump. Just treat them as what they are — for entertainment purposes only.

    nk (1d9030)

  16. Putin and Xi will remember Biden’s surrender quite well.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  17. right on, nk

    speaking of entertainment, got any more jokes about the career choices of our men and women in uniform?

    norcal could probably use another chuckle at their expense

    JF (e1156d)

  18. Time, place, and audience, JF. With audience the most important part.

    nk (1d9030)

  19. It isn’t so much about vindicating Trump as it is insisting people who voted against Trump and/or for Biden own the consequences of their principles. God knows we got force fed every Trump peccadillo for the last four years.
    People around my home on the progressive side put out yard signs “Any Functiong Adult 2020” and they gave us Biden /Harris. The never trumpers acquiesced to Biden/Harris over Trump and like Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal decisions, should own it and move on and fix it.
    Of course the principled people would rather let everything go down the crapper than say that on the balance, they might have been wrong because their pride, their very identity, told them Trump was the worst of all evils and to admit he isn’t would mean they were wrong. Biden HAS to be better (he is not) Biden is as corrupt and stupid as Trump, but evidently Biden does corrupt and stupid the RIGHT way

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  20. So, North Korea is restarting one of its reactors and getting back on the nuclear bus? Anyone think that’s even on Biden’s radar?

    frosty (f27e97)

  21. steveg (ebe7c1) — 8/30/2021 @ 9:23 pm

    NeverTrump is only interested is teaching lessons. Not learning them. They already know everything they need to know.

    frosty (f27e97)

  22. 10.It’ll be forgotten in a week…

    Like Pearl Harbor; like Korea; like Sputnik; like the Bay of Pigs; like the Cuban Missile Crisis; like JFK, RFK & MLK; like Tet; like Khe Sanh; like Apollo 11; like Mỹ Lai; like Watergate; like the fall of Saigon; like the Iranian hostage crisis; like Desert One; like the Beirut barracks bombing; like PanAm 103; like the WTC bombing; like Gulf War 1 & Gulf War 2; like the USS Cole; like 9/11; like killing OBL; like 20 years in Afghanistan… like doubtful.

    “Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule! Oh, we’ve got trouble. We’re in terrible, terrible trouble. That game with the fifteen numbered balls is a devil’s tool! Oh yes we got trouble, trouble, trouble! With a “T”! Gotta rhyme it with “P”! And that stands for Pool!”- Professor Harold Hill [Robert Preston] ‘The Music Man’ 1962

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  23. 11.The fall of Saigon is remembered because all the lefties in America had a stake.

    No. Its remembered because of millions of dollars worth of helicopters fleeing the city and then shoved overboard into the sea by the United States Navy.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  24. The never trumpers acquiesced to Biden/Harris over Trump and like Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal decisions, should own it and move on and fix it.

    Other than the above, well said. I’ll cop to being a NeverTrumper, because it’s simply true that I never have and never will vote for Trump, but that doesn’t mean NeverTrumpers like me voted for Biden.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  25. 12.The best we can hope for is that the Trumpmuffins will stop trying to vindicate Trump

    Vindication: Beau to Hell, Joe!

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  26. I have no brief for Biden and Harris. I only voted for them because I wanted Trump to lose. I hope they don’t f*** up America too much, for America’s sake.

    I will not defend them when they f*** up, for the sake of my ego. If I had that kind of personality, I’d probably be a Trumpcake, too.

    nk (1d9030)

  27. 26.I have no brief for Biden and Harris. I only voted for them because I wanted Trump to lose.

    “You bought him. You own him.”

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  28. 20.So, North Korea is restarting one of its reactors and getting back on the nuclear bus? Anyone think that’s even on Biden’s radar?

    He likes playing at weatherman of late so see if it shows up in his 6 PM report.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  29. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

    Did they get you to trade cold comfort for change?

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  30. The trip to Dover apparently didn’t sit well w/some families of the dead. Too much looking at his watch; too much talk about damn dead Beau.

    25th Amendment time.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  31. Jimmy carter was set up by bill casey’s treason with iran to hold are hostages so reagan could win the 1980 election. Remember iran/countra? Nixon did the same in 1968 with south vietnam with mrs chennault as go between.

    asset (4988cd)

  32. I would like to trade any tired and used up greek for one of those Great military dogs.

    mg (8cbc69)

  33. Biden will unite America – behind Trump,

    mg (8cbc69)

  34. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/30/charles-hurt-bidens-war-image-of-president-in-fetal-position-has-enemies-quaking/
    look at that cellar dweller, you people that didn’t vote for Trump own this pos.

    mg (8cbc69)

  35. Yet more evidence that the leave coalition was wrong.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  36. I would vote the same way today.

    nk (1d9030)

  37. JVW wrote:

    We don’t lack the ability; we lack the will.

    And that’s exactly right.

    The libertarian, but not Libertarian, Dana (3867c9)

  38. Some guy in Illinois wrote:

    I would vote the same way today.

    “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

    The libertarian, but not Libertarian, Dana (3867c9)

  39. DCSCA wrote:

    Well, there’s always the Army-Navy game.

    Go Army! Beat Navy!

    The libertarian, but not Libertarian, Dana (3867c9)

  40. I would like to trade any tired and used up greek for one of those Great military dogs.

    Those dogs might be okay. Islam only frowns on dogs as pets and food. It approves their use for guarding, hunting, and herding. I don’t know if the Taliban conducts experiments on dogs the way our military Uniform-Fetish Titillation Cadre does:

    News reports published last week in this paper and elsewhere found that the VA is continuing to conduct invasive experiments on dogs as part of its medical research program, experiments that result in the euthanasia of the animals. According to the reports, there are currently nine active experiments at four VA facilities, including in Milwaukee, where researchers are removing parts of the dogs’ brains to test neurons that control breathing prior to killing them by lethal injection, and in Cleveland, where doctors are measuring dogs’ cough reflexes by placing electrodes on their spinal cords. When done, the cords are severed, killing the dogs.

    nk (1d9030)

  41. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

    Einstein never said that.

    “The problem with quotes on the internet is that you never know if they are genuine.” — Abraham Lincoln

    nk (1d9030)

  42. Don’t ask – and don’t tell – teh Spartans…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  43. steveg (ebe7c1) — 8/30/2021 @ 10:59 pm

    Did they get you to trade cold comfort for change?

    They definitely got us to trade heroes for ghosts.

    frosty (f27e97)

  44. Anyhow, I did not vote for Trump in 2016, either, and I did get a different result in 2020. Trump lost.

    In 2016, America lost.

    nk (1d9030)

  45. @35, Time: “Yet more evidence that the leave coalition was wrong”

    This is what is being lost in the righteous tar and feathering of Biden. But whether the military and humanitarian crisis happened instantaneously…as it did…or dragged out over a couple of months….the end state was still the Taliban capturing the equipment we left the Afghanis, our allies being decimated, and ISIS regaining a safe haven. Most Trump supporters were perfectly fine with leaving the sh*thole and losing….and presenting that weakened posture to Putin, Xi, and radical jihadists. They weren’t clamoring for diplomatic conditions for the exit or staying long enough for Afghanis to get better at logistics, tactics, and air support…they simply didn’t care. Now Biden royally screwed up the exit with American lives lost and Americans left behind….but let’s stop pretending that we can take Trump’s words that he would have done better. Trump lies….reflexively…easily….spectacularly….and his supporters simply don’t care. Instead of trying to shame those of us who wrote-in an honorable candidate for President, why not actively advocate for a better choice for 2024. Quit serving up garbage and trying to suggest it’s filet mignon. Back someone smart, experienced, disciplined, conservative, and honorable. Stop using Biden’s garbage to justify a different brand…or smell…of garbage….

    AJ_Liberty (a4ff25)

  46. Exactly, AJ_Liberty!

    nk (1d9030)

  47. I shouldn;t have been surprised by he U.S. military leaving a day earlier than expected – all along Biden has wanted to give himself more time than he intends to use. Furthermore, it makes sense – if you are travelling with a group of thieves, it is a good idea to tell them that your destination is further away than it is so they will continue to make and improve plans to attack you till it is scheduled for past the point when you separate from them..

    But I think the main reason was that Joe Biden didn’t know whether the August 31 deadline that the Taliban would not extend meant just after midnight, August 30/31 2021, or the next midnight. August 31/Septemeber.

    So he arranged that the last plane out crossed out of Afghan air space at 3:29 pm EDT August 30, 2021, which was 11:50 pm Monday, August 30, 2021 in Afghanistan. (in Indian and some nearby areas, time zzones are half an hour offset from those in most of the rest of the world)

    https://jakubmarian.com/5-weird-things-you-didnt-know-about-time-zones

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  48. Biden last seen in a janitor’s closet sniffing the hair of a beautiful blonde that turned out to be a mop.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  49. A word must be said for all those in the United States government who worked very diligently and imaginatively to turn a colossal debacle into an enormous failure.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  50. AJ_Liberty (a4ff25) — 8/31/2021 @ 5:37 am

    Back someone smart, experienced, disciplined, conservative, and honorable. Stop using Biden’s garbage to justify a different brand…or smell…of garbage

    Do you have any suggestions? In 2020 this was supposed to be Biden correct? Then Trump’s garbage was used to justify Biden. But you’re saying we shouldn’t do that again, which I agree with. Who is this smart, experienced, disciplined, conservative, and honorable candidate?

    frosty (f27e97)

  51. I heard retired General Jack Keane refer to some sort of a poll on the radio last night on the Rita Cosby show on WABC 779 AM after 10 pm that showed disapproval of something about what President Biden did in Afghanistan (I don’t know what was the question) that went all across the board. He said it went about identically – 86% %o 88% – whether the subgroup was Republicans, Democrats or Independents.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  52. The root cause of all of this is this whole idea about ending wars, regardless of wwhat alternatiive is.

    Ideas have consequences as Rush Limbaugh used to say.

    (it was not original with him.

    It is actually the title of a 1948 book by Richard M. Weaver.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  53. 50. frosty (f27e97) — 8/31/2021 @ 6:19 am

    Who is this smart, experienced, disciplined, conservative, and honorable candidate?

    Could we maybe strike out “honorable?”

    Could be some semi-obscure person.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  54. The ask was whether US forces should stay until ALL Americans are out of Afghanistan, Sammy. Wide agreement, whatever respondents’ politics…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  55. Arne Duncan’s monumentally deranged (but now deleted) tweet comparing the unmasked and unvaccinated to Taliban suicide bombers was a window into the thinking of Team Obama/Biden/Clinton/Pelosi.

    They really do regard people who put freedom over mandates as terrorists.

    Obudman (46eeea)

  56. AJ, Trump’s a BS artist. His MO is that when a bad thing happens and he says loudly that he would have done it differently and it would have easily worked out perfectly. Often because he would have threatened his enemies with destruction. His supporters don’t care that he’s lying so they either believe it, or go along because what they really care about is the culture war.

    Leaving Afghanistan was always going to have downsides.
    Better control of the area means more troops and risks more casualties
    Better evacuation takes longer, costs more, and means more casualties
    Taking this equipment back likely the same thing.

    I continue to think Biden has calculated that the public won’t care much about this in a few months and he’ll be able to claim that he pulled us out of Afghanistan.

    I wish we’d stayed. Failing that I wish we’d done a better job planning the withdrawal. Now that we haven’t I hope we do a good job helping the allies we brought out make new homes in a safe country. Here if needed. I also hope we’re able to maintain relations with the Taliban sufficient to bring out everyone that we need to and haven’t yet.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  57. Obudman (46eeea) — 8/31/2021 @ 6:36 am

    Come on man! He said “suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport”. The Taliban are our partners now.

    frosty (f27e97)

  58. Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/31/2021 @ 6:32 am

    The ask was whether US forces should stay until ALL Americans are out of Afghanistan, Sammy. Wide agreement, whatever respondents’ politics…

    It might not be apparent that that could take years – and there is one American being held captive by the Haqqani network since January, 2020 (a month before Trump reached his deal with the Taliban)

    The United States already released some Taliban prisoners in exchange for someone being held by the Haqqani network, and the Taliban Pakistani intelligence put Khalil Haqqani in charge of security in Kabul, so they are recognized as just being different branches of the same thing, and they could blame the Taliban authorities (or whoever is running them) for holding him.

    While some might not commit for too many years, leaving so soon without even getting all Americans out, or willing to leave (there could be people they don;t want to abandon) would probably have even more than 88% opposition. Every day they were in a position to take more out.

    The Secretary if State said there were approximately 100 to 200 American citizens left in Afghanistan who wanted to leave – and that means immediately. But the generals can say (and be told to say) that the mission was completed because the mission was to take out as many (American citizens) as they could in the time allotted, and there’s no way to fail at that.

    Americans plus enough Afghan allies to mollify Biden’s critics he hopes but not so many as to anger the anti-immigrantion Trump Republican base.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  59. frosty: “Who is this smart, disciplined, conservative, and honorable candidate?”

    Wait, seriously? You’re a Republican and you can’t name one politician better than Trump? That should speak volumes to what has happened to the GOP in the last four years. She’s imperfect, but Nikki Haley is a superior candidate. We can go through much of the 2016 field…minus Carson who was never qualified….and now Ted who has serially soiled himself….and find better qualified, thoughtful, and conservative options. Look at other current governors…..DeSantis for instance….who apes Trump a little bit too much for my taste….but who is still a vast improvement. You have retired military types who have good resumes…natural leaders….who are better options. Step one is to commit to doing better. There are good people out there…we just have to want them more than what Trump gives us…..

    AJ_Liberty (a4ff25)

  60. The general thanked the Taliban for keeping crowds away from the airport.

    He also said that the airport was not handed over to the Taliban – they were in contact, and told them when they were leaving, but the Taliban commander or any other Taliban were not let into te airport while the U.S. military was there.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  61. Then there’s Mike Pence, who might get some votes from disaffected Democrats and from independents because he was on the other side of the “Stop the Steal” campaign, and never wavered.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  62. Don’t leave your vote behind, make ‘em count in ‘22 and ‘24.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  63. The general said that 10 more days wouldn’t have changed things. It wouldn’t have gotten ALL American passport and green card holders out of Afghanistan, but it might have gotten several more dozen.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  64. 36.I would vote the same way today.

    A universal characteristic of insanity is inflexibly doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  65. 56… if wishes and hopes were horses, he’d be Hoot Gibson…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  66. Obudman, I thought his comment was terrible, but maybe not for the same reasons. Finding a pretext to compare or equate policy differences, even strongly held ones, to vile and anti-American motivations just makes the tribalism in our politics worse. As we convince the bases that people who disagree with them aren’t motivated by different preferences or viewpoints but by malice and a desire to destroy their enemies we make it harder to find any common ground. A former secretary of education should have known better.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  67. @65, Its easy to understand why you want to be someone else.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  68. @65, more seriously; I understand that none of the major coalitions within the GOP or DEM shares or cares about my policy preferences. But I still have them.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  69. Most Trump supporters were perfectly fine with leaving the sh*thole and losing….and presenting that weakened posture to Putin, Xi, and radical jihadists.

    Beaush!t.

    More Neocon creamed chipped Cheney on a shingle.

    Leaving smartly is winning. Leaving badly is pure Biden. Vlad’s already learned the price to pay for Afghan forays. Xi’s no dummy when it comes to real estate and will buy it ‘dirt’ cheap. But do sell your condos in Ukraine and Taiwan.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  70. @57, they’ve been our allies for over a year. Our agreement with them is why we reduced our troop presence and released thousands of their captive soldiers.

    It’s a stupid alliance and I expect we’ll regret it more as time goes on but here we are.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  71. Call for Cat Stevens… call for Mr. Cat Stevens on the white courtesy phone…

    https://nypost.com/2021/08/30/afghan-folk-singer-fawad-andarabi-killed-by-taliban-for-playing-music/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  72. I continue to think Biden has calculated that the public won’t care much about this in a few months and he’ll be able to claim that he pulled us out of Afghanistan.

    In this media environment? Did you sleep through 1975? Or 1979??

    Not. A. Chance.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  73. “I wish we’d stayed. Failing that I wish we’d done a better job planning the withdrawal. Now that we haven’t I hope we do a good job helping the allies we brought out make new homes in a safe country. Here if needed. I also hope we’re able to maintain relations with the Taliban sufficient to bring out everyone that we need to and haven’t yet.”

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS2lzwh_6fUUCcvKxwabS8S1bNJ4E9LpLfvTw&s

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  74. The est that Biden can hope for is that “people don’t vote on foreign policy” (although they do on national security.)

    It can never be a positive for Biden.

    The New York Post had a wrd fr this in a headline:

    Dumkirk.

    Not only did the United States break its promises, it forced other countries to do so also, some particularly the British and the French, really don’t like that..

    They wanted them to break more promises than they did. The US commander at Kabul airport had an argument with his British counterpart, and now they are blaming the British for the suicide bombing last Thursday.

    I assume sources in the U.S, military spoke to CBS News’s David Martin

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-face-the-nation-08-29-2021

    ED O’KEEFE: Okay. You– you have learned more about what happened on Thursday at the airport, and– and then a lot of questions about why so many service members might have been in one area that would have caused them to die. What have you learned?

    DAVID MARTIN: Well, it kind of makes you grind your teeth, because that gate where the explosion occurred was due to be closed. And they kept it open because British troops, who were based in a hotel several hundred yards away, had decided they were going to go back to the airport as part of their pullout. So the gate was kept open longer than planned. The suicide bomber got there first.

    Like as if they had to keep gate open for other people if they kept it open for the British to bring in some people.

    It happened because in all their security screening they never dealt with the possibility: “What if the person we are searching really has a suicide vest?

    Checking people for bombs pr explosives in a way that can let them know that you are, is not a good idea.

    So much for strengthening alliances.

    Biden wants allies to have a veto, but not a vote.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  75. @72. This guy?!

    https://static.theprint.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/image-1068×601.jpg

    Towelhead Muddhutt & his Ceegar Box Quartet. Got all his wax cylinders & 78s. They really know how to cut a rug in Afghanistan.

    ‘Smok’em if ya got ’em…’ and they did just that.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  76. This event may quickly recede from the media’s memory, but trust me: Democrats will soon paint it as a great achievement. They will be quick to show how Biden was handed this mess from Trump and still evacuated more people than ever before in American history.

    It’s going to happen. And the media, even CNN, will go right along with The Narrative.

    You know why Biden was looking at his watch? Because he knows the media and the Democrats will have his back on this. He can be flippant and think of better places to be than on a tarmac honoring dead American soldiers.

    Hoi Polloi (093fb9)

  77. He uses a ‘Beau,’ too. Weep for him, Joe.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  78. I wish I’d thought to ask up front what people would have defined success. Now it’s too late.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  79. https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/todays-blacklisted-american-chase-bank-closes-lt-general-mike-flynns-credit-card-accounts-because-they-dont-like-his-opinions/

    Just a reminder that if the left fully consolidates power, they don’t want you to be able to live. You must submit to their reign of terror or be eliminated from society.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  80. 77. This event may quickly recede from the media’s memory…

    Not. A. Chance.

    It’ll dominate the midterms and the investigative hearings will be great TeeVee. Guess you never saw the Fulbright hearings on Vietnam. Credibility across the board is now in play. It’s Beauing, Beauing and just about all gone for ol’Joe. He’ll shove these guys on to the Amtraks or lose it completely. Unless he’s just a dumb, stubborn mick.

    Milley, Austin, Delta House president Sullivan and Secretary of State Wint are toast. They’ll be “retired” by November, 2022.

    “I trust his judgement.” – Nancy Pelosi 8/25/21

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  81. 79. Time123 (9f42ee) — 8/31/2021 @ 7:37 am

    I wish I’d thought to ask up front what people would have defined success. Now it’s too late.

    Biden already said it: (and he got it in writing from all military people involved)

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/26/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terror-attack-at-hamid-karzai-international-airport

    …. But the military — from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Joint Chiefs, the commanders in the field — have all contacted me one way or another, usually by letter, saying they subscribe to the mission as designed to get as many people out as we can within the timeframe that is allotted.

    There was no way to fail at that.

    Biden wanted just enough attention on that to make a defense for himself, but he didn’t want the average voter to understand this clearly.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  82. Now nobody was going to juxtapose that definition of the mission with claims of success.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  83. Sammy, I mean here. I wonder what people would have said bad/poor/OK/Good/Great looked like 1 year ago.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  84. This definition of success was not designed to get much circulation – it was designed to stop dead in their tracks any person making any criticism of the last two weeks as a failure.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  85. AJ_Liberty (a4ff25) — 8/31/2021 @ 6:59 am

    Wait, seriously? You’re a Republican and you can’t name one politician better than Trump?

    I’m consistently amazed at people’s ability to read just the part of the comment they want and then interpret that in indecipherable ways.

    First, I said, “Do you have any suggestions?”. Did you see that part of the comment or did you jump right to a snarky retort?

    Second, you think I’m an R why? Because I complain more about D’s and NeverTrump?

    That should speak volumes to what has happened to the GOP in the last four years.

    I’d say it speaks volumes to people’s reading comprehension skills and willingness to discuss issues.

    She’s imperfect, but Nikki Haley is a superior candidate.

    Ok, so, we’ve got one choice.

    We can go through much of the 2016 field…minus Carson who was never qualified….and now Ted who has serially soiled himself….and find better qualified, thoughtful, and conservative options. Look at other current governors…..DeSantis for instance….who apes Trump a little bit too much for my taste….but who is still a vast improvement.

    Ok, so, we’ve got two? Or is that 1 1/2?

    You have retired military types who have good resumes…natural leaders….who are better options.

    This isn’t as helpful a list. The military types are starting to look like a mixed bag.

    frosty (f27e97)

  86. The Restoration of Taliban rule is about much failure as you can imagine. You can’t fail any more than that except to have Afghanistan play a role in another attack on the United States – and Pakistan, I think, will have second thoughts about that.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  87. If they would have gotten ot as many Afghan interpreters as Congress wanted, it cold have even touted as a success – except that I don’t think Biden wanted that (and he still doesn’t) because he was scarebd of being criticized by Stephen Miller. Biden correctedd some of what Miller wrought but he didn’t cut out a lot of steps.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-miller-racist-hysteria-blocked-help-afghans-ex-pence-adviser-2021-8

    A former national security official blamed the Trump administration and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s “racist hysteria” for impeding the visa application process for Afghans who worked with the US.

    Olivia Troye worked as the homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. In a Twitter thread Friday, she blasted the Trump administration for its handling of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programs that provide a path to US residency for locals who worked with the US government in Afghanistan.

    “There were cabinet mtgs about this during the Trump Admin where Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan. He & his enablers across gov’t would undermine anyone who worked on solving the SIV issue by devastating the system at DHS & State,” Troye wrote.

    Since the Taliban swiftly seized control of Afghanistan Sunday, the US has been struggling to evacuate Americans as well as tens of thousands of Afghan allies who have worked with the US over the past two decades.

    The Biden administration has come under sharp criticism from both sides of the aisle for its handling of the US troop withdrawal and subsequent evacuations. But criticism has also been aimed at the Trump administration, including Miller in particular.

    Troye said she worked on the SIV issue but got “nowhere” because allies of President Donald Trump and Miller at the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and other security agencies “made an already cumbersome SIV process even more challenging.”

    She said many people within the administration believed the matter was urgent but that many were afraid to oppose the president’s allies, adding that there were “many closed door meetings” strategizing how to address the issue.

    “Trump had FOUR years-while putting this plan in place-to evacuate these Afghan allies who were the lifelines for many of us who spent time in Afghanistan,” she said. “The process slowed to a trickle for reviews/other “priorities”-then came to a halt.”

    An Afghanistan War veteran told CNN this week that Miller “should be held accountable for war crimes” for opposing the resettlement of endangered Afghans, and that he was “complicit” in their deaths.

    Miller is an advocate for strict immigration limits. In an appearance on Fox News Tuesday night, Miller said “those advocating for mass Afghan resettlement are doing so for political and not humanitarian reasons,” adding that it would also be too expensive.

    “The United States of America never, ever, made a promise, written or unwritten, to the people of Afghanistan that if after 20 years, they were unable to secure their own country, that we would take them to ours. That is nonsense. That has never been US government policy,” Miller said.

    Insider has reached out to Trump’s office and Troye for comment. Stephen Miller could not immediately be reached for comment.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  88. Frosty, You’re doing that thing where you ask questions that seem to imply something about your views.
    e.g. do you have any suggestions implies that you, frosty do not, or that you feel Trump was as superior to the other available choices.

    Then you seem surprised / indignant when someone includes those implications in their response.

    Then, having spent time criticizing him for not correctly understanding your unstated POV you choose not to clairify that POV.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  89. Nikki Haley fought off questions about the fictional island of Binomo.
    Under the current circumstamces, I’ll call that a win

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  90. Time123

    e.g. do you have any suggestions implies that you, frosty do not, or that you feel Trump was as superior to the other available choices.

    Frosty didn’t say there wasn’t anybody superior to Trump but implied @ #50 that there was not anybody who was “smart, experienced, disciplined, conservative, and honorable.

    AJ_Liberty mentioned Nikki Haley # #59 bit said she was imperfect and added that we could an go through much of the 2016 field…except for Ben Carson “and now Ted who has serially soiled himself” and find “better qualified, thoughtful, and conservative options” thus appearing to agree with my proposal @ #53 to consider the idea of striking out “honorable” (but not to completely disregard it and I would not either.)

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  91. Time123 (9f42ee) — 8/31/2021 @ 8:15 am

    I have no idea how a simple question like “do you have any suggestions” implies what you claim it implies. This looks like something you just made up.

    Said, a different way, I asked him a question about his position. Why is my POV even an issue at all? It’s a valid question for AJ_Liberty that can be asked by an R, D, another NeverTrump, etc. How does me being an R or not have anything to do with AJ_Liberty’s contention that there is someone smart, experienced, disciplined, conservative, and honorable to back within the GOPe? Is he going to change his position based on the POV of the person asking?

    Here, let me help. It has nothing to do with it. He wanted to be snarky with the “you’re a R and you don’t know”. That’s just an attempt to dodge the question.

    frosty (f27e97)

  92. Corruption is not the worst possible thing. Right now, in Afghanistan, corruption could be the salvation for many people, and their best hope. If only the Taliban regime would prove to be corrupt!

    In general, corruption and lack of integrity has to be evaluated along with many other things, and attention paid also to the what kind, and the degree.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  93. “A former secretary of education should have known better.”

    Quite possibly he did not know better because he’s expressed the same sentiment in his authoritarian elite groupthink circle and gotten no disagreement.

    Obudman (46eeea)

  94. 92… do better, frosty! This is your 4th warning…

    Colonel Haiku (064346)

  95. Colonel Haiku (064346) — 8/31/2021 @ 8:59 am

    There is a difference between implied and inferred. I don’t think everyone knows the difference.

    frosty (f27e97)

  96. @59: sounds like AJ will stick to haley and desantis through the first or second media smear, but not the third

    JF (e1156d)

  97. “A former national security official blamed the Trump administration and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s “racist hysteria” for impeding the visa application process for Afghans who worked with the US.”

    Don’t forget that other hysterical racist, David French:

    Have Afghan Refugees in Europe Launched a ‘Rape Jihad’? A compelling piece from a member of the foreign-policy elite suggests the answer is ‘yes.’

    “It’s against this backdrop — savage treatment of women and contempt for Western justice — that I read with alarm a stunning report on “Europe’s Afghan crime wave.” The piece is notable not just for its content, but for its author. Cheryl Benard has worked sympathetically with refugees and was a subject-matter expert at the RAND corporation. In other words, this piece isn’t from the anti-Muslim fever swamps but from the heart of the elite national-security establishment. Her thesis is simple: European nations are grappling with a wave of vicious immigrant attacks against women, and the attackers are coming disproportionately from Afghanistan.”

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/afghan-refugees-rape-jihad-europe/

    Obudman (46eeea)

  98. Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ just sayin’
    Plannin’ and dreamin’ a big waste of time
    Bullschiff on America’s dime

    Colonel Haiku (064346)

  99. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOVucOZwM8U

    One thing said here. It was compared to a captain of a cruise ship (eacuated in the wrong place?) who boasts of the number of people evacuated while hundreds drowned.

    Or maybe you could say that about the Titanic. Record number of people rescued from a shipwreck!

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  100. At 13:20 – near the end – host says Pentagon is blaming the British for the suicide bombing because that caused them to keep the gate open longer.

    At least Barack Obama prevented ISIS from taking over Baghdad. Here, guest says, they could have used Afghan soecial forces to secure Kabul when Taliban commander offered to not go in.

    But delaying the takeover of Kabul wasn’t part of the U.S. game plan

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  101. worse than Trump/2024

    mg (8cbc69)

  102. Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c) — 8/31/2021 @ 9:22 am

    Or maybe you could say that about the Titanic. Record number of people rescued from a shipwreck!

    Record number from an unsinkable ship that was struck by an iceberg! If you’re going to grab a record get one that is less likely to be superseded.

    frosty (f27e97)

  103. SF @51-
    Americans give Biden low marks on Afghanistan pullout: Reuters/Ipsos poll
    …….
    The national survey, conducted Aug. 27-30, found that 51% disapproved of Biden’s approach to the pullout while 38% approved.
    …….
    In the poll, completed just before the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, 49% said the U.S. military should stay in Afghanistan “until all American citizens and Afghan allies have been evacuated,” and 25% said that U.S. forces should remain until all U.S. citizens could leave.

    Only 13% said that troops should “evacuate immediately.”
    ……..
    The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 20% of adults said Biden deserves the “most blame for the current state” of the Afghanistan war.

    Ten percent mostly blamed former President George W. Bush, who ordered the invasion of the country two decades ago, and 9 percent blamed former President Donald Trump, who last year negotiated a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces.

    Another 30% blamed a slew of other actors in the region, including the Taliban, the Afghan military, U.S. military leaders and ISIS-K…….
    ……..
    The poll found that 35% of Americans believe that the coronavirus is the biggest problem facing the country today, while 18% said it was the economy. Only 10% said it was the war in Afghanistan.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  104. Mother of Marine killed in ISIS bomb attack has her Instagram account disabled after she blamed Biden for her son’s death and claimed President ‘rolled his eyes’ and ‘turned his back on her’ when she confronted him

    Facebook temporarily deleted the Instagram account of the mother of one of the Marines killed in Afghanistan by an ISIS bomb last week after she publicly blamed President Biden for his death and the deaths of the other servicemembers killed.

    Shana Chapell is the mother of Kareem Nikoui, 20, who was killed in the ISIS bomb attack at Kabul airport on August 26.

    On Monday, she posted a long Facebook post directed at Biden where she described meeting him on Sunday.

    She said she looked him ‘straight in the eyes’ and told him she did not want to hear about his son Beau, who died in 2015 – something other families who were at the meeting said the President brought up.

    She also alleged Biden ‘turned to walk away’ then threw his hand ‘up behind him as if he was saying “ok whatever” when she yelled at him that her son’s blood was on her hands.

    Her account was suspended yesterday, after thousands flooded her page with messages of condolence following her son’s death last week.

    JF (e1156d)

  105. Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told DailyMail.com on Tuesday: ‘We express our deepest condolences to Ms. Chappell and her family.

    ‘Her tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies. While the post was not removed, her account was incorrectly deleted and we have since restored it.’

    As for her previous posts that had been flagged – which included some before her son’s death about going to the White House – Facebook pointed to its ‘three strike’ rule.

    Moderation by algorithm is hard. Need to keep humans in the loop to fix the machine when it screws up.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  106. 97, it will be somebody we don’t know yet…DeSantis might be this cycle’s Scott Walker

    urbanleftbehind (419fc9)

  107. @107, i like Pete Meier. His lack of executive experience is a problem. But would be an easy pick ahead Biden, Harris, Trump, or the like.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Meijer

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  108. i like Pete Meijer.His lack of executive experience is a problem. …..

    He would never make it in the Republican primaries. His problem isn’t lack of executive experience, it is that he voted for impeachment.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  109. @109, it’s pretty likely that the GOP primary will be determined by a fight over competing conspiracy theories.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  110. The republican party is full of collectivist hacks that enjoy telling you what you want to hear, but doing zero. One thing in common with why we have not had a budget since old man bush. Mitch and Nancy have been in power since then. And not one republican gives a darn about a budget. Not one. They stink.

    mg (8cbc69)

  111. @109: meijer is actually the perfect candidate

    he won’t win

    four more years of not owning anything, which is the m.o. for many here

    JF (e1156d)

  112. @110-

    Touché.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  113. GOP will hold primaries. It’s unclear if the DNC will hold them, or fall back on the subterfuge, back-stabbing and party hack anointing of a “suitable” candidate they’ve become known for.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  114. Some folks are just willfully ignorant…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  115. @110 looks like meijer’s conspiracy theory is out of the competition

    but as with everything else, that it can’t win makes it the perfect conspiracy theory for you

    JF (e1156d)

  116. GOP will hold primaries.

    Like the 2020 primaries or caucuses in Nevada, South Carolina, Arizona, Kansas, Alaska, Hawaii, and New York? Oh, wait.

    If Trump runs again I expect to see the same thing happen, it will be a coronation. The Democrats did the same for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the Republicans for Bushes I and II. Neither party is virtuous when it comes to open debate.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  117. @117 I thought I saw a chart like that for unvaxxed but I can’t find it now. I thought it was somewhere between car and gun on this list.

    frosty (ef3b99)

  118. Of interest… https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/covid_breakthrough_chart_8-31-21.jpg

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/31/2021 @ 10:17 am

    I had no idea lightening was such a killer. We really need to do something about it. Maybe put lightening rods on our masks.

    Hoi Polloi (093fb9)

  119. My Nikki Haley post was responding to nk’s idea of picking on San Marino for a win and thinking it might be better to just create a fictional island to give a whuppin to.

    I’m guessing we start asking the military to bring diversity to the combat platoon level.
    So when they start taking casualties and need reinforcements they will have radio conversations like this: We’ve got 4 KIA and 4 wounded need medevac. Diversity levels down. Send me a Puerto Rican black male, Hispanic Male X female transexual, a black female, Hispanic male Mexico, one Hispanic OTM female, Lesbian white, one Asian male, one white male.

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  120. Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/31/2021 @ 10:17 am

    Even if the graph is 100% numerically true, it’s still Covid denialist propaganda. It remains that this virus is our 3rd largest killer two years running, behind only heart disease and cancer.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  121. @121 I be willing to partner with you on something for just the problem based on the IT bike from South Park. Our target market could be SF, Portland, Seattle, and maybe certain areas of NYC.

    frosty (ef3b99)

  122. @123 Paul, it looks like they’re comparing lifetime odds with a single year for Covid in that chart.. But their conclusion that the vaccine is extremely effective is correct.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  123. late for your nap, joe??

    https://youtu.be/rZmxgQ4lyBo

    JF (e1156d)

  124. Paul Montagu (5de684) — 8/31/2021 @ 10:48 am

    That is arguably a pro-vaccine graphic. Why do you think it’s COVID denialist?

    frosty (fd3b4b)

  125. That is arguably a pro-vaccine graphic. Why do you think it’s COVID denialist?

    The low odds, for one, giving the impression that it’s not all that deadly, and it doesn’t show hospitalizations and deaths for the unvaccinated. And Time is right about lifetime v. a single year.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  126. Even if the graph is 100% numerically true, it’s still Covid denialist propaganda.

    What’s teh frequency, Kenneth Paul ?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  127. Since we’re straying into Covid, here’s a good numerical analysis of hospitalizations in Israel for vaccinated and unvaccinated. The pattern becomes much clearer when breaking it down by age group.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  128. Paul, seems like it was created to support the idea that the vaccine makes any other mitigation action unnecessary. Which is probably rue if everyone were vaccinated.

    But doesn’t seem to be a partially useful or accurate visualization of risk. Adding risks for unvaccinated people, normalizing the risks to similar time frames, and probably restricting the graphic to similar risk profiles by age and gender would all be god revisions.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  129. @130, that’s paywalled unfortunately.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  130. And the graph doesn’t show you the chances of an unvaccinated person dying of Covid.

    Not that that number would be stable. The odds are higher the more cases there are, and the more serious cases there are (which would kead to more severe exposures.)

    Not to mention getting worse or better treatment.

    And, as Time123 said, it’s comparing the chances, for a resident of the United States, of eventually dying from these cause if the probability stayed the same as it was in 2019 or so to the chances of dying of Covid…

    A, if infected??

    B. Over some time period in 2020-21?

    C. Or what?

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  131. Time123 (9f42ee) — 8/31/2021 @ 11:30 am

    Those would all be positive improvements to the graph. I’m not sure that would help Paul.

    If you’re comparing single-year chance of death all of those other causes become rarer. The chance that I will die from heart disease during my lifetime is fairly high but the chance of me dying of it this year is fairly low. If you compute the lifetime chance of dying from COVID I don’t think it goes up by much.

    That becomes even more of a problem if you break it down by age.

    frosty (f27e97)

  132. You can try incognito mode, Time. That’s how I read Atlantic articles. But here’s the nut.

    Something very similar is happening in Israel. Vaccinated Israelis, like White Americans, are older as a group than unvaccinated Israelis. And that’s why they’re going to the hospital at a rate higher than you might naively hope. Among Israeli adults under 50, as of Aug. 15, 3.5 million were vaccinated and 1.1 million were not. That’s still a considerable number of vaccine holdouts. Among those 3.5 million vaccinated younger people, just 11 were hospitalized — about three per million. Meanwhile, of the unvaccinated in this age range, 43 were in the hospital, or 39 per million.

    Note that hospitalizations of young people for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated are low, because younger people rarely suffer the severest illness from covid-19. Still, vaccination reduced the rate of hospitalization more than 10-fold in the population under 50.

    Now look at the population 50 and older. There are 2.1 million vaccinated Israelis over 50, and 290 were in the hospital Aug. 15. That’s 136 per million, a rate that dwarfs anything younger people are experiencing. And unvaccinated older Israelis? There are very few people in that category: just 186,000. But of that group, 171 were hospitalized — a grievously higher rate of 919 per million. In the older population, vaccinated people were less than one-sixth as likely to be hospitalized as the unvaccinated.

    It is true there are more vaccinated than unvaccinated in hospital, but it’s only because of the high vaccination rate among the 50-and-olders.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  133. If he mentions it one more time:

    Attention dogwalkers and RV owners w/chemic toilets to empty:

    https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/147215315/joseph-robinette-biden

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  134. 111. Hear Hear for multiple sentences of the grammatical kind! Next thing you know, you’ll be giving Gawains Ghost a run for his money!

    urbanleftbehind (148539)

  135. Paul, Thank you, that makes sense and agrees with domestic data. Through last month

    https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrough-cases-data-from-the-states/

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  136. @134, Sociology & public health analysis are hard for these reasons.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  137. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-trump-broke-the-system-that-offers-protection-to-afghan-allies/ar-AANWBOo?ocid=msedgntp

    I think that says it all. Trump, what a hypocrite and a fraud. And Miller, what a xenophobist and a racist.

    Gawain's Ghost (c6fd3b)

  138. Gawain, that’s not at all surprising but those are things Biden should have fixed prior to the retreat.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  139. Will somebody i the White House please buy Joe a sundial?

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  140. 104,

    In the poll, completed just before the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, 49% said the U.S. military should stay in Afghanistan “until all American citizens and Afghan allies have been evacuated,” and 25% said that U.S. forces should remain until all U.S. citizens could leave.

    These seem to be alternative choices 513 people were asked to pick from.

    That is, 25% said only until all U.S. citizens could leave and 49% said all American citizens and Afghan allies, for a total of 74% over four days. 13% said leave immediately, close to the position of President Biden..

    The answer probably changed a little once it looked like “staying” could mean fighting their way back in.

    Asked to pick who was most to blame for the current state” of the Afghanistan war. and we don’t know what names were given and what had to be volunteered, 20% said Biden, 10% said Bush, and 9% said Trump. 30% (probably volunteered) a whole host of others, including the Taliban, the Afghan military, U.S. military leaders and ISIS-K…

    That poll was by Reuters and Ipsos and was taken from August 27 through August 30…

    The other poll, by ABC News and Ipsos, taken only on August 27 and 28, after the suicide attack at Kabul Airport, but before it became clear to many that there was no possibility of Biden extending the date for leaving, showed that 84% favored keeping troops there until all Americans had been evacuated (I’m not sure where General Jack Keane got his 86% to 88% figure unless it’s slightly lower for those who did not categorize themselves as Democrats, Republicans or Independents) and 71% who favored keeping them until all Afghan allies had been evacuated. People could say yes to both.

    Only 38% approved of Biden’s handling of Afghanistan in that two-day poll.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  141. “… the assumption was…”

    Never “assume,” Joe… etc., etc.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  142. Malarkey!

    Bluster, blarney and Beaush!t.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  143. Frosty: “I’d say it speaks volumes to people’s reading comprehension skills and willingness to discuss issues.”

    Time demonstrates remarkable patience and willingness to engage you. But most of your discussions seem to devolve into bad-faith tediousness…where people either are liars or can’t understand your obviously clear point. Well….I’m going to tap out from engaging you further….it’s simply a waste of everyone’s time. I think you COULD do better, it’s a shame you seem stuck in your rut.

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  144. “90%” isn’t “100%,” Senator, Just like $1400 is not $2000.

    Idiot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  145. It’s Trump’s fault; it’s my advisors fault. It’s my general’s fault. Ithat where the buck stops???

    “Buck” you Joe.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  146. 141. Time123 (9f42ee) — 8/31/2021 @ 12:07 pm

    those are things Biden should have fixed prior to the retreat.

    He was afraid to do too much, and just tried to push people through the process somewhat faster. Sort of like what politicians do with regard to the FDA and Covid.

    News item: There are 585 Afghani pilots and their families in Uzbekistan who fled two weeks ago on Afghani Air Force helicopters and planes.

    Uzbekistan is coming under pressure from the Taliban to return them. I guess the helicopters and the airplanes will go to the Taliban without saying unless diplomacy gets active about that, too.

    Uzbekistan is asking Washington to act quickly and get them out of there to a third country (The State Department has been slow. Biden’s not going to rush to evacuate them to the United States and it;s hard to get other countries to take them when the United States won’t – besides Uzbekistan is the country of first asylum and legally obligated by a well known international treaty to let them stay if they are in danger, so they figure it can wait – meanwhile they’ve got people in Qatar they are trying to place. The State Department continues to thank Uzbekistan for continuing to co-operate in “temporary relocation of vulnerable Afghans.”)

    Congressman August Pfluger (R-Texas) is active in the case because the daughter of one of his constituents is married to one of the pilots. The wife is apparently also in the United States but maybe not in his district. The pilot’s phone was confiscated by Uzbekistan about when they got there and they haven’t been in contact with him since.

    Uzbekistan had no idea they were coming and is housing them in lodging prevously used as moble hospitals for Covid.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  147. This is a speech a senator would make on the floor of the Senste.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  148. 137- Your sophisticated.
    Why would you read my drivel?

    mg (8cbc69)

  149. Grandpa is lecturing America.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  150. Somebody pull a Ron Burgundy on this old fart and write ‘Good night and fvck you San Diego’ in the teleprompter script.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  151. “we gotta learn from our mistakes. To me there are two of them…”

    To me, there’s one:

    YOU

    Idiot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  152. President Trump decided to end this war,

    Not you.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  153. Beau again.

    Go to Beau, Joe.

    Go. To. Beau.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  154. Can Tim Scott, Byron Donalds and Burgess Owens be convinced to try to put their hands in each other’s pockets.

    urbanleftbehind (148539)

  155. Oh say did you know,
    That ol’Joe lost his Beau,
    Oozing empathy so faux,
    That is always for show.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  156. Biden had 8 months to hammer out his own version of retreat and it looks like he did.
    He could have interpreted Taliban taking over towns as breaching the agreement.
    He could have kept Bagram open and he could have used airpower in June/July to take the wind out of the Taliban offensve and he could have had a better plan for the evacuation..not having it be an emergency evacuation for one
    Waah about Trumps agreement. That is stupid. The Taliban never meant to keep parts of the agreements which was emphasized when al-Qaeda leaders met with Taliban leaders. I thought Joe said they were sworn enemies.

    Trump might have let the Taliban get away with the same things and Trump might have F’d the draw down and out, But one thing we learned for sure about Biden is he and his team are much much weaker than advertised (and that was a low bar to begin with)

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  157. President Trump decided to end this war,

    “I ended the war in Iraq.”
    –Barack Obama, 2012

    We withdrew from a front in the War Against Militant Islamism. Neither Trump nor Biden ended anything.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  158. Tens of thousand of additional U.S. troops would have been required to…hold off the Taliban, militarily, but 0 U.S. troops could do so also?

    Or is it that tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops would have been required to protect themselves?

    Or is it the Afghan armed forces could do so for a period of time.

    Except that when defeat becomes inevitable, it also becomes imminent – not too many want to die at
    the Brest Fortress, or at the Alamo. Unless maybe the alternative is to be slaughtered sooner.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  159. Biden seems to blame Afghan president Ghani for the collapse. He did not blame the Afghan soldiers, echoing Senator Mitch McConnell on how many lost their lives..

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  160. Biden mentioned the “women and men” of the U.S. armed forces, mentioning women first, I guess to show how much he supports womens’ rights.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  161. steveg (ebe7c1) — 8/31/2021 @ 1:45 pm

    The Taliban never meant to keep parts of the agreements which was emphasized when al-Qaeda leaders met with Taliban leaders. I thought Joe said they were sworn enemies.

    No, Joe said the Taliban and ISIS are sworn enemies. He mentions that any time he mentions ISIS in Afghanistan.

    He recited a mess of selected facts.

    This is an illustration of how to mislead while telling the fewest outright lies you can point to.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  162. Earth to Joe; Earth to Joe:

    This was not Apollo 13.

    It is Apollo 1.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  163. Aug 19: “If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”

    Today: “The bottom line: 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.”

    JF (e1156d)

  164. @161. Read: Trump decided to end the war.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  165. More Beaush!t from Evacuation Joe.

    Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, some 340,000 Allied troops were evacuated from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England, Joe.

    9 days, Joe: under fire.

    Idiot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  166. 167.Aug 19: “If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”

    Today: “The bottom line: 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.”

    $2000 is $1400, too.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  167. Kind of agree with SteveG

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  168. @141 I agree, Time123, there are things Biden could have done better, but look at the situation he was in. I mean, after January 6, the Capitol was in turmoil.

    Trump knew he lost the election. And to Joe Biden no less! Biden had never even won a primary in his ealier presidential races, but he was not Hillary Clinton. That’s why he won, with the most votes of anyone in history.

    He was not Hillary. And he was not Trump. Yet Trump and these Trumplicans could not not handle it. It’s why they started these insane consipiarcy theories.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/probably-nothing-to-worry-about-republican-says-rigged-elections-will-lead-to-more-bloodshed/ar-AANWiHO?ocid=msedgntp

    Are you kidding me? Further violence and insurrection to protect Trump. It’s insane.

    Gawain's Ghost (c6fd3b)

  169. AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 8/31/2021 @ 12:35 pm

    Time demonstrates remarkable patience and willingness to engage you. But most of your discussions seem to devolve into bad-faith tediousness…where people either are liars or can’t understand your obviously clear point.

    I asked a simple question. You decided to go with snark and Time123 inferred something into my comment.

    You could have simply answered my question without the snark. Time123 could have just read my comment without trying to go meta and figure out what I really meant or my secret intentions.

    Well….I’m going to tap out from engaging you further….it’s simply a waste of everyone’s time. I think you COULD do better, it’s a shame you seem stuck in your rut.

    If you don’t want to answer don’t. Getting snarky and then claiming other people could do better is also a rut.

    frosty (f27e97)

  170. He should do much better, frosty. Time will tell… and the tells are usually amusing.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  171. D.C.Jen –
    We prefer our truth over your facts.
    Baghdad Bob would be proud.

    mg (8cbc69)

  172. How long until the tally band have a seat at the paris climate accord?

    mg (8cbc69)

  173. Frosty, I didn’t make any guesses about what you really meant. I asserted that it was reasonable to infer things beyond the black letter meaning of your words. I further asserted that you seem to get frustrated when people do that, but don’t clarify what you mean.

    You’ve said before that you’re not trying to play some game and I believe you.

    I’ll refrain from this type of conversation in the future. I’m not trying to upset or frustrate you.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  174. mg (8cbc69) — 8/31/2021 @ 3:31 pm

    I wish I could remember the source for half the things I hear/see. I could have sworn I heard a soundbite for that in the context of them wanting access to money. Although it could have been one of the many “If the Taliban want to be taken seriously by the international community they will …”.

    On the other hand (pun intended)

    “Listen, if these Paris Accords said that we could cut a person’s hand off if they didn’t recycle, or take a man’s wife and daughters as sex slaves if he did not drive a hybrid, we might have been open to giving them a shot,” Taliban leader Abu Ghani Baradar told The Mideast Beast. “But it’s just a bunch of non-binding promises to reduce emissions. Frankly, I feel like Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, would have laughed at something like that.”

    frosty (f27e97)

  175. Did the Taliban capture $83 billion worth of American equipment?

    No. Three Pinocchios, no:

    U.S. military equipment was given to Afghan security forces over two decades. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear fell into the hands of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. The value of these assets is unclear, but if the Taliban is unable to obtain spare parts, it may not be able to maintain them.

    But the value of the equipment is not more than $80 billion. That’s the figure for all of the money spent on training and sustaining the Afghan military over 20 years. The equipment portion of that total is about $24 billion — certainly not small change — but the actual value of the equipment in the Taliban’s hands is probably much less than even that amount.

    By now, Glenn Kessler seems a little bored at having to correct Trump. But, that’s part of Kessler’s job, so I guess he will keep doing it, as long as he has to.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  176. Thanks Jim, I’d suspected that, but it’s good to have it confirmed.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  177. What was the Trump over under this thread?

    mg (8cbc69)

  178. All Trump knows is what Stephen Miller reads in The London Times. And I particularly liked the part of Trump rounding it up to $85 billion.

    You know … that vindication thing might just be me giving too much credit to Trumpcakes. They’d be happy to have him as only the second worst President ever I think. If only the rest of us would just admit to owning Biden.

    nk (1d9030)

  179. Max Boot who knows a little about small wars, spreads the blame more broadly than most:

    If you ask me who is to blame, I would point not only to Biden but to former president Donald Trump — and to all of us, the people of America. By carrying out this pell-mell withdrawal from Afghanistan, our leaders, after all, were only giving us what we wanted.

    Large majorities of Americans wanted out — and large Americans wanted our allies not to get hurt in the process. One can argue that a militarily competent leader could have achieved both, but we haven’t had one in the White House since 2009.

    (Nor have we had much competent reporting on the war. We Americans might have done better if our scribblers and talking heads understood the war on Islamic terror. But I am not sure many of them even want to. How many of them even know that it didn’t start in 2001?)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  180. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 8/31/2021 @ 4:13 pm

    The $80b number always sounded like someone trying to boost an insurance claim.

    I’m not even sure the US spent $80b on it. The first time I heard that number I thought of the line from Judd Hirsch in the first Independence Day.

    President Thomas J. Whitmore: Where do you get funding for something like this?
    Julius Levinson: You don’t actually think they spent $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?

    frosty (f27e97)

  181. frosty – I expect the tally band to take our seat soon as we have become the worlds number 1 arms dealer to terrorists. 85 billion goes a long way in caveman time.

    mg (8cbc69)

  182. @181 @12? If not there possibly @45?

    frosty (f27e97)

  183. As one of the lemmings who bought into

    “Mr. Taliban, Taliban, turn over bin Laden.
    Daylight come, we drop de bomb.”

    back in 2001, I’ll accept my share of responsibility for going into Afghanistan.

    I won’t accept responsibility for either the stalemate or the rout. That lies entirely with the people who were getting paid to do the job. And blew it.

    nk (1d9030)

  184. Given how many pieces of equipment the Taliban has ‘captured’ – they’ve got plenty of spare parts to scrounge.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  185. #181 mg – How can we miss him, if he won’t go away?

    (There are frequent commenters here who ought to be able to adapt these these lyrics.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  186. Given how many pieces of equipment the Taliban has ‘captured’ – they’ve got plenty of spare parts to scrounge.

    Not to mention that they won without them to begin with.

    nk (1d9030)

  187. No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons
    …….
    The $83 billion figure — technically, $82.9 billion — comes from an estimate in the July 30 quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) for all spending on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
    …….
    …….[T]he the $83 billion spent on the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) goes back two decades, including almost $19 billion spent between 2002 and 2009.

    A 2017 Government Accountability Office report estimated that about 29 percent of the funds spent on the Afghan security forces between 2005 and 2016 went to equipment and transportation. ……

    Using that same percentage, that would mean the equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).
    …….
    The SIGAR report shows that 167 aircraft out of an inventory of 211 were usable — but the Afghan Air Force (AAF) still lacked enough qualified pilots. One issue was that the Taliban targeted pilots for assassination.

    Even more problematic, there were not enough maintenance crews to maintain the aircraft. “Without continued contractor support, none of the AAF’s airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months, depending on the stock of equipment parts in-country, the maintenance capability on each airframe, and the timing of contractor support withdrawal,” the report said.

    With great fanfare, the Taliban has seized a number of Black Hawk helicopters, including ones that the United States had just shipped this year at the request of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. But only the first crew of Black Hawk mechanics had been trained, so the military “can field no more than one UH-60 per night for helicopter missions,” SIGAR said.

    …….Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, said that before leaving Kabul airport on Aug. 30, the military “demilitarized” 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft. “Those aircraft will never fly again,” he said. “They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone.” (Demilitarized is a term that means damaging in place, sometimes with explosives.)

    …….. Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies [said] “In rough terms, however, if the ANDSF could not sustain it without foreign contractors, the Taliban will have very serious problems in operating it. That covers most aircraft and many electronics and heavier weapons.”
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  188. Max Boot who knows a little about small wars, spreads the blame more broadly than most:

    If you ask me who is to blame, I would point not only to Biden but to former president Donald Trump — and to all of us, the people of America. By carrying out this pell-mell withdrawal from Afghanistan, our leaders, after all, were only giving us what we wanted.

    A supporter of forever war would certainly blame anyone but themselves for promoting such lunacy in the first place.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  189. Arguing over how many billions of dollars in weapons Biden gave to the terrorist taliban is certainly a winning issue. I suggest you keep at it.

    NJRob (1a1095)

  190. Gawain’s Ghost (c6fd3b) — 8/31/2021 @ 2:40 pm

    This post is just sheer cope. “There’s nothing he could have done! If it wasn’t for that dastardly Trump and those Trump supporters, this could have been a success! How on earth could he have focused on the task at hand?”

    Isn’t this just a rehash of “the Presidency is simply too big for one man” excuse that gets trotted out whenever reality pokes its ugly nose in the left-liberal West Wing teevee fantasy? Especially for a President who can’t seem to refrain from humping his dead son’s corpse anytime someone points out where he and his administration messed up in this whole thing.

    Heck, they even left the military working dogs behind.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  191. 189 – Try and make us all go away, Mr. Miller.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQNkIrg-Tk

    mg (8cbc69)

  192. @193 and it’s 200 left behind not 500

    victory parade

    JF (e03271)

  193. 191…193… I would laugh if it wasn’t so totally brainless and unnecessary.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  194. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 8/31/2021 @ 5:50 pm

    I’m willing to leave it to you and DT. If there are two better people to sort it out I can’t imagine who they’d be.

    frosty (f27e97)

  195. Sweet Baby Jesus… the total asshoe Max B00t. Neodipsh*t.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  196. @179 kessler will fact check trump crowd sizes but not biden’s 90% evacuated claim he pulled out of his depends

    JF (e03271)

  197. “But the focus on Trump is a distraction. How much useful equipment did we leave behind? That matters. And so does all the money we spent on the entire war and on the equipment that might have been worth more than the cost of taking it with us as we rushed off.

    We should see all of the facts and judge them accurately, regardless of how Trump puts it. I understand wanting to stop Trump and others from exaggerating for political purposes, but that desire itself is political, and aggressive moves like switching from “cost” to “value” undermine trust in the would-be fact-checkers.”

    —- Ann Althouse

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  198. Get after it, Democrats!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  199. The optics are all that matters to these leftwing people. They don’t give two rips about Afghans and they sure don’t give a flying roger about their fellow Americans.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  200. The Afghan Military left it to the Taliban, not the US army.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  201. @200 “Dear 8 pounds 6 ounces… newborn infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet.” – Ricky Bobby

    frosty (f27e97)

  202. Heck, they even left the military working dogs behind.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 8/31/2021 @ 5:45 pm

    Practice for when the Norks, the Gangnam Style guy and the K-Poppers get their way…

    urbanleftbehind (148539)

  203. These never Trumpers who convicted Matt Gaetz will be apologizing in 1-2-3…………………………………

    mg (8cbc69)

  204. FWIW, JVW has a new thread where the party of science has decided to let Kevin’s drunk drivers rampage until after the recall election.

    Certainly Worldmeter or Desantis’ out of control Florida’s data instruct us that this will lead the extinction.

    BuDuh (870daf)

  205. Apparently Trump is arguing about it:

    Trump: US should get ‘every penny’ of abandoned equipment or ‘bomb the hell’ out of it

    LOL Molon labe!

    nk (1d9030)

  206. As Biden repeats claim that ‘nobody could have known’ Afghan Army would collapse, bombshell transcript from July reveals he pressured Afghan President Ghani to create ‘perception’ Taliban wasn’t winning ‘Whether it’s true or not”.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9945031/Biden-told-Afghan-President-needed-change-perception-Talibans-rapid-advance.html

    The ‘Trump would have been no different’ folks have their work cut out for them, but they have already had plenty of practice in the past few weeks.

    Obudman (676dac)

  207. #201 JF – Try this simple search: “Glenn Kessler + Joe Biden”. You might learn something.

    In fact, Kessler regularly fact checks Biden, just as he did Obama*. Recently, for example, he called Biden on Biden’s claim that he was always against “nation building” in Afghanistan.

    (*When Obama left office, Kessler did a “worst of” list of Obama falsehoods.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  208. Kessler is highly selective about his target when he wants to minimize the use of exaggeration and hyperbole. It was a few short weeks ago that the sh*tbird was enthusiastically engaging in it himself over Critical Race Theory and journalist Christopher Rufo before getting publicly humiliated about it.

    Kessler is a Tool.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  209. Usually it’s the old man who is shouting AT the TeeVee set, not from it, eh Joe?

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  210. 10% of Americans left behind.

    You know Joe, when JFK was told by the military that after bombing ‘Cuber’ there would still be perhaps 10% of the missiles left on the island ready to ‘get out’ by being fired at America to vaporize Wilmington nd Scranton, and they’s hve to invade Cuber as a follow up to get them, he didn’t say ‘They were warned; let’em leave when they want.’

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  211. Taliban and their ilk outfitted with night vision and secure communications.

    No downside there…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  212. Heh…

    David Burge
    @iowahawkblog

    Next time you liars want to claim the value of a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters and C-130s, use the Kelly Blue Book WHOLESALE price, not retail

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  213. #192 Factory Working Orphan – After the 9/11 attack, I told anyone who would listen to expect the war against radical Islamists to last 100 years — at least.

    And that’s because I had a basic understanding of radical Islam, and I understood this fundamental fact: It takes only one party to make war; it takes two or more to make peace. And Al Qaeda has not the slightest desire to have peace with us, or Israel, or the West, generally.

    Read this basic Wikipedia article for some of the facts. Their first attack on our forces was in 1992. They declared war on us in 1998, and attacked two embassies in Africa.

    I know of no way for us to end this endless war quickly, other than us surrendering to them. If you know one, share it with us, instead of whining. (We can end a campaign, as we just did in Afghanistan, but that will do little to end the war, might even make it worse.)

    (For some perspective, consider this: Al Qaeda is also at war with the Shias, and the Sunni-Shia conflict goes back more than a thousand years. Way more.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  214. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, said that before leaving Kabul airport on Aug. 30, the military “demilitarized” 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft. “Those aircraft will never fly again,” he said. “They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone.” (Demilitarized is a term that means damaging in place, sometimes with explosives.)

    Translation: they’re good for parts for the other ‘toys’ you didn’t ‘demilitarize.’

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  215. But really… keep drawing more attention to it. It’s not a world-class Fu*k up.

    No siree!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  216. #200 Colonel – If you have an argument with Max Boot, share it with us, rather than just calling him names.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  217. When Joe takes a dump, does he think of Beau?

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  218. Still no accountability from our senior military leaders on this. The Marine Corps commandant comes out and says “we’re counting on the Taliban” after 13 of his Marines got clacked in this fiasco. McKenzie actually had the chutzpah to call this an unqualified success. And of course, nothing from White Rage Milley except lies and excuses.

    When the Optimates lost at Thapsus and the Japanese lost at Okinawa, Metellus Scipio and Cato, and Ushijima, respectively, committed suicide rather than live with the shame of their defeat. We can’t even get the donkeys running the military now to take basic responsibility for two weeks of chaos and months of poor planning and execution, all while the Commander-in-Chief deflects the blame anywhere but on himself.

    I’m 3rd-generation military–Dad was in the Navy, my uncle joined the Marines, and my grandfathers were Army and Air Force. I did four deployments in 11 years. One of my high school classmates is buried in Arlington after getting killed by a suicide bomber in the early days of Iraqi Freedom. Unless there is a dramatic 180-degree change in the corporatized culture of the US military, the only way there’s going to be a 4th is over my dead body. These commanders have proven decisively that they’re nothing more than ladder-climbing paycheck-chasers, and that they’re not worthy of leading the citizens of a free nation during war.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  219. #213 – In fact, Kessler has done far more fact checks in the last few months of Biden than of Trump. But some won’t be satisfied until no one fact checks Trump.

    Does that include you? (If not, give us an example of a Trump fact check you approve of.)

    Here’s a compilation from Biden’s first hundred days.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  220. #192 Factory Working Orphan – After the 9/11 attack, I told anyone who would listen to expect the war against radical Islamists to last 100 years — at least.

    Anyone who actually believed this was going to be accepted as a 100 year operation was, to be quite blunt, delusional.

    Did you honestly think that Americans would accept occupying central Asia for 100 years? If not, then you should have come to the acceptance that this was going to be a fruitless project from the get-go and figured out how to leave with our dignity intact.

    I know of no way for us to end this endless war quickly, other than us surrendering to them. If you know one, share it with us, instead of whining. (We can end a campaign, as we just did in Afghanistan, but that will do little to end the war, might even make it worse.)

    This is the cope of the Forever War advocates–when their big nation-building plans don’t align with reality, they call the people pointing out exactly how unrealistic they were as “whiners” rather than eat the big plate of crow sitting in front of them.

    If your side had any understanding of history at all, and the lessons to be wrought from it, the last thing you guys would be doing is blaming everyone except yourselves. You lost the plot, and as a result you ultimately lost the war. In short, you guys need to be exercising a lot less blame avoidance, and a lot more humility in light of the last ten years in particular since that bullet passed through Bin Laden’s head, to say nothing of the entire GWOT enterprise.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  221. @224 you’re thinking that fact checking the current president more than an ex-president private citizen is some kind of mark of objectivity

    ok

    it probably explains your reliance on kessler and the bogus fact checker racket

    as for my favorite kessler fact check of trump, how about this one

    JF (e1156d)

  222. #226 JF – You know, it is mean of you to expose Ted Cruz that way. He’s such sad case, all that wasted talent, but why draw attention to him?

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  223. Ted Cruz would have turned into the long lost Bush cousin once had he gotten past Trump, meathead Hoosiers in Oakley shades be damned.

    urbanleftbehind (148539)

  224. #225 Factory Working Orphan – First, thank you for your service, and that of your family.

    Second, I have read military history widely, for example, all of Morison’s semi-official history.

    Third, I don’t consider myself as a member of a “side”; I believe that, in the search for truth, thinking in terms of “sides” is a serious handicap.

    Fourth, I explained why I thought this war will continue for many years, and asked you to explain how we can end it. You have refused to answer that question. Why?

    If you know how to end it, it would be a great blessing for all of us if you would share that with the world.

    (Incidentally, I suspect some of your criticisms of military leadership may be accurate. It is likely that both Obama and Trump weakened our military, especially at the top level.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  225. Hey, DCSCA

    Enjoy the rest of your evening:
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/nikki-haley-biden-lost-trust-confidence-us-military-global-allies

    P.S. has she been getting skin care advice from

    Sammy Sosa

    ?

    urbanleftbehind (148539)

  226. ‘I hope you burn in hell! That was my brother!’ What sister of Marine killed in Afghanistan screamed at Biden during Dover casket ceremony where he ‘wouldn’t even look’ relatives in the eye

    The sister of one of the 11 Marines killed in the Kabul suicide bombing told President Joe Biden to ‘burn in hell’ as she left the dignified transfer of remains ceremony on Sunday, according to a Tuesday report.

    Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, told The Washington Post that he showed a picture of his son to Biden and told the president: ‘Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12. And take some time to learn their stories.’

    He recalled that Biden didn’t seem to like those comments.

    ‘I do know their stories,’ Schmitz detailed that the president shot back.

    Schmitz said that a sister of a fallen troop yelled at the president after receiving the remains on Sunday: ‘I hope you burn in hell! That was my brother!’

    During an interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning, Rylee’s other sister Cheyenne detailed that she stayed with Jiennah at the start of her conversation with Biden, but walked away when she felt he was being ‘fake.’

    ‘Roice and my dad chose to leave the room. I chose to stay with my brother’s wife,’ Cheyenne said. ‘She wanted the chance to look him in the eye and see if it was going to be a sincere conversation or apology.

    ‘I was able to stand about 15 seconds of his fake, scripted apology and I had to walk away,’ she continued.

    She detailed that Biden ‘would not look us in the eye’ and felt ‘there was not an ounce of sympathy’ coming from him.

    ‘He tapped her on the knee and said, ‘I know what you’re going through, I lost my son,’ Cheyenne detailed, tapping her sister on the shoulder.

    Jim McCollum, Rylee’s father, told Fox & Friends: ‘It was more about his son. My son wasn’t mentioned.’

    ‘It was his son and about him and nothing to do with the 13,’ he said.

    JF (e1156d)

  227. @227 you’re obviously not on any side, Jim

    keep staying neutral and stuff

    JF (e1156d)

  228. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 8/31/2021 @ 8:37 pm

    I think you’re making some category errors. The fight against radical Islam isn’t a military issue but the fight against specific groups can be. In other words, there’s no war against “radical Islam” that will last 100 years any more than there’s a war against communism or poverty that will last 100 years. None of those things are “wars” in the military sense.

    So, you “end it” by first understanding what “it” is. Once the threat from AQ in AF was eliminated and OBL was killed the war should have ended. The idea that AF would be another Germany or Japan was a mistake. Will there be other groups we need to kill? Yes. Are those the same “war”? No.

    If there is a desire to keep a large military presence in AF, and I think there’s an argument for that, then focus on that. Keeping US forces in countries with Islamic populations and poor histories of human rights abuse isn’t impossible. We’re doing it in multiple countries in the ME. Don’t pretend to be doing something else.

    One of the things we don’t do is agree to the “you broke it you bought it” theory. If a country needs bombing and a government needs to be destroyed we don’t need to replace it.

    frosty (f27e97)

  229. @230. Looking gooooood. But she has to trim that do into a bob to add gravitas. At least she doesn’t need to mention Beau.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  230. frosty:

    Once the threat from AQ in AF was eliminated

    It wasn;t eliiminated from Pakistan, which was the real source there. If the threat of terrorism had been eliminated there would have been no war to fight in Afghanistan.

    Al Qaeda did set up shop in other counties. It hadm before 9/11. There was a little enclave in orthern Iraq that Saddam Hussein tolerated because the U.S. would not let him control Kurdistan.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  231. Americans will be killed with weapons left by the cellar dweller. Way to go voters.

    mg (8cbc69)

  232. Yeah but our Capitol has also not been invaded to disrupt Constitutional processes in over 230 days….so there is that

    AJ_Liberty (a4ff25)

  233. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 8/31/2021 @ 8:37 pm

    There most assuredly are sides here–it’s people who wanted to stay vs. people who wanted to leave.

    Fourth, I explained why I thought this war will continue for many years, and asked you to explain how we can end it. You have refused to answer that question. Why?

    Because I don’t believe in the premises of “fighting radical Islam.” That’s a neocon pretense that’s been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The goal should have been, “get Bin Laden, get out.” If we had done that, we would have spent far less blood and treasure on these fantasies of western democracy in the Middle East the last 20 years.

    Bush dropped the ball by opening up a new front in Iraq. Obama dropped the ball by not pulling out of Afghanistan about ten minutes after Bin Laden was killed, and fomenting color revolutions in the Middle East with the Arab Spring that ended up causing more problems than they solved. Trump dropped the ball by not telling Liz Cheney and Jason Crow to stuff it after they blocked funding to pull troops out based on a phony Russian bounty report put out by the spooks, and not immediately court-martialing the generals who kept troops in Syria against his orders. Biden dropped the ball by changing the pullout date to one that would provide him with the “West Wing” Hollywood photo op he wanted for 9/11, and still ended up botching the withdrawal despite giving himself another 3.5 months to make it happen.

    The last 20 years have been a series of blunders so magnificent that the notion of “nation-building” has taken a long-lasting hit in the minds of the American public. Fortunately, this might actually be a good thing, as next time there will hopefully be a demand for Congress to do its job and formally declare war and put their names on the line, rather than these open-ended force authorizations that don’t do anything other than give Presidents the excuse to treat foreign policy like a game of Age of Empires.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  234. 225. Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 8/31/2021 @ 7:12 pm

    Did you honestly think that Americans would accept occupying central Asia for 100 years?

    Yhe U.S. military has been n Korea now for 71 years, And that also can be described as “civil war” North Korea’s ambitions can’t realistically be described as extending beyond the Korean peninsula, or else it would be competing with Red China. Jimmy Carter wanted to withdraw troops, but he was dissuaded from doing so, They remain, and are sometimes thought of as a tripwire.

    Of course, in the interim, since the 1960s, or starting then, South Korea has become very prosperous and there is much trade between it and the United States, not to mention contact between people.

    There was also much contact now with Afghanistan, which perhaps distinguishes it from Eritrea.

    Biden, by the way, wanted the U.S. in central Asia, only not in Afghanistan, but just north of it, where presumably the Taliban would not go, and brought that up with Putin in June * but Putin said no.

    —————–
    * Russia dominates these countries.

    But of course, the real problem was Pakistan, with a military that is a law unto itself, but, unlike Burma, is not ready to openly seize power partly because maybe the United States would treat Pakistan differently – stop sending money for one thing – and even potentially try to take away or destroy their nuclear weapons.

    The problem probably is a subgroup within the Pakistani military, possibly split into a faction or two. There was a Pakistani Taliban that made a move toward taking over Pakistan in 2009, or at least some part of it..

    There was also sympathy with people in Afghanistan because of the treatment or rules the Taliban had imposed on women. {perhaps you could say not strictly a matter of national security.) But if we say we don;t care, why did we care about abolishing the international slave trade, which was only completely eliminated after the Civil War. There is now not one country, not even Mauretania or Saudi Arabia that openly tolerates slavery, although ISIS wanted to and started to bring it back.

    The Taliban, in the last few years, adopted a policy from ISIS: Forced marriages (or forced agreement by families on pain of being deemed to be in the opposition) of virgins aged 14 to 24, to their soldiers. They also learned tactics from al Qaeda in Iraq. The Taliban and al Qaeda have been unified since about 2009. I mean they are integrated militarily, or what’s left of al Qaeda there is,

    Not that the Taliban is anything real. It’s all notional. Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency, the ISI, is running the show. The Taliban had a leader, Mullah Omar, whose death was kept secret for two years, and that never happens, not even in the most secretive organization, in the case of someone who is really in charge. Be in Stalin or Howard Hughes or Kim Il Sing of North Korea. the death pf the person in charge becomes known within a day or two even though the outside world knew nothing of his being sick.

    The current official leader of the Taliban (not the one who they were negotiating with in Doha who came back to Afghanistan) hasn’t been seem or heard of since the Taliban’s victory.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  235. If not, then you should have come to the acceptance that this was going to be a fruitless project from the get-go

    In 100 years, something in the world has to change.

    The thing is, though, the United States never figured out who was the enemy – it was Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency. It could be even that telling them we knew who was keeping this war going, would have been enough to stop it.

    and figured out how to leave with our dignity intact.

    Trump tried to leave with dignity – with a negotiated power sharing agreement, but the Taliban Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency wasn’t interested. They wanted the United States to be humiliated, so that people would think it would never come back. That was possibly the reason for the attack on the Pentagon building on September 11, 2001. If the United States had responded as it did previously – with no more than a cruise missile strike at a mostly symbolic target, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, especially after the assassination of its leader on September 9, 2001. might have given up hope of American intervention, which is what was keeping it going,

    I know of no way for us to end this endless war quickly, other than us surrendering to them.

    Biden didn’t have the guts to do that.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  236. “The Only War We’ve Got” is not merely a book title. There is a multi-million person military culture and a multi-trillion dollar military industry both of which need war in order to flourish. Like Germany and Japan before WWII. And literally hell-bent on taking us to where Germany and Japan wound up at the end of WWII. And who will provide our Marshall plan? The Martians?

    nk (1d9030)

  237. Yeah but our Capitol has also not been invaded to disrupt Constitutional processes in over 230 days….so there is that.

    You had to dust that discredited turd off before polishing it. You can – and must – do better.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  238. The southern end of a northbound horse we have as president has repeatedly said that “we” will stay in Afghanistan until the last American is home. Just another line of bullschiff.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  239. I don;t think President Biden ever said “we” will stay in Afghanistan until the last American is home. He may have worked hard to imply that, though, without ever actually saying that.

    Yesterday he said they planned for every contingency, including the one that happened. He said a plan was ready and it worked as designed.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/31/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-end-of-the-war-in-afghanistan

    …That assumption — that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown — turned out not to be accurate.

    But I still instructed our national security team to prepare for every eventuality — even that one. And that’s what we did.

    So, we were ready when the Afghan Security Forces — after two decades of fighting for their country and losing thousands of their own — did not hold on as long as anyone expected….

    ….As a result, to safely extract American citizens before August 31st — as well as embassy personnel, Allies and partners, and those Afghans who had worked with us and fought alongside of us for 20 years — I had authorized 6,000 troops — American troops — to Kabul to help secure the airport.

    As General McKenzie said, this is the way the mission was designed. It was designed to operate under severe stress and attack. And that’s what it did.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  240. Today’s blame game is hammering the Biden administration for what is described as a failure to plan a chaotic execution. It seems pretty obvious that mistakes were made. Some may have been intelligence errors — which belong in the CIA and military intelligence in-boxes and on the desks of policy-makers who seem to have seriously misread Taliban planning, strategy, and capabilities.

    I am less persuaded that it is right to savage the Biden administration for the execution of the endgame. As Beckett says, we can weep for the day-by-day outcome and those we might have helped, but I think we can also begin to explain why the evacuation looked chaotic.

    Time, information, and staffing may be a big part of the answer. The Biden administration did not have time, lacked information up-front, and was not fully staffed to pull this off.

    This administration came into office just over seven months ago. Their transition team had frankly been stiffed by the outgoing administration, which had committed to a U.S. withdrawal by May 1. This was especially true in the national security arena, where the Biden transition was denied access to the Pentagon and to any planning data about Afghanistan or anything else at first.That’s no information of value before January 20, 2021, with just over 3 months to departure.

    To make matters worse, once the file drawers and disc drives were opened, it became clear that while the military had a withdrawal plan (some of the best logisticians in the world live at DoD), there was no equivalent planning for civilian evacuation in place; no planning had been done.In fact, the reverse appeared to be happening: Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration advisor, was actively trying to slow down the processing of Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans.

    Chris Miller, who was the last “acting” Secretary of Defense for Trump, has even suggested that there was no intention of leaving; the threat of departure was to convince Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that he needed to form a coalition government with the Taliban that would in fact allow the US military to stay.

    Late information and no civilian evacuation plan. Hardly surprising now that the Biden team extended the May 1 deadline. Their first major problem was time was running out and there was no information or plan.

    Then, for a plan this detailed and complex, any administration would need policy officials in place. By 1994, Clinton had his team on board, down to the Assistant Secretary level. The Biden administration is well behind the normal pace for nominating and confirming political appointees. The pace is especially slow in the State Department, where a large number of nominees are being held up in the Senate largely by Sen. Ted Cruz over his unhappiness about a Russian pipeline into Germany.

    Anyone involved in a past crisis or civilian overseas operation can tell you that things do not get implemented until policy calls have been made. Civil servants are excellent at producing advice, options, details, and critical information. For good reason, they do not make policy calls.If you want agreements to land Afghan refugees in other countries, you need to d with the other country. Diplomats do that, and they need instructions from policy officials in D.C. who need to have the people in place to make those decisions.

    In short, this was a perfect storm for the chaos we have seen and the rapid adjustments that have been needed. Clearly, the system is adjusting, over 117,000 people have been evacuated, State’s Consular Affairs staff is crashing on the paperwork for SIVs. And mistakes have been and will be made.

    For sure, the State Department needs to reform its operations to execute its role in such operations more efficiently (for a broader proposed agenda of State reforms, see my February report for the Quincy Institute.)

    Yes, there needs to be an “after action” deep dive to unearth what went wrong. But the tick-tock, blame game is mostly noise, not answers; it has not served the American people well. It provides for titillating headlines but does not reflect the difficulty in such operations.

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/08/30/wanted-a-cleaner-kabul-withdrawal-heres-what-it-would-have-taken/

    Victor (4959fb)

  241. Biden:

    Now, some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and “Couldn’t this have be done — have been done in a more orderly manner?” I respectfully disagree.

    Imagine if we had begun evacuations in June or July, bringing in thousands of American troops and evacuating more than 120,000 people in the middle of a civil war. There still would have been a rush to the airport, a breakdown in confidence and control of the government, and it still would have been a very difficult and dangerous mission.

    The bottom line is: There is no evacuatio- — evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, and threats we faced. None.

    There are those who would say we should have stayed indefinitely for years on end. They ask, “Why don’t we just keep doing what we were doing? Why did we have to change anything?”

    The fact is: Everything had changed. My predecessor had made a deal with the Taliban. When I came into office, we faced a deadline — May 1. The Taliban onslaught was coming.

    We faced one of two choices: Follow the agreement of the previous administration and extend it to have — or extend to more time for people to get out; or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war.

    He never explains why the war would have gotten worse.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  242. The Taliban onslaught was based on a weaker and less capable Afghan force, and promises of killing soldiers who were captured or surrendered combined with the guarantee of not being killed (vouched for by intermediaries and previous cases) if they abruptly abandoned their posts.

    Biden also says about that onslaught:

    The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  243. Victor, I’ll stipulate that everything you said is correct. But that means we shouldn’t have pulled out when we did.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  244. @Time123.

    But that means we shouldn’t have pulled out when we did.

    President Biden claimed (with no evidence like they like to say) that doing so would have required him to:

    send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  245. Might be true. If so he also needed to be upfront with us about what’s required. Of course, I’d have been Ok with that.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  246. 244… Sammy, he not only said it, he said it more than once.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  247. “We are f*cking abandoning American citizens,” Army colonel wrote in a frantic series of texts that detail how a group of Americans were rejected at airport as rescue flight awaited.

    President Biden declared to a puzzled country on Tuesday that the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was an “extraordinary success,” while his Pentagon portrayed a prosaic, workaday process to repatriate Americans still stranded in the war-torn country…

    People were turned away from the gate by our own Army,” Yon said.

    After the episode ended and the Americans scattered to safe houses to avoid being captured, Yon wrote a stinging email to an Army major whose team had tried to coordinate the rescue before abandoning it.

    “You guys left American citizens at the gate of the Kabul airport,” Yon wrote Tuesday to the commander. “Three empty jets paid for by volunteers were waiting for them. You and I talked on the phone. I told you where they were. Gave you their passport images. And my email and phone number. And you left them behind.”

    He added: “Great job saving yourselves. Probably get a lot of medals.”

    https://justthenews.com/government/security/were-americans-people-screaming-outside-gates-kabul-airport-turned-away?utm_source=breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  248. Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c) — 9/1/2021 @ 7:52 am

    I don;t think President Biden ever said “we” will stay in Afghanistan until the last American is home

    Technically, I think he said “out” and not “home”. He did say “we”.

    From the George S. interview.

    “And if there’s American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out,” Biden said.

    frosty (f27e97)

  249. 251. Most of what Biden said in his various TV appearances, was repeating the same thing. He spoke on August 16, 20, 24, 26 and 31 at least.

    A lot of that was carefully worked out wording. I think each statement was designed to be true, taken in isolation, but to add up to lie. That’s why they had to so carefully track each other.

    I don’t Biden ever said we will stay in Afghanistan until the last American has been taken out (let alone vulnerable Afghans.)

    After Kabul fell:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan

    Is there anywhere there that you will find the word ALL there? Or any specfic condition that would cause him to extend the deadline past August 31?>

    Now, let me lay out the current mission in Afghanistan. I was asked to authorize — and I did — 6,000 U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan for the purpose of assisting in the departure of U.S. and Allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan, and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside of Afghanistan.

    Our troops are working to secure the airfield and to ensure continued operation of both the civilian and military flights. We’re taking over air traffic control.

    We have safely shut down our embassy and transferred our diplomats. Our dip- — our diplomatic presence is now consolidated at the airport as well.

    Over the coming days, we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan.

    We’ll also continue to support the safe departure of civilian personnel — the civilian personnel of our Allies who are still serving in Afghanistan

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  250. August 20:

    Q Thank you, Mr. President….You made the commitment to get American troops out, to get the American citizens out. Will you make the same commitment to those who assisted in the American war effort over the last 20 years?

    …The first part of your question was — I can’t remember now.

    Q It is: Are — would you commit to the same commitment — would you make the same commitment to bring out Afghans who assisted in the war effort?

    THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Yes. We’re making the same commitment. There’s no one more important than bringing American citizens out. I acknowledge that. But they’re equally important, almost — is all those who — those “SIVs,” we call them, who, in fact, helped us. They were translators. They went into battle with us. They were part of the operation. As well as — we’re also trying to get out as many NGOs — non-governmental organizations — women’s organizations, et cetera. We’re doing all we can. …

    Q And are you willing to stay passed the 31st to make that happen — to bring all the Americans out, to bring those SIVs out?

    THE PRESIDENT: I think we can get it done by then, but we’re going to make that judgment as we go.

    He only promises to do “all we can” And says he was make a decision later about going past August 31.

    The reporter says: You made the commitment to get American troops out, to get “the” American citizens out. Biden doesn’t dispute that, but he doesn’t affirm that either.

    It’s tough trying to get an idea across without actually saying it. Sometimes maybe you slip up ad seem to be promising to get at least all American citizens out..

    They later settled on the wording those who want to get out, and said they’d issued warnings back as far as March.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  251. Here’s Biden August 22. I left out that date @254

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/22/remarks-by-president-biden-on-tropical-storm-henri-and-the-evacuation-operation-in-afghanistan

    Now I’ll take a few questions.

    Darlene, from the Associated Press.

    Q Mr. President —

    THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

    Q Thank you. We’re nine days away from the August 31st deadline. Will you extend that deadline? Or what — what is your thought process on extending the evacuation operations?

    THE PRESIDENT: There’s discussions going on among us and the military about extending. Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are going to be discussions, I suspect, on how far along we are in the process.

    THE PRESIDENT: Mario Parker, Bloomberg.

    Q Thank you, Mr. President. Just to piggyback off the August 31st deadline, you told the G7 in Cornwall — you promised them support, back in June. If they ask for a larger — or a longer American presence past the August 31st deadline, what will you tell them on Tuesday, sir?

    THE PRESIDENT: I will tell them that we’ll see what we can do. Look, we are working closely with the G7. I’ve spoken with most of the leaders of G7. I’ll be doing a conference with them, I think, Tuesday — I’m not certain — and we’ll have that discussion.

    But we are — we already have helped get out diplomats from other countries. We’ve already helped get out citizens from other countries, and we’ll continue to do that.

    Q And, Mr. President, it sounded like that the — you’ve extended operations into Kabul, outside of the airport. Is that correct?

    THE PRESIDENT: What I’m not going to do is talk about the tactical changes we’re making to make sure we maintain as much security as we can.

    We have constantly — how can I say it? — increased rational access to the airport, where more folk can get there more safely. It’s still a dangerous operation.

    But I don’t want to go into the detail of how we’re doing that.

    Andrew from the Wall Street Journal.

    Q Thanks, Mr. President. Our reporting on the ground shows that Afghans with the proper paperwork are still having trouble getting to the airport. Some say they feel abandoned by the U.S. U.S. embassy staff still haven’t — some U.S. embassy staff that are Afghan haven’t be able to — haven’t been able to make it into the airport as well. Why isn’t the U.S. doing more to allow Afghans into the airport — to ensure access to the airport? And are you still opposed to setting up an extended perimeter around the airport to help ease that access?

    THE PRESIDENT: Number one, I think you’re going to see they’re going to get out….

    Q And will the Taliban agree to an extension past August 31st? Have you discussed that with them?

    THE PRESIDENT: We’ve discussed a lot with the Taliban. They’ve been cooperative in extending some of the perimeter. That remains to be seen whether we ask that question.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  252. The most questionable thing Biden said was this business of needing to bring in thousands of troops if we didn’t leave.

    Notice he never said many would be killed. This could have been recommended by the Pentagon as protection. The number had been recently reduced ti 2,500 from some 10,000 plus.

    It wasn’t a Cold War but it was a relatively low simmer – and you could hope you could do something to reduce the level of combat further and to continue the lack of attacks on American troops.

    I think.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  253. They found an interview (the one with George Stephanopolous on August 19) where President Biden seems to have explicitly promised to stay i Afghanistan until the last American citizen is out.

    Hat tip:

    https://www.jewishworldreview.com/0921/york090121.php

    “If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out,” he told ABC News on Aug. 19

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  254. Here it is:

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-transcript-abc-news-george-stephanopoulos-interview-president/story?id=79535643

    STEPHANOPOULOS: All troops are supposed to be out by August 31st. Even if Americans and our Afghan allies are still trying to get out, they’re gonna leave?

    BIDEN: We’re gonna do everything in our power to get all Americans out and our allies out.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean troops will stay beyond August 31st if necessary?

    BIDEN: It depends on where we are and whether we can get– ramp these numbers up to 5,000 to 7,000 a day coming out. If that’s the case, we’ll be– they’ll all be out.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: ‘Cause we’ve got, like, 10,000 to 15,000 Americans in the country right now, right? And are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out–

    BIDEN: Yes.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: — is out?

    BIDEN: Yes.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: How about our Afghan allies? We have about 80,000 people–

    BIDEN: Well, that’s not the s–

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that too high?

    BIDEN: That’s too high.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: How many–

    BIDEN: The estimate we’re giving is somewhere between 50,000 and 65,000 folks total, counting their families.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Does the commitment hold for them as well?

    BIDEN: The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone that should come out. And that’s the objective. That’s what we’re doing now, that’s the path we’re on. And I think we’ll get there.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: So Americans should understand that troops might have to be there beyond August 31st?

    BIDEN: No. Americans should understand that we’re gonna try to get it done before August 31st.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: But if we don’t, the troops will stay–

    BIDEN: If — if we don’t, we’ll determine at the time who’s left.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: And?

    BIDEN: And if you’re American force — if there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out.

    He said ALL

    But I think he meant people at the airport. Biden claimed it depended on the number of passengers the planes could aboard.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  255. Of course Biden also said:

    : The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone that should come out.

    “Everyone we can get out is a standard which you cannot fail.

    “Should get out” is hiding that many people we think should get out were not accepted, sometmes on;y because they hadn’t been processed.

    But here Biden was talking about Afghan allies, not American citizens.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  256. The pullout this week, was going to look like this every week post 2007-10. The correct time to exit Afghanistan was August 2002 with goals met. Staying after the initial goals were met was pure nation building in a place of no nation. So well meaning people rolled up their sleeves and tried really hard to build a permeant sand castle at low tide. High effort, zero impact, for 20 years.

    There is no government of Afghanistan, there never was. It was American contractors spending 20 years building a central government for a group of people who didn’t want it, don’t know how to run it, and frankly don’t care. 19.5 years of wasted effort because we didn’t understand the place we were in.

    Still a blackeye on Biden because this isn’t his first time in having the ability to exit 1 day earlier.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0)

  257. If they’d have left in 2002, al Qaeda and the Taliban would have gone right back in.

    What Biden claims now is that al Qaeda or terrorists, have a lot of other places they can go, and Afghanistan isn’t anything special.

    The United States did quite a bit of successful nation building but stopping opium cultivation was another thing.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  258. You mean the al Qaeda planning and training done for 9/11 in Saudi Arabia, the US, Somalia, Yemen…

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0)

  259. June 2019. Taliban kill 2 American soldiers. Question gets asked in Democratic debate. Tulsi Gabbard all for withdrawal. (Taliban is here to stay – they didn’t attack us, al Qaeda did – how would you speak to the parents of those 2 American soldiers?) Tim Ryan against, makes a general argument.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6d9-kn3U3o

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  260. 263. Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0) — 9/1/2021 @ 4:46 pm

    You mean the al Qaeda planning and training done for 9/11 in Saudi Arabia, the US, Somalia, Yemen…

    Recruitment was mostly done in Saudi Arabia. Hijacker training unknown, maybe in Iraq in part – could be Afghanistan. Pilot training done in USA.

    Chieff hijacker pilot Mohammed Atta (from Egypt) mixed up what radio went into the passenger cabin and what transmission went to air traffic control and he steered wrong all the other hijacker pilots about that.

    Somalia had a separate group. Yemen – only one person was recruited from there and he could not gain admission to the United States because many Yemenis overstayed their visas.

    Vetting of terrorists done in Afghanistan – they all visited bin Laden.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  261. 9/11 was also planned in Europe, oarticulaly Germany where some of the hijackers were studying I think.

    Geirge W. Bush told the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden or else they’d be considered an enemy.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  262. 245. 9/1/2021 @ 7:58 am

    it became clear that while the military had a withdrawal plan (some of the best logisticians in the world live at DoD), there was no equivalent planning for civilian evacuation in place;

    Theur whole planning was based on there not being any need for an emergency civilian evacuation – of Afghans, let alone of American citizens. They intended to keep the embassy in Kabul open, with s small contingent of Marines or others comparable with that of some other countries that had no permanent American military force based there.

    Biden said we planned for every eventuality – but what kind of a plan?

    no planning had been done.In fact, the reverse appeared to be happening: Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration advisor, was actively trying to slow down the processing of Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans.

    And now Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the process was designed to be slow.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)


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