What was the purpose of today’s terrorist attack outside of the airport in Kabul?
The answer is obvious; it was motivated by a desire to humiliate President Biden, the United States and the West in general.
How long will it be before the Taliban turns over the former American Embassy in Kabul to the Russians or the Chinese?
My guess is that we might see that by the end of this year.
Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Joe Biden (or as Maureen Dowd calls them Wynken, Blynken and Nod) all have one thing in common; that deer in the headlights look.
I thought this piece by Matthew Yglesias lays out a pretty good case that many people including Claire, Vivek, Thomas, Monique and WigWag really didn't care that much about Afghanistan and if they did really care about Afghanistan they would have given Russia a pass for example for invading Crimea and Dunbas in order to get Russia's help to stabilize Afghanistan(Or Iran for that matter).
It looks to me as if Biden & Co. are prepared to skedaddle out of Afghanistan on August 31, even if a whole lot of US citizens remain stranded there. No doubt they'll offer the excuse that those remaining behind chose to stay behind.
It may seem incredible that a US president would do such a wicked, cowardly thing—but then everything that Joe Biden has done since he ignited this crisis suggests that (1) he doesn't mind lying and (2) that he's a poltroon. Will no one resign in protest over his utter spinelessness and gross dereliction of duty? Probably not. No doubt he and his minions are crossing their fingers and hoping that the whole thing will blow over. But hard on the heels of the withdrawal is the twentieth anniversary of 9/11—and not all the spin in the galaxy can uncouple them. Imagine how revolting it will be to see this man—who makes Neville Chamberlain look like Bismarck—presiding over the solemn commemorations of that terrible day.
Incidentally I spoke to my daughter—as you may recall, an Afghanistan veteran—and she is utterly disgusted, not to mention brokenhearted over the soldiers she knew who were wounded or killed during her tour of duty. What could I say to her? What can anybody say?
You may be interested to know what veterans are saying about this calamity Below is the text of a recent post to Facebook by Alex:
I find it ironic that the phrase most commonly associated with 9/11 is “Never Forget” because it seems as though we have forgotten why America still had interests in Afghanistan. It was our insurance policy to make certain that the events of 9/11 could never be born and bred in that area again. Twenty years ago, we did not have that insurance, and almost 3,000 innocent Americans paid the price for it in their blood on 9/11. Since then, thousands of American soldiers have died, while countless others left pieces of themselves, physically and mentally, in defense of this insurance policy. I see why Americans wanted out of Afghanistan, but the way this was done is absolutely disgraceful. The images of the war started with Americans jumping out of the Twin Towers to escape the events caused by Islamic terrorism. Now, they conclude with images of Afghan citizens attempting to evade the same terrorism, while clinging to, and later falling from, American aircraft as they flee. Thank you, Mr. President."
Claire, are you stunned, speechless and nauseated enough to admit that as much as you detested Trump, the United States was more respected by its adversaries (and even its allies) when he was President than it is after the fiasco Biden has perpetrated in Afghanistan?
I’m no fan of Donald Trump, but I must admit that it’s hard to imagine how he could have perpetrated a more humiliating and shameful debacle than Biden has. If the former was an unfit president, the latter is equally unfit—if not for precisely the same reasons.
Watching the President’s press conference this afternoon was a dispiriting ordeal. I beheld a hollow man, mouthing empty words. His voice was halting, his empathizer-in-chief routine was painfully artificial, his pledge to avenge the blood of our dead was pathetically unconvincing. All too obviously the man is shellshocked and exhausted, with no idea of what to do beyond mouthing the platitudes with which his handlers have stuffed him. My conclusion is chilling and it leaves me numb: In this hour of its need, our country has no leader.
How America arrived at this sorry pass is a matter for profound reflection: National disasters of this magnitude are a long time in the making. It will probably be found that this one is traceable to the Sixties—like the Thirties a low, dishonest decade. But honestly, just now I cannot summon up the indignation and energy to embark on the necessary analysis. I just feel terribly sad. The twelve Marines and the Navy Corpsman who died today were members of my extended family, which encompasses all who wear or have worn the uniform.
Trump was incompetent but Biden’s incompetence is truly peerless.
Trump may have been venal but has he done anything in his personal, professional or political life that approaches the venality of Biden’s behavior during the Afghanistan retreat? Who has more innocent blood on his hands, the 45th President of the United States or the 46th?
With Biden’s surrender to the Taliban soon to be in the rear view mirror, the President and his team can now devote their full attention to acquiescing to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. The resulting arms race in the Middle East will be something to behold and is likely to have far bigger and more dangerous consequences that make the Afghan debacle look like a sideshow.
How we arrived at this sorry pass is something I hope that the Cosmopolitan Globalists will reflect on and write about in the weeks ahead.
Commenting on the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the Great War, the British author, journalist and literary critic, Rebecca West famously said,
I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else. They stink so badly that I cannot believe that even in life they were healthy.“
The United States was never an Empire exactly, but in light of the Afghan disaster, West’s admonition hits a little bit too close to home.
Today we learned from White House communications director Kate Bedingfield that the chaos in Afghanistan is "not acceptable" to President Biden. That's just one more lie to add to a very long list—for obviously the chaos in Afghanistan is acceptable to Joe Biden. Recall that in his interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos he described that chaos as inevitable: something he'd expected all along. And that claim of course contradicted pretty much everything he said in his now-notorious July 8 statement on the Afghanistan withdrawal:
This lamentable performance raises a pointed question: Why should anybody, anywhere, now believe a single thing that Joe Biden says? His credibility is shot—and because as president he speaks for this country, America's credibility is gone.
There have been attempts to portray Biden as a hard-eyed, hard-hearted practitioner of Realpolitik, but a glance at the total record shows the absurdity of such characterizations. This man has long been known as a fabulist and spinner of phony narratives. His record on on foreign policy and national security issues is a pig's breakfast of misjudgment, error and magical thinking. And on top of that there's the fact, increasingly obvious, that he's mentally unfit, incapable of performing the duties of his high office. This is a crisis that transcends the Afghanistan debacle.
All, there was a pretty good article I found in the National Interest that gives I think a pretty coherent case as to why Joe Biden has acted so much in objection that of the readers and writers of the Cosmopolitan Globalist.
Basically the article suggests Biden views the people who run things in Kiev as being just as corrupt as those who run things in Kabul and is basically saying sayonara if you really like corruption which both groups have been shown to do then you will be sure to like life under the thumb of Russia and the Taliban. Where I think the Cosmopolitan Globalist response would be is this is a very harsh form of collective punishment. Many people in Ukraine and Afghanistan who genuinely are not corrupt are going to thrown under the bus and run over by Biden although some might say the same about Margaret Thatcher fight with the British coal miners.
Quote: "Just as corruption doomed your nation-building fantasies in the Middle East—and, most recently, Afghanistan—Biden has seen the swamp of corruption in Ukraine’s oligarchic economy close up. Petroleum rents—“unearned” income just for sitting between a seller and a buyer—are like an addiction for the Ukrainian elite, fueling that corruption. Of course Ukraine isn’t Iraq and we won’t just cut Kiev off. We agree to help Ukraine kick its addiction, transition to clean energy, and bolster its security. But it’s time for realism on Ukraine, not more misguided idealism that has led to repeated regime change in the Middle East and endless NATO expansion toward Russia—policies that aggravate relations with Russia, fuel Middle East instability, and drive huge refugee flows, all major political crises for us."
Aug 19, 2021Liked by Rachel motte, Claire Berlinski
The more I brood over this self-inflicted defeat, the angrier I feel. What is going through my mind was well expressed by Winston Churchill's speech in the House of Commons on October 5, 1938, after the signing of the Munich Agreement:
“I will, therefore, begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing. I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat…
“And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
These words strike like an arrow at the gnarled little heart of the Biden Administration. The damage he and his minions have done, the shame they've brought upon the United States, the aid and comfort they've given to our enemies, the hell to which they've condemned the people of a prostrate nation, will reverberate down the years and decades. As Churchill said of Munich, this week's humiliating spectacle is but a foretaste of a terrible reckoning. And worst of all, for the next three years the leaders, so called, who engineered this cowardly defeat and surrender will remain in charge. As long as Joe Biden occupies the White House, the urgently necessary "recovery of moral health and martial vigour" is scarcely to be expected.
What exactly do you want? Or let's put it this way what political compromises would you have made Thomas, to stay on Afghanistan? You have previously made clear you have no desire for any type of normalization of relations with Iran for example. What about domestic policy in the US? Your "favorite" president George W Bush prior to Trump was one of the most divisive Presidents in American history. You are like the kid who walks into the ice cream shop and wants every flavor on the menu.
No. Bush wasn't divisive. The way people talked about him was divisive. The most divisive President prior to Trump was Obama. But I may be biased, what with all the bitterly clinging to my bible and my guns...
Aug 19, 2021Liked by Claire Berlinski, Rachel motte
Particularly disheartening was yesterday’s sorry performance by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which I can only characterize as a stain on the honor of the armed forces of the United States. In effect they shrugged their shoulders over the plight of the US citizens stranded in Afghanistan, not to mention the plight of tens of thousands of Afghans whose lives are forfeit because they cooperated with the US. To hear the leaders of the world’s most powerful military plead that they “lack the capacity” to do what’s necessary to bring those people out made me cringe and turn away from the TV screen.
I wore the uniform of the US Army for twenty-eight years, in war and peace, and until this week that was for me a point of pride. I’m not sure how I feel about it now.
Aug 19, 2021Liked by Claire Berlinski, Rachel motte
The performance of the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was truly cringe worthy. Is it possible that the greatest military in the world genuflects to a rag tag army of terrorists when it comes to safely evacuating Americans and American allies? Is it really impossible for the U.S. to secure the safety of Americans who need to get to the Airport to escape?
Add to this, the fact that just a short while ago, the DOD press secretary admitted that the Department doesn’t know how many Americans are in Afghanistan or in the Kabul area. Shouldn’t someone have figured this out before Biden ordered the withdrawal?
Then there’s blinkered Blinken and his dimwitted deputy, Wendy Sherman, warning the Taliban that they won’t be welcomed into the international community if they mistreat Afghan women. I’m sure that this threat has the Taliban shaking in their boots.
But as usual, when it comes to absurd statements, it’s a European who takes the cake; in this case, the pompous and vacuous EU Foreign Policy Chief, Borrell. He said,
“What we cannot do is to let the Chinese and Russians to take control of the situation…We could become irrelevant.”
Somebody wake this clown up and explain to him that the EU hasn’t been relevant in a decade. It’s not the relevance of the EU he should be worried about, but it’s survival.
The full political fallout is yet to be felt. Just wait until the 20th Anniversary commemorations of 9/11.
Any President would be expected to play the major role in leading the commemoration of such a somber moment in American history.
How will Biden do that with the Taliban ascendant in Afghanistan? What can he possibly say?
As our country fully reckons with the failure in Afghanistan (the war that Obama labeled as the good war) it’s hard to believe that there won’t be a political price to be paid.
Aug 19, 2021Liked by Claire Berlinski, Rachel motte
I’ve had just the same thought. The spectacle of Joe Biden presiding over the solemn commemoration of that terrible and heroic day would be enough to gag a maggot. What, indeed, could he possibly say? “Never mind”?
There is also the question of Biden’s mental fitness—a question no longer confined to the social media fever swamps. If we’re honest we must admit that Biden’s demeanor, incoherence and wildly inconsistent statements are alarming. There’s something wrong with the President. This week, it became obvious.
That's unfortunate. It has been there for all to see. I don't know that it matters much. In the election we had the choice between a guy who was temperamentally and intellectually unfit for the job, and a guy who was...I don't know the right fancy word...unfit for health reasons? Anyway...a choice between dumb and dumberer. You pick which is which.
Like many New Yorkers, I know people who died when the towers collapsed. A neighbor who was a fireman perished, as did an acquaintance who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm located on the 101st to 105th floors at One World Trade Center.
The firm lost almost 700 people, two thirds of its New York work force that day.
Remarkably, Cantor’s CEO, Howard Lutnick, was taking one of his children to her first day of school that morning so he survived.
In the intervening years, Cantor (and its subsidiary, BGC) has honored its fallen colleagues by raising many millions of dollars for a variety of charities including charities which support programs for 9/11 survivors. See,
My brother and I were on an airplane traveling from LaGuardia Airport to Florida when the towers were hit. Our wives were frantic for about 90 minutes until they found out that we weren’t on the flights that crashed into the Towers.
In light of what’s happened in Afghanistan, the idea of President Biden presiding over the 20th Anniversary commemoration is very distasteful.
No, it can't. Biden will use the convenient excuse of age to step aside in favor of some other candidate—probably not Kamala Harris, to whose multiple preexisting political liabilities is now added the stigma of complicity in a national humiliation.
Probably yes with exception of one very unlikely circumstance which would be that the GOP nominates a centrist minded candidate known for managerial competence like Charlie Baker of Massachusetts with no ties to either the Trump or Bush wings of the party.
In terms of the probability of the GOP nominating someone like Baker I would ask the two inhouse GOP primary voters here at the Cosmopolitan Globalist, Thomas M Gregg and WigWag would "they" vote in a Republican Party primary for someone like Charlie Baker? Probably not in my opinion.
Aug 18, 2021Liked by Rachel motte, Claire Berlinski
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” (Winston Churchill)
Churchill’s words sum up the foreign and defense policy—if policy it can be called—of the Biden Administration. There was no good reason for the United States to withdraw from Afghanistan. All the hand-wringing over "endless war" & etc. conveniently overlooks the fact that US ground troops were no longer engaging in combat against the Taliban. As a matter of fact, the mission had returned to its roots: counterterrorism. And as I have noted elsewhere, though it would have been better to wipe out the Taliban, enforcing a stalemate that kept them out of power was an acceptable alternative: a high-payoff, low-cost strategy. The situation was not ideal, but then the situation never is.
The argument in favor of Biden’s bug-out boils down to a claim that America is incapable of sustaining a long-term security commitment. Really? Where Afghanistan was concerned, it's simply ridiculous to assert that the necessary military commitment was unbearably onerous, or that the American people were clamoring for withdrawal. While it’s true that polling showed low support for the Afghanistan commitment, it’s also true that for the vast majority of Americans it was an abstract issue. Only a tiny minority of American families have members who serve or have served in the armed forces since 9/11. Especially once the casualty count dwindled to single digits, the public paid scant attention to what was going on in Afghanistan. So in reality, there was no pressure on the US to withdraw. We could have stayed on—greatly to the benefit of Afghanistan, not to mention to the benefit of our own national security.
Unfortunately, that’s all over now.
Who would have predicted that Donald J. Trump’s replacement would turn out to be even more incompetent and mendacious that he was? But here we are. Not only did Joe Biden make a colossal strategic blunder, he bungled the withdrawal itself. Right now in Afghanistan, an unknown number of Americans are stranded, with no way out. Think about that. Biden came into office determined to get out of Afghanistan. There was ample time to plan an orderly retreat. But this fool—I cannot mince words—abandoned a secure air base and pulled out all our troops in advance of any civilian evacuation. So of course the troops had to be sent back in, but to Kabul airport, access to which is controlled by the Taliban.
And if that’s bad news for US citizens, it’s a death sentence for Afghans who worked with the US for twenty years. We may be sure that their names are included on the Taliban’s kill lists. No doubt some have already been killed. The charge that a politician one dislikes has “blood on his hands” is much misused. In this case, however, it sticks. Joe Biden’s hands drip with blood: “Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
We’re supposed to believe that Biden & Co. were surprised by the speed with which the Afghan armed forces collapsed. I don’t know why. What did they expect to happen after depriving the Afghans of the logistical support on which they depended? Worse still, Biden kneecapped the Afghan army, then mocked it for its unwillingness to fight—which was simply despicable. Remember when he said that “America is back”? Remember when he said that on his watch, America would once more be trusted by our allies and respected around the world? Well, I doubt that our allies around the world repose much faith or trust in Joe Biden’s America. I doubt that America is viewed today with anything but contempt and scorn. Our adversaries, on the other hand, must be delighted with Biden’s America.
I’m a veteran of the Vietnam War. My younger daughter, a former US Army MP, is an Afghanistan veteran. I swore to myself that I’d do all I could to make sure that the indifference, ingratitude and plain hatred meted out to my generation of veterans would never come my daughter’s way. But when it comes from a president of the United States and his supporters—what’s to be done?
One possibility to consider is in the next few days the Taliban will find it irresistible with a couple of thousand US troops sitting right at the Kabul Airport and perhaps up to the 10 to 20 thousand Western Civilians not to pick a fight i.e. kill, take hostages, create a causus belli, etc and then this whole thing blows wide open. Interestingly if you want the US to stay in Afghanistan you should be hoping for a direct Taliban provocation. In some sense I would argue the Taliban is at as greater risk of getting into a direct fight with the US anytime since the days before and after September 11 2001.
If the Taliban reason for being is to fight the West they have a perfect opportunity to do so right now. If there reason for being is to get control Afghanistan and keep the West out well they have incentive to get everyone of the ideological opponents out as safety and smoothly as possible. The thing is they might not actually know what they and more importantly they leadership might not be able to control there ranks. The rank and file of the Taliban might be believe their purpose in life isn't to govern Afghanistan but instead to fight the West and if the Taliban doesn't pick a fight with the remaining US presence on the ground right now in Kabul it will be a show of weakness and lack of ideological dogma on the part of the Taliban leadership.
During the Iran hostage crisis or doing the fall of Saigon there weren't still thousands of US troops right on the frontlines that could have caused a direct conflict with the US going back in so to speak.
Think of it from the other side, too - if we really wanted to pull down the taliban we could surprise them with a huge influx of troops and beat them off while the chaos is still ongoing.
Walter Russell Mead asked an interesting question this morning,
“How many thousands of American, western and other foreign potential hostages are now behind Taliban lines? How will they be treated? What will be the price for their release?”
Will Biden be forced to do what his former boss did; deliver pallets of cash to the enemy?
In addition to the valuable information in this essay, it would be interesting to read an informed description of what the elements of an orderly retreat would have looked like given the decision of the Biden Administration to leave.
There are numerous other questions that need to be addressed. One that comes to my mind is how will this impact the negotiations on reviving the JCPOA? Will the already hardline President of Iran become emboldened in his demands as a result of an obvious American defeat? In light of how weak the United States looks now, won’t the Biden Administration also insist on conditions that won’t open it up to domestic charges of forging an agreement with Iran full of loopholes?
If all of this makes a return to a revived JCPOA unlikely and the new and improved JCPOA that Biden promised during the Campaign impossible, doesn’t this dramatically increase the chance of war with Iran?
After all, neither Israel or the United States (or the world for that matter) can tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Biden’s capitulation to the Taliban put a spike through the heart of his fervent desire to facilitate a detente with Iran?
Everyone’s asking what this means for Taiwan; I wonder what it means for Japan. How emboldened will China be now that American credibility has suffered. It would be interesting for the Cosmopolitan Globalists to weigh in on what the options are for Taiwan or whether it’s out of options. Does the western defeat in Hong Kong foreshadow the end of democracy in Taiwan or does that nation still have an escape hatch?
If the United States won’t leave 2500 troops in Afghanistan to stabilize a country that gave sanctuary to terrorists who murdered thousands of Americans, what chance is there that the United States would launch a retaliatory strike against China if China attacked Japan with either conventional or nuclear weapons? Doesn’t the defeat in Afghanistan reveal the American nuclear umbrella, at least outside of Europe, to be a charade?
NATO appeared to be a paper tiger before the Afghanistan debacle. Wasn’t the fecklessness of both the EU and NATO revealed when all it’s member nations were reduced to doing what they do best, stomping their feet and launching platitudes?
My take is that there is a solution to some of this. We need political leaders in the West who focus more on nationalism than internationalism. Only nations focused on the needs and aspirations of their own citizens will be strong and cohesive enough to participate as “good citizens” of a scaled back but still vibrant international community.
Until elites stop obsessing about the importance of international law and fatally flawed experiments like the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Health Organization and even the EU, the West will never regain the strength it needs to sustain a more reasonable effort at international cooperation.
Let’s look at who’s on the way up and who’s on the way down. Nations that fantasize about the resilience of the international community are on the way down; the United States and Europe being the best examples.
Who’s on the way up? Nations that eschew internationalism (or in the case of China, merely pay lip service to it). China is rising and so is Russia (which makes Putin a genius despite being a monster).
There’s a lesson in all of this; will the West learn it before it is too late?
WigWag, I can actually tell you one country that could live with an Iranian nuke and that is India. An Iranian nuke leaves India no worse off than it already is vis a vis nuclear armed Pakistan and perhaps better off as Pakistan would then be sandwiched by nuclear armed India and a nuclear armed Iran.
In terms of Iran Europe will not lift a finger to do anything short of Iran being on the verge of having a nuclear weapon. The European view is people like Trump and yourself WigWag blew up the first JCPOA and the Trumps/WigWags of the world can deal with the consequences of a nuclear armed Iran on their own. Lastly because of Brexit both Israel and the US lost their most important ally in terms of moral clarity in the European Union. Now the EU is going to be much more controlled by neo-Gaullists like Macron and neo-mercantilists like Merkel.
In terms of nationalism well a country like Hungary has no ability to develop a nuclear deterrent which is become the sine quo non of being a sovereign nation in the 20th century so just more Victor Orbanian nationalist cheerleading is going to do the trick. Obviously one solution for the Hungary's and Estonia's of the world to throw in with those in Brussels who want to turn the EU itself into a full fledge nation state United States of Europe but I suspect WigWag you are no fan of that idea.
Probably the one country who could get closest to a French style independent nuclear deterrent in a short period of time is Japan and for a lot of reasons I suspect it won't simply because as an island nation it is not at all easy for let's say Russia or China to invade it. Obviously there is a risk of a Chinese first strike nuclear attack on Japan but I consider that a fairly fanciful idea and what good would it do China.
What was the purpose of today’s terrorist attack outside of the airport in Kabul?
The answer is obvious; it was motivated by a desire to humiliate President Biden, the United States and the West in general.
How long will it be before the Taliban turns over the former American Embassy in Kabul to the Russians or the Chinese?
My guess is that we might see that by the end of this year.
Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Joe Biden (or as Maureen Dowd calls them Wynken, Blynken and Nod) all have one thing in common; that deer in the headlights look.
I thought this piece by Matthew Yglesias lays out a pretty good case that many people including Claire, Vivek, Thomas, Monique and WigWag really didn't care that much about Afghanistan and if they did really care about Afghanistan they would have given Russia a pass for example for invading Crimea and Dunbas in order to get Russia's help to stabilize Afghanistan(Or Iran for that matter).
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-national-security-establishment
It looks to me as if Biden & Co. are prepared to skedaddle out of Afghanistan on August 31, even if a whole lot of US citizens remain stranded there. No doubt they'll offer the excuse that those remaining behind chose to stay behind.
It may seem incredible that a US president would do such a wicked, cowardly thing—but then everything that Joe Biden has done since he ignited this crisis suggests that (1) he doesn't mind lying and (2) that he's a poltroon. Will no one resign in protest over his utter spinelessness and gross dereliction of duty? Probably not. No doubt he and his minions are crossing their fingers and hoping that the whole thing will blow over. But hard on the heels of the withdrawal is the twentieth anniversary of 9/11—and not all the spin in the galaxy can uncouple them. Imagine how revolting it will be to see this man—who makes Neville Chamberlain look like Bismarck—presiding over the solemn commemorations of that terrible day.
Incidentally I spoke to my daughter—as you may recall, an Afghanistan veteran—and she is utterly disgusted, not to mention brokenhearted over the soldiers she knew who were wounded or killed during her tour of duty. What could I say to her? What can anybody say?
You may be interested to know what veterans are saying about this calamity Below is the text of a recent post to Facebook by Alex:
I find it ironic that the phrase most commonly associated with 9/11 is “Never Forget” because it seems as though we have forgotten why America still had interests in Afghanistan. It was our insurance policy to make certain that the events of 9/11 could never be born and bred in that area again. Twenty years ago, we did not have that insurance, and almost 3,000 innocent Americans paid the price for it in their blood on 9/11. Since then, thousands of American soldiers have died, while countless others left pieces of themselves, physically and mentally, in defense of this insurance policy. I see why Americans wanted out of Afghanistan, but the way this was done is absolutely disgraceful. The images of the war started with Americans jumping out of the Twin Towers to escape the events caused by Islamic terrorism. Now, they conclude with images of Afghan citizens attempting to evade the same terrorism, while clinging to, and later falling from, American aircraft as they flee. Thank you, Mr. President."
I'm stunned, speechless, and nauseated.
Claire, are you stunned, speechless and nauseated enough to admit that as much as you detested Trump, the United States was more respected by its adversaries (and even its allies) when he was President than it is after the fiasco Biden has perpetrated in Afghanistan?
I’m no fan of Donald Trump, but I must admit that it’s hard to imagine how he could have perpetrated a more humiliating and shameful debacle than Biden has. If the former was an unfit president, the latter is equally unfit—if not for precisely the same reasons.
Watching the President’s press conference this afternoon was a dispiriting ordeal. I beheld a hollow man, mouthing empty words. His voice was halting, his empathizer-in-chief routine was painfully artificial, his pledge to avenge the blood of our dead was pathetically unconvincing. All too obviously the man is shellshocked and exhausted, with no idea of what to do beyond mouthing the platitudes with which his handlers have stuffed him. My conclusion is chilling and it leaves me numb: In this hour of its need, our country has no leader.
How America arrived at this sorry pass is a matter for profound reflection: National disasters of this magnitude are a long time in the making. It will probably be found that this one is traceable to the Sixties—like the Thirties a low, dishonest decade. But honestly, just now I cannot summon up the indignation and energy to embark on the necessary analysis. I just feel terribly sad. The twelve Marines and the Navy Corpsman who died today were members of my extended family, which encompasses all who wear or have worn the uniform.
Trump was incompetent but Biden’s incompetence is truly peerless.
Trump may have been venal but has he done anything in his personal, professional or political life that approaches the venality of Biden’s behavior during the Afghanistan retreat? Who has more innocent blood on his hands, the 45th President of the United States or the 46th?
With Biden’s surrender to the Taliban soon to be in the rear view mirror, the President and his team can now devote their full attention to acquiescing to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. The resulting arms race in the Middle East will be something to behold and is likely to have far bigger and more dangerous consequences that make the Afghan debacle look like a sideshow.
How we arrived at this sorry pass is something I hope that the Cosmopolitan Globalists will reflect on and write about in the weeks ahead.
Commenting on the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the Great War, the British author, journalist and literary critic, Rebecca West famously said,
I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else. They stink so badly that I cannot believe that even in life they were healthy.“
The United States was never an Empire exactly, but in light of the Afghan disaster, West’s admonition hits a little bit too close to home.
Things just keeps getting worse.
Today we learned from White House communications director Kate Bedingfield that the chaos in Afghanistan is "not acceptable" to President Biden. That's just one more lie to add to a very long list—for obviously the chaos in Afghanistan is acceptable to Joe Biden. Recall that in his interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos he described that chaos as inevitable: something he'd expected all along. And that claim of course contradicted pretty much everything he said in his now-notorious July 8 statement on the Afghanistan withdrawal:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/
This lamentable performance raises a pointed question: Why should anybody, anywhere, now believe a single thing that Joe Biden says? His credibility is shot—and because as president he speaks for this country, America's credibility is gone.
There have been attempts to portray Biden as a hard-eyed, hard-hearted practitioner of Realpolitik, but a glance at the total record shows the absurdity of such characterizations. This man has long been known as a fabulist and spinner of phony narratives. His record on on foreign policy and national security issues is a pig's breakfast of misjudgment, error and magical thinking. And on top of that there's the fact, increasingly obvious, that he's mentally unfit, incapable of performing the duties of his high office. This is a crisis that transcends the Afghanistan debacle.
All, there was a pretty good article I found in the National Interest that gives I think a pretty coherent case as to why Joe Biden has acted so much in objection that of the readers and writers of the Cosmopolitan Globalist.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/nord-stream-and-beyond-rescuing-ukraine-while-repairing-russia-ties-190838
Basically the article suggests Biden views the people who run things in Kiev as being just as corrupt as those who run things in Kabul and is basically saying sayonara if you really like corruption which both groups have been shown to do then you will be sure to like life under the thumb of Russia and the Taliban. Where I think the Cosmopolitan Globalist response would be is this is a very harsh form of collective punishment. Many people in Ukraine and Afghanistan who genuinely are not corrupt are going to thrown under the bus and run over by Biden although some might say the same about Margaret Thatcher fight with the British coal miners.
Quote: "Just as corruption doomed your nation-building fantasies in the Middle East—and, most recently, Afghanistan—Biden has seen the swamp of corruption in Ukraine’s oligarchic economy close up. Petroleum rents—“unearned” income just for sitting between a seller and a buyer—are like an addiction for the Ukrainian elite, fueling that corruption. Of course Ukraine isn’t Iraq and we won’t just cut Kiev off. We agree to help Ukraine kick its addiction, transition to clean energy, and bolster its security. But it’s time for realism on Ukraine, not more misguided idealism that has led to repeated regime change in the Middle East and endless NATO expansion toward Russia—policies that aggravate relations with Russia, fuel Middle East instability, and drive huge refugee flows, all major political crises for us."
The more I brood over this self-inflicted defeat, the angrier I feel. What is going through my mind was well expressed by Winston Churchill's speech in the House of Commons on October 5, 1938, after the signing of the Munich Agreement:
“I will, therefore, begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing. I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat…
“And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
These words strike like an arrow at the gnarled little heart of the Biden Administration. The damage he and his minions have done, the shame they've brought upon the United States, the aid and comfort they've given to our enemies, the hell to which they've condemned the people of a prostrate nation, will reverberate down the years and decades. As Churchill said of Munich, this week's humiliating spectacle is but a foretaste of a terrible reckoning. And worst of all, for the next three years the leaders, so called, who engineered this cowardly defeat and surrender will remain in charge. As long as Joe Biden occupies the White House, the urgently necessary "recovery of moral health and martial vigour" is scarcely to be expected.
What exactly do you want? Or let's put it this way what political compromises would you have made Thomas, to stay on Afghanistan? You have previously made clear you have no desire for any type of normalization of relations with Iran for example. What about domestic policy in the US? Your "favorite" president George W Bush prior to Trump was one of the most divisive Presidents in American history. You are like the kid who walks into the ice cream shop and wants every flavor on the menu.
No. Bush wasn't divisive. The way people talked about him was divisive. The most divisive President prior to Trump was Obama. But I may be biased, what with all the bitterly clinging to my bible and my guns...
Particularly disheartening was yesterday’s sorry performance by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which I can only characterize as a stain on the honor of the armed forces of the United States. In effect they shrugged their shoulders over the plight of the US citizens stranded in Afghanistan, not to mention the plight of tens of thousands of Afghans whose lives are forfeit because they cooperated with the US. To hear the leaders of the world’s most powerful military plead that they “lack the capacity” to do what’s necessary to bring those people out made me cringe and turn away from the TV screen.
I wore the uniform of the US Army for twenty-eight years, in war and peace, and until this week that was for me a point of pride. I’m not sure how I feel about it now.
The performance of the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was truly cringe worthy. Is it possible that the greatest military in the world genuflects to a rag tag army of terrorists when it comes to safely evacuating Americans and American allies? Is it really impossible for the U.S. to secure the safety of Americans who need to get to the Airport to escape?
Add to this, the fact that just a short while ago, the DOD press secretary admitted that the Department doesn’t know how many Americans are in Afghanistan or in the Kabul area. Shouldn’t someone have figured this out before Biden ordered the withdrawal?
Then there’s blinkered Blinken and his dimwitted deputy, Wendy Sherman, warning the Taliban that they won’t be welcomed into the international community if they mistreat Afghan women. I’m sure that this threat has the Taliban shaking in their boots.
But as usual, when it comes to absurd statements, it’s a European who takes the cake; in this case, the pompous and vacuous EU Foreign Policy Chief, Borrell. He said,
“What we cannot do is to let the Chinese and Russians to take control of the situation…We could become irrelevant.”
Somebody wake this clown up and explain to him that the EU hasn’t been relevant in a decade. It’s not the relevance of the EU he should be worried about, but it’s survival.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or to cry.
Can Biden's political career survive this? Does this kill his chance at re-election? When even NPR is critical you know it's bad.
The full political fallout is yet to be felt. Just wait until the 20th Anniversary commemorations of 9/11.
Any President would be expected to play the major role in leading the commemoration of such a somber moment in American history.
How will Biden do that with the Taliban ascendant in Afghanistan? What can he possibly say?
As our country fully reckons with the failure in Afghanistan (the war that Obama labeled as the good war) it’s hard to believe that there won’t be a political price to be paid.
I’ve had just the same thought. The spectacle of Joe Biden presiding over the solemn commemoration of that terrible and heroic day would be enough to gag a maggot. What, indeed, could he possibly say? “Never mind”?
There is also the question of Biden’s mental fitness—a question no longer confined to the social media fever swamps. If we’re honest we must admit that Biden’s demeanor, incoherence and wildly inconsistent statements are alarming. There’s something wrong with the President. This week, it became obvious.
I had not paid any attention to claims of his mental unfitness (dementia? until this week. Now I can see it.
That's unfortunate. It has been there for all to see. I don't know that it matters much. In the election we had the choice between a guy who was temperamentally and intellectually unfit for the job, and a guy who was...I don't know the right fancy word...unfit for health reasons? Anyway...a choice between dumb and dumberer. You pick which is which.
Like many New Yorkers, I know people who died when the towers collapsed. A neighbor who was a fireman perished, as did an acquaintance who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm located on the 101st to 105th floors at One World Trade Center.
The firm lost almost 700 people, two thirds of its New York work force that day.
Remarkably, Cantor’s CEO, Howard Lutnick, was taking one of his children to her first day of school that morning so he survived.
In the intervening years, Cantor (and its subsidiary, BGC) has honored its fallen colleagues by raising many millions of dollars for a variety of charities including charities which support programs for 9/11 survivors. See,
https://www.bgcpartners.com/charity-day/
My brother and I were on an airplane traveling from LaGuardia Airport to Florida when the towers were hit. Our wives were frantic for about 90 minutes until they found out that we weren’t on the flights that crashed into the Towers.
In light of what’s happened in Afghanistan, the idea of President Biden presiding over the 20th Anniversary commemoration is very distasteful.
No, it can't. Biden will use the convenient excuse of age to step aside in favor of some other candidate—probably not Kamala Harris, to whose multiple preexisting political liabilities is now added the stigma of complicity in a national humiliation.
Yes, that's my guess as well.
You are getting way too ahead of yourselves. You also seem to assume it will NOT be a Trump vs Biden rematch.
Probably yes with exception of one very unlikely circumstance which would be that the GOP nominates a centrist minded candidate known for managerial competence like Charlie Baker of Massachusetts with no ties to either the Trump or Bush wings of the party.
In terms of the probability of the GOP nominating someone like Baker I would ask the two inhouse GOP primary voters here at the Cosmopolitan Globalist, Thomas M Gregg and WigWag would "they" vote in a Republican Party primary for someone like Charlie Baker? Probably not in my opinion.
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” (Winston Churchill)
Churchill’s words sum up the foreign and defense policy—if policy it can be called—of the Biden Administration. There was no good reason for the United States to withdraw from Afghanistan. All the hand-wringing over "endless war" & etc. conveniently overlooks the fact that US ground troops were no longer engaging in combat against the Taliban. As a matter of fact, the mission had returned to its roots: counterterrorism. And as I have noted elsewhere, though it would have been better to wipe out the Taliban, enforcing a stalemate that kept them out of power was an acceptable alternative: a high-payoff, low-cost strategy. The situation was not ideal, but then the situation never is.
The argument in favor of Biden’s bug-out boils down to a claim that America is incapable of sustaining a long-term security commitment. Really? Where Afghanistan was concerned, it's simply ridiculous to assert that the necessary military commitment was unbearably onerous, or that the American people were clamoring for withdrawal. While it’s true that polling showed low support for the Afghanistan commitment, it’s also true that for the vast majority of Americans it was an abstract issue. Only a tiny minority of American families have members who serve or have served in the armed forces since 9/11. Especially once the casualty count dwindled to single digits, the public paid scant attention to what was going on in Afghanistan. So in reality, there was no pressure on the US to withdraw. We could have stayed on—greatly to the benefit of Afghanistan, not to mention to the benefit of our own national security.
Unfortunately, that’s all over now.
Who would have predicted that Donald J. Trump’s replacement would turn out to be even more incompetent and mendacious that he was? But here we are. Not only did Joe Biden make a colossal strategic blunder, he bungled the withdrawal itself. Right now in Afghanistan, an unknown number of Americans are stranded, with no way out. Think about that. Biden came into office determined to get out of Afghanistan. There was ample time to plan an orderly retreat. But this fool—I cannot mince words—abandoned a secure air base and pulled out all our troops in advance of any civilian evacuation. So of course the troops had to be sent back in, but to Kabul airport, access to which is controlled by the Taliban.
And if that’s bad news for US citizens, it’s a death sentence for Afghans who worked with the US for twenty years. We may be sure that their names are included on the Taliban’s kill lists. No doubt some have already been killed. The charge that a politician one dislikes has “blood on his hands” is much misused. In this case, however, it sticks. Joe Biden’s hands drip with blood: “Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
We’re supposed to believe that Biden & Co. were surprised by the speed with which the Afghan armed forces collapsed. I don’t know why. What did they expect to happen after depriving the Afghans of the logistical support on which they depended? Worse still, Biden kneecapped the Afghan army, then mocked it for its unwillingness to fight—which was simply despicable. Remember when he said that “America is back”? Remember when he said that on his watch, America would once more be trusted by our allies and respected around the world? Well, I doubt that our allies around the world repose much faith or trust in Joe Biden’s America. I doubt that America is viewed today with anything but contempt and scorn. Our adversaries, on the other hand, must be delighted with Biden’s America.
I’m a veteran of the Vietnam War. My younger daughter, a former US Army MP, is an Afghanistan veteran. I swore to myself that I’d do all I could to make sure that the indifference, ingratitude and plain hatred meted out to my generation of veterans would never come my daughter’s way. But when it comes from a president of the United States and his supporters—what’s to be done?
One possibility to consider is in the next few days the Taliban will find it irresistible with a couple of thousand US troops sitting right at the Kabul Airport and perhaps up to the 10 to 20 thousand Western Civilians not to pick a fight i.e. kill, take hostages, create a causus belli, etc and then this whole thing blows wide open. Interestingly if you want the US to stay in Afghanistan you should be hoping for a direct Taliban provocation. In some sense I would argue the Taliban is at as greater risk of getting into a direct fight with the US anytime since the days before and after September 11 2001.
If the Taliban reason for being is to fight the West they have a perfect opportunity to do so right now. If there reason for being is to get control Afghanistan and keep the West out well they have incentive to get everyone of the ideological opponents out as safety and smoothly as possible. The thing is they might not actually know what they and more importantly they leadership might not be able to control there ranks. The rank and file of the Taliban might be believe their purpose in life isn't to govern Afghanistan but instead to fight the West and if the Taliban doesn't pick a fight with the remaining US presence on the ground right now in Kabul it will be a show of weakness and lack of ideological dogma on the part of the Taliban leadership.
During the Iran hostage crisis or doing the fall of Saigon there weren't still thousands of US troops right on the frontlines that could have caused a direct conflict with the US going back in so to speak.
Think of it from the other side, too - if we really wanted to pull down the taliban we could surprise them with a huge influx of troops and beat them off while the chaos is still ongoing.
Fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time.
Walter Russell Mead asked an interesting question this morning,
“How many thousands of American, western and other foreign potential hostages are now behind Taliban lines? How will they be treated? What will be the price for their release?”
Will Biden be forced to do what his former boss did; deliver pallets of cash to the enemy?
In addition to the valuable information in this essay, it would be interesting to read an informed description of what the elements of an orderly retreat would have looked like given the decision of the Biden Administration to leave.
There are numerous other questions that need to be addressed. One that comes to my mind is how will this impact the negotiations on reviving the JCPOA? Will the already hardline President of Iran become emboldened in his demands as a result of an obvious American defeat? In light of how weak the United States looks now, won’t the Biden Administration also insist on conditions that won’t open it up to domestic charges of forging an agreement with Iran full of loopholes?
If all of this makes a return to a revived JCPOA unlikely and the new and improved JCPOA that Biden promised during the Campaign impossible, doesn’t this dramatically increase the chance of war with Iran?
After all, neither Israel or the United States (or the world for that matter) can tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Biden’s capitulation to the Taliban put a spike through the heart of his fervent desire to facilitate a detente with Iran?
Everyone’s asking what this means for Taiwan; I wonder what it means for Japan. How emboldened will China be now that American credibility has suffered. It would be interesting for the Cosmopolitan Globalists to weigh in on what the options are for Taiwan or whether it’s out of options. Does the western defeat in Hong Kong foreshadow the end of democracy in Taiwan or does that nation still have an escape hatch?
If the United States won’t leave 2500 troops in Afghanistan to stabilize a country that gave sanctuary to terrorists who murdered thousands of Americans, what chance is there that the United States would launch a retaliatory strike against China if China attacked Japan with either conventional or nuclear weapons? Doesn’t the defeat in Afghanistan reveal the American nuclear umbrella, at least outside of Europe, to be a charade?
NATO appeared to be a paper tiger before the Afghanistan debacle. Wasn’t the fecklessness of both the EU and NATO revealed when all it’s member nations were reduced to doing what they do best, stomping their feet and launching platitudes?
My take is that there is a solution to some of this. We need political leaders in the West who focus more on nationalism than internationalism. Only nations focused on the needs and aspirations of their own citizens will be strong and cohesive enough to participate as “good citizens” of a scaled back but still vibrant international community.
Until elites stop obsessing about the importance of international law and fatally flawed experiments like the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Health Organization and even the EU, the West will never regain the strength it needs to sustain a more reasonable effort at international cooperation.
Let’s look at who’s on the way up and who’s on the way down. Nations that fantasize about the resilience of the international community are on the way down; the United States and Europe being the best examples.
Who’s on the way up? Nations that eschew internationalism (or in the case of China, merely pay lip service to it). China is rising and so is Russia (which makes Putin a genius despite being a monster).
There’s a lesson in all of this; will the West learn it before it is too late?
Or is it already too late?
WigWag, I can actually tell you one country that could live with an Iranian nuke and that is India. An Iranian nuke leaves India no worse off than it already is vis a vis nuclear armed Pakistan and perhaps better off as Pakistan would then be sandwiched by nuclear armed India and a nuclear armed Iran.
In terms of Iran Europe will not lift a finger to do anything short of Iran being on the verge of having a nuclear weapon. The European view is people like Trump and yourself WigWag blew up the first JCPOA and the Trumps/WigWags of the world can deal with the consequences of a nuclear armed Iran on their own. Lastly because of Brexit both Israel and the US lost their most important ally in terms of moral clarity in the European Union. Now the EU is going to be much more controlled by neo-Gaullists like Macron and neo-mercantilists like Merkel.
In terms of nationalism well a country like Hungary has no ability to develop a nuclear deterrent which is become the sine quo non of being a sovereign nation in the 20th century so just more Victor Orbanian nationalist cheerleading is going to do the trick. Obviously one solution for the Hungary's and Estonia's of the world to throw in with those in Brussels who want to turn the EU itself into a full fledge nation state United States of Europe but I suspect WigWag you are no fan of that idea.
Probably the one country who could get closest to a French style independent nuclear deterrent in a short period of time is Japan and for a lot of reasons I suspect it won't simply because as an island nation it is not at all easy for let's say Russia or China to invade it. Obviously there is a risk of a Chinese first strike nuclear attack on Japan but I consider that a fairly fanciful idea and what good would it do China.